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THE FARMER AND HIS COMMUNITY
BY
DWIGHT SANDERSON
PROFESSOR OF RURAL SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
In the "good old days" of early New England the people acted in
communities. The original New England "towns" were true communities;
that is, relatively small local groups of people, each group having its
own institutions, like the church and the school, and largely managing
its own affairs. Down through the years the town meeting has persisted,
and even to-day the New England town is to a very large degree a small
democracy. It does not, however, manage all its affairs in quite the
same fashion that it did two hundred years ago.
When the Western tide of settlement set in, people frequently went West
in groups and occasionally whole communities moved, but the general rule
was settlement by families on "family size" farms. The unit of our rural
civilization, therefore, became the farm family. There were, of course,
neighborhoods, and much neighborhood life. The local schools were really
neighborhood schools. Churches multiplied in number even beyond the need
for them. When farmers began to associate themselves together as in the
Grange, they recognized the need of a strong local group larger than the
neighborhood. A subordinate Grange for example is a community
organization. Experience gradually demonstrated that if farmers wished
to cooperate they must cooperate in local groups. Strong nation-wide
organizations are clearly of great importance, but they can have little
strength unless they are made up of active local bodies. Gradually, the
community idea has spread over the country, in some cases springing up
almost spontaneously, until to-day there is a very widespread belief
among the farmers, as well as among the special students of rural
affairs, that the organization and development of the local rural
communities is the main task in conserving our American agriculture and
country life. It is interesting to note that what is true in America is
proving also to be true in other countries. In fact, the farm village
life in Europe and even in such countries as China is taking on new
activities, and it is being recognized that the improvement of these
small units of society is one of the great needs of the age.
Professor Sanderson, in this book, has attempted to indicate just what
the community movement means to the farmers of America. He has brought
to this task rather unusual preparation. In turn, a graduate of an
agricultural college, a scientist of reputation, Director of an
agricultural experiment station, Dean of a college of agriculture, he
has had a wide, varied and successful experience in various states. He
finally arrived at the conviction, however, that the most important
field of work for him lay in dealing with the larger phases of country
life, and he gave up administrative work for further preparation in the
new field. In his position as Professor of Rural Organization in the
College of Agriculture at Cornell University, he has been unusually
successful, both as investigator and as teacher. He speaks as one who
knows the farmers and not as an outsider, and also as a thorough
student.
This book therefore is sent out with a good deal of confidence. It deals
with one of the most important of the rural topics that can be discussed
these days. It points out fundamental principles and indicates practical
steps in applying principles.
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD.
FOREWORD
In recent years we have heard a great deal about the rural community and
rural community organization. All sorts of organizations dealing with
rural life discuss these topics at their meetings, the agricultural
press and the popular magazines encourage community development, and a
number of books have recently appeared dealing with various phases of
rural community life. The community idea is fairly well established as
an essential of rural social organization.
One might gain the impression that the community is a new discovery or
social invention were he to read only the current discussions. It is,
however, a form of social organization as old as agriculture itself, but
which was very largely neglected in the settlement of the larger part of
the United States. This new emphasis on the community is, therefore, but
the revival in a new form of a very ancient mode of human association.
The community becomes essential because the conditions of rural life
have changed and rural people are again being forced to act together in
locality groups to meet the needs of their common life.
The author has attempted to define the rural community and to describe
the new conditions which are determining its structure and shaping its
functions, in the belief that an understanding of the nature of the
rural community should aid those who are seeking to secure a better
social adjustment of the countryside. It attempts to relate "The Farmer
and His Community." The problems and methods of community organization
have been discussed but incidentally, and the book is not designed as a
handbook for community development. Its chief aim is to establish a
point of view with regard to the rural community as an essential unit
for rural social organization through a sociological analysis of the
past history and present tendencies of the various forms of associations
which seem necessary for a satisfying rural society. It is hoped that
such an analysis presented in an untechnical manner may be of service to
rural leaders who are working for the development of country life by
giving them a better understanding of the nature of the community and
therefore a firmer faith in its future and greater enthusiasm and
loyalty in its service.
The present volume is a brief summary of a more extended study of the
rural community, not only in this country but in other lands and in
other times, which is now in preparation for publication.
DWIGHT SANDERSON.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY. _May, 1922._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE RURAL COMMUNITY 3
II. THE FARM HOME AND THE COMMUNITY 14
III. THE COMMUNITY'S PEOPLE AND HISTORY 29
IV. COMMUNICATION THE MEANS OF COMMUNITY LIFE 37
V. THE FARM AND THE VILLAGE 46
VI. COMMUNITY ASPECTS OF THE FARM BUSINESS 58
VII. HOW MARKETS AFFECT RURAL COMMUNITIES 67
VIII. HOW COOPERATION STRENGTHENS THE COMMUNITY 77
IX. THE COMMUNITY'S EDUCATION 91
X. THE COMMUNITY'S EDUCATION, CONTINUED; THE
EXTENSION MOVEMENT 107
XI. THE COMMUNITY'S RELIGIOUS LIFE 121
XII. THE COMMUNITY'S HEALTH 137
XIII. THE COMMUNITY'S PLAY AND RECREATION 153
XIV. ORGANIZATIONS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY 169
XV. THE COMMUNITY'S DEPENDENT 181
XVI. THE COMMUNITY'S GOVERNMENT 196
XVII. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION 209
XVIII. COMMUNITY PLANNING 222
XIX. COMMUNITY LOYALTY 234
APPENDIX A 247
THE FARMER AND HIS COMMUNITY
"_The core of the community idea, then--as applied to rural life--is
that we must make the community, as a unit, an entity, a thing, the
point of departure of all our thinking about the rural problem, and, in
its local application, the direct aim of all organized efforts for
improvement or redirection. The building of real, local farm communities
is perhaps the main task in erecting an adequate rural civilization.
Here is the real goal of all rural effort, the inner kernel of a sane
country-life movement, the moving slogan of the new campaign for rural
progress that must be waged by the present generation._"--_Kenyon L.
Butterfield, in "The Farmer and the New Day."_
CHAPTER I
THE RURAL COMMUNITY
No phase of the social progress of the Twentieth Century is more
significant or promises a more far-reaching influence than the
rediscovery of the _community_ as a fundamental social unit, and the
beginnings of community consciousness throughout the United States. I
say the "rediscovery" of the community, for ever since men forsook
hunting and grazing as the chief means of subsistence and settled down
to a permanent agriculture they have lived in communities.
In ancient and medieval Europe, in China and India, and among primitive
agricultural peoples throughout the world, the village community is
recognized as the primary local unit of society. In medieval France the
rural "_communaute_" was the local unit of government and social
administration. Its people met from time to time at the village church
in regular assemblies at which they elected their local officers,
approved their accounts, arranged for the support of the church, the
school, and local improvements. In most of France and throughout much of
Europe the farm homes are still clustered in villages, from which the
farm lands radiate. There the village is primarily a place of residence,
and with the lands belonging to it forms the community.
New England was settled in much the same manner, being divided into
towns which still form the local units of government, and which for the
most part are single communities, though here and there more than one
center has sprung up within a town and secondary communities have
developed. The New England town meeting has ever been lauded as the
birthplace of representative democratic government in America, and in
its original form it was a true community meeting, dealing not only with
the political government, but considering all religious, educational,
and social matters affecting the common life of the town.
Although the New England tradition determined the form of local
government in the areas settled by its people in the central and western
states, the township was but an artificial town resulting from methods
of the land surveys. The homesteader "took up" his land with but little
thought of community relations. He traded at the nearest town; church
was first held in the school-house and later churches were erected in
the open country at convenient points; his children went to the district
school; and his social life was chiefly in the neighboring homes. His
life centered in the immediate neighborhood. As railroads covered the
country, villages and town sprang up at frequent intervals, and
gradually became the real centers of community life, but usually there
was but little realization on the part of either village or farm people
of their community interests. The farmer's attention was on the farm,
the townsman's chief interest was his business, and not infrequently
their interests were in conflict and they gave little thought to their
real dependence on each other.
In the South the plantation system of the landed aristocracy, which as
long as it existed was quite self-sufficient, gave little encouragement
to community development. The county was the most important unit of
local government and the "carpet-baggers'" efforts at establishing local
townships were repudiated with the ending of their regime. Only in
recent years have conditions throughout the South, largely the result of
increased immigration and the breaking up of large plantations, favored
the development of local communities.
In general, the American farmer has voted and taken his share in local
politics and government, has attended his own church, has traded where
most convenient or advantageous, has joined the nearest grange or lodge,
and with his family has visited nearby friends and relatives and joined
with them in social festivities; he has loyally supported these various
interests, but until very recently, he has had little conception of the
interrelations of these institutions in the life of the community or of
the possible advantages of community development as such. But new wants
and new problems have arisen which may only be met by the united action
of all elements of both village and countryside. The automobile demands
better roads and both farmer and businessman are interested to have them
built so that the natural community centers may be most easily reached.
Better schools, libraries, facilities for recreation and social life,
organization for the improvement of agriculture and for the better
marketing of farm products, are all community problems and force
attention upon the community area to be served by these institutions. A
consolidated school or a library cannot be maintained at every
crossroads. Only by the support of all the people within a reasonable
distance of a common center are better rural institutions possible.
The trend of events was thus bringing about a recognition of the place
of the community in the life of rural people, when the Great War
hastened this process by many years. Liberty Loan, Red Cross, and other
war "drives" were organized by communities which vied with each other in
raising their quotas. A new sense of the unity of the community was
brought about by the common loyalty to its boys in the nation's service.
Having created state and county councils of defense, national leaders
came to appreciate that the primary unit for effective organization for
war purposes must be the community, and President Wilson wrote to the
State Councils of Defense urging the organization of community councils.
Thousands of these had been organized when the Armistice was declared,
and although most of them were not continued, the importance of the
local community was given national recognition and attention was
directed to the need of the better organization of local forces for
community progress.
What, then, is the rural community? Is it a real entity or is it merely
an idea or an ideal? Where is it and how can we recognize it?
We are indebted to Professor C. J. Galpin, now in charge of the Farm
Life Studies of the United States Department of Agriculture, for first
developing a method for the location of the rural community. Professor
Galpin[1] holds that the trading area tributary to any village is
usually the chief factor in determining the community area. He
determines the community area by starting from a business center and
marking on a map those farm homes which trade mostly at that center. By
drawing a line connecting those farm homes farthest from the center on
all the roads radiating from it, the boundary of the trade area is
described. In the same way the areas tributary to the church, the
school, the bank, the milk station, the grange, etc., may be determined
and mapped. The boundaries of these areas will be found to be by no
means coincident, but it will usually be found that most of them center
in one village or hamlet, and that the trade area is the most
significant in determining the area tributary to this center. When the
areas served by the chief institutions of adjacent centers are mapped,
it is usually found that a composite line of the different boundary
lines separating these centers will approximate the boundaries of the
communities. A line which divides adjacent community areas so that most
of the families either side of this line go most frequently to, or their
chief interests are at, the center within that boundary, will be the
boundary between the adjacent communities. Thus, from the standpoint of
location, _a community is the local area tributary to the center of the
common interests of its people._[2]
As indicated above the business center may usually be taken as the base
point or community center, from which to determine the boundaries of the
community. However, in the older parts of the country or in hilly or
mountainous regions, the trade or business center is not always the same
as the center of the chief social activities of the people, and may not
be the chief factor in determining the community center. Not
infrequently a church, school and grange hall located close together may
form the nucleus of a community which does its business at a railroad
station village some distance away, possibly over a range of hills. The
chief trading points cannot, therefore, be arbitrarily assumed as the
base points for determining community areas, but those points at which
the more important of the common interests of the people find expression
should be considered as community centers. It is not simply a question
of where the people go most often, but of where their chief interests
focus.
With this concept of a community it is obvious that the "center" of a
community must be the base point for determining its area. It would seem
that the community center is essential to the individuality of any
community: The community "center" need not necessarily be at the
geographical center of the community; indeed in many cases it is at or
close to one of its boundaries, though in an open level country it will
tend to approximate the center.
The term "community center" is here used in a literal sense of being the
center of the activities of the community. It should be distinguished
from the "community-center idea" which refers to a building, whether it
be a community house, school, church, or grange hall, as a "community
center." Such a building in which the activities of the community are
largely centered may be a community center in a very real sense, but in
most cases these activities will be divided between church, school,
grange hall, etc. No one of them can then be a center for the whole
community, but taken together they constitute the center in which the
chief interests of the community focus. Every community must necessarily
have a more or less well defined community center; it may or may not
have some one building in which the chief activities of the community
have their headquarters. Such buildings, of whatever nature, may well be
called community houses or social centers.
Although attention has been directed to the area of the community, the
community consists not of land or houses but of the people of this area.
Its boundary merely gives a community identity, as does the roll of a
company or the charter of a city. The community consists of the people
within a local area; the land they occupy is but the physical basis of
the community. The nature of the community will depend very largely upon
whether its people live close together or at a distance. In the Rocky
Mountain States many communities are but sparsely settled and may have a
radius of forty or fifty miles and yet be true communities, while on the
Atlantic seaboard a definite community with as many people may have a
radius of not over a mile or two.
Nor is the community a mere aggregation or association of the people of
a given area. It is rather a corporate state of mind of those living in
a local area, giving rise to their collective behavior. There cannot be
a true community unless the people think and act together.
The term "neighborhood" is very frequently used as synonymous with
"community," and should be definitely distinguished. In the sense in
which these terms are now coming to be technically employed, the
neighborhood consists of but a group of houses fairly near each other.
Frequently a neighborhood grew up around some one center, as a school,
store, church, mill, or blacksmith shop, which in the course of time may
have been abandoned, but the homes remained clustered together. Or the
neighborhood may be merely six to a dozen homes near together on the
same road or near a corner. The school district of the one-room country
school is commonly a neighborhood, but as there are no other interests
which bind the people together it cannot be considered a community.
Likewise people associate in churches, granges, etc., but church
parishes overlap, and the constituency of any one of these associations
is not necessarily a community. Only when several of the chief human
interests find satisfaction in the organizations and institutions which
serve a fairly definite common local area tributary to them, do we have
a true community. In many cases the neighborhood, particularly the
school district, forms a desirable unit for certain purposes of social
organization, and, indeed, in many cases it may be necessary to develop
the neighborhood as a social unit before its people will actively
associate themselves in community activities, but the neighborhood
cannot function in the same way as the larger community which brings
people together in several of their chief interests. The community can
support institutions impossible in the neighborhood, such as a grange,
lodge, library, various stores, etc. The community is more or less
self-sufficing. A community may include a variable number of
neighborhoods. The community is the smallest geographical unit of
organized association of the chief human activities.
Bringing together these various considerations concerning the nature of
the rural community we may say that _a rural community consists of the
people in a local area tributary to the center of their common
interests_.
Obviously the community thus defined has nothing to do with political
areas or boundaries, for very commonly a community may lie in two or
three townships or counties. That rural areas are actually divided into
such communities and that the community is the primary unit of their
social organization may best be tested by taking any given county or
township and attempting to map its area into communities on the basis
above described. In most of the northern and western states and
throughout much of the South, most of the territory may be quite readily
divided into communities. This has been demonstrated by the rural
surveys of the Interchurch World Movement[3] and by the community maps
made by County Farm Bureaus.
A very large part of the South, however, has no natural community
centers and in such sections it will be found very difficult if not
impossible to define community areas. The store may be at the railroad
station, the church in the open country, and the district or
consolidated school at still another point. Some people go to one store
or church and others to another. Under such conditions, no real
community exists. Usually, any form of social organization is more or
less difficult under such conditions, for the people are divided into
different groups for different purposes and there is nothing which makes
united activities possible. It seems probable that only to the extent
that certain centers of social and economic life come to be recognized
by the people, and community life is developed around them, will the
most effective and satisfying social organization be possible.
Recognition of the community as the primary unit for purposes of rural
organization has now become quite general. Several mid-western states
have passed legislation permitting school districts to combine into
community districts for the support of consolidated schools or high
schools, irrespective of township or county boundaries. The present
tendency in the centralization of rural schools seems to be in the
direction of locating them at the natural community centers. Rural
churches are coming into a new sense of responsibility to the community
and the community church is increasingly advocated. The American Red
Cross in planning its peace-time program is recognizing the importance
of the rural community as the local unit for its work. The County Farm
Bureaus, working in cooperation with the state colleges of agriculture
and the United States Department of Agriculture, very soon discovered
the value of the community as the local unit of their organization, and
carry on their work through community committees or community clubs.
Possibly no other one movement has done so much to bring about the
definite location of rural communities and their appreciation by rural
people. A conference of national organizations engaged in social work in
rural communities held in 1919 summed up the experience of a group of
representative rural leaders in the statement: "In rural organization it
is recognized that the local community constitutes the functional unit
and the county or district the supervisory unit." In other words, it is
the rural community which really "carries on," whatever the executive
organization of the county or district may be.
The strength of the rural community as a social group lies in two facts.
First, it is not so large but that most of its people know each other.
The size of the community in this regard does not depend so much upon
the actual number of square miles involved as upon the number of its
population. People may all be acquainted in a sparsely settled community
covering a ten-mile radius, and there may be less acquaintance in a
small community with a dense population. Secondly, the great majority of
the people in the average rural community are dependent upon agriculture
for their income, either directly or once-removed. These two facts make
possible common interests and a social control through public opinion
which is not possible in larger social units such as the county or city.
Sir Horace Plunkett appreciates this when he says:
"Our ancient Irish records show little clans with a common
ownership of land hardly larger than a parish, but with all
the patriotic feeling of larger nations held with an
intensity rare in modern states. The history of these clans
and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states
shows that the _social feeling assumes its most binding and
powerful character where the community is large enough to
allow free play to the various interests of human life, but
is not so large that it becomes an abstraction to the
imagination_."[4]
This inherent social strength of the rural community, the fact that the
community is relatively permanent, and the appreciation that only
through community effort may rural people realize their natural desire
to enjoy some of the advantages of cities, force the conviction that the
community must be the primary unit for the organization of rural
progress. It is from this point of view that we shall discuss the
community aspects of the various human interests of the farmer and the
consequent relations of "The Farmer and His Community."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Galpin, C. J., "The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community."
Research Bulletin 54, Agricultural Experiment Station of the University
of Wisconsin, May, 1915; and also in his "Rural Life," Century Co., New
York, 1920.
[2] The following four pages are revised from the author's bulletin,
"Locating the Rural Community," Cornell Reading Course for the Farm,
Lesson 158.
[3] See Reports of the Town and Country Department, Committee on Social
and Religious Surveys, 111 Fifth Ave., New York, or Geo. H. Doran, New
York.
[4] "Rural Life Problem in the United States," p. 129. Italics mine.
CHAPTER II
THE FARM HOME AND THE COMMUNITY
The American farmer thinks first of his own home; only recently has he
commenced to appreciate that his and other homes form a community. In
the "age of homespun" the pioneer subdued his new lands and built his
home; the farm and the home were his and for them he lived. He bought
but little and had but little to sell. Farms were largely
self-supporting. Neighbors helped each other in numerous ways and as the
country became more thickly settled neighborhood life grew apace. But
there was little sense of relation to the larger community. Roads were
bad and people were too widely scattered to come together except on
special occasions. The family was the fundamental social unit and social
life revolved around the family, or in the immediate neighborhood.
But "times have changed." The farm is no longer largely self-supporting.
It is now but a primary unit in a world-wide economic system, conducted
with money as the basis of exchange and dominated by the interests of
capital. Farm products are sold for cash and their value is determined
by distant or world markets with which the farmer has no personal
contact and of which he often has but little knowledge. Most of the
goods consumed on the farm must be purchased. The marketing of his
products and the purchasing of goods have given the farmer increasing
contacts with the village and town centers and a broader knowledge of
the world at large.
During the past century modern ideas of transportation and the
development of industries due to inventions and scientific discoveries
have resulted in an enormous growth of city populations. The social life
of the cities is increasingly dominated by the interests of the
individual rather than those of the family, until the breaking down of
urban family life has become a world-wide problem. The family is no
longer the social unit of the city as it is in the country.
Now farm people are by no means as isolated from town and city as is
often imagined. Their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters have gone
to make up the increasing urban populations. Through correspondence and
visiting back and forth, through frequent trips to town, through the
daily city newspapers, and through the general reading of magazines,
farm people are in more or less close contact with the life and manners
of the cities. Inasmuch as slightly over half of our people now live in
towns or cities and only one-third live on farms, it is not surprising
that urban ideals and values and the urban point of view tend more and
more to dominate those of the countryside. There has been a natural
tendency, therefore, for the association of country people to center in
the country town and village, in the community center.
Better transportation and the inability to maintain satisfactory
institutions in the open country have made this process inevitable and
it will do much to abolish the evils of rural isolation. The increasing
difficulty of maintaining successful churches in the open country and
the growth of the village church, the dissatisfaction with the one-room
district school and the desire for consolidated schools and community
high schools, are evidences of this tendency.
The smaller size of the farm family has made it less self-sufficient
socially than formerly, and the fact that fewer near relations live
nearby and farms change hands more often has resulted in fewer
neighborhood gatherings. The different members of the family tend to get
together more with groups of their own age and sex coming from all parts
of the community, and definite effort is made for the organization of
such groups according to their various interests.
Attention is directed to these tendencies because in our present
emphasis on the relation of the farmer to his community and on community
values, we must not lose sight of the fact that the family must ever be
recognized as the primary social institution of rural life. Indeed, it
may not be too much to claim that the largest value in the agricultural
industry is in the possibility of the most satisfactory type of home
life. The millionaire farmer is so rare as to be negligible, and
although farmers as a class doubtless have as wholesome and satisfactory
a living as they would in other pursuits, yet no one engages in farming
as a means of easily acquiring large wealth. The highest rural values
cannot be bought or sold.
The mere fact that farming is practically the only remaining industry
conducted on a family basis--which seems likely to continue--and that
all members of the family have more or less of a share in the conduct
and success of the farm, creates a family bond which does not ordinarily
exist where the business or employment of the father and of other
members of the family is dissociated from the home. Although the burden
of the farm business on the home is often decried and there is obvious
need of lightening the mother's work for the farm as much as possible,
yet under the best of conditions there is on the farm a constant and
intimate contact between the father and mother and children which is
rarely found under other conditions.
Primitive woman discovered the art of agriculture. At first, the men
assisted the women in what time they could spare from hunting; but as
game became scarce and the food supply grown from the soil was found to
be more certain, agriculture became man's vocation. Permanent home life
commenced with the development of agriculture. As he became a farmer,
primitive man stayed at home with his wife and shared with her the
nurture of the children. Before then the family had been _hers_, now it
was _theirs_. The mere fact that the home and the business are both on
the farm, that father is in the house several times a day and that the
whole family are acquainted with his farm operations, will always give
the farm home a superior solidarity, so long as the family lives on the
farm. Though but few farm homes are ideal and some of them have but
little that is attractive, yet nowhere are conditions so favorable for
the enjoyment of all that is most precious in family life as in the
better American farm homes.
If this be true, that the chief value in agriculture is in the
possibility of the most satisfactory home life, then community
development should be considered primarily from the standpoint of its
effect on the farm home, for the social strength of the country will be
more largely determined by its homes than by its other social
institutions. We should endeavor, therefore, to build up that type of
community life which makes for better homes and stronger families. While
seeking to afford superior advantages to individuals, all effort toward
community improvement should recognize that the strength of the
community is in its home life.
The need of this point of view with regard to rural community
organization has been very forcibly indicated by Mr. John R. Boardman,
one of our keenest observers and interpreters of country life in his
"Community Leadership." He says:
"At the heart of the rural situation is the rural family.
The social problems involved in home life in the rural
village and on the farm are of two kinds,--developmental and
protective. The social unit in the city is the individual.
Urban conditions have rapidly disintegrated the family as a
social unit. Grave dangers have resulted from this
interference with the unity of domestic life. The rural
family is in danger of meeting the same fate. It is now the
social unit in the rural social structure. Every effort must
be put forth to make this situation permanent. The major
problem is one of home conservation. Protection of the rural
family against social exploitation will demand increasing
attention. The development of social organization along
lines which interfere with the unity and solidarity of rural
family life must be approached with extreme caution and
tolerated only as they may be absolutely necessary. So far
as possible social organization must be built around the
rural family and give it every possible opportunity to act
as a family in the scheme of organization and activity. The
home as a social center must receive increased attention.
There is great danger, in the new interest which is being
aroused in rural social life, that the matter of social
organization be greatly overdone. The rural family will be
the one to suffer first and most severely as a result of
this craze for social organization."
In support of this point of view it is interesting to note that the
strongest rural institutions, the church, the grange, and the recently
organized Farm Bureaus, are all organizations which have an interest for
the whole family or for most of its members. With an increasing sense of
social needs and responsibilities on the part of rural people, new
organizations will be formed and various community activities must be
undertaken, but if country people will remain true to their traditions
and, with clear view of changing conditions, will seek to organize their
community life as an association of farm and village _families_, they
will create the most satisfying and enduring type of society. The
community buildings now becoming so popular in rural communities are a
good example of a family institution organized to furnish better
recreation and social facilities for the whole family.
Inasmuch as the home is its primary social institution, the rural
community must give its first consideration to its relations to the home
and how the home life may be strengthened, if the rural family is to
withstand the influence of the disintegrating home life of the city. For
the farm home is in a process of readjustment to modern conditions and
the recognition of ideals and objectives of home-life by the community
will be a powerful factor in their maintenance.
The mother has ever occupied the central position in the home. Under
modern conditions, as a result of her education and broader knowledge of
life, through her more frequent contacts with town and city and through
her wider reading, many a farm mother is coming to feel that her
position is an anomalous one. In some cases she may be able to solve her
own problems, but only a general change in public opinion concerning
their position will bring a more acceptable status to farm women as a
class.
Some of the farm woman's problems arise from the increasing division of
labor between her husband and herself and from the marketing of the farm
products; these are the problems of her economic status. The peasant
woman of medieval Europe or the wife of the American pioneer never
worried that she did not receive a monthly allowance or a certain share
of the farm income. She worked with her husband and family in raising
the farm products and she shared in their consumption, for but
relatively little was sold off the place. To-day, the wife of the farm
owner does little work on the farm; its products are sold and much of
the food and practically all of the clothing is purchased. She and her
children contribute a considerable amount of the labor of the farm
enterprise, and do all of the housework; but the husband does the
selling and most of the buying, she often has but little share in the
management of the family's finances, and rarely knows what she may count
on for household expenses. She comes to feel that she is no longer a
real partner, but a sort of housekeeper, though without salary or
assured income. In over nine thousand farm homes studied in the northern
and western states,[5] one-fourth of the women helped with the
livestock, and one-fourth worked in the field an equivalent of 6.7 weeks
a year, over half of them cared for the home gardens, and one-third of
them kept the farm accounts. Over a third of them helped to milk,
two-thirds washed the separators, and 88 percent washed the milk pails,
60 percent made the butter and one-third sold the butter, but only 11
percent had the spending of the money from its sale. Likewise 81 percent
cared for the poultry, but only 22 percent had the poultry money for
their own use and but 16 percent had the egg money. These figures do not
give us a complete analysis of the household finances in relation to the
amount contributed by farm women, but they are indicative of the general
situation.
It is because of these facts that farm women feel that a larger portion
of the farm income should be spent in giving them better household
conveniences, somewhat commensurate with the amount that is spent for
improved farm machinery and barn conveniences. Only one-third of these
farm homes had running water; and but one-fifth had a bath-tub with
water and sewer connections; 85 percent had outdoor toilets. Improvement
is in evidence, however, for two-thirds had water in the kitchen, 60
percent had sink and drain, 57 percent had washing machines, and 95
percent had sewing machines. It is not that she is merely seeking less
work so that she may attend her club or go to the movies, that the farm
mother desires better conveniences and shorter hours--her average
working day is now 11.3 hours--but because she has new ideals of the
nurture which she wishes to give her family and of what she might do for
them had she the time and physical strength.
As a result of the cooperative survey of 10,000 representative farm
homes in 241 counties in the 33 northern and western states made by home
demonstration agents and farm women, Miss Ward[6] gives some interesting
"side-lights," which are as illuminating as the statistics:
"Women realize that no amount of scientific arrangement or
labor-saving appliances will of themselves make a home. It
is the woman's personal presence, influence, and care that
make the home. Housekeeping is a business as practical as
farming and with no romance in it; home making is a sacred
trust. A woman wants time salvaged from housekeeping to
create the right home atmosphere for her children and to so
enrich their home surroundings that they may gain their
ideals of beauty and their tastes for books and music not
from the shop windows, the movies, the billboards, or the
jazz band, but from the home environment.
"The farm woman knows that there is no one who can take her
place as teacher and companion of her children during their
early impressionable years and she craves more time for
their care. She feels the need of making the farm home an
inviting place for the young people of the family and their
friends and of promoting the recreational and educational
advantages of the neighborhood in order to cope with the
various forms of city allurements. She realizes that modern
conditions call for an even deeper realization and closer
contact between mother and child. The familiar term, 'God
could not be everywhere so He made mothers' has its modern
scientific application, as no amount of education and care
given to children in school or elsewhere outside the home
can take the place of mothering in the home. 'The home
exists for the child, hence the child's development should
have first consideration.'
"Farm women want to broaden their outlook and keep with the
advancement of their children 'not by courses of study but
by bringing progressive ideas, methods, and facilities into
the every day work and recreation of the home environment.'"
"True enough," you say, "but these are problems of the individual home.
What have they to do with the community?" Just this: The status of the
farm woman is a matter determined more by custom than by individual
achievement. It is difficult for any one woman, no matter how able or
strong-minded, to maintain a status much in advance of that of her
neighbors; but let the women of a community get together and discuss
their problems and ideals and the group spirit strengthens each of them
in the pursuit of the common ideals. It is such a desire for mutual
support--even though they are not conscious of it--which has drawn farm
women together into clubs and which has given such an impetus to the
Home Bureaus, or women's departments of the county Farm Bureaus. Not
only in women's organizations, but finally in community organizations of
men and women, such as the Grange and the church, the social standards
of the community receive the sanction of public opinion, than which
there is no more powerful means of influencing family usages. The
community as such, must give recognition to a new and better status of
its farm women.
If the rural home remains the primary social institution, it will be due
to its intelligent effort at self-defense, and not to any inherent right
which it has to such a position. Originally the family was but a
biological group. Until modern times the agricultural family was chiefly
an economic unit. Only with the isolation of the American farm, did the
individual family assume the primary social position known to our
fathers and grandfathers. Physical isolation and large families made the
farm home the only possible social center. Isolation is largely passing,
families are smaller, and organizations of all sorts and commercial
amusements compete with the family. It is the use of leisure time which
reveals the true loyalty of the family group. If there be nothing to
attract them to the fireside, they will inevitably go elsewhere whenever
possible. Hence, if it would have its foundations strong, the community
must encourage the enrichment of home life, particularly, in the hours
of leisure when life is most real. The family games after supper, the
group around the piano singing old and modern songs, the reading aloud
by one member of the circle, the cracking of nuts and the popping of
corn, the picnic supper on the lawn, the tennis court or croquet ground,
the home parties, the guests ever-welcome at meals, these are but items
in a possible scorecard of the sociability of the home. We are giving
much thought to all sorts of group activities, but how much attention
have we given to systematically encouraging the social unit which has
the largest possibilities, the family? Last summer my friend, Professor
E. C. Lindeman, of the North Carolina College for Women, spent several
weeks in becoming acquainted with rural Denmark under peculiarly
favorable conditions. A statement in a letter from him regarding Danish
home life is apropos in this connection:
"I observed that the country people find a great deal of
social expression within their own homes. The home life is
organized on a much higher plane than is common in America.
In addition, there is a larger content of cultural and
educational material within the family circle."
In the same way the economic position, health, education, and all other
phases of life of the family are the most potent influences both in the
life of its members and of the community.
The question arises, therefore, what is the community doing to
strengthen the home? In recent years the new discipline of Home
Economics has vigorously attacked the problems of diet, clothing, and
household management, and has accomplished much. It is now concerning
itself with health, child welfare, and even with child psychology and
the family as an institution. Yet the home economics point of view is
necessarily restricted to that of the institution which it serves, i.e.,
the home; it has the same limitations, when pursued solely from the home
standpoint, that farm management has as an interpretation of farming if
not related to agricultural and general economics. We need a
consideration of the problems of the home from the standpoint of other
social institutions and with regard to its function in social
organization. We need a clearer concept of the relation of the home to
the community and to community associations and activities.
The community institutions, the school, the church, and various
organizations, have had too much of a tendency to compete with the home
rather than to support and strengthen it. Thus the tendency of the
school has been to demand a larger and larger portion of the child's
time and to assume that because certain phases of education can be more
economically given in the school, that, therefore, it should take over
as much of the educational function of the home as is possible; a
conclusion which is by no means valid. In the home project a new
educational principle has been discovered, which has far-reaching
significance: for in it the school and the home cooperate, the school
outlining, standardizing, and interpreting, while the home furnishes
supervision, advice, and encouragement. Thus, the home is stimulated to
perform those educational functions in which it is superior, through a
definite effort upon the part of the school to strengthen them. The same
principle is being applied to education in hygiene. Why should not the
church and Sunday school adopt similar methods and undertake a definite
system of encouraging the home to give moral and religious education in
an adequate fashion, rather than attempt to give homeopathic doses to
children _en masse_? Why should not the church, or the school, or both,
give parents instruction and inspiration as to how to educate their
children in matters of sex, about which they are in the best position to
gain their confidence? Should not our clubs and social organizations,
for men and women, boys and girls, face the question, as to whether
their aggregate activities are unduly competing with the home, and
should they not give definite thought as to how they may assist and
strengthen the basic institution of our social organization? If the home
is the essential primary social institution, then its well-being should
command the consideration of every institution of the community; for the
function and objectives of the home cannot be determined solely by
either its own ideals and purposes, or by the values established by the
various special interest groups. The home and the community institutions
are constantly in a process of adapting themselves to each other, and to
the extent that each recognizes the function of the other and is willing
to cooperate rather than to compete, is the highest success of each made
possible.
This problem of the relation of the home to the community is a
relatively new one, and is largely the result of better means of
communication which have enlarged the horizon of every farm home. When
the life of the child was almost wholly within the home and the
neighborhood, the parents gave themselves little concern about the
influence or conditions of the larger community. But when her children
go to a consolidated school and their school associates are unknown to
her, when they attend the movies in the village, and when they read the
local weekly or the city daily newspaper and the monthly magazines, so
that they know what is going on throughout the world, then, if she be
wise, a mother commences to realize that the community is having a
growing influence in shaping their character and that however ideal the
home may be, it is but a part of their lives. She commences to
appreciate that she must have an understanding of the life and forces of
the community so that she may use her influence toward making their
social environment what it should be and so that she may be able to make
the home so attractive that it will hold their primary interest and
loyalty. Thus community problems of health, of education, of recreation
and social life, and of religion become inter-related with those of the
home. The successful homemaker can no longer concern herself solely with
home-management, but must assume her share of responsibility in
community-management, or "community housekeeping."
With the new responsibilities of suffrage rural women are following the
example of their city sisters in taking a larger interest in civic
affairs and social legislation, and with a most wholesome influence on
community life. There is, however, some danger that while the men are
engaged with their business problems, these social problems will be too
largely left to the women;[7] for without the sympathetic understanding
and hearty cooperation of their husbands, rural women will find that
their new social ideals will materialize but slowly. Here again, such
family organizations as the Grange, the Church, and Farm and Home
Bureau, in which community activities engage both men and women are
peculiarly serviceable.
An interesting example of how the family may function in community life
is found in a small town in southern Michigan (Centerville) where the
people have established a cooperative motion picture theater, to which
the families buy season tickets, and where one may find whole families
together enjoying the best pictures to the accompaniment of a community
orchestra. This is also being accomplished in many community buildings.
On the other hand the home need not abdicate all of its old-time
functions as a social center. A few years ago in attending a rural
community conference at the University of Illinois I was interested to
hear a farm woman, a graduate of that university, tell how she and her
neighbors had held amateur dramatic entertainments on their front
verandas during the summer. The young people took the parts and the
audience sat on the lawn, and thus many families were brought under the
influence of the better homes who would not have thought of visiting
them. When winter came on, these entertainments were continued in a
slightly different manner, so that neighboring families were brought
into contact without any tendency toward undue intimacy between families
which would not associate otherwise. Family parties for young and old,
should by no means be abandoned in favor of community parties, however
satisfactory and attractive the latter may be.
The social responsibility of the rural home must receive new
recognition, for the day when we can live to ourselves in the enjoyment
of a select group of personal friends is rapidly passing, if we are to
have satisfactory social conditions. It is one of the bad effects of the
increasing amount of tenancy in our best farming sections, and of the
frequent changing of farm ownership, that the shifting of residence
makes it difficult for the family to secure a satisfactory social
position in the community life.
In the last analysis, however, the largest contribution of the home to
the community and the best means of solving the problem of its relation
to community life, is in the development of the best social attitudes
among its members toward each other and toward the life of the
community; for all sound social organization is but an application of
the relations of the family to the affairs of larger social groups, and
unless attitudes of mutual aid, common responsibility, and voluntary
loyalty, are maintained in the home, so that its relations form a norm
for all other human groups, rural society will have lost the chief
dynamic of social progress.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] From "The Farm Woman's Problems," Florence E. Ward. U. S. Dept. of
Agriculture, Circular 148 (1920).
[6] _Ibid._, pp. 14, 15.
[7] Benjamin Kidd claims that this superior interest of women in race
welfare is due to woman's cultural inheritance and that from the very
nature of the division of labor between man and woman, man is less
capable than woman of devoting himself to human welfare. "But the fact
of the age which goes deeper than any other is that the male mind of the
race as the result of the conditions out of which it has come, is by
itself incapable of rendering this service to civilization. It is in the
mind of woman that the winning peoples of the world will find the
psychic center of Power in the future."--"The Science of Power," p.
241.
CHAPTER III
THE COMMUNITY'S PEOPLE AND HISTORY
The community is composed of people in a certain area, but the community
may be dead or it may be alive. The _life_ of the community is
determined by the degree to which its people are able to act together
for the best promotion of their common welfare. This ability to act
together will obviously depend upon the extent to which the people have
common aims and purposes. If the people of a community form distinct
groups with diverse ideals and purposes, it will be much more difficult
to secure that sympathy, tolerance, and understanding which are
necessary for united action, than if they are more alike. Yet it is just
such diversity of interests of different elements in the community which
gives rise to community problems and which brings about an appreciation
of the need of developing community life.
It is necessary, therefore, to have some appreciation of how the
characteristics of its population influence community life.
In the first place, a community of people of different nationalities or
races, or sometimes even of people from different states, find it much
more difficult to secure a common loyalty than if they were of one
stock. It is, of course, quite true that many an old community of a
single stock is divided by family, religious or political feuds; yet
usually there is more solidarity between people of common traditions and
culture. The largest problem in the so-called "Americanization" of
foreigners in rural communities is to get the natives to understand and
appreciate the newcomers and to realize that the future of the community
depends upon mutual respect and good will. Had we a little more of an
historical perspective, we would remember that all of our ancestors were
"foreigners" but a few generations back. In almost every part of the
United States are communities in which alien groups form one of the
chief obstacles to a better community life. Throughout the South, the
most fundamental problem is that of a better understanding between the
two races, and until some means of amicable adjustment is attempted,
there is little prospect for the development of community life. In some
of our best agricultural sections there have been successive waves of
immigration of different nationalities. Thus in Dane County, Wisconsin,
of which Madison--the state capital--is the county seat, Dr. J. H.
Kolb[8] describes communities in which Germans, Norwegians, and Swiss
have largely supplanted the original settlers from New England. In an
interesting study of Americanization in a community in the Connecticut
Valley of Massachusetts, John Daniels[9] has described how the French
Canadians and Irish and then the Poles have taken up the land, and how
good feeling between them and the native Yankees was gradually
established. On the other hand, a nearby community in southern New York
comes to mind, in which there is a colony of Bohemians, and another of
Finns, which have been fairly successful in building up hill farms
deserted by the descendants of the original settlers, and yet the
community as a whole has done little toward making these people feel
that they are a part of its life, although their industry is one of its
largest economic assets. "America is the home of the free" and most of
our people do desire a real democracy, but we seem to have assumed that
it will develop spontaneously, and we have not appreciated that good
will and common understanding require some means of acquaintance and
exchange of ideas, and that the interests and desires of all the people
in a community, young and old, must receive recognition. Unless we can
establish democracy in our own local community, how can we expect it in
the state or nation?
A second factor in community life is the age of its people. How often do
you find a community composed chiefly of elderly people which is
progressive? In the more progressive communities are not the middle-aged
and young married people in control? The younger people desire better
advantages for themselves and particularly for their children, and so
they stand for better schools, better churches, and better facilities
for all phases of community life. It is largely for this reason, it
seems to me, that older communities seem to have cycles of relative
decline and progress, according to the proportion of older and younger
people. It is to be hoped that in future generations the ability to
"keep young" may become more common; indeed, this is one of the chief
objectives of modern education.
The density of population is also a determining factor with regard to
many phases of community life, for it is obviously much easier to carry
on many community activities where the people live fairly close together
and not very far from the community center, than where the country is
but sparsely settled. Even with automobiles and telephones, the distance
between homes will have a large influence in determining the nature of
community activities. One of the most difficult of our rural problems
is how to bring to the people in sparsely settled regions the advantages
which they rightly crave. It will be physically and economically
impossible for them to have as good opportunities as sections which are
more densely settled, but ways must be found whereby a larger degree of
equality of opportunity is available to more thinly inhabited
communities.
Changes in population immediately affect community needs. Where
immigration is increasing rapidly, institutions such as schools,
churches, and stores are often inadequate, and there is every incentive
toward the development of community spirit and united effort to meet the
common needs. On the other hand, in the older sections decreasing
populations make it impossible to maintain as many institutions as
formerly. Many an eastern community has inherited two or three churches,
which were once well filled, but which now merely serve to divide the
community as none of them are able to operate successfully, though it is
obvious that unless the people are more loyal to their common needs than
to their differences that the community will be unable to survive.
In relatively new communities, and often for several generations, the
influence of the original settlement of the community may have a strong
effect on its life. Thus where a new section is settled by acquaintances
from an older community, by relatives, or those of one church, there is
a bond between them from the beginning, but where land is settled by
homesteaders from different sections, the process of establishing common
ideals and purposes is a gradual one. Many a community in the middle
west still bears the stamp of its original settlers. About in the center
of West Virginia is the little community of French Creek which was
settled by a few New England families a little over a hundred years
ago. A recent study[10] of this community shows that it has had a
powerful influence in the educational life of the whole state, and that
its progressive spirit is largely traceable to "an ancestry of energetic
people with high ideals which have been passed on by each generation."
On the other hand, in many cases this influence is soon lost, due to
some radical change in local conditions and the influx of new elements.
Its history plays an exceedingly large role in advancing or retarding
community development. History and tradition are the memory of the
community; they bring to mind its past experiences. Common ancestors and
common participation in important events in the past give a sense of
identity and heighten community consciousness. Pride in the history of
the community is like pride in a good family, and is a strong factor in
maintaining the standards of its people. Of course the past may be one
of which no one is proud and which they may prefer to forget, but this
is a spur to new endeavor as it is to a family to attain a new status.
Community life is likely to be at a low ebb where there is but little
knowledge of, or interest in, the history of its past. I was recently
impressed with this in visiting a small inland community, which was not
without many events of interest in its earlier development. I failed,
however, to find any connected records of the community's past or any of
its people who know much of its history. So far as I could learn there
had been few celebrations or community activities for many years and
there was a general feeling that the community had been on the down
grade and needed redirection. It seemed to me that one of the things
which might arouse community loyalty in this instance would be for its
people to clean up some of the old neighborhood cemeteries where many of
the early pioneers lie buried, and which are now grown up and unkept.
Then I think of another community where every few years on important
anniversary events the history of an organization or of the community as
a whole is related and often published in the local press. Its past has
no more striking events than that of the locality last mentioned, but
these people have pride in their community and their loyalty is renewed
on these anniversary occasions.
Miss Emily F. Hoag[11] has recently given a good picture of how the
history of their community has been made to live in the hearts of the
people of Belleville, New York, through their loyalty to the old Union
Academy, and she has given a fine example of how a community may be
brought to a realization of the contribution which it has made to the
life of the state and nation.
Only by a knowledge of the community's history can the nature and origin
of the attitudes of its people be understood. A generation or two ago,
perchance, there was a quarrel between two families which was carried
into the school meeting, and to this day two factions have persisted.
The attitudes of the people in many a progressive town may be directly
traced to the influence of some outstanding leaders--a teacher,
minister, or doctor, perhaps--long since gone to their reward. A village
fire, the coming of a railroad or its deflection to a nearby town, a
bank failure, a prohibition crusade, the establishment of a library are
but a few examples of events which form crises in the life of every
community and which have a far-reaching and subtle effect in moulding
its character.
The cultivation of a knowledge of its own history is, therefore, one of
the first duties of a community which seeks to understand itself so that
it may better direct its life. Every community should maintain a record
of its history, and have some means of preserving important historical
material. The New York legislature has recently passed an act
authorizing any township or village board to appoint a local historian,
without salary, and to furnish safe storage for historical records. One
of the most progressive rural communities in the country is the Quaker
settlement at Sandy Spring, Maryland,[12] whose first historian was
appointed in 1863 and whose historian reads the record of the year at
each annual meeting. These "Annals" form a most intimate account of the
community's progress. The custom of some rural newspapers of publishing
local history of the past year on New Year's Day serves much the same
purpose.
One of the best means of encouraging historical appreciation, and one
which is very generally neglected, is the teaching of local history in
the schools. Educators have learned that it is more pedagogical to
commence instruction in geography with the local environment of the
child, which it can know and understand, than to begin--as
formerly--with the nebular hypothesis; but they are only commencing to
appreciate that the same principle applies to the teaching of history.
Is it not true that most children can glibly recite dates and events in
the history of their own and foreign countries, of whose significance
they have only a vague appreciation, but who never secure any real
historical point of view or an appreciation of the importance of history
because it has not been made concrete and intimate, as must be the case
in considering local events? If national history is taught to develop
patriotism, why should not local history be taught to inspire civic
loyalty? Such a study of the efforts and sacrifices of former citizens
would bring a new sense of obligation to be worthy of the heritage they
have bequeathed, and would gradually establish an attitude of loyalty to
the community which would be considered as essential to respectability
as devotion to one's country. Indeed, how can one be truly loyal to a
great country which is mostly unknown to him if he is not loyal to the
people with whom he lives day by day in his home community?
One of the best means of reviving interest in the community's past is
through the production of an historical pageant, which is discussed on
page 161; for as the people act together the events of the past, they
gain a new realization of what they owe to the life of the community in
bygone days, and come to appreciate that men come and men go but the
community continues and perpetuates their influence for better or for
worse.
Socrates' injunction to "know thyself" is the epitome of wisdom for the
community as it is for the individual. The first step in this process of
self-acquaintance is to secure an accurate knowledge of the kinds of
people which compose the community, and how its past is influencing its
present.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] "Rural Primary Groups," a study of agricultural neighborhoods.
Research Bulletin 51, Agr. Exp. Station of the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, 1921.
[9] "America via the Neighborhood," p. 419, D. Appleton & Co., 1920.
[10] A. J. Dadisman, "French Creek as a Rural Community," Bulletin 176,
Agricultural Experiment Station, West Virginia University, June, 1921.
[11] "The National Influence of a Single Farm Community," Bulletin 984,
United States Department of Agriculture, Dec., 1921.
[12] See "A Rural Survey of Maryland," Dept. of Church and Country Life,
Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 1912;
reprinted in part in N. L. Sims' "The Rural Community," p. 227, New
York, Scribners, 1920.
CHAPTER IV
COMMUNICATION THE MEANS OF COMMUNITY LIFE
We have seen that the real life of the community depends on common
interests and the ability of its people to act together. This having
things in common is the basis of all community and is achieved only
through the exchange of ideas by various means of communication. Without
communication there would be no community and no civilization. It is
man's ability to communicate through spoken and written language that
has made him _human_. Man is more than animal because he can exchange
ideas with his fellows, and can profit by the experience of the race.
This power of communication creates a new world for him in which he
lives on a different plane from all other living things. The very words
_community_ and _communication_, both derived from _communis_--common,
indicate their relation to each other; _community_--the having in
common, _communication_--the making common.[13]
Until modern times practically all communication between the masses of
the people was by word of mouth. The people of the old world lived
together in villages which were largely self-dependent, and only the
higher classes were educated to read and write. There was little
opportunity for contact with the outside world, and the people felt
little need of better means of communication. It has been frequently
asserted that isolation has been the chief rural problem in America. The
reason for the dissatisfaction with life on isolated farms is better
appreciated when we remember that during all previous history men have
lived together in close association and their whole mode of thought,
customs, attitudes, and desires have been formed in the intimate life of
compact groups. It is but natural, therefore, that life on the isolated
farm with but few contacts with others than immediate neighbors should
become irksome and that town and city have had a peculiar attraction for
farm people.
We cannot here examine the causes and history of the development of our
modern means of communication, but we must recognize that it is due to
them that rural community life as we are coming to know it in the United
States is made possible. Without these newer facilities for more
frequent association and exchange of ideas, rural life would still be
confined to the small local neighborhood.
At the same time, the railroad and trolley have abolished the isolation
of the rural community and have made possible the diversion of local
interests and loyalties to larger centers. Thus while communication aids
the integration of the community it affords equal facilities for its
disruption. Doubtless some of the smaller community centers will be
unable to compete with the attraction of nearby larger centers, but
there seems no good reason to believe that better communication will
injure the best life of communities which are of sufficient size to
support the institutions which will command local loyalty. This dual
influence of means of communication on the internal and external
relations of rural communities creates some of the chief problems of
rural social organization, for the increase of means of communication in
the past two or three generations has been more momentous and has had a
more far-reaching effect on human relations than in all the previous
centuries since the invention of writing.
A brief survey of the more important of these new agencies will indicate
how they affect the relations of the farmer to his community and to
other communities. These may be considered under the two general heads
of means of transportation, and means for the exchange of ideas.
As long as transportation was by wagon and by boat, commerce was slow
and expensive; each community was compelled to be largely
self-dependent, and life was isolated to an extent that it is difficult
for us to conceive. Anderson has well stated the situation when he says:
"Merchandise and produce that could not stand a freight of
fifteen dollars per ton could not be carried overland to a
consumer one hundred and fifty miles from the point of
production; as roads were, a distance of fifty miles from
the market often made industrial independence
expedient."[14]
It was the steam railroad which made larger markets available, made
possible the growth of our large cities and the opening up of new lands
distant from markets. The railroad and manufacturing by power machinery
put an end to the "age of homespun," and made it more profitable for the
farmer to sell his products and to purchase his manufactured goods in
exchange. The railroad, and the markets which it made available, changed
the village center from a place of local barter to a shipping point and
so tended to center the economic life of larger areas in the villages
with railroad stations. Better local roads were necessary and business
tended to become centralized in the village. The numerous wayside
taverns along the main highways disappeared, as did the neighborhood
mill and blacksmith shop. The railroad, more than any other one factor,
has determined the location of our rural community centers.
The electric railroad made the village centers more available to farm
people and gave transportation facilities to many villages without
railroads, but it also made it possible for the people of smaller
communities to go to the larger centers for trading and other
advantages. Trolleys have made it possible for many farm children to get
to high school who could not otherwise have attended and have enabled
those living near them to more easily get back and forth from the
village centers for all phases of community life. On the whole, however,
they have probably carried more traffic between communities, and it
seems strange that they have not more generally been able to find a
profit in hauling produce from the farms to the nearest markets or
shipping stations.
Of more importance to community life has been the development of good
roads, a movement which did not get under way until the present century
and which was chiefly due to the rural free mail delivery and the
automobile. The change in rural life due to automotive vehicles can
hardly be exaggerated. In our best agricultural states practically every
farmer has his automobile. He can get to the community center as quickly
as the business man or laborer gets to his work in the average city, and
can go to the county seat or neighboring city as quickly as one can
drive to the business section from the more distant parts of New York or
Chicago. Auto-bus lines radiate from most of our small cities, and auto
trucks not only bring freight from nearby wholesale centers, but are
rapidly supplanting horses for hauling farm produce to the shipping
station or market.
As good roads have been due chiefly to state and county, and more
recently to national aid, it is but natural that they should have been
constructed where the traffic is heaviest connecting the main centers.
What is now most needed to build up the local communities is a
systematic development of the principal local roads radiating from the
community centers.
Good roads and automobiles have made possible a new sort of a local
community, which could never have existed without them. Consider the
present possibility of consolidated schools with auto-busses to haul the
children; the numbers of automobiles which come in from the farms to
every village center where there is a band concert or movie show; the
ability to get in the "flivver" after supper and ride to a relative's or
friend's on the other side of the town and be back for early bedtime;
and one can perceive how the people in a community area are bound
together and develop common interests in new advantages made possible by
their ability to get together easily and quickly. How could the county
agricultural agent or the visiting nurse cover a county as effectively
as they now do without the automobile? The rural community can now enjoy
the services of expert paid executives in many fields of work as diverse
as a county commercial club secretary, a Boy Scout leader, a Sunday
school executive, or county health officer, because the county has
become a unit which can be covered as easily as a city and is large
enough to support such a division of labor as no one community could
enjoy. We shall have occasion to refer to many county organizations and
agencies which not only build up the county and the county seat, but
which strengthen the life of every community which they serve, and whose
work is very largely possible because of good roads and automobiles.
Where bad roads still exist many of these services must wait and less
community life is possible.
Nor does the home lose with the community advancement due to better
transportation. Surely it is better to have the children living at home
than boarding in the village while they attend high school; the doctor
is secured more quickly and the visiting nurse is available; and the
family can come and go as a family because less time is required and
there is no waiting for the horses to feed, or to get rested.
It is true of course that the automobile makes it possible for people to
go to the larger towns and other village centers, and to visit their
particular friends and relatives in neighboring communities, and thus
seems to furnish means for breaking down and stratifying community life.
These tendencies exist, but they will not seriously injure the community
which has anything worth while for its people. Better transportation
simply makes possible a more highly organized community life, and any
complex organization is the more easily deranged; a complex machine or a
high-bred animal is more susceptible to injury than a simple tool or
scrub. Many ministers have railed against the automobile, while others
have used it to fill their pews. We cannot get away from that oldest of
paradoxes, first learned by Father Adam, that every new good has
possibilities of evil. A certain type of mind has always enjoyed
condemning every new invention as "of the Devil," and yet the world wags
on and no one who knows them would go back to "the good old days."
The automobile has brought new ideas both to the community and to the
farm and home. Farmers and their wives are traveling by auto much more
than they ever did by train, and it is impossible not to pick up new
ideas. One of the most effective educational devices is the farm tour in
which a group of Farm Bureau members travel from one farm to another
studying the methods of farming, and the women have adopted the idea for
an inspection of farm homes.
To discuss all the effects of automotive vehicles--cycle, car, truck,
bus, and tractor--on farm life would fill a book in itself: space
forbids except for incidental mention in the following chapters.
Turning to the mechanisms for the transmission of ideas, we appreciate
the even more wonderful inventions which have brought the whole world to
the farmer's door.
A generation ago farmers went several miles to the nearest postoffice
for their mail, and usually got it but two or three times a week. To-day
over the greater part of the country it is delivered to them daily, and
they can ship small packages by parcels post from their doors. This
daily delivery has greatly widened the circulation of the daily
newspapers and magazines of all sorts, and has given farm people a new
knowledge and a livelier interest in city and world-wide affairs. The
parcel post has made the mail-order business, but it is even more
beneficial to the local merchant who can fill a telephone order and mail
it to a customer for less expense than delivery costs in the city.
Correspondence and advertising by farm people have greatly increased. It
is true that the abolition of many rural postoffices has destroyed an
old-time rendezvous, but farmers probably go to the community center
more frequently than formerly. A more unfortunate feature of the rural
delivery service is that it often gives the farmer a mail address at a
postoffice of a community where he rarely goes, and fails to indicate
the community in which he is located to one unacquainted with the local
geography (see page 232).
Even more important as an aid to community activities is the telephone.
Visiting is now done more over the phone than in person, but
conversation can be had with any one in the community at any time, and
isolation is banished. The telephone has brought a larger protection to
the farm home in calling the doctor, police, or fire assistance. The
economic value of the phone soon became apparent for the distribution of
market reports and weather forecasts or for ordering goods or repairs
from town, and the marvelous wireless telephone will greatly extend
these services. The Extension Service of the Kansas Agricultural College
is installing a wireless outfit which will receive market and weather
reports and will transmit them to the farm bureau offices at the county
seats, where they may be relayed through the local telephones to every
farmer. Thus world-wide conditions may be flashed to the farmer's
fireside. Within the community the telephone has made possible a degree
of organization hitherto impossible. Meetings are called, committees are
assembled, or their business is done over the phone, so that both social
and economic life are greatly stimulated.
The farmer is sometimes chided for not having organized rural life more
effectively. The simple reason is that he has not had the mechanisms
whereby he could do so. With only mud roads and horses people could get
together but infrequently, and arrangements had to be made when they
were together. City life was better organized because people could get
together more easily. To-day both time and space have been so largely
overcome that communication in the country is almost as rapid as in the
city and more effective organization is possible.
Better transportation, mail, and telephone service have made available
agencies for the communication of ideas, previously accessible only to
the few or patronized so infrequently by those further away as to
furnish too small a constituency for their successful maintenance. The
free public library is a powerful educational agency, but many a
community has been too small for its support. Now county library systems
are being organized--thanks to automobiles--which give branch stations
to every community (see p. 102). Lyceum courses of lectures and
entertainments, chautauqua courses, public forums for the discussion of
current problems, and last, but not least, the moving picture shows with
their pictures of important events from all parts of the world and
showing life from Central Africa to the Antipodes, all of these are
agencies for bringing new ideas to the rural community, and are becoming
increasingly common as better transportation makes it possible for the
people to utilize them. The fact that these agencies must be located
where they can serve the largest number of people, determines their
location at the community centers and they are thus a large factor in
unifying the community.
Modern transportation has abolished the isolation of the farm and new
means of communication have freed the spirit of the farmer and brought
the world to his doors. Together they make possible so many
satisfactions heretofore only available to the cities, as to quite
revolutionize the whole aspect of rural life. They give a new position
to the rural community and to the farmer's status in it.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Community is derived from the Old English word _commonty_ which
came to mean "the body of the common people, commons." Communication is
from the Latin _communicare_, also derived from _communis_--common, and
_ic_ (the formative of factitive verbs)--to make, or to make common.
[14] "The Country Town," p. 20.
CHAPTER V
THE FARM AND THE VILLAGE
We have seen that an active community must focus its life at some
center, and that this center is usually a village which has been
established primarily for business purposes. The relation of the
American village to the surrounding farms is historically unique and is
largely due to the rapidity and ease with which large areas of the
United States were settled after the advent of railroads. In the
colonial period and the early days of the New West, every settlement was
so isolated that it was obliged to be largely self-sufficient.
Transportation was slow and uncertain and prohibitive for other than the
necessities which could not be locally produced. Under these conditions
the farmer and village business man were so inter-dependent that they
were forced to consider each other's interests. But when settlement
became safer and transportation easier the homesteaders took up their
claims without relation to village connections; they traded where it was
most convenient, and their social life centered largely in the immediate
neighborhood and in the district school and country church. On the other
hand the village was settled by men who came primarily for business. The
spirit of the age was that of competition and they came primarily for
profits. Their business came from the farms, but they felt little sense
of obligation to them. Every village was a potential city in their eyes
and its growth and the rise of real estate values was of more concern to
them than the development of the community's basic industry of
agriculture. The village craftsman and business man gets most of his
living from the farms and it should be to his interest to give them the
best of service, but more and more he has become primarily a business
man or craftsman, coming to the village to "make money" and moving on
when he sees better opportunities elsewhere. His business and craft
affiliations link him to the centers of commercial and industrial life
in the cities, and he is strongly inclined to take the city's point of
view. Particularly has this been the case with the country banker who
has so largely controlled the economic life of the village and
countryside. Too often he has inevitably been more largely influenced by
the interests of eastern capital and the mortgage owners than by the
real needs of his local constituency.
The result has been an increasing friction between the villages and the
farms, and we have come to think of them as two separate groups or
interests rather than as essential and inter-dependent parts of a social
area--the community. The literature of country life and of rural
sociology has very rightly recognized the existing situation, but many
writers seem to accept the division between village and farm as
inevitable, and even question whether there can be a rural community of
the type herein described, rather than to recognize that this is but a
necessary stage in the beginning of community life, due to the mode of
settlement and temporary conditions.
This friction between farmer and villager has been most acute in the
Middle West and has found its extreme expression in the Non-partisan
League Movement, which has engendered a degree of bitterness between the
two factions which cannot be permanently maintained without serious
injury to their common interests. This, however, is only an attempt of
the farmers to secure redress through political control, and is but the
political form of expression of a protest which is being more
effectively made as an economic movement through cooperative buying and
selling agencies, particularly strong in Kansas and Nebraska, but
rapidly spreading throughout the country.
Some rural leaders would have us believe that the interests of the
village and the farm are fundamentally antagonistic and irreconcilable.
They advocate that the consolidated school or high school be placed in
the open country where it will be uncontaminated by the urban-mindedness
of the village; that the grange is the farmers' organization and is
sufficient for him and has no need of affiliating itself with the
affairs of the village; that the farmers should develop their own
cooperative stores and selling agencies so that they can be economically
independent of the "parasitic" trader of the village. Such a naive point
of view has a certain logical simplicity which is based on the
presupposition that conflict is inevitable and that justice and equity
can be secured only through dominance. The same line of reasoning finds
no solution of the problem of capital and labor, or of the interests of
producer as over against consumer, except in strong organization and
eternal economic conflict. It is apparent that there is much
justification for this view and that it seems in many cases to be a
necessary stage in the adjustment of interests, but that it is either
inevitable or a permanent necessity is controverted both by experience
and by a more thorough analysis of the relationships involved.
There is no gainsaying the fact that conflict has been one of the chief
agencies of human progress in the past; but neither can it be disputed
that cooperation, or mutual aid, has been of equal importance. Neither
attitude can be conceived as primary or dominant; they have interacted
throughout the history of mankind. Fundamentally, the problem of the
relationship of these two phases of life is much the same as that of the
nature and function of good and evil. The one cannot exist without the
other, and both are relative terms. Our present thought on these
problems has been too largely dominated by a wrong interpretation of the
theory of the survival of the fittest as the primary force in human
evolution. We have assumed, and the German militarists carried the
doctrine to a logical conclusion, that this hypothesis gave the sanction
of a biological law to a competitive struggle between men. But such an
inference was explicitly denied by Charles Darwin,[15] and has no
biological foundation. The struggle he described is between species and
not between members of the same species. On the other hand, we find
throughout nature that those species have been most successful which
have developed the most effective means of mutual aid.[16] Thus our
economic and political thought has been dominated for the past two or
three generations with a blind worship of the dogma of unrestrained
competition, which has no basis of proof either in biological or social
science.
When we examine what has gone on in the older sections of our country
and project the present tendencies into the future, we get a different
point of view, and come to see that only by an adjustment of the
relations of the village and the farm to each other can the best life of
both be secured. We shall have occasion in subsequent chapters to
consider the social and political problems involved, but let us here
discuss merely the economic relations, which have been the chief source
of discord.
In the first place if we examine the situation in the older parts of the
country we find a much more cordial relation between village and country
than farther west, and a greater sense of belonging to a community. The
reasons for this cannot be discussed in detail, but a large factor is
the increasing tendency to centralize institutions; school, church,
grange, lodge, stores, etc.; in the village as the country becomes
older, roads are better, and higher standards develop. Furthermore, the
relative status of the farmer changes the situation. In the older parts
of the country most of the capital needed to supply credit to farmers
and their business organizations comes from within the locality, whereas
in the newer sections they are dependent upon outside capital. In the
older sections where land has become more valuable and wealth has
accumulated, the farmer as well as the villager is a bank director, and
the amount of capital which the farmer has invested in his business is
often much greater than that of the village business man. When the
farmer comes into town in his first-class automobile as frequently as he
desires, he has a very different status from former days. The
"banker-farmer" movement, which started as an effort of the banker to
assist the farmer in better methods of production and marketing, has now
become a "farmer-banker" movement in which the country banker has been
forced to give new thought to the credit facilities of his patrons, and
is already challenging the justice of the country's credit facilities
being dominated by the large city banks which are chiefly interested in
financing industry and commerce.
There is no question that in many a rural town there are too many
stores, as there are in the cities, that in many cases their service is
very inefficient, and occasionally their prices are exorbitant, but
several forces are already tending to remedy these evils where they
occur, and improvement may be hastened by intelligent and constructive
discussion. Thus exorbitant prices or poor service has made possible the
large sales of the mail-order houses, but the total volume of their
business in most localities is relatively small and their competition
has probably been beneficial to the wide-awake merchant. For first-class
merchants have been able to show that they can meet the mail-order
prices if the customer is willing to pay cash, and the advertising of
the mail-order houses has undoubtedly increased the wants of the average
farm household. In a recent address Dr. C. J. Galpin has pointed out
that one of the shortcomings of the average country merchant is that he
has not studied the needs of his patrons and brought to their attention
new inventions and the better grades of goods. He holds that the higher
standard of living of city people is largely due to the fact that
attractive goods and better equipment are constantly brought to their
attention in the shop windows and by salesmen.
The cooperative buying of farm supplies and machinery, which is now
assuming such large proportions, is due not merely to an effort to
secure lower prices, but to secure better goods. It is a notorious fact
that for many years the farmer has had to buy inferior fertilizers and
feeds from local dealers because they were all he could get. Both mixed
feeds and fertilizers have been sold under certain brands on much the
same principle as patent medicines, until the farmer has organized his
own agencies to secure their manufacture in accordance with the best
scientific formulas. This has been primarily due to a short-sighted
policy on the part of manufacturers, but it has done greater injury to
the retailer who, in general, has made little effort to learn the real
needs of his trade and supply it with the best goods. The same has been
true of seeds and agricultural machinery. As a result of this one of the
chief claims of such a cooperative agency as the New York
Grange-League-Federation Exchange is that it is able not only to sell at
a lower price but to furnish the best quality. The wide-awake country
merchant has been keen to appreciate these facts and wherever he has
studied his trade and devoted himself to its interests he has built up a
successful business. The "Country Gentleman" has done a real service in
recently publishing a series of articles by A. B. MacDonald which have
described the successes of a few of the outstanding "Big Country
Merchants."
The "chain store" has not as yet invaded the village, but it is rapidly
gaining a foothold in the smaller cities and village merchants may as
well prepare for its competition, for there seems no good reason why its
greater buying power and superior organization should not enable it to
undersell the local merchant if the customer is willing to pay cash. As
yet all chain stores are on a cash basis and this would seem to prevent
their gaining much of the business of the farmer who has depended on
long time credit. But the cooperative stores, which do business only for
cash, have solved the credit problem by establishing credit facilities
whereby short-time loans may be made and a credit established against
which purchases are charged. There is no question that both farmer and
merchant would be better off if credit were carried by a financial
institution. The farmer is being rapidly educated in business practices,
and it will be surprising if some enterprising corporation does not
establish a chain of village stores which will do a cash business, but
which will arrange for separate credit on a strictly business basis. If
one looks at the trend of business in the cities and towns during recent
years, he cannot but come to the conviction that either country
merchants will have to get together so as to pool their purchasing power
and get the advantages of expert assistance in advertising, accounting,
store arrangement, and other technical services which the chain store
enjoys, or they will be forced to content themselves with the poorer and
less profitable class of trade. I have seen no studies of the matter,
but it would be interesting to know how large an amount of farmer trade
is now enjoyed by the chain groceries in our larger towns. My own
impression is that they are a much more serious competitor of the small
country merchant than is the mail-order house. These are but a few of
the forces which will bring better service from the village merchant.
There are also ways in which farmers may secure better service without
attempting to operate a cooperative store of their own or deserting the
local merchants. Farm Bureau associations have in numerous cases made
arrangements with a local dealer whereby he would handle their seeds,
fertilizers, or spraying materials at a specified rate of profit, upon
condition that they give him all their trade in these articles and place
their orders in advance. This principle of collective buying through an
established merchant at an agreed rate of profit has much to commend it,
and is being utilized by the Grange-League-Federation Exchange in New
York state to take care of its local business as far as possible. The
fact is that the profits of a strictly cooperative store, after paying
the salary of a competent manager and other costs of operation, which
would make a very attractive income for a single merchant, do not make a
dividend to each of its many patrons much more than a good rate of
interest on the total cost of purchases. It may as well be recognized
that unless there be a strong loyalty to the cooperative principle by a
considerable group of patrons and unless there be peculiar need of a
cooperative store that it is not a mechanism which will automatically
secure much lower prices or superior service, for the success of the
enterprise depends primarily on the manager and if he be competent, he
must be paid sufficient to command not only his services but his loyalty
and initiative. The cooperative store will find it good business to have
a profit-sharing arrangement with its manager and employees, if it
expects to secure the same service from them that may be secured from
the better merchants. On the other hand, if by pooling their buying
power a group of farmers can throw their business to one merchant in
consideration of his selling at a specified profit, even if only for a
particular line of goods, they get the advantage of their collective
purchasing power and have none of the responsibility for maintaining the
business. Although it is my belief that the cooperative principle is
essentially sound and must ultimately dominate our business life, yet it
will need to find means of giving larger incentive to its managers if it
is to compete with the best individual business men. After all, what is
wanted is to get business on a functional basis, and if this can be
accomplished by means of collective buying through an established
business which furnishes its own capital and management, the farmer is
the gainer. The essential thing is that business be put on the basis of
public service rather than private profit. When that principle is
recognized as being the only sound basis of our economic system, then
the methods of business organization will be determined by what
experience shows to be most advantageous to the community, and it may
well be that true "_cooperative competition_" between individual
merchants and cooperative stores may exist side by side with advantage
to all concerned.
Another factor in rural community life is the increase of industrial
establishments in villages and small towns. There can be no question
that the centralization of industry in our large cities, which has
proceeded so rapidly since the development of steam power, has now
passed its maximum and that there will be a considerable
decentralization of certain industries which can be operated profitably
in small units. The metropolitan city has passed its maximum of
economic efficiency for many phases of manufacturing, if economic
efficiency is judged by its power to produce "well-being," rather than
mere wealth. We have been obsessed with the glamour of the bigness of
the modern city and we are but beginning to seriously question its real
efficiency. The possibility of superior living conditions in a small
town are now being recognized both by employer and laborer, and better
transportation and the development of electric power lines make possible
the organization of certain of our large industries in small units. As
this process proceeds the business of the village and small town will no
longer be chiefly dependent on agriculture and there will be a further
need for accommodation of the different interests of the community. Here
again, some see only loss to rural life; but if one examines the
situation more thoroughly, mutual advantages are equally apparent. If
the farmers are organized for cooperative selling, they will be
benefited by the better local markets, which are the backbone of the
agricultural economy of so prosperous a country as France. Certain local
industries, whose production is of a seasonal nature, might so arrange
their operation that some of their labor might be available to work on
the neighboring farms during the rush season. Even more important would
be the increased purchasing power of the community, making possible
better stores and business and professional services of all sorts, and
the increase of wealth which would make possible the support of better
schools, churches, and social advantages of all sorts. It is, of course,
true that the introduction of industry in not a few cases seems to have
lowered the standards of community life, but this is by no means
universal or inevitable.
One of the unfortunate phases of the efforts of small communities to
secure industrial plants is that they often secure establishments which
are not adapted to local conditions or whose financial status is
insecure, and the enterprise inevitably results in failure, with
discouragement to all concerned. There is great need for county chambers
of commerce or commercial clubs with skilled commercial executives as
secretaries who can give the same expert service to the business life of
the small rural communities that the cities now have. The business life
of the community might profit as much from such a service as the farms
have from the expert assistance afforded through the Farm Bureaus.[17]
We have been considering the economic relations of the farm and the
village as affecting community life, for they are at present the chief
factor in creating community interest, as well as the leading cause of
group friction. The rural community of to-day is primarily an economic
unit, but in the future it seems probable that business will occupy a
relatively less important place than the social activities of the
community center. Not that there will necessarily be less business,
although the widening of markets constantly tends to take business from
the local centers, but that business will be more efficient and less
competitive; business will not occupy so large a share of attention, but
will take its rightful place as a means to an end, while the community
will take more interest in those institutions which actively promote all
phases of its higher life, of health, education, art, sociability, and
religion.
These social institutions will increase in relative importance and they
must be located at the community center if they are to have a sufficient
constituency to be efficient in their work and command the loyalty of
rural people. Inasmuch as both farmer and villager are necessary for the
adequate support of church, lodge, school, and other community
organizations, they cannot be expected to work together in these
activities if one is antagonistic to the other, or if the one is helping
to put the other out of business. The farmer has had many grievances
against the townsman, but the fault has not been entirely on one side,
and only by mutual support and the recognition of their dependent
interests can a satisfactory community life be maintained. The root of
the whole trouble lies in the imaginary division of the community into
town and country. With the realization that their common interests are
essential and that their differences are due to lack of proper
adjustment, many of these difficulties will be alleviated. It is my
experience that in the most successful communities, the farmers speak of
"our" town, they are proud of "our" bank, and "our" stores, school, and
churches are the best in the region. Such loyalty is the best of
evidence that the business men of the town have devoted themselves to
supplying the farmers' needs, and that there is mutual understanding
between them. Only by a common loyalty to mutual service can the true
community exist.
Farmers need the village and it should be to them "our town," of whose
successes and improvements they are proud. As the villagers cannot exist
without the farmers they should be interested in supporting every
movement for the farmers' weal. As they have more frequent contacts with
other centers and with cities, they will be the first to bring many new
ideas and suggestions to the community, but they must realize that only
as all elements of the community are agreed will any new movement be
permanently successful. There must be loyalty to farm leaders as well as
to those of the village. Indeed, the most successful rural communities
are those in which all are one big community family whose institutional
interests center in the village.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] See George Nasmyth, "Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory."
[16] See P. Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid."
[17] See L. H. Bailey, "The Place of the Village in the Country-Life
Movement," York State Rural Problems, II, 148. Albany, N. Y., 1915.
CHAPTER VI
COMMUNITY ASPECTS OF THE FARM BUSINESS
In the days of the pioneer the farm business was hardly affected by
community conditions. A general store where necessities could be
purchased, a mill where grain could be ground, and a blacksmith shop
were about the only necessary business agencies. The farm was largely
self-sufficient and there was but little real community life. Nor was
there much change in the next generation or two among the farmers who
built substantial homes, supported their neighborhood churches and
schools, and with the free labor of a good-sized family made a
comfortable living. Their interests were chiefly in their families and
neighbors, and questions of local government were about the only
community bond. When new sections of the country were opened up by
railroads and with the growth of cities farm lands increased rapidly in
value, there was an era of speculative farming, which Dr. Warren H.
Wilson has called the era of the "exploiter."[18] A farm was bought with
an idea of its improvement and resale at a good profit, and many farmers
moved from one section to another in search of new land which was both
fertile and cheap.[19] The era of land speculation has by no means
passed, as has been learned to their sorrow by many who bought farms at
inflated prices during the World War, and whenever there is a sudden
rise in land values, speculation will doubtless recur. On the other
hand, as cheap lands become scarce, as the better lands become more
valuable and the amount of capital required to equip and operate a farm
in the better agricultural sections increases, there will be less
tendency to be on the lookout for a profitable sale and the farm
business will become more permanent because of the large effort and
capital expended in the enterprise and the consequent attachment of the
owner. A man with a considerable investment does not care to move
frequently. Thus higher land values--inevitable with an increasing
population--will favor a more permanent type of farming, conducted on
scientific and business principles, of what Dr. Wilson calls the
"husbandman" type. This type of farmer not only desires but requires
better institutions of all sorts, which can only be maintained at a
community center. Thus permanency of ownership of farm operators
conduces to community development.
Unfortunately, however, the rise of values of the best land seems to
encourage tenancy rather than ownership, for tenancy is greatest and
increases most on the best farm lands. The general economic aspects and
the ultimate solution of the tenancy problem are national rather than
local problems. The effect of tenancy as it now exists, with a frequent
shifting from one community to another, is, however, a very serious
community problem, for all observers agree that the maintenance of a
satisfactory standard of community life is much more difficult where
tenancy predominates.
One important economic aspect of tenancy is that tenants, who are
frequently moving, will less readily and effectively affiliate in
cooperative enterprises, and we shall see that cooperative organizations
have a large influence in promoting the solidarity of the rural
community. This has been well brought out by one of our best students
of the tenancy problem, Dr. C. L. Stewart, who says:
"Farming efficiency in the future, however, will probably
consist to a greater extent in the ability to increase net
profits through cooperative dealing with the market. The
efficiency test must, therefore, rule more strongly against
operators of the tenures, whose characteristics are opposed
to successful cooperative effort on their part.
"That tenants," he continues, "changing from farm to farm at
more or less short intervals, should generally be more
active and successful than owners in building up cooperative
organizations is hardly in the line of reason.... If in the
future, cooperation assumes forms requiring greater
permanency of membership in the societies, greater intimacy
of acquaintance among the members, or greater investment per
member, the tenants will doubtless find themselves
handicapped in their relation thereto."[20]
The effect of a large percentage of tenants is even more serious upon
the social side of community life. Those who have studied the problem
are agreed that both schools and churches tend to be inferior in tenant
communities. There is little "chance of development of deep friendships
and associations which give vitality to church life" where a large
proportion of the tenants are frequently moving, nor can they give as
good financial support to the church as landowners. The frequent
shifting of the tenant population creates a difficult problem for all
the social life of the community, for it is impossible for a community
to assimilate a considerable percentage of its population every year and
to develop those strong ties of loyalty which are essential to real
community life.
Thus a reasonable permanency of residence of its population is
essential to successful community life and this is largely determined by
the economic situation of the farm business. And the importance of the
effect of tenancy, or any other economic aspect of agriculture on the
life of its people must be recognized as a fundamental consideration in
determining rural policies. Well being _on_ the land and not wealth
_from_ the land is the final goal of agriculture.
Community life is also affected by the type of farming which is
prevalent among its people. Modern agriculture is becoming specialized,
and the crops grown are determined both by soil and climate and by the
markets available. Fruit sections are due primarily to the former, while
the regions producing market milk are determined chiefly by the latter
factor. Now various types of farming make distinctly different demands
upon the time of the farmer and so to a considerable extent they
condition his social life. Dairying is probably the most confining sort
of farming, and on the one-man farm there is little opportunity for
getting away. "Haven't missed milking morning or night for six years,"
one dairyman replied to me when asked if he ever had a vacation. The
fruit grower, on the other hand, during the winter can take a few weeks
to go South or visit relatives without injury to his business. In the
South after the crops are "laid by" in midsummer is the season for
camp-meetings, picnics, and "frolicking" in general. Not only does the
fruit grower have more leisure than the dairyman, but population is
denser in a fruit-growing or trucking community and hence the
communities are smaller and more compact. Just what characteristics of
community life may be attributed to these differences in vocation it
would be difficult to say, for so far as I am aware no exact studies
have compared several communities of each type, but that they exercise a
large influence on community customs and the social attitudes of the
people is patent to even a casual observer who passes from a dairy
section to a fruit region, or from the northwestern grain belt to a
region of general farming.[21]
Specialization in agricultural production also affects community life in
that its economic interests are unified both as regards production and
marketing and as the income of most of its people comes from one or two
products, their attention is focused upon them and a greater degree of
solidarity results than where farming is more diversified and farmers
are not so dependent on the sale of one or two crops. Specialization is
chiefly due to advantages which it ensures in marketing, as will be
indicated in the next chapter, and it is because there is less economic
pressure to compel general farmers to market together and that they lack
the solidarity developed by specialization, that cooperative selling
associations have not generally succeeded in a general farming region
when they have attempted to handle various farm products.
Specialization in agriculture encourages further division of labor
because there is a sufficient volume of work to pay for expert services.
Thus dairy communities have developed cow-test associations, which
employ one man to test the percent of butter-fat for each cow, to
interpret their milk production records, and sometimes to advise them
with regard to feeding. In fruit regions a considerable business is done
in contract spraying. Threshing crews and threshing-rings have long been
common. Custom plowing by tractor, and hauling of farm produce by motor
truck are becoming common. It seems probable that such division of labor
will increase as much as is practicable, but it finds very definite
limitations in the agricultural industry, due to the very short season
in which many operations can be performed and which thus gives short
employment for any of the seasonal operations.
Division of labor also involves increasing the manufacture or
"processing" of agricultural products which is an asset to the community
if performed locally as far as possible. Butter is no longer made in the
home but at the creamery, and milk is prepared for the city market at
the shipping station, or is sold to a local condensary, all of which
employ more or less skilled labor. With crops which are perishable or
bulky, "processing" must be performed locally. Thus canneries are
located where the vegetables or fruits are grown. Although the selling
of equipment for cooperative canning plants has been almost as much of a
swindle as promoting cooperative creameries, yet large numbers of
cooperative creameries exist where conditions for them are suitable, and
there seems no inherent reason why cooperative canneries cannot be made
successful when farmers have learned how to organize and to employ
expert help.[22] In his delightful vision of the possibilities of a new
Ireland, entitled "The National Being," George William Russell ("A.
E."), holds out the hope that the increase of such local cooperative
manufacture of agricultural products may be the means of furnishing an
opportunity for the rural laborer to better his status.
"But what I hope for most," he says, "is first that the
natural evolution of the rural community, and the
concentration of individual manufacture, purchase, and sale
into communal enterprises, will lead to a very large
cooperative ownership of expensive machinery, which will
necessitate the communal employment of labor. If this takes
place, as I hope it will, the rural laborer, instead of
being a manual worker using primitive implements, will have
the status of a skilled mechanic employed permanently by a
cooperative community. He should be a member of the society
which employs him, and in the division of the profits
receive in proportion to his wage, as the farmers in
proportion to their trade."[23]
To the extent that "processing" farm products is taken from the farm and
performed at the community center, or that there is a division of labor,
the local community is thereby strengthened, for its life is more highly
organized; it is more inter-dependent.
An interesting phase of the relation of the community to the farm
business is in the protection of crops and animals from insect pests and
diseases. If one man plants his wheat late enough to escape the Hessian
fly his crop is benefited, but if all in a community do so the
subsequent infection is greatly reduced with consequent advantage to
all. The chief obstacle preventing the successful combating of the
cotton boll weevil in the South has been the difficulty of securing
united action in the necessary cultural measures for its control. Most
striking results have been secured in the eradication of the Texas Fever
Tick from large areas of the South, although this has been carried on
using the county as a unit; for many purposes in the South the county is
practically a community. Some of the best community work in this field
has been in the West in poisoning ground squirrels and other injurious
rodents and in rabbit drives. Although the poisoning campaigns are
conducted over whole counties or several counties, they are organized by
communities and their success is possible only because every one in the
community does his part. Whenever the farmers of a community become
convinced that they are unable to fight a pest or disease individually,
but can do so if they act collectively so that a sufficiently large area
is treated as to prevent immediate re-infection, a new community bond
has been established. Whether these activities are carried on by
communities of the exact nature previously defined (page 10) is
immaterial. The significant fact is that their people are learning how
to act together in the common defense, for it was the common defense
which first compelled mankind to live in communities, and it is defense
for one purpose or another which is ever compelling the people of a
locality to act together.
Farm management experts point out the practical value to the farmer of
community experience with regard to methods of farm practice peculiarly
adapted to local climate, soils, and markets. If one is going into
dairying he can learn little from his neighbors if he locates in a fruit
section, but in a dairy section he may constantly learn from the common
experience. Dr. G. F. Warren says:
"There is so much to learn about farming in any community
that one man cannot hope to learn it alone. The experience
of the community is of the utmost value to every farmer.
Different men try out new varieties of crops, new machines,
different breeds of animals, different methods of raising
crops, different methods of building construction, different
ways of saving labor. Each man gets the experiences of all;
if a man is following a type of farming different from his
neighbors, he cannot hope to try all these things. He is not
likely to progress very rapidly."[24]
These advantages occur if there be a true community; i.e., if through
communication one may learn the experience of others, but in some cases
the experience is of little value because it is not available.
Finally farmers are coming to find it profitable to establish the
reputation of a community for advertising purposes. So at the railroad
station we are faced with the sign, "Kalamazoo, the home of celery." We
know of "Kalamazoo, direct to you" stoves, but we had forgotten that it
is one of the oldest and best celery-growing communities in the country.
Thus increased specialization gives very real advertising values to a
community which builds up a reputation for its products. But such a
reputation is simply the recognition by the outside world of the
character of the community. Thus ability to advertise itself is a very
real index of its solidarity, and the desire to be able to gain
advantage from advertising may become a real motive for activities of a
community, as it does with many an individual. The ability to advertise
but shows the economic value of the creation of a real community.
Common interests in the farm business form the primary bond for the
establishment of true rural communities, and the strongest of these
common interests are those involved in the problems of marketing.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] See "The Evolution of the Country Community."
[19] See Hamlin Garland, "A Son of the Middle Border."
[20] Land Tenure in the United States with special reference to
Illinois, University of Illinois, "Studies in the Social Sciences," Vol.
V, No. 3, Sept., 1916, p. 124.
[21] See John M. Gillette, "Constructive Rural Sociology" (1st Ed.),
Chapter III.
[22] For an excellent discussion of "Processing Farm Products," see
Theodore Macklin, "Efficient Marketing for Agriculture," Macmillan, New
York, 1921, Chap. VI.
[23] "The National Being, Some Thoughts on Irish Polity," p. 57, Maunsel
& Co., Dublin and London, 1916.
[24] "Farm Management," p. 98, Macmillan & Co., New York, 1913.