Part 9 (1/2)
”3. They are also beginning to adopt the methods of the organized foreign farmer in controlling the sale of their b.u.t.ter, eggs and poultry in the British markets.
”4. And they not only combine in agricultural production and distribution, but are also making a promising beginning in grappling with the problem of agricultural finance. It is in the last portion of the Irish programme that by far the most interesting study of the co-operative system can be made, on account of its success in the poorest parts of the Island. Furthermore, the attempt to enable the most embarra.s.sed section of the Irish peasantry to procure working capital ill.u.s.trates some features of agricultural co-operation which will have suggestive value for American farmers.
”A body of very poor persons, individually--in the commercial sense of the term--insolvent, manage to create a new basis of security which has been somewhat grandiloquently and yet truthfully called 'the capitalization of their honesty and industry.' The way in which this is done is remarkably ingenious. The credit society is organized in the usual democratic way explained above, but its const.i.tution is peculiar in one respect. The members have to become jointly and severally responsible for the debts of the a.s.sociation, which borrows on this unlimited liability from the ordinary commercial bank, or, in some cases, from Government sources. After the initial stage, when the inst.i.tution becomes firmly established, it attracts local deposits, and thus the savings of the community, which are too often h.o.a.rded, are set free to fructify in the community. The procedure by which the money borrowed is lent to the members of the a.s.sociation is the essential feature of the scheme. The member requiring the loan must state what he is going to do with the money. He must satisfy the committee of the a.s.sociation, who know the man and his business, that the proposed investment is one which will enable him to repay both princ.i.p.al and interest. He must enter into a bond with two sureties for the repayment of the loan, and needless to say the characters of both the borrower and his sureties are very carefully considered. The period for which the loan is granted is arranged to meet the needs of the case, as determined by the committee after a full discussion with the borrower. Once the loan has been made, it becomes the concern of every member of the a.s.sociation to see that it is applied to the 'approved purpose'--as it is technically called. What is more important is that all the borrower's fellow-members become interested in his business and anxious for its success.
”The fact that nearly three hundred of these societies are at work in Ireland and that, although their transactions are on a very modest scale, the system is steadily growing both in the numbers of its adherents and in the turnover,--this fact is, I think, a remarkable testimony to the value of the co-operative system. The details I have given ill.u.s.trate one important distinction between co-operation, which enables the farmer to do his business in a way that suits him, and the urban form of combination, which is unsuited to his needs.”
The traditional economy that centered in the farm household was independent. The ethical standards of country life recognized but small obligations to those outside the household. Farmers still idealize an individual, or rather a group, success. They entertain the hope that their farm may raise some specialty for which a better price shall be gained and by which an exceptional advantage in the market shall be possessed. The conditions of the world economy are imposing upon the farmer the necessity of co-operation.
The prices of all the farmers' products are fixed by the marginal goods put upon the market. For instance, the standard milk for which the price is paid to dairy farmers, is the milk which can barely secure a purchaser. The poor quality, relative uncleanness, and the low grade of the marginal milk dominate the general market in every city, and the farmer who produces a better grade gets nothing for the difference. It is true that there is a special price paid by hospitals and a limited market may be established by special inst.i.tutions, but we are dealing here with general conditions such as affect the average milk farmer and the great bulk of the farmers. It is on these average conditions alone that the country community can depend.
Co-operation is the essential measure by which the producer of marginal goods can be influenced. To raise the standard of his product it is necessary to have a combination of producers. So long as the better farmer is dependent by economic law upon those prices paid for marginal goods, the only way for the better farmer to secure a better gain is to engage in co-operation which shall include the poorer and the marginal farmer.
In the Kentucky counties which raise Burley tobacco, a few years ago the tenant farmer was an economic slave. He sold his crop at a price dictated by a combination of buyers. He lived throughout the year on credit. His wife and his children were obliged to work in the field in summer. He had nothing for contribution to community inst.i.tutions.
Indeed, he very frequently ended the year without paying his debts for food and clothing.
The organizations of these farmers which have been formed in recent years for self-protection have been blamed for some outrageous deeds.
Persons in sympathy with these organizations have burned the barns of farmers unwilling to enter the combination. They have administered whippings and threats right and left in the interest of the farmers'
organization. In their contest with the buyers to secure a better price they have reduced to ashes some of the warehouses of the monopoly to which they were obliged to sell their tobacco. These public outrages are worthy of condemnation. The writer believes that they were not essential to the process of co-operation by which the farmers fought their way to better success, though the effect of these acts is a part of the historical process.
But the combination of farmers has redeemed the poorer, the tenant farmer and the small farmer from economic slavery. His representatives now fix the price of the product. There is one buyer and one seller, compet.i.tion being eliminated; and the price at which the tobacco is sold is the farmers' price, not the manufacturer's price. As a result the farmers are able to hire help. The wife and children no longer work in the field. The bills are paid as they are incurred, instead of credit slavery binding the farmer from year to year. Last of all this prosperity has taken form in better roads, better schools and better churches. It remains only to be said that among the farmers engaging in this co-operative union there were many preachers and pastors of the region. They took a large part in the combinations of farmers which affected this great gain. They recognized that the fight of the farmers for self-respect and for free existence was a religious struggle and that the church had a common interest in the well being of the population to which it ministered.
Another instance of co-operation is seen in Delaware and on the ”Eastern Sh.o.r.e” where the soil had been exhausted. Methods of slavery days were unfavorable to the land and after the War it was long neglected. In recent years a new type of farmer has come into this territory. By intensive cultivation with scientific methods, he is raising small fruits, berries, vegetables and other products, for the nearby markets in the great cities. The success of these farmers has been dependent upon their produce exchanges. They have learned, contrary to the traditional belief of farmers, that there is a greater profit for the individual farmer in raising the same crop as his neighbor, than there is in an especial crop which competes in the market for itself. That is to say, in s.h.i.+pping a carload of strawberries the farmer gets a better price when the car is filled with one kind of berry than he would receive if the car was made up of a number of separate consignments under different names and of different varieties. Co-operation has been better for the individual than compet.i.tion.
It at once becomes evident that co-operation is an ethical and a religious discipline. As soon as the farming population is saturated with the idea, which these farmers fully understand who have prospered by co-operation, the religious message in these territories will be a new message of brotherhood. The old gospel of an individual salvation apart from men and often at the expense of other men will be enlarged and renewed into a gospel of social salvation. No man will be saved to a Heaven apart or to a salvation which he attains by compet.i.tion or by comparison, but men shall be saved through their fellows and with their fellows. The country church, of all our churches, will teach in the days to come the gospel of unity.
The writer's own experience as a country minister was a perfect ill.u.s.tration of this union of all members of a community. In the community Quakers, Irish Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists were represented in nearly equal numbers. With people widely diverse in their economic position, though dependent upon one another, it became evident to all that the only religious experience of the community must be an experience of unity. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of an old Quaker who supplied the funds and of two others of gracious spirit and broad intellect, the whole community was united, on the condition that all should share in that which any did. One church was organized to receive all the adherents of Protestant faith and one service of wors.h.i.+p united all, whether within or without the church. Even the Roman Catholics once or twice a year for twenty years have been brought together in meetings which express the unity of the countryside.
Other instances there are of co-operation among churches in the country, but their number is not great. There is a supplementary co-operation in the division of territory in some states. The church at Hanover, N. J., has a territory six miles by four, in which no other church has been established. This old Presbyterian congregation has peopled its countryside with its chapels and has a.s.sembled the chapel wors.h.i.+ppers regularly at its services in the old church at the graveyard and the manse.
In Rock Creek, Illinois, the Presbyterian Church has a community to itself, and ministers in its territory with the same efficiency with which the Baptist church across the creek ministers to its territory, in which it also has a religious monopoly. These two congregations respect one another and have a sense of supplementing one another, which is a form of co-operation. The ideal expressed in these two instances is cherished by many. It is hoped that religious bodies may agree in time to divide the territory, to give up churches, to sell or transfer property rights and to s.h.i.+ft their ministers from communities which have too many to those communities not served at all. But the way for this co-operation as an active principle has not yet opened. Its value is in those communities which have had it from the first as an inheritance.
It has so far not proven a remedy to be applied for the cure of existing evils.
The writer believes that the path of co-operation is the efficient and slow one of economic and social organization rather than the delusive short-cut of religious union. People cannot be united in religion until they are united in their social economy. The business of the church is to organize co-operative enterprises, economic, social and educational, and to school the people in the joy, to educate them in the advantages, of life together. Co-operation must become a gospel. Union requires to be a religious doctrine. It will be well for a long time to come to say but little about organic union of churches and to say a great deal about the union in the life of the people themselves.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 32: ”Rural Denmark and Its Lessons,” by H. Rider Haggard. See also the Bulletins of the International Inst.i.tute of Agriculture at Rome, Italy.]
XI
COMMON SCHOOLS
The weakness of the common schools in American rural communities shows itself in their failure to educate the marginal people of the community, in their failure to train average men and women for life in that community, in their robbing the community of leaders.h.i.+p by training those on whom their influence is strongest, so that they go out from the community never to return; and in their general disloyalty to the local community with its needs and its problems.
It is the boast of the people of the country school district that their school has ”sent out” so many people of distinction. On a rocky hillside in a New England town there stands, between a wooded slope and a swamp, an unpainted school building. Within and without it is more forbidding than the average stable in that farming region. But the resident of that neighborhood boasts of the number of distinguished persons who have gone forth from the community, under the influence of that school. This is characteristic of country places and country schools. The influence of the school, so far as it has any, is that of disloyalty to the neighborhood. It robs the neighborhood of leaders.h.i.+p. It does nothing to cultivate a spirit of sympathy with the life that must be lived there. For every one whom it starts upon the exodus to other places it leaves two at home uninspired, indifferent and mentally degenerate.
Another fault of the one-room country school, which makes it a weak support of the country community, is its lack of professional support.
Among four hundred teachers in such schools, throughout the country, not one in a hundred expects to remain as a country schoolteacher for a lifetime. There is no professional cla.s.s devoted to the country school.
Its service is incidental in the lives of men devoted to something else.