Part 10 (1/2)
The academies of earlier days in rural America were centers of a similar influence. But with the growth of the public-school system these have been generally abandoned. It is a question whether some of them would not serve a need which is felt today, if only they would train men for modern country life with the same success which they once had in training leaders for a former period.
Then all the people lived in the country. Now only a third of the people are concerned with the farm. So that the education of the modern country boy or girl would require to be carried on in a different manner, in order to retain the best of them in the country. The example of the ”Folk Schools” offers an a.n.a.logy to what might be done in American country life, if the academy could be transformed into an inst.i.tution for the education of the young in the country.
All observers testify that the ”Folk High Schools” have been the first influence in transforming Denmark in the past forty years, from a nation economically inferior to a nation rich and prosperous. This change has been wrought through the betterment of the farmers and other country people, by means of education in country life; and this education has been economic, patriotic, co-operative and religious. So perfect has it been that it is hard to a.n.a.lyze; but the acknowledged center of it has been a system of schools in which the problem of living is taught as a religion, an enthusiasm and a culture.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 33: ”The American Rural School,” H. W. Foght.]
XII
RURAL MORALITY
The moral standards of the pioneer type and of the land-farmer type prevail in the country. The world economy has precipitated on the farm an era of exploitation which has not yet reached its highest point.
Meantime, according to the ethical ideals of the pioneer and of the farmer, country people are moral.
The investigations of the Country Life Commission brought general testimony to the high standards of personal life which prevail in the country. In such a representative state as Pennsylvania the standard of conduct between the s.e.xes was found to be good. The testimony of physicians, among the best of rural observers, was nearly unanimous, in Pennsylvania, to the good moral conditions prevailing in the intercourse of men and women in the country. This indicates that the farmer economy had superseded the economy of the pioneer.
The moral problem of the pioneer period consisted of a struggle for honesty in business contracts, and purity in the relation of men and women. The story of every church in New England and Pennsylvania, until about 1835 at which Professor Ross dates the beginning of the farmer period, shows the bitter struggle between the standard accepted by the church and that of the individuals who failed to conform. The standard was inherited from the older communities of Europe. The conduct of individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living.
Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in d.u.c.h.ess County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were more cases of adultery considered by Oblong Meeting in every average year of the eighteenth century than were known to the whole community in any ten years at the close of the nineteenth century. The farmer economy in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in which individual action and independent personal initiative were the prevailing mode.
The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet endowed with social standards. He knows that it is right to give full measure when he sells a commodity, but he does not yet see the evil of breaches of contract. Farmers of high standing in their communities for their personal character, who are truthful and ”honest” in such contractual relations as come down from their fathers, have been known to use the school system of the town for their own private profit, or that of members of their families, and to ignore financial obligations which belong to the new period, in which money values have taken the place of barter values.
A good ill.u.s.tration is that of a deacon in a country church, whom I once knew. His word was proverbially truthful. As widely as he was known his reputation for piety and simple truthfulness, for honesty and purity of life were universal. I do not think that he was consciously insincere, but as a trustee in administering a fund devoted to public uses he seemed to have a clear eye for only those enterprises through which he or members of his family could indirectly secure incomes. Entrusted with a public service which involved the improvement of the school system, so far as he acted individually and without prompting by those who had been accustomed all their lives to modern methods, his action was that of loyalty to his own family and relations.h.i.+p. In so doing he regularly would betray the community and the public interest. Yet he seemed to do this ingenuously and without any conception of the moral standards of people used to the values of money.
I have known the same man, whose standing among farmers was that of a blameless religious man, to borrow money, and in the period of the loan so to conduct himself as to forfeit the respect of people used to handling money. To them he seemed to be a conscious and deliberate grafter. The explanation in my mind is that he suffered from the transition out of the pioneer and farmer economy into the economy of the exploiter.
The history of the sale of lands in the country, in the recent exploitation of farm-lands, contains many stories of the breach of contract of farmers, and the inability of the farmer to sell wisely and at the same time honestly. Contrasting the farmer in his knowledge of financial obligation with the broker in the Stock Exchange, the latter type stands out in strong contrast as an admirable example of financial honesty to contracts, even if they be verbal only. The farmer on the other hand has no conception of the relations on which the financial system must be built. He is not an exploiter to begin with, but a farmer.
The transition from the older economy to the new is ill.u.s.trated in the dairy industry which surrounds every great city. The dairy farmer has ideas of right and wrong which are purely individualistic. He believes that he should not cheat the customer in the quant.i.ty of milk. He recognizes that it is wrong, therefore, to water the milk, but he has no conception of social morality concerning milk. He gives full measure: but he cares nothing about purity of milk. He is restless and feels himself oppressed under the demands of the inspector from the city, for ventilation of his barns and for protection of the milk from impurity. I have known few milk farmers who believed in giving pure milk and I never knew one whose conscience was at ease in watering milk. That is, they all believe in good measure and none believes in the principle of sanitation. They stand at the transition from the old economy to the new.
A story is told among agricultural teachers in New York State to the effect that an inspector following the trail of disease in a small city traced it to impure milk supplied by a certain farm. In the absence of the man he insisted on inspecting the dairy arrangements, being followed from room to room by the farmer's indignant wife. Finally he said, ”Show me the strainer which you use in the milk,” and she brought an old s.h.i.+rt, very much soiled. Looking at it in dismay the inspector said, ”Could you not, at least, use a clean s.h.i.+rt?” At this the woman's patience gave way and she declared, ”Well, you needn't expect me to use a clean s.h.i.+rt to strain dirty milk!”
The packing of apples for market ill.u.s.trates the transition from the farmer economy in which the ethical standards are those of the household, or family group, to the world economy in which the moral standards are those of the world market. Apples are packed by all cla.s.ses of farmers, regardless of varying religious profession, in an indifferent manner. The typical farmer hopes by compet.i.tion with his neighbors to gain a possibly better price. Instances of such successes as come to certain family groups are endlessly discussed by farmers; and the highest ideal that one meets among farmers who sell apples throughout the Eastern States is expressed in the instance of some family who have improved their own farm and their own orchard, so as to win for the family or the farm a reputation in some particular market and thus to gain a higher price.
Contrast with this the marketing of apples by the Western fruit growers'
a.s.sociations. Among them, as for instance in the Hood Valley, Oregon, apples are packed not by the farm owner with a view to competing with his neighbors, but by the committee representing the whole district. The individual farmer has no access to the market. He cannot hide his poor fruit in an envelope of his best fruit, so as to deceive the buyer. The committee has a reputation to maintain on behalf of the a.s.sociation, not of the individual. The apples are marketed on their merits in accordance with a certain standard. The impersonal demands of the world economy are kept in mind. The individual farmer and farm are forgotten. The result is that these far western growers, whose fruit is said in the East to be inferior in flavor to the apples of New York and New England, can sell their product in the eastern market at a higher price per box than the New York or New England farmer can secure per barrel.
The transition from farming to exploiting has brought out in full view the wastefulness of the farmer economy which is being succeeded by exploitation. The whole doctrine of conservation belongs in this transition. Economy means, literally, housekeeping. The same meaning appears in the word husbandry. It is a principle of saving. Its extraordinary value at the present time is due to our sudden sense of the wastefulness of farm life in recent years. Edward van Alstyne, an agricultural authority in New York, says, ”We farmers think we are most economical, but we are the most wasteful of all men.” The wastefulness of American farming begins in the tillage of too many acres. The farmer prefers wide fields even at the cost of poor crops.
The New York Central Railroad, which is carrying on a propaganda of husbandry, has appointed a man as expert farmer who increased the yield of potatoes on his land from sixty to three hundred bushels per acre.
This brings out clearly that his neighbors are still producing sixty bushels per acre, wasting four-fifths of their land values. This waste is a wrong that should be denounced in the country church just as sternly as doctrinal sins, which have occupied the attention of country ministers in the past.
Expert farmers say that if corn-stalks for fodder are left out in the field until they are fed to the cattle they lose forty to fifty per cent of their food values. This waste is sinful, but the sin is visible only in the new economy of exploitation which counts all values in terms of cash. No sooner is the sinfulness of waste observed than its connections with moral delinquencies of country people becomes clear. In the improvement of rural morality due to the sifting of country people during the farmer period, it becomes evident that among a people so serious-minded some delinquencies still remain. The immoralities that still lurk and fester in the country are due very largely to waste. This waste of human things is parallel to the waste of economic values.
In a conference there was some difficulty in persuading a certain country minister to speak. When finally he arose he said, ”I am not much interested in the scientific a.n.a.lysis of the country church. All I am interested in is sin.” One wonders whether he was dealing with the sins of the country in their causes or in their effects, or was he simply concerned with the sins which consist in opposing the doctrines of his particular denomination, whatever it was. This wastefulness of the values in the soil enters into the social life of the country. Farmers care as little for the social values as for land values. Young men and women ignore the moral importance of little things. They are not taught that coa.r.s.eness is wrong. They are not made to realize that cleanliness and courtesy and reverence for the human body are of vital importance in life.