Part 2 (1/2)
Secretary Wilson has recently given it as his opinion that land-seekers who pa.s.s by the farms now offered for sale in the western portions of New York State often go further and fare worse. In these relatively low-priced lands, it ought not to be difficult for agricultural communities to establish permanently a rural society worthy of American ideas of progress. But to do this is to solve the problem we are discussing. We have some other aspects of that problem to consider before we can agree upon the essentials of a philosophic and comprehensive scheme for the rehabilitation of rural life--before we can lay down the lines of a movement to give effect to our plan.
The Far Western section has hardly yet emerged from the frontier-pioneer stage, and its rural problem is still below the horizon. I may, however, note in pa.s.sing a few evidences that the people of this section have already shown a very real concern for rural progress. The fruit-growers of the Pacific Coast have, in the cooperative marketing of their produce, made an excellent beginning in a matter of first importance in any scheme of rural development. On irrigation farm lands there has been developed, in connection with the upkeep and control of the water systems, a community spirit which will surely lead to many forms of organisation for mutual economic and social advantage. In the city of Spokane, Was.h.i.+ngton, the Chamber of Commerce has aroused a public interest in the work of the Country Life Commission which, so far as my information goes, has not been equalled elsewhere in the United States.
The Chamber is republis.h.i.+ng the Report of the Commission, for which no Federal appropriation appears to have been made. It would seem to be a not wild speculation that the statesmen and social workers who will first solve the rural problem of the English-speaking peoples may be found in the Far West of the New World as well as of the Old.
I must now conclude the diagnosis of rural decadence by a consideration of what in my judgment is the chief cause of the malady, and so get to a point where we can determine the nature of the remedy. It will then remain only to sketch the outlines of the movement which is to give practical effect to the agreed principles in the life of rural communities.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] _North American Review_, September, 1909.
CHAPTER V
THE WEAK SPOT IN AMERICAN RURAL ECONOMY
The evidence of competent American witnesses proves that there is, in the United States, notwithstanding its immense agricultural wealth, a Rural Life problem. Here, as elsewhere, on a fuller a.n.a.lysis, the utmost variety of race, soil, climate and market facilities serve but to emphasise the importance of the human factor. But this consideration does not lessen the need for a sternly practical treatment of the rural social economy under review. In this chapter, I propose to go right down to the roots of the rural problem, find what is wrong with the industry by which the country people live, and see how it can be righted. We should then have clearly in our minds the essentials of prosperity in a rural community.
Agriculture, the basis of a rural existence, must be regarded as a science, as a business and as a life. I have already adverted to President Roosevelt's formula for solving the rural problem--”better farming, better business, better living.” Better farming simply means the application of modern science to the practice of agriculture. Better business is the no less necessary application of modern commercial methods to the business side of the farming industry. Better living is the building up, in rural communities, of a domestic and social life which will withstand the growing attractions of the modern city.
This threefold scheme of reform covers the whole ground and will become the basis of the Country Life movement to be suggested later. But in the working out of the general scheme, there must be one important change in the order of procedure--'better business' must come first. The dull commercial details of agriculture have been sadly neglected, perhaps on account of the more human interest of the scientific and social aspects of country life. Yet my own experience in working at the rural problem in Ireland has convinced me that our first step towards its solution is to be found in a better organisation of the farmer's business. It is strange but true that the level of efficiency reached in many European countries was due to American compet.i.tion, which in the last half of the nineteenth century forced Continental farmers to reorganise their industry alike in production, in distribution and in its finance. Both Irish experience and Continental study have convinced me that neither good husbandry nor a worthy social life can be ensured unless accompanied by intelligent and efficient business methods. We must, therefore, examine somewhat critically the agricultural system of the American farmer, and see wherein its weakness lies.
The superiority of the business methods of the town to those of the country is obvious, but I do not think the precise nature of that superiority is generally understood. What strikes the eye is the material apparatus of business,--the street cars, the advertis.e.m.e.nts, the exchange, the telephone, the typewriter; all these form an impressive contrast with the slow, simple life of the farmer, who very likely scratches his accounts on a s.h.i.+ngle or keeps them in his head.
But most of this city apparatus is due merely to the necessity of swift movement in the concentrated process of exchange and distribution. Such swiftness is neither necessary nor possible in the process of isolated production. But there is an economic law, applicable alike to rural and to urban pursuits, which is being more and more fully recognised and obeyed by the farmers of most European countries, including Ireland, but which has been too little heeded by the farmers of the United States and Great Britain. Under modern economic conditions, things must be done in a large way if they are to be done profitably; and this necessitates a resort to combination.
The advantage which combination gives to the town over the country was recognised long before the recent economic changes forced men to combine. In the old towns of Europe all trades began as strict and exclusive corporations. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries new scientific and economic forces broke up these combinations, which were far too narrow for the growing volume of industrial activity, and an epoch of compet.i.tion began. The great towns of America opened their business career during this epoch, and have brought the arts of compet.i.tion to a higher perfection than exists in Europe. But it has always been known that compet.i.tion did not exclude combination against the consumer; and it is now beginning to be perceived that the fiercer the compet.i.tion, the more surely does it lead in the end to such combination.
A trade combination has three princ.i.p.al objects: it aims, first, at improving what I may call the internal business methods of the trade itself by eliminating the waste due to compet.i.tion, by economising staff, plant, etc., and by the ready circulation of intelligence, and in other ways. In the second place, it aims at strengthening the trade against outside interests. These may be of various kinds; but in the typical case we are considering, namely, the combination of great middlemen who control exchange and distribution, the outside interests are those of the producer on one side and the consumer on the other; and the trade combination, by its organised unity of action, succeeds in lowering the prices it pays to the unorganised producer and in raising the prices it charges to the unorganised consumer. In the third place, the trade combination seeks to favour its own interests in their relation to other interests through political control--control not so much of the machinery of politics as of its products, legislation and administration. I am not now arguing the question whether or how far this action on the part of trade combinations is morally justifiable. My point is simply that the towns have flourished at the expense of the country by the use of these methods, and that the countryman must adopt them if he is to get his own again. Moreover, as organisation tends to increase the volume and lower the cost of agricultural production and to make possible large transactions between organised communities of farmers and the trade, it will be seen that the organised combination of farmers will simplify the whole commerce of those countries where it is adopted, and thus benefit alike the farmer and the trader.
This truth will be easily realised if we consider for a moment the system of distribution which the food demand of the modern market has evolved. Agricultural produce finds its chief market in the great cities. Their populations must have their food so sent in that it can be rapidly distributed; and this requires that the consignments must be delivered regularly, in large quant.i.ties, and of such uniform quality that a sample will give a correct indication of the whole. These three conditions are essential to rapid distribution, but their fulfilment is not within the power of isolated farmers, however large their operations. It is an open question whether farmers should themselves undertake the distribution of their produce through agencies of their own, thus saving the wholesale and possibly the retail profits. But unquestionably they should be so well organised at home that they can take this course if they are unfairly treated by organised middlemen.
The Danish farmers, whose highly organised system of distribution has made them the chief compet.i.tors of the Irish farmers, have established (with Government a.s.sistance which their organisation enabled them to secure) very efficient machinery for distributing their b.u.t.ter, bacon and eggs in the British markets. Other European farming communities are becoming equally well organised, and similarly control the marketing of their produce. But where, as in America and the United Kingdom, the town dominates the country, and the machinery of distribution is owned by the business men of the towns, it is worked by them in their own interests.
They naturally take from the unorganised producers as well as from the unorganised consumers the full business value of the service they render. With the growing cost of living, this has become a matter of urgent importance to the towns. In the cheaper-food campaign which began in the late fall of 1909, voices are heard calling the farmers to account for their uneconomical methods, while here and there organisations of consumers are endeavouring to solve the problem to their own satisfaction by acquiring land and raising upon it the produce which they require.
In the face of such facts it is not easy to account for the backwardness of American and British farmers in the obviously important matter of organisation. The farmer, we know, is everywhere the most conservative and individualistic of human beings. He dislikes change in his methods, and he venerates those which have come down to him from his fathers' fathers. Whatever else he may waste, these traditions he conserves. He does not wish to interfere with anybody else's business, and he is fixedly determined that others shall not interfere with his.
These estimable qualities make agricultural organisation more difficult in Anglo-Saxon communities than in those where clan or tribal instincts seem to survive.[4]
Now it is fair to the farmer to admit that his calling does not lend itself readily to a.s.sociative action. He lives apart; most of his time is spent in the open air, and in the evening of the working day physical repose is more congenial to him than mental activity. But when all this is said, we have not a complete explanation of the fact that, by failing to combine, American and British farmers, persistently disobey an accepted law, and refuse to follow the almost universal practice of modern business. I believe the true explanation to be one that has somehow escaped the notice of the agricultural economist. Those who accept it will feel that they have found the weak spot in American farming, and that the remedy is neither obscure nor difficult to apply.
The form of combination which the towns have invented for industrial and commercial purposes is the Joint Stock Company. Here a number of persons contribute their capital to a common fund and entrust the direction to a single head or committee, taking no further part in the business except to change the management if the undertaking does not yield a satisfactory dividend. Our urban way of looking at things has made us a.s.sume that this city system must be suitable to rural conditions. The contrary is the fact. When farmers combine, it is a combination not of money only, but of personal effort in relation to the entire business.
In a cooperative creamery, for example, the chief contribution of a shareholder is in milk; in a cooperative elevator, corn; in other cases it may be fruit or vegetables, or a variety of material things rather than cash. But it is, most of all, a combination of neighbours within an area small enough to allow of all the members meeting frequently at the business centre. As the system develops, the local a.s.sociations are federated for larger business transactions, but these are governed by delegates carefully chosen by the members of the const.i.tuent bodies.
The object of such a.s.sociations is, primarily, not to declare a dividend, but rather to improve the conditions of the industry for the members. After an agreed interest has been paid upon the shares, the net profits are divided between the partic.i.p.ants in the undertaking, to each in proportion as he has contributed to them through the business he has done with the inst.i.tution. And the same idea is applied to the control of the management. It is recognised that the poor man's cooperation is as important as the rich man's subscription. 'One man, one vote,' is the almost universal principle in cooperative bodies.[5]
The distinction between the capitalistic basis of joint stock organisation and the more human character of the cooperative system is fundamentally important. It is recognised by law in England, where the cooperative trading societies are organised under _The Industrial and Provident Societies' Act_, and the cooperative credit a.s.sociations under _The Friendly Societies' Act_. In the United States (I am told by friends in the legal profession), the Articles of a.s.sociation of an ordinary limited liability company can be so drafted as to meet all the requirements I have named. Most countries have enacted laws specially devised to meet the requirements of cooperative societies. However it is done, the essential of success in agricultural cooperation is that the terms and conditions upon which it is based shall be accepted by all concerned as being equitable in the distribution of profits, risks and control. It then becomes the interest of every member to give his whole-hearted support and aid to the common undertaking. To accomplish this, it is necessary to explain and secure the acceptance of a const.i.tution and procedure carefully thought out to suit each case. It will be readily believed that a.s.sociations of farmers which will meet these conditions are not likely to be spontaneously generated; hence the necessity for a plan and for the machinery to carry it through.
In this matter I am here speaking from practical experience in Ireland.
Twenty years ago the pioneers of our rural life movement found it necessary to concentrate their efforts upon the reorganisation of the farmer's business. They saw that foreign compet.i.tion was not, as was commonly supposed, a visitation of Providence upon the farmers of the British Islands, but a natural economic revolution of permanent effect.