Part 3 (1/2)

In no way is the contrast between rural and urban civilisation more marked than in the application of the teachings of modern science to their respective industries. Even the most important mechanical inventions were rather forced upon the farmer by the efficient selling organisation of the city manufacturers than demanded by him as a result of good instruction in farming. On the mammoth wheat farms, where, as the fable ran, the plough that started out one morning returned on the adjoining furrow the following day, mechanical science was indeed called in, but only to perpetrate the greatest soil robbery in agricultural history. Application of science to legitimate agriculture is comparatively new. In my ranching and farming days I well remember how general was the disbelief in its practical value throughout the Middle and Far West. In cowboy terminology, all scientists were cla.s.sified as ”bug-hunters,” and farmers generally had no use for the theorist. The non-agricultural community had naturally no higher appreciation of the farmer's calling than he himself displayed. When some Universities first developed agricultural courses, the students who entered for them were nicknamed ”aggies,” and were not regarded as adding much to the dignity of a seat of higher learning. The Department of Agriculture was looked upon as a source of jobs, graft being the nearest approach to any known agricultural operation.

All this is changing fast. The Federal Department of Agriculture is now perhaps the most popular and respected of the world's great administrative inst.i.tutions. In the Middle West, a newly awakened public opinion has set up an honourable rivalry between such States as Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota, in developing the agricultural sides of their Universities and Colleges. None the less, Mr. James J. Hill has recently given it as his opinion that not more than one per cent of the farmers of these regions are working in direct touch with any educational inst.i.tution. It is probable that this estimate leaves out of account the indirect influence of the vast amount of extension work and itinerant instruction which is embraced in the activities of the Universities and Colleges. I fear it cannot be denied that in the application of the natural sciences to the practical, and of economic science to the business of farming, the country folk are decades behind their urban fellow-citizens. And again I say the disparity is to be attributed to the difference in their respective degrees of organisation for business purposes.

The relation between business organisation and economic progress ought, I submit, to be very seriously considered by the social workers who perceive that progress is mainly a question of education. Speaking from administrative experience at home, and from a good deal of interested observation in America, I am firmly convinced that the new rural education is badly handicapped by the lack of organised bodies of farmers to act as channels for the new knowledge now made available. In some instances, I am aware, great good has been done by the formation of farmers' inst.i.tutes which have been established in order to interest rural communities in educational work and to make the local arrangements for instruction by lectures, demonstrations and otherwise. But all European experience proves the superiority for this purpose of the business a.s.sociation to the organisation _ad hoc_, and has a much better chance of permanence.

Again, the influence upon rural life of the agricultural teaching of the Colleges and Universities, as exercised by their pupils, may be too easily accepted as being of greater potential utility than any work which these inst.i.tutions can do amongst adults. This is a mistake. The thousands of young men who are now being trained for advanced farming too often have to restrict the practical application of their theoretic knowledge to the home circle, which is not always responsive, for a man is not usually a prophet in his own family. It is here that the educational value of cooperative societies comes in; they act as agencies through which scientific teaching may become actual practice, not in the uncertain future, but in the living present. A cooperative a.s.sociation has a quality which should commend it to the social reformer--the power of evoking character; it brings to the front a new type of local leader, not the best talker, but the man whose knowledge enables him to make some solid contribution to the welfare of the community.

I come now to the last part of the threefold scheme--that which aims at a better life upon the farm. The cooperative a.s.sociation, in virtue of its non-capitalistic basis of const.i.tution and procedure (which, as I have explained, distinguishes it from the Joint Stock Company), demands as a condition of its business success the exercise of certain social qualities of inestimable value to the community life. It is for this reason, no doubt, that where men and women have learned to work together under this system in the business of their lives, they are easily induced to use their organisation for social and intellectual purposes also.

The new organisation of the rural community for social as well as economic purposes, which should follow from the acceptance of the opinion I have advanced, would bring with it the first effective counter-attraction to the towns. Their material advantages the country cannot hope to rival; nor can any conceivable evolution of rural life furnish a real counterpart to the cheap and garish entertainments of the modern city. Take, for example, the extravagant use of electric light for purposes of advertis.e.m.e.nt, which affords a nightly display of fireworks in any active business street of an American city far superior to the occasional exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, which was the rare treat of my childhood days. These delights--if such they be--cannot be extended into remote villages in Kansas or Nebraska; but their enchantment must be reckoned with by those who would remould the life of the open country and make it morally and mentally satisfying to those who are born to it, or who, but for its social stagnation, would prefer a rural to an urban existence.

In one of his many public references to country life, President Roosevelt attributed the rural exodus to the desire of ”the more active and restless young men and women” to escape from ”loneliness and lack of mental companions.h.i.+p.”[8] He is hopeful that the rural free delivery, the telephone, the bicycle and the trolley will do much towards ”lessening the isolation of farm life and making it brighter and more attractive.” Many to whom I have spoken on this subject fear that the linking of the country with the town by these applications of modern science may, to some extent, operate in a direction the opposite of that which Mr. Roosevelt antic.i.p.ates and desires. According to this view, the more intimate knowledge of the modern city may increase the desire to be in personal touch with it; the telephone may fail to give through the ear the satisfaction which is demanded by the eye; among the ”more active and restless young men and women” the rural free delivery may circulate the dime novel and the trolley make accessible the dime museum. In the total result the occasional visit may become more and more frequent, until the duties of country life are first neglected and then abandoned.

I do not feel competent to decide between these two views, but I offer one consideration with which I think many rural reformers will agree.

The attempt to bring the advantages of the city within the reach of the dwellers in the country cannot, of itself, counteract the townward tendency in so far as it is due to the causes summarised above. However rapidly, in this respect, the country may be improved, the city is sure to advance more rapidly and the gap between them to be widened. The new rural civilisation should aim at trying to develop in the country the things of the country, the very existence of which seems to have been forgotten. But, after all, it is the world within us rather than the world without us that matters in the making of society, and I must give to the social influence of the cooperative idea what I believe to be its real importance.

In Ireland, from which so much of my experience is drawn, we have found a tendency growing among farmers whose combinations are successful, to gather into one strong local a.s.sociation all those varied objects and activities which I have described as advocated by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. These local a.s.sociations are ceasing to have one special purpose or one object only. They absorb more and more of the business of the district. One large, well-organised inst.i.tution is being subst.i.tuted for the numerous petty transactions of farmers with middlemen and small country traders. Gradually the Society becomes the most important inst.i.tution in the district, the most important in a social as well as in an economic sense. The members feel a pride in its material expansion. They acc.u.mulate large profits, which in time become a kind of communal fund. In some cases this is used for the erection of village halls where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held, lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the a.s.sociation a.s.sumes the character of a rural commune, where, instead of the old basis of the commune, the joint owners.h.i.+p of land, a new basis for union is found in the voluntary communism of effort.

A true social organism is thus being created with common human and economic interests, and the clan feeling, which was so powerful an influence in early and mediaeval civilisations, with all its power of generating pa.s.sionate loyalties, is born anew in the modern world. Our ancient Irish records show little clans with a common owners.h.i.+p of land hardly larger than a parish, but with all the patriotic feeling of large nations held with an intensity rare in our modern states. The history of these clans and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states shows that the social feeling a.s.sumes 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. Most of us feel no greater thrill in being one of a State with fifty million inhabitants than we do in recognising we are citizens of the solar system. The rural commune and the very small States exhibit the feeling of human solidarity in its most intense manifestations, working on itself, regenerating itself and seeking its own perfection. Combinations of agriculturists, when the rural organisation is complete, re-create in a new way the conditions where these social instincts germinate best, and it is only by this complete organisation of rural life that we can hope to build up a rural civilisation, and create those counter-attractions to urban life which will stay the exodus from the land.

I do not wish to exaggerate the interest which the rural life of my own little island may have for those who are concerned for the vast and wealthy expanses of the American farm lands. But, even here there is a genuine desire for the really simple life, which in its commonest manifestation is a thing that rather simple people talk about. In a properly organised rural neighbourhood could be developed that higher kind of attraction which is suggested by the very word _neighbourhood_.

Once get the farmers and their families all working together at something that concerns them all, and we have the beginning of a more stable and a more social community than is likely to exist amid the constant change and bustle of the large towns, where indeed some thinkers tell us that not only the family, but also the social life, is badly breaking down. When people are really interested in each other--and this interest comes of habitually working together--the smallest personal traits or events affecting one are of interest to all.

The simplest piece of amateur acting or singing, done in the village hall by one of the villagers, will arouse more criticism and more enthusiasm among his friends and neighbours than can be excited by the most consummate performance of a professional in a great city theatre, where no one in the audience knows or cares for the performer.

But if this attraction--the attraction of common work and social intercourse with a circle of friends--is to prevail in the long run over the lure which the city offers to eye and ear and pocket, there must be a change in rural education. At present country children are educated as if for the purpose of driving them into the towns. To the pleasure which the cultured city man feels in the country--because he has been taught to feel it--the country child is insensible. The country offers continual interest to the mind which has been trained to be thoughtful and observant; the town offers continual distraction to the vacant eye and brain. Yet, the education given to country children has been invented for them in the town, and it not only bears no relation to the life they are to lead, but actually attracts them towards a town career.

I am aware that I am here on ground where angels--even if specialised in pedagogy--may well fear to tread. Upon the principles of a sound agricultural education pedagogues are in a normally violent state of disagreement with each other. But whatever compromise between general education and technical instruction be adopted, the resulting reform that is needed has two sides. We want two changes in the rural mind--beginning with the rural teacher's mind. First, the interest which the physical environment of the farmer provides to followers of almost every branch of science must be communicated to the agricultural cla.s.ses according to their capacities. Second, that intimacy with and affection for nature, to which Wordsworth has given the highest expression, must in some way be engendered in the rural mind. In this way alone will the countryman come to realize the beauty of the life around him, as through the teaching of science he will learn to realise its truth.

Upon this reformed education, as a basis, the rural economy must be built. It must, if my view be accepted, ensure, first and foremost, the combination of farmers for business purposes in such a manner as will enable them to control their own marketing and make use of the many advantages which a command of capital gives. In all European countries--with the exception of the British Isles--statesmen have recognised the national necessity for the good business organisation of the farmer. In some cases, for example France, even Government officials expound the cooperative principle. In Denmark, the most predominantly rural country in Europe, the education both in the common and in the high school has long been so admirably related to the working lives of the agricultural cla.s.ses that the people adopt spontaneously the methods of organisation which the commercial instinct they have acquired through education tells them to be suitable to the conditions. The rural reformer knows that this is the better way; but our problem is not merely the education of a rising, but the development of a grown-up generation. We cannot wait for the slow process of education to produce its effect upon the mind of the rural youth, even if there were any way of ensuring their proper training for a progressive rural life without first giving to their parents such education as they can a.s.similate.

Direct action is called for; we have to work with adult farmers and induce them to reorganise their business upon the lines which I have attempted to define. Moreover, this is essential to the future success of the work done in the schools, in order that the trained mind of youth may not afterwards find itself baulked by the ignorant apathy or lazy conservatism of its elders.

I hold, then, that the new economy will mean a more scientific mastery of the technical side of farming, for farmers will make a much larger use of the advice, instruction and help which the Nation and the States offer them through the Department of Agriculture and the Colleges. It is equally certain that there will arise a more human social life in the rural districts, based upon the greater share of the products of the farmer's industry, which the new business organisation will enable him to retain; stimulated by the closer business relations with his fellows which that organisation will bring about, and fostered by the closer neighbourhood which is implied in a more intensive cultivation.

The development of a more intensive cultivation must carry with it a much more careful consideration of the labour problem. The difficulty of getting and keeping labour on the farm is a commonplace. I think farmers have not faced the fact that this difficulty is due in the main to their own way of doing their business. Competent men will not stay at farm labour unless it offers them continuous employment as part of a well-ordered business concern; and this is not possible unless with a greatly improved husbandry.

To-day agriculture has to compete in the labour market against other, and to many men more attractive, industries, and a marked elevation in the whole standard of life in the rural world is the best insurance of a better supply of good farm labour. Only an intensive system of farming can afford any large amount of permanent employment at decent wages to the rural labourer, and only a good supply of competent labour can render intensive farming on any large scale practicable. But the intensive system of farming not only gives regular employment and good wages; it also fits the labourer of to-day--in a country where a man can strike out for himself--to be the successful farmer of to-morrow. Nor, in these days of impersonal industrial relations, should the fact be overlooked that under an intensive system of agriculture, we find still preserved the kindly personal relation between employer and employed which contributes both to the pleasantness of life and to economic progress and security.

Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding the countryside of the worst of its present pests. Those wandering dervishes of the industrial world, the hobo, the tramp--the entire family of Weary w.i.l.l.i.e.s and Tired Timothys--will no longer have even an imaginary excuse for their troubled and troublesome existence. But the farmer who was the prey of these pests must, if he would be permanently rid of them, learn to respect his hired farm hand. He must provide him with a comfortable cottage and a modest garden plot upon which his young family may employ themselves; otherwise, whatever the farmer may do to attract labour, he will never retain it. In short, the labourer, too, must get his full and fair share of the prosperity of the coming good time in the country.

There is one particular aspect of this improved social life which is so important that it ought properly to form the subject of a separate essay; I mean the position of women in rural life. In no country in the world is the general position of woman better, or her influence greater, than in the United States. But while woman has played a great part there in the social life and economic development of the town, I hold that the part she is destined to play in the future making of the country will be even greater.

In the more intelligent scheme of the new country life, the economic position of woman is likely to be one of high importance. She enters largely into all three parts of our programme,--better farming, better business, better living. In the development of higher farming, for instance, she is better fitted than the more muscular but less patient animal, man, to carry on with care that work of milk records, egg records, etc., which underlies the selection on scientific lines of the more productive strains of cattle and poultry. And this kind of work is wanted in the study not only of animal, but also of plant life.

Again, in the sphere of better business, the housekeeping faculty of woman is an important a.s.set, since a good system of farm accounts is one of the most valuable aids to successful farming. But it is, of course, in the third part of the programme,--better living,--that woman's greatest opportunity lies. The woman makes the home life of the Nation.

But she desires also social life, and where she has the chance she develops it. Here it is that the establishment of the cooperative society, or union, gives an opening and a range of conditions in which the social usefulness of woman makes itself quickly felt. I do not think that I am laying too much stress on this matter, because the pleasures, the interests and the duties of society, properly so called,--that is, the state of living on friendly terms with our neighbours,--are always more central and important in the life of a woman than of a man. The man needs them, too, for without them he becomes a mere machine for making money; but the woman, deprived of them, tends to become a mere drudge. The new rural social economy (which implies a denser population occupying smaller holdings) must therefore include a generous provision for all those forms of social intercourse which specially appeal to women. The Women's Sections of the Granges have done a great deal of useful work in this direction; we need a more general and complete application of the principles on which they act.

I have now stated the broad principles which must govern any effective scheme for correcting the present harmful subordination of rural life to a civilisation too exclusively urban. Before I bring forward my definite proposal for a remedy calculated to meet the needs of the situation, I must antic.i.p.ate a line of criticism which may occur to the mind of any social worker who does not happen to be very familiar with the conditions of country life.