The Challenge of the Country: A Study of Country Life Opportunity

Professor H. W. Foght says three things are now required of the teacher of a rural school. “(1) he must be strong enough to establish himself as a leader in the community where he lives and labors; (2) he must have a good grasp on the organization and management of the new kind of farm school; and (3) he must show expert ability in dealing with the redirected school curriculum.”39 In short, if he lives up to his opportunity as a rural leader, he will train his boys and girls distinctly for rural life, giving them not only the rudiments of agricultural training, but an enthusiasm for farming from the scientific side as the most complex of all professions; utilizing the vast resources the country affords for teaching objectively, not merely through hooks, and thus bridge the gap between the school and life.

The Call of the Country Church

The modern college man is not attracted to the ministry of the country churches which are conducted along old lines. If that ministry is to consist merely in preaching once or twice a week to half a hundred people, conducting a mid-week service for one-fifth of that number and doing the marrying and the burying and the parish calling for a fraction of a rural community divided among three struggling churches, then the college man refuses to be interested. Consequently we find most of such churches are manned by untrained men. They usually receive the wages of an unskilled laborer. Trained ministers usually receive a living wage. The college man demands at least a man’s job; a chance to invest his life where his whole personality will count and where his energy and perseverance will be allowed to work out his problems to a successful issue.

Let us grant at the start that churches which have no real field, in a community that is over-churched, need not expect to get our college men for pastors. If they have only a fraction of a field, let them have half a man. Likewise the church which is too selfish to offer the minimum living wage in return for faithful service must not expect a self-respecting, educated minister to serve it and at starvation rates. Even a martyr has no license to starve his wife and children to gain his starry crown. The church which gives no liberty to its pastor, but treats him like a hired man, and dictates his professional policy and perhaps even his pulpit messages, will of course not hold, if it ever should gain, a man of ability and initiative. And, lastly, the church which lacks the modern spirit, is hopelessly behind the times in its dogmatic teaching, rails at modern science as ungodly, and denies the social gospel of Jesus and the prophets, such a church will neither deserve nor desire the services of a college-trained man. His reverence for truth as well as loyalty to his own ideals would forbid his serving them.

Large Tasks Awaiting Real Leadership

While there are some small men with little training serving churches under the above conditions, there are also thousands of other churches striving to do God’s will in the service of men, many of them with earnest, able pastors. These men usually win the respect and confidence of their community and are given great opportunity as community builders when their leadership proves equal to the task. As the new rural civilization has developed, the title Country Minister has become once more a title of honor, just as the term Country Gentleman has again come to its own. In the readjustment of country life to the new agriculture and the new social ideals of cooperation, a new and brighter day has dawned for the country church. It is a day of new prosperity and of widening service.

This means a new opportunity for the right sort of a country minister sufficient to claim the life service of strong men. In fact, the task of readjustment is too difficult for any but strong men. Broken-down ministers, or men who have failed in the city, must not look to the country parsonage to-day as a refuge from toil or a temporary harbor for repairs. The insistent needs of the Kingdom of God in the country to-day demand strong, efficient men, specifically trained for country service and thoroughly acquainted with country folks and their life needs. We must have a permanently loyal country ministry for life, men who plan to devote their lives to rural redemption.

The Modern Type of Country Minister

College men of earnest spirit, who have determined to consecrate their lives to any life mission to which they believe God has called them, must listen to the call of the country church. The very difficulty of the task will challenge their interest and their courage. Would they know exactly the type of leadership the country church to-day requires? Let them study word by word this splendid description by Dr. Butterfield, unequalled in its clear analysis:

“The country church wants men of vision, who see through the incidental, the small and the transient, to the fundamental, the large, the abiding issues that the countryman must face and conquer.

“She wants practical men who seek the mountain top by the obscure and steep paths of daily toil and real living, men who can bring things to pass, secure tangible results.

“She wants original men, who can enter a human field, poorly tilled, much grown to brush, some of it of diminished fertility, and by new methods can again secure a harvest that will gladden the heart of the Great Husbandman.

“She wants aggressive men, who do not hesitate to break with tradition, who fear God more than prejudice, who regard institutions as but a means to an end, who grow frequent crops of new ideas and dare to winnow them with the flails of practical trial.

“She wants trained men who come to their work with knowledge and with power, who have thought long and deeply upon the problems of rural life, who have hammered out a plan for an active campaign for the rural church.

“She wants men with enthusiasm, whose energy can withstand the frosts of sloth, of habit, of pettiness, of envy, of back-biting, and whose spirit is not quenched by the waters of adversity, of unrealized hopes, of tottering schemes.

“She wants persistent men, who will stand by their task amid the mysterious calls from undiscovered lands, the siren voices of ambition and ease, the withering storms of winters of discontent.

“She wants constructive men, who can transmute visions into wood and stone, dreams into live institutions, hopes into fruitage.

“She wants heroic men, men who possess a ‘tart cathartic virtue,’ men who love adventure and difficulty, men who can work alone with God and suffer no sense of loneliness.

“The critical need just now is for a few strong men of large power to get hold of this country church question in a virile way. It is the time for leadership. We need a score of Oberlins to point the way by actually working out the problem on the field. We need a few men to achieve great results in the rural parish, to reestablish the leadership of the church. No organization can do it. No layman can do it. No educational institution can do it. A preacher must do it, – do it in spite of small salary, isolation, conservatism, restricted field, overchurching, or any other devil that shows its face. The call is imperative. Shall we be denied the men?”40

Student Recruits for the Home Ministry

The Student Volunteer Bands in most of our colleges unite in a stimulating comradeship the young men and women who have pledged their lives to foreign missionary service. It is well worth while for our college men who have heard this call of the country church for this specialized service of Christ and humanity to organize local groups of Student Recruits for the Home Ministry, as has been done in various centers on the Pacific coast and at Oberlin College, Grinnell and elsewhere, under various names. At Oberlin this strong body of choice young men, in the college of arts and sciences, meets regularly through the year with a vitally helpful program which stimulates their intelligent interest in and loyalty to the ministry as the greatest of all professions. At the close of the year the members of this Theta Club, as it is called, are tendered a banquet by the students of Oberlin Theological Seminary, with a message from some successful pastor. It is counted one of the most significant events of the college year.

The Call for Christian Physicians

There have been many followers of the Good Physician who have never been ordained except by the grace of God, whose consecrated devotion to the needs of sick humanity has been a genuine ministry. Often the Christian physician is the best friend of the family. Certainly he has countless opportunities to serve more than the bodily needs of men; and no man in the community is rendering more sacrificial service. He is ever at the call of human need, day or night. He heeds the call of the poorest as quickly as the wealthiest, and does from 5 % to 30 % of his work without remuneration. He is one of the most necessary factors in every community; yet for many rural communities the nearest up-to-date physician is many miles away.

In these days of specialists, “general practice” is relatively less attractive. There is some danger also that the fine idealism which has long characterized this splendid profession may yield to the growing commercialism which to-day threatens all professions like a canker. When surgeons operate for dollars instead of for a cure; and physicians make the art of healing strictly business instead of scientific kindness, it will be a sad day for humanity.

The work of the physician is not properly a business; it should be classed as social service of the highest order. In spite of the higher standards of medical schools recently41 with an emphasis on a general college preparation, fewer college men are going into medicine. The percentage has steadily decreased since 1850, and in the past twelve years there has been a sharp decline. The proportion at Harvard College has declined one-half in thirty years, though meanwhile Harvard Medical School has become a strictly graduate department.

It is evident that luxury-loving collegians are avoiding the medical profession to-day just as they are dodging the ministry. If they have capital of their own, business offers them a larger income and makes little demand upon their sympathies in personal service. Selfish men avoid the costs of life-sharing which a life in close personal associations compels, as is true of teaching, the ministry and the medical profession. But this is no handicap but greater opportunity, for men of real earnestness.

The Special Need of Country Doctors

The profession is seriously overcrowded in the cities, but people in the rural districts are literally dying for trained physicians. Some medical faculties are advising their graduates not to stay in the city but to settle in country villages where they are most needed, and where quite possibly they would find greatest success. “There are many towns in this state,” writes a medical professor, “with only 500 to 1,000 people, where a young physician could do well and where he is needed.”

Although, according to the best data obtainable, most medical graduates settle in cities, – the proportion at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, being as high as 90 %, – there is a rapidly increasing demand for them in the suburban and rural sections in the East because of the strong city-to-country movement. The secretary of the Harvard Medical faculty notes this: “With the advent of automobiles and the desire of people to live in the country, serious problems in medicine are frequently presented to the country practitioners.”

The need of educated physicians in country communities is well stated by Dr. Means of the Ohio Medical School: “The condition of medical practice in many of our country communities is deplorable. I can recall any number of places where there are two, three, four and five physicians and not one of them has had any post-graduate work from date of graduation, and none of them known to attend medical societies. Their professional work is on a par, no better, no worse, than that of their ancestors. I always feel that such communities sorely need an up-to-date physician who has been educated along the lines of modern sanitation and general medicine. The demand for a medical education has grown to such proportions in the last ten years that graduates, after having spent so much time and money, do not care to go into country practice. The five years or more that they spend in city environments while completing their medical education almost unfits them for country life. The result is that our cities are filling up with young physicians who can scarcely make a living. These are men of character and proficiency who would give tone to any country community and supply a public want.”

The Unique Rewards of Country Practice

There are, to be sure, certain serious disadvantages under which the country physician labors, such as distance from hospitals and nurses; but these are overbalanced by the manifest need and greater opportunity. The situation is acute. For earnest college men, willing to invest their lives in rural leadership, this constitutes a real call to a life of service which may be God’s own call to them. No one who has ever read Ian Maclaren’s story of Dr. MacLure, “A Doctor of the Old School,” can fail to appreciate the peculiar devotion of country people to their trusted physician “who for nearly half a century had been their help in sickness, and had beaten back death time after time from their door.”

After the funeral of the good old doctor who had so long sacrificed his comfort for the people of Drumtochty, Lord Kilspindie from Muirtown Castle voiced at the grave this tribute to the faithful physician of country folk: “Friends of Drumtochty, it would not be right that we should part in silence and no man say what is in every heart. We have buried the remains of one that served this Glen with a devotion that has known no reserve, and a kindliness that never failed, for more than forty years. I have seen many brave men in my day, but no man in the trenches of Sebastopol carried himself more knightly than William MacLure. You will never have heard from his lips what I may tell you to-day, that my father secured for him a valuable post in his younger days; but he preferred to work among his own people. I wished to do many things for him when he was old, but he would have nothing for himself. He will never be forgotten while one of us lives, and I pray that all doctors everywhere may share his spirit.” “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

The Rural Call to the Legal Profession

Though the legal profession is greatly overcrowded in the city, trained lawyers are scarce in the country. “My impression is,” says a law school dean, “very few of the country lawyers are professionally trained men, especially in the South and some of our western states.” Another dean estimates the number of trained country lawyers as about one-fourth. The older lawyers in the small places are apt to be the best trained, according to the judgment of Dean Irvine at Cornell Law School; though that rule is often reversed in the cities. “Rarely does a law school graduate settle down in a town of less than 5,000 people,” says the dean at Boston University. The great majority of Columbia law graduates remain in New York City. Eighty to ninety per cent. of Cornell lawyers settle in cities above 10,000 people.

The secretary of the law faculty of the University of Michigan believes “there is a need of one or more trained lawyers in every community of a thousand people. Such a lawyer would, of course, serve the surrounding country as well as the town in which he lives.” Dean Harlan F. Stone of Columbia writes: “I believe that there will be in the future exceptional opportunities for the well-trained lawyer in the smaller communities. He will probably not make as much money as with a large city practice, but if he possesses good general qualifications and integrity it is inevitable that he should be an influential man in his community, and live a useful and, from the broad point of view, successful life. His chances of entering politics or going on the bench in the right way are probably better than in the large cities.”

Here, as in the other professions, the choice seems to be between larger earnings in the city and larger rewards in the country; greater fees, with less relative appreciation, or the finer rewards of gratitude for personal services and neighborly kindness and the broad opportunity for influence and leadership in a place where both are greatly needed. The call to college men with the legal mind and a passion for justice, to practice law in the country, is a true call for Christian consecration. It probably will involve some financial sacrifice, but it will mean a life of great satisfaction. The true man who heeds this call will become the trusted adviser of the widow, the protector of the defenseless and the innocent, the righter of many wrongs, the peacemaker in needless feuds, the incorporator of cooperative business projects which will fraternalize old competitions, the public spirited leader in all new movements for the betterment of rural life; and, if God wills and the people choose, a career in straight politics, which nowhere needs highminded leadership more than in some rural counties where the ballot is a mere chattel and public office a private graft.

Life Opportunities in Agricultural Professions

College men are apt to overlook the fact that, after all, the fundamental professions in the country are those directly connected with agriculture. The scientific agriculturist, who tills the soil as accurately as the engineer constructs a bridge and with possibly higher scientific requirements, will naturally be the prime agent in rural progress. It is good to see the enthusiasm of students in agriculture after they have caught this vision. “I like farming,” writes a student at the State College of Washington, “and believe there is as much room for scientific work in agriculture as any other line of work.” Another writes, “I think there are great opportunities open for agriculture in this Northwest. At first I thought I never would like the farm because I could see nothing but work; but I have become acquainted with some of the possibilities and find there is something besides drudgery.”

The city person of average intelligence who thinks farming is “just farming” would be amazed to discover the breadth and variety of agricultural professions. Besides scientific husbandry in general, there is animal husbandry and the breeding of blooded stock, dairying, farm management, horticulture, agricultural engineering and technology, particularly in irrigation, forestry, veterinary surgery and medicine, fruit-growing, entomology specializing, parasitology, plant pathology, agronomy and cereal breeding, agricultural chemistry, landscape architecture, agricultural editing, agricultural teaching, from elementary grades to university, institute lecturing, weather bureau service, scientific investigating at government experiment stations, and public service in great variety under state and national departments of agriculture. In all of these there is a chance for college men to invest their lives and reap the rewards of real influence.

Some Special Rural Opportunities

In answer to the question “What special opportunities are there in country life to-day which should appeal to college students to invest their lives in the country?” Secretary Mann of the Cornell faculty summarized as follows: “Successful farming; teaching or supervising the teaching of agriculture; scientific investigations at home or in government stations; rural landscape improvement; agricultural experts as county agents or officers; local agricultural experts on individual responsibility; agricultural police duty, including inspectors of all sorts in state and national departments of agriculture; organizing of cooperative societies; agricultural advisers in the employ of railroads, chambers of commerce and the like; representatives of commercial organizations that desire to extend their operations into the open country, as for farm machinery concerns, manufacturers of packages, dairy supply houses, canning industries and the like; social betterment; rural Y. M. C. A. work; supervisors of rural playgrounds; and rural civic improvement.” The list is surely a varied one, broad enough to fit any variety of talent, when a man has a real love for rural life and wishes to find his life usefulness in the country.

A most pertinent suggestion comes from Dean Meyer of the Agricultural Department of the University of Missouri which college students may well consider: “The greatest need of the rural community to-day is cooperation; but no plan of cooperation can ever be successful among farmers in the absence of some one, or a very few men who have all the qualifications of outstanding leadership. There is a real call for our college trained men to go into the country, study local conditions, and then promote a plan of business cooperation. If this is successful he may then expect with equal success to carry on a plan for social cooperation which will lead to a betterment of the home, the church and the school.” Again we are reminded that the ultimate problem is leadership, the costliest thing in the world; but the very commodity of personality which college men ought to have ready for wise investment. It is the call for community builders all along the country-side which forces itself upon the strongest men of brave initiative, of courage, tact and ability. This call, a modern call of new insistence and vast significance, should challenge the college man like a call to battle.

The Call of the County Work Secretary

Among the many calls to a life of service which challenge the college man, one of the most urgent is the call to rural leadership in the Young Men’s Christian Association. It is peculiarly a college man’s task. Possibly one country lawyer in four is professionally trained. The percentage of educated country ministers is smaller still. Country doctors, though usually medical graduates, are very seldom college men. But the rural secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association is usually college trained. With wise foresight, the Association is sending many of its best men into the country field where the need of leadership is so acute. No other branch of Association work has so large a proportion of college trained men except the work with college students themselves; this is the right perspective.

The man who aspires to this interesting and strategic work with the boys and young manhood of the country must be a man of large capacity for leadership and with a broad knowledge of human nature. He must be a keen lover of country life and must understand country people and their great interests. The more he knows of scientific agriculture the better; but he must above all be a man of devout Christian spirit and a thorough knowledge of the Bible; with a fine friendliness for all sorts of people, and a great longing to help the country boy to develop into useful Christian manhood.

In most other lines of rural service a man’s influence is ordinarily limited to the single community in which he lives. The County Work Secretary’s field is an entire county. He is not working merely with a single group of people but with similar groups in a score of townships and usually the finest people in each village, whom he selects for their local Christian influence and their devotion to community welfare. Through these local leaders our Secretary multiplies his own life, as he shares with them his visions and his hopes, as he enlists them for specific tasks and trains them for the service; giving them the benefit of his expert knowledge of country life, of rural sociology and of boy life, of teaching method and the modern interpretation of the Bible.

While his primary task is the discovery and training of local leadership as a Christian community builder, he also makes his office a convenient clearing house of ideas and practical plans for community betterment. As he quietly goes about his work it soon becomes evident that he is a “man who knows”; and his expert knowledge, his cooperation and advice are sought by parents and teachers, churches and Sunday schools, pastors and superintendents, school supervisors, women’s clubs, farmers’ institutes and Granges, and he must be a man of large ability to prove equal to his opportunity. As a trusted neutral among the churches, he of all men has the best chance to overcome church rivalries and bring together jealous churches in a working federation or a real unity. He must be at once a man of prayer and an athletic specialist who can through his local leaders organize wholesome sports among his boys; he must not only have a genius for cooperation and securing the cooperation of others in worth-while tasks, but he must be able to take the single farmer, single-handed, and in a quiet, friendly but masterful way get that farmer to give his growing boy a fair chance.