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

Its Early History: Various Plans for Rural Welfare

The father of the country life movement seems to have been George Washington. He and Benjamin Franklin were among the founders of the first farmers’ organization in America, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, established in 1785. There were about a dozen such societies by 1800, patterned after similar organizations in England. President Washington had an extensive correspondence with prominent men in England on this subject and made it the subject of his last message to Congress. He called attention to the fundamental importance of agriculture, advocated agricultural fairs, a national agricultural society and government support for institutions making for rural progress.

Since these early days there have been many organized expressions of rural ambition, most of them only temporary but contributing more or less to the movement for the betterment of country life. There were over 900 agricultural societies in 1858 and these had increased to 1,350 by 1868 in spite of the setback of the civil war. Most of these were county organizations whose chief activity was an annual fair. Agricultural conventions were occasionally held, sometimes national in scope, which discussed frankly the great questions vital to farmers; and more permanent organizations soon developed which had a great influence in bringing the farmers of the country into cooperation with each other industrially and politically. Foremost among these were the Grange (1867), the Farmers’ Alliance (1875), the Farmers’ Union (1885), Farmers’ Mutual Benefit Organization (1883), and the Patrons of Industry (1887). The Farmers’ National Congress has met annually since 1880, and has exerted great influence upon legislation during this period, in the interest of the rural communities.

Its Modern Sponsors: The Agricultural Colleges

Important as these efforts at organized cooperation among farmers have been, nothing has equalled the influence of the agricultural colleges, which are now found in every state and are generously supported by the states in addition to revenue from the “land-grant funds” which all the colleges possess. These great institutions have done noble service in providing the intelligent leadership not only in farm interests but also in all the affairs of country life. At first planned to teach agriculture almost exclusively, many of them are now giving most thorough courses in liberal culture interpreted in terms of country life. The vast service of these schools for rural welfare, in both intra-mural and extension work, can hardly be overestimated.

The Roosevelt Commission on Country Life

It will be seen that the country life movement has been making progress for years. But it really became a national issue for the first time when President Roosevelt appointed his Country Life Commission. Though greeted by some as an unnecessary effort and handicapped by an unfriendly Congress which was playing politics, the Commission did a most significant work. Thirty hearings were held in various parts of the country and a painstaking investigation was conducted both orally and by mail, the latter including detailed information and suggestion from over 120,000 people. The Commission’s report, with the President’s illuminating message, presents in the best form available the real meaning of the country life movement. It will serve our purpose well to quote from this report a few significant paragraphs:

“The farmers have hitherto had less than their full share of public attention along the lines of business and social life. There is too much belief among all our people that the prizes of life lie away from the farms. I am therefore anxious to bring before the people of the United States the question of securing better business and better living on the farm, whether by cooperation among the farmers for buying, selling and borrowing; by promoting social advantages and opportunities in the country, or by any other legitimate means that will help to make country life more gainful, more attractive, and fuller of opportunities, pleasures and rewards for the men, women and children of the farms.”

“The farm grows the raw material for the food and clothing of all our citizens; it supports directly almost half of them; and nearly half of the children of the United States are born and brought up on the farms. How can the life of the farm family be made less solitary, fuller of opportunity, freer from drudgery, more comfortable, happier and more attractive? Such a result is most earnestly to be desired. How can life on the farm be kept on the highest level, and where it is not already on that level, be so improved, dignified and brightened as to awaken and keep alive the pride and loyalty of the farmer’s boys and girls, of the farmer’s wife and of the farmer himself? How can a compelling desire to live on the farm be aroused in the children that are born on the farm? All these questions are of vital importance, not only to the farmer but to the whole nation.” —Theodore Roosevelt.

Its Call for Rural Leadership

“We must picture to ourselves a new rural social structure, developed from the strong resident forces of the open country; and then we must set at work all the agencies that will tend to bring this about. The entire people need to be aroused to this avenue of usefulness. Most of the new leaders must be farmers who can find not only a satisfactory business career on the farm, but who will throw themselves into the service of upbuilding the community. A new race of teachers is also to appear in the country. A new rural clergy is to be trained. These leaders will see the great underlying problem of country life, and together they will work, each in his own field, for the one goal of a new and permanent rural civilization. Upon the development of this distinctively rural civilization rests ultimately our ability, by methods of farming requiring the highest intelligence, to continue to feed and clothe the hungry nations; to supply the city and metropolis with fresh blood, clean bodies and clear brains that can endure the strain of modern urban life; and to preserve a race of men in the open country that, in the future as in the past, will be the stay and strength of the nation in time of war and its guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace.”

“It is to be hoped that many young men and women, fresh from our schools and institutions of learning, and quick with ambition and trained intelligence, will feel a new and strong call to service.”

Its Constructive Program for Rural Betterment

The Commission suggested a broad campaign of publicity on the whole subject of rural life, until there is an awakened appreciation of the necessity of giving this phase of our national development as much attention as has been given to other interests. They urge upon all country people a quickened sense of responsibility to the community and to the state in the conserving of soil fertility, and the necessity for diversifying farming in order to conserve this fertility. The need of a better rural society is suggested; also the better safeguarding of the strength and happiness of the farm women; a more widespread conviction of the necessity for organization, not only for economic but for social purposes, this organization to be more or less cooperative, so that all the people may share equally in the benefits and have voice in the essential affairs of the community. The farmer is reminded that he has a distinct natural responsibility toward the farm laborer, in providing him with good living facilities and in helping him to be a man among men; and all the rural people are reminded of the obligation to protect and develop the natural scenery and attractiveness of the open country.

The Country Life Commission made the following specific recommendations to Congress:

The encouragement of a system of thoroughgoing surveys of all agricultural regions in order to take stock and to collect local facts, with the idea of providing a basis on which to develop a scientifically and economically sound country life.

The encouragement of a system of extension work in rural communities through all the land-grant colleges with the people at their homes and on their farms.

A thoroughgoing investigation by experts of the middleman system of handling farm products, coupled with a general inquiry into the farmer’s disadvantages in respect to taxation, transportation rates, cooperative organizations and credit, and the general business system.

An inquiry into the control and use of the streams of the United States with the object of protecting the people in their ownership and of saving for agricultural uses such benefits as should be reserved for such purposes.

The establishing of a highway engineering service, or equivalent organization, to be at the call of the states in working out effective and economical highway systems.

The establishing of a system of parcels post and postal savings banks.

The providing of some means or agency for the guidance of public opinion toward the development of a real rural society that shall rest directly on the land.

The enlargement of the United States Bureau of Education, to enable it to stimulate and coordinate the educational work of the nation.

Careful attention to the farmers’ interests in legislation on the tariff, on regulation of railroads, control or regulation of corporations and of speculation, legislation in respect to rivers, forests and the utilization of swamp lands.

Increasing the powers of the Federal government in respect to the supervision and control of the public health.

Providing such regulations as will enable the states that do not permit the sale of liquors to protect themselves from traffic from adjoining states.

IV. Institutions and Agencies at Work

Organized Forces Making for a Better Rural Life

When we consider the vast scope of the Country Life Movement in America and the variety of agencies involved, it greatly increases our rural optimism. The following list was compiled by Dr. L. H. Bailey and is the most complete available.

1. Departments of Agriculture, national and state.

2. Colleges of agriculture, one for each state, territory, or province.

3. Agricultural experiment stations, in nearly all cases connected with the colleges of agriculture.

4. The public school system, into which agriculture is now being incorporated. Normal schools, into many of which agriculture is being introduced.

5. Special separate schools of agriculture and household subjects.

6. Special colleges, as veterinary and forestry institutions.

7. Departments or courses of agriculture in general or old-line colleges, and universities.

8. Farmers’ Institutes, usually conducted by colleges of agriculture or by boards or departments of agriculture.

(The above institutions may engage in various forms of extension work.)

9. The agricultural press.

10. The general rural newspapers.

11. Agricultural and horticultural societies of all kinds.

12. The Patrons of Husbandry, Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union, and other national organizations.

13. Business societies and agencies, many of them cooperative.

14. Business men’s associations and chambers of commerce in cities and towns.

15. Local political organizations (much in need of redirection).

16. Civic societies.

17. The church.

18. The Young Men’s Christian Association, and other religious organizations.

19. Women’s clubs and organizations, of many kinds.

20. Fairs and expositions.

21. Rural libraries.

22. Village improvement societies.

23. Historical societies.

24. Public health regulation.

25. Fraternal societies.

26. Musical organizations.

27. Organizations aiming to develop recreation, and games and play.

28. Rural free delivery of mail (a general parcels post is a necessity).

29. Postal savings banks.

30. Rural banks (often in need of redirection in their relations to the development of the open country).

31. Labor distributing bureaus.

32. Good thoroughfares.

33. Railroads, and trolley extensions (the latter needed to pierce the remoter districts rather than merely to parallel railroads and to connect large towns).

34. Telephones.

35. Auto-vehicles.

36. Country stores and trading places (in some cases).

37. Insurance organizations.

38. Many government agencies to safeguard the people, as public service commissions.

39. Books on agriculture and country life.

40. Good farmers, living on the land.

It is through the activity and growing cooperation of these various agencies that the new rural civilization is now rapidly developing. It will be the purpose of our next chapter to describe the process. Rural progress in recent decades has been surprising and encouraging in many quarters. Men of faith cannot fail to see that the providence of God is now using these modern forces in making a new world of the country. It may fairly be called a new world compared with the primitive past. Thus our rural optimism is justified, and we have increasing faith in the future of country life in America.

Test Questions on Chapter II

1. – What tribute to country life is inscribed on the Washington Union Station? It is a just tribute?

2. – Can you accept the “Country Boy’s Creed”?

3. – Why are so many city boys studying in agricultural colleges? How is it in your own state?

4. – Discuss some of the disadvantages and drawbacks of modern city life.

5. – Why is country life attractive to you?

6. – What do you reckon among the privileges of living in the country?

7. – Discuss the real optimism you find in the “challenge of the difficult” in country life.

8. – How do you explain the “back-to-the-soil movement” from the cities to suburban and rural villages?

9. – Show how the real “Country Life Movement” differs from this.

10. – Mention some of the early plans for rural welfare in America.

11. – What part have the agricultural colleges had in the Country Life Movement?

12. – When did rural betterment first become a national issue in the United States?

13. – What definite rural needs did President Roosevelt mention in his message to the Country Life Commission?

14. – What special call for rural leadership did this Commission voice?

15. – What do you think about the program for rural progress which the Commission proposed to Congress?

16. – What do you think about the proposal to establish a parcels post?

17. – In what special ways do the farmers’ interests need safeguarding?

18. – Make a list of improvements which you consider necessary in the country sections you know the best.

19. – Name as many agencies as you can which are making a better rural life.

20. – On what do you base your faith in the new rural civilization?

CHAPTER III

THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION

FACTORS THAT ARE MAKING A NEW WORLD IN THE COUNTRY

Introductory: Rural Self-Respect and Progress

The faith of the country life movement is justified by the remarkable rural progress of the past generation. City life has been revolutionized by inventive skill, modern machinery, new forms of wealth and higher standards of efficiency and comfort; but meanwhile this marvelous progress has not been confined to cities. To be sure depleted rural districts, drained of their best blood, have not kept pace. But suburban sections in close partnership with cities have shared the speed and the privileges of urban progress, and meanwhile healthy, self-sustaining rural counties, scorning any dependence upon cities except for market, have developed great prosperity of their own and a remarkably efficient and satisfying life, even though population may have somewhat declined.

This is so radically different from the life of the past, we may justly call it a new rural civilization. It is distinctly a rural civilization, not merely because of its characteristics, but because it is a triumph of rural leadership and the product of rural evolution, by fortunate selection and survival in the country of efficient manhood and womanhood best adapted to cope with their environment.

Thousands who failed in the country have gone to the cities, where it is often easier for incompetence to eke out an existence by living on casual jobs. Thousands of others have found better success in the city because they were better adapted to urban life. Often the net result of the migration has been profit for the country community which has held its best, that is, the country born and bred best adapted to be happy and successful in the rural environment.

Where you find the new rural civilization well developed, you find a self-respecting people, prosperous and happy, keeping abreast of the times in all important human interests, keenly alert to all new developments in agriculture and often proud of their country heritage. Because of this new prosperity and self-respect, ridicule of the “countryman” has ceased to be popular among intelligent people. The title “farmer” has taken on an utterly new meaning and is becoming a term of respect.

All this marks a return to the former days, before the age of supercilious cities, when most of the wealth and culture and family pride was in the open country and the village. To be sure in some sections of America this frank pride in rural life has never ceased. The real aristocracy of the South has always been mainly rural. Many of the “first families of Virginia” still live on the old plantations and maintain a highly self-respecting life, free from the corrosive envy of city conditions, often pitying the man whose business requires him to live in the crowded town, and rejoicing in the freedom and the wholesome joys of country life. The hospitable country mansions of the South still remind us of the fame of Westover, Mount Vernon and Monticello as centers of social grace and leadership; and the most select social groups in Richmond welcome the country gentlemen and women of refinement from these country homes, not merely because of the honored family names they bear, but because they themselves are worthy scions of a continuously worthy rural civilization. They have never pitied themselves for living in the country. They do not want to live in the city. They are justly proud of their rural heritage and their country homes.

I. The Triumph over Isolation

Conquering the Great Enemy of Rural Contentment

The depressing effect of isolation has always been the most serious enemy of country life in America. Nowhere else in the world have farm homes been so scattered. Instead of living in hamlets, like the rest of the rural world, with outlying farms in the open country, American pioneers with characteristic independence have lived on their farms regardless of distance to neighbors. But social hungers, especially of the young people, could not safely be so disregarded, and in various ways the social instincts have had their revenge. Isolation has proved to be the curse of the country, as its opposite, congestion, has in the city. The wonder is that the rural population of the country as a whole has steadily gained, nearly doubling in a generation, in spite of this handicap. Obviously the social handicap of isolation must be in a measure overcome, if country life becomes permanently satisfying. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the new rural civilization has developed many means of intercommunication, bringing the remotest country districts into vital touch with the world.

Among the factors that have revolutionized the life of country people and hastened the new rural civilization are the telephone, the daily mail service by rural free delivery, the rapid extension of good roads, the introduction of newspapers and magazines and farm journals, and traveling libraries as well, the extension of the trolley systems throughout the older states, and the rapid introduction of automobiles, especially through the West.

In these various ways the fruits of modern inventive skill and enterprise have enriched country life and have banished forever the extreme isolation which used to vex the farm household of the past. The farm now is conveniently near the market. The town churches and stores and schools are near enough to the farms. The world’s daily messages are brought to the farmer’s fireside. And the voice of the nearest neighbor may be heard in the room, though she may live a mile away.

The Social Value of the Telephone

Among these modern blessings in the country home, one of the most significant is the telephone. A business necessity in the city, it is a great social asset in the rural home, like an additional member of the family circle. It used to be said, though often questioned, that farmers’ wives on western farms furnished the largest quota of insane asylum inmates, because of the monotony and loneliness of their life. The tendency was especially noticeable in the case of Scandinavian immigrant women, accustomed in the old home to the farm hamlet with its community life.

To-day the farmer’s wife suffers no such isolation. To be sure the wizards of invention have not yet given us the teleblepone, by which the faces of distant friends can be made visible; but the telephone brings to us that wonderfully personal element, the human voice, the best possible substitute for the personal presence. Socially, the telephone is a priceless boon to the country home, especially for the women, who have been most affected by isolation in the past. They can now lighten the lonely hours by a chat with neighbors over household matters, or even have a neighborhood council, with five on the line, to settle some question of village scandal! All sorts of community doings are speedily passed from ear to ear. Details of social plans for church or grange are conveniently arranged by wire. Symptoms are described by an anxious mother to a resourceful grandmother and a remedy prescribed which will cure the baby before the horse could even be harnessed. Or at any hour of the day or night the doctor in the village can be quickly summoned and a critical hour saved, which means the saving of precious life.

On some country lines a general ring at six o’clock calls all who care to hear the daily market quotations; and at noon the weather report for the day is issued. If the weather is not right, the gang of men coming from the village can be intercepted by phone. Or if the quotations are not satisfactory, a distant city can be called on the wire and the day’s shipment sent to the highest bidder – saving money, time, and miles of travel.

All things considered the telephone is fully as valuable in the country as in the city and its development has been just as remarkable, especially in the middle West where thousands of independent rural lines have been extended in recent years, at very low expense. In 1902 there were 21,577 rural lines in the United States, with a total length of 259,306 miles of wires, and 266,969 rural phones.

Good Roads, the Index of Civilization

When John Frederick Oberlin began his remarkable work of community building in the stagnant villages of the Vosges Mountains, his very first move was to build a road. The status of any civilization is fairly clearly indicated by the condition of the highways. The first sign of rural decay in a discouraged community has often been the neglect of the thoroughfares. One of the widespread signs of rural progress is the recent attention given to good roads. In 1892 the Good Roads Association was formed. In the previous year the first state aid for good road building was granted, and since then state after state has appropriated millions of dollars for this purpose. The proposal that a great macadam road be built by Congress from Washington to Gettysburg, as a memorial to President Lincoln, whether a wise proposition or not, shows how prominent this subject has finally become, in the eyes of the nation.

Progressive farmers have discovered that a bad road is a tax upon every ton of produce hauled to market; that in effect it lengthens the three mile distance to ten; that the trip requires three hours instead of one; and that a good macadam road, or some form of paving, varying with the nearness of materials, pays for itself again and again, in the saving of time and money, and wear and tear on rolling stock and teams. The social effects of good roads are almost as clear as the industrial benefits. There is more social cooperation. People go oftener to town, they gather more easily at church and social functions, and the intermingling means better acquaintance and more helpful friendships. Better business, better social life, better neighborhoods, follow the trail of better roads – and a far better chance for the country church.