The Rural Life Problem of the United States Part 3

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.

I can well imagine readers who have patiently followed my arguments wis.h.i.+ng to interrogate me in some such terms as these: "a.s.suming," they may say, "that we accept all you tell us about the neglect of the rural population, and agree as to the grave consequences which must follow if it be continued, what on earth can we do? Of course the welfare of the rural population is a matter of paramount importance to the city and to the nation at large; but may we remind you that you said the evil and the consequences can be removed and averted only by those immediately concerned--the actual farmers--and that the remedy for the rural backwardness was to be sought for in the rural mind? 'Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?' Must not the patient 'minister' to himself?"

Fair questions these, and altogether to the point. I answer at once that the patient ought to minister to himself, but he won't. He has acquired the habit of sending for the physician of the town, whose physic but aggravates the disease. Dropping metaphor, the farmer does not think for himself. In rural communities, there is as great a lack of collective thought as of cooperative action. All progress is conditional on public opinion, and this, even in the country, is a very much town-made thing.

So I am, then, in this difficulty. My subject is rural, my audience urban. I have to commend to the statesmen and the philanthropists of the town the somewhat incongruous proposal that they should take the initiative in rural reform. Neither the thought nor the influence which can set in motion what in agricultural communities is no less than an economic revolution are to be found in the open country. To the townsmen I now address my appeal and submit a plan.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress (1903).

CHAPTER VII

THE TWO THINGS NEEDFUL

In my earlier chapters I traced to the Industrial Revolution in England the origin of that subordination, in the English-speaking countries, of rural to urban interests which finds its expression to-day in the problem of rural life. I have shown that the continuance of the tendency in America was natural if not inevitable, and have urged that, for economic, social and political reasons, its further progress should now be stayed. If my view as to the origin, present effects and probable consequences of the evil be accepted, any serious proposals for a remedy will be welcomed by all who realise that national well-being cannot endure if urban prosperity is accompanied by rural decay. In this belief I offer the scheme for a Country Life movement which has slowly matured in my own mind as the result of the experience described in the preceding pages.

The first aim of the movement should be to coordinate, and guide towards a common end, the efforts of a large number of agencies--educational, religious, social and philanthropic--which, in their several ways, are already engaged upon some part of the work to be done. For such a movement the United States offers advantages not to be found elsewhere in the area for which we are concerned. For here public-spirited individuals and a.s.sociations of the kind required exist in larger numbers than can be known to any one who has not watched what is going on in this field of social service. If I had not already devoted too much s.p.a.ce to personal experiences, I could of my own knowledge testify to the remarkable growth of organised effort in American rural communities. Sometimes this is the outcome of a growing spirit of neighbourliness, sometimes it emanates from young Universities and Colleges emulating the extension work with which nearly every big city is familiar. I have been much struck with the way in which, at gatherings of school teachers, pedagogic detail and questions affecting their status and emoluments have become less popular subjects for discussion than schemes of social progress.[9] Similarly, the agricultural Press is becoming less exclusively technical and commercial, and more human. Even the syndicated stuff is getting less townified. My correspondence, newspaper clippings sent to me, and many other indications, point in the same direction. They leave the impression upon my mind that there is a vast, efficient and enthusiastic army of social workers upon the farm lands of the United States badly in need of a Headquarters Staff.

If I am right in believing that, of the English-speaking countries, the United States affords the best opportunity for such a consummation, most a.s.suredly the present time is peculiarly auspicious. If Mr. Roosevelt's Country Life policy has not been received with any marked enthusiasm, American public opinion has been thoroughly aroused upon his Conservation policy. The latter cannot possibly come to fruition--nor even go much further--until the Country Life problem is boldly faced. In the Conference of Governors it was pointed out over and over again that the farmer, now the chief waster, must become the chief conserver. As such he will himself become a supporter of the policy, and will bring to the aid of those advocates of Conservation whose chief concern is for future generations, an interested public opinion which will go far to outweigh the influence of those who profit by the exhaustion of natural resources. To the country life reformer I would say that, as the one idea has caught on while the other lags, he will, if he is wise, hitch his Country Life waggon to the Conservation star.

With every advantage of time and place, the promotion of the movement which is to counteract the townward tendency will have to reckon with the psychological difficulty inherent in the conditions. They must recognise the paradox of the situation already pointed out, the necessity of interesting the town in the problems of the country. The urban att.i.tude of mind which caused the evil, and now makes it difficult to interest public opinion in the remedy, is not new; it pervades the literature of the Augustan age. I recall from my school days Virgil's great handbook on Italian agriculture, written with a mastery of technical detail unsurpa.s.sed by Kipling. But the farmers he had in mind when he indulged in his memorable rhapsody upon the happiness of their lot were out for pleasure rather than profit. While the suburban poet sang to the merchant princes, Rome was paying a bonus upon imported corn, and entering generally upon that fatal disregard for the interest of the rural population which is one of the accepted causes of the decline and fall.

How that Old World tragi-comedy comes back to me when I talk to New York friends on the subject of these pages! I am not, so they tell me, up to date in my information; there is a marked revulsion of feeling upon the town _versus_ country question; the tide of the rural exodus has really turned, as I might have discerned without going far afield. At many a Long Island home I might see on Sundays, weather permitting, the h.o.r.n.y-handed son of week-day toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls. These supply a select circle in New York with b.u.t.ter and eggs, at a price which leaves nothing to be desired--unless it be some information as to the cost of production. Full justice is done to the new country life when the Farmers' Club of New York fulfils its chief function, the annual dinner at Delmonico's. Then agriculture is extolled in fine Virgilian style, the Hudson villa and the Newport 'cottage' being permitted to divide the honours of the rural revival with the Long Island home. But to my bucolic intelligence, it would seem that against the 'back to the land'

movement of Sat.u.r.day afternoon the captious critic might set the rural exodus of Monday morning.

These reflections are introduced in no unfriendly spirit, and with serious intent. To me this new rural life is a.s.sociated with memories of characteristically American hospitality; but my interest in it is more than personal. It is giving to those who cultivate it, among whom are the helpers most needed at the moment, a point of view which will enable them to grasp the real problem of the open country, as it exists, for example, in the great food-producing and cotton-growing tracts of the West and South. Both in the countries where the townward tendency of the industrial age was foreseen and prevented, and in those in which the evil is being cured, the impulse and inspiration which will be required to initiate and sustain our Country Life movement came mainly from leaders who were not themselves agriculturists.[10] Proficiency in the practice or even in the business of farming is not necessary. What is needed is a comprehensive knowledge of public affairs, political imagination, an understanding sympathy with and a philosophic insight into the entire life of communities. Men who combine with the necessary experience those gifts of heart and mind which go to make the higher citizens.h.i.+p in the many, and the statesmans.h.i.+p in the few, will more likely be found in the city than in the country. Yet they are, in the conditions, the natural leaders of the Country Life movement, which must now be defined.

The situation demands two things; on the one hand an a.s.sociation, popular, propagandist, organising; on the other, an Inst.i.tute, scientific, philosophic, research-making. These two things are distinct in character, but they are complementary to each other. One will require popular enthusiasm and business organisation. To the service of the other must be brought the patient spirit of scientific and philosophic a.n.a.lysis and inquiry. These two bodies--the popular propagandist a.s.sociation and the scientific research-making Inst.i.tute--must, therefore, be created; and, for a reason to be explained when we consider the work of the Inst.i.tute, they should be independent of each other. This rough indication of the character of the work, which I will describe more in detail presently, will suffice for the moment. I feel that the work will be so intensely human in its interest that it will be well to say at once how the two central agencies can be established, and the movement made, not a writer's fancy, but a living and doing agency of human progress.

A body, in many respects ideally fitted to give the necessary impulse and direction to the work of organisation, is already in the field. The leaders of the Conservation idea, recognising that their policy, in common with other policies, will need an organised public opinion at its back, have founded a National Conservation a.s.sociation. Mr. Gifford Pinchot has now been selected as its President. Before he was available, the task of organising and setting to work the new inst.i.tution was unanimously entrusted to and accepted by President Eliot, of whose qualifications all I will say is that we foreign students of social problems vie with his own countrymen in our appreciation of his public work and aims. These two appointments are sufficient proof of the serious importance of the work, and bespeak public influence and support for the a.s.sociation. I have no doubt that this body would be fully qualified to formulate and initiate the Country Life movement, and act as the central agency for the active promotion of its objects. Its members, who, I am sure, agree with Mr. Roosevelt in regarding the movement as a necessary complement to the Conservation policy, might even feel that for this very reason it was inc.u.mbent upon them to set their organisation to this work.

There is, however, one consideration which will make Mr. Pinchot and his a.s.sociates hesitate to adopt this course. The doubt relates to the distinction I have drawn between the Conservation policy and the Country Life movement, the one seeking to promote legislative and administrative action, and the other, while it may give birth to a policy, being chiefly concerned with voluntary effort.[11] Although the National Conservation a.s.sociation is founded for the purpose of educating public opinion upon the Conservation idea, it may decide to support the Conservation policy of one party rather than that of another. It would thus become too much involved in party controversy to act as a central agency of a movement which must embrace men of all parties. Should this view prevail, the difficulty can be easily surmounted by following the Irish precedent, where we had a very similar and indeed far more delicate situation to save from political trouble. An American Agricultural Organisation Society could be founded for the purpose in view, and as it is probable that leading advocates of the Conservation policy would take a prominent part in the Country Life movement, the interdependence of the two ideas would have practical recognition.

Apart from the possibility of political complications, there is one strong reason to recommend this course. The movement will accomplish its best and most permanent results as an advocate of self-reliance; it will seek to make self-help effective through organisation; it will concern itself much more for those things which the farmers can do for themselves by cooperation than with those things which the Government can do for them.[12] The selection, however, between the two alternative courses is a question which the foreign critic cannot decide. The work to which I now return will be the same, whatever agency is charged with its execution.

The central body (which for brevity I will call the a.s.sociation) will have as its general aim the economic and social development of rural communities. The work will be mainly that of active organisation. For reasons explained in the earlier chapters, the organisation must be cooperative in character, and will be concentrated upon the business methods of the farmers. This will, it is believed, cure a radical defect in their system--a defect which, as I have argued, is responsible for a restricted production, and for a course of distribution injurious alike to producer and consumer, besides exercising a depressing influence upon the economic efficiency and social life of rural communities. It follows that the first step towards a general reconstruction of country life, which has the promise of giving to the country a social attraction strong enough to stem the tide of the townward migration, is agricultural cooperation.

Such being the general aim and the definite procedure, the first practical question that arises will be, how to apply this solvent--agricultural cooperation. It will not suffice to throw these two long words at the hardy rustic; shorter and more emphatic words might come back. Two equally necessary things must be done; the principle must be made clear, and the practical details of this rural equivalent of urban business combination must be explained in language understanded of the people. It is not difficult to draft a paper scheme for this purpose, but the fitting of the plan to local conditions is a very expert business. Hence the central agency should have at its disposal a corps of experts in cooperative organisation for agricultural purposes. After a short visit to a likely district by a competent exponent of the theory and practice, local volunteers would be found to carry on the work. Experience shows that once a well-organised cooperative a.s.sociation of farmers is permanently established, similar a.s.sociations spring up spontaneously under the magic influence of proved success in known conditions. I should strongly recommend concentration at first on a few selected districts, with the aim of making standard models to which other communities could work. I need hardly say that all this work would be done in cooperation with whatever other agencies would lend their aid. The Country Life movement would be extremely useful to the great educational foundations centred in New York. I happen to know that the Trustees of the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Russell Sage endowments are keenly desirous to promote such a redirection of rural education as will bring it into a more helpful relation with the working lives of the rural population. Then there are such bodies as the Y. M. C. A., whose leaders, I am told, are alive to the value of the open air life, and are anxious to extend their country work in the rural districts. The great army of rural teachers, the Farmers' Union, and other farmers' organisations I have already named would gladly cooperate with schemes making for rural progress.

More important, I believe, than is generally realised, from an economic and social point of view, are the rural churches. In many European countries, where agricultural cooperation has played a great part in the people's lives, the clergy have ardently supported the system on account of its moral value. In Ireland, some of our very best volunteer organisers are clergymen. Some leaders of the rural church in the United States have told me that a feeling is growing that an increased economic usefulness in the clergy would strengthen their position in the society which they serve in a higher capacity. I know that the suggestion of clerical intervention in secular affairs is open to misunderstanding.

But here is a body of educated citizens who would gladly take part in any real social service; and here is a situation where there is work of high moral and social value calling for volunteers. Nothing but good, it seems to me, could result if such men, who have more opportunity and inclination for general reading than the working farmer, would help in explaining the intricacies of cooperative organisation and procedure which must be understood and practised in order that the system may be fruitful.

In addition to its active propagandist work, the central a.s.sociation could exercise a powerful and helpful influence in other ways. It should, of course, keep both the agricultural and the general press informed of its plans and progress. It should also keep in touch with the agricultural work of all important educational bodies, and more especially urge upon them the necessity of spreading the cooperative idea. The Department of Agriculture would welcome and support the movement; for I know many leading men in that service who thoroughly understand and recognise the immense importance, especially to backward rural communities, of the cooperative principle.

It is not necessary, at this stage, to go further into details. I feel confident that the work of a.s.sisting all suitable agencies, such as those I have named, and others which may be available, through organisers of agricultural cooperation and by the spreading of information, would soon enable the central body to render inestimable service to the cause of rural progress. Such, at any rate, is the outline of my first proposal for giving to my American fellow-workers upon the rural problem the a.s.sistance which I feel they most need at the present moment. I pa.s.s now to my second proposal.

I suggest that an inst.i.tution--which, as I have said, will be scientific, philosophic, research-making--should be founded. It would be, in effect, a Bureau of research in rural social economy. Personally I know that, in my own experience as an administrator and organiser, I have been constantly brought face to face with problems where we could turn to no guide--no patient band of investigators who had been measuring, a.n.a.lysing, determining the data. Yet in some directions much excellent work is being done. Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems of the rural population have entered into the studies of economists and sociologists. At leading Universities I have sought in vain for light. At a recent anniversary in New York, which brought together the foremost economists of the Old and New World, there was an almost complete omission of the country side of things from a programme which I am sure was generally held to be almost exhaustive.

The fact is, the subject must be treated as a new one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country Life movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to make good the deficiency of information which has resulted from the general lack of interest in the subject under review. An Inst.i.tute is wanted to survey the field, to collect, cla.s.sify and coordinate information and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to carry exact statistical method into his work so that he may no longer have to depend on general statements, but may have at his command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while its significance can be measured. I may mention a few typical questions on which useful light would be shed by the Inst.i.tute's researches:--