Rural Life"'
in Canada ,

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John MacDotsgall

THE LIBRARY

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THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

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RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

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RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

ITS TREND AND TASKS

BY

JOHN MacDOUGALL

With an Introduction by
James W. Robertson, C.M.G., D.Sc, LL.D.

Cbairman of the Royal Oommiition on Industrial Training

and Technical Education.

For Thr Board of Social Service and Evangelism
The Prrsbvtrrian Church in Canada

Toronto
THE WESTMINSTER COMF'ANY. LIMITED

1913

Copyright, Canada, by the Board of Social Service and

Evangelism of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Published May, 1913

M

T-

TO

MY WIFE.

TO THE MEMORY OF

HER MOTHER AND MINE.

AND TO

ALL THE NOBLE ARMY OF WOMEN

IN THE RURAL HOMES

OF CANADA.

Send my little book afield

Frontinir praise or blame.
V^ith the shininK flag and shield

Of your name."

— Lampman.

A 'Ji»4 '»«>c 1

Here's to the land of the rock and the pine,
Here's to the land of the raft and the river,

Here's to the land where the sunbeams shine,

And the night that is bright with the north-light's quiver!

Here's to the land with its blanket of snow —
To the hero and hunter the welcomest pillow;

Here's to the land where the storm-winds blow

Three days ere the mountains can talk to the billow!

Here's to the land of the axe and the plow,

Here's to the hearties that give them their glory, —

With stroke upon stroke and with blow upon blow
The might of the forest has passed into story!

Here's to her hills of the moose and the deer.
Here's to her forests, her fields and her flowers.

Here's to her homes of unchangeable cheer,

And the maid 'neath the shade of her own native bowers!

Here's to the buckwheats that smoke on her board.
Here's to the maple that sweetens their story,

Here's to the scythe that we swing like a sword.
And here's to the fields where we gather our glory!

— William Wye Smith. '"'"

PREFACE

This volume is the outcome of a request from the
Hoard of Social Service of the Presbyterian Church in
Canada to the writer to prepare a short course of lec-
tures dealing with the ])roblem of the Country Church,
for the Summer School at Geneva Park, on Lake Cou-
chiching.

I nder the direction of the Board the lectures wore
again delivered in the Presbyterian College, Halifax,
and in Knox College, Toronto. The seventh chapter
represents an additional lecture to the students of these
colleges.

In compliance with the desire of the Board the lec-
tures, in somewhat enlarged form, are now brought be-
fore the public. The manner of its production accounts
for the use of the direct address and other features in
the form of the volume.

Although the incidental illustrations have been drawn
from a local field, and the situation in Ontario is most
in evidence, and although one particular branch of the
("hnrch is occasionally rclcrrcd to, the viewpoint of the
book is national.

The writer begs that the volume will be regarded by
no one as a treatise on its subject. It is put forth as
but a 8<*ries of individual impressions upon an inijior-
tant j>robIfni in national welfare.

SpENrEUvii.i.K, Ontahio^
28th February, 1913.

Where are the men of my heart's desire?

Of the British blood and the loyal names?
Some are north, at the home hearth-fire,

Where the hemlock glooms and the maple flames;
And some are tramping the old world round
For the pot of gold they have never found!

—Theodore Roberts.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

Page

DKPI.KTION OK RTKAL POPULATION 19

The first, or physical dimension, numerical diminution
of population. The second dimension, social strain.
The third dimension, moral danger. Bearing of the
situation on the church. Relation of the church to
the problem.

CHAPTER II.

Economic Causes of Depletion 57

Decay of village crafts. The modern industrial
system. Loss of village commerce. The revolution in
husbandry. Increased cost of living. Agricultural
base insufficient. Forestry and agriculture. The
crime of exploitation. Conservation of soil fertility
neglected. Unscientific husbandry. Lack of modern
business methods. Economic burdens. Lack of credit.
Uneconomic taxation.

CHAPTER III.

Economic Solutions of tue Pboblem 95

Relative standing of the art of agriculture. All lands
to be put to their best use. Forestry. Orcharding.
The moral implicate. Conservation of fertility. The
ethical prerequisite. Adaptation of farm practice to
scientific methods of agriculture. The underlying per-
sonal problem. Adaptation of farm practice to methods
of modern business. Co-operation. Legislation requis-
ite. The moral difficulty underlying the economic one.
Rural credit systems.

CHAPTER IV.

Social Causes of Unbe.st 123

The problem fundamentally one of appreciation of life.
The conditions of labor unsatisfactory. The country
lacking In means of social life. Lacking In healthful
recreation. In means of education for country life.
Lack of appreciation of country values. In commun-
ity ideals. In the new(?r ethical Implications of reli-
gion

10 CONTENTS

CHAPTER V.

Page
The Function of the Chubch 151

Theology and sociology alike requisite. The establish-
ing of the Kingdom of God affords the requisite stand-
point. The course of the Providence of God and the
Spirit of God in the trend of the age bestows the
requisite insight wrhereby to discern her function.
Two factors in the founding of the Kingdom — the sal-
vation of souls and the redemption of society. Two
factors found in the trend of the age — social service
and preventive work. The church, how far institu-
tional?

CHAPTER VI.
The Country Church Programme 167

Executive oversight. The rural survey. Church union
or federation. Special preparation for the ministry.
Direct ministry of teaching. Utilization of established
agencies. Of new agencies.

CHAPTER Vn.
Students fob the Ministry and the Rural Problem - 203

Students to-day possessed of the spirit of social ser-
vice. Social science not sufSciently taught. An im-
perative call for such teaching. Equality in status in
rural ministry and urban. The country ministry a
call to strong men. The permanent rural pastorate.
Training for the country ministry.

CHAPTER VHI.
Rural Uplift Elsewhere 227

The labors of John Frederick Oberlin. Rural recon-
struction in Denmark. Advance in Ireland through
co-operation. The rural life movement in the United
States. The challenge to the Christian Church.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Sheep Husbandry in British Columbia - - Frontispiece
Hastings County, Ontario, Losing 3,138 in Rural Popu-
lation in a Decade 17

In Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Losing 26.5 per cent, in

a Decade 27

In Prince Edward Island, a Township Losing 37 per cent.

in a Decade 37

Presbyterian Church, Spencerville 60

Church at Shanly, Ontario 61

Finest of Forest Land, Unfit for Husbandry - - - 73

Pasture on an Unoccupied Farm 81

Prize Field of Oats, 87 Bushels to the Acre. World's

Average, 28 97

Fruit Lands, Grimsby, Ontario 105

Loads of Grain from Equal Plots, with Clover and

Without 113

Hayfield on the Klondyke, Sub-Arctic .... 125

The Hired Man in the Home 130

Unnecessary Toil — Water from the Well - - - 130

The Country Child with Few Playmates, Few Games - 135

Schoolhouse in Edwardsburg, Ontario .... 139

A Flower-Loving Farmer, Indian Head .... 142

Homestead Garden, Indian Head, Sask. . . . . 142

Public School, Vineland, Lincoln County, Ontario - - 153

Macdonald Consolidated School, Guelph, Ontario - - 163

"Look Here, Upon this Picture, and on This " - - 178

The Country Needs a Vision of its Own Felicity - - 178

Rittenhouse School Gardens, Lincoln County. Ontario - 189

Rlttenhou.se School. Lincoln County, Ontario - - - 193

Macdougall Hall and St. Paul'H Church, Ormstown. Que. 195

Mormon School, Taylor Slake, Raymond, Alberta - - 199

Danlsti HomcBtead 232

DanlHti Farmyard 232

O London holds the hearts of men,

And London's paved with gold;
But ah, to hear the lark again.

And see the buds unfold!

0 London stole my youth away
The while she gave me bread;

She killed my soul from day to day,
And gave me gold instead.

But in the twilight cold and gray.
Above the city's voice

1 hear the mowers mow the hay,
I hear the birds rejoice.

A. Middleton, "Exile.

i

LNTRODUCTION

We are just begiuuiug to realize that our vast areas
of good lauds could aud should carry happy homes
for millions more people and not have them huddled
into big towns where the children cannot play. How
stupid the people are who are rich and strong and do
not give the children a chance ! Inexpressibly stupid,
no matter how they may pride themselves on motor
cars and big ships and fine buildings, if the chil-
dren of the poor as well as the rich have no chance to
play on the grass and pick flowers and drink in the
enriching vigor of good air. Such people do not match
our land. 'Flicv are like a degenerate, of an old ances-
tral stock, that was once strong before luxury and
self-indulgence and all kinds of libertine behavior made
him a despicable thing. As I have gone over this con-
tinent I have wondered when the man shall arise who
will say. " The J^ord expects that these plains and moun-
tains and forests and orchards will be occupied by
pcf)ple to reflect His image and match the setting of
their homes."

Let us consider the con.servation of the resources of
the land ; not only to grow big crops, to increase the
exports and make the balances of trade stand out with
startling figures, but to have a better boy, to have a
more U-autifiil girl, that the next generation for whom
we an- trustees should still more reflect back the
grandeur of human life and have a fair chance to give

l.i

14 INTKODUCTION

expression to it through the wise use of our natural
resources. Farming is gathering sunshine, forging
wealth out of chaos, — gathering and humanizing into
wealth for the service of the race the great unused
powers of nature. It is one of the great fundamental
occupations, and therefore the interests of the men who
follow it are worth conserving. We have laid out our
school system — that is, our rural public schools that we
boast so much about — to train a boy to read and write
and figure as the essential means of conserving and
training for use his God-given powers and obligations
to gather sunshine. Maybe the preparation does not
qualify for the job, and the boy goes to town where he
will find some job to suit his training.

Why has the Young Men's Christian Association gone
on faster and more widely than some other organiza-
tions ? It is not attempting to save men's souls apart
from their bodies; it is not attempting to help men by
appealing to their intellect only. By inclusion of the
body, mind and spirit, with training for his occupation,
the whole man may be saved into faith in a Christ who,
as the perfect example, was Himself trained that way.

And when we men who are responsible have done
these things then we shall still be unprofitable servants ;
because no man can achieve more than a fraction of the
service that will pay for what he came into, all unearned
by his own labor or life. I wish the churches out in
the rural districts ever-abounding success in making
these things known to the youth — God's partner in
the new earth ; that it is worth while to be consciously
a partner in the oare of old Mother Earth, as a home
for the race, bearing fine crops, with weeds suppressed,
diseases and vile things under the restraining control

INTRODUCTION 15

of intelligent, educated man. and Earth herself becoming
more beautiful and fertile ; that, when he is far enough
on to see and hope for the new heaven and the new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, he has no real
gain from the vision unless he takes his part in making
the earth new and righteous where he lives; and that
he best gives expression to his life, as one of the part-
ners, who helps to reveal and reflect God through his
labor and his love.

James W. Robertson.

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DEPLETION OF RURAL
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How tame now seems to me this herdsman life,

Unprofitable too; naught do I here, —

Naught that can serve good purpose. Why then stay?

Others could tend these herds as well as I,

And haply better, for my thoughts are far

From meads and kine and all the servile round

Of household duties, the same from year to year,

Far from the rural dull routine. .

— Charles Heavysege, " Saul."

Rural Life in Canada

CHAPTER I.

Depletion of Rural Population.

'' The Poetic Genius of ray country found me — as
the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha — at the plough,
and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade
me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and plea-
sures of my native soil in my native ton£:ue: I tuned
my wild artless notes as she inspired." So wrote
Robert Burns. That he was bred to the plow gave
Burns his knowledge of rural life; his genius gave
him insight into its significance. And thus in the
poem which made the Plowman's fame, and in its most
impassioned part, the patriot-poet prays:

O Scotia, my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven Is sent,

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health and peace and sweet content.

And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile.

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while.

And stand, a wall of fire, around their much-loved Isle!

The welfare of this " wall <»f fire " is fjindainciital in
national well-being.

" Agriculture," says that keen-visioned watchman on

10

20 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

the towers, Dr. James W. Robertson, in a masterly plea
for the conservation of our agricultural resources, " is
not only an occupation which some individuals follow
for profit: it is a great national interest determining
in a dominant way the fortunes of this nation and the
opportunities and the character of the population. So,
while the improving of Canadian agriculture primarily
concerns the farmer and his family, it affects the status
of Canada, its outlook and its destiny."* Any wide-
spread movement or persistent tendency which affects
the status of the rural population is therefore a matter
of concern to all, whether dwelling in city or in
country, who have at heart the national welfare,
and consequently sets a task for the Home, the School,
the State, and the Church. Such a problem is given
by the changing relations of city and country life. The
rapid growth of urban population in comparison with
rural is a phenomenon so pronounced, so widespread,
and so persistent as to arrest universal attention.

The report of the Board of Social Service presented
to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
Canada in 1911 called that church's attention with
emphatic force to the problem of the city. That report
was an outcome of a two years' study of the situation —
a study not only of the down-town problem, but of the
up-town problem as well; not only of the congested
centre, but also of the suburb. It stated in terse terms
that the problem exists ; asserted that in Canada it is
just emerging as one of the most urgent of national
questions; and claimed that it is the problem of the
twentieth century. A fuller study of the situation

* Commission of Conservation, Canada, III, p. 89.

RURAL DEPLETION 21

reveals that we have as vital and as urgent, a problem
of the country as of the city. It is the counterpart and
correlative of the city problem. And though its moral
outcrop is not so immediately obvious as in the case of
the city, it is in its ultimate issues the more funda-
mental of the two.

We shall consider in our first chapter the depletion
of rural life in three of its dimensions, physical, social,
and moral, as seen in the numerical decline in popula-
tion, the social strain upon the home and all the insti-
tutions of society, and the moral dangers incident to the
situation.

The first or physical dimension, numerical decrease,
is found throughout large districts of country. Let us
glance first at some local illustrations.

Within a recent seven-year period seventy-six young
persons left my pastoral charge for the cities or the
West. A good proportion were from among our best
church workers. They were not lost to the cause.
One, for instance, trained in Christian work in the
Young People's Guild at Spencerville, was the means
of founding two congregations at Francis and its vicin-
ity, in Saskatchewan. They were not lost to the cause,
but what did their removal not mean to the church in
Spencerville ?

Some few years ago a young Spencerville farmer said
to me, '' When my father bought out the land we are
now working he displaced thirty-<Mght jx-rsons. We are
four, with four constant hired help." The change has
meant no economic loss. Whih; wo were conversing
he was on his way to ^fontreal in charge of two carloads
of stall-fed cattle for the British nuirket, all from his
father's barns. Farming had improved under con-

7

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22 EUKAL LIFE m CANADA

solidation, but what of the social loss where eight per-
sons replaced thirty-eight?

There is one school district within the bounds of my
congregation where for four years past there have been
but three children on the roll, and for three months of
the last school year but one pupil was in attendance.
Yet the school registers of forty years ago show an
average attendance of forty-five pupils. What is the
social significance of this fact?

Spencerville, a hamlet of two hundred inhabitants,
is situated on the ISTation River between two con-
cession roads. On the nearer of these concessions,
right over against the village, are seven consecu-
tive farms, once occupied, now without an occupant.
What is the sociological bearing of this circumstance?

These incidents of the situation — these indications
of a process of change — might be duplicated with varia-
tion in form or degree from the experience of every
observer. They are evidences of a universal tendency,
a world-movement. Population the world over is mass-
ing itself in cities. Cities are becoming congested, the
country depleted.

Canada during the last decennial census period
increased in population by 1,833,523, yet her rural
growth was only 574,878, while her urban expansion
was 1,258,645. She added 34.13 per cent, to her total
population during the decade, but only 17.16 to her
people in the country, though 62.25 to those in town
and city. We are apt to think of the prairies as purely
agricultural regions, yet Saskatchewan, adding 389 per
cent, to her rural population, added 648 per cent, to her
urban population ; and Alberta, increasing by 344 per
cent, in rural growth, increased by 588 per cent, in
urban growth.

EURAL DEPLETION 23

British Columbia gained 100,318 in rural, but 113,505
in urban, population in the decade. Manitoba, rich in
still unoccupied land, won 70,511 for her farms and
hamlets, but 129,892 for her villages, towns and cities.
Quebec, although so largely agricultural, gained 39,951
in country population while advancing by 313,863 in
city growth.

Our country people formed, when the previous census
was taken in 1901, 62.4 per cent, of the total popula-
tion; when the recent one was taken in 1911 thev had
fallen to 54.4 per cent. Our city population, 37.6 in
1901, had grown to 45.6 in 1911.

The proportion of rural to total population has fallen
in every Province during the decade ; in Prince Edward
Island from 85 per cent, to 84 ; in Saskatchewan from
80 to 73 per cent. ; in New Brunswick from 76 per
cent, to 71 ; in ^Manitoba from 72 to 56 per cent. ; from
71 per cent, to 62 in Nova Scotia and in Alberta; from
60 to 51 per cent, in Quebec; in Ontario from 57 per
cent, to 47; and in British Columbia from 49 to 48
per cent.

But it is not from relative increase merely, of city
as compared with country, that the grave niial situa;
tion arises. Our addition of 34 per cent, in a decade
does indeed present serious problems of several kinds,
in evangelization, in assimilation, and even in trans-
portation. But it does not give rise to the rural prob-
lem. Nor does the fact that we added 62 per cent, to
the city and but 17 to the country population reveal the
real heart of the problem. The country's loss is not
relative merely, but absolute. Tlu* question is not one
of slackened growth, but of waste; begun. Tlu; country
is not simply falling bc^jiin.l in llic u[)\var(l race; she

24 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

is not even standing still ; she is slipping downhill again
and knows not how to stay her course.

We did not complete our survey of the Provinces a
moment ago. We ceased with Quebec, whose gain as
there given in figures we now notice was equal to 4 per
cent, in her rural parishes, but 48 per cent, in her indus-
trial centres. We have yet to consider that while New
Brunswick had an accession of 22,262 to the inhabi-
tants of her cities she suffered a diminution of 1,493 in
her residents in the country; while Prince Edward
Island towns simply maintained their ground, her
townships fell back by some 9,546 ; while Nova Scotia's
cities gained to the extent of 56,745 her farming dis-
tricts lost by some 23,981 ; and that Ontario, adding
392,511 inhabitants to her cities and towns, parted with
52,184 from her rural homes.

Let us look more particularly at Ontario's loss.
Grenville, the county in which Spencerville is situated,
had 21,021 people in 1901; now it has 17,545. Stor-
mont numbered 27,042 a decade ago, but to-day 24,775.
North Lanark by the previous census was credited with
17,236, by the recent one with 14,624. Frontenac,
having then 24,746, now numbers 21,944. Lennox and
Addington eleven years ago were given 23,346, one year
ago 20,386. East Hastings, from 27,943 had fallen
off to 24,978. Lambton East from 26,219 had dwin-
dled to 22,223 ; North Bruce from 27,424 had dimin-
ished to 23,783.

Looking at other counties from another angle, we find
that North Wellington lost 14.6 per cent, in the decade ;
East Huron decreased 15.2 per cent, during the ten
years; Dufferin's population diminished by 15.6 in the
same period; North Middlesex fell away by 16.3;

RURAL DEPLETION 25

Grenville partod with 16.6 per cent, of her people, but
was outclassed by South Bruce with a loss of 16.9 per
cent. These three last-named counties saw just one-
sixth of their population leave their bounds within the
ten-year period.

But the loss is heavier still. These figures are for
counties. The statistics for the counties include those
for the towns. Xow, with some few exceptions, such
as Deseronto, with a loss of 42.9 per cent., Graven-
hurst, of 24.3, or Almonte, of 18.9, the towns are holding
their own. Consequently the percentage of loss is still
higher for the townships than for the counties. Let us
look at a few illustrative examples. Grenville lost 16.6
per cent., but her rural loss was 18.6 per cent., and the
township of Edwardsburg, of which Spencerville is the
centre, lost 21 per cent. The apparent loss in South
Bruce is 16.9 per cent. ; the real rural loss 19.3 per
cent., and the actual loss in Kinloss township 23 per
cent. The census informs us that Dufferin was a loser
by 15.6 pr-r cent. ; the rural exodus was 18.5 ; but Gara-
fraxa decreased 24 per cent. In North Bruce the rural
loss was 18.2 per cent.; in East Grey and in East
Lambton 18.9 per cent; in South Grey 20.4 per cent.,
and in West Elgin 21.6 per cent. But what shall we
say of such a case as that of North Grey, whose rural
loss was 21.9 per cent, while her total gain was 7.8 per
cent. ; whose townships of Kcppel and Sarawak decreased
by 34.3 and 48 per cent., while her urban population, in
the towns of Owen Sound and ^feaford and the village
of Shallow Lake, increased by 48.5 per cent. < Or of
Peterborough West, adding 20 per cent to the total
popiilation, and 29 per cent, to her city of Peterborough,
but losing 51.5 per cent, from her township of Galway '(

26 EUKAL LIFE IN CAl^ADA

When the situation in Ontario is thoroughly can-
vassed we find that of the 526 townships in Ontario,
exclusive of the immigration area — Algoma, IS'ipissing,
Thunder Bay, and Kainy River — ^there has been a
decrease of population in 423; and that of the 75
census districts containing rural as well as urban popu-
lation, 60 suffered decrease in their rural population.
If, again, we except the five districts in the New North,
we find that in ten districts only is there growth of
rural population.

We may perhaps realize the contrast more vividly
still by placing rural loss over against urban gain in
certain counties. Carlton lost 2,561 in rural population
and gained 6,587 in urban; in Elgin the respective loss
and gain were 3,302 and 4,128 ; in Grey, 10,782 and
7,083 ; in Haldimand 1,139 and 1,468 ; in West Hast-
ings, 1,586 and 1,063 ; in Kent, 2,701 and 1,502. West
Lambton's rural loss of 2,594 stands over against an
urban gain of 1,980; South Lanark's loss of 1,460 over
against a gain of 1,215. Leeds suffered a rural loss of
2,150, but with an offset in urban gain of 1,118 ; On-
tario— the county of that name — met with a rural loss
of 2,091, but had an urban increase of 2,689 ; in Parry
Sound the respective loss and gain were 1,970 and
3,581; in Perth, 3,792 and 3,013; in Renfrew, 2,724
and 1,961. Russell lost 1,204 in rural population ; Wel-
lington, 4,189 ; and Simcoe, 5,431 while gaining respec-
tively 5,472, 3,035, and 5,472 in urban growth.

The census summary informs us that the rural
decrease in Ontario is 52,184. This is 4.19 per cent.
But the rural gain in the five new districts is 44,940.
Therefore the rural loss in Old Ontario was 97,124, or
8.36 per cent. And the rural gain in the ten growing

RURAL DEPLETION 27

districts was 12,545. Therefore the rural loss in the
sixty waning census districts is 109,669, or 10.82 per
cent

Yet Ontario, with a net increase of 1.5 per cent,
per annum through the excess of births over deaths,
would have gained 200,183 in rural population in the
decade. Moreover, fully 40-4,000 immigrants gave, at
the ports of entry, Ontario as their destination, and of
these fully 30 per cent, gave farming as their occupa-
tion. From this additional source the Province received
an increase of rural population amounting to 121,200,
without considering natural increase. The migration
from her farms therefore amounts not to 52,184, but
373,567.

Xova Scotia's loss of 23,981 amounts to 7 per cent;
and the decrease is found in every district except two ;
in these the rural growth amounts to only seven-tenths
of one per cent. In several counties the decline is
severe; Colchester, 10.5 per cent; Inverness, 11.9;
Shelburne and Queen's, 14.8 ; North Cape Breton and
Victoria, 15.8; Pictou, 26.6. The urban growth in
Pictou, on the other hand, is 72 per cent Severe as
is this loss sustained by the counties, the townships in
this case again alone reveal the real facts. The coun-
ties might be taken in almost unbroken succession to
exhibit cases of severe declension in special townships.
Advocate in Cumborhuid, for instance, loses 40 per
cent

In Prince Edward Island the diminution amounts to
10.8 per cent, and is general throughout the Island. In
parts it is 8*,*vere. In King's County, for instance,
Township No. 40 loses 36 per cent. ; in Queen's County,
Township No. 20 loses 37 per cent.

28 KUKAL LIFE IN CAI^ADA

In New Brunswick, because of expansion into new
areas the loss is slighter, yet even here there is a loss
in more than half the counties. In Westmoreland the
falling off is 13 per cent. ; in Charlotte, 13 ; in King's
and Albert, 17. The loss in townships is startling.
Hampton, in King's, loses 40 per cent. ; Hillsborough,
in Albert, 41 ; Sussex, in King's, 45 ; Madawaska and
St. Francis, in Victoria, 47 and 53 respectively.

In Quebec, though there is a rural gain amounting
over the whole Province to 4 per cent., yet there is a
shrinkage in twenty-seven counties; in some severe:
Montmorency, for instance, meets with a loss of 11.7
per cent ; Chambly and Vercheres, 11.9 ; Yamaska,
12 ; Richelieu, 20.2 ; and Laval, 23.7 per cent.

The contrast between rural loss and urban gain in
certain counties is as vivid in other Provinces as in the
case of Ontario. King's County, Prince Edward Island,
lost 3,178 in rural population while gaining 1,089 in
urban. In Nova Scotia the respective loss and gain
were: in Cape Breton, South, 1,173 and 19,438; in
Cumberland, 1,713 and 6,088; in Inverness 2,630 and
3,848; in Pictou, 5,885 and 8,284; in Shelburne and
Queen's, 3,329 and 3,112 ; and in Yarmouth, 1,211 and
1,562. Charlotte, in New Brunswick, lost 2,999 in
rural population and gained 1,713 in urban, while in
King's and Albert the loss and gain were 5,666 and
3,371, and in Westmoreland, 4,319 and 6,880.

In Manitoba the receding of the tide has just set
in. Lisgar records a loss of 7.5 per cent. ; a score of
districts show recession. Were it not for expansion
over new territory towards the north, the whole Pro-
vince would show decline in rural population.

RURAL DEPLETION 29

Assuming that the natural increase of population is
1.5 per cent, per annum, the rural population of the
Dominion in 1901, 3,349,516, should have increased
by 547.878 before the census was taken in 1911. Of
the 1,715,326 immigrants who came to Canada during
the decade, approximately one-third at the ports of
entry gave farming as their occupation. These, with
the same annual rate of increase, give a further aug-
ment of 670.258. The rural population thus received
an accretion of 1,218,136. The actual growth was
574,878. Therefore 643,258 persons left our country
districts during the decade. That all of these are not
found in our Canadian cities does not alter the facts
of the case.

On soft Pacific slopes, — beside

Strange floods that northward rave and fall —
Where chafes Acadia's chainless tide,

Thy sons await thy call.
They wait; but some In exile — some
With strangers housed, in stranger lands *

Winnipeg is not the third Canadian city, if we count »
by Canadian-born population ; Boston is ; 200,000 of ^
her people are Canadian. There are several New Eng-
land cities with a majority of their population Cana-
dian born. When the figures of the Census Bureau
were published a year ago, men asked in perplexity,
"Where is the other million?" The Canadian nurses
serving in American hospitals might be given as the
first count in the answer. Canada sd about making
of herself a good place for manufacturers, and suc-
ceeded, bnt at the cost of becoming a less desirable

•Charles G. D. Roberts, " In Divers Tonos."

30 RUKAL LIFE m CANADA

place for farmers. Her manufacturers would in due
time have arisen, because of her advantages, and v^ould
have been in an immensely stronger position eventuall;;^
with a broader agricultural base.

Such is the record for a single decade. We must
not, because of space, go into similar detail in regard to
earlier periods. We should expect to find that in each
decade the proportion of rural population grew less,
and such is the case. We note the preceding one only.
Between 1891 and 1901 the rural population of Prince
Edward Island fell from 8Y per cent, to 85 ; of l^ew
Brunswick, from 84 to 76 ; of JSTova Scotia, from 82 to
71 ; of Manitoba, from 73 to 72 ; of Quebec, from 66 to
60; of Ontario, from 61 to 57, and of British Columbia,
from 62 to 49 ; while throughout the Dominion the fall
was from 72.3 per cent, to 62.4.

But the comparative rate of growth of the two sec-
tions of the population for the decade 1891-1901 is a
fresh surprise. In Manitoba the tendency is least ad-
vanced ; the rural gain was 65 per cent., while the urban
was 71 ; in British Columbia it is much more marked,
rural gain being 37 per cent, and urban 142 ; while in
Quebec the rural gain was 0.39 per cent, and the urban
31. In Prince Edward Island a rural loss of 5.8 per
cent, stands beside an urban gain of 4.7 ; in 'New Bruns-
wick, a loss of 6.7 beside a gain of 36.7 ; in !N^ova Scotia,
a loss of 11 per cent, beside a gain of 40 ; and in Ontario,
a rural loss of 3.73 beside an urban gain of 12.49 ; while
through all Canada a rural increase of 53,375 is offset
by an urban increase of 484,701, or a gain of 1.01 per
cent, in rural by a gain of 31.53 in urban population.
But even yet we are scarcely prepared to find that in
New Brunswick there was an actual decline in rural

RURAL DEPLETION 31

population in 84 per cent of the census districts; in
Nova Scotia of 95 per cent. ; in Ontario, exclusive of
the immigration areas in newly opened territory in
Algoma, Muskoka and Nipissiug, of 98 per cent., and
in Prince Edward Island of 100 per cent. Let us pre-
sent a few outstanding examples of retrogi-ession cover-
ing longer periods, such as Durham East, with a total
population, including the town of Port Hope, of 19,064
in 1871, of 18,710 in 1881, of 17,053 in 1891, of
14,464 in 1901, and of 14,301 in 1911 ; Durham West,
including such a town as Bowmanville, with a total
population for those decades respectively of 18,316,
17,555, 15,374, 13,106, and 12,112; of Frontenac, as
formerly constituted — in all these comparative state-
ments we are careful to include strictly the same terri-
tory—with 16,310, 14,993, 13,445, 12,008, and 11,044 ;
or Lanark Xorth, though such a town as Almonte is
included, with 19,899, 19,855, 19,260, 18,180, and
15,456; or Lennox, 16,396, 16,314, 14,900, 13,421, and
12,023; Northumberland West, 17,328, 16,948, 14,947,
13,055, and 12,965; or finally, Perth South, with
22,715, 21,608, 19,400, 17,861, and 16,038. Did con-
siderations of space not forbid we should wish to add
detailed examples of retrogression in the case of town-
ships covering the same period, inasmuch as the per-
centage of loss would be much more striking; for ex-
ample, the township of Chinguacousy in the county of
Peel has this record — we go back ten years further —
in 1861, 6,897; 1871, 6,129; 1881, 5,467; 1891, 4,794;
1901, 4,177; and 1911, 3,913; a loss of 46 per cent, in
fifty years. An impressive array of similar histories
might be given. We close with one additional presenta-
tion of these momentous facts. The rural population

32 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

of Ontario in 1871 was 1,306,405. It is now 1,194,Y85.
There has been a loss in forty years of 111,620. Her
urban population was then 313,446. It is now
1,328,489. There has been a gain of 1,015,043. In all
eastern Canada there was in 1871 a rural population of
2,898,486. There is now 2,864,713, a loss in 40 years
of 23,773. There was then in all eastern Canada an
urban population of 680,296. There is now 2,599,228.
There has been an urban growth in forty years of
1,918,932.

In Quebec the problem assumes a special form. All of
the forces at work elsewhere are at work there also, with
^^^ an added one — racial dispossession. Originally all
of that great triangle of territory between the
United States border and the St. Lawrence River as
far down as Quebec was, save for a fringe of counties
along the St. Lawrence and of parishes along the
Richelieu, settled by English-speaking people. To-day,
through the action of a movement displacing and replac-
ing one people by another, this great region, containing
fifteen counties — one of the finest in all Canada — is
overwhelmingly French-speaking.

This is not the first time in history that civilization
has been confronted with a problem arising out of the
displacement of one people by another. In ancient
Britain it arose at the close of the first half of the fifth
century. For a century and a half the problem pressed.
Then it passed. It was not solved. It ceased. A race
was extinguished. When Hengist landed on Thanet
in 449 Roman culture stretched across Britain and
reached the farthest shores of Ireland. It was the vigor-
ous civilization which later made Ireland the chosen
home of letters and arts. When Llywarch sang the

RURAL DEPLETION 33

death-song of C^Tidyllaii he sang the dirge of a passing
people.

In one respect — that of race — we wish to draw a
parallel between this movement and that now going on
in Canada. The Saxon conquest was sheer disposses-
sion. The historian Green tells ns that " not a Briton
remained as subject or slave on English ground." There
was no massacre. But " field by field, forest by forest,
the land was won. As each bit of ground was torn
away by the stranger, the Briton sullenly withdrew,
only to turn and fight doggedly for the next." Else-
where, in Spain and Gaul, though these lands were also
conquered by Germanic peoples, there was no dispos-
session. Religion, social life, administrative order, re-
mained Roman. But in Britain the laws, the manners
and the faith which the Roman people had left behind
vanished before the Saxon. Just such a race movement
is going on in Canada in our time. Robert Sellar, in
his valuable monograph, " The Tragedy of Quebec,"
tells us that when he first went to Huntingdon, the
county, save for one municipality, was as solidly Eng-
lish-speaking in population as any county in Ontario,
but that he has witnessed the decline of the original peo-
ple to the point of being in a minority. The same change,
only in a more marked degree, has taken place in all the
counties east of the Richelieu. !Missisquoi, founded by
U. E. Loyalists, has ceased to be English-speaking.
Drummond, Wolfe. Shefford, may ])e said to be French-
speaking. The transformation has been going on with
startling rapidity during the past fifteen years. In 1891
there were eleven English-speaking counties in tlio Pro-
vince of Quebec. Now English-speaking people are in a
minority in every one. The writer is on familiar ground
3

34 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

in discussing this problem. In his boyhood there were
only two French-speaking families in the village of
Ormstown. A few years ago he attended a political
meeting there. Chairman and speakers were French.
A fragment of the time was given to an address in
English.

It is unfortunate that this matter has to be referred
to in terms of race, inasmuch as it is not racial in
essential character. There is absolutely no racial
barrier to prevent our French and English-speak-
ing peoples commingling. In the writer's mind one
French-Canadian, who was throughout his boyhood and
youth employed on his father's farm, stands as a type
of a splendid race. He had the physical hardihood that
enabled him to handle a logging-chain bare-handed in
the woods in winter, the mechanical aptitude which
made all his work artistic in finish, the bonhomie of
spirit which kept him ever genial and sprightly, and the
faithfulness of character which made every task, how-
ever remote from oversight, not eye-service, but good-
will. The respect and the affection with which the
French-Canadian is regarded by the British-Canadian
where he is intimately known is returned with recip-
rocal affection and respect. Witness Sir Wilfrid
Laurier's tribute to Mr. Murray, his host in school days
while he gained his rare mastery of the English tongue.
Yet we have a race-movement in Canada planned with
consummate skill and carried out with tenacity of pur-
pose, affecting the population of wide extents of terri-
tory.

The problem given us by this race-movement is not
simply one of ministering to the weakened remnant;
not, for example, how to care for the 12,000 children

KUKAL DEPLETION 35

of scattered English-speaking parents attending the
French schools. It is rather how to stem the move-
ment itself and hold our two races as one associated
people. Quebec, apart from any question of popula-
tion, holds the future of the Dominion in her hands.
Bj the incorporation of Ungava she is rendered per-
manently our premier Province in extent. She is our
greatest in resources. That province is the coming in-
dustrial centre of this continent. Of Canada's water-
power, estimated at twenty-six million horse-power,
Quebec is reported to possess seventeen million.* A
mutual understanding and collaboration is needed for
the efficient development of material resources of such
magnitude, as well as for the political and social well-
being of our common country.

Shall we not all be oxe race, shaping and wielding the nation?
la not our country too broad for the schisms which shake
petty lands?
Yea, we shall join in our might, and keep sacred our firm fed-
eration,
Shoulder to shoulder arrayed, hearts open to hearts, hands
to hands! t

Nor is the problem confined to Quebec. In old Glen-
garry, known to fame, the majority of the population is
French-speaking. Father Ix' Pel, speaking at the Parle
FranQais Congress in Quebec in Jime last, is reported
in the press as having stated that there are now 250,000
French-sj)f'akiii£r p<'ople in Ontario, and that there are

• .Mr. R. K. Younx, Suporintcndtnt of Dominion Ruilway
Lands, In tf;rHtimoiiy before the Forests, Waterways and Water-
powers CommlsHion. Press report.

t Barry Stratlon. " 85."

>l,

36 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

>

over 50;,000 children taught in French in the bilingual
and the purely French schools of the Province. Mr.
Frank Yeigh, the well-known publicist, informs us in
" Facts about Canada " that they have the preponderant
vote in fifteen counties; Father Le Bel claims that in
twenty-two their vote is the decisive factor. Mr Yeigh
estimates that by the end of this century they will num-
ber six millions in Ontario. Here in these beautiful
Muskoka groves — if the present tendencies remain un-
checked— before two generations shall have passed,
French, save on the lips of tourists, will be the only
language heard. In ISTew Brunswick the French popu-
lation now numbers 90,000, or more than one-fourth of
the po'pulation. In Prince Edward Island, while the
total popvilation decreased by nine and a half thousand,
the French people increased by over four thousand.
This problem, then, is not a Quebec problem, but Cana-
dian. It is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, be-
fore any English-speaking nation to-day.

The first and fundamental dimension of the problem
is physical — the numerical diminution of the popula-
lon. But the rural loss is not only quantitative ; it is
qualitative as well. The second dimension is social,
and is measured by the strain on all social institutions
and relations. \ Farm homes in Canada are farther apart
than anywhere' else in the worl;g[. Leaving out of consi-
deration such districts as Algoma West, with 1.29 to the
square mile, and Algoma East, with 0.91, we have in
Ontario counties such as Lennox and Addington, 14.4 ;
South Renfrew, 14.1; ISTorth Lanark, 13.9; Frontenac,
13.1; Peterborough, 13.2; Victoria, 9.22. In all these
cases the towns are included. The rural population of
the United States is 15 to the square mile, and even

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RUEAL DEPLETION 37

Russia, whose people, moreover, live iu hamlets rather
than on farmsteads, has 10. Yet in Nova Scotia, Anna-
polis, including the towns has only 14.04 ; Shelburne
and Queen's, 11.97; and Guysborough, 10.29; and New
Brunswick as a Province, including her cities, has but
12.61 to the square mile.

How serious, therefore, is our situation when we find
that under the first count in the social strain — the aban- ,
doaed home — in Ontario, Lennox and Addington have
366 fewer dwelling houses than ten years ago, a loss of
6.9 per cent. ; East Huron 310 less, a loss of 7.5 per
cent. ; North Lanark had 265 of its dwellings, or 7.7
per cent., go out of use in the decade; and Lambton
East 491, or 8.3 per cent. ; while in Grenville 352, or
9.17 per cent, became unoccupied — the largest loss, for
a county, in the Province. But here again the county
does not present the real facts; in towns the dwellings
are increasing in number. The townships form the
real test. Here are some of the outstanding instances.
The historic township of East Zorra in Oxford County
closed 13.0 per cent, of its homes; in Hastings, Madoc
lost 13.7; Ashfield, in Huron, allowed 15 per cent, to
fall into desuetude; in Grey, Egremont has 15.1 aban-
doned homes, and Glenelg, 16.2; Edwardsburg has 17
per cent.; Darling, in Lanark, 17.3; Cavan, in Dur-
ham, 18.8; Glenelg, also in Grey, 19.8 per cent. Were
there space we might specify as well Arran, Cnlross,
Huron, Wawanosh, Camden, Rochester, Greenock, Au-
gusta, Brant, Tuscarora, Kinloss, Bruce, Haldiniaiul,
and Abinger, with empty fannhouses ranging from 10
to 20 per cent. But all of these are quite outclassed by
Ijarric. in Frontenac, with 25.4 of its dwellings aban-
doned in the decade; Morris, in Huron, wilh 25.5;

38 KURAL LIFE m CA:N"ADA

Keppel, in Grey, 27.1Y, and Sarawak, in Grey, 45.8
per cent. The loss is as widespread in the Maritime
Provinces as in Ontario. In New Brunswick, Hamp-
ton lost 36 per cent, of its homes, Hillsborough 39,
Sussex 46, St. Francis 49, and Madawaska 58 per cent.
ISTot poetic sentiment only but stern fact in fancy drest
is given us in the lines :

Memory gleams like a gem at night

Through the gloom of to-day to me,
Bringing dreams of a childhood bright
At Chateauguay.

Stands a house by the river side,

Weeds upspring where the hearth should be,
Only its tottering walls abide.
At Chateauguay.*

But the abandoned dwelling is a lesser social evil than
the weakened household. While engaged in pastoral
visiting lately, a parishioner spoke to me of the number
of houses in his neighborhood from which a multitude
once went with him to the house of God to keep holyday.
But the pathos of the situation was seen in this, that
he himself was living in his well-found house alone.
From Edwardsburg we lost in the decade one-
eleventh of our families, but one-fifth of our popu-
lation. The families which remain are depleted
households in the midst of a depleted countryside.
From the families which are still with us in Gren-
ville there have gone away 1,303 persons. This
does not mean that simply the redundant members
of the household leave. It means that in many
cases parents are left to carry on the farm alone. Let

* Arthur Weir, " Fleur de Lys."

RURAL DEPLETION 39

Greuville stand as our single and sufficient illustration.
In 1901 the average number of persons per family in
city and country throughout Canada was 5.16. In
Gronville it was then 4.42. By 1911 the average for
Canada in city and country had fallen to 4.84. But in
Grenville it had fallen to 4.07. Family life that aver-
ages only four persons to a household throughout a com-
munity of over seventeen thousand persons can suffer
little further diminution and continue.

The third line of social strain is seen in the relative
numbers of the sexes in rural Canada. One of the most
startling surprises given by the recent census was found
in the lessened proportion of women in our country
homes. The girls are even more dissatisfied with farm
life than are the boys, and are leaving in larger num-
bers.

The general rule of population the world over is that
females outnumber males. The usual proportion is
about 105 to 100 at birth, and about 107 to 100 in adult
life. This rule holds good of our urban population. In
only 45 out of the 250 cities, towns and villages of older
Ontario do males exceed females. But in our rural
population this universal rule of human life is reversed,
and the reversal is so general as to be astounding. In
only 40 of the 920 townships and other rural divisions —
exclusive of Indian reserves — enumerated by the census
in all Ontario do females outnumber males.

lyct us take the county of Middlesex as an illustration.
In the North Riding there are six townships. In every
case males exceed females, and the total excess is 473.
The rifliner contains also one town, Parkhill, and two
villages, Ailsa (Jraig and Lucan. In all, women surpass
men in number, the whole surplus being 188. East

40 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

Middlesex is purely rural, consisting of the four fine
townships of London, Dorchester, Missouri, and West-
minster. In each the male population predominates,
the aggregate predominance being 518. The west rid-
ing embraces five townships; in every one more men
than women are found, the plurality throughout the five
being 469. In its town and villages, Strathroy, Glen-
coe, Newbury and Wardsville, men are everywhere in
a minority, its total being 355. There is one city within
the bounds of the county, London, with an excess of
females over males of 2,498. In the townships of Mid-
dlesex there are 107 men to 100 women. In the city,
towns and villages of Middlesex there are 112 women
to 100 men. There is only one county in Ontario, this
one of Grenville, in which females exceed males in the
purely rural population.

" The excess of females over males in the urban popu-
lation of Ontario is 10,865. The excess of males over
/ females in the rural population of Ontario is 85,940.
In the cities, towns and villages, taken by themselves,
there are 102 women to 100 men. In town and country
taken together there are 106 men to 100 women. In
the country alone there are 116 men to 100 women.

This anomaly holds true, not of Ontario only, but of
all rural Canada. In New Brunswick males outnumber
females in every census district except the city of St.
•John. There women outrank men by 2,013. In the
rest of the Province men outrank women by 7,845. In
Nova Scotia in every district outside of Halifax save
two there is an excess of females. The overplus for the
province is 9,700.

Have all of our women the vagrant heart ? We know

KUEAL DEPLETION 41

that they have not. Then why so many fleeing from the
country ?

Ah, to be a woman! to be left to pique and pine,

When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of

mine.
Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be Btill?
There! the last leaves of the beech-tree go dancing down the

hill.
All the boats at anchor they are plunging to be free —
Oh! to be a sailor, and away across the sea!
O bird that fights the heavens, and is blown beyond the shore.
Would you leave your flight and danger for a cage, to fight

no more?
No more the cold of winter, or the hunger of the snow.
Nor the winds that blow you backward from the path you

wish to go?
Would you leave your world of passion for a home that knows

no riot?
Would I change my vagrant longings for a heart more full of

quiet?
No — for all its dangers, there is joy in danger, too;
On, bird, and fight your tempests, and this nomad heart with

youl*

But where there is not the vagrant spirit, what impels
our girls to leave ?

A Xourth form of social strain ought perhaps to be
discussed. It is said that leaders are leaving the
country. Those who are drawn away include many of
the ablest and most progressive. There are, however,
higher qualities than ability and energy. I have known
of more than one case where young men, and of still
more cases where young women, remained on the farm

• Dora SiRtTHon Shorter. " A Vagrant Heart."

42 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

througli a sense of duty to others. Efficient help is
given in the solution of more than one direct problem
bj actions such as this. Dutv is the source of energy.
The drain meanwhile is real. Our question is only
as to the validity of the principle. I visited recently a
farm home in the county of Dundas. My host, after
having — according to the farmer's manner — shown me
something of his barns, brought me to his office. It was
furnished with roll-top desk, desk telephone, safe, and
reference library. Everything about home and farm
was in keeping therewith. Yet the household consisted
of husband and wife, hired woman and hired man. But
there were three sons and two daughters in the city. The
eldest son is a graduate — with honors in mathematics —
of Toronto University, and has passed the examinations
of the Institute of Actuaries of Great Britain. The
other sons are graduates in Medicine and in Science of
McGill University. The eldest daughter is a graduate
of the Conservatory of Music at Toronto. The children
will not consent to the sale of the farm. It is still the
home of their pride, the scene of their happy vacations
and reunions. Such cases are not uncommon. But does
it follow that the country must deteriorate ? Can we
afford to obey the mandate:

Go, bind your sons to exile,
Send forth the best ye breed.

That depends solely on the spirit of those who remain.
If part go that they may achieve something worth while,
their very going proves a spur to all who take pride in
their success. For centuries the achievements of Scot-
land's sons abroad were the very pulse of life to her sons
at home. But when hopelessness or dissatisfaction is

RURAL DEPLETION 43

the cause of the exodus, blight comes, not because of the
exodus, b\it of abiding conditions. The country can
obey the maxim, " Send forth the best ye breed," pro-
vided that she "' take up the White Man's burden '' ;
can " bind her sons to exile " if it be " to serve another's
need." That call '* comes now, to search your man-
hood," not to impair it. What is needed is intense life
— not labor, but life — upon the farm itself, so that the
country shall not become the b^nvay. The highway
must lie free for all through city and country alike.

This is the law of the highways,

This is their gospel made plain,
Let the laggards keep to the byways,

And the weak and the halt remain,
Where the hurrying tides shall heed not,

And the eyes of the world shall not see.
The weaklings of life that we need not.

In these paths where the strong must go free.

Age decrepit, and youth

Streaked with age ere its prime.
The crafty side-trackers of truth,

The thriftless consumers of time,
Mere shadow-shapes of man,

And woman worn to a shade,
These do the highways ban,

And with iron brows upbraid.

This Is the law of the highways.

This Is their gospel writ wide,
Let the souls that are formed for the byways

Keep clear of our strenuous tide.
For patience we have not. nor space,

For the weak, or the halt, or the blind,
For the aged that cannot keej) i)ace,

Nor the eyes that are looking behind.*

• J. C. M. Duncan, In Thr Witntaa, Montreal.

44 EUKAL LIFE m CANADA

This is the law of the country and has been. ]S"ot
hers " the thriftless consumers of time." The virile
country not only can " bind her sons to exile to serve
another's need " ; she " dare not stoop to less." And if
for the hour despondent, she is true at the heart to her
past.

The third count in our problem amounts to the ques-
tion : Is there a moral strain being placed upon rural life
by our present situation ? In this field it is more diffi-
cult to glean representative facts and present them
fairly. No statistics are available on this aspect of the
problem. Dr. W. L. Anderson, in his able volume deal-
ing with our problem, writes : " Our argument rests
upon the favorable showing of the country as a whole
compared with the city as a whole. As tested by the
symptoms of degeneracy, the country is in as healthful
a state as the city ; where the advantages and wholesome
influences of civilization are massed; where education
is at its best ; where eloquence finds its opportunity and
art gathers its treasures; where wealth gathers all re-
sources and taste has every gratification ; where churches
are powerful and every social institution co-operates in
the exaltation of human life. That the country is not
distanced by the city in social and moral development
almost exceeds belief ; or, to use the terms in which we
began, the line of averages is at a surprising height in
the country."* The question is, however, not one of
comparative values in city and country, but of what
tendencies are at work in the country.

Country life of late has made one marked advance.
It has socialized, and to a large extent solved, the drink

* W. L. Anderson, " The Country Town," p. 111.

RURAL DEPLETION 45

problem. It has taken hold of this evil as a community
question and has therefore crowned its efforts with suc-
cess. It has not only socialized the reform, but to some
degree standardized it as well. The country newspaper
has to a very large extent barred out the liquor ad-
vertisement. And to this standard the urban press must
come.

I might add that the country has made marked ad-
vance in regard to general practice concerning the use
of tobacco. Last autumn seventeen farmers, chiefly
young men, gathered at the home of one of my church
managers on silo-filling day. Of the seventeen not one
used tobacco in any form.

Business integrity, in so far as tested by the older
ethical standards, is high in the country. But it is not
yet so in regard to the newer ethical imperatives. A
daughter of the manse and a daughter of the farm were
discussing some finer branch of cooking. " But wc use
cream, not milk," said the daughter of the farm. " Oh,"
was the response, " do you keep the milk of a cow at
home just for that ?" " Pshaw, no," came the answer,
" we take a dipper or two from the factory can." This
is suggestive of much that is lacking bearing upon the
ethics of co-operation in the country.

In other fields having to do with graver moral evils
I offer no attempt at generalization. But let me give
single instances of actualities in several moral realms.
Xear a certain hainlot which shall be nameless a farmer
sent his wife int(» the field l<j drive the team with the
harrows. When, wearied. sh(* sat down to rest, he rent
a splinter from a fence rail and beat her. l>y night men
forced his door, dragged him from hiding, rode him
upon a fence rail, and informed him that if he beat his

46 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

wife again treatment more drastic would be meted out
to him. Here two grave crimes meet : wife-beating and
lyncb-law. What is the bearing upon our problem ? A
farmer of Canadian stock had sold and left that farm ;
he had been replaced by an immigrant of a stock mor-
ally lower than our Canadian farmers, among whom
wife-beating is unknown.

In the home of another young man in that hamlet
two women were frequently left alone — his wife and
another. The public noticed with disapproval the occa-
sional coming of some men of leisure from a neighbor-
ing city, the nation's capital. One night, while one of
these was present, the men of the place turned out and
gave the house a " charivari," staining its walls with
broken eggs, and withdrew. Soon afterwards the prem-
ises were sold, and the household went away into obli-
vion. Again the bearing upon our problem is this : The
young husband, finding little occupation at his trade in
the neighborhood, sought employment away from home
in the town. '

Again, the township of Edwardsburg has, like all
other Ontario townships, been almost unstained by the
crime of murder. Yet we had one sad case in recent
years. A man who had purchased a farm raised his
hand against the man from whom he had bought it.
The verdict of the jury, with the full assent of the
Attorney-General, was " Insanity " ; and, what is more,
the verdict of our people, a community of whom the
great majority would never condone crime even to save
one of their number from death, unanimously acquiesced
in the verdict. But who was he who was thus acquitted
of responsibility for his deed? The trend citywards
had called away a son from that home to the city, for

EURAL DEPLETION 47

whose life he was unfitted ; and the father, to bring him
back from the city, made over to him the homestead, and
purchasing elsewhere for himself that he might begin
anew, had broken down under the strain.

For an illustration from another field of moral evil
we shall go bejond our own borders. Mr. P. V. Collins,
editor of the Northwestern Agriculturalist, of Minne-
apolis, advertised for a stenographer of the highest
ability. From among the applications received he
selected one from a young woman apparently of such
qualifications as he desired. But when she came to his
office he discovered that she had only a public school
education and a rudimentary knowledge of short-
hand. "When a.sked why she had copied out the
application she replied,''! did not write that; the
principal of the academy which gave me my diploma
sent it." Investigation brought out the facts that
there was a bogus college selling diplomas through-
out the country to anyone who had been for a term at a
business school ; and then sending coimtry girls to posi-
tions which they could not possibly fill, notifying those
in charge of the traffic in immorality of the stranding
of the girls in the city. This particular one met with a
phihmthropist and friend, but there are other cases.
The longing to escape from country to town is being
taken advantage of by designing men to lure girls to
their ruin.

liut the chief factor in the moral strain is not found
in the direct evil results or the moral pitfalls incident to
the situation, but in the fact that moral cnthusiasuis are"
lacking in the country owing to tlu- present trend. No
high incentive takes men away; im lofty passion abides
with those who remain. Where people are discontent

48 KUKAL LIFE m CANADA

with their lot and seek to escape it, with no fine aspira-
tion leading them to any other walk in life, there is an
absence of the moral incentives which made rural mor-
ality so splendid a thing in the past.

There is the best of testimony to the existence of the
moral strain. Professor Giddings writes : " Degenera-
tion manifests itself in the protean forms of suicide, in-
sanity, crime and vice which abound in the highest
civilization where the tension of life is extreme, and in
those places from which civilization has ebbed away,
leaving a discouraged remnant to struggle against de-
teriorating conditions. . . . Like insanity, crime
occurs most frequently in densely populated towns on
the one hand, and on the other in partly deserted rural
districts.""* Dr. H. B. MacCauley, Secretary of the
Eastern Division of the Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in America, says : " In my district of thirteen
States I have an opportunity of seeing the condition of
things in the country in a way that is very broad ; and I
am prepared to say that if there is a place anywhere
that needs the remedy which Jesus Christ alone can
give, that place is in the country."f

In the connection that obtains between the church and
our problem there is a two-fold reference: the bearing
of the situation upon the church, and the relation of the
church to the problem.

The bearing of the situation upon the church is mani-
fest. The church is sensitively sympathetic to every
vital experience of the community. The immediate re-
sult of depopulation is the loss of numbers to the church.
This has not as yet been proportionate to the decline in

*F. H. Giddings, "Principles of Sociology," p. 348.

t " The Rural Church and Community Betterment," p. 38.

RURAL DEPLETION 49

population. The church is holding her own better than
other institutions in the country. But a glance shows
the inevitable trend. That trend is common to all de-
nominations. Surveys of rural conditions made re-
cently in the United States show conclusively that the
increase or the decrease of the churches is a communal
experience. Where one suffers all suffer with it. In-
vestigation would doubtless show the same to be the case
in Canada. But let us look at representative facts as
found in the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

When we open the Blue-book the first congregation
found on the official list in the Statistical Tables is
Boularderie, in Svdnev Presbyrerv. Let us look over
its record for a decade. Its households numbered in
1902, 290; in 1903, 274; in 1904, 270; in 1905 the
pastorate was vacant and no returns are given ; in 1906,
250; 1907, 249; 1908, 246; 1909, 246; 1910, 231;
1911, 161. The severe loss in the last year is doubtless
due in some way to the extension of the plant of the
Steel and Coal Company at Sydney ; the steady decline
for the decade reflects general conditions. This con-
gregation was taken simply because it stood first upon
the list. Let us take a larger unit, a Presbytery, by
selection as a representative one. Lanark and Renfrew
may fairly be called such. It lies in a fertile and pro-
gressive district. It has an excellent record in church
activities. Its congregations are strong, the sclf-suj)-
porting ones averaging 130 households to the pastoral
diargf. The average stipend or salary of its rural min-
isters is above $1,000. It appears to incrcjisc. It <nii-
tained 3,362 households in UHiI and 3,763 in 1011. an
increase of 40] fttr the decade. Let us see Imw this in-
crease is accounted for. Six mission fields have been
4

50 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

founded in new districts, with an aggregate of 188 fami-
lies. The increase of the Presbytery as it existed in
1901 is but 213 households. There were at that time —
including missions — 33 charges. Of these two now
number just what they did in 1901 ; 13 show an in-
crease— of these two only are purely rural; 18 show a
decrease. But the increase in the congregations in the
towns of Arnprior, Renfrew and Smith's Falls is 284
families. There is therefore a loss throughout the rest
of the Presbytery, including the towns of Almonte,
Carleton Place, Pembroke and Perth, of 71 households ;
while the falling off in the 18 congregations actually
losing amounts to 215. The facts underlying
the total figures when analyzed in this Presbytery
would be found typical elsewhere. But let us take a
wider unit still. The three central Synods increased in
each case steadily from 1901 to 1909 in the number of
families. Then there comes an ominous change in all
three cases. The Synod of Montreal and Ottawa had
in 1909, 21,720 households. In 1910 it had 21,276, a
decline of 444. Toronto and Kingston in the former
year had 42,507, in the latter 42,176, a decrease of 331.
Hamilton and London in 1909 numbered 28,243; in
1910, 28,037, a falling off of 206. The latter recovers
in 1911 to 28,784; Montreal and Ottawa recovers to
21,637, but is still short of the mark of two years be-
fore; Toronto and Kingston had still further fallen to
40,986, an added loss of 1,521 households. We ma^^
perhaps realize the trend most vividly by noticing that
six Presbyteries suffered loss in the total number of
households in the decade, namely Kingston, Lindsay,
Barrie, Saugeen, Stratford, and Bruce, with an aggre-
gate decline of 963 families; while the Presbyteries of

PRESHYTKIUAN CIIIK.H. SI 'KXCi;! : \ 1 1 .l.i:.
A vilUiKf- cuthediul. I.iilll in h.-ihr .lavs.

RURAL DEPLETION 51

Hamilton, Montreal, and Toronto, though each, while
largely urban, includes a rural section, increased re-
spectively by 1,780, 2,086, and 4,768 households. In
each case the gain was considerably more than half of
the total gain in the whole corresponding synod for the
decade.

Rural churches are not and cannot be filled with
worshippers as they once were. The Presbyterian
Church in Spencerville, a village cathedral built in bet-
ter days, never puts its spacious gallery to use. The
most easterly church in the Presbytery of Glengarry, in
Ontario, and the most westerly one in the Presbytery of
Montreal, in Quebec, are examples of churches whose
auditoriums have been cut down in size since they were
first built. Churches here and there are closed. Within
six miles of Spencerville are two churches whose con-
gregations dwindled until they disappeared. No statis-
tics are available upon this aspect of the problem in
Canada. But in the United States, where the strain
upon the churches has proved much more severe than in
Canada, accurate surveys show the situation. The Ohio
Rural Life Survey of 1912, for instance, reveals 800
abandoned churches in that State. In no county in the
State are one-half of the congregations holding their
own. In several counties not 10 per cent, are growing.
In 10 counties, with a total of 394: congregations, not
one-twentieth of the number had resident ministers.
The ministers live in towns and go to the country to
preach. Ninety-six townships in these ten counties,
comprising nearly 4,000 square miles, are without a
re.sident minister in the cftuntry districts.

Other bearings of the situation upon the church in
addition to this fundamental one might be discussed;

52 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

we confine ourselves to the falling off in students for the
ministry. This is forcibly presented for one branch of
the church by Professor Kilpatrick in his Introduction
to Mr. Mott's volume, " The Future Leadership of the
Church." " The Blue-book for 1908 presents facts
worthy of careful consideration. In 1875 the church
possessed 139 students ; in 1907 this number had risen
to 194, a gain of 55. In 1875 the church possessed 706
charges; in 1907 this number had risen to 1,984, a gain
of 1,278. If it required 139 students to supply the
needs of a church of 706 congregations, surely 194 are
far too few to supply the needs of a church of 1,984 con-
gregations. Again, compare 1907 with 1902. In 1902
the church possessed 230 students and 997 congrega-
tions. In 1907 the number of congregations had in-
creased by 987, while the number of students had de-
creased by 36." The cause of this decline is found in
the rural situation. Over 90 per cent, of our students
have been drawn from the country. The increasitng dis-
content and unrest, the lessening of optimism and altru-
ism, have affected adversely the country's richest pro-
duct, the heralds of the Cross.

Of more importance is the church's relation to the
problem. The church is a means, not an end. The
question is not one of maintaining her numbers and
recruiting her ranks. It is one of the efficacy of her
service to the country in its need. There was a time
when the chancelleries of Europe were hard pressed to
provide revenue for their governments. Then the
science of political economy had its birth. The chan-
celleries found that the best way to secure revenue was
by making their people prosperous. There was a period
when for ages the Christian Church thought the end of

RURAL DEPLETION 53

her existence was the perfection of her own organism,
and the cathedrals of Europe form the magnificent
monument of the ideal and of its failure. The purpose
of our enquiry is not in the slightest degree, How can
the Church save herself amid the country's peril ^ Tt
is, How can she make rural life a happier and nobler
life, how she can meet the unmet needs of Canada,
until

From Nova Scotia's misty coast to far Columbia's shore
She wakes — a band of scattered homes and wilderness no more,
But a strong nation, with her life full-beating in her breast,
A noble future in her eyes — the Britain of the West.

Hers be the noble task to fill the yet untrodden plains

With fruitful, many-sided life that courses through her veins;

The earnest quest of noble ends, — the generous heart of

youth, —
The stamp of true nobility, high honor, stainless truth;

The love of country soaring far above dull party strife.
The love of learning, art, and song — the crowning grace of life;
The love of science searching far through nature's hidden
ways ;

The love and fear of nature's God — a nation's highest praise;
The English honor, nerve, and pluck, — the Scotsman's love of

right,—
The grace and courtesy of France, — the Irish fancy bright, —
The Saxon's faithful love of home and home's affections blest;
And, chief of all, our holy faith — of all our treasures best!*

• Agnes Maulc Machar, " Dominion Day."

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF
DEPLETION

The City Enoch! Here were sown and grew
The seeds of Art when art and life were long;
Here Lamech turned his misery to song.

Here Jubal labored, seeking conquests new;

Here man's soft hand made brass and iron yield
To cunning shapes and uses, — ^wondrous skill!
Tearing earth's iron heart with iron will

To see what secrets in it lay concealed;

And here, O Music, like a dream of heaven
Thy subtle thrill did touch the wearied brain
With raptured, passionate longing to regain

The bliss of having nought to be forgiven!

Let me in fancy see thee rise again,

O City of the Wanderer, ever sought!

City of that wise Jubal who first taught
The harp and organ to the sons of men;

That I may learn the secret of his might,
Who, leaving earth unto his brother's care,
Did winning battle with the powers of air,

And made them his and mine by victor's right!

— John Reade.

CHAPTER IL
Economic Causes of Depletion.

Our survey of the rural problem thus far lias been an
essay in social description. The science of Sociology
would bid us now proceed wdth social interpretation in
order to advance later to social construction.

The decrease in rural population is not due to the
departure from the country of farmers alone. The
decline of two other classes contribute to the general
result. First the village crafts decayed, and now village
commerce is waning.

A village forty years ago was industrially a better
place than now. Each hamlet had its corps of trained
and skilled workmen with sturdily independent homes,
making the rich contribution to community life that
skilled craftsmen bring. The essential industries were
everywhere represented. The village had a fairly self-
sufficing economic life. Spencerville fourteen years ago
supported two tailors. My acquaintance with the
locality is just sufficiently long-standing to have seen
this handicraft disappear. Other tradesmen have gone
since then, the shoemaker being the last to leave —
within the present year. The flour-mill also has re-
cently been dismantled of its machinery, and convertec^
into a feed-supply depot for the produce of distant mill-
ing companies. My memory of the village where boy-
hood's years were spent, Ormstown, situated amidst the

57

58 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

rich farm lands of the Chateauguay Valley in Quebec,
goes vividly back to the year 1869. A shy and visionary
boy, I watched the tradesmen at their work while other
schoolboys strove upon the playground. In that year
the ashery, unused for years, was dismantled — the
scene of an earlier, already vanished industry. In
the sawmill work was being urged with pressing haste.
Night shifts were often employed. At the grist mill
farmers contested for precedence as they brought great
loads of fine-hulled white oats to be kiln-dried and
ground into round Scotch oatmeal, with sleighloads of
which they then drove to distant Montreal to market.
This mill was a few years later enlarged to meet the in-
creasing local demand for its output of flour. Near the
centre of the village stood the tannery, one of our
largest buildings. All manipulations, from flesher to
currier, were by hand; and from the bark-mill in the
broad shed to the harness-shop in the upper storey the
establishment was a scene of busy industry. The portly
tanner who then initiated his boy follower into the
mysteries of bark-pit and ooze I learned in later years
to know as an excellent Shakespearean scholar. Near-
by was the principal cabinet-maker's shop. A sweep
horsepower in the basement drove the turning-lathe at
which bed-posts and spindles were fashioned. At the
side benches apprentice and journeymen worked, while
at the front bench the proprietor — a village philan-
thropist and the patriarch of the temperance forces of
the Province — wrought in walnut or bird's-eye maple
the bridal suites of furniture for the community. The
six wood-working shops of the village were each dis-
tinctive in character. At the oldest of the house-car-

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 59

penter shops the coffins for the dead of the coimtryside
were also made, each as sad occasion called. And into
the making of each went a loving sympathy unknown in
an age of machine-made products. As if it were yester-
day there comes back the sense of the mystery of death
and of fellow-feeling with bereavement which workman
and little boy by his side, permitted to hold and pass the
silvered nails, alike felt as the work went on in reverent
silence. Another of the local carpenters was then build-
ing the spacious village church, portrayed at page 195
of this volume, producing every panel and moulding on
the spot and by hand, save as a treadmill horse-power,
set up temporarily on the premises, lent its aid. From
the homes of each of these builders a youth afterwards
entered the ministry. Another of our carpenters special-
ized in the exact work of the millwright, and showed him-
self in various ways a self-taught mathematical genius.
In my university days I discovered that he, who had
never seen a copy of Euclid, had, Pascal-like, wrought
out at his bench many of the problems of Euclid. At
the wheelwright shops all vehicles for pleasure-driving
as well as for farm use were built. I can recall seeing
farmers drive in with loads of split hickory bolts for
spokes and rock-elm blocks for hubs, though already the
machine-made spoke and hub were competing for favor.
The ironwork on these vehicles was no assemblage of
machine-madf parts, but the product of genuine crafts-
manship, elaborate and ornate. All the smiths of the
neighlxjrhood were master craftsmen. One, at Dewitt-
ville near by, specialized in forging steel, and for this
service burned his own charcoal pits. As a lad of seven
or eight I took delight in watching the neat conical piles

60 EURAL LIFE IN CA:N^ADA

of wood carefully laid, and seeing the strange gases ooze
through the covering of clay, while creosote condensed
and dripped from the inserted gun-barrel. How differ-
ent the amount of labor bestowed on such products then
and now ! As we detrained at Longford to come over
here to Geneva Park a day or two ago we passed one of
the Canada Chemical Company's extensive plants,
where by the carload wood is run, car and all, into the
retort, and the car comes out at length with a load of
charcoal upon it ready for shipment. Now, too, the dis-
tillates, formerly wasted, pay for both material and
process, and the once costly charcoal is a clear-gain by-
product.

In the open country on the other side of the village by
the Chateauguay another smith — master alike of his
trade and the situation — forged the long iron-frame
plow, so heavy to turn at the furrow's end, but so light
of draft upon the team because of true lines of design
and fine workmanship. With that same long plow the
plowmen of the days of my boyhood turned furrows so
true in line and so clean in comb that a rifle bullet might
be fired from end to end of the field on those level
meadows without once rising above the crest of the fur-
row, yet without staining itself with touch of the clay.
Presently there came to the village the machine-shop
also, for local service, and for well-nigh a generation
the threshing-machines for the locality were of home
manufacture. Space forbids my describing other busy
shops — those of the tailors, the shoemakers, the sad-
dlers, and many another. In that small village of eight
hundred people there were then over thirty-five such
shop industries.

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ECOXOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 61

Tradesmen such as these have as a class ahnost dis-
appeared from our present-day industrial world. Their
going deprives the countryside of a variety of openings
in life for persons of different tastes, and confines the
choice of occupations to one, that of agriculture. ' It
has removed varied types of life from the comninnity,
reducing social groups to the monotony of a single class.
It has withdrawn an intelligent, capable, prosperous
and contented population from the country.
■ This loss is reflected in our literature:

This river of azure with many a weed in

Its pools is as fair as those famous of old;
Its wash Is the same as made blossoms in Eden,

And still it remembers their crimson and gold;
As lovely this valley with forests around it,

As vivid the evergreens shading the hill;
But manhood has gone from the cottage that crowned It,

And alders are growing at Atkinson's Mill.

The stream Is the same with Its tinting of azure.

Yet the old bridge Is moved from Its mooring of stone.
Departed are those who once made It a pleasure

To sail here, or skate when the summer had flown.
This pathway through cedar Is trampled no longer

By feet that went dally to school 'gainst their will;
The fraerrance of hope In the springtime was stronger

And sweeter than summer by Atkinson's Mill.*

One of the chief steps in this process proved a serious
blow to the prosperity of the Maritime Provinces — the
cessation of the ship-building industry when the sailing
vessel with wooden hull was replaced by the steel-built
steamer. Before that time Canada bad become fifth in
rank among the mercantile maritime nations, Britain,

* Andrew Ramsay.

62 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

apart from Canada, ranking first. Our poets then sang
with pride:

I see to every wind unfurled
The flag that bears the maple-wreath;

Thy swift keels furrow round the world,
Its blood-red folds beneath;

Thy swift keels cleave the farthest seas,
Thy white sails swell with alien gales ♦

and the building of these vessels gave our sea-board
cities economic and social wealth.

The cause of this loss lies in the genius of the modern
industrial world. The processes which have wrought
out this modern system destroyed an industrial order
which had been in building since the destruction of the
ancient Roman civilization. The characteristic mark
of this vanished order was household industry engaged
in local production for local use. The modern indus-
trial world brought in the factory system and world-
wide transportation, each of which owes its rise to the
invention of machinery and the discovery of power, and
by means of these has developed its characteristic and
epitome, the modern city.

The year 1769, an even century before the date of our
description of village crafts, marks an epoch in the
world's history. In that year Arkwright patented his
spinning frame and set up his first mill equipped there-
with, driven as yet by horse-power, but marking the be-
ginning of the factory system. In that year Watt
patented his steam engine, which alone could have ren-
dered the factory system effective. In the same decade,
another genius, James Brindley, gave to the world the

* Charles G. D. Roberts, " In Divers Tones."

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 63

modem canal systom. The means of communication
thus begun, augmented by the advent of the steamboat
in 1807, and the railroad in 1830, rendered possible the
massing of factories in great cities. New York ranked
ninth of the cities of the United States in 1820, with
but 9,000 people to Albany's 90,000, and was being still
further o\itclassed. Her true growth began with the
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, but her rapid ex-
pansion about 1839 with the advent of the modern
steamship. The Bessemer process, 1856, giving the
steel rail instead of the iron one, cut the cost of railway
haulage in half. Power transmission in 1891 rendered
possible a still greater concentration by placing fac-
tories, not at the place of the source of power, but at the
foci of transport and centres of trade. The average cost
of transport in 1800 was ten dollars per ton per hun-
dred miles. As I write a carload of mill-feed has just
come into Spcncerville from Brandon. The cost of
transport is four dollars per ton for one thousand five
hundred miles. For wheat and flour the cost was then
prohibitive at two hundred miles distance. Now they
can be profitably carried by rail and sea the semi-cir-
cumference of the earth.

Another concurrent change has had an equally great
effect in industrial organization. The incorporated
company was called into being by the need for larger
aggregations of capital ; the corpf)rat(i trust — of which
the Standard Oil Trust, originating in 1881, was tlic
prototype — was designed to eliminate the wastes of coin-
petition, but has been used to limit production, control
price.*?, and monopolize markets. Thus has arisen an
industrial economy which Bvndicates each form of pro-

64 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

duction over the area of a continent and seeks to incor-
porate the world.

The direct result of these changes has been that
articles in all lines of production are made more cheaply
in large factories with power machines than in the small
shops by hand labor. The demand for the latter, except
in some lines of artistic production, has ceased. The
master workman dismissed his journeyman and appren-
tices, and eventually betook himself with his household
to the city, to become factory operatives.

The final outcome has been an almost inconceivably
great increase in material production, together with a
general advance in conditions of living, but with lament-
able failure to reap the full advantage in human welfare
of the new conditions. The strain of toil has been light-
ened, hours of labor have been shortened, scarcity of the
necessities of life has largely ceased ; men are housed
and clad and fed with such comfort and plenty as our
forefathers never knew. But at every step of the pro-
cess the persons displaced have suffered hardship.
Wealth has increased enormously, but an undue share
of the reward has gone into the hands of the few. New
realms are made subject to our command, but in the pro-
cess the human element has been too much disregarded.
A system which gives us the automobile, but which also
gives us the rubber atrocities in Congo and Peru for the
sake of our automobile tires — and wrongs more wide-
spread if not so deadly here at home — demands control
in some way by the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ.

Yet the modern industrial system is not the cause,
but merely the occasion of such failure. It has furn-
ished some with a greater engine of oppression than
any had ever before possessed, only because it has

i

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 65

afforded to all a greater means of service than any ever
before known. In the material framework of the indus-
trial world we have the structural lines supplied us
upon which the finest spiritual development man has
as yet conceived of shall presently take place. " One
music, as before, but vaster," shall yet arise from the
modern world. The new is better than the old.

^loreover, the change is not only for the better, it
was also imperative. Malthus was entirely in the right
in asserting, from his standpoint amidst the economic
conditions of his time, that population was rapidly
pressing upon the limits of the means of subsistence.
Though the greater portion of the race was then engaged
in agriculture, food production was insufficient for
increa.se of population, whereas now greater abundance
for all is furnished by the moiety of the population
which still remains upon the land, and every prospect
..promises greater abimdance for yet larger population
for indefinite periods in the future.

The opening up of new lands under the old economic
conditions would not have bettered matters, inasmuch
as agricultural regions such as Saskatchewan now is
could not have become the base of support for more
densely populated distant regions apart from modern
means of transportation ; nor. indeed, coidd agricul-
tural regions such as these have come into being, for
their needed manufactured products could not have
\>oon transported to thcin. All expansion must have
U'cn cx[)aiiHion of the limifs of tlie eomuiunity organized
as it then was.

Not only so, Imt to Malthus's position wo must add
this — that population was pressing upon the limits of
manufacture as well as of food supply, for man liad
6

66 EUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

come to the limits of available power. It could, we are
persuaded, be shown from the records of the time that
the amount of power derived from the muscular energy
of the horse and the ox had begun to diminish in propor-
tionate quantity, and that derived from human muscles
to increase. And for this underlying cause, that the
power drawn from the labor of the horse and ox calls
for a greater extent of land surface for food supply
than does the same amount of power derived from the
muscles of men. This is the explanation of the use
of human labor in the heaviest tasks in China and
Japan. The tourist is shocked as he listens to the
forced respiration of the coolies while they haul carts
laden with builders' materials up the Bluff at Yoko-
hama; the philanthropist is stirred to indignation as
he sees the Chinaman carry, poised on the head cradle,
the heavy timbers of the Yunnan forests to their place
of use on the Great Plain. I have seen teams of a
thousand men, with intensest strain of the muscles,
spurred on by the crack of the lash, haul the heavy
hulls of junks up the inclined planes of mud which
form the locks of the Grand Canal of China. Such
human toil is due to the relative dearness of animal
labor amidst a dense population as its sole cause. This,
and not indifference to human suffering, this, and not
lack of inventiveness, lays such loads upon the coolies
of the Orient.

When the sedan chair was first used in England it
was a common remark that men were made to do the
work of beasts. The first letters patent for the keep
of sedan chairs for hire in London were granted in
order " to prevent the unnecessary use of coaches." As
England increased further in population she must have

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 67

called other men from her looms to become porters of
the webs woven ; she must have bidden her plowmen
become delvers of the soil. In China the mattock
replaces the plow, and the roller is drawn, not by horses
or oxen, but by men. To this pass Europe was coming,
was perilously near, when the power of steam came to
her rescue. The world had come to a pass where ad-
vance in civilization or regression towards savagery
were the only paths possible. There was no middle
way of stability. The new order came to relieve alike
the weaver at the loom and the husbandman at the
plow.

. The loss of village commerce is following that of the
village crafts. A quarter of a century ago the village
storekeeper was a prosperous man. He was not uncom-
monly the wealthiest man in the community. His
place of business served, in a way, as a social centre.
His family, and he himself, were helpers and leaders
in every social enterprise, including the church. Then
in 1876 John Wanamakcr organized the Departmental
Store and the ^lail Order System. He had earlier
become a disciple of Ruskin in holding that chaffering
had no legitimate place in trade, and that an absolutely
one-price system must prevail. Cheap and rapid tran-
sit made the mail-order system possible. The one-price
system and exact description in advertising, together
with large turnover and direct service, made it efficient.
Uetail trading has in consequence been revohitionized.
Wholesaling half a century ago was done over the
counter. The country trader travelled to the city to
place his orders. Then came the driimmer, the modem
" commercial man." As completely as wholesale trado
was thereby recast in new moulds, so fully is retailing

68 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

now being made over. We are in the last hours of the
older day. Here, again, as in the case of the village
crafts, the outcome has been an ultimate economic bene-
fit, but an immediate social loss. Severe distress is felt
by the class displaced. And the community loses one
more of its progressive elements.

But the decrease in rural population is chiefly due to
the removal from the country community of farmers'
households. What is the explanation of their removal ?

One factor in Eastern Canada was the opening up to
settlement of the rich wheat lands of Manitoba by the
building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885.
The beginning of marked depletion of population in
Ontario occurs in the following year, 1886. But another
and more universal factor had been already at work
for a generation, and was, just at that juncture, attain-
ing full force. For the art of farming also was revolu-
tionized by the introduction of machinery and of power.
True, it was as early as 1834 that McCormick invented
the reaper. But it was not until the Crystal Palace
Exhibition in London in 1861 — that revealer of so
many tendencies — that the utility of the reaper was
demonstrated. The year 1835 gave us the most primi-
tive form of the thresher, but in 1864 the first steam
thresher was used. In 1874 the binder came, but not
until 1886 did its usefulness begin, when its fingers
learned to knot twine instead of, as before, twisting
wire. That year, in which the marked exodus of
farmers from the Maritime Provinces and Ontario to
Manitoba began, may fairly be said to begin a new
period in agriculture. The year which brought in the
twine-binder brought also the gang-plow and the use of
steam power in plowing. In that year came also the

i

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 69

somewhat rapid adoption of the silo. Just before that
date the tirst cream separator to be used on this side of
the Atlantic had been set up in the Province of Quebec.
About the same period also began the widespread adop-
tion of the modern barn, with its trolley unloader and
its installation of a water system. The introduction of
improved tield machinery, the hay-loader, the potato-
digger, the manure-spreader; the employment of the
traction engine and the gasoline motor, has kept pace
with the remodelling of the barn. The outcome of
these changes is that one man, with modern equipment,
can accomplish the results achieved by many in the days
of hand labor. The Census Bureau of the United
States, in a report dealing with the census of 1890, pub-
lished a comparative table covering the nine principal
farm products in 1850, and showing that whereas
570,000,000 days' labor— that of 1,900,000 persons for
300 days — were required to produce them, the same
amount of the same staples in 1890 were accounted for
by 400,000 persons or 120,000,000 days' labor, slightly
over one-fifth requisite forty years before. The ratio
of change during the ensuing twenty years has doubtless
been accelerated rather than slackened. We would
probably be not far wrong in supposing that the effi-
ciency of labor, in the major operations at any rate, is
not far from seven times what it was two generations
ago.

But with the increasing use of machinery on the
farm has come, with almost eqtial pace, an increasing
demand for farm produce due to increase of city popu-
lation and to the more lavish consumption accompany-
ing increased wealth. The setting free from farm
labor of a certain nuuilMtr fcjllows the introduction of

70 EUKAL LIFE IN CAl^ADA

machinery as a matter of course. But why has there
not also come fuller satisfaction with farm conditions ?
Why have we not, while the city grows, at least a stable
farm population, with greatly enlarged production per
capita, with increasing rural wealth, together with
decreasing prices of farm produce, and with greatly
enhanced leisure for better living on the farm ?

The world's markets are not glutted with farm goods ;
the reverse is the case. Prices of farm products have
not decreased, but have risen greatly. The steady, gen-
eral upward trend of all prices is ultimately due to the
cheapening of the standard of value — gold. But the
proportionate increase in price of one great class of
products above another is due to subsidiary causes. The
incidence of higher prices upon those with fixed earn-
ings is so severe as to constitute the greatest economic
difficulty of our time.

Now, amidst all the increase in the cost of living,
that due to enhanced prices of commodities from the
farm stands easily first. In the year 1897, when the
cost of living was at the lowest point reached for a
generation, the index figure for all wholesale prices in
Canada stood at 92.2. But the average index figure
for all farm produce was still lower, namely, 86.7.
Two years later, when the average index figure for all
commodities throughout Canada stood almost exactly
at par, 100.1, the figure for all farm produce through-
out Canada had risen more rapidly and stood at 96.7.
In 1903 the general index figure for all products and
the index figure for all farm products had become
almost identical, 110.5 for the former, and 110.9 for
the latter. By 1907 the index figure for all commodi-
ties had mounted to 126.2, but that for agricultural com-

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 71

modities to 120,5. The suddeu drop in textiles in the
following year, from 126.1 in 1907 to 111.0 in 1908,
brought down the average index figure for all com-
modities for the year to 120.8, while the figure for
farm products had gone up to 131.1. In 1909, when
the general figure was 121.2, that for agricultural pro-
ductions had grown to 134.9. In 1910 the general
index number reached 124, but the farm index number
had soared to 136.9. In 1911 the figures had become
127.2 for all articles, and 139.4 for the farm's share.
But in the bulletin issued for the month of June, 1912,
when the cost of living throughout Canada, as indicated
by the index number for wholesale prices in general,
had reached the highest point since our records began
to be kept, the highest since our prices were driven
upward by the civil war in the United States, namely
136.9, the average index for all agricultural products
throughout Canada had soared to the incredible height
of 172.7. This is demonstrative evidence that the agri-
cultural base of modern life is with us in Canada insuf-
ficient. A greater production on the farm is iniporn-
tively demanded for the nation's sake.

Of equally absorbing interest is a detailed compari-
son of the factors in the cost of living due to the prices
of different classes of goods for the month named, June,
1912. The index figure for beef is an even 200; that
for poultry, 222; for all animals and meats, 178.9;
for all grains and fodders, 189.5; for all dairy pro-
duct.s — lowest among produce of the farm — 137.4; lor
all other foods, 185.3. l>ut the very highest of all
lines apart from farm products is just on :i Itvrl with
the lowest of these, the index figure for boots and shoes
being 137.9. That for all building materials comes

72 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

next, 131.5; for all textiles, 120.7; for drugs and
chemicals, 114.4; for housefiirnishings of all kinds,
112.8; for all metals and implements, 112.7; for all
fuel and lighting, 106.

That the agricultural base of supply in Canada is
becoming insufficient, and that a more general produc-
tion upon the farm is imperatively needed, is shown
also by the falling off in the supply of several staple
farm products. Canada in 1903 exported to Britain
over 34,000,000 pounds of butter. During the last
nine months of 1912 this export trade had entirely
ceased ; not a pound of butter was shipped to Britain.
On the contrary, Canada now imports butter from New
Zealand. During 1912 we imported in all 5,714,405
pounds, in value amounting to $1,511,654. Of eggs
Canada imported during the year, chiefly from the
United States, 11,007,345 dozen, paying for them
$2,327,924, and paying upon them in customs duties
$330,219. Of stall-fed cattle over 45,000 head were
shipped from Montreal to Britain in 1911, but less than
6,000 head in 1912. In 1881 there were 3,048,678
sheep upon the farms of Canada; in 1901, 2,510,239;
in 1911, 2,106,010. Were we to examine other smaller
lines of farm produce we should find the same rule hold-
ing good. For instance, we exported in 1912 $6,541
worth of beans, and imported $210,145 worth. Were
we to examine the output of each Province we should
find the same record. Ontario, for instance, had in
1912 106,000 fewer dairy cattle upon her farms than
in 1911. The receipts of fat cattle at the Toronto
stock yards fell off from 317,000 head in 1910 to
273,000 head in 1911. Corresponding facts might be
cited from every Province and in many fields of out-

ECOXOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 73

put. A fuller production upou the farm is needed and
would bring sure reward.

In the face of such a showing as this concerning rela-
tive prices and lowered production, one may well ask
in the interest of the general community, " Why is
there migration from the farm ?" and in the interest
of the farmer, " Why is there dissatisfaction with farm
life ?" The rephicing of hand labor by machinery can-
not be the sole explanation. Many of our townships
had reached their maximum of population before the
chief developments in machinery had taken place.
Many New England " towTis " were becoming depleted
as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century.
I^t us endeavor to search out some of the main causes.

The invariable rule is found to be that depletion
shows itself first and works out most completely on the
less fertile soils. I have stated that along the nearest
concession road to Spencerville, right over against the
village, are found seven adjoining farms without a
resident farmer. That tract of land is high-lying,
stony, thin-soiled over rock, and arid, beyond any ad-
joining areas. Yet on that now arid territory stumps
of pine still remain as evidence of a heavy growth of
white pine whose trunks were two and even three feet
in diameter.

We thus reach the first of the economic causes of the
migration from the farm, due to an error in the field
of conservation of natural resources, namely the opening
up to settlement and denuding of thciir forests of lands
IcKH profitable for agriculttire than for forestry. Lands
that are very valuable for forestry may be quite value-
leHs for agrictilttin-. A light soil of limited depth which
when cleared washes witb the rain, leaving ex{)ose(l

74 KUEAL LIFE IN CA]!^ADA

rock, but which is held by binding roots while under
forest, is one example. Gravel which parts readily
with its water in the open but remains moist when in
woods is another. Sand which drifts with the wind is
a third. " It is a known fact that in certain upland
parts of the Eastern United States the average level of
the ground-water has fallen from ten to forty feet . . .
while springs and wells have permanently failed."* In
their original condition forests throve on these lands.
Once cleared it was impossible to maintain conditions
under which profitable agriculture could be carried on.
Even re-afforesting has become difficult. This condi-
tion holds of a large part of the mountainous and hilly
districts of the world. Yet upon these districts the
waterflow of the streams, and consequently the humidity
of the climate, and ultimately the productiveness of all
lands depend. Yet the policy of our Governments long
fostered exploitation of the forests upon such lands.

A great economic wrong has been inflicted upon the
world by the exploitation of all natural resources, a
waste made possible by modern means of transportation
and manufacture employed under control of the purpose
of present gain alone, untempered by the thought of
service or of responsibility for the future ; a wrong of
such magnitude as to amount to actual spoliation of
coming generations, of such magnitude as to amount to
actual defiance of the God of Providence.

The world of to-day is in the position of an heir who
has come into possession of a great estate and is reck-
lessly squandering his patrimony :

Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine.t

* Commission of Conservation, Report I, p. 13.
t Oliver Goldsmith, " The Traveller."

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 75

Engineering science has made it possible for men to
draw rapidly upon all resources; transportation has
made it possible to seize the pristine wealth of all con-
tinents, and the foolish heir of the ages has not come
to his senses in regard to the use of his new domain.

Men are to-day becoming millionaires through seltish
exploitation of forest and stream and field and mine
and ocean, and of the toil of their fellow men until not
only the blood of the poor innocents, but also the dried-
up beds of the brooks, the bared rocks of the hillsides,
the weed-covered, scrub-covered fields of our fathers, the
shaft-and-tunnel trap-doors of forsaken mines, and the
extinct genera of sky and earth and sea cry aloud to
God who made all things very good, to the God who
" worketh even until now," that He might fashion this
earth as a fit habitation for all men of all generations.

I charge our farmers, who go to the West to exploit
the virgin fertility of the prairies and have no thought
of making a permanent home for themselves or their
children there, with a dastardly crime against society ;
— yet it is a crime in which they are but feeble imita-
tors of the objects of men's worship to-day, the million-
aire exploiters of the world's wealth.

Our fathers sinned, both in ignorance and wilfully,
and we their children are paying the penalty in depleted
communities, but even while paying the penalty we are
sinners beyond our fathers.

Yet again, we have other unoccupied farms where
substantial buildings, enclosed garden-plots and trim
fields, as well as local history, attest the exi8tenc<» of
profitable farming carried on in the recent past. Here
we reach another error in the realm of conservation —
unscientific farming that has depleted flic fertility of

76 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

lands which should have grown in productive capacity
under tillage.

Among all recent movements one of the richest prom-
ise is that of the national conservation of natural
resources. Of these, looked at in their widest range,
human efficiency stands first ; but next to it, in power
for good or ill upon human welfare, undoubtedly ranks
fertility of the soil. The Committee on Lands of the
Dominion Commission of Conservation carried on in
1911 an investigation in the form of an Agricultural
Survey of 1,212 farms throughout the Dominion, 100
in each of the Maritime Provinces, 200 in Quebec, 300
in Ontario, and 412 in the four western Provinces, to
discover whether there was upon these farms conserva-
tion of fertility, of labor, and of health. The informa-
tion received was neither second-hand nor superficial.
The report of the chairman. Dr. J. W. Robertson, in-
forms us that " In most of the Provinces the farmers
are living upon the accumulated capital which nature
provided in the soil, leaving their lands poorer because
they had been on them."* Yet a fair number are not
only maintaining but increasing fertility, and in this
fact is found the ground of hope for the future. They
are of the type which survives upon the farm, the class
to which all shall yet belong. In Prince Edward Island
51 per cent, report larger yields than they had formerly,
the increase dating from 15 to 18 years ago. In Nova
Scotia 46 per cent, of the farms examined show an
increase ; in Quebec, 39 per cent. ; in New Brunswick
and in Ontario 24 per cent., the increase dating from
ten years ago, while in Manitoba not one farmer reports

* Commission of Conservation Report, III, p. 57.

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 77

an increase, and 40 per cent, acknowledge a marked
decrease. '' The decrease of yield per acre in that Pro-
vince," says Dr. Robertson, " must be concurrent with
exhaustion of fertility."

The broadest inductions we can reach show that this
loss is widespread. The area under cultivation in the
West — Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta — in-
creased 269 per cent, in the last decade ; the amount of
products increased only 185 per cent. In the United
States the wheat area increased 56 per cent, between
1S90 and 1900, the yield only 40 per cent.; the corn
area increased 31 per cent., but the yield only 25 per
cent.

Here again, as in the case of the exploitation of the
forest, the lure of the soil is addressed to the worst that
is in man, the appeal of the soil to his best. " The lure
t»f the Prairies is like unto the lure of the Yukon and
the lure of the Cobalt, — ' Come and take something,
ship it out, and make yourself rich.' " But the
appeal of the soil is that we treat the land with loving
care so aa to reap ever-increasing profits while preserv-
ing the crop-producing power of the soil for the benefit
of our descendants. And the reward is not material
only, whether present or prospective. " When man
exhausts the soil, what does he do? He helps to make
the j)oopl(' more careless and less competent; he leaves
them less [»o\ver and more poverty in every respect. On
the oth<'r hand, when he preserves and increases the fer-
tility of the soil, the p(K)ple therel)y becom(! increasingly
efficient and capable. Tliese two go together. Ft is
for us to see that \\u' fertility of our soil shall be main-
tained, an<l that there shall l)e continuously improving
conditions for the rural population." " Consider that

78 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

report from a virgin Province with the accumulated
wealth of 50,000 years of the Creator's deposits in that
savings bank of soil ; that not one farmer in a hundred
has reported any increase over ten years ago, and that
46 per cent, of them have reported a decided decrease.
That gives us much food for thought. It brings out a
grave situation for consideration. It is to me, much
more imminent of blessing or disaster than any other
material question now before the West."*

O Demeter, abounding in fruit and ears of the harvest,
Well may this field be wrought and yield a crop beyond
measure.f

But we have not only tracts that are springing up
in scrub forest and other areas that afford pasturage for
the stock of adjoining farmers ; the major portion of the
land in the township of Edwardsburg is for sale. Not
that it is all so advertised, though much of it is. Lead-
ing Edwardsburg farmers assure me that three out of
four of the farmers in the township are ready to accept
any reasonable offer for their acres. Why should this
be the case ?

The Lands Committee of the Conservation Commis-
sion carried on in 1911 an investigation gleaning infor-
mation fairly representative of the actual conditions in
each Province in regard to the practice of well-planned
farming as shown by systematic rotation of crops, the
practice of sowing selected seed, and the application of
manures ; and also as to the inroads of weeds, insect
pests, and plant diseases. This inquiry into actual con-

* Report cited, p. 92.
t Theocritus, Idyll X.

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 79

• lit ions was made by competent men. It was scientific
ri'search, not in the laboratory, but in the rural com-
munity. The Report indicates that a comparativel;^
small number of farms are run under good systems of
cropping and good methods of cultivation. A few of
the salient points brought out by the survey are : That
(Hit of the 800 farms under investigation in the Mari-
time Provinces, Quebec and Ontario, on only 25 per
wnt. is any systematic rotation of crops followed ; in
a representative Ontario county " a percentage of the
farmers hardly know what is meant by the term system-
atic rotation." Yet, Dr. Robertson states, wholly
apart from the effects obtained from fertilizers, and
simply by the use of a rotation which includes the bean
or clover crop, there has been in specified places an
increase of from 100 to 150 per cent, in amount, with
an increase of from 200 to 300 per cent, in profit.

Mr. Grisdale, Director of Dominion Experimental
Farms, stated in his evidence before the Select Standing
Committee of the Senate on Agriculture, in 1912, that
the average farmer spends $10 an acre in the cultivation
of his land, and, according to the census, receives
$15.50, making a clear profit of between five and six
dollars, but that at the Experimental Farm cultural
operations cost $11.77, and crop return is $45.47 per
afro, making a profit of $33.70.

As regards the use of selected seed the Report states
that by the majority of farmers nothing is done in the
way of seed selection more than to grade tlu^ grain
through a fanning mill. Yet Dr. Ivohertson assures us
tliat by seed wieetion alone the croits of (Canada can
Ik' doubled. " In Ontario, field crops last year were
worth $193,000,000, and if there were $193,000,000

80 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

more of wealth coined into existence out of chaos, not
transferred out of one pocket into another, but called
into existence by intelligent labor out of otherwise chaos,
indifference, want of knowledge, want of ability, want
of application, waste of sun power, and failure to use
the seed power that is all about us, — ^what an enriching
gain to us it would be ! If the crops of the whole North-
west last year — Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta
— had been a complete failure, so that nothing grew,
what a depression would have come over Canada, what
a measure of dearth and starvation would have come
over that part of our inheritance. That hints at the
effect on our national life of $220,000,000 of value
from crops being here or not here. The doubling of the
crops of Ontario would be an addition to the value of
the crops of Canada almost as great as the addition of
the crops of these three great Provinces has been."*

Some years ago Dr. Robertson directed an experiment
carried on on 1,400 farms throughout Canada wherein
for three successive crops the finest heads were selected
from the most vigorous plants of wheat and oats. The
exact amount of increase was computed in percentages.
Dr. Robertson, recognized everywhere as one of the
world's trusted leaders in reliable experiment, applied
the percentage of increase thus obtained to the field
crops of Canada, finding that " if all fields had been
sown with similarly superior seed, not imported from
Kamschatka, but selected from the fields and farms of
Canada, we should have got from the same area enough
grain to fill 1,500 miles of railway cars ; enough increase
above what we harvested to fill 1,500 miles of railway

* Commission of Conservation, Report III, p. 91.

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ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 81

cars in one year. Surely that is a confirmation of the
statement that if the methods employed by the best 10
per cent, of the farmers prevailed all over Canada, we
would get this doubling of the value of our crops,
$565,000,000."

The loss from the prevalence of weeds, insects, and
plant diseases was found to be heavy. Taking the
farmers' own judgment as to the amount of loss —
always, when carefully given, an under-estimate because
of lack of trained habits of observation — this runs to
an average of $75 to $100 to each farm. There are
areas in the West actually abandoned through the pre-
valence of wild oats and stinkweed. In the county of
Brome, Quebec, orange hawkweed threatens to destroy
the pasture and has reduced its power for carrying stock.
In Lanark County, Ontario, the injury done by sow-
thistle is so alarming that it is predicted farms will be
abandoned. Dr. Robertson remarks, in reporting on
this matter: "I do not want to say anything dis-
paraging about Canada . . . but I have to go to
Scotland once in a while to get the delight, the refresh-
ing delight to one's eyes, of seeing farming that is clean,
and beautiful in its cleanness."

Vet Britain once suffered most severely from weeds.
The poet Crablx? gives us this vivid picture: —

Rank weeds that every art and care defy
Reljfn o'er the land and rob the blighted rye;
There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
And to the ragged Infant threaten war;
Thf-re popples nodding mock the hope of toil;
Th're the blue biigloBB paints the sterile soil;
Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf
The Bllmy mallow waves her allky leaf;
6

82 KUKAL LIFE IN CAl^ADA

O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,
And clasping tares cling 'round the sickly blade;
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,
And a sad splendor vainly shines around.*

Loss throiigli inferior stock in dairying is heavy.
The average yearly yield of milk per cow in Ontario
is 4,540 lbs. But there are many cows in the Province
yielding 15,000 lbs., and some that reach 22,000 lbs.
At the Winnipeg meeting of the British Association in
1909 the Danish Live Stock Commissioner described
methods in use in Denmark which had raised the aver-
age yield of cows from 80 lbs. of butter in 1864 to 220
lbs. in 1908.

l^OT is this the limit of our loss. The township of
Edwardsburg, among other excellent products, yields
potatoes of superlative quality. Competent judges
affirm that at Spencerville Eair the samples of potatoes
annually exhibited grade upon the average higher in
excellence than those seen at the Provincial Exhibition
in Toronto. Yet this superlative crop has no recognized
place in the market. The chief reason appears to be
that a score or two of varieties are commonly grown,
and when shipped all of these varieties may be found
in one carload.

Thus we find that the economic problem is not only
one of technics — of utilizing to best advantage the
powers of nature in growing plants and animals for
human use, but also of economics in its strict sense as a
science — of utilizing agricultural production to best
advantage when it has taken place, through transporta-
tion and distribution, through development of consump-

• George Crabbe, " The Village as It Is."

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 83

tion, through business co-operation, through all the rela-
tions of agriculture to other industries and to legisla-
tion.

Dr. Georire H. Clark, Dominion Seed Commissioner,
emphasizes the condition we have just pointed out, as
one cause which accounts for the lack of market for
products intrinsically good : the absence of standards of
uniformity in shipment. " The Ontario potato crop
is a badly mixed crop. Were the commercial potatoes
that are marketed in Toronto offered in England, Lon-
don's poor would have an opportunity to buy cheap
potatoes. Any good cook will tell you that she gets
poor results if she boils long white, round white, and
rose types together."* The same condition and a simi-
lar failure are found to apply to the marketing of other
products. Successful millers must establish and main-
tain definite uniform brands of flour. Ontario millers
find that they can combine 60 per cent, of Ontario wheat
and 40 per cent, of Western wheat with the finest re-
sults, yet many of our largest milling concerns are not
in the market to buy Ontario wheat, because they find
it impossible to get two carloads that will give the same
result. Three years ago the Dominion Government
advanced 400,000 bushels of seed oats to farmers in the '
West, owing to the failure of ripened seed in the previ-
ous autumn. Ontario had a largo supply of good com-
mercial oats to offer ; all were rejected by the Seed Com-
missioner because obtainable only in mixed varieties
and types. The whole amount was secured in Scotland
without difliculty, all true to the Abimdance type. i\Ir.
Clark asks the farmers of Canada to look at our wheat,

•O. TT. Clark. 12th Annual Hoport, Ontario Agricultural
Societies, p. 26.

84 EUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

oats, barley and potato crop through the spectacles of
the miller and the consumer in general, assuring us that
if that be done it will raise the average value of these
crops by several per cent, simply by making the supply
already secured more uniform in quality.

Yet again, potatoes have been delivered on board cars
at vSpencerville at thirty cents a bushel, and report says
that the same potatoes have been sold at Toronto, still
on board cars, at a dollar a bushel. That more than
double the amount paid the farmer — whose labor is ex-
pended months in advance, whose capital is engaged
throughout the year — should be paid to the first middle-
man and the transportation company, whose capital is
engaged in this transaction for a few days only, is not
conducive to the satisfaction of the farmer. The cause
of what seems an excessive difference in price would
appear to be due to the fact that farmers are not organ-
ized for business purposes. Co-operation is absent.

Too small a proportion of the price paid by the
ultimate purchaser goes to the farmer. Part at
least of the excessive cost of agricultural products
is not due to anything that the farmer does or
leaves undone. According to the United States De-
partment of Agriculture it cost approximately 55
per cent, of what the consumer paid to take the farm
products of that country from the farmer to the con-
sumer. What the farmer sold for six billion dollars
consumers paid thirteen and one-third billions. A Com-
mission appointed by the State of New York reported
lately that the food of New York, as received from the
farmers, costs, laid down at the railway terminals,
$350,000,000 a year, but delivered to the homes
$500,000,000. This added charge of 43 per cent, the

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 85

Cominisaiou holds, is due in large part, uot to excessive
profit, but to sheer waste.

There is need of applying business methods to the
question of what shall be consumed on the farm and
what sent to market. Our exports of farm products
constitute a question of supreme national importance.
To every hundred dollars' worth of exports from Can-
ada the main industries contribute as follows: Fisheries,
$5; manufactories, $12; mining, $15; lumbering, $16;
and agriculture, $51. In that proportion do our in-
dustries pay our debts to the outside world. Now, some
of this agricultural export trade is bad business. " The
butter exported from Denmark to Great Britain in
1909 was 197,751,024 lbs., worth $49,802,400; and
that almost fifty million dollars' worth of butter carried
out of Denmark less of the elements of fertility than
did each thousand tons of hay shipped out of Quebec
to New England. There is a contrast indeed in the
national administration of agriculture ! Fifty million
dollars' worth of butter impoverishing the land less
than each thousand tons of hay, worth at most,
$14,000!"*

Finally, sufficient attention is not paid to sheer ex-
cellence of product. In every neighborhood there are
a few farmers whose products command a much higher
price than those of the majority. " The Danes take
from England enough more money than any other
nation obtains for an equal quantity of butter, bacon,
and eggs, because of their superior quality, to pay for
their whole educational work and to have a balance
over. For the superiority of their butter, bacon, and

• CoDBervatlon CX>mmlHHlon, III, p. 103.

86 EUHAL LIFE IN CANADA

eggs, they get, as a premium, more than we spend on
our rural schools from the Atlantic to the Pacific."*

Moreover, the farmer bears economic wrongs as well
as suffers under economic failure. The report of the
Commission on Country Life transmitted by President
Eoosevelt to the Senate and House of Representatives
in 1909 lays the chief emphasis upon this feature of the
farm problem. In the view of the members of the Com-
mission the first of the main special deficiencies in coun-
try life is " disregard of the inherent rights of the land-
worker." The handicaps which they have specially in
mind are: the speculative holding of lands, the mon-
opolistic control of means of transportation and of
streams; wastage of forests, with consequent exposure
to floods and to disastrous soil erosion ; and restraint of
trade. They find that farm property bears an unjust
share in taxation. And among the remedies which
they recommend are " a thoroughgoing investigation by
experts . . . into the farmer's disadvantages in re-
gard to taxation, transportation rates . . . and
credit, . . . and careful attention to the farmer's
interests in legislation and the tariff."f

Speculative holding of lands has not as yet become a
handicap to farmers in Eastern Canada. But specula-
tive buying of farm lands is a menace of the near future.
Throughout New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois farm lands have more than doubled in
price within a decade. So soon as there is any check
upon the freeness of land for settlement in our own
West, the conditions which prevail in these States will
be found in Canada as well. The rise is speculative in

* The same, p. 104.

t Country Life Commission, Report, p. 8.

ECOXOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETIOls^ 87

character. There is certainly no legitimate justifica-
tion to be found for it in the relation between invest-
ment and return in farming as an industry at present.
The inflation in price would seem to be due to antici-
pation of a prospective demand for land in the near
future. Its immediate result is a deceptive prosperity,
and a change in the character of ownership. The
farmer is able to borrow increased amounts against in-
creased value, and mortgages are increasing; and many
farmers sell at the first slight rise to capitalist investors
who reap the profits of further rise in value, while
tenants replace agricultural owners. This phase of the
problem is one in regard to which the interest of the
Canadian farmer is expressed in the adage : Forewarned
is forearmed.

But in the West the speculative holding of lands
becomes nothing short of a blight upon progress.
Around railway towns lie concentric circles of vacant
sections. The townships everywhere are checkered
with unoccupied squares. The farmer is pressed far
out upon the prairie. The haulage to the elevator is
increased, and all the conveniences of life lie at a dis-
tance. The making of roads is retarded. Every mile
of long-distance travel is an economic loss. The schools
are under a handicap. The organization of the town-
ships is rendered less effective.

The whole subject of the relation of the great rail-
way systems of Canada to the farmer teems with
questions touching public welfare. The larger aspect
of several of the questions raised by the American
Country Life Commission are with us embraced under
this head. 'I'he policy followed in opening the West
waa controlled more largely by con.sideratious of rail-

88 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

way traffic than of common welfare. Settlers were
soiiglit by a world-wide propaganda in order that when
placed on the land they might furnish railway freight-
age. Eventual national progress would have been
more fully secured by a less artificial development.
Agriculture in the West would have developed upon
more helpful lines. It is more than a question whether
agricultural prosperity in the East was not injured
by the forcing of Western grain-growing. The exodus
from Nova Scotia and Ontario was due not only to the
lure of free land in Manitoba, but also to economic
pressure in the East due to artificial development of the
West. And more recently we have seen considerations
of railway haulage become a factor in deciding an
issue of national importance to the disadvantage of the
farmer in the rejection of reciprocity in natural pro-
ducts with the United States. And an injury of great
magnitude has been inflicted upon the farmers of the
West by the exemption of the lands of the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company from taxation. The inten-
tion of Parliament was that these lands should be
exempt from taxation until the settlement of the local-
ity ; the interpretation placed upon the wording of the
act of gift is that they are exempt until the settlement
of the particular parcel of land. Municipal develop-
ment and all progress is thereby greatly hampered.

Our system of banking throws an undue burden upon
the farmer. Capital is withdrawn from the country
to be used in the city by means of facilities for making
loans to manufacturers which are denied to farmers.
I have heard farmers object to any proposal to furnish
them with facilities for credit on the ground that such
would be provision for sinking into debt. These indi-

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETIO:^' 89

viduals belong to the same economic school as did the
farmer who, when a horse of his was killed, said that
it didn't matter, for the horse had cost him nothing,
as he had paid for him in labor. Credit is one of the
strong factors of modern progress. The farmer needs
it for the utilizing of production in advance of sale.
Too much capital is idle in the hands of farmers.
When the manufacturer has a hundred plows in his
warehouse he can realize upon them at once by bor-
rowing upon them as security. When the farmer has
a thousand bushels of wheat in his granary he cannot
borrow upon it, although it is the best collateral security
in the world. Our banking laws expressly forbid the
banks to make such loans. The farmer must secure
current loans by personal note or by chattel mortgage.
In consequence, although the farmer is the safest of pri-
vate borrowers, he nevertheless pays the highest rate of
interest. Xot in all countries, however. France and
Germany, for instance, have provided adequate farm
credit. And thus, while strong national governments
obtain permanent loans at 2 per cent, interest; while
call loans in New York bear 2.4G, and the Bank of
England's discount rate in 1911 averaged 3.47; while
the best commercial paper in New York bears 4.10,
strong railroad l)onds 4.60, public utilities 5.00, the
best industrials, 5.50, and average industrials, 6.50;
while French farmers borrow at 4.30, German farmers
at 4.40, and even Arab farmers in Egj'pt at 8.00, the
American farmer borrows at an average of 8.50 per
cent. Fanners in the f'anndian West are charged 10
per cent, by the banks.

Our general system of taxation is an economi(r injus-
tice to the farmer. All taxation should fall upon value

90 EUKAL LIFE IN CA]!^ADA

for production, not upon means of living. To treat
all wealth alike in this regard is to fail to see that each
generation owns in absolute fee its own production, but
has only a life interest in the sources of wealth. There
are four factors in production: "land," in its widest
economic sense; "labor," including ability as well as
toil ; capital ; and society. The contribution of society
is the so-called " unearned increment," which is found
not only in the price of land, but in the wages of labor
and in the interest of capital. This is the true " unpro-
ductive surplus " of political economy. This incre-
ment of the value of land, labor, and interest, earned
by society, should become, not the subject of taxation,
but in its own entirety the whole complement of taxes.
The function of taxation is not to lay a burden upon
land, labor, or capital, levying the burden according to
the patient willingness of the shoulder to bear it, but
to appraise the share of production due to society as a
partner with the other three and to hand over to her
her own. And had society wages as she has worth,
wealth would be hers for all her tasks, and her members
would be relieved from their burdens alike of poverty
and of riches. Under the failure of government to
accomplish this true function of taxation the farmer is
the chief sufferer. His is the most patient shoulder
beneath uneconomic taxation, and upon it in conse-
quence the heaviest load is placed.

Enough! the lie is ended. God only owns the land;
No parchment deed hath virtue unsigned by His own hand,
Out on the bold blasphemers who would eject the Lord,
And pauperize His children and trample on His word.

ECOXOMTC CAUSES OF DEPLETIO:^^ 91

Behold this glorious temple with dome of starry eky,
And floor of greensward scented and trees for pillars high,
And song of birds for music, and bleat of lambs for prayer.
And incense of sweet vapors arising everywhere.

Behold His table bounteous spread over land and sea.
The sure reward of labor, to every mortal free;
But harki through Nature's anthem there rises the refrain,
God made the world, but giveth it unto the sons of men.*

• J. W. Bengough, " Verses Grave and Gay."

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS OF
THE PROBLEM

My lord rides through his palace gate.

My lady sweeps along in state;

The sage thinks long on many a thing,

And the maiden muses on marrying;

The minstrel harpeth merrily,

The sailor ploughs the foaming sea.

But fall to each whate'er befall.

The farmer feedeth all.

Smith hammereth cherry-red the sword,
Priest preacheth pure the Holy Word;
Clerk Richard tales of love can tell.
Dame Alice worketh 'broidery well;
Great work is done, be it here or there.
And well man worketh everywhere;

But work or rest, whate'er befall.

The farmer feedeth all.

— Charles G. Leland.

God, make me worthy of Thy land
Which mine I call a little while.
This meadow where the sunset's smile

Falls like blessing from Thy hand.
And where the river singing runs
'Neath wintry skies and summer suns.

I would be nobler than to clutch

My little world with gloating grasp;

Now, while I live, my hands unclasp,
O let me hold it not so much

For my own joy as for the good

Of all the gentle brotherhood.

— R. W. Gilder.

CHAPTER III.
Economic Solutions of the Problem.

Agriculture as a business is advancing. Its rewards
to-day are very much greater than ever before. And
the efficiency of its service to human need is even greater
than the rewards have been.

A comparison of the agriculture of England five hun-
dred years ago with that of the present is informing.
" In those days half the arable land lay in fallow. The
amount produced was — to take wheat as an example,
about eight bushels the acre in ordinary years — less
than a third of an average crop at the present time.
There were no artificial grasses. Clover was not known,
nor any of the familiar roots. As a consequence there
was little or no winter feed, except such coarse hay as
could be made and spared. Cattle were small, and
stunted by the privations and hard fare of winter. The
average weight of a good ox was under four hundred-
weights. iSheep, too, were small, poor, and came slowly
to maturity. The average weight of a fleece was not
more than two pounds. With ill-fed cattle there was
little or no strong manure. Iron was very dear, cost-
ing, to take wheat as a standard of relative value, nine
times as much as it does now. But the number of per-
sons engaged in agriculture was nearly as numerous
as it now is. It fnil)ra('od, to be sure, nearly the whole
population, though all their labor did not produce an

9.T

96 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

eighth part of that which is gathered at present."*
But great as has been the progress of the art of farming
since the period when the yield was one-eighth of that
now obtained from equal areas of arable land, relatively
to the advance in world progress in general since the
advent of the modern industrial world, agriculture is
falling behind. There has not been the multiplying
of efficiency in this field that there has been in the pro-
duction of cotton or of steel. Marvellous as has been
the progress in the development of better varieties of
grain — for instance, our new Canadian barley, of
which a recent issue of World's Work editorially
says : " Twelve grains of barley have encircled the
earth — twelve grains of barley borrowed from Canada
by the University of Wisconsin have sent millions of
their progeny abroad over our land. Their fame has
made this new race sought even as far as Russia . . .
It has added many millions to the profit of the man on
the soil," — it has not kept pace with, for example, the
advance in the conquest of disease by modern medical
science. And this relative slackening of pace is much
greater among the main body of agriculturists than
among its leading exponents. The problem of the
farm, from the standpoint of agriculture as an art, is
simply this: how to apply all the elements of modern
efficiency as wrought out in the industrial world as a
whole through invention and organization to that art
throughout its whole extent. Where this is done suc-
cessfully, as in Denmark, the rural problem is not felt.

So great is this relative failure of farming as an occu-
pation that farm lands have slight value to the farmer

* Thorold Rogers, " Manual of Political Economy," p. 158.

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 97

as an investment. Thej give him little more than
opportnmity to earn a livelihood as a workman. That
is, he receives no " rent," as that term is used in politi-
cal economy, and little return for capital. The farmer
is at once landlord, capitalist and workman. As land-
lord he oAvns his land surface. As capitalist he owns
his buildings, his stock, his implements, and the tilth
in which he keeps his land — all that the farmer in
Britain provides, who pays rent for his land-area to
the landlord. As workman he fulfils a double func-
tion, he is manager of a business and manual laborer.
As landlord he is entitled to fair rent as trustee for his
land so far as rent does not include unearned special
privilege. As capitalist he has the right to the usual
reward of capital — and the reward of capital, when
its risks also are kept in view, should be fairly equal
in all lines of employment. As a workman he is
entitled to the wages of labor and of management. The
first charge to be paid out of any business is labor's
wage, then the wage of superintendence ; next comes
capital's portion with its two shares, the first for main-
tenance, the 8ecx)nd for interest; and last of all, the
portion for rent. Now, in many cases the whole income
of the farmer is sufficient only for wages of labor and
management, with nothing left as return for the invest-
ment of capitalist and landlord. Some fifteen years ago
Mr. Robert Sellar, the able editor of the Huntingdon
Gleaner, made a series of first-hand investigations into
the investment an'l income of farmers in the counties
of Chateaugiiay and Huntingdon, (Quebec, and showed
conclusively that many received no return, not only as
" economic rent," but even for capital invcstcrl in equip-
7

98 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

ment. This was, indeed, at the period of greatest de-
pression, when farm prices were less than one-half what
thej are at present. But it was also, be it noted, in
one of our most fertile districts, the Chateauguay valley,
and among a people who rank as one of our progressive
farming communities. What was true of such a dis-
trict at that period must hold even at this time in less
fertile districts. The same facts are presented from
the obverse point of view by Dr. Warren H. Wilson:
" Near Ithica, New York, farmers prosper as they do
in few parts of the State, but by a survey made by the
College of Agriculture it was found that among 615
farmers the average labor income was only $423. That
is, after paying interest on their invested capital and
accounting for work done by others the farmer is able
to pay himself a wage of only about $1.20 per day."*
Nor is this to be considered a trifling item in our
national prosperity. A superficial observer might sup-
pose the capital investment of our farmers a bagatelle
compared with that in our great transportation, manu-
facturing and commercial interests. The truth lies
quite the other way. Over the Horticultural Build-
ing of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto
in 1912 a streamer was flying bearing the legend:
" Ontario's Farmers' Invested Capital One Billion Two
Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars." It is vital to
Ontario's welfare that that amount be not sunk in
unremunerative investment. Ontario's investment in
agriculture is greater than all Canada's investment in
industrial enterprises. These the Financial Times
estimates at $1,245,000,000. It is greater than all the

* " Men and Religion Messages," Vol. VI, p. 2.

ECOXOMIC SOLUTIONS 99

savings of the people of Canada held as liquiil assets.
These, as deposited in the banks, amonnt to slig:htly
over one billion dollars. For every dollar Canada has
invested in manufacturing she has five dollars invested
in agi'icultnre.

Again, there is a fixed charge against the farm which
must be constantly met or farming cannot continue. It
is the subsistence wage for the family and cost of wear
and tear of the plant. Income from whatever source
must meet this of necessity, and more than this for
satisfactory living. Beyond it lies the " productive sur-
plus," which makes the business a progressive one, and
beyond this again the surplus proper, which constitutes
the prize for which progressive industry strives. Sup-
pose this fixed charge to be $750, suppose it $1,000 —
it varies with the standard of living — if income falls
Ixdow this amount the alternatives are: to abandon the
farm, to live on in grinding poverty, to seek some side
line of gain, or — to make farming pay better. The
two former alternatives are ruled out for us by our
very thesis. Which of the latter is the true alter-
native?

Some look for seasonal industries to be established in
the country. The demand for farm labor is to some
extent a seasonal one; help is needed at certain times;
there is leisure at others. Tt is thought that other
seasonal industries might be made to dovetail in with
this. The hat factories of Hrockville and those of iMat-
teawan, New York, call away certain Spencerville
peopN' for a time twi<'<' a y<*ar. Let ns, the suggestion
runs, have many such seasonal industries in the coun-
try itself. I fear the whole scheme is quite Utopian.
It miglit serve the other industries slightly; it could

100 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

never widely serve the farm home. There is indeed
force in Dr. Kobertson's words before the Conservation
Commission : "A good system of rotation provides for
the spreading of the labor of the farmer over most of
the year. The other system means a rush of work and
very long hours for two months in spring and two in
harvest, and little satisfactory occupation during other
parts of the year. I have never known a healthy man
who, under sixty, could loaf for half the year and escape
the devil. I do not mean the devil hereafter, but the
devil here and now. A man has to be at something,
something with a definite purpose that calls out his
powers, or he will not be happy. "Where the practi-
cable system of farming does not provide satisfying,
profit-leaving work during the winter, let us have what
the Swiss have, what the Swedes have : the home indus-
tries— not for profits, but for the salvation of the boys
and young men, for the satisfaction of the women.
Labor, intelligent, skilful labor, labor with good will, is
a means of grace, whereby the race will be ever rising,
rising, rising."* Dr. Robertson advocates not seasonal
industries in factories, but home industries for moral
rather than for economic ends. A better way, economi-
cally, is the one he points out in his opening sentence.
A good system of rotation of crops is the fountain-head
of good cultivation, as well as a fountain-head of good
living. Of the four economic alternatives the fourth
and not the third is the true choice.

Sir Horace Plunkett, who has done so much for
Irish agriculture through promoting co-operation, has
uttered a famous dictum concerning the needs of

• Conservation Commission, III, p. 96.

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 101

American farmers : '' Better living, better farming,
better business." Now it is as often better business
as it is better farming that is necessary for the
better living that is sought. Just as the weakness,
economically, of the factory worker lies in this, that
the capitalist, who holds the stronger economic
position, controls the whole product, produced co-opera-
tively by capitalist and laborer, so the economic weak-
ness of the farmer lies in this, that he has no voice in
fixing the price for which he sells his products, no voice
in fixing the cost of transport for his products, and no
voice in fixing the price of the commodities required
in his occupation ; and also in that whereas his market
has become world-wide, and the unit of sale has become
the carload, he has no means whereby he can sell by
sample at a distance, or furnish products by the unit
of delivery. The farmer must enter the modern bro-
therhood. The repair of country life can only come
on modern lines. Nevermore can we have the inde-
p>endent household unit or the self-sufficient farmstead
any more than we can have the journeyman days of
industry restored. The efficiency of agriculture calls
for organization and specialization corresponding to
those which have made modern industry productive.

The rural problem is far from being solely, or even
chiefly, an economic one. But in so far as economic
in character it must have an economic remedy. Coun-
sels of patience avail naught here, and the rewards of
gracious growth under discipline are the incentives in
another realm of struggle than this. Yet the econ-
omic remedy is found to have, at every step of its ap{)li-
cation, a moral implicate without which it is unavail-
ing and unavailable. What is needed is a new rural

102 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

organization whose formative processes themselves shall
prove to be at once the needed ethical disciplines v^hich
shall bring the new age into touch with God through
Christ and the social opportunities for the satisfaction
of aspirations now unrealized.

All lands must be put to their best use. In Edwards-
burg we have several thousands of acres of sand-bar-
rows. Once they had mould enough to yield large
crops of corn, rye and potatoes. Now they afford
scanty pasture. So soon as the mould is once broken
through they become drifting sand. There are already
many hundreds of small areas where the sand drifts
in wavelets with every wind. It is beautiful, but with
a beauty which is costly and is unappreciated. The
fertile intervales between the sand-barrows are threat-
ened. Herein lies a real community danger.

For years past I have urged, from every available
platform, the instant duty of reafforesting every acre
where drift may yet occur. Last year I was invited by
a farmer in the neighboring township of Augusta to
visit his farm and see a plantation of four thousand
thrifty young pine trees from one to four years old,
growing where drifting sand had been. The Govern-
ment of Ontario had supplied the seedlings free of
charge. It is the beginning of much that is yet to be.
Forestry, silviculture, shall yet rank with agriculture.
Its importance as an occupation, to say nothing of its
importance in conserving stream flow, rainfall, fertility,
and climate, or in supplying the world's timber needs,
is not realized. " For example, in our Province of
British Columbia the timbered land will have 10,000
to 40,000 feet of timber to the acre, say on an average
25,000 feet, which would furnish to our transportation

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 103

companies material for freight to the extent of 37^2
tons. If the land were used for agricultural purposes
it would take the crops for fifty years to equal this.
In marketing this crop of timber there would be spent
in wages only over five dollars per thousand feet, or
$125 per acre ; and the Government would receive fifty
cents per thousand feet, or $12.50 per acre as royalty.
How many years of cultivation for agricultural pur-
poses would it take to produce the same result r''^' *' To
cite another case of fiinancial result of forest manage-
ment, I may refer to waste-land planting in France,
which was carried on with State aid by municipalities
and private enterprise. Here, in the last sixty years,
2,300,000 acres of absolute waste land of various
descriptions were reclaimed by forest planting at a
total cost of $15,000,000. These areas are now esti-
mated to be worth $135,000,000, and furnish annual
crops valued at $10,000,000, or, in other words, yield
67 per cent, on the initial outlay."! When waste land
is allowed to return to forest without care the result is
scrub growth. The forest of silviculture is as different
from such woods as are the fields of the College at Ste.
Anne from those of the Syrian peasant. Let me cite
one other example of actual attainment, from Massa-
chusetts. Three-year-old plants of Norway spruce
were set out in 1878 on hillsides, in poor sandy soil,
unfit for cultivation, which was yielding less than fifty
cents per acre yearly as pasture. The land cost the
State five dollars per acre In 11)10 four average trees
were cut for wood-jjulp. 1 hey ran from 50.7 to 71.8

•John Hi.-ndry, CommlHslon of Conservation. 11, p. ;»:i.
t Dr. H. K. F«rnow. Tho Ham<', I, p. 32.

104 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

feet in height and from 0.9 to 1.3 feet in diameter at
the base. The four trees gave 70.6 cubic feet of timber
for pulp, which yielded 1,225 lbs. of the dry product.
At the present price of pulp the total yield per acre, if
cut, would be $1,111. If to the value of the land an
equal sum be added for the planting, plus compound
interest and taxes, the total capital employed may be
estimated at $64.83 per acre, so that the total yield
for 32 years would be $1,046, or $32.70 per acre for
each year.* All hillsides and all rough lands in the
world should be in forest.

A few miles from Spencerville stands a shaft on the
spot where the first Macintosh apple tree grew. In
its native home. Eastern Ontario, this fine variety
attains an excellence which it reaches nowhere else;
and here it should be largely grown. The orchard
lands of British Columbia command a price of $1,000
an acre. Yet large areas in our Eastern Provinces —
those adapted to the growing of the Macintosh in East-
ern Ontario, for instance, the Fameuse near Montreal,
or the New Brunswicker in the St. John Valley — are
in the market for one-tenth to one-twentieth or even
one-fortieth of that price because now devoted to dairy-
ing and grain-growing, which under scientific orchard-
ing would yield as large returns as do the Okanagan
fruit lands. Not over one-tenth of the suitable land is
under orchard in the far-famed Annapolis Valley.

Putting the land to a more appropriate use has
proved, in specific cases, a real solution of the problem
of depopulation. Fruit-growing has saved the situa-
tion in several counties in Ontario. Wentworth County

* Publications of the International Agricultural Institute,
Rome, Vol. I, No. 6, p. 34.

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ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 105

is one of the ten Census Districts with a growing rural
population. Let us take Saltfleet, one of its townships,
as an illustration of our principle. This is a lakeside,
fruit-growing township. After a temporary decline in
population between 1881 and 1891, it has grown from
2,765 in 1891 to 3,029 in 1901, and 4,458 in 1911,
an increase of 61 per cent, in twenty years; while Bin-
brook, lying just behind it, w'ith ordinary agriculture,
declined from 1,674 in 1891 to 1,403 in 1901, and
1,245 in 1911, a decrease of 25 per cent, in the same
period. The County of Lincoln is another of the grow-
ing districts. North Grimsby is an example of its
fruit-growing townships, increasing in rural population
from 1,095 in 1891 to 1,321 in 1901, and 1,758 in
1911, a growth of 60 per cent, in a score of years;
while South Grimsby, immediately adjoining, declined,
with mixed farming, from 1,610 in 1891 to 1,379 in
1901, a loss of 14 per cent, in ten years, but which with
the adoption of orcharding has again begun to hold its
own. In each of the ten growing districts — in all of
which there had been a previous decline of population —
there has been adoption of some line of special agri-
culture.

Another point of exceeding interest is to be noted in
this connection. The class that is growing is always
the one which is rendering fullest service to the com-
munity, not the one which is taxing it most severely.
Such is the case with the fruit-growers of Canada in
comparison with her general farmers. In 1911, when
the average index figure for farm products in general
stood at 139.4, for all fresh native fruits it stood at
1 16.1, with a drop in the summer fruit season to 89.1.
The avoragf figure for the decade has been only 107.

106 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

But forestry and orcharding touch merely the fringe
of the application of this principle of adapting the
system of farming to the nature of the land. An analy-
sis of the soil of the Eed Kiver Valley, made at Eotham-
sted, in England — where soils are known as nowhere
else — reveals that the plains of Manitoba, the objective
point of the migrations of the buffalo of old, are best
suited to grass. And grass, plain grass, is king; and
neither wheat nor corn nor cotton. Grass conserves,
protects, enriches the soil. Grass in abundance spells
good crops for years to come. Grass is the foremost
crop in extent, the greatest revenue producer of the
world. It, too, in turn, needs to be adapted to fittest
use. In Lanark County, Ontario, Drummond, with
level, rich soil and good roads, is best fitted for dairy-
ing; Dalhousie, with rolling hills and fertile valleys,
is the natural home of beef cattle, while Burgess, with
its large, rougher farms, is an ideal home for sheep.

Adaptation to soil, climate, and all conditions, must
become the fundamental condition of all husbandry.
An American authority puts the case well : " In a
rough way the American farmer has done precisely
this. The wheat belt, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the
sugar-beet belt, the fruit belts, are the result of this
adaptation. In the future, however, an approximate
or rough adaptation will not answer. It must be accu-
rate, scientific. The number of cultivated crops is sure
to increase rapidly. New varieties will demand special
environment. Competition between lands will force
the best use of every acre. Minute conditions of soil-
texture, slope, drainage, rainfall, frost-line, sunshine,

ECOXOMIC SOLUTIONS 107

are already considerations in intensive farming, and
will dominate more and more widely."*

But how secure this ? Leading farmers everywhere
are already guided by it ; how shall all be led to follow ?
Such is the final question in all discussions of our
problem. The solution is not economic in nature, but
ethical — it depends not on knowledge, but character.
" The results of intellectual achievement of one race
or one man may be freely borrowed by the rest of the
world, provided the rest of the world have the moral
qualities which will enable them to profit by them;
whereas moral qualities cannot be borrowed by one race
from another. Japan, for example, could easily borrow
from* European nations the art of modern warfare,
together with its instruments of destruction ; but did
not lx>rrow, and could not borrow, that splendid courage
and discipline which enabled her to utilize so efficiently
the inventions which she borrowed. So one nation can
easily borrow farm machinery and modern methods of
agriculture, but it cannot borrow the qualities which
will enable it to profit by them. Saying nothing of
mental alertness and willingness to learn, ... it
could not borrow that patient spirit of toil, nor that
sturdy spirit of self-reliance, nor that forethought which
sacrifices present enjoyment to future profit, nor can it
borrow that spirit of mutual helj)fulness which is so
essential !"• any effective rural work, . . . nor can
it borrow a general spirit of enterprise which ventures
out upon plans and purposes which a{)prove themselves
to the reason. These things have to be developed on

• K. L. Buttorflold, " Country Church and Rural Problem."
p. 14.

108 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

the soil, to be bred into the bone and fibre of the people ;
and they are the first requisite for good farming."*
These considerations apply to every successive requisite
for betterment, and make the problem fundamentally
a problem for the church.

Care, too, for the conservation of fertility, we must
have. Canada apparently ranks fairly well in produc-
tion per acre. Measured by yield of wheat, our
average per acre in 1911 was 19.5 bushels, whereas that
of Russia was 8, of the United States 12.6, of France
20.5 bushels. Yet our standing in productiveness is
only apparent. We seem to be doing fairly well
because we are bringing virgin land by the million
acres under crop, thus keeping average up. But how
does even that average compare with Britain's 32.6 or
Denmark's 44.8 bushels to the acre ?

Our fresh-turned prairie sod affords a yield above
Europe's best. What would it not mean to us if such
fertility were maintained ? And it could well be. The
pity of the present situation, with rapid depletion of
fertility, is that it is quite unnecessary. Not only so,
but fertility once lost can be restored. Two hundred
years ago the yield of wheat in England was eight
bushels to the acre. During the last fifty years it has
averaged from thirty to forty bushels. The possibili-
ties for Ontario, whose average in 1910 was 25.2 bushels
for fall wheat, and for spring wheat 20.19 bushels,
is shown by yields obtained at the Experimental Farm
at Guelph. Fourteen varieties of wheat which had
been under test for sixteen successive years gave in 1911
an average yield of 50.5 measured bushels of 62.2 lbs.

• Prof. T. N. Carver, " Rural Economy a Factor in the Suc-
cess of the Church," p. 15.

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 109

to the bushel and for the sixteen-jear period an average
of 46.7 bushels averaging 61.3 pounds per bushel. A
four years' rotation was employed. A light applica-
tion of barnyard manure was made once in each rota-
tion. No artificial fertilizers were used.

So great a physicist as Sir William Crookes feared
that there was danger that the nitrogen of the soil might
be too scant for producing permanently sufficient wheat
crops. But through the discoveries of later investi-
gators we have learned that by means of the life of bac-
teria on the roots of clover, alfalfa, and all legumes,
nitrogen is taken directly from the air and prepared for
the use of other plants. There are only three factors in
depletion of fertility — the loss of humus; the decrease
of either of three inorganic elements, nitrogen, potash,
and phosphorus ; and deficiency of bacteria. All three
factors are easily controlled ; the presence of any one
is most serious. On our prairies, humus, so abundant
in the virgin sod, is being lost so rapidly that the spring
winds blow away the soil, leaving the seed exposed.
The rotation of two crops and fallow must be replaced
by a rotation including grass or clover. " Experiments
in Minnesota have shown that out of 170 lbs. of nitro-
gen lost from virgin soil in a year only 27V2 were
absorbed by the crop and 132V^ were purely and simply
lost. The only means known whereby such loss can be
prevented is to alternate the raising of wheat with
crops of vegetables and of forage." Dr. Frank T.
Shutt, of the Doiiiiiiion Experimental Farm, by moans
of analyses which rank among the most thorough-going
ever made on this continent, has shown that there is
only nitrogen enough in the best soils of Canada for
150 crops of cereals, but over each acre floats in the air

110 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

enough for a million crops, upon which we may draw
by means of clover. Potash is liberated through fer-
mentation by the use of manure. But Dr. Robertson's
words are to be well weighed when he tells us that
" phosphorus is somewhat deficient ; and there is great
danger for the future of farming in Canada unless we
conserve that and put it back upon the soil."* As to
the third factor in depletion, we know that " by cultiva-
tion and good management the farmer can increase the
population of his soils by many myriads of bacteria per
square inch in the course of a few years. "f Yet I have
seen in Ontario fields of loam where heavy crops of
rye had been recently grown, lying uncultivated and
in such shape that upon more than two-thirds of the
surface of the soil no weeds were to be seen. The
ground was bare. Bacteria there were almost none
in that soil.

In my judgment this is almost the chief economic
cause of the rural exodus. Few think of leaving the
farm whose crops are increasing. And here again the
implications of the problem are ethical. The brief his-
tory of the North Dakota Better Farming Association
brings this fact out clearly. Although that State, the
pristine richness of whose prairies was so great, was set-
tled only in 1880, the average yield of wheat from 1905
to 1910 was but 12 bushels to the acre. In 1911 it
fell to 9 bushels. Thereupon Mr. A. Rogers, the lum-
ber king of the State, sought out Mr. B. L. Howe, the
elevator king, and said, " This State is going back to
the badgers. We have not more than ten years' busi-
ness ahead of us." Together they called on Mr. J. J.

* Conservation Commission, III, p. 62.
t The same, p. 48.

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 111

Hill, who from his desk reached for a paper in a pigeon-
hole, saving, " Here is your plan for betterment, and
here is a subscription of $5,000 a year for three years
to put it through." The Soo lino of railway and the
Great Northern each duplicated his gift. The banks,
townships, and the counties contributed, until there was
in hand the sum of $43,000 a year for three years.
The Association sent to the Minnesota State Agricul-
tural College begging the loan of their best man for
three years as Director. Professor Thomas N. Cooper
was sent. By spring fourteen counties were organized
under a force of twenty-six men whose work was to give
practical demonstrations in the field, and teach rotation
of crops and farm accounting. At the close of the
first season's work, Professor Cooper tells the Better
Farming Association that what they must get after first
is not the betterment of North Dakota's wheat or flax
crop, but her ^fan crop. The problem is one of
ch^jaeter.

The churdi must teach that conservation is a moral
task ; must sound a clear note against exploitation of
the soil as essentially immoral. Farmers know fam-
iliarly the common practice of tenants whereby a course
of cropping is pursued that will take the utmost pos-
sible out of the land within the rental period. They
recognize that it is to the disadvantage of the owner,
but they look on him as helpless. The church must
stress the Old Testament truth, never to be superseded,
that the earth is Jehovah's. Ood is tliaf Owner whose
fields men are devastating, and He is not hcifjless in the
ease. Such preaching, listencil to. will bold men on
the land tbrongli llicir prosjicrity. :nnl tn llicir Mcsscd-
ness.

V

112 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

There must be adaptation of farm practice, along all
lines, to scientific methods of production. What does
not the world owe to men such as Lord Townshend, to
whom is attributed the famous Norfolk four-year rota-
tion of crops; Robert Bakewell, who in England in
the eighteenth century adopted the methods by which
all breeds of live stock have since been improved; Sir
J. B. Lawes, of Rothamsted, who taught men to under-
stand the soil; and Luther Burbank, of Santa Rosa,
who has raised the development of vegetable life to a
new plane ! Similar work is being done most success-
fully in Canada. The technicists of the Dominion
Experimental Farms " have given the farmers of the
West control over the climate to the extent of escaping
frosts in great measure by means of varieties of wheat
which will ripen days earlier than was formerly the
case." The technicists of the Ontario Agricultural
College have given to the world a barley which yields
on the average some four bushels to the acre more than
any other variety before grown. At Macdonald Col-
lege at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec — the Agricul-
tural Department of McGill University — experimental
and educational work is being carried on over a square
mile of farm land, which is the equal of any being done
in the world. From these sources and from many others,
through our Farmers' Institutes and other organizations,
we obtain every needed help for a great forward move-
ment. President Butterfield, of the Agricultural Col-
lege of Massachusetts, generously acknowledges our
standing : " Ontario presents a good illustration of how
a good agriculture can be created in a dozen years, by
co-operating methods of agricultural education. Her
provincial department of agriculture, her experimental

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ECU.XOMIO SOLUTIONS 113

station, her agricultural college, her various forms of
extension work, and her various societies of agricul-
turists have all worked together with an unusual degree
of harmony for the deliberate purpose of inducing
Canadian agriculturists to produce the things that will
bring the most profit. The results have been most
astonishing and most gratifying/'* To read such
words may bring a glow of satisfaction. But let not
the satisfaction obscure for us the force of the wise
words. Agriculturists need to be induced to produce
the things that will bring most profit. Again we meet
with the ethical implication of the economic remedy.
Duty is laid upon the progressive man and unprogres-
sive alike. How shall we gain what Denmark has
found ? No farmer to-day in Denmark feels that he
has done his duty, if he has discovered a better method
of raising a crop or feeding a cow, until he gets all
others to adopt the same method. How shall others
realize that " agriculture is f^>r the gaining of crops,
and the gaining of the best crops from a constantly
improving soil depends upon the capacity and quality
of the men " ? Whence the " statesmanship in agri-
culture which shall ensure the perpetual well-being of
an intelligent prf»ple animated by goodwill and rooted
in land well tilled and beautiful '( That, I think, might
be to us a vision, as it should Ik' an incentive to help in
the making of the new earth wherein dwelleth rigliteous-
nes-s-''^

And there inust come adaptation of farm maiiage-
nient tr) tbe most inipnived iriethods of modern bjisiness.
A Spencerville farmer was transformeij from :i routine

• K. L. Buttorfleld, " Chapters in Rural ProKross." p. 190.
t Dr. .1. W, RobftftBon, Commission of Conservation. I, p HO.

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114 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

worker into an alert business man by the introduction
of the Babcock test in dairying. Its use revealed to
him that he kept a few cows at good profit, and yet
more at no profit. He began to apply the same business
principle to other things — the feed value of different
fodders, for instance. Then accurate records of the
daily production of milk by each cow in the herd were
begun. Pedigreed stock of the finest strains was pur-
chased, and developed with unusual success. Some
time ago a stockman visited his barn, examined his
records, picked out a score of head, and asked, " What
is your figure for these ?" When, after computation,
the farmer named his figure, the stockman without a
word wrote out a cheque for the amount. The sum
was larger than all the stock of every kind upon the
farm, together with all the equipment of the farm,
together with a fair proportion of the price of the farm
itself, had amounted to fifteen years before. What had
business methods meant to that farmer ? He had
learned to make a livelihood ; but more, he had learned
to live. He and every member of his family had found
in farming a zest unknown before. It had become an
absorbing occupation, and thereby many of the interests
of life had been transformed. Those who begin to live
in this way do not leave the farm. There are many
particulars concerning which there is a clamant cry
for the application of better business to farm manage-
ment, but in no particular is the need more pressing
than in providing some more efficient means of distri-
bution of farm products. There exists a small co-opera-
tive association of farmers at Spencer ville who ship
their eggs under guarantee of freshness, uniformity of
size and color, and regularity of supply, and gain from

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 115

two to ten cents a dozen above the re^ilar price by doing
so. A farmer had a fairly good two-acre orchard from
which he received about $75,00 a year for his fruit.
A co-operative society was formed in the neighborhood
in 1906. He joined it for the purpose of setting an
example rather than for any particular good that he
thought he would receive at the hands of the Associa-
tion. But improving influences were at work, and
year by year this improvement was measured by his
returns. In 1911 the same man with the same orchard
and practically the same number of trees received
$432.00 for his apples. The co-operative packing,
under positive guarantee, of the apples of British
Columbia has gained for them a market and fame. The
St. Catharines Cold Storage and Forwarding Company
is an example of what can be done in the shipping of
produce. Their distributions have grown from a few
hundred dollars in the first year to $90,000 in 1911,
and upon this it is safe to say that there has been a sav-
ing of between $10,000 and $20,000 in the year to the
farmers. The company is co-operative. The Canadian
Seed-Growers' Association is a fine example of the im-
provement of the conditions of an industry possible
under co-operation.

Sir nr>race Plunkett, one of the ablest of the writers
who have discussed on its economic side the farm ques-
tion as it exists in the United States, regards this as the
first essential in meeting the problem: "The Country
Life movement deals with what is probably the most
important problem before the English-speaking peoples
at this time. Now the predominance of the towns,
which is df'prcssing the country, is based partly on a
fuller application of modern f)hysiral scienrc, partly on

116 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

superior business organization, partly on facilities for
occupation and amusement ; and if the balance is to be
redressed the country must be improved in all three
ways. There must be better farming, better business,
and better living. These three are equally necessary,
but better business must come first. For farmers, the
way to secure better business is co-operation, and what
co-operation means is the chief thing that the American
farmer has to learn."* Such business co-operation the
farmers of Denmark have secured, and in securing it
have become strong. By means of it the farming of
Denmark is so specialized and so organized that it
resembles more the great modern industries than old-
time farming. Yet the land is still owned and worked
by small-acreage farmers. In no other country is farm
population holding its own as in Denmark.

The first requisite for such co-operation in Canada
is the securing of legislation authorizing the formation
of co-operative societies, defining their objects, powers
and responsibilities, and providing safeguards for their
operation and for central co-ordinating societies. There
is an essential difference between the organization
requisite for joint stock companies and co-operative
societies, a difference indicated by the very names of
the two classes of organizations. The one is a combina-
tion of capital, the other an association of persons. In
the control of the company the holding of shares con-
stitutes the voting power ; in the control of the society
membership does so.

Sir Horace Plunkett says: "The object of rural
associations is not to declare a dividend, but to improve

* Sir Horace Plunkett, " The Rural Life Problem in the
United States," p. 84.

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 117

the conditions of the industry for the members. In the
control of the manag:eraent the principle of * One Man
One Vote ' should be strictlv observed, an essential con-
dition of co-operative as distinguished from joint-stock
organization."* " This principle is so well established
by the experience of all countries that it is rather re-
markable that it has not yet affected Canadian legisla-
tion. Those who have read the history of co-operation
will have remarked that while there are individual
societies composed of men of exceptional ability and
public spirit that have succeeded with a joint-stock
organization, yet speaking generally co-operation has
been a dismal failure until suitable legislation was pro-
vided, or at least until antagonistic laws have been
repealed."f As our legislation now is, Canadian
farmers seeking formal organization are obliged to use
the methods of capitalism that enable those whose inter-
ests are not necessarily in the land or the industry to
control the organization and take what toll they please.
But more than legislation is required. Law is effec-
tive only as it embodies public will. In 1896 the Na-
tional Agricultural Union of Great Britain attempted
c<^)-operati()n on a large scale. The British Produce
Supply Association was formed. A quarter of a million
dollars was put in the scheme. Owing, however, to the
want of organization among the farmers it was found
that regular supplies could not be obtained. How shall
the (•o-op<'rative spirit be fostered ? H(!re as every-
where, we come finally to the moral difficulty under-
lying the economic one. Our farmers' l)oys do not

• Thr Outlook, December, 1911.

t A MacNell. Department of Agriculture, Canada, " Report,
Third Conference of the FrultKrowera of Canada," p. 19.

/

118 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

learn team-play in their games at school, and the lack
follows them throughout life. A spirit of independence
is the strength but becomes the weakness of rural life.
Bishop Gruntvig's splendid Folk Schools scattered
broadcast the seeds of co-operation throughout Den-
mark. The Roman Catholic Church, under Leo XIII.,
deliberately adopted similar methods in the Encyclical
" Rerum Novarum," and the fruit is being seen in the
" Catholic Workmen's Organizations " of Europe. Is
there not a lesson here for us ?

Co-operation in Canada has so far been found in two
classes of farm industry only, dairying and fruit-grow-
ing. It is equally applicable to stock-raising and to all
forms of farm production. It is the needed agency for
securing all the desiderata mentioned in our previous
discussions, — transportation, distribution, development
of markets, selling by sample, uniform grading of pro-
ducts, and excellence of output.

But co-operation has still another field of operation
in the farmer's relation to the financial world. We have
a fine example of what can be accomplished in this
direction in co-operative insurance in the Grenville
Patrons' Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Its office
is in the village of Spencerville ; the directors are
all farmers of the vicinity. It is now in its twenty-first
year of service. Its operations extend over five counties.
The policies in force number 4,957, their average
amount $1,600; the amount at risk $7,916,460. The
business has been carried on with unbroken and in-
creasing success from its inception. Such co-operative
financial concerns are an earnest of what our farmers
will yet accomplish.

At the beginning of the present session of Parliament
the Hon. C. W. White promised that the Bank Act

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 119

would undergo amendment during the session author-
izing banks to make loans on the products of the farm,
even including live stock. There are hints that oppo-
sition has arisen and that the hill will be withdrawn.
Such an outcome would constitute a call to our farmers
to form co-operative banking associations. There may
be other reasons for such action. Our banking system
is highly centralized. There are but five and twenty
banks in Canada. Two dozen bank managers control
the available liquid savings of the Dominion. It might
prove in the interest of national well-being that another
system of banking should arise to offset such centraliza-
tion.

Germany has a highly effective form of rural co-
operative banking. In 18-17 F. Raiffeisen, Burgo-
master of Flammersfeld, finding that the farmers of his
district could borrow only at usurious rates, formed co-
operative unions of the better-off citizens to loan to the
poorer. No profit was sought. The principle was dis-
interested love. After fifteen years, Raiffeisen con-
fessed failure; unions based on this principle had no
vitality. He then formed co-operative loan banks.
Farmers in a defined district syndicate their farm lands
under negotiable Ijonds which arc offered jointly as
security for the credit the society needs. The indi-
vidual farmer then borrows from this society. The
Central Co-operative Bank of Prussia co-ordinates the
societies. The source-book for information upon their
working is Volume I,, Monographs on Agricultural
Co-op(;ratioii, the International Institute of Agricul-
ture, Rome. TlnTe are over 1G,000 of the co-operative
societies, united in fifty-two federations, all united in
the Central Co-c)j)erative Bank. Their loans to farmers
in 10 10 amounted to $:i,800,00(),0()(). The average

120 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

rate of interest paid bj farmers is 4.4 per cent. They
form the foundation on which the whole structure of
co-operation in Germany is built. Never, even during
the stress of the Franco-Prussian war or the later agri-
cultural depression, has there been the failure of a
single one. A Commission appointed by President
Taft recommends their adoption in the United States.
The Raiffeisen system has improved social conditions.
Our mortgage system lowers them. In Germany the
directors are the borrower's neighbors. To them he
must explain his need of money and his hope of repay-
ment. When an intemperate man is given a loan after
promising to leave drink alone it is to the interest of his
neighbors to keep him sober. German pastors affirm
that the Raiffeisen system is one of the strongest moral
influences in the community.

It is, finally, through the adoption of the co-operative
principle that we shall at length attain the political
unity and efficiency of rural communities so greatly
needed — not for class legislation, which is only evil con-
tinually— but for rendering forever impossible class
legislation hostile to the farmer, and for linking in one
upward movement of civilization the forces of reform
in city and country.

In building up our Northern Land to be
A vast Dominion stretched from sea to sea,
A land of labor but of sure reward,
A land of corn to feed the world withal,
A land of life's rich treasures, plenty, peace,
Content, and freedom both to speak and do, —
A land of men to rule with sober law
This part of Britain's empire, next the heart.
Loyal as were their fathers, and as free!*

♦William Kirby, "Canadian Idylls," p. 136.

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST

Would I, too, were a man like Philippe

To mount, and lover-like, in boots and spurs,

Rush into the great city's open arms!

The country is a dull old-fashioned maid.

Well enough, truly, for young wayward children,

As is a spinster aunt to care for them.

But when those children are grown men and women

They will be governed by the aunt no more!

I'm weary of these grave environing woods

'Midst which I dwell and watch e'en wandering clouds.

Until I yearn to wander after them.

— J. A. Middleton.

CHAPTER IV.

Social Causes of Unrest.

A better rural life must indeed be based on rural
economic prosperity. But the problem is not funda-
m.entally an economic one. Dr. Josiab Strong, " whose
inspiring and thorough social studies opened to men
this field of observation," has ever urged this. The
problem of production has been solved, he considers.
Let us suppose, he adds, the problem of distribution
(that is, the adjustment of wealth, not the transport of
products) also solved, so that there should be ample
provision assured for the physical wants of every human
being for all time to come. Would people, he then asks,
would people, delivered from the fear of poverty, be
more satisfied with life, more devoted to each other?
This question he answers by asking another: Has
this Ixiatific, altruistic change taken place in our
wealthy class who are freed from thought of reach of
want? James Russell Lowell in his last address to
college students bade them never forget the reason for
which colleges e.xist: " Not that you may get something
by which to earn your bread, but that every mouthful
of bread may be more sweet to your taste." The rural
problem is very largely one of such appreciation of life.

The problem of production is far from Ixnng solved.
In ("anada we have wheat in abundance, and therefore
bread, though bread alone, of our necessary food, keeps
low in price. But we have not the fruit nor flesh nor

123

124. KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

fish nor fowl we need. The fear of famine for the
world is past, but the dawn only is breaking of that
bright morning when the earth shall yield her increase.
The whole wide earth shall yet become one great garden
of Grod, fertile and beautiful.

Reclamation shall yet take place by irrigation of
millions of acres now thought worthless, and of other
millions by drainage ; rich bottom lands shall be pro-
tected from river overflow by levees, and dykes reclaim
the fertile silt of lake and sea.

Conservation of soils from erosion, conservation of
the fertility of soils and of the means of enrichment of
soils, conservation of streams and forest and climate,
shall become universal; and the woods crowning all
the hillsides shall be peopled with plumaged birds and
fur-clad animals yielding regulated tribute to man.

The work of the wizards of agriculture in the de-
velopment of grains, grasses, roots and fruits, shall go
on until every vegetable prodvict shall exceed present
standards as far as the apples of Annapolis surpass the
wayside crab.

The work being done by national commissions in
searching all lands for every plant and shrub and vine
and tree suited to the climatic conditions of other coun-
tries shall become universally successful until each
country shall find itself, as John Reade has sung of
Canada:

Binding the charms of all lands that are rarest,
Like the bright cestus of Venus, in one.*

All that is best in each national system of agricul-
ture— the patient labor of China, where even now no

* John Reade, " The Prophecy of Merlin."

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 125

weed is ever seen — the universal proprietorsliip of
France, the technical research of Germany, the scien-
tific cultivation of Britain, the progressive management
of America, the thorough co-operation of Denmark,
shall become the heritage of all.

And then shall the earth yield her increase. The
Sahara shall become an unroofed greenhouse, arcaded
with palms, garlanded with vines, swarded with gourds;
every mile of the tropics shall be pruned into exuberant
largesse, and even the Arctics shall yield a richer tribute
than temperate zones once gave — for it is a scientific
fact that the moss-covered timdras of our Northland,
when once our herdsmen tend the reindeer there, are
fitted to give as rich an output of food for man as do
the grassy plains of Texas with their long-horned steers
to-day.

Let none despise the heritage of Our Lady of the
Snows! Why do the wild birds migrate to the north?
Not for longer hours of daylight, and not for solitude
for nesting, but for ampler food-supply. Lean of sinew,
they fly high above our ken as they go north, and the
pot-hunter scarce deigns to look for them as they pass.
Rotund of body, they fly low as they return, and are
everywhere slaughtered, for they have fed fat upon the
myriad swarms of inse<'t8 of the Arctic summer, and
their very flesh is stained jMirplc with the juices of the
V>errics «»f its autumn. Why arc our shoals of finest
food-fisliCK. wliy tbc whale, nature's masterpiece of phy-
sical grrtwtli, tlcuizenH of tli*- fold waters only? Be-
cause the «-o|(J waters, and they alon(!, :iie literally thick
with fftod, .\ii<l man shall yet, in some way, follow
nature's hints; and when he shall begin to ten<l bis
flo<;ks of Hf)lan geese and eider duck, he shall ask, but

126 KURAL LIFE 11^ CAI^ADA

ask in vain, Why did not our fathers conserve for ns
the musk-ox, and all the wild one-time denizens of this
world of God's and ours ?

The problem of production, now being solved as re-
gards girders and rivets, shall then be solved as regards
bread for a fuller world. Shall it be a satisfactory and
a satisfied world ? That will be found to depend on
whether all that is best in every system of agriculture
in amplest development, and in every form of industry,
shall be crowned by the Christian ideal of service to
humanity — on the degree to which our struggling de-
mocracy shall be transformed into the likeness of the
kingdom of God.

The farmer has been dissatisfied with his returns.
But he is even more discontent with his situation. He
finds his conditions of labor unsatisfactory, his means
of education and recreation, his home, and even his
church. The country is lacking in the joy and pride
of labor; it is lacking in social life at present, though
it remembers wistfully the social pleasures of the
past ; lacking in a system of education adapted to
the farm, as our present school system is fitted to pre-
pare for the business office or the university; it is lack-
ing in healthful recreations, in appreciation of country
values ; lacking in community ideals, in altruism, in all
the newer ethical implications and applications of re-
ligion. And, inasmuch as man cannot live by bread
alone, even were there no economic problem, people
would still leave the country.

The hours of labor are long upon the farm. A fort-
night ago I was a guest over night at a farm home.
Though I was downstairs at a quarter past six in the
morning breakfast was already over. My hostess apolo-

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 127

gized, explaining that the men must have breakfast be-
fore thej began their day's work. " But surely," I said,
" that compels you to be at work very early in preparing
their meal for them before their work begins.'' "' I am
up every morning at half-past four," was her reply.
Yet it had been almost eight in the evening when, the
day's work being over, we three had sat down to the
feast of reason, the flow of soul, and the joy of the
spirit. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ
in America has adopted a platform which has been
styled the social creed of the churches and hailed as the
magna charta of the worker's sacred rights. This
social creed asserts that the churches must stand
** for the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours
of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that
degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the
highest human life." The Pittsburg Survey declared
not onlv the seven-days week of labor, but the twelve-
hours day in vogue among the steel-workers, a disgrace
to civilization. What of the sixteen-hours day of many
of our women on Canadian farms ( The hours are long
for others than women. The growing boy, the imma-
ture youth, should not be expected to plod along as
steadily as the mature man, even through the rightful
hours of well-regulated toil. Forgetfulness of this on
the part of the father is the cause of much dissatisfac-
tion among country boys. And worse even than forget-
fulness may be found. There are undoubtedly cases
upon the farm where parents exploit their children's
labor for the sake of the money return as really as do
employers of child labor in factory or sweatshop. And
even the men tlicmsclves sufTer through overlong hours
of toil, Tho\igh agriculture is not one of the most ex-

128 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

hausting forms of labor, it is monotonous, save for the
turn of the seasons, and it is often solitary. Even its
advanced forms often confine the solitary workman to
the ceaseless round of tasks in the barn throughout the
day and the week. For in many cases the new equip-
ment and the specialized lines were adopted with regard
paid to the output alone, and not to the effect upon the
agent.

The conditions of toil are often unnecessarily hard.
Labor-saving devices in the home are sometimes scantily
provided, while those for barn and field are ample.
" Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want
of heart." Let us glance at a single illustration — the
supply of water in the house. The Agricultural Survey
of 1910 found that in Prince Edward Island ninety-
seven per cent, of the farm houses obtain water from
wells outside the house. All carry the water by hand.
In Nova Scotia only two per cent, of the farm houses
have water piped to the house. In New Brunswick
ninety-five per cent, obtain water from wells and springs.
In English-speaking Quebec ninety-two per cent, carry
water by hand. These conditions are general. This
lack is due perhaps chiefly to the fact that the equip-
ment introduced so liberally out-of-doors is not re-
garded as labor-saving by the man who has no
dread of toil, but rather as a means of adding to the
efiiciency of his labor and thus multiplying his output.
But the wife suffers nevertheless, and the daughters
leave. The household science courses offered by the
agricultural colleges point the way to a solution.
With wider knowledge of the possibilities of achieve-
ment through fuller equipment the daughters of the
farm will vie with their brothers in advance.

Conditions of toil in the fields also are unnecessarily

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 129

hard. The modern crusade against occupational dis-
ease must deliver the farmer from rheumatism and
many another affliction by recalling him from the fields
in rain and giving him more mastery over all the cir-
cumstances of his toil. The modern world can easily
afford such relief through a fairer distribution of the
profits of labor.

The problem of the farm laborer is an unsolved one
in Canada as yet, nor will it be solved until greater
efficiency is demanded, higher wages paid, and a home
for the farm laborer and his household provided. A
somewhat common custom at present is to pay a certain
monthly wage — the average for eastern Canada is
$32.66 per month for a season of some seven or eight
months — together with board at the farmer's table and
a room in his house, and also stabling and keep for the
hired man's horse. I recently asked one of our leading
farmers regarding the effect upon the efficiency and
general character of the men of this custom of main-
taining a driving horse. " They are out driving until
midnight," was his reply ; " the effect upon both morals
and efficiency is bad. But," he added, '' you can secure
them upon no other terms." The cottage for a home
would benefit employer and employee alike. What
modern industry has discovered modern agriculture
must learn, namely, that the best paid and cared for
labor is the most profitable.

The boarding of the hind nwu is often a hardship
to the honsowife. The custom iiciy have national com-
pensations. When :i Miiiii (»l foreign nationality is
hired, nothing else so effectively shapes him iutn a
Canadian citizen. But it has personal penalties. If
several men an* crnployed the strain upon the homo life
is severe. I havr- already instanced in another connec-
9

130 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

tion a young Spencerville farmer whose father by the
purchase of several farms had replaced thirty-eight per-
sons by eight. Recently this young man told me of the
decision to rent the farm, giving as the chief reason
that his mother and sister were practically attendants
upon the hired men. The home, which has everything
desirable that country life can afford, is maintained,
but the barns and fields are in the hands of renters ;
and the city claims another of that type which gives
us nation-builders.

The result of conditions of labor on the farm is that
there is little of that joy and pride in one's work which
is essential to all true living. Our people need not only
to sing with our poet Anderson of to-day:

There is no land like our land,

The sea calls to the sea;
The mother that hath home us
Hath a daughter fair as she.

0 this may love the kopje,

And that the blue-gum tree,
But this land is our land,

And Canada for me!*

but to sing in the spirit of our poet Sangster, writing
just before our modern day began:

A song, a song for the good old flail
That our fathers used before us;
A song for the flail, and the faces hale
Of the queenly dames that bore us! ^
We are old Nature's peers,
His royal cavaliers;
Knights of the plough! For no Golden Fleece we sail;
We're princes in our own right,— our sceptre is the flail !t

* R. S. G. Anderson, in " The Westminster."

t Charles Sangster, Cantata, " The Happy Harvesters."

Till-: IIIKKI) MAX IX Till-: IImMK

UNNKi'KSSAlCV TnW. UATi;iC I-|:«'.\l Till': WDLL

WoIIIUIi'm riVlr(JI«MH tUHkH.

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 131

The country is lackinsr in social life. This lack is
seen not merelv in what is often called society, but in
its very elements. The fewness of women in the coun-
try brings seyere social strain. Domestic help for farm
homes cannot be obtained. In times of illness a trained
nurse can be secured. During the recoyery of strength
neighlx)rs render what assistance they can, but not eyen
the services of a washerwoman can be had for hire. In
May last T conducted the funeral of a wife and mother.
The household consisted, in addition, of the husband and
two sons under twenty. For six months a trained nurse
had been in charge, but the husband and the sons had
perforce to l>ecome the housekeepers. Since the funeral
they have lived alone, bereaved indeed. They are well-
to-do. They are eminently respectable. Yet attempts
to secure a housekeeper have been in vain.

Tho financial relation between farmers ami thoir
children has caused many a tragedy. I could cit(> an
instance of a man of thirty-five, married, with happy
children, an elder in his church, serving upon a rich
farm, without a dollar t<t own (»r to control except with
the express consent of his father. The son, but not the
father, holds the respect and the afi"ection of the com-
munity. A form of trial which has made this one man
strong through discipline has made countless hundreds
fail. Scant appreciation, little relaxation, iiiid Inck of
financial provision annually drives nuuiy promising
youths from the (■<»untry to the city, Financial (-(piality
iK'hveen husband and wife; wise rewards to the ciuM
for mastering tasks, leading on to a deliiiile under-
standing over indep(;ndent responsibility, are called for.

Means of social life, in the ordinary accej)tance of
that term, are lacking in the country. .V (juestiounairc

132 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

sent out to a number of mj acquaintances brings more
evidence of this than of any other lack. One woman
quotes, in passionate protest, the words of Cowper:

O Solitude, where are the charms
Which sages have seen in thy face?
I Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this desolate place.

The hunger for comradeship drives many a migrant
from the country to the never-filled cities. This need
must itself be met, for though there are compensations
in the country, " to speak of them is scarcely more
effective than to reason with the avalanche concerning
the glory of the mountain after it has felt the joy of
yielding to the forces that have pulled at its heart since
the world began."*

The social life of pioneer days had two character-
istics absent from that of the present. The essential
operations of the farm brought people together. Log-
ging was perforce a common task. There was not capi-
tal in the hands of the pioneers to secure its perform-
ance by paid labor. The nature of the task did not per-
mit of its being done single-handed. And so it was with
many other operations as well. The " bee " — the word
does not arise from the social habits of the honey bee ;
word and institution alike came down from ancient
Saxon days, when an alarm of danger from a foe
brought all together for defence — the " bee " to which
men had recourse for mutual aid in labor availed for
social utility as well. And the other characteristic was
that the satisfaction of ends attained gave place for

* Wllbert L. Anderson, " The Country Town," p. 196.

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNEEST 133

social purposes. Men felt that they were gaining what
they lived for, and so when some weeks of comparative
leisure came at different seasons of the year, a house-
hold would go to spend the greater part of a happy day
with another household in social cnjojnuent. iS^either
of these sources of social activities is found with us at
present. The newer and bettor agriculture is richer by
far in potentialities of social satisfaction through col-
laboration than was the earlier primitive form. But
these potentialities are not yet being taken advantage
of as they might and should be. The use of machines
made it possible for men to labor more alone. The ad-
vance in modes of agriculture has opened men's eyes to
a vision of things to be achieved, but attainment has
not come, and every moment and every energy are de-
voted to the progress or the prosperity so ardently de-
sired, while the needs of the social life are forgotten in
eager pursuit of the material goal.

Yet there are instances everj'Avhore to be found fore-
shadowing the coming good. I have mentioned a gath-
ering of seventeen farmers on silo-filling day, none of
whom used tobacco. Yet the group to which they be-
long has maintained a Pipe-club, and jolly good times
have been enjoyed at its meetings. They are remodel-
ling their barns, r in ploying modern adaptations of
cement and improved water systems. For the installa-
tion of tlicse improvements co-operatively they formed
a Pipe-and-Wrench Club. An annual business meeting
was necessarv, and of the first a social fnnctiun as wtll
was made, with wives and dangbtcrs present, and after-
• liiiner toasts. The meetings of the club then became
monthly affairs, witli papers read, diseussionH, ami
niUHic. It is a]f)ng some .sncli lines as these lliaf a better

134 KURAL LIFE IN CAE^ADA

social life on the farm must be built up. The new social
satisfactions must be linked with the new economic co-
operation. .

The rural telephone is having almost revolutionary
effects in answering social need. There is a local tele-
phone company for Augusta and Edwardsburg town-
ships, with central exchange in Spencerville, whose cap-
ital is provided solely by our farmers, and whose board
of directors is composed of farmers. It has already
placed telephones in over five hundred homes, and is
rapidly extending. And again this is to be noted: the
social benefit arises through an instrumentality intro-
duced not for our social but for business purposes. In
this it is typical of all real betterment. Rural mail de-
livery is also affording help, although upon intellectual
rather than upon social lines. From the village of
Spencerville five delivery routes radiate, serving ap-
proximately four hundred homes. Another local insti-
tution of a genuinely social character is the agricul-
tural fair. The township one held in Spencerville is
the year's chief visiting day for hundreds of households.
And again we notice that this instrumentality has been
maintained in social efficiency by remaining true to its
agricultural character. Those fairs in neighboring
towns which commercialized their attractions, depend-
ing upon hired entertainment for drawing power, are
dying or dead ; this and similar ones depending upon
interest in farm products and handicrafts are growing
in patronage.

'The country is lacking in healthful recreation. Play
is almost unattainable in country schools under present
conditions. We have many hundreds of schools with an
attendance too small to secure efficiency along any line.

THE COUNTRY CHILD WITH FEW PLAYMATES,

FEW GAMES.

In a delightsome woild, companionless.

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST l.'if.

A Special Report of the Department of Education of
Manitoba shows that in that Province in 1910, there
were two schools operated with an average attendance
for the year of less than two ; seven with an average of
less than three ; twelve with an average of less than
four; twenty with less than live; thirty-six with less
than six ; fifty-two with less than seven ; two hundred
and eleven with less than ten, and two hundred and
sixty with less than twelve. Those enrolled vary in age
from five to fourteen years. What possibility is there
of the formation of play-groups in such schools ? Nor
is there usually any equipment for play. How diifer-
ent from the thronged, well-equipped, supervised play-
ground of a great city school ! Nor is the child better
off at home. The child of the city streets has so many
companions, but no place to play; the country child,
with all the world to play in, has so few companions
and few games. Even the games familiar to all school
children a generation ago — inherited from the folk-
games of earlier generations — are largely forgotten.
Still more true is this of the games of youth, so helpful
a feature of earlier English life:

AH the villugL' train, from labor free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree,
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;
Many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground.
And slights of art and feats of strength went round.
And Btill as each repeated pleasure tired
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired.
These were thy charms, sweet village! Sports ilkt- these
With Bwet't succession taught even toil to please;
These round thy bowers their cheerful Influence shed;
These were thy charms — but all thy charms are fled I*

• Oliver Goldsmith, " The Deserted Village."

136 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

One of the causes of this loss is the coming of the com-
mercialized spectacle of sport. Our joung people from
the country flock to the nearest town or city to pay their
entrance fee and see a professional game. They have
given up play for what serves no true recreative pur-
pose. " Contrast the bleachers' benches and the field
at a baseball match. On the crowded seats is such an
abandonment of restraint as can hardly be paralleled
in civilization. Men release themselves from control.
They shout, they hoot, they yell, they scream. They
wave their hands, their hats, their handkerchiefs. On
the other hand how alert and controlled the athletes are.
They have won their places by being highly trained in
body and mind. They are cool, quick and resourceful.
Brain and body are at the highest tension. And the
players work together: every man is ready to make a
sacrifice hit if it will win a run for the team. Every
man knows his place, and every man does his best. It
is a wonderful exhibition of co-operative activity. It
is a lesson in self-control, self-reliance, self-denial. It
is all that the howling gallery of spectators is not."*
Once play was well-nigh universal. That condition
must be won back again.

Eor play, sport, recreation, is one of the great human
needs. There is involved not a question of athletics
alone, nor of amusement, but of the enriching of life
, throughout childhood and the refreshing of life in later
years. Scientific study of child-life has demonstrated
that a balanced manhood depends upon fullness of play-
experience in childhood. In adult life efiiciency de-
mands recreation. It is the finding of accurate ob-

* Dr. J. W. MacMillan, in " Social Service," p. 69.

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 137

servers that one reason why farmers co-operate so little
is that they have not learned team-work through play
in vouth. Phiv is one of the most ethical of all human
activities. In other activities we are largely controlled
from without. In play we are most free. Play is
spontaneous, and therefore self-expressive, and thus
ethical. But it has also another great meaning. It is
in play that the instinctive aversion of one individual
to another is most fully overcome, and the social spirit
is fostered. It is when individuals come together with
pleasure that they merge so as to become a society, a
community.

An unsolved problem is as to how the recreations of
country life may be so associated with its tasks that
boys and girls shall regard farm life as a desirable
vocation. The recreations of the country must become
native and significant; must have a true relation to
real life in the country — they cannot be exotic. The
farmer distrusts the city reformer's knowledge of rural
life, and humorously depicts it:

I would flee from the city's rule and law,

From its form and fashion cut loose,
And go where the strawberry stands on its straw.

And the gooseberry grows on its goose.
Oh, lot me drink from a moss-grown pump

That was hewn from a pumpkin tree;
Eat mush and milk from a rural stump —

(From form and fashion free);
— Now-gathcTf'd mush from the mushroom vine,

And milk from a milk -weed sweet.
With luscious pine-apple from the pine —

(Such food as the gods might eat),
— And then to the whitewashed dairy I'd turn.

Where the dairy m.-ild haHtonlng hliii.

138 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

Her ruddy and golden butter to churn

From the milk of her butter-flies;
And I'll rise at morn with the early bird,

To the fragrant farm-yard pass.
As the farmer turns his beautiful herd

Of grasshoppers out to grass.

Yet he accepts his recreation from town. With much
better cause might he discount amusements of the Coney
Island type proffered him' from the city than flout its
well-meant social guidance.

The country is lacking in means of education adapted
to country life. Here we touch upon one of the most
direct and active causes of loss of rural population.
Those boys and girls who take fullest advantage of the
public school go on to the high school, business college
or university, and almost invariably enter teaching or
other of the professions or business life. A two-fold
injury is wrought by our present educational system.
Not only are some led directly from the farm. Others,
seeing no connection between their studies and life, lose
all interest in study, and take up the tasks of the farm
unprepared to appreciate what is best in farm life.
Every child is entitled to an education that is at once
cultural and vocational. A vocational course lays the
foundation for technical or professional skill and effi-
ciency; it should also show the pupil how to use his
vocation as a means of personal growth, intellectual
and moral, and how to make his vocation a means of ser-
vice to his fellow-men. There is a one-roomed public
school within my congregation, at Ventnor, where for
the past three years there has been a school garden with
experimental plots cultivated by the pupils. Last year
the chief kinds of fodder plants were the subject of ex-

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SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 139

periment. With what zest those plots were cared for!
The study was intended to be vocational, but there was
no subject taiij2:ht in that school more cultural ; ii(»t only
so, but every cultural subject benefited by the presence
of the one vocational one. Pupils, learning for real
life, became eager for all education. Again, when I
first knew Spencerville few of the school children could
name the wild flowers; some could not even recognize
the forest trees. The school principal had the boys be-
gin a collection of native woods. It aroused such in-
terest that a collection so excellent was secured that
when once the Governor-General visited the Brockville
schools to grace the opening of the Macdonald ^Manual
Training School, the loan of this collection was asked
for by the county superintendent as an exhibit. Now,
this study of native woods was taken up as cultural. It
gave some boys at least such a new interest in the
countr}- that it proved vocational as well, fitting them
for, and retaining them upon, the farm.

Not only is the chief trend of our present mode of ,
education away from the farm, but as compared with
the same mode of education in the cities our coimtry
schools are inetficicijt. In the city teaching is made a
life vocation; in the country it is made a stepping-stone
to some other career. The average time spent by our
rural teachers in this profession is less than four years.
Of all city teachers professional tiaining is demanded;
in the country many are permitted to teach, imt only
without profcHsional training, but even without a certifi-
cate of general attainments. Moreover, even with ill-
qiialified teachers, country schools are more expensive
than city oiu-s, inasmuch as a<le(|uately j»aid teachers
for well filled classes cost less per pupil than the j)oorly

140

KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

X

paid teachers with one or two pupils to a class. In
Manitoba during the year 1910 there were 62 districts
operating schools with an enrolment of 10 or less, the
total enrolment being 321, averaging 5.1 per school.
These districts spent $35,707, which means that the edu-
cation, such as it was, cost $111 per child, based on the
average attendance. In marked contrast with these
figures are those of the city of Winnipeg, where the cost
per pupil was $34, and this included a full collegiate
course, together with manual training and domestic
science for children in the grades, and school buildings
as complete as any in Canada. The era of consolidated
schools must come. These will secure an abler, better
qualified teaching force ; equipment for carrying on
work of a vocational nature; the numbers of pupils
needed to carry on organized play, the grading of pupils,
and an adequate school programme ; and the housing
and other facilities requisite for the social, recreational
and cultural activities of an organized social centre.

There is a pitiful lack of appreciation of country
values. One of these is the beauty of nature ; the love
of animals is another ; the privacy and freedom of life
another ; environment essentially healthful and creative
another. But such values are countless, — wide as
human life itself and varied as its needs. Even in the
new industrial life farm values stand easily first. In
the factory the mechanic tends one operation of one
machine ; on the farm a man must master all opera-
tions of a score of machines. One becomes a machine-
tender ; the other an artisan and engineer.

But these values are unappreciated. Few of those
who are freeborn heirs of the country are awake to the
charm of the fields. A farmer may be grandly master

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 141

of his business and at the same time, with Lampman,
thrill with the joy of the earth:

The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes,
I bathe my spirit In blue skies,

And taste the springs of life.
I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I match the bluebird In her mirth;

And wild with wind and sun,
A treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise.
The hillsides and the wooded ways,

Till earth and I are one.*

Few know the birds, the common flowers, or even
the forest trees, and as for the native shrubs they are
quite nameless. This lack is general. An English
observer writes: "There is no help in visions of
Arcadia ; yet it is plain fact that in days gone by the
peasantry found life more than endurable. They had
their folk-songs, now utterly forgotten. They had
romances and fairy-lore, which their descendants could
no more appreciate than an idyll of Theocritus. If
your peasant love the fields* which give him bread, he
will not think it hard to labor in them . . . There
was a time when the old English nanics of all our
flowers were rornmon on rustic lips — by which, indeed,
they wcp" first uttered. Tin- fact that flowers and
birds arc well-nigh forgotten, togellier with the songs
ami the elves, shows how a<lvaneed is the process of
rural disintegration. "f

• Archibald Lampman, " Lyrics of Earth."

t " Th^' I'rlvaff Fapors of Honry Ryccroft." p. 202.

142 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

It was my privilege to attend the first Students' Con-
vention at Northfield — that gathering of college men
at which the Student Volunteer Movement began. One
day a few of us were oft" for a tramp over the hills.
Coming across some huckleberry pickers we bought a
few berries. As we paid a woman for them I said,
" What a glorious view you have from these hills !"
With mild profanity but with strong feeling she
replied : " You wouldn't think so darn much of it if
you had to make a living here picking blueberries."
There were forces of feeling pent up within that
woman's nature, but resentment only at hard condi-
tions was felt. I have a friend, one of the largest-
natured and truest-hearted of all our ministers of the
Gospel, who in his youth was a gardener on one of
Scotland's great estates. Flowers in garden and green-
house were grown in utmost profusion. Seldom were
they seen except by the servants who tended them.
Thousands were cut daily and thrown aside. Hard
by was a great industrial city, yet none of its people,
destitute as they were of flowers and of all forms of
beauty, were ever permitted to see one blossom of the
boundless store near by. As a consequence, to one
true heart which until then had loved flowers they are
now a source of pain. So, with some who dwell in
the country, all nature is so intimately blent with asso-
ciations of toil that it cannot be looked on with plea-
sure. With yet more these sensibilities have never
been aroused. The latent power was there, and, as the
harpstring vibrates when a note is struck on a string
of similar pitch, might have awaked at the touch of
nature-love in another heart.

A K1.<>\VKIM,< iVI Xi ; I'WK.M i:i:. IXMIAX iii:aii.

JlM.MKSrKAl* <i.\Ui>i:S. INKIA.N IIKAK, SASK.
A|>|>riM-latl<in of fiiunt ly v;ihi«M.

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 143

With beauty God covers the ground; no acre too poor to

befriend.
That thou and I and all men may perceive and comprehend.*

But in childhood neither did parent speak of love of
beauty at home, nor did teacher impart it in school,
nor were its fountains in literature discovered. And
as a consequence a great human need is unmet. The
unesthetic rural mind starves amid scenes " where the
spirit of beauty dwelleth," as though seamen should
perish of thirst as they sail in the mouth of the broad
Amazon.

There is truth in Edwin Alarkham's arraignment
of society in his greatest poem, " The Man with the
Hoe":

Bound by the weight of centuries, he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground;
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair?
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down that brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
What gulfs between him and the seraphim I
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?

One perhaps resents thr- aj)|)licati(>n of this strong f)or-
traiture of tlie peasant of Kuropc to any class of our
pcoj)Ic. One may go fnrtlicr iin<l say: This is what
the intuition of the p<»et saw in the gn-af painting;
* Bliss Carman.

144 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

but what did the intuition of the artist see in the human
life there portrayed ? Was it not the deathlessness of
the home affections and the sensibilities of religion ?
True; jet poet and painter are alike right, and the
question for us in Canada is this: Though religion
and love be unquenchable, do we wish to retain these
sensibilities only? — to retain them on the terms of the
life Millet depicts and Markham censures ? Turn we
to another great French painting, Jules Breton's
"Song of the Lark," and ask: Why should we not
retain the rapture visible on this peasant girl's face as
she listens to the morning song of the lark while
trudging barefoot to her toil, without retaining the
narrowness of her peasant life ? We ask also : Though
there are many among our farmers who are far from
insensible to " the rift of dawn, the reddening of the
rose, and the long reaches of the peaks of song," aye,
and who " feel all the passion of eternity," yet why
should " time's tragedy " be in " their aching stoop " ?
Why should they so bear " upon their back the burden
of the world " that " through their bent shape humanity
cries protest " ?

Is this the thing the Lord God made, and gave

To have dominion over sea and land?

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power,

To feel the passion of eternity?

Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns

And pillared the blue firmament with light?

— Down all the stretch of hell to its last gulf

There is no shape more terrible than this,

More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed,

More filled with signs and portents for the soul.

More fraught with menace to the universe!

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;

SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 145

Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;

Through this dread shape, humanity — betrayed,

Plundered, profaned, and disinherited, —

Cries protest to the judges of the world,

A protest that is also prophecy.

O Masters, Lords and Rulers in all realms.

Is this the handiwork ye give to God?

This monstrous thing, distorted and soul-quenched?

How will ye ever straighten up this shape?

Give back the upward looking and the light;

Rebuild in it the music and the dream.

Touch it again with immortality.

Make right the immemorial infamies.

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

Who, one may again ask, arc the " Masters, Lords and
Rulers in all realms '' who are responsible ? Not only
those whose oppression brings about such woe, but also
all who might relieve that woe. Dr. Henry Sloane
Coflin, of !^^adison Avenue Presbyterian Church, in
his recent volume, " Social Aspects of the Cross,"
writes thus of the viewpoint of Jesus : " Again, and
this is more surprising, Jesus numbered Himself with
the transgressors. There is not the slightest indica-
tion that He felt Himself a sinner. The keenest con-
science our world has known found nothing with which
to charge itself. There is no expression of penitence
and no prayer for forgiveness among the personal
prayers of Jesus. lint this does not mean that Tie
considered Himself withoiit responsibility for the
ignorance and folly and iniquity of the world in which
He lived. While fully aware of His uniqueness,
placing himself apart from and over against the rest
of humanity, Jchus realized His oneness with men in

all that they achieved or failed of, sutTcrcd. or enjoyed.
10

146

EUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

If there was a Zacchaeus whose honesty and generosity
had given way under the bad system of revenue-col-
lecting them in vogue, Jesus felt Himself implicated
in his downfall. If there were sick folk, their diseases
were to Him, in part at least, due to inherited weak-
ness or wrong conditions of life which might frankly
be termed devilish, but for which He felt Himself
socially accountable."

And if we. His followers, do not try to better human
living, Markham's final question concerns us:

O Masters, Lords and Rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
When this dumb terror shall reply to God
After the silence of the centuries?

The country is lacking in community ideals. What
patriotism is to a nation such ideals are to a locality.
Solidarity is one of these high ideals, the oneness in
being and in interests of all. But in the country as it
now is there is no magnetism to touch its atoms with
the power of affinity and make them cohere. The rural
community is but ropes of sand where it should be
chains of steel. There are localities here and there
throughout the country where more of such solidarity
exists than is generally found. Roebuck, the neigh-
borhood in which is situated one of the three
congregations in my pastoral charge, has always,
through some kindly influence, retained something of
this. The two denominations chiefly represented in the
community, Methodist and Presbyterian, are singu-

SOCIAL CAUSES OF U:NREST 147

larly free from sectarian feeling. Their Sunday-school
work has always been carried on as a union enterprise.
Two school districts more than a generation ago built
one school in common and have since had a large dis-
trict school carrying on public school work in two
grades, under two teachers. In other ways the people
of the locality act as if integrally one. May it not be
largely in consequence of this solidarity that there is
found there a larger farm population than can be found
elsewhere in the coiinty of Grenville ?

The church, too, is lacking in certain regards in the

country. This is d\ie not to absence of devoted service

on the part of pastors and church workers, but to need

of redirection. And lack here is more far-reaching in

effects than at any other point. The church is, of all

institutions, deepest in the affections of the greatest

number of persons. If there be an unsatisfied hunger

that she alone can meet, that want must touch rural

life at a more vital point than any other. Let us

notice such lack in two directions only. The farmer

is entering a new world-environment for which the

church is called upon to fit him. He no longer meets

face to face those with whom he deals. He sells by

sample for delivery at a distance, and must learn to

deliver goods up to sample. He is entering upon new

relations with his neighbors through co-operation. The

greatest ethical task of each generation is to provide

new forms of guidance for such new conditions as these.

The greatest ethical task for the church in the city is

to plare within the new corporate industrial and com-

mereial organizations the controlling motives of justice

and brotherhood. Th^ most fundamental honesty

tf>-day deals with unearned profits. So the greatest

148 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

ethical task of the church in the country is to lead the
farmer to feel the new responsibilities arising out of
the new agriculture so that he shall enter upon them
with a new sense of personal worth and of service
rendered.

And the church is called on to render social service
in the country. By this we do not at all mean that she
is to become institutional. That may follow inciden-
tally. But she is to seek not simply the regeneration
and the spiritual culture of individuals, but also the
transformation of every relationship and every institu-
tion now conformed to the spirit of this world into the
blessedness of the kingdom of God. The church is now
valiantly fighting the liquor traffic; she must deliver
rural society in like manner from every adverse encum-
brance. And she must foster every organization and
agency that strives for the enrichment and enlargement
of life. An ancient philosopher defined the freeman
by no contrast with the slave, but as the man who lives
in a state where there is no slave. Even so there can
be no happy man until no one is unhappy. The church
is to serve until there is no preventable misery.

I will not cease from mental fight.
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

—William Blake, " Social Advance."

THE FUNCTION OF THE
CHURCH

" They are all living monuments of a dead church," said
Frances Willard once in speaking to Dr. Josiah Strong, of the
Red Cross and similar movements. " Nay," was the reply,
" She is not dead, but sleepeth."

Wild, wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?

Dark, dark night, wilt thou never wear away?
Cold, cold Church, in thy death-sleep lying.

Thy Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter-day!

Peace, faint heart, though the night be spent with sighing;

Rest, fair corse, where thy Lord Himself hath lain;
Weep, dear Lord, where Thy bride Is lying,

Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health
again.

— Charles Kingaley.

I pray you look over the walls of your creed.
Heaven-centred and staunch as they seem,

At the manifold forms of human need
With which the ages teem.

— Arthur Wentworth Eaton.

CHAPTER V.
The Function of the Church.

The farmer is engaged in a struggle which is affecting
every situation in the country and every institution. It
is in this struggle that the farmer now needs religious
help. Shall the church give him in this crisis theo-
logical teaching only — pure, it may be, as to its source
in the Word of God. but still purely theological ? Or
shall she, not turning aside from this, busy herself also
with all his varied interests, social, educational, recrea-
tional, and even economic '. What, in meeting such a
situation, is the function of the church \

In New England there has been a clashing of policy
as well as of viewpoint upon this problem, between the
Evangelicals and the Liberal Christians. The Liberal
Movement stressed humanitarian types of uplift to such
a degree as to become a sociological rather than a reli-
gious movement for betterment. The Evangelicals
stressed the teaching of the Christian pulpit, depending
upon its fruits in personal character; claiming that
New England, cradled in theology, had produced her
superb manhood in the past, with its outcome in civiliza-
tion, by means of her orthodoxy. Each side had its
limitation of view. Those who advocate reliance upon
pure theolf)gy overlook the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers
came to New England purposely to seek a new social
environment, and that this new environincut gave an

151

152 EUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

open field for the beneficent influence of theology.
They overlook also the fact that in the New England of
the past century, where preaching became most indi-
vidualistic and unpractical, the rural exodus became
most exhausting. Dr. Warren H. Wilson says : " The
only areas of country life known to me in which people
do not go to church at all are in New England and
among colonies of New England people. ... I think
the preachers of New England who taught individual-
ism instead of social efficiency had a hand in this."*

Those who place the stress upon pulpit teaching in
its best form of strong and sane evangelism, but still
with neglect of social efficiency, overlook the fact that
New England was the cradle of the strongest evangelism
of the past generation under Dwight L. Moody. Those
who place reliance upon humanitarian efforts overlook
the fact that New England has been even more markedly
the home of unsuccessful social experiment than of
unsuccessful religious individualism ; and also that the
only communities in the United States of America
where the present rural problem has not arisen — the
Dunkards, Mennonites, and other Dutch and German
communions, and to a considerable degree the Scotch
and Scotch-Irish communities — there has been found
not only greater social efficiency, but also clearly defined
theological discipline ; while both schools alike overlook
the fact that in the few but great examples of downward
rural tendencies being checked and replaced by uplift
of the finest character — such as, on the local scale, in the
Steinthal under Oberlin, and on the national scale in
Denmark under Gruntvig — are examples of the welding

* " Men and Religion Messages," Vol. VI, p. 261.

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THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 153

into one of spiritual culture and social service. No
controversy is ever settled save by the logic of facts, and
the logic of facts, through the verdict of the historical
outcome, is putting an end to this controversy in New
England. " What we are now getting,'' says Dr.
George F. Wells, " in the evangelical and missionary
movements of the present day, is a theology socialized —
the things of faith humanly lived and taught . . .
while the danger, if not the guilt, of the liberal move-
ment, because of a too persistent emphasis, is that of
not becoming a part of the socialized church she has
helped to nurture, and thus of becoming ineffective as a
mere sociology."*

The liberal movement claims to have taught the
church that she has a social task, and the claim is ad-
mitted by many. But there was another and earlier
teacher. The tasks undertaken by Christian mission-
aries abroad formed the iirst leaven; and the Salvation
Army — whose revered leader, knighted long since by
the sword of the Spirit in Immanuel's hand, has just
l>een called to the presence of his great Conunanderf —
was the effective pioneer. And without being cognizant
of the details one may safely assume that through what-
ever group the impulse in New England came, it was
neither the blind passion of outraged humanity nor the
patient insistence of the scientific spirit, but the power
of the Holy Spirit of God working by love in hearts
renewed by faith in Christ which there as elsewhere
called the church's attention t<» the need of fuller, wi(l<'r
social service.

• " An AnBwer to the New England Church Qu(«tlon." p. 8.

t 0«-n»'ral Hooth's dfuth had b<'i-n announced In the press the
day before the flrst delivery of thlB lecture.

154 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

We need not therefore ask, Is the function of the
church primarily theological or primarily sociological ?
It is neither. Her function is religious. Now, reli-
gion is not a science, but a department of life, whereas
theology and sociology are sciences. And religion, as
life, has need of both sciences as her handmaids.

The devotees of sociology are fain, meanwhile, to
inform us that theology fails even to define the church
as a social institution ; theologians are but too apt to
retort that sociology is incompetent to define the church,
because it has no language whereby to describe the
redemptional aspect of the facts for which the church
stands. Both criticisms have elements of truth, but
only as each science is defective. Were sociology a truly
inductive science, comprehensive in its inductions, it
would find the facts of redemption in human society as
clearly as any other series of facts ; and were theology
a truly progressive science it would find in the increas-
ing complexity of social relations, in the new problems
of social ethics, and in the development of the social
conscience, a realm of Godward relations the key to
which is found in the scriptural conception of the
church as the social institute of the kingdom of God.

We obtain the right standpoint from which to discern
the function of the church when we regard it as an
institute — an established organization or society pledged
to some special purpose and work — whose object is the
establishment of the kingdom of God in human society.

And we obtain the requisite insight wherewith to dis-
cern the function of the church when we follow the
course of the providence of God and the teaching of the
Spirit of God in the trend of the age.

THE FUNCTION OF THE CHUKCH 155

The coming of the kingdom of God involves a two-fold
redemption. There are two entities which Christ came
to save, the soul of man and — not, as Kauschenbusch
puts it, the " race of man," but — the whole creation.
The age and the rightful use of proof-texts is not past.
Here are the proofs : " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved " ; and " The creation itself
also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."

There are two methods by which the kingdom of
God enters our world : " Except a man be born from
above he cannot see the kingdom of God." " And I
saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of
heaven from God."

In order to set up the kingdom of God in the world
of men the church seeks the salvation of the souls of
men by means of a service so fundamental that it has
as yet no distinctive name ; and she seeks the redemp-
tion of society — of the whole creation — by means of
what we to-day describe as social service. The former
of these, service, namely, to the soul of man, demands
a specific name, even as " a host of economic terms
await translation into moral and spiritual speech."*
We have called it evangelistic service, but social service
also is of the essence of the gospel ; we have called it
spiritual service, religious service, but each of these
terms covers social service as well. We fully endorse
the opinion of Mrs. Browning:

What'B the beat thing In the world?
Something out of it, I think.

• Charles S. MacFarland, " Spiritual Culture and Social Ser-
Tlce," p. 18.

156 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

But we hold that the Gospel comes not only to make
men fit for heaven, but to make earth fit for men. By
means of these two forms of religious service the church
seeks to answer in regard to every man the two primary
and perennial questions of G-od concerning man,
" Where art thou ?" and " Where is thy brother ?" The
first of these questions is answered in personal regenera-
tion, the second in social redemption. The latter is as
essential to the kingdom as the former. We must seek
to bring to pass a social order which shall embody the
teaching of Jesus. " His teaching about the kingdom
of God has its application to the society we now know
as the Christian church, but has also its application
beyond the Christian church to the family, the com-
munity, the state, the brotherhood of humanity, and to
whatever forms of associated life are found among
men."*

The denial of this dishonors God. There is an evident
parallelism between the occasion, famous in Scottish
ecclesiastical history, when Erskine made his plea for
foreign missions and was bidden by the Moderator to
refrain, with the words, "Young man, sit down. When
God wishes to save the heathen He can do it without
your aid or mine," and the occasion described by the
Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of
Christ in America : " Only a little while ago I heard
a strange plea from a minister whose parish is situated
in a great democratic manufacturing community. His
advice was that we must refrain from trying to adjust
the social order. He said we must leave things to God.
God would take care of it, and we must not interfere

* D. M. Ross, " The Teaching of Jesus," p. 144.

THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 157

with His desiffns."* Gentlemen, when such a stand is
taken it is time to crv with Erskine, '* ^loderator, rax
me that Bible," and, beginning with Christ's words i|i
the twenty-fifth of Matthew, read afresh the will of
God.

The church exists to secure for all their perfectjiC^
human rights. She has therefore as her fundamental
task the evangelizing of all persons, and as her culmin-
ating task the glorification of life. But an essential
intermediate task emerges as the consequent of the first
and the antecedent of the second, namely, the training of
men for world-service. As the three dimensions of
length, breadth, height, exhaust space, so these three
forms of service — evangelism, spiritual culture, and
human service — securing spiritual life, nurture, and
vocation, complete the business of the church.

From this standpoint, then, of the church as the
agency of Christ in establishing the kingdom through
the salvation of men and the redemption of society, we
seek to discover the function of the church in the pre-
sent crisis in rural life.

But vision as well as standpoint is needed. The
requisite insight can only be gained as God is seen at
work in the trend of the age. Wb.en the providence of
God was shattering the social fabric of the ancient
Roman wf»rld the Spirit of God led Christian men to
one form of service ; when the feudal system of
mediaeval Europe was taking form, and again when
that in turn was giving way to democracy, the sanu'
Spirit led on, throuph the trend of the age, to other
forms of sf-rvice. When men lived and labomd chiefly

• 8. C. .MarFarland, " Spiritual Culture and Social Service,"
p. 50.

158 KUEAL LIFE IN CA:N'ADA

as independent persons or households, the church was
called upon to stress faithfulness in personal relation-
ships. The need lay there; the way was open for
nothing else. But when the unit of industry and of
living becomes the group, when commerce takes form
under the chartered company and the trust, the form
of human need has changed, and the form of service
changes with it. And the form to which God is now
leading is Social Service, that is, that form of effort
for man's betterment which seeks to uplift and trans-
form his associated and communitv life.

Of the trend of the age Professor Law finely says in
the excellent Guild Hand-book on Social Service:
" The Christianity of our age has so far developed and
will still further develop a social conscience, which in
the breadth of its view of social duty and its sensitive-
ness to social responsibilities, marks a fresh stage in
the divine education of mankind, and in the moulding
of human life by the leaven of the kingdom of God."
If that be an excellent statement of the starting-point
of a modern discussion of the mission of the church,
the next step could not be given in a finer way than in
the later words of Professor Law : " There is perhaps
no more living conviction among us than that, if we
wish to help men effectively, we must act on them
through all the complex influences of social environ-
ment."*

But still another, a second insight into the church's
function is given us by the trend of the age. Pre-
ventive work is emphasized, rather than restorative.
The volume of the " Men and Religion Messages " deal-
ing with Social Service opens with this striking illustra-

•" Social Service," edited by R. W. Mcintosh, pp. 8, 10. -

THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 159

tion: " When the United States Government faced the
enterprise of digging the Panama Canal it had to set
about the task of creating a new Panama through which
to dig it. That region had been notoriously unhealthy,
80 that every tie of the Panama Kaihvay is said to
have been laid at the cost of a man's life. Before taking
its engineers and thousands of laborers thither, that
government had to establish adequate hospital facili-
ties and provide a competent staff of physicians and
nurses; but it was also necessary to attempt to clean
up the Isthmus, to drain the towns and to do away with
all standing pools where mosquitoes breed, to destroy
rats and make regulations at the ports so that no others
could get ashore from vessels, to erect sanitary vil-
lages in which the builders of the canal could be safely
kept. The result has been one of the miracles of
modern times, — the transformation of a pestilential
locality into a health resort; a place where no man
willingly lived, who could possibly get away from it.
into a place where large hotels arc successfully run
for steamer-loads of tourists who come seekinj; rest
and new vitality.

" Jesus came to create a new earth . . . "*
It has ever been the glory of the Christian Church
that she has acted the part of the Good Samaritan,
alleviating misery, providing charity; she has founded
hospitals, asylums; she has relieved, she has rescued
the victims of ignorance, poverty, wretchedness, jmd
crime. Put in her earlier days, indwelt by the Spirit
of her Lord, she went forth as a purifvin<;. recoiistriic-
tivo power, turning the world upside down. Xor hafl
she at any time wholly ahnndcjned tliiH health-giving

•"Men and Kfllglon M*>HsaKf;H," Vol, II, p. 1.

160 EUEAL LIFE IN CAI^ADA

mission. But in these days she is coming more fully
into her own.

This is the trend of our age. More than ever before
men are seeking knowledge and control of the causes
of conditions and events. Such mastery is the whole
spirit and trend of modern science. Such is the
" dominant note of modern philanthropy. Organized
charity is now endeavoring to seek out and to strike
effectively at the causes of dependence, the organized
forces of evil, the intolerable living conditions, which
are beyond the control of the individuals whom they
injure and whom they too often destroy. Other tasks
for other ages ; this be the glory of ours, that the social
causes of dependence shall be destroyed."* Such, too,
is the modern note in the labors of the Christian
church. She is vitally concerned with the fundamental
questions of social righteousness and industrial equity.
It was her spirit that brought into being the Red
Cross Societies, but she is addressing herself to the
abolition of war. Never shall she cease to pour wine
and oil into wounds while one half-dead traveller is
found, but her truer office is not this, nor to police
the road, but to reform the system which produces
robbers.

A simple and concrete yet pertinent example which
exemplifies at once both principles, of social rather
than individual service, and of removing causes rather
than remedying results, is found in the two successive
stages of the work for temperance, as we still style it.
First came the attempt to reform the drunkard and to
conserve the boy by means of the pledge, and next the

* Edward T. Devine, " The Dominant Note of Modern Philan-
thropy."

THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 161

attempt to prevent the making of drunkards by means
of prohibition. The first method sought, bv personal
service to individuals man by man, to rescue fallen
men, or, as individually, to prevent men from falling.
The second method sought to defend a community, and
that by communal action, against the presence of temp-
tation. Preventive, rather than rescue work, is the
supreniL' social duty of the church.

Thus we gain the requisite insight wherewith to
discern the function of the church in dealing with the
rural problem. In her programme there must be no
social opportunism. She is not to use palliatives. She
is to deal not with symptoms but witli causes of dis-
turbance, and thus effect a radif^al euro.

These principles must guide in her attempts to solve
the city problem as well. Social settlements are im-
peratively called for by tho present situation, but they
will not solve the problem. They deal with proximate
but not with ultimate causes of distress. The agencies
called for to deal with these clearly lie elsewhere. To
point out what these agencies are is a light under-
taking; to utilize them, labor indeed. There are two
central sources of power which the church must domin-
ate for the kingdom in order to solve the city problem,
— the Directorates and the Unions. Out of these two
foci of potency stream the energies that make or mar the
city, and the church must claim Ixith of them for her
Master. At the annual meeting of one of the great
coffee-housf fonipanies of Txtndon a few days ago a
dividend of ihirty-sevcn per cent, was dt-flarcd. Amid
the congratulatory speechfs which followed the read-
ing of the report the question was asked by one of tho
shareholders: "What do we pay our waitresses?"
n

162 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

When that question and kindred question are asked and
asked effectively in the name of Christ at all Boards
of Directors the first great step shall have been taken
for the solution of the citv problem. xA^nd the second
is like unto it in validity, urgency, and potency,
namely, that men should ask in the Labor Unions:
" What do we give our masters, eye-service or faith-
fulness ?" jSTot the minimum wage only but the high-
est wage industry can afford must be granted ; but
with that wage must go true-hearted service.

Across the personnel of the membership of the direc-
torates and the unions alike runs the line of universal
cleavage among men, that which separates men of the
world and the servants of Christ; and through these
latter the church must dominate the two nuclei of life ;
and then shall the city — the hope and the despair of
democracy, the glory and the shame of civilization, —
be won for the Kingdom. All other hostile forces must
soon capitulate when these protagonists become bond-
servants of Christ.

Another point remains to be considered. How far is
the function of the church, thus understood, institu-
tional ? The institutional church is substitutionary.
One of our Deaconesses in speaking during the "Insti-
tute Hour" at the Summer School at Geneva Park
touched the very heart of the matter with regard to all
institutional church work, when she said that the
Deaconesses had been given a beautiful descriptive
name, " Vicarious Mothers." Blessings on their
gracious, vicarious service ! But better that the real
mothers should also serve as mothers than that we
should have vicarious mothers ; better the service of

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THE FUNCTIOX OF THE CHURCH 163

the mother in fact though it he imperfect, than the most
perfect service of a vicarious mother.

The institutional church performs for society func-
tions which under ideal conditions belong to other
social institutions. Because the homes of the slums
cannot perform their rightful functions the church
undertakes some of these in place of the home. There
are certain primary classes of institutions such as the
home, the club, the firm, the trust, the school, the
town, the nation, which among them share every duty
the institutional church can undertake.

The church's function is to be monitor and guide to
all these. She is conmiissioned to go into all the
world of human relationships, and disciple all nations,
all societies, all communities of men, teaching men so
institutionalized to observe all things whatsoever Christ
hath commanded.

Wo have read the Great Commission as though it
said "Go, disciple all persons." Its true force is that
the nation is to be discipled until as such it fulfils
Christ's will, and the nation here implies all forms of
community life, of which it is the chief and the t\7>e.

But, though such is her full social function under
ideal circumstances, nevertheless the church began her
course with institutionalism. Finding tlicn no agency
in society to which she could teacli II is hiw of charity,
as now she teaches the state, she app()intf'(l the seven
t<» y)f'rf(>rtn tbc diaconato, the social service, of an nl-
monary society.

Aforeover, ina.sniuch as her views upon many forma
of service are ever in advance «>f those of all other in-
stitutions, the church must o.vvr be, to that extent, in-
8titutif»nal. At every new stage of progress in huinnn

164 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

uplift the Church of Christ must have her diaconate,
and maintain it until all ideals have risen to her plane.

And the conditions of the rural community to-day,
in failing to provide for so many human needs that
those whom God designed to dwell in the country are
fleeing thence, constitute an emphatic call to the church
to become institutional in regard to every unanswered
rural human need, until she heal country life.

"It goes without saying that much of what we call
social service ought not to be necessary. It may seem
a derogation from the spiritual mission of the church
to engage in the efforts to secure the justice, the effi-
ciency, the better conditions of life and work, the wide
opportunities for individual and social development
which it is the desire of voluntary social agencies to
bring about. But until actual provision is made by the
state or other agencies for the prevention of the evils
and the meeting of the needs which are helping to pro-
duce the social unrest of our day, the church must
stand by the work, just as in former ages she stood by
the almsgiving and the ministration to individuals
which have resulted in so many functions of our pre-
sent governments — hospitals, alms-houses, schools and
the like. When government or other agencies shall
have assumed the new obligations which new social and
economic conditions are forcing on us, then the church
may relinquish her share in the work and press on to
some other worthy task."* Then shall the Diaconate
be set free for the duties of the Apostolate, and a new
stage be reached in the spiritual life of man.

* " A Social Service Programme for the Parish." The Joint
Commission on Social Service of the Protestant Episcopal
Church.

THE COUNTRY CHURCH
PROGRAMME

Sow the seed beside all waters

North and south and east and west;
That our toiling sons and daughters

In the harvest may be blest.
Tell the tidings of salvation

'Mid the storms of Labrador;
Speak the word of consolation

By the lone Pacific's shore.
Where the fisher plies his calling

'Mid the perils of the sea;
Where the forests old are falling,
Giving place to lawn and lea.

— Robert Murray, "Book of Praise.

CHAPTER V[.

The Country Church Programme.

President Biitterfield, in his book " The Country
Church and the Rural Problem," says: '' T do not
happen to know of a rural church with a protjramrae of
work which constitutes a really live attack upon the
essential problems of rural civilization/' Daring as
aviator's flijrht and yet more full of risk may seem any
attempt even to sketch such a profjrammo. I^ut yet to
do so is simply to endeavor to translate into the terms
of the concrete case before us the general {)rogTaTnme of
Christianity, which is:

To proclaim good news to such as are in need;
To announce release to the prisoners of war,
And recovery of sight to those who do not see;
To set at liberty those whom tyranny has crushed;
To proclaim the year of grace with the Lord.

The first desideratum for such a programme is execu-
tive OVERSIGHT. This problem gives the Boards of Social
Service another field of operation. Our cfiicient Sec-
retaries, who have accomplished sd much in tlic way of
giiiding legislation on moral and social problems, so
much in promoting sane and strong evangcdism, so niurh
in fighting organized vice, and are mow taking up lines
of work wliieh will hcdp solve tlie city problem, must
also Ih'couh' our trained and s^-ientilic leaders in this
field of .srK'ial service for the njdiff of eountrv life.

107

168 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

An extract from the " Report of Progress for 1911,"
of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in
America, puts well the place of such executive over-
sight : "At the meeting of the Council in Philadelphia
in 1908 three notable reports were made which attracted
national and international attention, the reports,
namely, upon ' The Church and Industrial Relations,'
' The Church and International Relations,' and ' The
Church and Home Missions.' Had the meeting in
Philadelphia been merely a Convention these notable
utterances would soon have lost their significance. But
placed in the hands of the churches with provision for
permanent executive oversight they have become the
source of activities of service which, it is no exaggera-
tion to say, are affecting the entire Christian and church
life of our country."

This utterance indicates clearly the weakness, not
only of conventions, but of much of the business of the
church. Conferences, Synods, and Assemblies adopt
recommendations and pass resolutions which express
with wisdom and force well-planned courses of action.
But because of no executive leadership to see to the
carrying out of such resolutions, much of their force is
lost.

It is but a few years since the churches began appoint-
ing their Boards and Commissions of Social Service.
It was then the conviction of many that the church
had entered upon a new field of achievement which
would yet be found to exercise as profound a change
upon society, and in its reflex action upon the church
itself, as even the great work of missions was doing.
That conviction is strengthened to-dav as we see new
vistas such as this opening before us.

THE COUNTRY CHURCH PROGRAMME 169

The services to be rendered by such an executive
would consist in the exploration of the field ; the plan-
ning of appropriate means of service; the holding of
conferences for the arousing and guiding of opinion ;
and the preparation of necessary helps for the task.
Yet must the church cease to look for the prophet of a
wonder-working movement that shall solve our prol)-
It-m, and gird herself for a serious task. The need
for both oversight and local endeavor is well
put in the opening words of a ^lanual issued
recently by the Joint Commission on Social Service
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States. '* This pamphlet is the first of a series on
various phases and methods of social service. It is
intended to follow this initial pamphlet with others on
such topics as ' The Agricultural Community and its
Problems.' . . . The success of social service depends
ultimately upon the efforts of the individual parish.
I'nless the minister of the individual church and
his workers, men and women, take a hand in actual
community service, the efforts of larger units, diocesan
or national social service organizations, must go largely
for naught. In fact a chief oltject of these larger bodies
should be to interest the individual parish and its
minister in the world-wide movement to improve con-
ditions of life and work for men, women ami ciiildren."*
Such initiative and oversight an efffH!tive programme
would lay iiixtn our Secretaries of the Board of Social
Service.

Tlie next desideratum for the programme is a Survey
of Rural Conditions under such guidance. In order

•"A Social Service .Manual for th»> Parlab."

170 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

to effective service the church must first envisage her
task. The first duty of the physician is diagnosis.
Remedies are the means by which to reach his objective
— the restoration of health ; but remedies are the hazard
of the dice, with heavy odds against a cure, until diag-
nosis recognizes the disease and indicates its stage.

The church received the Survey as a means of
research in her field of service, from Charity Organiza-
tion. The great surveys so far, among many lesser
ones, have been Booth's monumental work, " The Life
and Labors of the People of London," and the " Pitts-
burg Survey." The Survey is an attempt to base the
church's policy upon all pertinent facts. The modern
world has been made the modern world by the use of
just such inductive methods. This method it was with
which the Dominion Conservation Commission began its
work, in a survey of agricultural conditions on a thou-
sand farms throughout Canada. It is at once the
scientific method of the use of objective material, and
the recognition of the organic character of social facts.
The recent report of the Federal Council deals with this
method under the striking caption " Standard Research
and Christian Progress."

The survey is necessary because facts are elusive and
illusive, hidden away until sought, and deceptive as they
thrust themselves upon impression. We do not know
accurately the needs of the rural community. And it
is necessary also because the kind and number of human
needs is not what they recently were. The values of
living have changed. There are new forms of waste of
human resources, and new standards of human effi-
ciency. And while the facts everywhere have a class
resemblance, they vary in detail from place to place.

THE COUNTRY CHIKCH PROGRAMME 171

" Know your coinmunity '' must become the church's
watchword in social service in country as in city. If
it be profitable for husbandry to have experts testing
and suggestine: methods, may it not be more needfnl to
have efficiency studies of rural social and religious life?
The churches adopting this agency acknowledge in
doing so their past remissness. A recent typical
utterance runs : '' The Board of Home Missions
of the PresbN-terian Church in the United States of
America has been ministering to country parishes for
more than a century. It has sought farmers through
forests and across deserts. It has built innumerable
little white churches on the country crossroads for him
to worship in. It has baptized his childreu, taught
them, married them, and buried them. It has striven
to save his soul — striven earnestly and valiantly, some-
times heroically. But never until within this year has
it made a thorough, official and scientific study of the
country community it has attempted to serve. It has
done everything in its power to pave the farmer's road
to the celestial city, but it has paid little attention to
examining his road to the nearest village church. It
has given great sums to alleviate poverty, but given little
thought to the cau.ses that make for poverty — the
American system of farm tenantry, the robbing of soil
of it« fertility and stripping the hillside of its trees.
It has pictured the In-auty of the heavenly mansions
and taken no account of the buildings in which men and
women must spend their lives here an<l now. If has
\xH'n a faithful st<'ward in caring for the Klysiaii fields,
but it has allowed the riches of blue-grass and corn and
wheat-field to U' .xquandere*! with prodigal liiiinl. It
has made a glorious and imtiring fight to teach the chil-

172 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

dren God's word in the Bible, but it has left God's
word in the rivers and hills, the grass and the trees,
without prophet, witness, or defender. Hereafter it is
going to know something about the communities it
attempts to serve — of what stuff they are made, what are
their needs and their aspirations. It will take an inter-
est in the everyday affairs of the farmer — his crops and
stock, his buildings and machinery, his roads and school,
his lodge and recreation. The spires of the little cross-
roads church will still point to the skies, but its f ootstone
will lie on the commonplace work of the day. It will
' preach the worth of the native earth,' and it will
look upon American land as holy land to be guarded
as a sacred trust from the Almighty to His children."*

This method is coming largely into use, as an instru-
ment by the churches. During last year the Depart-
ment of Church and Country Life of the Presbyterian
Church in the United States carried on seven rural
surveys in as many communities and States.
The scope of the inquiry was as follows: " Beginning
with the locality, the economic conditions as expressed
in land-ownership, wages, labor conditions, and the
' money-crops ' of the district, and proceeding through
an analysis of the population, of the social mind, means
of communication, class distinctions, social organiza-
tions, the investigator approached last of all the in-
quiries as to moral conditions and religious institutions,
and the final inquiry had to do with the social welfare,
conceived as a resultant of the various processes under
study, "t

In 1909 a survey was carried on jointly by the Fed-

* " A Rural Survey in Missouri," p. 3.

t " A Rural Survey in Pennsylvania," p. 3.

THE COUNTRY rlirKCH PROGRAMME 173

•

eral Council and the Home Missions Council. Its pur-
pose was to discover the amount of '' overlapping " in
mission work. It revealed instead so great an amount
of " overlooking " of need that those who were supposed
to know most about conditions almost resented the find-
ings. But this survey has become the historic seed of
nation-wide activities. One of its fruits was the deci-
sion, in January of the present year, of the Home
Missions Council, consisting of representatives of the
boards of home missions of the twenty-four leading
denominations in the United States, to carry out, as a
common undertaking, a survey of every State from
Kansas to the coast, in order that " the endeavor to
Christianize a continent be based upon the widest pos-
sible basis of ascertainable facts."*

Material is abundant for use in the direction of such
a survey. George Frederick Wells has published an
excellent manual, " A Social Survey for Rural Com-
munities." The Commission on Social Service of the
Protestant Episcopal Church has issued another, en-
titled " A Social Service Programme for the Parish " ;
the Young People's Missionary Movement, a third ; the
Rus.sell Sage Foundation a more comprehensive one for
general use in city or country. '' The method is cor-
rect, and it is the only corrective method."

One of the needs revealed by every survey yet made
gives us the next desideratum for the fhurcb's pro-
gramme, Chun-li Union, or, where organic union be not
feasible, Federation. The situation shows the absolute
necessity of co-ordinating our forces. Not the j)lnnting
(}{ the church in immigration areas alone, but the orien-

• " Conmjltatlon« upon Wcatftrn Neglected Flolda." Homo
MlMlon rounrll, p. 3.

174 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

tation of the church to her task throughout the country,
calls for the setting free of efficiency unencumbered by
the brakes of denominational rivalry. In communities
where different denominations became established half
a century ago, where commodious church buildings
were erected forty years ago, designed to accommo-
date larger congregations than then existed, where
depletion of population commenced thirty years ago
and has already carried off one-third of the population
for which those churches were built, as imperative a
situation is found as any demanding co-operation in the
home mission field.

And the logic of the situation points to organic union.
There appears no practical reason why the Presbyterian
Church in Canada and the Presbyterian Church in the
United States should unite organically. Their duty
might be to federate for the solution of similar prob-
lems. But where several churches serve one community,
where their work interlaces, organic union, if possible,
is the rational course. As well divide our school work
sectarianly and hope to have it efficient ; as well have
three competing schools in each hamlet ; as well have
children in the open country pass by a school or two in
order to attend that of their grandfather's preference,
and expect a scholarly community, with education effi-
ciently applied to life, as hope for the best results reli-
giously in serving our farmers' homes by our divided
church life.

Some fear that the absence of competition would
lessen the church's activity. One of the most fruitful
of modern conceptions is that of the efficiency engineer.
He examines the expenditure of labor in a trade — that
of the bricklayer, for instance, and points out how by
different movements of the hand and trowel labor may

THE COL'MKV CHURCH PROGRAMME 175

be halved and etiiciency doubled; he scrutinizes an
organized business and points out where leakages occur,
where poor co-ordination is found, wIuto efficiency
might be promoted. The Dominion Government has at
present an English expert investigating the working of
the Departments with a view to efficient reorganization.
The tests of the efficiency engineer applied to the
churches would show that their efficiency lies not in the
competitive spirit but in spiritual consecration.

But if organic union be not possible, co-operation as
frank, as full, as free, as if denominations were organi-
cally united is imperative. To serve our land in her
need every church must work, not for the church in
either its local or its connexional interests, but for the
kingdom of God.

In the United States men have no hope of any speedy
organic union on a large scale. But forty denomina-
tions, forming practically almost the entire constitu-
ency of evangelical Christianity, have formed a Federal
Council which is Ix'coming the central agency in coun-
try community iK'tterment. The movement anticipates
union. Dr. Talhnadge Root, one of the Secretaries,
says: "Conditions demand co-operation everywhere
and consolidation somewhere. The (juestion to-<lay is
no longer lx'twe<'n isolation and co-operation. The only
alternative now is between t»iiij)ori»rv or permanent,
spasmodic or systematic, co-operation. Federation
means co-operation systematic and permanent. It is
indispennable, not only for present efficiency, but as the
first stop towards cliurch unify." As between the
denominations the phm is federate<i action. Iml as
regards the I(K'al sit nation the outcome in " one-minis-
ter feflcralions in c«tuntrv vilbiges " is practically nnion.
.■\ difliciilfv in tlu' aflniinisf r;if ion of tlicse lia-;. how-

176 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

ever, arisen, through the custom of having these ad-
ministered bj the authorities of the different denomina-
tions in turn. George Frederick Wells, lately Research
Secretary of the Federal Council, a recognized authority
on the matter, says : '' Transitional Federations, where
churches for a time have to relate themselves to different
denominational organizations, suffer from too much
friction." We are fortunate in possessing in Canada
a more promising agency, in the Joint Union Com-
mittee with its new function of oversight and adminis-
tration, for such local union churches, awaiting the com-
ing of the organic union to which we look forward.
Meanwhile, here, as in the United States, " the para-
mount end is the establishment of efficient co-operation
among evangelical denominations so as to meet the
unmet spiritual needs of America and bring about the
establishment of the kingdom of heaven here."
^■^ — -<fhe next requisite in the programme is Special
. Training for the Ministry. Not that there should be
- one class of ministers trained for the country and
another for the city. We desiderate one civilization
in city and country alike in which all shall be at home,
and therefore reprobate any further distinction of class.
But special training is called for in methods of dealing
with this problem on the part of all ministers, so that
those whose lot happens to fall in the city shall have
a sympathetic understanding of it, while those whose
choice is the country pastorate shall have efficient equip-
ment for their tasks. To some slight extent, perhaps,
elective courses of study may prove necessary, though
only in a limited field. But there is need of training
for all alike along new lines — of direct contact with
social problems under the teacher's eye, — that is, for

THE COUNTRY CHURCH PR0(}RA:\[ME 177

the use of the case-system or cliuical method ; aud for the
adoption as a main subject of research, of the study of
the relation of the kingdom of God to the associative
life of man.

The next requisite in the procjrainnie is the direct
Ministry of Teachins; upon the problem. The church
must, from her throne of power, the pulpit, preach
a message for the times. The need of the hour is that
of a clearer understanding on the part of Christian men
and women of the present situation.

We even venture to suggest some topics of discourse,
not as exhaustive, but suggestive; ; and first the Problem
itself. We as pastors need to take up with our people
a serious study of the problem. Evidence accumulates
from many quarters that our people will welcome such
discussion. These needs are very real in the experience
of our people, though inarticulate. Their very expres-
sion is itself the first step towards setting at liberty
those who are crushed.

Again, we should speak upon the merits of life on the
farm. There is indeed an attraction in the city:

The sun's on the pavement

And the current comes and goes,
And the grey streets of London

They blossom like the roHo.
Thi' bluebells may bockon

The cuckoo call — and yet,
The grey streets of ImixAou

I never may forget.
And the gn-on country meadows

Are fresh and fine to see;
But the grey streets of London

They're ail the world to me.*

• Rosamund Watson. " A Song of London."
12

I

178 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

A true life maj be lived anywhere :

O Love builds on the azure sea,

And Love builds on the golden sand,

And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud.
And sometimes Love builds on the land.

O if Love builds on sparkling sea.
And if Love builds on golden strand.

And if Love builds on rosy cloud.
To Love, these are the solid land.

O Love will build his lily walls.
And Love his pearly roof will rear.

On cloud or land, on mist or sea —
Love's solid land is everywhere!*

And yet — those expert judges in the things of the heart,
the Poets, being witness — the country is peculiarly the
home of the home.

Happy the man whose life's full round

Is passed within his farmstead's bound;

Who in his elder years may view

The self-same home that as a boy he knew.

Fortune upon him has no hold

With its alarms and tumults manifold;

He does not flit on fickle wings

Slaking his thirst at unfamiliar springs.

Active still and stout of thew

A hale old man, he lives three ages through.

Others may seek the changes travel gives:

They see more life, but he more truly lives.t

And even the ascetic life — ^when, under Bernard of
Clairvaux with his Rule of Charity, it abandoned cities

* Isabella V. Crawford, " Malcolm's Katie."
t Claudian. Translated by George S. Bryan, " Poems of
Country Life."

•L<H»K iii:ki:. i'imn this I'lfrrKi:. am) <i.\ this.'

THK i;i«i'NTitv m;i;iis a vish»n <.i' its <»s\n

I'KhlcMTV.

THE COUNTRY (^HURCH PROGRAMME 179

and the sciences tu render valuable service in the devel-
opment of agriculture — wrote over the portals of its
rural hostelries:

Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall.
More promptly rises, •vs'alks with nicer heed.
More safely rests, dies happier.*

The worth of rural life is seen more clearly still by
contrast through the hare, bald recital of Frederic Har-
rison's tremendous indictment of modern industrial con-
ditions in British cities: " To me at least it would be
enough to condemn society as hardlv an advance upon
slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of indus-
try were to be that which we now behold — that ninety
per cent, of the actual producers of wealth have no
home that they can call their own beyond the end of
the week ; have no bit of soil or so much as a room that
belongs to them : have nothing of value of any kind
except as much furniture as will go in a cart; have the
precarious chance of weekly wages which barely suffice
to keep them in health ; are housed for the most part in
places that no man thinks fit for his horse ; are separ-
ated by 80 narrow a margin from destitution that a
month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings
them face to face with hunger and pauperism. This is
the normal state of the average workman. "f Thorold
Rogers, too, declares, " There is every reason to fear
that it is the case that there is collected a population
in our great towns that erpials in amount the whole of
those who lived in England six «'f'nturif's ago, whose

•WordHworth. "Sonnets."

t AddroHH b<-for" IndiHtrliil n<'miin<ratlon ronRreKH, quoted
In "Social Advanro." by Divld WaUion, p 01.

180 KURAL LIFE IN CAl^ADA

condition is more destitute, whose homes are more
squalid, whose means are more uncertain, whose pros-
pects are more hopeless, than those of the peasant serfs
of the middle ages or the meanest drudges of the mediae-
val cities."* How different our Canadian rural life:

City clangors are far behind us.

Dusty streets and noisome air;

Rutliless toil can no longer bind us.

Liberty shatters the gyves of care.

Green are the hills which the clouds float over,

Mountains of pearl in a sapphire sea;

Zephyrs are laden with scent of clover

And rural melodies, blythe and free.

Herds of cattle in grassy meadows

Mottling the valleys, recline at ease —

Ruminate dreamily under the shadows

Cast by the graceful sheltering trees.

Orchards laden with apples and peaches,

Fields that are white with the waving grain.

Bounties of nature and industry teach us

Lessons that memory long shall retain.

Here and there by the trees half hidden

We catch a glimpse of a pleasant home;

And the thought springs up to the lips unbidden,

O why should Canada's children roam?t

And again, we should speak of the improvement pos-
sible in farm life. I am asked a question : Should the
church undertake to teach agriculture ? and a second
one: Should the church tell men how to raise better
cabbages ? It was my purpose Vather to emphasize the
better social life. But let us consider. Until the
present year this particular branch of the church main-

* Thorold Rogers, " Six Centuries of Work and Wages,"
p. 47.

t Edward Hartley Dewart, " Songs of Life."

THE COUNTRY CHURCH PROGRAM.ME 181

tained a university. She might as legitimately main-
tain an agricultural college if the nation should fail to
do so. The same branch of the church teaches the Bhils
in India how to farm. Under stress of circumstances
she might do so elsewhere.

There are no heathen oaks, no Gentile pines,
The soil whereon we stand is Christian soil.

Should she teach men here how to gi'ow better cabbages ?
She need not. But she should teach men everywhere
and always that it is their duty to grow bettor cabbages.
Each of (lur Provinces provides most helpful agencies
of agricultural improvement; it is for the church to
deal with the moral prerequisites of better husbandry,
and hold out the In'tter resultant life as an incentive.

If husbandry, anijjjitied l»y reclamation, perpetuated
by conservation, fostered bv science, raav become all
that vve have seen possible when the whole wide world
shall become a garden, what of the Edenic life obtain-
able there i " (Jod's partner in making the new earth "
is Dr. RoJK'rtson's definition of the young modern
farmer, and he gives thereby a glimpse into the inex-
haustible life attainable by country people, who despite
every wasting force are still the wellspring of national
strength.

We should remind our people that as the farmer ol"
tf>-day has risen far alM)ve the status of ihe past, so
further advance is thereby nuide still nnu-e jtossible; as
machinery has already lightened (oil, its further ser-
vices may Ix; yet more significant; as the t(lej)li(»ne,
mail-delivery and other agencies are now enriching riinil
life, other and finer facilities are practieabN'. W'
should speak of what education might do in a merely

182 KUEAL LIFE m CANADA

material way for the fanner. A recent social survey
near Ithica, ISTew York, covering a county, revealed the
fact that the annual labor income of farmers having a
high school education was $304 larger than those hav-
ing only a district school education. The high school
course vv^as for them equivalent to an endowment, at 6
per cent., of $5,066. The annual labor income of
farmers with some agricultural college training was
larger by $588. For these the high school and college
training was equivalent to an endowment of $9,800.

We might speak of what intellectual entertainment
has done at Hesperia, Michigan, to bring satisfaction
at home, renown abroad, and to bestow world leadership.
Twenty years ago an annual school convention began to
gather farmers and teachers to discuss their problems
and entertain one another. Orators of world-wide fame
now feel honored by being asked to speak at Hesperia.
The county is sending forth from her own sons educators,
statesmen, and authors to serve their generation and
bring fame to their birthplace. We should remind
men that the defects of country life are of a kind more
readily remedied than are the defects of city life ; that
the means of immediate betterment along some lines are
quite at their command ; and that to flee from environ-
ment instead of improving it is to confess failure, to
be swayed by circumstances instead of ruling fate. The
country needs a vision of its own felicity.

Again, we must preach that the very function of hus-
bandry, which is to furnish man's daily bread, lays
upon men a duty. It imposes an obligation similar
to that lying upon a soldier at his post. 'Not upon all
persons. Of the youths growing up in a rural com-
munity one may be markedly mechanical in his tastes.

THE COUXTRY CHURCH PROGRAMME 183

maj understand mechanism at a glance, and by nature's
gift move fearlessly among machinery as its conscious
king. Another may be as eminently fitted for the
field of commerce ; he is at home amidst the forms and
calculations of business, and comprehending the laws
of trade is the very wine of life to him. Another may
be as markedly musical in his tastes, and still another
a hn-er of literature ; while to another, spiritually
minded, there comes the call of the Spirit to the service
of Christ in His ministry. For such the field of duty
lies elsewhere. But for the man who loves the soil,
whose delight is in the care of stock, the man who
though he may make his way in the city — for he is
country-born and therefore strong, country-bred and
therefore versatile — yet must ever look back with long-
ing to the farm, — for him the farm is the place of duty.
He is called to furnish men's daily bread. To live in
this spirit is to make husbandry a noble form of human
endeavor. Such an one need never ask the question of
the discouraged:

" What Is there left for me beneath the sun?

My labor seems so useless; all I try

I weary of before 'tis well begun;

I scorn to grovel, and I cannot fly."

" Hush! hush! repining heart! There's One whose eye

Esteems each honest thought and act and word

Noble as poet's song or patriot's sword.

Be true to Him: He will not pass thee by.

He may not ask thee mid Pits stars to shine

And yet He needeth thee, His work is thine."*

And llii-> JM l»ut to say that his duty i.s part uf a univer-
sal human duty — to serve. We must preach that the

•John Readf, " Thr I'rophrcy of Merlin."

184 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

spirit of Christ brought into business life would give
all labor alike, on farm, in factory, or at the desk, the
dignity of service. Then each man, producer or trader,
would take out of the product or the turn-over, not a
fortune, but a livelihood, and let the rest form a contri-
bution to human well-being, in the form of zealous
labor, ample wages, or a good-value product.

The minister is expected to serve for a stipend, a
living. The physician, though he charges fees, is
expected to put service before remuneration ; the soldier
serves for a livelihood, and is expected to lay down his
life at need. And all the truly great in the field of
science have been too devoted to their profession to seek
wealth. Our Christian business men must learn to live
thus as well. We are not to ask for this service up to
the measure of Christ, but in His spirit. His rule is to
be ours : " I am among you as one that serveth " ; but
His measure : " The Son of man hath not where to lay
his head," is not asked of others. We must say to men :
" Take your living, generous as it may be, but make
your occupation service." Any man who lives by this
rule would remain in the country, at his beloved occu-
pation; for the incentives which now call men away
would be gone. This, and not <3onscription of the youth
of a nation for some years' service in subduing nature
to man — as proposed by Professor James — is the
" moral equivalent of war," in calling out the qualities
of manhood in a people.

Is this possible? Easily, where once the demand is
steadfastly made in Jesus' name. As great things have
been done through lesser motives. Honor has accom-
plished as much. We send and are sent as guests into
chambers with fittings of silver, and never a thought of

THE COUXTRY ("HI RCH PROGRAMME 185

pilfering or of being pilfered crosses our minds. It
is not the power of the law that restrains, and. with
many, not of conscienoe. It is habit. And even the
heathen had developed a higher morality still. Until
the coniing of the whitt* man the trapper of the Xorth
cac-hed his provisions and his pelts, and the mark of the
cache was inviolate. If men can standardize honesty
thus, what prevents the elevating of business to the
standard of service ( If patriotism in time of war can
make service a stronger incentive than gain, than love of
of life, what cannot the potent force of Christian faith
accomplish ( As certainly as legislation now forbids
usury, 80 certainly will some form of wise restraint yet
prevent the taking of more than ample livelihood out
of labor's retiirn; biit should those who are free from
law in the freedom of Christ need aught to bind them to
such service ? Xow, this ideal, once present, would lead
men to seek that vocation where each could render the
fullest service. Were it once present there would be
no rural problem.

The next essential in the programme is the utilization
of the agencies already at hand for the church's use. "^

Foremost among these is the JEEoigc. The home i«r
the greatest agency of human welfare. It is the place
where all that upbuilds does its initial, and all that
destroys its final, work. Education, industry, society,
and religion alike look to the home for their material.
One feature of the present situation is the disregard of
the home. There is a diverse characteristic of the emi-
gration from Britain which settled Kastern Canada and
that from Eastern Canada whieh helps fill up the West.
In the one rase men sought homes, in the other fortunes.
Another trait of the western migration is that many go

186 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

not oblivious but regardless of the fact that thej take
their families from homes of comfort to live for an
indefinite period deprived of satisfactory home sur-
roundings. And a chief note of the movement from
the country is the making light of responsibility towards
the home, towards parents who are left to carry on the
farm alone. The church should lead her sons to say:

Oh, fame may heap its measure,

And hope its blossoms strew.
And proud ambition call us,

And honor urge us through;
But kinsfolk, kinsfolk.

My thought is all for you!
No strange and lovely countries

Men venture forth to view.
No power and gifts and glory

Are worth one heart-beat true;
And kinsfolk, kinsfolk.

My heart is all for you!*

But the church should do more than this. " Home " is
not a static conception. We have passed lately from
what we regarded as a static world into what we know to
be a dynamic world — from a world of assorted things
into a world of advancing processes. The tasks of the
home itself are changing. A book upon " The Chris-
tian Home/' by Dr. John Hall, popular twenty-five
years ago, does not meet the needs of to-day. Changes
have taken place in two directions; functions once de-
volving solely upon the home have been relegated to
other agencies, while the socializing of life has multi-

* " Northland Lyrics," by W. C. Roberts, Theodore Roberts,
and Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald.

THE COUXTRY CHUKCH PROGRAMME 187

plied the relationships of the home. \\Tiile the advance
of the science of education takes both teaching and train-
ing of children more and more largely out of the hands
of parents ; while the home is no longer related only to
church and school and business, but to guild and club
and lodge and office, — the church must lead the home
to stress more than ever the primary and essential func-
tions which ever remain hers. Our advancing civiliza-
tion necessitates a more prolonged training than for-
merly for the full responsibilities of life. A chief fac-
tor in making country-born and bred men and women
the leaders in all lines of national progress has been
that family life which required each one from child-
hood's years to take his due share in the duties of the
homo. This home life is in danger. It must be con-
served and developed. The Lome must still provide in
childhood occupation embodying the child's tastes, the
environment's necessities, the parents' wisdom ; and
must also provide in youth some form of economic part-
nership Ijctween parent and child. This age of organ-
ization demands that our youth adjust themselves to a
sense of their place in organizations and possess a sense
of loyalty to institutions. My boy of seven comes from
his school saying, " I'm on the committee, I must see
to the programme for Friday afternoon's school con-
cert." This has the modern ring. No such training
found place in my childhood. The home also must
stress lovaltv to itself, and the child's sense of member-
ship should broaden out from the home relationships
to those of the neighborhood and to all the institutions
of society until tin? youth becomes a citizen (»f ti)e world
iu the home. Our intenser life demands more recrea-
tion, our ampler life more soeial provision. iIihii did

188 EUKAL LIFE m CANADA

the past. The means of recreation and of social plea-
sures ar© being commercialized as a consequence. The
church must lead the home to supply an ordered pro-
vision for social as for other needs — a provision to
include all its members, the tired mother as well as the
eager daughters. The chief responsibility for the social
life of youth rests not with the church or the school but
with the home, and the fundamental social duty of the
church is to maintain the social integrity and activity
of the home. And our age of world-wide interests
demands a fuller recognition of responsibility, of the
worth of character, of the supremacy of conscience and
the duty of service, than ever before. The home has
therefore a more emphatic call than ever to provide for
social religion and personal faith. In a word, all of
those deficiencies which make conservation, progressive
farming, co-operation, social satisfaction and commun-
ity service difficult of attainment must first be grappled
with in the home. What Oberlin achieved, what Grunt-
vig secured, is what our modern life demands and Christ
commands — the use of the home as the first agency in
upbuilding the kingdom of heaven.

The church must avail herself of the next great
agency, the School. By this is not meant any formal
control of the one institution by the other, but that the
church should inspire the school to freely fulfil more
adequately its tasks, and inspire the people to respond
more fully to the advantages offered by the school. Our
standpoint is that of the Christian Conservation Con-
gress, which " postulated the church as the agency and
the force that is to do the work which the twentieth cen-
tury demands," and " that it is the business of the
church to face fearlessly all the new problems of our

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THE COUNTRY CHURCH PROGRAM.\lE 189

complex day, and to grapple with them to a solution."
The whole social fabric must become a metaphrase of
the Christian life. What is needed is a body of
opinion within the church which shall understand the
school at its best, criticize it constructively, inspire it
with the leavening, uplifting, conserving influence of
religion ; and shall guide the public to accept from the
school, and to ask of it, not only the intellectualizing of
the children committed to its care, but that it shall voca-
tionalize, socialize, and moralize them as well. When,
for instance, wo find in a recent report issued by the
Ontario Government the statement that " neither the
pupils nor the parents seemed to have any desire to
have agriculture taught in the school," we are face to
face with a condition in which character and motive are
the chief factors — and the church is the agency to deal
wnth these.

In order to solve the rural problem there is need of
widely difl"usod education in agriculture. The Pro-
vincial agricultural colleges cannot give this to many,
though they give it thoroughly; the coming county
agricultural high schools will be its finest agency, but
cannot give it to all. The public schools must give a
training that shall Ik* in some degree vocational. Our
Provincial Departments of Education arc ofi^ering
through the public schools elementary teaching in for-
estry, agriculture, and horticulture; but in the^e efforts
meet with a widespread lack of moral support. To
secure this is the task of the church.

But the school must do more than vncationalize the
pupil ; it n)ust do its part in socializing and moralizing
him HH well. Heyond all other classes farmers find it
difficult to organize and to co-opr-rjite f(.r mutual good.

190 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

Even when so organized Sir Horace Plunkett finds that
the local co-operative society will sell through the cen-
tral co-operative agency when prices are low, but
through other channels when prices are high,

Balking the end half won for an instant's dole.

Here again is a situation which the church both directly
and through the school must meet. The school must
adopt supervised play as a socializing agency. Wherever
introduced, rational, normal play has promoted physical
vigor; it has aroused mental alertness more generally
than the prospect of advantage through the possession of
knowledge had done ; but its especial results have been
in the realm of character. It has solved the problem of
discipline, it has taught self-confidence and respect for
the rights of others. It is one of the means that lies at
the basis of the solution of the rural problem. That
problem has two imderlying economic causes: insuffi-
cient production by the farmer and exploitation of the
farmer. Industrial efficiency on the farmer's part, to
be secured through vocational education, must meet the
first ; social efficiency on his part, to be secured by such
means as this, must meet the second. Should anyone
object that such training lays an added burden upon
the teacher, an enhanced cost upon the school, the reply
lies in the comparative amounts of the cost and of the
loss now sustained by the nation through rural deple-
tion. The efficiency of supervised play is recognized
by all educationists. What is still requisite is a sense
of the urgency of the situation upon their part, and an
acceptance of their view of its efficiency by the public.
To inspire educationists and public with this sense of
urgency and efficiency is the task of the church.

THE COUNTRY CHURCH PROGRAMME 191

The Consolidated School, that has proved such an
educational advance in Ohio and Indiana and is spread-
ing so rapidly throughout tlie United States, has been a
pedagogical success in Canada, but, so far as its wide
adoption is concerned, a practical failure. In Mani-
toba and in Xew Brunswick, however, the movement
is making good progress. People are getting for
their children, through more primitive methods,
as good an education as they desire for them. But the
principle of the consolidation of schools has undoubtedly
made good in meeting country needs. It is for tlic
church to help in securing the working of that principle.

If the church undertakes her part in inspiration and
moral support the outlook is bright indeed. Here is the
voice of the Province of Ontario in official utterance:
'' The country school of the future will be teaching agri-
culture. It will not be a new kind of sehotd simply be-
cause it has added a new subject to its list of studies.
But in the teaching of this new subject it will find a new
service? in the community and a new meaning for educa-
tion for country people.

'* It will be the local experimental farm in a simple,
but effective way; it will introduce new varieties of field
crops and test methods of cultivation through the child-
ren's school-farm; it will V>e the local beauty-spot, with
neat fences, well-kept buildings, lawns, and flower beds;
it will 1k' the local play-ground, not only for the child-
ren, but for the grown-ups ; it will be the local centre for
social gatherings; its library will serve everyone with
books, magazines, bulletins and reports that concern
themselves with the farm work in home and field as well
as with literary matters.

" In the school work it will not consider examinations

192 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

as the be-all and end-all of its effort ; it will not cheat the
many for the sake of preparing a few for advanced work
in a higher school; it will remember that most of the
pupils will have only a short time at school and a long
time at work, and it will make its instruction fit the
needs of the worker no less than the future needs of the
scholar ; it will try to keep the boy who is not clever in
book-studies at school and to educate him through prac-
tical activities with tools and in the garden ; it will re-
member that children are educated for life through ac-
tivities in play, in work at home, in handling tools, in
experiences in Nature's Workshop, no less than by learn-
ing from books; it will bring the fathers and mothers
back to school again by using the daily home interests
as the means of education of their children. It will give
to our boys and girls in the country an education for
life."*

But better still, here again is the official voice of that
efficient Department in direct recognition of Grod as the
goal of its labors :

I teach

The earth and soil
To them that toil,
The hill and fen
To common men

That live just here;

The plants that grow.
The winds that blow.
The streams that run
In rain and sun
Throughout the year;

* Ontario Department of Education. Circular No. 3, 1912.

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THE COUNTRY OHFROH PROGRAMME 193

And then I lead
Thro' wood and mead,
Thro' mould and sod
Out unto God;

With love and cheer
I teach!*

Education in the city owes much to the gifts of phil-
anthropy; in the country, as yet, little or nothing. To
ask from men of wealth recognition of rural needs is
not to pauperize the country ; to claim equality of treat-
ment with the city is no more than to demand simple
justice. Buildings, equipment, endowment, are lavished
upon the city by men who indeed made their fortunes
there, but made them bv means of sturdv country
strength, used, often, in controlling sources of affluence
whose origin is in the country. Such men owe the debts
of philanthropy to rural rather than to urban need. An
instance of a wise and generous gift for better education
in the country is found in the Rittenhouse School in
Lincoln County. Ontario. Mr. M, F. Rittenhouse hav-
ing won ample means in lumbering, acknowledged the
debt he owed to the old one-roomed stone schoolhouse at
Jordan Harbor, where he had received his education, by
giving to the neighborhood a well-equipped modern
school. Two school districts were united. The philan-
thropist in the case presented the enlarged district with
a graded school equipped for manual training and
domestic science, having a school garden and ample
grounds furnished with facilities for supervised recrea-
tion. The school grounds are four acres in extent. Not
yet satisfied with this provision for the neighborhood,
the ddiior went farther. Across the highway from the ^

• L. H. Bailey, (luoted In circular cited.
13

194 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

school was a finely-wooded knoll of five acres. As this
could not be secured separately he purchased the farm
of which it formed a part. In the grove he had built a
hall for community purposes, with large lecture room,
library, museum, and all facilities for a social centre.
The hall with its five acres of grounds he presented to
the school district; the remainder of the farm to the
Provincial Department of Agriculture for a demonstra-
tion farm for fruit-growing. The highway passing the
school he had rebuilt on the finest lines for some two
miles, having it boulevarded and provided with bridges
of artistic beauty. An impetus has been given to the
whole neighborhood. Land in the vicinity has trebled
in value. The adjoining school sections have been
stimulated to similar activities. Mr. Rittenhouse's
action is an example which should call to the front many
philanthropists.

The church should avail herself in the country of an
interdenominational agency which has been found of
great service in the city — the Young Men's Christian
Association. Had it not been for this institution social
need in the city — so far as the church's ministry thereto
is concerned — would have been as scantily supplied
as in the country. The average city church does noth-
ing more for those beyond its membership, and scarcely
more for those within, than does the country congre-
gation, in all that pertains to the physical and recrea-
tional, and the social life. The Association, however,
has done a magnificent work for young manhood
through its gymnasiums, its athletic clubs, its recrea-
tion-rooms, its social parlors, and its classrooms. It
has not only rendered direct service but has stimulated

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THE COrrN'TRY CHrRCH PROGRAMME 195

other agencies to gi'cater activity, and has leavened all
athletic and recreational life with a nobler spirit. All
that the citj has received through the Association the
country requires and deserves. We have already three
( 'ounty Associations in Ontario — in Bruce, Huron and
Lanibton. Fourfold activities are carried on, physical,
social, educational, and religious. The finest achieve-
ment of the Association is in developing leadership.
The secretary is the pastor's strongest reinforcement.
The Young Women's Christian Association otfers itself
as a similar agency among girls and young women.
That organization lately approached the Federal Coun-
cil of the Churches in the United States with this re-
quest : " The Young Women's Christian Association, in
its newly developed rural work, has been grateful to
recognize its entire allegiance to the church, from which
it draws its inspiration, and whose work it constantly
seeks to advance. . . . We should be especially
glad, therefore, if the Federal Council could make it
plain to the churches that the Young Women's Christian
Association is an arm of the church, and that it stands
ready to do work for them whenever they need help in
specialized work for the women in a community."

A denominational and congregational agency to be
availed of is the Men's Brotherhood. Within the con-
gregation this organization is fitted to perform the ser-
vice which the Association renders for the county. The
Firotherhfxjd seems especially adaj)ted to meet the pres-
i-nt situation. It is an organization of men. Tt is at
«)nee intensely spiritual and thoroughly practical in aim.
The manliness of Christ is its inspiration; His s^nn-
pathy witli nicn its pattern. Fls av<t\ved first object

196 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

is to lead men into fellowship with Christ and His
church; its second, to seek the welfare of men in their
relations with each other and with the world as a place
for all men to live ; and its third to give all men, especi-
ally in times of need, the help of Christian comrade-
ship. Other church agencies adapted to such services
are the Young People's Guild and the Christian En-
deavor Society.

The Young Men's and Women's Christian Associa-
tions are fitted to supply permanently the needs of the
marginal classes in the country as in the city along re-
creative and educational lines ; brotherhoods and guilds
to supply permanently within the congregation similar
needs. But a direct and immediate duty lies before the
church to fulfil another temporary social want institu-
tionally. She needs to avail herself, for the present
crisis, of a new agency, the social centre. In my native
village of Ormstown, Quebec, is a building bearing
my family name, MacDougall Hall, built as a memorial
to a beloved uncle, a farmer, by his brother, another
farmer, and presented to the Presbyterian Church in
Ormstown as a home for the social activities of the
church — the first of its kind in Canada. The donor was
in advance of his time in providing such a social centre.
Moreover, in his presentation of the hall to the church,
he expressed the wish that the trustees should hold the
building not for that congregation's use alone, but for
any social activities the sister denominations might wish
to engage in ; not only so, but that the building should
be open for any community gatherings also. Macdonald
College opened its recent Provincial campaign of " Tak-
ing the Agricultural College to the Farmer " in Mac-
Dougall Hall.

THE COUICTRY CHURCH PROGRAMME 197

Other institutions, notably the school, are being called
on to provide centres for social life, and are doing so.
In many parts of the United States legislative sanction
has been given for the use of school grounds and build-
ings for such purposes when not required for class work.
The meetings so held are not solely nor chietly for socia-
bility, but for uutraminelpd discussion of community
problems and a purposeful programme of activities.
But so far as used for purely social gatherings they lay
an additional duty upon the church. Jt has been foimd
that where schools were thrown open without provision
for guidance in such social work, where it was supposed
that attractive social surroundings without supervision
would make for character-building, such gather-
ings became a blot on the community rather
than a help. Even more imperatively than does
recreation, social centres require supervision. This
would seem a task too delicate and too respon-
sible for our public school teachers, immature as they
so often are. The call is for leadershij) in numbers
sufficient and in strength adequate to supply a distinc-
tively character-building atm<isj)h('rc. in otlier words,
this widespread movement in regard to the schools is but
an additional call to the church to provide social centres.

In this form of service, as in others, material equip-
ment is no panacea, riie Spokane Chamber of Com-
merce in a recent utterance calls for a Country Life Hall
in every community in the State. Hut the real leaders
in the rural life movement are emphasizing leadership
as the prime necessity and manifest iliiiiiiiishing concern
over fullness of equipment.

Beyond that of adoi)ting new agencies of service an-

198 EUEAL LIFE IN CAl^ADA

other dutj lies upon the church. The modification of
the primary occupations by modern industrial develop-
ment, which is the real cause of the present rural prob-
lem, demands study and action from many institutions.
Educational, industrial, recreative, fraternal, political
organizations have functions, responsibilities and duties
to undertake in regard to this problem. The church,
while she is to fill these organizations with spiritual men,
to inspire them with a spiritual character and a Chris-
tian ideal, must also recognize the supremacy of each in
its own domain, and the necessity of the contribution of
each to the solution of the problem. Thus, recognizing
the unity of the problem and the solidarity of the forces
which unitedly must solve it, she is called upon to assist
in the federation, " upon the level " of all forces of
progress.

Moreover, the Christian Church must awake to the
fact that she has a competitor for the suffrages and the
domain of the rural community in one of the most astute
of selfish agencies — Mormonism. While not disdaining
to dominate the city this system seeks first the sceptre of
the open country. Its dream is of world-conquest. It
behooves the church to match against the iron unity of
Mormon discipline the living unity of her faith, against
the inducement of a sensual life the incentive of a con-
secrated one, and now, before it be grown strong, to free
Canada from this incubus.

Such a programme calls for self-denial and devoted
service on the part of the church, but it leads to victory.
" Are we, the churchmen of this continent, prepared to
undertake any such programme as the regeneration of
society until all social institutions attain the measure

THE COUNTRY CHURCH PROGRAMME 199

of the stature of the fullness of Christ? Are we pre-
pared as families, as business firms, as labor
organizations, as cities, as a nation, to make the
venture of the Son of Man when He set His face stead-
fastly to go up to Jerusalem, and stake everything on
love i . . . Through many tribulations we must enter
into the kingdom of God, ' It became Him, for whom
are all things, and to whom are all things, in bringing
many sons to glory, to make the author of their salva-
tion perfect through sutfering.' The households, the
corporations, the unions, the municipalities, the nations
who would lead many of their brethren into the glory
of the kingdom of justice, kindness and faithfulness,
and be the author under God of their social salvation,
cannot expect a different perfecting of their Messianic
vocation.

" But the cross for Christians can never be more than
an incident. * Christ Jesus died, or rather is risen to
life again, who is also at the right hand of God.' We
cannot anticipate a destiny less exalted for any family,
or firm, or organization, or country, which dares to make
the experiment of incarnating in its life the spirit of
Calvary. And there is no other way of placing a home,
an industry, a settlement, a state, at the right hand of
God."*

From ocean unto ocean

Our land ahall own Thee Lord,
And filled with true devotion

Obey Thy sovereign word.

• " Mea and Religion MessageB," " Social Service." p. 117.

200 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

Our prairies and our mountains.

Forest and fertile field.
Our rivers, lakes and fountains,

To Thee shall tribute yield.
Till all the tribes and races

That dwell in this fair land
Adorned with Christian graces

Within Thy courts shall stand.

— Robert Murray, "'Book of Praise."

STUDENTS AND THE RURAL
PROBLEM

From life's enchantments,

Desire of place.
From lust of getting.

Turn thou away and set thy face
Toward the wilderness.

With awful judgment,

The law, the rod.
With soft allurements

And comfortable words, will God
Pass o'er the wilderness.

The bitter waters

Are healed and sweet;
The ample heavens

Pour angels' bread about thy feet,
Throughout the wilderness.

The tents of Jacob

As valleys spread.
As goodly cedars

Or fair lign aloes, white and red,
Shall share thy wilderness.

And Carmel's glory

Thou thoughtest gone.
And Sharon's roses.
The excellency of Lebanon,

Delight thy wilderness!

— Anna Bunston,

CHAPTER VII.
Students and the Rural Problem.

I count myself happy, — in coming, at the close of our
study of this problem, to an aspect of more personal in-
terest,— in that 1 address a company of students. '^ Tell
me what the young men of Oxford are thinking," some
one has said, " and you will tell me what all England
will be saying presently." This is said not by way of
flattery, but of help. I briug you not honey but a spur.
And of all students, one is happy, when speaking of
social service, in addressing students for the ministry.
You remember the famous picture, " The Lion's Cubs."
A group of boys from one of the great schools of Eng-
land stand before Xelson's monument in Westminster
Abbey. One can read the look of high resolve upon
their eager faces as they gaze at the figure of their hero.
He is England's lion ; they his cubs. Valor lives and
glows again in tlicm through his great life. Of the
young warriors of the ^Messianic King the Psalmist de-
clares: "Thy people offer themselves willingly in the
day of thy power: in the beauties of holiness, from the
womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth.''
The gl(»w of c«jnsecration to service is upon the facos of
the Lion of Judah's whelps as they contcmplafo the life
of service of Jesus of Nazareth.

In considering the relation of students for the minis-
try to the problem of the country church, let us notice,

2o:{

204 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

first, that students to-day have the spirit of social service.
I speak not yet of them as the college has moulded them,
but of the student class as they are to-day in themselves.
Back of the college lies the social preparation, un-
directed of human purpose, in the environment of the
boy life. This spirit may not as yet be articulate,
but it is apt to be there. For our students come from
homes in touch with the movements of to-day. If from
farm homes, as so many of them are, then from the
homes of those farmers who are farming well. Their
fathers and brothers in all probability have had some
contact with the forces that are making for scientific
farming, if not through attendance at the agricultural
college, at least through familiar use of its bulletins.
They are not from the homes of farmers who are fail-
ures, those growing antiquated, those becoming deca-
dent. If from the industrial ranks, then from homes
which are in touch with the forward movements of the
great labor world. It was ever so. But, someone may
say, Do not students often come from the homes of the
poor ? Granted ; but in what wise poor ? From the
homes of widows of fine extraction, from the homes of
the poor who aspire ; not from the sinking poor or the
degenerate. They are sons of the morning, men of the
coming day.

Environment as well as origin gives them the spirit
of the present, the social spirit. The youths growing
up in the homes of our Canadian churches are fed upon
the bread of social service. The church papers, East
and West, for example, and those of the other denom-
inations in equal measure, present it most attractively.
The pages of all Sabbath-school publications teem with
it. In our fine and strong religious fiction, such as

STFDEXTS AND THE KURAL PROBLEM 205

Ralph Connor's and Marion Keith's works — though
even to mention these is injustice to those passed by —
social service is ever the background on which the plot
is laid. And when we touch the highest levels of litera-
ture of the past quarter-century, the '' long reaches of
the peaks of song," in poems such as " The White Man's
Burden " and "' The ^lan with the Hoe," social service
is ever their theme and inspiration, their burden and
their fire. And again it was ever so. Our English
literature begins with '* The Vision of Piers Plownnan,"
— a vision of social good, one which anticipates in a
marvellous way our modern needs and methods — nor
has there ever been lacking in that literature, from the
day of Langland's hot invective to the day of Kingsley's
clarion note, the signature which Frederick Harrison in
his " Studies of Victorian Literature " finds at its very
heart : " Literature to-day has many characteristics,
but its central note is the influence of Sociology."
Lender such influence our students receive the ground-
work of the social spirit on which to build. Conscience,
with them, is apt to be awake to social responsibility.

Rut we turn aside to notice as to our second point
that the regulations under which our college courses
are plannc<l do not call for the teaching of social science
as fully as they might. The Rev. Charles Stelzle,
Secretary of the Department of Church and Labor of
the Presbyterian Church in the United States, last year
addressed a letter to each of the 184 theological semin-
aries in the L'nit<.'d States, asking these (juestions:

" Please state what practical social service experience
Htudeiits rec<'ive wliilc in tlic scniinarv.

'' Do yoM Iiavf! a c(»ur80 in social tt^aching^

" Wliat is tlie totitl numbfr of hours devoted to nil

206 RUEAL LIFE IN CAISTADA

lectures during the year, and how many of these hours
are given to the study of social problems ?

" Is any attempt made to acquaint the student at
first hand with social problems either in the city or in
the country?

" Would you introduce more sociological study if you
had the necessary money ?

" Have your students asked for additional courses in
sociological subjects in the seminary ?

" Is the student offered special inducements in the
form of scholarships, for example, in order that he may
take additional sociological work ?

" What is your general opinion of the value of socio-
logical training for the theological student ?"

Of the 184, replies were received from 80. l^ow, in
drawing an inference from this slight response we must
recognize that Mr. Stelzle is an outstanding man, a
recognized leader. He has the approval of the l^ational
Government of his country for services rendered as a
mediator in labor disputes. His questions in a field
which he has made his own should therefore have been
looked upon as of serious moment. They should not
have been looked on as an impertinence. And doubt-
less they were not. We can only infer that failure to
respond was confession of lack and of consciousness of
lack. In these 104 seminaries there is doubtless no
training whatever in social service.

Of the eighty from which replies were received about
two-thirds were offering some kind of sociological course.
But with most of them this meant only the stiidy of the
Mission Sunday School, the Rescue Mission, hospital
work, and similar philanthropic and religious enter-
prises. Should we apply a similar test to the medical

STUDENTS AXD THE RURAL PROBLEM 207

colleges, asks Mr. Stcl/le, and find them limiting their
students to the study of medical agencies, and making
no provision for the courses in hygiene, diagnosis, or
clinical practice, what should be the verdict we would
give ?

Of these 80 seminaries, not more than one dozen had
anything like an adequate course in the matter of
sociolosrv'. Even of these Mr. Stelzle makes this criti-
cism : They handicap the study of social problems by
otfering incentives to follow other courses. Yet prac-
tically every seminary responding was convinced of the
value of sociological training for the theological student,
although there were some notable exceptions.

Thus we come to our third general head, that there is
an imperative call, based not upon such opinion, but
upon fact, which opinion follows slowly, for courses in
the teaching of sociology in our universities — in case
of their failure, in our colleges — and for courses of
training in social service in our colleges. For we live
in a recently made world. Down to the dawn of the
nineteenth century the work of the world was done by
muscular power. Each man was independent in his
u.se of this power. Then came steam with more effi-
cient power. But its efficiency varied with the scale
upon which it was utilized. Therefore men concen-
trated for its utilization. This brought interdepen-
dence instead of independence among men. ^Nfen are
massed and organized as never before. And that is
the new civilization.

But we live also in a still more recently made world
of service. In l!ilO the Russell Sage Foundation pub-
lished the results of ;in investigation of the s<jcial
movements organized i>ii ;i national senle in the Ignited

208 EUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

States. Their number as tabulated is in the neighbor-
hood of seventy. The order of their appearance, and
especially their rapid increase with each decade, is
instructive. The six decades before 1880 gave rise to
13; the decade of the eighties to 4; of the nineties to
12 ; the opening decade of this century to 39. Earliest
among those named — the earlier associations for the
reform of the drunkard are not included — came an
association for the care of the insane, then one for the
prevention of illiteracy; the American Association for
the Instruction of the Blind followed after an interval ;
and then, rapidly, the American Prison Association,
the Public Health Association, the Women's Christian
Temperance Union, the Purity Alliance, the Associa-
tion for the Eeeble-Minded, and the National Confer-
ence on Charities and Correction. The eighties gave
rise to the Red Cross Association and the Chris-
tian Social Union. The nineties brought social
settlements, women's councils, the National Coun-
cil of Mothers, the Anti-Saloon League, and move-
ments for regulation of industries and of immigration.
After 1900 came a host of movements for the preven-
tion of child labor, of infant mortality, of blindness,
of tuberculosis ; for the education of backward chil-
dren, of negroes, the care of delinquents, of epileptics ;
for the suppression of the white slave traffic, and pre-
vention of infant mortality. The various denomina-
tions organize for social service — ^the Presbyterian
Church's Department of Church and Labor ; of Church
and Country Life ; the Methodist Federation for Social
Service ; the Industrial Committee of the National
Council of Congregational Churches, the Social Service
Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the

STUDENTS AXn THK KrKAL PROBLEM 209

Commission in Social Service of the Federal Council
of the Churches of Christ in America. The social
movements in the American Republic thus tabulated
bj the Sage Foundation have their counterpart in every
line of helpfulness in all lands. Their emergence is
evidence of an organic world-movement. The Church
of Christ can no more resist the impulse to take part,
and the leading part, in this world-movement than can
the living tree in spring resist the impulse to put forth
leaves and bloom and set her fruit. In these facts of
the new civilization and the new impulse to service —
the work respectivelv of the Providence and of the
Spirit of God — lie the imperative call to the church,
not only to labor in social service, but to take her place
in teaching and in formulating the sciences which deal
with societarv forms and groups and with social pro-
cesses.

Now our subject at this hour is not Sociology and
Students for the ^finistrv, but The Rural Problem and
Students for the Ministry. Our excursus was neces-
sary, however, inasmuch as the right of way of sociology
in these halls gives our problem its standing ground.

And. returning, we note as our next point that while
our students have the groundwork of the modern social
spirit f)n which to build, our working assumption
regarding the status of the country ministry is not
favorable to generous service for the solution of the
rural problem. Our fheorv of the ministry is correct
enough, — we must recover its working reality, Tii
theory all are eqiial in standing; a Moderator is, by
definition, but the primus among parrs. In effect, we
grade men accordinfr to their charges. Men should
have weight according to persr»nal worth and <ervi<'e
14

210 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

done, and not according to field of labor. There is one
department of our work in which this is the case — the
foreign field. We do not saj Japan is a more impor-
tant field than Korea, India than China, and group
men accordingly. Yet we do say city and suburban
congregations are important, the hamlet unimportant ;
and rate men's standing by such criteria. Even the
efficiency of the renowned pastor whose prosperous
cause scarce keeps pace with the suburb's growth may
conceivably be less than that of the unknown pastor
whose rural charge more than holds its relative place
among the institutions of the country community. But
let us disregard altogether this equation, and note only
that the solid achievements in world-service of country-
bred men constitute an historical vindication of the
worth of rural service which renders all other vindica-
tion superfluous. We make no special plea for the
country ministry ; we postulate equality in recognition
of worth in every field of service. Judged by present
standards Labrador would be rated an unimportant
field; service, and not parish, is the ground upon which
Wilfred Grrenfell is appraised among the King's
laborers.

Coming now nearer the heart of our subject, we
discover that the Christian ministry in the country con-
stitutes to-day a call to men of the best type. Even
were country life to become a by-product of civiliza-
tion, successful Christian service there, judged from the
modern standpoint of the value of by-products, would
be of prime importance. Its presence or its absence
would still be the decisive factor in determining the
worth of Christianity to the world. But country life
is no mere by-product. President Butterfield, of

STUDENTS AND THE RURAL PROBLEM 211

Amherst College, recently said: "For the next
twenty years we may expect the country life move-
ment to have great influence on the course of
events. Politicians will use it as a means of riding
into power. Demagogues and fakirs will take advan-
tage of it for personal gain. Writers are even now
beginninor to sensationalize it. But there will also arise
country men with statesmanship in them — if not, we
cannot make the progress we need. The movement will
have its significant national aspect, and we may look
for Governors of States, and perhaps more than one
President of the LTnited States, to come out of it."

I almost feared to quote this passage, lest my pur-
pose should be misconstrued, lest you might suppose I
said : " Then you too may find position through this
crusade." My purpose is simply to point out that this
estimate of the movement by such a man as President
Butterfield implies that an important field of service
is found in the countrv church to-dav. The countrv
call is one to stir the blood, alike because of possibilities
of failure and of achievement tliat lie before the country
community.

Her risk of failure which may affect the world is
evident. Tn " Who's Who in Canada " for last year
85 per cent, are country-born. Xinety per cent of our
ministers of the gospel come from country homes.
Henry Wallace, of WnUarr's Farmer, Towa's leading
journalist, writes: '* It is from tho rural population
that the cities of this land, of all lands, in all ages, have
drawn tbf vigorous blood with which to replace the
enormous waste incident to city life. It may in fact
well be doubted whether cities of over 50,000 could
continue to prosper, to govern tbomselves. or ovnn ron-

212 EURAL LIFE IN" CANADA

tiniie in existence worth while, without this stream of
fresh blood from the country, with its cool nerves, firm
muscles, and good habits."* The '' Law of the City,"
as well as the " Law of the Yukon," is given by Robert
W. Service in the words :

This is the Law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
" Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and

your sane;
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the contest, men who are grit to the

core;

Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom; them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my

meat;
But the others — the misfits, the failures — I trample under my

feet."t

That virile tribute is checked as soon as dissatisfaction
prevails in the country; it ceases when degeneracy
begins. In the unrest of the rural community lies the
chief cause of the recent falling off in candidates for
the ministry.

Gentlemen, Christ calls strong men to heathendom
through the prospect of uplifting a pagan people. Does
He not also call such men to the country through the
prospect of upholding a Christian one ?

But I should be utterly unscientific if I made my
chief plea the possibility of failure in supplying the
church with candidates for the ministry, .the city with
the red blood of leadership ; the failure to send forth
these would be only symptomatic of disease in the rural

* " Men and Religion Messages," Vol. VI, p. 119.
t Robert W. Service, " The Spell of the Yukon."

STUDEXTS AXD THE RURAL PROBLEM 213

community itself. Here is a class larger in numbers
than any other, professional or mercantile or industrial,
larger than all other classes taken together; a class
engaged in the most necessary of all callings — that of
providing the people's daily bread ; a class more depend-
ent upon itself alone for all the possibilities of attain-
ment and satisfaction in life than is any other class.
This class is in danger of failing to provide itself with
leaders through whom to exert its influence in the con-
trol of national affairs, to say nothing of guidance in
local matters ; in danger of viewing its own calling with
disdain and fleeing from its environment in disgust.
The chief call, along this line of risk of failure, is a
call to uphold the finest Christian civilization in the
country fur the rural community's own sake.

Flowers of Thy heart, O God, are they.*

And shall they who stand, u wall of fire, around their
much-loved land fail, and you take not heed ^ Shall
they cease to march in the van in physical vigor, in
material advance, in intellectual power, in social pro-
gress, in moral strength, or in spiritual life, and no
clarion call be heard therein by the very strongest men
who enter the ministry (

lint the call for the best comes still more definitely
through possibilities of achiovemont. In the city you
may iniiii.st<-r to a limited number of the leaders of
to-day. In the country you may call forth the empire-
builders and founders of the kintrdom of manv to-mor-
rows. And in the country itself great events are at
hand. The Country Life Movement itself .-alls for
you. 1 1 is evident that (jur agricultural colleges and

• Ebfnezer Klllotl, Hymn, "God Save the People."

214 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

many other agencies have begun a crusade for a better
rural economy. Modern progress helps it forward
with the rural telephone and mail delivery ; the Domin-
ion and Provincial Governments are seeking means of
fostering it; the educational forces are contributing
richly; even the railway companies are sending out
their Better Farming Specials. The moments of the
movement are agricultural science, vocational education,
farmers' co-operation, supervised recreation, community
organization. That crusade needs the Christian Church
at its very heart if it is to be spared the blight of
materialism. Frederick Almy, Secretary of the Char-
ity Organization Society of America, says : " The social
gospel is being preached from every sort of pulpit, the
stage, the pages of the novel, the magazine ; until it is
a wonder that the public will stand so much of it.
There are signs of a reaction, and I fear for the future
unless social work becomes less utilitarian. It is
attacking those old enemies of mankind, ignorance and
disease, with such sledge-hammer blows that they are
weakening visibly. But its agencies are too material,
and social work needs unspeakably the inspiration and
the interpretation of its message which the church alone
can give. . . . Its success depends upon whether it
can get itself adopted by the church in every hamlet
and cross-roads. ... If through this alliance the
modern social movement with its gospel of adequate
opportunity sweeps the country, it will mean such an
uplift for neglected humanity as will go far toward
social reconstruction."

Gentlemen, there is in that a proffered alliance, a task
in leadership to stir the pulses of the best. And if the
movement beckons, still more does its outcome. That I

STUDENTS AND TIIK RrUAL PROBLEM 215

shall not attempt to outline, but leave to your own
prophetic souls. Jt was worth while for strong men to
lay the foundations of Japan's, China's, India's uplift ;
it is worth strong men's while to enter this held to-day.

Do you consider that I am decrying the city pastorate
— making a plea which, if heeded, would close the way
for the most devoted and the ablest to enter there ?
Such is far from my intention. There is a call, and a
great one, which is directly to the city pastorate. But
if it be a love of ease or of gain or of fame which urges
any of you to cast eyes of longing toward the city, you
are debtors of your immortal souls to resist such a wish,
and to seek a held somewhere, anvAvhere where such
desires for fancied ease or gain or fame shall be cruci-
fied. Otherwise you shall win indeed your world, but
verily lose your life.

But if there be a passion within you of brotherliness
for the factory operative, and if there be reason for you
to think that you can help the men of the labor unions
to dominate those unions for Christ and His kingdom ;
or if you know yourself of the kindred of the men of
commerce and of capital — if you have in you that which
will make their life with its temptations and victories
an open book to you — if your passionate longing be to
guide these strong men to dominate the directorate
boards for Christ and His kingdom, even though pitiless
Mammon crush you as you succeed, then your call is
to the city's turmoil anrl the city's crown.

Our next point is that in order to e.xert any con-
tinuing influence upon the course of rural development
a man must become a real part of fjiat country life.
We need a permanent rural pastorate — not abiding in
our Hiarge, but in the country. In point of fact the

216 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

country ministry is just at the pass where the country
community stands — eager to escape to the town. Be-
fore the ministry can correct this state of affairs in
general country life, the same tendencies must be cor-
rected in the ministry itself.

The Christian Conservation Congress held in New
York in April last went about its work in the same
effective way as the Edinburgh Missionary Conference
of a few years ago — by the appointment in advance of
commissions to study and report upon each phase of the
subject. One of these commissions dealt with the rural
church. Among its findings is the following: "We
need a permanent country pastorate. We can hardly
expect that every man who takes a country charge shall
remain there all his life. . . . Many strong men
who succeed in country parishes will inevitably be
called to city parishes. Nevertheless, there should be
developed a rural clergy as a professional group that
tends to specialize itself and that tends to induce other
men to make this their life work. The idea of the
country pastorate as a distinct vocation should be pro-
mulgated among young men. The need and feasibility
of such permanent service should become a part of
the common thinking and talking about the country
church."*

For we live in an age of specialization. Not only so,
but specialization is one of the chief of the forces which
have made this progressive, successful age. And there
is place for specialization in the ministry as in any other
profession. There are indeed deprivations involved in
country life, but they must be looked upon from the

* " Men and Religion Messages," Vol. VI, p. 77'.

STUDEXTS AXD THE RURAL PROiiLEM 217

same viewpoint as those on the foreign mission field.
The work itself is the foremost consideration.

If you make such a life choice, gentlemen, you will
be but walking in the footsteps of noble exemplars.
Oberlin declined a chaplaincy in the proudest regiment
of France to become pastor of Ban de la Roche, nor
could even the request of the Academy of France induce
him to leave his country parsonage. Of George Her-
bert, who united in one person the saiutliest character,
the richest culture, the ripest scholarship, the finest
genius, and the noblest blood of the England of his
day, it was said, " He himself became a country minister
that he might show how that sphere could become a field
fit for intelligent, energetic, and stately living." Charles
Kingsley, a brilliant and versatile genius — he was
senior optime in mathematics and won first-rank honors
in classics at Cambridge — at the age of twenty-two
became curate of Eversley, a country parish where
scarcely one person could read or write, and, though
j)oet and novelist, popular lecturer and university pro-
fessor, canon of Westminster Abbey, and chaplain to
Queen Victoria, there he ministered throughout his
life. It was said in the hearing of an American bishop
that the time would come when it would be as great an
honor to be a successful country minister as to be a
city minister. He replied that the time was already
here, and had been since Charles Kingsley put Eversley
on the map of the world. There arc places wliose
names arc yet unknown to fame.

It follows, as our next point, that there should be
fuller attention given to preparation for the special
tasks of the fountry ministry. I have no slightest sug-
gestion to offer here as to how this C^ollege, which hau

218 KURAL LIFE IN GANKDA

such a splendid record in preparing men for the min-
istry, should order its work. Nor do I suggest that you
should divide yourselves into two classes, burning the
bridges between, for city and country service. But
with those of you who look forward to the country
ministry, your chosen work should bear the same rela-
tion to your preparation that foreign mission work does
to the foreign mission volunteer. These men seek the
full advantage of the common training provided for all
who enter the ministry; their fellows participate with
them in acquiring a general familiarity with the prob-
lems of the mission field ; but in addition the mission
volunteers avail themselves of every means of special
knowledge and fitness. They study comparative reli-
gion with the zest not of curiosity but of need ; ethnic
psychology has to them not an academic but a practical
interest. Moreover they form their mission-bands,
their study-classes ; they hold conventions, they invite
addresses by specialists. All that concerns missions
they seek to make their own. They put enthusiasm
into their preparation.

For the best work in the country ministry to-day you
need to become as skilled as the schools can make you in
the principles of sociology, in knowledge of the indus-
trial order, in the agencies of social service, as well as
in the problems of the rural community. And these
should have for you the absorbing interest that mission-
ary principles and practice have for the foreign mission
volunteer. Even census tables might captivate you as
maps did William Carey.

Your work will call for knowledge of the sciences
that deal with rural well-being, especially agricultural
economics and rural sociology. It is not enough that

STUDENTS AND THE RFKAL PROBLEM 21!)

your youth may have been spent in the country. One
does not know forestry because he roamed the woods
in childhood with delight. A knowledge of the rural
social status — of depletion, for example — is not instinc-
tively acquired. Residence in the country does not
nmke one an adept in the social psychology of rural
life, in isolation and its results, for example. '' How
can even rural teachers learn to appreciate the social
function of the rural school, except they be taught ?"

Your work calls for knowledije of the forces which
make or mar country life. You need to know the coun-
try's needs, to recognize the less patent as well as the
apparent ones. What, for instance, is lacking that so
many of our country boys take so little interest in school
studies ( What are the successive unmet needs indi-
cated in these verses:

Poor wee Sandy, he wanted to play,
But the bairns on the village green warned him away,
For Sandy was always more ragged than they —
Fearful wee, tearful wee Sandy!

Poor boy Sandy, alack and alas!
At school he was always the dunce of the class;
" That thick-hoad''d laddio no standard could pass " —
Cowering, glowering Sandy.

Poor lad Sandy, he never could learn
Any buslnf-Hs by which he a living might earn;
And the world with her weak ones is angry and stern —
Wondering, blundering Sandy. ♦

What would play luivo done to briirhtcii, })rightnes8 to
educate, education to employ, unhelped Sandy?

And you (iced to know the country's wealth. Say

• Anonymous, In " Social Advance," by David Watson, p. 252.

220 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

what one will, the country can never compete with the
city in the things of the city. The sparkling, flashing,
dazzling brilliance of her vivid, radiant streets by night
is all the city's own :

Give to me, Love, our London towB,

Now, when the hovering night comes down,

What if away there still be day.
Naked sky over silver reaches.
Bronze of bracken and gold of beeches?

Give me the woven shadows brown

Shot with the lights of London town!

Little of stars our London recks;
Night with her fiery garland decks

Light upon light as pearls strung white;
Fast through the shadows and moony blazes
Topaz and ruby whirl in blazes.

Flash in the sinister veil, the crown

Royal and fierce, of London town.*

And better things than those pulsing waves of throb-
bing light which have such attraction for many, are
hers. But it is for you who are to serve humanity in
the country to learn the country's wealth in the things
of the country — things that the city cannot have. If
the city is given a crown royal and fierce by her mechan-
ism of light, the country's dower is the sunrise and
sunset, dawn and day and the stars of night. If in
the city topaz and ruby whirl in blazes, in the country
is the light ineffable of all precious gems from the
crimson flame of the ruby in the simset up through the
orange of the jacinth in the tints of autumn and the
golden sheen of the topaz in the harvest, the livinjf

* Margaret L. Woods, " The Gondola of London."

STUDENTS AND THE RUKAL PROBLEM 221

green of the emerald fields, the vivid aznre of the
sapphire heavens, to the royal purple and the ethereal
violet of the amethyst as they glow in the shadow of
the hills and gleam in the cloud. The whiteness of
pure light, too, is hers alone, milky iridiseence as of
the opal in the morning mist, '^ chalcedony's dim white-
ness, pure-serene " in fields flooded with moonlight,
lustre of pearl in the dew, the radiance of the diamond
lavished on the landscape of snow. Now, the country's
richness of aesthetic loveliness is but a type of Ikm-
wealth for human living which it is yours to lead all
men to see.

Out of the heart of the city, begotten
Of the labor of men and their manifold hands,
Where souls that were sprung from the earth in her morning,
No longer regard — nor remember — her warning.

Whose hearts in the furnace of care have forgotten
Forever the scent and the lure of her lands;

Out of the heart of the usurer's hold.

From the horrible crush of the strong man's feet,
Out of the shadow where pity Is dying.
Out of the clamor where beauty is lying

Dead in the depths of the struggle for gold;
Out of the din and the glare of the street;

Into thr' arms of our mother wc come.
Our broad, strong mother, the innocent earth.
Mother of all things beautiful, blameless,
.Mother of hopes that her strength makes tameless,
Whore the voices of grief and of battle are dumb.

And the wholo world laughs in the light of her mirth*

;\ik1 you nr-ed to know the agencies that are making
for iK^ttermont. Let me mention in this connection one

• Arrhibald Lampman, " Fr»^dom."

222 RUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

or two lines of preparation whicli you would do well
to follow in addition to your studies within these halls.
They will suggest others. First, acquaint yourself
fully and practically with the work of the Young Men's
Christian Association, not only as carried on among
college men, but also in the range of its city activities.
All that the city owes to the Association the country
has a right to receive. Nor is this little. The athletic
clubs, the gymnasium, the recreation rooms, the class-
rooms, reading-rooms and parlors, for men and for boys,
of the " Y. M. C. A." have been the chief source of
supply — through the church's agency — of the needs
unmet in the country. Save as represented by the
City Association, the average town congregation has
had but little to distinguish her from her rural sister in
social equipment. Now, familiarity with its working
in the city is the prerequisite for your employment of
this agency in the country.

Secondly, familiarize yourselves with the working
of the agricultural college. Young men aspiring to
influence in journalism now regard a course in scien-
tific agriculture as one of the important vestibules to
their life work. Not a full course in such a college is
called for, for you need not be technically trained agri-
culturists— but first-hand acquaintance with the scope
of the work these schools are carrying on, and with the
spirit in which it is being done. I do not ask you to
accept my summing up of that work — it might appear
the vision of an enthusiast. Let me rather present a
sketch drawn by a practical Boer farmer on the veldt,
Mr. J. A. Neser, presiding at the Dry Farming Con-
gress of South Africa, held recently: "We have assem-
bled to discuss dry farming, but dry farming is merely

STTDEXTS AND THE RURAL PROBLEM 223

part of a larger whole — the New Agriculture. AAHiat,
then, is this new Agriculture ? It deals with all those
things which affect the daily life of the farmer. It
brings the railway to his door; demands refrigerator
cars for his perishable products ; forms co-operative
societies for the purchase of seed, machinery, and
manures. It analyzes his soil, tests his milk, builds
butter and bacon factories ; gi'ades his crops, establishes
land-banks and parcel posts, and erects rural telephones.
It teaches him to control disease, and to gi'ow and har-
vest every crop. It sends his son to the agricultural
college and his daughter to the school of domestic
science." In the country ministry, gentlemen, you
need acquaintance with the technical side of such a
movement, and mastery of its social aspect.

What is the life for which vou are fitting vourselves?
There are certain needs of the city which the social
settlement is designed to serve. There are human
needs of other kinds belonging to a class of persons very
different in character in the country, to which the
manse might bo made to bear the same relation as the
settlement does to our foreigners in the city. What is
the conception embodied in the very word "parish"?
Is it not just this idea of a settlement? The parish is
the little world " around the dwelling," the world which
the minister and his home are there to serve.

Permit me to say, in closing, that such a niini-^try
would imply an intimate folktwing of Christ, and must
W'gin as His W'gan. Being in the f<»riii nf (Inij Ho
thought it not a thing to be clung to that He should
boon an equality with Oorl. [ need recount no further
step of His, if this first one yon take — counting nothing
that js rightfully yours of place (u* power a thing t<. be

224 EUKAL LIFE IN CANADA

clung to. In willing consecration you are to enter on
your life work.

This, again, implies prayer. It was my privilege to
be at the Conference at ISTorthfield at which the Student
Movement for Missions had its origin. Men were first
deeply moved at a meeting addressed by ten young men,
some sons of missionaries, some natives, representing
ten missionary lands. At that historic meeting, when
D. L. Moody called for one speaker, Robert Wilder, to
speak for India, there was no response. ISTeither on
platform nor floor was he to be found. When sought
in the waiting-room behind the platform he was dis-
covered there upon his knees, oblivious of the passage
of time. The movement thus cradled in prayer evoked
a similar spirit of prayer for guidance from the
great body of students present. For the next fortnight
men were to be seen in groups in the rooms, and out
alone upon the hills, in prayer, until Mr. Moody said
he had witnessed nothing approaching it in power dur-
ing his life. In order that this problem of the country
church may be solved men must give themselves to the
ministry for the country in that same spirit of prayer.

But those who know best how to read aright the
signs of the times are clearly of opinion — the literature
of service that is springing strong and full from the
heart of the church to-day being their best evidence —
that the Church of Christ is ready to go forward, it may
be to her Gethsemane, but certainly to her glory.

I know of a land that is tinged with shame,

Of hearts that faint and tire;
And I know of a name, a name, a name

Can set that land on fire.
Its sound is a brand, its letters flame.
Yea, I know of a name, a name, a name,

Will set this land on fire.

RURAL UPLIFT ELSEWHERE

In Bome great day

The country church

Will find its voice
And it will say:

" I stand in the fields
Where the wide earth yields

Her bounties of fruit and of grain;
Where the furrows turn
Till the plowshares burn

As they circle again, again;
Where the workers pray
With their tools all day.

In sunshine and shadow and rain.

" And I bid them tell
Of the crops they sell.

And speak of the work they have done;
I speed every man
In his hope and plan.

And follow his day with the sun;
And grasses and trees,
The birds and the bees

I know and I feel every one.

" And out of it all
As the seasons fall

I build my great temple alway;
I point to the skies
But my footstone lies

In commonplace work of the day;
For I preach the worth
Of the native earth —

To love and to work is to pray."

— L. H. Bailey.

CHAPTER VIII.
KrRAi. Upi-ift Elsewhere.

One of the instructive historical instances of success-
ful grapplinij with the problem is found in the work of
John Frederick Oberlin in the Ban de la Roche, in
Alsace.

True, in this case the chief factor in the present situ-
ation, the farmer entering into the industrial world, was
lacking; yet the principles employed l\v Oberlin apply
to-day. A man of genius, with a thorough and compre-
hensive education, of good birth and standing, he was
led through deep religious consecration to accept the
pastorate of Walder.sbach in the Ban de la Roche, de-
clining a chaplaincy in a French regiment to do so. The
parish was a small one of about one hundred families ;
the people spoke a patois which could be the means of no
external information ; they were without means of edu-
cation, and were sunk in poverty. There were no
bridges whereby conmiunication could Ik? carried on
with the outside world, but stepping-stones only over the
rivers. Here Oberlin spent his life, <lying beloved by
his people, honored by his count rv and the world. He
saw that to Kuc<'ced in religious work he must build up
the commiinity in every way; and e(»mbining alTection-
ate diligence in the pastorate with spiritual preaching,
he added to tlu-se resolute and wise endeavor to promote
ediM-afion an<l prosperity, lie began with the school ami
followed up with economic betterment. Having been a

227

228 RUEAL LIFE IN CA:^rADA

student of engineering he summoned his parishioners
to roadmaking. The land, poorly cultivated, yielded
less than was needed for food for its own inhabitants.
Oberlin taught better methods of agriculture, — the use
of compost, the rotation of crops ; he instituted an agri-
cultural society and a school of agriculture — one of the
first known — himself experimenting and teaching. He
founded infant schools — the first of which history
speaks — with '' conductrices " to bring children to and
from their homes — the Greek " pedagogue " revived.
He introduced scientific methods into the ordinary
schools, and instituted a higher school. The children
were taught to sew, plait, and knit from earliest years ;
weaving and dyeing with the plants of the country were
taught later. He took boys into Strasburg and had them
taught trades, of which they in turn became teachers in
the parish. Thus home industries were introduced into
every household. The population, 500 when Oberlin
began his ministry, had increased to 3,000 before his
death, and this growth in numbers was the least part of
the progress. The Royal Agricultural Society of Paris
sent a commission to study his methods of husbandry,
invited him to a more public sphere of labor, and con-
ferred on him a gold medal. This man of genius had
by his direct outlook upon life and its needs in the spirit
of Christ anticipated modern education, agriculture and
sociolog}^ He had given his people the most scientific
husbandry and the most advanced education known in
his age, and thus secured for them economic prosperity,
social welfare, and numerical growth.

In Denmark we have an example on the national scale
and at the present time of the uplift of an agricultural
people ; and here again the impulse is due to a Christian

RliiAL IPIJFT ELSEWHERE 229

pastor, Bishop Gnintvig, — poet, historian, patriot, edu-
cator, statesman and phihinthropist.

Denmark was greatly weakened at the end of the
Napoleonic wars. She was financially bankrupt, and
economically prostrated bv her war with Prussia, end-
ing with the Treaty of Vienna in 1804. Gruntvig real-
ized that if his people were to be helped the impulse
must reach the mass of the people, nuist be linked with
their dailv life, and that its source must be in religion.
Gruntvigs sympathies were democratic to a radical de-
gree. A friend of the writer's was once a guest in a
home in Edinburgh. A disciple of Gruntvig — a lady
who had become known as a social worker in Denmark
— came to the same home as a guest. At once on being
presented to her hosts she asked permission to meet the
maids of the house and form their acquaintance. Such
is the democratic spirit of the movement inaugurated
by Bishop Grnntvig. Before 18G4 he had begun a
" Folk High School." He sought to extend this means
of education, under the Queen's patronage, as a means
of rural uplift. The schools, however, extended as pri-
vate enterprises. There are now over eighty of them in
the country. They are boarding-schools, owned pri-
vately though receiving grants from the nation. They
are permeated by a Christian atmosphere, but without
formal religious teaching, riicic is an intense spirit of
application in thcin, but examinations are unknown.
The object sought is mental and spiritual (piickcning.
Instruction is given by uieans of lectures, and is upon
historical, literary and scientific subjects. Music, sing-
ing, and gymnastics have a large place. The age of ad-
mission is eighteen. Vouiig men attend for a five
months' term. — Xoveiniier to .\]>ril ; vouiiti: women f<»r

230 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA

a three months' term, — May to August. Fully two-
thirds of Denmark's rural youth pass through them.
Many attend for but a single term. To observers it is
marvellous that so much could be accomplished by so
short a residence. The impulse, however, is vital. So
potent has been their influence that a majority of the
present Cabinet Ministers of Denmark have passed
through their course. The Premier has been a teacher
and director in them. There are also Government high
schools and agricultural schools thoroughly equipped
and manned, drawing their inspiration and ideal from
these Folk Schools.

Bishop Gruntvig used patriotism as one of his agen-
cies, writing upon national history, editing and teach-
ing the national songs and literature with such success
that a cult sprang up which in over-zeal tabooed all for-
eign books, imtil a reaction set in to avoid isolation from
the stream of world-literature. Meanwhile patriotism
was intensely aroused. Why should not we in Canada
make more of our literature ?

Sing me a song of the great Dominion,

Soul-felt words for a patriot's ear!
Ring out boldly the well-turned measure,

Voicing your notes that a world may hear!
Here is no starveling, heaven-forsaken.

Shrinking aside where the nations throng;
Proud as the proudest moves she among them,

Well is she worthy a noble song!
Sing me the joy of her fertile prairies

League upon league of the golden grain.
Comfort, housed in the smiling homestead,

Plenty, throned on the lumbering wain!*

* Robert Reid, in Rand's " Treasury of Canadian Verse."

RURAL UPLIFT ELSEWIIKRE 281

The graduates of Gruntvig's Folk Schools originated
and promoted the many and varied co-operative societies^
wliich cover practically everything connected with rural
Demnark's welfare. There are co-operative societies of
production, e.g., cattle breeders' associations, " control "
societies for the registration of milk-yield, butter-fat,
and relation of feeds to yield ; co-operative societies for
the manufacture of country products into finished
market commodities, — creameries, cheese-factories,
bacon-curing houses ; co-operative societies for the stor-
age and sale of the commodities, for the promotion of
saving, and for the upholding of credit. The outcome
of a passionate sense of common adversity into which
religion withycducation as her handmaid came with up-
lifting power, has been a devoted, successful community
service.

Co-operation began in 1882, in dairying first, then
in the bacon industry, then in egg-production. The
economic results soon became evident. In the next six
years the exports of eggs doubled, of cheese trebled, of
eggs quadrupled, and of bacon quintupled. The export
of butter is now over eight-fold what it was in 1881, of
eggs over twelve-fold, and of bacon fourteen-fold.* At
the meeting of the British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science held in Winnipeg in 1009 a Danish
<"ommissi<inor described methods by which the average
yearly yicdd of butter from Danish cows had risen from
80 pounds in 1804 to 220 pounds in 1908. Tlie fertility
of her soil, naturally low, has increased remarkably, go
that fllje has now tlie largest yield <>f wheat per acre in

•Monographs of Int'-rnatloiial Itistltiifc of AKriciiK iivc, Vol.
I, p. Vo'J.

232 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

the world, a yield which is moreover almost double the
world's average. In 1911 her average was 30 quintals
to the hectare, while Britain's was 21.9, Canada's 14,
that of the United States 8.4, and the average of the
22 wheat-producing countries on the five continents,
15.3 quintals to the hectare of land.* Denmark exports
to other countries nine dollars worth of farm products
for every acre under cultivation, although she supports
a population of 155 to the square mile. The average
net profit on her farms is $15 to the acre.

She has attained these results in a distinctively mod-
ern manner, by assimilating the management of agri-
culture to that of the great industries of the times.
Most of the products are so specialized as to demand
much labor, a large proportion of it highly skilled ; the
margin of net earnings is narrow ; competition requires
marketing to be of the most skilful kind. Co-operation
was the sole means by which such problems could be
solved. Moreover, in accomplishing these economic re-
sults, she has maintained and improved the social status.
Sixty per cent, of her population is rural. Nine out of
every ten of her farmers own the land they till. The
average 100-acre farm employs three hired men the year
round. Emigration, once large, has almost ceased — in
the three years from 1905 to 1908 it fell from 8,051 to
4,558. The home life of the people has improved in
every way. Sanitation, home conveniences, neatness
and beauty have been secured ; the love of gymnastics,
of song — the rural songs of field labor, of the woods, the
brooks, the birds, the love of literature, have become
prevalent. The church, formerly a State institution,

* Monographs on Agricultural Corporations, International
Institute of Agriculture.

DANISM 111 i.\i i:sti:ai).

I>AM.SII I'AKMVAKD.

Dcnmnrk'M rural wcirarc has lu-in wmi li\ CliiiHtlaii
co-<j|)i'rall<»ii.

RURAL I I'l.lFT ELSEWHERE 233

has become more free and strongly evangelicaL New
church buildings are being erected by Lutherans and
Gruntvigians jointly as community structures. Thus,
under the impulse of a true education for practical life
directed by an intense evangelical spirit and securing
co-operative organization on a national scale, Denmark
has been reconstructed as a nation, her depleted soil re-
plenished, her landscape made beautiful ; she has been
uplifted out of a great military defeat, out of debt, out
of social disintegration. She has almost closed her poor-
houses and abolished pauperism. I''rom being one of
the poorest of countries she has attained the largest per
capita wealth of Europe. She is a land of rural homes
and of altruism.

In Ireland a remarkable advance has been made
under co-operation. In 1889 Mr. Phinkett, now Sir
Horace Plunkctr. rciiirned to Ireland after ten years'
residence in the American West. Competition from
Denmark threatened the Irish dairy industry. Govern-
ment aid towards land purchase by small farmers offered
opportunity for a betterment movement. ^Ir. Plunkett
advocated co-operative societies. Fifty meetings were
held before the first one was formed ; over two additional
years' advocacy In'fore the seconcL Lciiislation was se-
cured— for all the United Kingdom — by the Industrial
and Provident Societies Act of 1893 and tlie I^'riendly
Societies Act of 189G. The Irish Agricultural Organ-
ization Society was established to proiuote the forujation
of societies; the Irish ('o-oj)erative Agency Society to
co-ordinate marketing of products. Demonstrators are
employed f<i teach scientific! agriculture on the farms.
The outcome is that " in a little more than twenty ^^'ar8,
against tretnendous <liffi<Milti('S, in an atmosphere

234 EURAL LIFE IN CANADA

charged with religious and political animosities, a peace-
making movement based on the principle of self-help by
mutual help has been built up. All creeds and parties
leave their religious and political difficulties outside,
and work together. More than 900 farmers' co-operative
societies, with almost 100,000 members, are doing a
business of about $15,000,000 a year."* Yet even in
this economic betterment the need of a deeper underly-
ing ethical uplift is felt. " There is a tendency for
societies to consign butter to the Agency when prices
are low and to market their butter independently when
offered good prices elsewhere, "f

In the United States a widespread movement for the
betterment of rural life is in progress. Attention was
first called to the problem from the purely material side.
The census of 1880 recorded a decrease of 5,000,000
acres under cultivation in the North Atlantic States,
every state sharing in the loss. The New England
Abandoned Farm discussion and movement followed.
State authorities became advertising agencies for for-
saken farms, seeking summer residents as purchasers.
The better lines since followed are thrown into relief by
the very names adopted by the organizations. What
was at first a Back-to-the-farm Movement has become a
Rural Life Movement. Men have turned from dealing
with results to dealing with causes, from palliative
measures to remedial ones.

The first helpful study of the subject, from the reli-
gious standpoint and in a constructive way, was made
by Dr. Washington Gladden, who in a small volume,

* Sir Horace Plunkett, in Youth's Companion, Boston.

t Monographs on Agricultural Corporations, International
institute of Agriculture.

RURAL rPLIFT ELSEWHERE 235

'* The Christian Leagiie of Connecticut," published in
1883, gives an excellent discussion of essential princi-
ples. His larger volume. '* Parish Problems," 18S9,
and his later one. " The Christian Pastor and the Work-
ing Church," 1898, have each chapters upon rural con-
ditions and means of help.

The Evangelical Alliance took up the problem in
1889, when its secretary, Josiah Strong, officially " ex-
plored " five counties in the State of New York, and the
Rev. Henry Fairbanks forty-four towns in Vermont.
These studies included economic, moral and social con-
ditions, population, numbers of churches, church mem-
bership and attendance. At the next International Con-
ference called by the Alliance, in Chicago, in 1893, the
problem was given a foremost place, with papers by Pre-
sident W. De Witt Hyde, Dr. Samuel Dyke, and others.
Both of these leaders had previously written able articles
on the subject, Dr. Dyke upon ''The Religious Problems
of the Country Town," and Dr. Hyde upon "Impending
Paganism in New England." Dr. Strong's research work
led to the publication in 1893 of his volume " The New
Era," in which we have a clear presentation of both city
and criuntrv problems as they exist and are grappled
with to-day. It also led to Dr. Strong's making these
and kindred questions his life work.

The American Sunday School has taken uji the work
of betterment energetically in wisely adopting new
methods and in giving the work of the school a wider
scope than Ix^fore. The organized Hible (Mass has l)e-
eome a social uplift agency. Some excellent survey
work has Ixjen carried on by this orgauizaf ion. Three
years ago a prize of $1,000 was ofTered by the I'liioii for
the manuscript of the best essay on flu- problems of

236 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

country communities. The prize was awarded to
Charles Roads, for his excellent volume, " Eural Chris-
tendom," a work of solid worth.

The Young Men's Christian Association, which had
already done so much for city life, began work for the
country in 1889, when Mr, Robert Weidensall origin-
ated the " County Work." Under this plan of organ-
ization the county town becomes the headquarters of a
secretary. The secretary seeks to reach every hamlet in
his county and to be in touch with every congregation.
The county secretary is usually an agricultural college
graduate. The departments are the same as those found
so necessary and successful in the city — educational,
physical, social, and religious. Adaptation is sought to
the needs and the opportunities of the situation. The
educational work, for example, embraces farm book-
keeping, house sanitation, crop rotation. The fine work
accomplished for the city along athletic and recreational
lines is being wisely adapted to rural needs. The Asso-
ciation publishes a monthly magazine. Rural Manhood,
dealing most helpfully with many of the problems of the
rural community, — a periodical fitted to render useful
service to every country minister. But the Association
seeks to do more than employ its own agencies. In 1910
a country church conference was called to meet in New
York by the Rural Section of the Y, M, C, A, for the
purpose of securing a consensus of opinion from church
leaders and other authorities on country life as to how
there could best be established a basis of co-operation
between the church and its supplementary agencies, A
most helpful volume, " The Rural Church and Com-
munity Betterment," embodies the discussions and

RURAL rPLTFT ELSEWHERE , 237

results. A second conference was held in December,
1911. with a similar but more constructive programme,
the outcome of which is another volume, " The Country
Church and Rural Welfare."

The various denominations have organized for the
solution of the rural problem, and it has been found
that such organization has called forth the services of
some of the church's strongest men, and that the agencies
thus established have quickly come to the forefront in
the expressed interest of the church as well as in the
manifest fruitfulness of their service. The Presby-
terian Church, North, was in the van with her Depart-
ment of Church and Country Work, with Dr. Warren
H. Wilson as chairman. The Department has made
surveys of rural conditions in Pennsylvania, Missouri,
Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, ^laryland and Tennesee,
of the same general nature as the great Pittsburg survey
into city conditions. The results are published in most
interesting documents in pamphlet form. They cover
very comprehensively economic, educational, social, and
religious conditions, and constitute one of those richly
concrete life-studies which in this present time are lay-
ing the solid foundations of social and religious advance.
But they arc far from being simply studies of the situa-
tion. Each one is an efficiency-document as well, out-
lining a [)rogrammc of work rciidcrod obviously neces-
sary to the I<ic;il situation. The Department of Chiireli
anrj Count rv Lif*- has other lines of helpful work as
well. During the summer of 1912 four summer schools
for country ministers were carried on in widely sepiii-
ated territorv. Leaflets and other literature are wid(dy
used, and even the pietiire postcard, riiere lies Iw^fore

238 KUEAL LIFE IIST CANADA

me a postcard stating that " The Department of Church
and Country Life advocates :

The Church as a centre for the building of the community.

The federation and co-operation of all the churches in the
community, in order to make the people one.

The consolidation of the Rural Schools for the education of
young men and women for life in the country.

The promotion of Scientific Agriculture, in order to con-
serve the soil for our children; to produce abundance for the
consumer; to keep the farmer's income abreast of rising
prices.

The leadership in Social Recreation for the moral develop-
ment of the youth and the workingmen of the community.

Better living conditions in the interests of the future; and the
cherishing of the history of the community in memory of past
days.

Such ministry to the community that pauperism shall be
excluded and the burden of poverty lifted.

The preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the time
and in every community.

Now this postcard is itself a photograph of a poster
upon a hoarding. The moral effect of such a proclama-
tion, when lived up to, must be of the finest character.
The Federation for Social Service of the Methodist
Episcopal Church has a Commission on the Country
Church, with the Rev. G. Frederick Wells of New York
as chairman. The directness of method characteristic of
this strong denomination is shown in the action of the
General Conference in 1908 when the formation of the
Federation was approved. The Conference submitted
four questions to the Federation, asking that the find-
ings in reply be submitted to the next General Confer-
ence: (1) What principles and measures of Social Re-
form are so evidently righteous and Christian as to de-

RURAl. rPl.IFT ELSEWHERE 239

mand the specitic approval of the church? (2) How
can the agencies of the ^lethodist Episcopal Church be
wisely used or altered with a view to promote the prin-
ciples and measures thus approved? (3) How can we
best co-operate in this behalf with other Christian de-
nominations ? (4) How can our courses of ministerial
study in seminaries and conferences be modified with a
view to the better preparation of our preachers for effi-
ciency in social reform ?

The Joint Commission on Social Service of the Pro-
testant Episcopal Church is rendering efficient service
with its sane and scientific work, for example, the
" social service programme for a parish in an agricul-
tural community." This church bids fair to be one of
the foremost leaders in the work.

The ^Moravian Church, which has a rapidly expand-
ing work in our own Northwest, recently appointed a
Country Church Commission, which began its work
with a thorough studv of the statistics of the rural con-
gregations for the last seven years — the first systematic
eflFort by any denomination to separate the statistics of
city and country work. fhe results are reported to be
" of a kind that challenges the attention and calls for
action."

The Roformecl Presbyterian ('hurcli, whose member-
ship is largely in the fount rv, has, through a strong
commission, of which l)r. Hcurv Wallace, one of
America's leading agricultural editors, is chairman,
attacked the problem with vigor.

Other denominations are engaged a«; well. IIw ro
port of \h(- Commission on the Church and Social Ser
vice to the Federal Council in I »i ccmber. 1012. informs
us that the l)e[)artment of Social Servic<* of the

240 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA

ISTorthern Baptist Convention has taken significant
action ; that other denominations — the Disciples of
Christ, the Society of Friends, the Christian Church,
the United Presbyterian Church — are partially organ-
ized, with steady volunteer service; and that half a
score of additional denominations are in process of or-
ganization in the interests of the country church and
rural life.

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in
America is becoming the central directing agency of the
churches in the country life movement. This Council,
formed in 1908, represents the leading Protestant de-
nominations of the United States. It is a force to be
reckoned with in every outstanding moral and social
question. The Council has decided, after wide corres-
pondence, that there is a great call for interdenomina-
tional work in the rural movement, and has under con-
sideration far-reaching plans. Meanwhile the Council
has taken various steps in co-ordinating the work. A
directory of over two thousand of the organizations
working at the problem has been prepared. A practical
programme for the rural community has been drawn up.
Information is being gathered upon what the theological
seminaries, the inter-church federations, the various de-
nominations, the home mission boards, the country life
commissions, the agricultural colleges, and the philan-
thropic associations, are doing to promote the interests
of rural life.

All of the recent strong popular movements in the
churches are entering this field. The Young People's
Missionary Movement is actively engaged, and has pub-
lished an excellent handbook entitled " A Country Com-
munity Survey " as a guide in the investigation of con-

^

KURAL UPLIFT ELSEWHERE 241

ditions. The Missionary Education ^Nfovement has
issued one of its textbooks iipou this problem. " The
Church of the Open Country," by Dr. Warren H.
Wilson. The Men and Religion Movement emphasized
country work. One of the seven volumes which record
the great Conservation Congress deals with this subject.
Rook I of the volume deals with " The Rural Church of
the Twentieth Century," and Book II with " Social
Religion in the Country." The treatment is scientific,
comprehensive and masterly.

Outside of the church's organization but in closest
sympathy with it are found many promising movements.
The Hesperia Movement is a fine example. In 1886 a
public school teachers' association in Michigan sought
added strength for its work by having the farmers meet
with the teachers at their annual convention at Hes-
peria, a country village miles away from any railroad.
The Association meets yearly on a Thursday night and
continues its sessions until Saturday. An attendance of
twelve hundred is usual. The best speakers in America
address the Association, but its chief attractions are
found in the enthusiastic local talent it has evoked. It
is not simply educational in character, but literary,
musical, and social as well. A co-operative work for
rural-school uplift has given wholesome entertainment
to a wide district, created a taste for literature in school
and home, fostered the love of good music, and advanced
every ideal of citizenship. Rural lifo Ims becomo
sweeter, saner and satisfying.

But it is chiefly in such instrumentalities as the Am-
herst Movement that promise is found, inasmuch as this
movement is based upon botterment of the fundamental
charartoristics of farm life and reaches after every clo-
16

242 KUEAL LIFE IN CANADA

ment in its crowning worth. Just as Eaiffeisen in Ger-
many discovered that co-operative societies formed upon
the principle of pure benevolence possessed no vitality,
but that when organized as essentially business concerns
upon a Christian and not a mercenary basis, they be-
come effective, so this movement is grounded upon scien-
tific agricultural education, while it confidently claims
the co-operation and leadership of the church in higher
tasks. The movement has its centre at the Massachu-
setts Agricultviral College at Amherst. Kenyon L.
Butterfield, President of the College, is its foremost ex-
ponent. But the Amherst Movement is but an illus-
trative instance of a nation-wide impulse embracing
every agency engaged in agricultural research, organiza-
tion, and education, from the federal Department of
Education down through the State departments and
State colleges to the county societies, from the Farmers'
National Congress to the local meeting of the Farmers'
Institute, and embracing the Grange and the agricul-
tural press, through all of whose extent two salient fea-
tures emerge — a call for co-operation of all agencies and
for the enlistment of the influence of the church. Dr.
Tallmadge Root of the Federal Council of the Churches
says in regard to the Amherst Movement, " It is a great
civic revival, deeply moral and religious in its essential
meaning, whose immediate field is the country com-
munity and whose natural leader is the church."

The public school is contributing its quota, and a
large one, to the solution of the recreative and social
need. Twelve States have enacted laws authorizing the
appointment of recreative commissions and authorizing
school boards to spend funds for social and recreative
purposes. In Kentucky a league of citizens raised funds

RURAL UPLIFT ELSEWHERE 243

bj popular subscription for a model schoolbouse,
adapted to community use. One county in Texas bas
issued bonds lor balf a million dollars to build live
schools equipped as social centres. The United States
Bureau of Education becomes a clearing-bouse of in-
formation on the movement, issuing bulletins on social
and recreation work. It is proposed to add to the Fed-
eral Department of Education an expert on the activi-
ties in school buildings after school hours. The slogan
of the movement is : " We are going to have a new rural
life. The farm is not to have the life of a race of her-
mits."

And even Congress is found investigating the prob-
lem, proposing remedies, and making the same demand
for leadership upon the church. In 1908 President
Roosevelt appointed a Country Life Commission to re-
port upon the condition of country life, the means avail-
able for supplying the deficiencies which exist, and the
best methods of organized permanent effort along the
lines of betterment of rural conditions. The Commis-
sion points out the need of four great forces : " Know-
ledge— the underlying facts must be understood " ;
" Education — there must be a new kind of education
adapted to the real needs of the farming people " ; " Or-
ganization— there must be a vast enlargement of volun-
tary organized effort among farmers"; and "Spiritual
Forces — the forces and institutions that make for mor-
ality and spiritual ideals among rural people must be
energized. We miss the heart of the problem if wo
neglect to foster personal cliaracter and neighborhood
righteousness. The best way to preserve ideals for
private conduct and public life i.s to build up
the institutions of religion. The church has great

244 RURAL LIFE 1^ CANADA

power of leadership. Tlie whole people should
understand that it is vitally important to stand
behind the rural church and to help it to become
a great power in developing concrete country life
ideals. It is especially important that the country
church recognize that it has a social responsibility to the
entire community as well as a religious responsibility
to its own group of people. . . . Any consideration
of the problem of rural life that leaves out of account the
function and the possibilities of the church, and of re-
lated institutions, would be grossly inadequate. This is
not only because in the last analysis the country life
problem is a moral problem, or that in the best develop-
ment of the individual the great motives and results are
religious and spiritual, but because from the pure socio-
logical point of view the church is fundamentally a
necessary institution in country life. . . . This gives
the rural church a position of peculiar difficulty, and
one of unequalled opportunity. The time has arrived
when the church must take a larger leadership, both as
an institution and through its pastors, in the social re-
organization of country life."*

It is manifest that there is a great movement in pro-
gress for rural betterment, and through movement and
need alike, a great call to the church. In Canada that
call is still more imperative. Our percentage of growth
in population is greater than that of the United States ;
theirs was 21 per cent, in the past decade ; ours 34. Our
percentage of immigration is greater; 31.9 against their
11.5 per cent. The urbanization of population is more
rapid with us ; their percentage of rural population has

* Report of the Country Life Commission, pp. 17, 60.

RURAL UPLIFT ELSEWHERE 245

fallen 5.S per ceut. in ten years, ours 8 per cent; in
twenty years theirs has been lowered by 10.2, ours by
13.8. Instances of percentages of city growth with us
are almost unequalled any^vhere, Winnipeg, 221 per
cent, in ten years, Edmonton 848, Calgary 893, Regina
1,243, Swift Current, 1,430, and Saskatoon, 10,523 per
cent, in one decade. The development of corporation
control over production and sources of wealth is with us
perhaps the most riotously rapid the world has yet seen.
Seven years ago trust control had scarce begun in
Canada; already it dominates almost every one of the
more lucrative sources of wealth. On the other hand
the call is imperative because the church is as yet strong
in Canada in the rural districts, — to act efficiently she
must meet the situation before becoming weakened.
And yet again, her allies are with us of the strongest.
McGill University, through her faculty of agriculture
in Macdonald College at Ste. Anne's, leads the world in
university education for agriculture. Ontario alone em-
ploys over a hundred trained, skilled, competent agri-
culturists, teaching, and travelling over the Province
furnishing information and advice upon farm condi-
tions and possibilities. Dr. Robertson says: " In those
regards Canada is in the front rank among all the
nations of which I have any knowledge."* Such are the
factors in the call to the church in Canada.

Life has two sovereign moments: one when man settloB

down
To some life-worthy purpose; one, when he gains the

cTown.t

• Con8«rvat!on Commission 111, p. 90.

t Matthew Ulchcy Wright, In Hand'H " Treasury of Canadian
Verse."

246 RURAL LIFE m CANADA

The second of these sovereign movements is exempli-
fied among us in the work of Dr. Grenfell, by which a
population not indeed agricultural, and yet distinctly
rural, has been uplifted economically and socially and
spiritually to a new plane of life ; the first opens before
rural Canada to-day.

An old farm-house with meadows wide
And sweet with clover on each side;
A bright-eyed boy, who looks from out
The door with woodbine wreathed about,
And wishes this one thought all day:
" Oh, if I could but fly away

From this dull spot, the world to see,
How happy, happy, happy.

How happy I should be!"

Amid the city's constant din
A man who round the world has been,
Who, 'mid the tumult and the throng,
Is thinking, thinking, all day long:
" Oh, could I only tread once more
The field-path to the farm-house door,
The old green meadow could I see.
How happy, happy, happy,
How happy I should be!"

— Annie Douglas Robinson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Wilbort L., LL.D., "The Country Town." Baker &

Taylor Co., 1906. $1.00.
Ashenhurst, J. O., " The Day of the Country Church." Funk &

Wagnalls, 1910. $1.00.
Beard. A. F., D.D., " The Story of John Frederick Oberlin."

Pilgrim Press, 1909. $1.00.
Bayley, L. H., " The Country Life Movement." Macmillan Co.,

1911. $1.25.
Butterfleld. K. L., " The Country Church and the Rural Prob-
lem." University of Chicago Press, 1911. $1.00.
Butterfield, L. H., " Chapters in Rural Progress." University

of Chicago Press, 1908. $1.00.
Carney, Mabel, "Country Life and the Country School." Row,

Peterson & Co., 1912. $1.00.

FIske, Walter, " The Challenge of the Country." The Associa-
tion Press, 1913. 75c.

Gladden, Washington, D.D., " The Christian League of Con-
necticut." The Century Co., 1883.

Gladden, Washington, D.D., " Parish Problems." The Century
Co., 1887. $1.50.

Hayward. C. E., " Institutional Work for the Country Church."
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McKeever, W. A., "Farm Boys and Girls." Macmillan Co.,
1913. 75c.

Mott, John R., "The Future Leadership of the Church," Stu-
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Plunkett, Sir Horace, "The Rural Life Problem In the United
State*." Macmillan fV).. 1911. $1.25.

RoadH, Charles, D.D.. " Rural Christendom." Amet-ican Sun-
day School Union, 1910. yOc.

RobortHon. James W., LL.D.. "The SatJHfactlon of Country
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247

248 EUEAL LIFE IN^ CANADA

strong, Josiah, D.D., "The New Era." The Baker & Taylor
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Vincent, J. H., D.D., " The Modern Sunday School." Eaton &
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Wilson, Warren H., " The Church of the Open Country." Stu-
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" Social Service," Edited by R. W. Macintosh. R. Douglas
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" The Rural Church and Community Betterment." Report of
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" The Country Church and Rural Progress." Report of Y. M.
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Six Pamphlets. " A Rural Survey in Pennsylvania," " — in Ken-
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" Rural Manhood," a magazine published by the Y. M. C. A.
Association Press, 124 E. 28th Street, New York. $1.00 a
year.

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