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REPORT OF THE
COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

REPORT

OF THE COMMISSION
ON COUNTRY LIFE

Published March, 1911
Reprinted September 1911, March 1917

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EXPLANATION

The Report of the Commission on Country
Life was published as Senate Document No.
705, 60th Congress, 2d Session, for the use of
Congress. It has not been available for popular
distribution. The Spokane Chamber of Com-
merce has reprinted it, for use in the country
life movement in the Northwest.

The Report is now placed in the hands of a
regular book publisher, as one means of making
an accessible record of the findings and recom-
mendations of the Commission. If profits accrue
to the Commission from the sale of the book,
they will be devoted to public country life work.

L. H. BAILEY,
For the Commission.

ITHACA, N. Y., September 20, 1910.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

SAGAMORE HILL,
OYSTER BAY, N. Y.
July 21st., 1910.

I am glad that the report of the Commission on
Country Life is to be reprinted. I had hoped
that Congress would make an appropriation to
give the Commission official status and furnish
it the means to continue its admirable work. As
this was not done, I trust that so far as possible
the work will be continued by private and vol-
untary aid. The Commissioners have served
without compensation and they are entitled to
the heartiest thanks from all men intelligently
interested in the welfare of their country.

The Commission was appointed because the
time has come when it is vital to the welfare of
the country seriously to consider the problems
of farm life. So far the farmer has not received
the attention that the city worker has received
and has not been able to express himself as the
city worker has done. The problems of farm life
have received very little consideration and the
result has been bad for those who dwell in the
open country, and therefore bad for the whole

10 INTRODUCTION

nation. We were founded as a nation of farmers,
and in spite of the great growth of our industrial
life it still remains true that our whole system
rests upon the farm, that the welfare of the
whole community depends upon the welfare of
the farmer. The strengthening of country life is
the strengthening of the whole nation.

If country life is to become all that it should
be, if the career of a farmer is to rank with any
other career in the country as a dignified and
desirable way of earning a living, the farmer
must take advantage of all that agricultural
knowledge has to offer, and also of all that has
raised the standard of living and of intelligence
in other callings. We who are interested in this
movement desire to take counsel with the farmer,
as his fellow citizens, so as to see whether the
nation cannot aid in this matter; for the city
dweller in the long run has only less concern
than the country dweller in how the country
dweller fares. I am well aware that the working
farmers themselves will in the last resort have to
solve this problem for themselves; but as it also
affects in only less degree all the rest of us, it
is not merely our duty, but in our interest, to
see if we can render any help towards making the
solution satisfactory.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY
OF THE REPORT

REPORT OF THE
COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

(Introductory Summary of Report, pages 17 to 31.)1
(The full Report of the Commission, pages 33 to 150.)

WASHINGTON, January 23, 1909.
To the President:

The Commission on Country Life herewith
presents its report, covering the following topics:

INTRODUCTORY REVIEW OR SUMMARY. [Pages
17 to 31.]

FULL REPORT OP THE COMMISSION. [Pages
33 to 150.]

I. GENERAL STATEMENT.

The purpose of the Commission. [Page

40.]
Methods pursued by the Commission.

[Page 49.]

(Circulars, Hearings, School-house
meetings.)

t 1 The Introductory Summary or Review, with the President's
Message, went to the press, and it is from this brief synopsis
that the popular knowledge of the Commission's conclusions
is derived.]

14 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

II. THE MAIN SPECIAL DEFICIENCIES IN
COUNTRY LIFE. [Page 59.]

1. Disregard of the inherent rights of

land-workers. [Page 59.]

(a) Speculative holding of lands.

(b) Monopolistic control of streams.

(c) Wastage and control of forests.

(d) Restraint of trade.

(e) Remedies for the disregard of the

inherent rights of the farmer.

2. Highways. [Page 82.]

3. Soil depletion and its effects. [Page

83.)

4. Agricultural labor. [Page 91.]

(a) Statement of the general problem.

(b) The question of intemperance.

(c) Developing the local attach-

ments of the farm laborer.

5. Health in the open country. [Page

100.]

6. Woman's work on the farm. [Page

103.]

III. THE GENERAL CORRECTIVE FORCES THAT
SHOULD BE SET IN MOTION. [Page
107.]

7. Need of agricultural or country life

surveys. [Page 118.]

OUTLINE 15

8. Need of a redirected education.

[Page -121.1

9. Necessity of working together.

[Page 128.]

10. The country church. [Page 137.]

11. Personal ideals and local leadership.

[Page 144.]

INTRODUCTORY REVIEW
OR SUMMARY

The Commission finds that agriculture in the
United States, taken altogether, is prosperous
commercially, when measured by the conditions
that have obtained in previous years, although
there are some regions in which this is only
partially true. The country people are producing
vast quantities of supplies for food, shelter,
clothing, and for use in the arts. The country
homes are improving in comfort, attractiveness
and healthfulness. Not only in the material
wealth that they produce, but in the supply of
independent and strong citizenship, the agri-
cultural people constitute the very foundation
of our national efficiency. As agriculture is the
immediate basis of country life, so it follows that
the general affairs of the open country, speaking
broadly, are in a condition of improvement.

Many institutions, organizations, and move-
ments are actively contributing to the increasing
welfare of the open country. The most impor-
tant of these are the United States Department

18 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

of Agriculture, the colleges of agriculture and
the experiment stations in the states, and the
national farmers' organizations. These institu-
tions and organizations are now properly assum-
ing leadership in country life affairs, and con-
sequently in many of the public questions of
national bearing. With these agencies must be
mentioned state departments of agriculture,
agricultural societies and organizations of very
many kinds, teachers in schools, workers in
church and other religious associations, travelling
libraries, and many other groups, all working with
commendable zeal to further the welfare of the
people of the open country.

THE MOST PROMINENT DEFICIENCIES.

Yet it is true, notwithstanding all this progress
as measured by historical standards, that agri-
culture is not commercially as profitable as it is
entitled to be for the labor and energy that the
farmer expends and the risks that he assumes, and
that the social conditions in the open country
are far short of their possibilities. We must
measure our agricultural efficiency by its pos-
sibilities rather than by comparison with previ-
ous conditions. The farmer is almost necessarily
handicapped in the development of his business
because his capital is small, and the volume of

DEFICIENCIES 19

his transactions limited; and he usually stands
practically alone against organized interests. In
the general readjustment of modern life due to
the great changes in manufactures and com-
merce, inequalities and discriminations have
arisen, and naturally the separate man suffers
most. The unattached man has problems that
government should understand.

The reasons for the lack of a highly organized
rural society are very many, as the full Report
explains. The leading specific causes are :

A lack of knowledge on the part of farmers
of the exact agricultural conditions and
possibilities of their regions;

Lack of good training for country life in
the schools;

The disadvantage or handicap of the
farmer as against the established business
systems and interests, preventing him from
securing adequate returns for his products,
depriving him of the benefits that would
result from unmonopolized rivers and the
conservation of forests, and depriving the
community, in many cases, of the good that
would come from the use of great tracts
of agricultural land that are now held for
speculative purposes;

Lack of good highway facilities;

20 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

The widespread continuing depletion of
soils, with the injurious effect on rural life;

A general need of new and active leader-
ship.

Other causes contributing to the general result
are : Lack of any adequate system of agricultural
credit, whereby the farmer may readily secure
loans on fair terms; the shortage of labor, a
condition that is often complicated by intem-
perance among workmen ; lack of institutions and
incentives that tie the laboring man to the soil;
the burdens and the narrow life of farm women;
lack of adequate supervision of public health.

THE NATURE OP THE REMEDIES.

Some of the remedies lie with the national
Government, some of them with the States and
communities in their corporate capacities, some
with voluntary organizations, and some with
individuals acting alone. From the great number
of suggestions that have been made, covering
every phase of country life, the Commission now
enumerates those that seem to be most funda-
mental or most needed at the present time.

Congress can remove some of the handicaps of
the farmer, and it can also set some kinds of work
in motion, such as:

The encouragement of a system of thor-

NEEDS 21

oughgoing surveys of all agricultural regions
in order to take stock and to collect local
fact, with the idea of providing a basis on
which to develop a scientifically and econom-
ically sound country life;

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

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

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

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

The establishing of a system of parcels
posts and postal savings banks;

And providing some means or agency for

22 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

the guidance of public opinion toward the
development of a real rural society that shall
rest directly on the land.

Other remedies recommended for considera-
tion by Congress are:

The enlargement of the United States
Bureau of Education, to enable it to stimu-
late and coordinate the educational work of
the nation;

Careful attention to the farmers' interests
in legislation on the tariff, on regulation of
railroads, control of regulation of corpora-
tions and of speculation, legislation in re-
spect to rivers, forests and the utilization of
swamp lands;

Increasing the powers of the federal
government in respect to the supervision
and control of the public health;

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

In setting all these forces in motion, the co-
operation of the States will be necessary; and in
many cases definite state laws may greatly aid
the work.

Remedies of a more general nature are: A

NEEDS 23

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

Certain remedies lie with voluntary organiza-
tions and institutions. All organized forces both

24 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

in town and country should understand that
there are country phases as well as city phases of
our civilization, and that one phase needs help as
much as the other. All these agencies should
recognize their responsibility to society. Many
existing organizations and institutions might
become practically cooperative or mutual in
spirit, as, for example, all agricultural societies,
libraries, Young Men's Christian Associations
and churches. All the organizations standing for
rural progress should be federated, in states and
nation.

THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM OF COUNTRY LIFE.

The mere enumeration of the foregoing de-
ficiencies and remedies indicates that the problem
of country life is one of reconstruction, and that
temporary measures and defense work alone will
not solve it. The underlying problem is to
develop and maintain on our farms a civilization
in full harmony with the best American ideals.
To build up and retain this civilization means,
first of all, that the business of agriculture must
be made to yield a reasonable return to those who
follow it intelligently; and life on the farm must
be made permanently satisfying to intelligent,
progressive people. The work before us, there-
fore, is nothing more or less than the gradual
rebuilding of a new agriculture and new rural

UNDERLYING PROBLEMS 25

life. We regard it as absolutely essential that
this great general work should be understood
by all the people. Separate difficulties, important
as they are, must be studied and worked out in
the light of the greater fundamental problem.

The Commission has pointed out a number of
remedies that are extremely important. But
running through all of these remedies are several
great forces, or principles, which must be utilized
in the endeavor to solve the problems of country
life. All the people should recognize what these
fundamental forces and agencies are.

Knowledge. — To improve any situation, the
underlying facts must be understood. The farmer
must have exact knowledge of his business and
of the particular conditions under which he
works. The United States Department of Agri-
culture and the experiment stations and colleges
are rapidly acquiring and distributing this knowl-
edge; but the farmer may not be able to apply
it to the best advantage because of lack of
knowledge of his own soils, climate, animal and
plant diseases, markets, and other local facts.
The farmer is entitled to know what are the
advantages and disadvantages of his conditions
and environment. A thoroughgoing system of
surveys in detail of the exact conditions under-
lying farming in every locality is now an indis-

26 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

pensable need to complete and apply the work of
the great agricultural institutions. As an occupa-
tion, agriculture is a means of developing our
internal resources; we cannot develop these
resources until we know exactly what they are.

Education. — There must be not only a fuller
scheme of public education, but a new kind of
education adapted to the real needs of the farm-
ing people. The country schools are to be so
redirected that they shall educate their pupils in
terms of the daily life. Opportunities for train-
ing toward agricultural callings are to be multi-
plied and made broadly effective. Every person
on the land, old or young, in school or out of
school, educated or illiterate, must have a chance
to receive the information necessary for a success-
ful business, and for a healthful, comfortable re-
sourceful life, both in home and neighborhood.
This means redoubled efforts for better country
schools, and a vastly increased interest in the
welfare of country boys and girls on the part of
those who pay the school taxes. Education by
means of agriculture is to be a part of our regular
public school work. Special agricultural schools
are to be organized. There is to be a well-
developed plan of extension teaching conducted
by the agricultural colleges, by means of the
printed page, face-to-face talks, and demonstra-

UNDERLYING PROBLEMS 27

tion or object lessons, designed to reach every
farmer and his family, at or near their homes,
with knowledge and stimulus in every' depart-
ment of country life.

Organization. — There must be a vast enlarge-
ment of voluntary organized effort among farmers
themselves. It is indispensable that farmers shall
work together for their common interests and for
the national welfare. If they do not do this, no
governmental activity, no legislation, not even
better schools, will greatly avail. Much has been
done. There is a multitude of clubs, and associa-
tion for social, educational and business purposes;
and great national organizations are effective.
But the farmers are nevertheless relatively unor-
ganized. We have only begun to develop busi-
ness cooperation in America. Farmers do not
influence legislation as they should. They need
a more fully organized social and recreative life.

Spiritual forces. — The forces and institutions
that make for morality and spiritual ideals among
rural people must be energized. We miss the
heart of the problem if we neglect to foster per-
sonal character and neighborhood righteousness.
The best way to preserve ideals for private con-
duct and public life is to build up the institutions
of religion. The church has great power of lead-
ership. The whole people should understand that

28 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION

The Commission recommends all the correc-
tives that have been mentioned under the head
of " The Nature of the Remedies." It does not
wish to discriminate between important measures
of relief for existing conditions. It has purposely
avoided endorsing any particular bill now before
Congress, no matter what its value or object.

There are, however, in the opinion of the
Commission, two or three great movements of
the utmost consequence that should be set under
way at the earliest possible time because they
are fundamental to the whole problem of ultimate
permanent reconstruction; these call for special
explanation.

1. Taking stock of country life. — There should
be organized, as explained in the main Report,
under government leadership, a comprehensive
plan for an exhaustive study or survey of all the
conditions that surround the business of farming

RECOMMENDATIONS. 29

and the people who live in the country, in order
to take stock of our resources and to supply
the farmer with local knowledge. Federal and
state governments, agricultural colleges and other
educational agencies, organizations of various
types, and individual students of the problem,
should be brought into cooperation for this great
work of investigating with minute care all agri-
cultural and country life conditions.

2. Nationalized extension work. — Each state
college of agriculture should be empowered to
organize as soon as practicable, a complete
department of college extension, so managed as
to reach every person on the land in its state,
with both information and inspiration. The work
should include such forms of extension teach-
ing as lectures, bulletins, reading-courses, cor-
respondence courses, demonstration and other
means of reaching the people at home and on
their farms. It should be designed to forward
not only the business of agriculture, but sanita-
tion, education, home-making, and all interests
of country life.

8. A campaign for rural progress. — We urge
the holding of local, state and even national
conferences on rural progress, designed to unite
the interests of education, organization and
religion into one forward movement for the

rebuilding of country life. Rural teachers,
librarians, clergymen, editors, physicians and
others may well unite with farmers in studying
and discussing the rural question in all its aspects.
We must in some way unite all institutions, all
organizations, all individuals, having any in-
terest in country life into one great campaign for
rural progress.

THE CALL FOR LEADERSHIP.

We must picture to ourselves a new rural
social structure, developed from the strong
resident forces of the open country; and then we
must set at work all the agencies that will tend
to bring this about. The entire people need to be
roused to this avenue of usefulness. Most of the
new leaders must be farmers who can find not
only a satisfying business career on the farm, but
who will throw themselves into the service of
upbuilding the community. A new race of
teachers is also to appear in the country. A new
rural clergy is to be trained. These leaders will
see the great underlying problem of country life,
and together they will work, each in his own field,
for the one goal of a new and permanent rural
civilization. Upon the development of this
distinctively rural civilization rests ultimately
our ability, by methods of farming requiring the
highest intelligence, to continue to feed and

LEADERSHIP 31

clothe the hungry nations ; to supply the city and
metropolis with fresh blood, clean bodies and
clear brains that can endure the strain of modern
urban life; and to preserve a race of men in the
open country that, in the future as in the past,
will be the stay and strength of the nation in
time of war, and its guiding and controlling
spirit in time of peace.

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

FULL REPORT OF THE COMMISSION

I

GENERAL STATEMENT

Broadly speaking, agriculture in the United
States is prosperous and the conditions in many
of the great farming regions are improving.
The success of the owners and cultivators of good
land, in the prosperous regions, has been due
partly to improved methods, largely to good
prices for products, and also to the general ad-
vance in the price of farm lands in these regions.
Notwithstanding the general advance in rentals
and the higher prices of labor, tenants also have
enjoyed a good degree of prosperity, due to fair
crops, and an advance in the price of farm prod-
ucts approximately corresponding to the advance
in the price of land. Farm labor has been fully
employed and at increased wages; and many
farm hands have become tenants and many ten-
ants have become landowners.

There is marked improvement, in many of the
agricultural regions, in the character of the farm

36 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

home and its surroundings. There is increasing
appreciation on the part of great numbers of
country people of the advantage of sanitary
water supplies and plumbing, of better con-
struction in barns and all farm buildings, of good
reading matter, of tasteful gardens and lawns, and
the necessity of good education.

Many institutions are also serving the agri-
cultural needs of the open country with great
effectiveness, as the United States Department
of Agriculture, the land-grant colleges and ex-
periment stations, and the many kinds of exten-
sion work that directly or indirectly emanate
from them. The help that these institutions
render to the country life interests is everywhere
recognized. State departments of agriculture,
national, state, and local organizations, many
schools of secondary grade, churches, libraries,
and many other agencies, are also contributing
actively to the betterment of agricultural con-
ditions.

There has never been a time when the Ameri-
can farmer was as well off as he is today, when
we consider not only his earning power, but the
comforts and advantages he may secure. Yet

GENERAL CONDITION 37

the real efficiency in farm life, and in country life
as a whole, is not to be measured by historical
standards, but in terms of its possibilities.
Considered from this point of view, there are very
marked deficiencies. There has been a complete
and fundamental change in our whole economic
system within the past century. This has re-
sulted in profound social changes, and the re-
direction of our point of view on life. In some
occupations, the readjustment to the new con-
ditions has been rapid and complete; in others
it has come with difficulty. In all the great
series of farm occupations the readjustment has
been the most tardy, because the whole structure
of a traditional and fundamental system has been
involved. It is not strange, therefore, that de-
velopment is still arrested in certain respects,
that marked inequalities have arisen, or that posi-
tive injustice may prevail even to a very marked
and widespread extent. All these difficulties are
the results of the unequal development of our
contemporary civilization. All this may come
about without any intention on the part of any
one that it should be so. The problems are never-
theless just as real, and they must be studied and
remedies must be found.

38 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

These deficiencies are recognized by the people.
We have found, not only by the testimony of the
farmers themselves, but of all persons in touch
with farm life, more or less serious agricultural
unrest in every part of the United States, even
in the most prosperous regions. There is a wide-
spread tendency for farmers to move to town.
It is not advisable, of course, that all country
persons remain in the country; but this general
desire to move is evidence that the open country
is not satisfying as a permanent abode. This
tendency is not peculiar to any region. In diffi-
cult farming regions, and where the competition
with other farming sections is most severe, the
young people may go to town to better their con-
dition. In the best regions, the older people re-
tire to town because it is socially more attractive,
and they see a prospect of living in comparative
ease and comfort on the rental of their lands.
Nearly everywhere there is a townward move-
ment for the purpose of securing school advan-
tages for the children. All this tends to sterilize
the open country and to lower its social status.
Often the farm is let to tenants. The farmer is
likely to lose active interest in life when he re-

GENERAL CONDITION 39

tires to town, and he becomes a stationary citi-
zen, adding a social problem to the town. He is
likely to find his expenses increasing and is
obliged to raise rents to his tenant, thereby mak-
ing it more difficult for the man who works on the
land. On his death his property enriches the
town rather than the country. The withdrawal
of the children from the farms detracts from the
interest and efficiency of the country school and
adds to the interest of the town school. Thus
the country is drained of the energy of youth on
the one hand, and the experience and accumula-
tion of age on the other, and three problems more
or less grave are created : a problem for the town,
a problem for the public school, and also a prob-
lem of tenancy in the open country.

The farming interest is not as a whole re-
ceiving the full rewards to which it is entitled,
nor has country life attained to anywhere near
its possibilities of attractiveness and comfort.
The farmer is necessarily handicapped in the de-
velopment of social life and in the conduct of his
business because of his separateness, the small
volume of his output, and the lack of capital.
He often begins with practically no capital, and

40 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

expects to develop his capital and relationships
out of the annual business itself; and even when
he has capital with which to set up a business and
operate it, the amount is small when compared
with that required in other enterprises. He is not
only handicapped in his farming, but is disadvan-
taged when he deals with other business interests
and with other social groups. It is peculiarly
necessary, therefore, that government should
give him adequate consideration and protection.
There are difficulties of the separate man, living
quietly on his land, that government should
understand.

THE PURPOSE OP THE COMMISSION.

The Commission is requested to report on the
means that are "now available for supplying the
deficiencies which exist" in the country life of the
United States, and "upon the best methods of
organized permanent effort in investigation and
actual work" along the lines of betterment of
rural conditions.

The President's letter appointing the Com-
mission is as follows:

APPOINTMENT OF COMMISSION 41

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

OYSTER BAY, N. Y.,
August 10, 1908.
My dear Professor Bailey:

No nation has ever achieved permanent greatness
unless this greatness was based on the well-being of
the great farmer class, the men who live on the soil;
for it is upon their welfare, material and moral, that
the welfare of the rest of the nation ultimately rests.
In the United States, disregarding certain sections and
taking the nation as a whole, I believe it to be true
that the farmers in general are better off today than
they ever were before. We Americans -are making
great progress in the development of our agricultural
resources. But it is equally true that the social and
economic institutions of the open country are not
keeping pace with the development of the nation as
a whole. The farmer is, as a rule, better off than his
forebears; but his increase in well-being has not kept
pace with that of the country as a whole. While the
condition of the farmers in some of our best farming
regions leaves little to be desired, we are far from
having reached so high a level in all parts of the
country. In portions of the South, for example,
where the Department of Agriculture, through the
farmers' cooperative demonstration work of Doctor
Knapp, is directly instructing more than thirty thou-
sand farmers in better methods of farming, there is
nevertheless much unnecessary suffering and need-
less loss of efficiency on the farm. A physician, who

42 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

is also a careful student of farm life in the South,
writing to me recently about the enormous percentage
of preventable deaths of children due to the unsani-
tary condition of Southern farms, said:

"Personally, from the health point of view, I
would prefer to see my own daughter, nine years
old, at work in a cotton mill, than have her live
as tenant on the average Southern tenant one-
horse farm. This apparently extreme statement
is based upon actual life among both classes of
people."

I doubt if any other nation can bear comparison
with our own in the amount of attention given by
the government, both federal and state, to agricul-
tural matters. But practically the whole of this
effort has hitherto been directed toward increasing
the production of crops. Our attention has been
concentrated almost exclusively on getting better
farming. In the beginning this was unquestionably
the right thing to do. The farmer must first of all
grow good crops in order to support himself and his
family. But when this has been secured, the effort
for better farming should cease to stand alone, and
should be accompanied by the effort for better busi-
ness and better living on the farm. It is at least as
important that the farmer should get the largest
possible return in money, comfort, and social advan-
tages from the crops he grows, as that he should get
the largest possible return in crops from the land he
farms. Agriculture is not the whole of country life.

APPOINTMENT OF COMMISSION 43

The great rural interests are human interests, and
good crops are of little value to the farmer unless
they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm.
This problem of country life is in the truest sense
a national problem. In an address delivered at
the Semi-Centennial of the Founding of Agricultural
Colleges in the United States a year ago last May,
I said:

"There is but one person whose welfare is as
vital to the welfare of the whole country as is
that of the wageworker who does manual labor;
and that is the tiller of the soil — the farmer. If
there is one lesson taught by history it is that
the permanent greatness of any state must ulti-
mately depend more upon the character of its
country population than upon anything else.
No growth of cities, no growth of wealth, can
make up for loss in either the number or the
character of the farming population.

"The farm grows the raw material for the food
and clothing of all our citizens; it supports di-
rectly almost half of them; and nearly half the
children of the Unites States are born and
brought up on the farms. How can the life of
the farm family be made less solitary, fuller of
opportunity, freer from drudgery, more comfort-
able, happier, and more attractive? Such a
result is most earnestly to be desired. How
can life on the farm be kept on the highest level,

44 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

and where it is not already on that level, be so
improved, dignified and brightened as to awaken
and keep alive the pride and loyalty of the farm-
er's boys and girls, of the farmer's wife, and of
the farmer himself? How can a compelling
desire to live on the farm be aroused in the chil-
dren that are born on the farm? All these
questions are of vital importance not only to
the farmer, but to the whole nation.

"We hope ultimately to double the average
yield of wheat and corn per acre; it will be a
great achievement; but it is even more important
to double the desirability, comfort, and standing
of the farmer's life."

It is especially important that whatever will serve
to prepare country children for life on the farm, and
whatever will brighten home life in the country and
make it richer and more attractive for the mothers,
wives and daughters of farmers should be done
promptly, thoroughly and gladly. There is no more
important person, measured in influence upon the
life of the nation, than the farmer's wife, no more im-
portant home than the country home, and it is of
national importance to do the best we can for both.

The farmers have hitherto had less than their full
share of public attention along the lines of business
and social life. There is too much belief among all
our people that the prizes of life lie away from the

APPOINTMENT OF COMMISSION 45

farm. I am therefore anxious to bring before the
people of the United States the question of securing
better business and better living on the farm, whether
by cooperation between farmers for buying, selling
and borrowing; by promoting social advantages and
opportunities in the country; or by any other legiti-
mate means that will help to make country life more
gainful, more attractive, and fuller of opportunities,
pleasures and rewards for the men, women and chil-
dren of the farms.

I shall be very glad indeed if you will consent to
serve upon a Commission on Country Life, upon
which I am asking the following gentlemen to act:

Professor L. H. Bailey, New York State College of

Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y., Chairman.
Mr. Henry Wallace, Wallaces' Farmer, Des Moines,

Iowa.
President Kenyon L. Butterfield, Massachusetts

Agricultural College, Amherst, Massachusetts.
Mr. Gifford Pinchot, United States Forest Service.
Mr. Walter H. Page, Editor of The World's Work,

New York.

My immediate purpose in appointing this Com-
mission is to secure from it such information and ad-
vice as will enable me to make recommendations to
Congress upon this extremely important matter. I
shall be glad if the Commission will report to me upon
the present condition of country life, upon what
means are now available for supplying the deficiencies
which exist, and upon the best methods of organized

46 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

permanent effort in investigation and actual work
along the lines I have indicated. You will doubtless
also find it necessary to suggest means for bringing
about the redirection or better adaptation of rural
schools to the training of children for life on the farm.
The national and state agricultural departments
must ultimately join with the various farmers' and
agricultural organizations in the effort to secure
greater efficiency and attractiveness in country life.
In view of the pressing importance of this subject,
I should be glad to have you report before the end of
next December. For that reason the Commission
will doubtless find it impracticable to undertake ex-
tensive investigations, but will rather confine itself
to a summary of what is already known, a statement
of the problem, and the recommendation of measures
tending towards its solution. With the single excep-
tion of the conservation of our natural resources,
which underlies the problem of rural life, there is no
other material question of greater importance now
before the American people. I shall look forward
with the keenest interest to your report.
Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
Professor L. H. Bailey,

New York State College of Agriculture,
Ithaca, N. Y.

Subsequently, Charles S. Barrett of Georgia,
and William A. Beard of California were added
to the Commission.

THE PROBLEM 47

The means that may be suggested for amelio-
ration of country life fall under one or more of
three general classes: (a) definite recommend-
ations for executive or legislative action by the
federal government; (b) suggestions for legis-
lative enactment on the part of states; (c) sug-
gestions or recommendations to the public at
large as to what the Commission thinks would be
the most fruitful lines of action and policy on the
part of individuals, communities or states.

The problem before the Commission is to
state, with some fulness of detail, the present
conditions of country life, to point out the causes
that may have led to its present lack of organ-
ization, to suggest methods by which it may be
redirected, the drift to the city arrested, the
natural rights of the farmer maintained, and an
organized rural life developed that will promote
the prosperity of the whole nation.

We are convinced that the forces that make for
rural betterment must themselves be rural. We
must arouse the country folk to the necessity for
action, and suggest agencies which, when properly
employed, will set them to work to develop a
distinctly rural civilization.

48 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

In making its inquiries, the Commission has
had constantly in mind the relation of the farmer
to his community and to society in general. It
has made no inquiry into problems of technical
farming except as they may have bearing on
general welfare and public questions.

The Commission has not assumed that country
life conditions are either good or bad, nor is it
within its province to compare country con-
ditions with city conditions; but it has assumed
that we have not yet arrived at that state of
society in which conditions may not be bettered.

It is our place, therefore, to point out the de-
ficiencies rather than the advantages and the
progress. In doing this we must be distinctly
understood as speaking only in general terms.
The conditions that we describe do not, of course,
apply equally in all parts of the country; and we
have not been able to make studies of the prob-
lems of particular localities.

Before discussing the shortcomings more fully,
we may explain how the Commission undertook
its work.

FIELD OF INQUIRY 49

METHODS PURSUED BY THE COMMISSION.

The field of inquiry has been the general social,
economic, sanitary, educational and labor con-
ditions of the open country. Within the time at
its disposal, the Commission has not been able to
make scientific investigations into any of these
questions, but, following the suggestion of the
President, has endeavored to give "a summary
of what is already known, a statement of the
problem, and the recommendation of measures
looking towards its solution." We have been
able to make a rather extensive exploration or
reconnoissance of the field, to arrive at a judgment
as to the main deficiencies of country life in the
United States today, and to suggest some of the
means of supplying these deficiencies.

The Commission and its work have met with
the fullest cooperation and confidence on the part
of the farmers and others, and the interest in the
subject has been widespread. The people have
been frank in giving information and expressing
opinions, and in stating their problems and dis-
couragements. There is every evidence that the
people in rural districts have welcomed the
Commission as an agency that is much needed

50 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

in the interest of country life, and in many of the
hearings they have asked that the Commission
be continued in order that it may make thorough
investigations of the subjects that it has con-
sidered. The press has taken great interest in the
work, and in many cases has been of special
service to the Commission in securing direct in-
formation from country people.

The activities of the Commission have been
directed mainly along four lines: the issuing of
questions designed to bring out a statement of
conditions in all parts of the United States; cor-
respondence and inquiries by different members
of the Commission, so far as time would permit,
each in a particular field; the holding of hear-
ings in many widely separated places; discus-
sions in local meetings, held in response to a
special suggestion by the President.1

1 The President's suggestion for meetings in school houses
and other local places is as follows (this letter was not included
in the Report of the Commission.):

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON,

November 9, 1908.
My dear Professor Bailey:

I wish at the outset cordially to thank you for the way in
which you have taken hold of the work you are doing. No
more valuable work for the people of this country can be done,

THE QUESTIONS 51

THE CIRCULAR OF QUESTIONS.

As a means of securing the opinions of the
people themselves on some of the main aspects of
country life, a set of questions was distributed,
as follows:

I. Are the farm homes in your neighborhood
as good as they should be under existing
conditions?

II. Are the schools in your neighborhood train-
ing boys and girls satisfactorily for life
on the farm?

III. Do the farmers in your neighborhood get
the returns they reasonably should from
the sale of their products?

because no more valuable work for the farmers of this country
can be done.

Now of course the whole success of the work depends upon
the attitude of the people in the open country, of the farming
people of the United States. If they feel an awakening interest
in what you are doing, they should manifest it. Moreover, it is
essential that the farmers, the men who actually live on the soil,
should feel a sense of ownership in this Commission, should feel
that you gentlemen in very truth represent them and are re-
sponsive to their desires and wishes, no less than to their needs.
It seems to me, therefore, that it would be wise to try to get into
the closest possible touch with the farmers of the country and to
find out from them, so far as you are able, just what they regard
as being the subjects with which it is most important that you
should deal. This you are already doing by sending out a cir-
cular of questions and by holding meetings in different parts of
the United States. But perhaps something more can be done.

I accordingly suggest that you ask the farmers to come to-
gether in the several school districts of the country so that they

52 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

IV. Do the farmers in your neighborhood re-
ceive from the railroads, highroads, trol-
ley lines, etc., the services they reasonably
should have?

V. Do the farmers in your neighborhood re-
ceive from the United States postal serv-
ice, rural telephones, etc., the service
they reasonably should expect?

VI. Are the farmers and their wives in your neigh-
borhood satisfactorily organized to promote
their mutual buying and selling interest?
VII. Are the renters of farms in your neighbor-
hood making a satisfactory living?
VIII. Is the supply of farm labor in your neighbor-
hood satisfactory?

IX. Are the conditions surrounding hired labor
on the farms in your neighborhood satis-
factory to the hired man?

may meet and consider these matters. I suggest the school dis-
tricts because the school house would be the natural and proper
place for such a meeting; or they could meet at other customary
or convenient places. It would be well if the meetings could be
held within the next three or four weeks; that is, before Con-
gress adjourns prior to the Christmas holidays, so that at the
time of the reassembling of Congress early in January you will
have the reports of the meetings and so will be in position to
advise definitely what should be done. I suggest that you ask
them to meet, not later than Saturday, December 5th; and you
will, of course, use your own judgment whether to summon the
meeting by circular or otherwise.

Thruout this letter where I use the word "farmers" I mean
also to include all those who live in the open country and are
intimately connected with those who do the farm work — min-
isters, school teachers, physicians, editors of country papers, in

THE QUESTIONS 53

X. Have the farmers in your neighborhood
satisfactory facilities for doing their busi-
ness in banking, credit, insurance, etc.?
XI. Are the sanitary conditions of farms in your

neighborhood satisfactory?

XII. Do the farmers and their wives and families

in your neighborhood get together for

mutual improvement, entertainment and

social intercourse as much as they should?

What, in your judgment, is the most important

single thing to be done for the general betterment

of country life?

Note: Following each question are the sub-ques-
tions:

a. Why?

b. What suggestions have you to make?

short, all men and women whose life work is done either on the
farm or in connection with the life work of those who are on the
farm.

You know better than I what topics you will suggest. How
would it do to include such topics as:

The efficiency of the rural schools;
Fanners' organizations;
The question of farm labor;
The need of good roads;
Improved postal facilities;
Sanitary conditions on the farm.

Your purpose is neither to investigate the farmer, nor to in-
quire into technical methods of farming. You are simply trying
to ascertain what are the general economic, social, educational
and sanitary conditions of the open country, and what, if any-
thing, the farmers themselves can do to help themselves, and
how the Government can help them. To this end your especial

54 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

About 550,000 copies of the circular questions
were sent to names supplied by the United States
Department of Agriculture, state experiment
stations, farmers' societies, women's clubs, to
rural free deliverymen, country physicians and
ministers, and others. To these inquiries about
115,000 persons have now replied, mostly with
much care and with every evidence of good faith.
Nearly 100,000 of these circulars have been ar-

desire is to get in touch with and represent the farmers them-
selves. The Commission now consists of five members. I shall
ask two more gentlemen to serve upon it, so that the full mem-
bership will be as follows:

Professor L. H. Bailey, New York State College of Agriculture,

Ithaca, N. Y., Chairman;

Mr. Henry Wallace, Wallaces' Farmer: Des Moines, Iowa;
Kenyon L. Butterfield, President Massachusetts Agricultural

College, Amherst, Mass.;

Gifford Pinchot, U. S. Forest Service, Washington, D. C.;
Walter H. Page, of North Carolina, Editor of The World's Work;
Charles S. Barrett, Union City, Ga., and
William A. Beard, Sacramento, Cal.

Again thanking you, and with all good wishes for your success
in this great and important work, believe me,

Very sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Professor L. H. Bailey, Chairman,
Commission on Country Life,
New York State College of Agriculture,
Ithaca, New York.

MEETINGS 55

ranged and some of the information tabulated in
a preliminary way by the Census Bureau. In
addition to the replies to the circulars, great
numbers of letters and carefully written state-
ments have been received, making altogether an
invaluable body of information, opinion and sug-
gestion.

THE HEARINGS.

Hearings were held at thirty places by the
whole Commission, or part of it, between No-
vember 9 and December 22, 1908; and frequently
two or more long sessions were held. Very full
notes were taken of the proceedings. They were
attended by good audiences, in some instances
overflowing the hall. At several, especially in
the Northwest, delegates were in attendance rep-
resenting associations and communities in the
vicinity, who were anxious to present their views
and needs. Speeches were numerous and usually
short and pithy, and represented every sort of
person concerned with rural life, including many
women, who contributed much to the domestic
and educational aspects of the subject. The
governors and principal officials of the states

56 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

were often present; and also the presidents and
professors of institutions of learning, clergymen,
physicians, librarians, and others, but the bulk
of the speakers and audiences was country
people. No attempt was made to follow a defi-
nite program of questioning, but general dis-
cussions proceeded, with an occasional show of
hands or outburst of applause to signify general
assent to the speaker's words.

The hearings were held as follows:

Nov. 9, College Park, Md.

10, Richmond, Va.

11, Raleigh, N. C., and Athens, Ga.

12, Spartansburg, S. C.

13, Knoxville, Tenn.

14, Lexington, Ky.
16-18, Washington, D. C.
19-21, Dallas, Texas.
22-23, El Paso, Texas.
24, Tucson, Ariz.
25-26, Los Angeles, Cal.
27-28, Fresno, Cal.
28-29, San Francisco, Cal.
30, Sacramento, Cal.

Dec. 1, Reno, Nevada.
2, Portland, Ore.

4-5, Spokane, Wash., (and at Opportun-
ity, near by).

HEARINGS 57

Dec. 2-3, Salt Lake City, Utah. ,

5, Cheyenne, Wyo.

6, Bozeman, Mont.
7-8, Denver, Col.
9-10, Omaha, Neb.

10, Council Bluffs, la.

11, Minneapolis, Minn. (St. Anthony

Park).

12, Madison, Wis.
14, Champaign, 111.

16, Ithaca, N. Y.

17, Springfield, Mass.

18, Boston, Mass.

22, Washington, D. C.

THE SCHOOL-HOUSE MEETINGS.

The suggestion of the President that the
country people of the United States come to-
gether in their district school-houses to discuss
country life questions under consideration by the
Commission, was officially transmitted by the
Commission to the state and county super-
intendents of schools of every state and territory.
A great part of the press of the country quoted
the suggestion in full, often printing with it the
original list of questions issued by the Com-
mission. School officials, ministers of country
churches and other persons concerned in the ad-

58 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

vancement of country matters, contributed their
active efforts for organizing such meetings. Re-
ports of meetings have already come in from
almost every state, and we have notice of many
meetings still to be held. Separate states have
set specific days for simultaneous meetings in all
their country school-houses, notably Nebraska
and Missouri. The States of Washington, Ore-
gon, Montana and Idaho by concerted arrange-
ment held a meeting December 5, the date sug-
gested by the President. Suggestion has come
from many parts of the country for the regular
establishment of such meetings for annual na-
tional observance by the country people as an
inventory-taking day, and for planning com-
munity advancement for the ensuing year.

II

THE MAIN SPECIAL DEFICIENCES IN
COUNTRY LIFE

The numbers of problems and suggestions that
have been presented to the Commission in the
hearings and through the correspondence are
very great. We have chosen for special dis-
cussion those that are most significant and that
seem most to call for immediate action. The
main single deficiency is, of course, lack of the
proper kind of education, but inasmuch as the
redirection of educational methods is also the
main remedy for the shortcomings of country
life, as also of any other life, the discussion of it
may be reserved for Part III.

1. DISREGARD OP THE INHERENT RIGHTS OP

LAND-WORKERS.

Notwithstanding an almost universal recog-
nition of the importance of agriculture to the
maintenance of our people, there is nevertheless
a widespread disregard of the rights of the men

60 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

who own and work the land. This results di-
rectly in social depression as well as in economic
disadvantage.

The organized and corporate interests rep-
resented in mining, manufacturing, merchan-
dizing, transportation and the like, seem often
to hold the idea that their business may be de-
veloped and exploited without regard to the
farmers who should, however, have an equal op-
portunity for enjoyment of the land, forests and
streams, and of the right to buy and sell in the
open markets without prejudice.

The question of the moral intention of the con-
solidated interests is not involved in these state-
ments. The present condition has grown up;
and without going into the reasons, it is imper-
ative that we recognize these disadvantages to
country life interests and seek to correct them.
The way in which discriminating conditions may
arise is well illustrated in the inequalities of tax-
ation of farm property. It is natural that visible
and stationary property should be taxed freely
under our present system; it is equally natural
that invisible and changeable property should
tend to evade taxation. The inevitable result is

INHERENT RIGHTS 61

that the farmer's property bears an unjust part
in taxation schemes.

Nor is this disregard of the inherent rights of
the land-worker confined to corporations and
companies, or to the recognized inequalities of
taxation. It .is often shared by cities. Instead
of taking care of their own undesirables, they
often turn them off on the country districts.
The "fringe" of a city thereby becomes a low-
class or even vicious community, and its influence
often extends far into the country districts.
The Commission hears complaints that hoboes
are driven from the cities and towns into the
country districts where there is no machinery for
controlling them.

The subjects to which we are here inviting at-
tention are, of course, not confined to country
life alone. They express an attitude toward
public questions in general. We look for the de-
velopment of a sentiment that will protect and
promote the welfare of all the people whenever
there is a conflict with the interests of a small or
particular class.

The handicaps that we now have specially in
mind may be stated under four heads: Specu-

62 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

lative holding of lands; monopolistic control of
streams; wastage and monopolistic control of
forests; restraint of trade.

(a) SPECULATIVE HOLDING OF LANDS.

Certain land-owners procure large areas of
agricultural land in the most available location,
sometimes by questionable methods, and hold it
for speculative purposes. This not only with-
draws the land itself from settlement, but in
many cases prevents the development of an agri-
cultural community. The smaller land-owners
are isolated and unable to establish their neces-
sary institutions or to attract the attention of the
market. The holding of large areas by one party,
tends to develop a system of tenantry and
absentee farming. The whole development may
be in the direction of social and economic ineffec-
tiveness. In parts of the West and South, this
evil is so pronounced that persons have requested
the Commission to recommend measures of re-
lief by restricting, under law, the size of specu-
lative holdings of agricultural lands.

A similar problem arises in respect to the utili-
zation of the swamp lands of the United States.

SWAMP LANDS 63

According to the reports of the United States
Geological Survey, there are more than seventy-
five million acres of swamp land in this country,
the greater part of which are capable of reclama-
tion at probably a nominal cost as compared to
their value. It is important to the development
of the best type of country life that the reclama-
tion of the lands in rural regions proceed under
conditions insuring their subdivision into small
farm units and their settlement by men who
would both own them and till them. Some of
these lands are near the centers of population.
They become a menace to health, and they often
prevent the development of good social con-
ditions in very large areas of country. As a rule,
they are extremely fertile. They are capable of
sustaining an agricultural population numbering
many millions; and the conditions under which
these millions must live are properly a matter of
national concern. In view of these facts, the
federal government should act to the fullest ex-
tent of its constitutional powers in securing the
reclamation of these lands under proper safe-
guards against speculative holding and land-
lordism. It may be that in the case of those lands

64 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

ceded to the states for the purpose of reclamation,
the greater part of which are unreclaimed, there
exists a special authority on the part of the federal
government by reason of failure to comply with
the terms of the grant; and there should be a
vigorous legal inquiry into the present rights of
the government with respect to them, followed,
if the status warrants it, by legal steps to rescind
the grants and to begin the practical work of rec-
lamation.

(b) MONOPOLISTIC CONTROL OF STREAMS.

The legitimate farming interests of the whole
country would be vastly benefited by a systema-
tic conservation and utilization, under the aus-
pices of the state and federal governments, of our
waterways both great and small. Important ad-
vantages of these waterways are likely to be ap-
propriated in perpetuity and without adequate
return to the people by monopolistic interests
that deprive the permanent agricultural in-
habitants of the use of them.

The rivers are valuable to the farmers as
drainage lines, as sources of irrigation supply, as
carriers and equalizers of transportation rates, as
a readily available power resource, and for the

RIVERS 65

raising of food fish. The wise development of
these and other uses is important to both agri-
cultural and other interests ; their protection from
monopoly is one of the first responsibilities of gov-
ernment. The streams belong to the people ; under
a proper system of development their resources
would remain an estate of all the people, and be-
come available as needed. A broad constructive
program involving coordinate development of
the many uses of streams, under conditions in-
suring their permanent control in the interest of
the people themselves, is urgently needed, and
none should be more concerned in this than the
farmers.

River navigation affords the best and cheapest
transportation of farm products of a non-perish-
able nature. The rivers afford the best means of
competition with railroads, because river carriage
is cheap, and because the rivers once opened by
the government for navigation are open to all
and monopoly of their use should be an im-
possibility. Interest in river improvement for
the purpose of navigation is very keen among the
farmers who actually use river transportation,
and to some extent among farmers who enjoy

66 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

advantages in railway rates due to parallel water
lines; but the great mass of farmers, while com-
plaining of what they affirm to be unjust and
exhorbitant railway rates, have given too little
thought to the means of relief with which nature
has favored them. This is probably due to lack
of knowledge of the actual economies of river
transportation. For example, one community
located 200 miles from a former head of naviga-
tion, ships wheat by rail to a market that is
1,033 miles distant, at a cost of 21 cents per
bushel, yet it showed no interest in the reopening
of the channel that would reduce the train haul to
less than one fifth the distance.

This failure to consider the waterways is
probably due very largely to the high rates per
ton mile charged by railroads for short hauls.
Under the present methods of fixing the railway
tariffs, local rates are often almost or quite as
great as between points far distant, and there is
small inducement to use cheap river freights be-
cause of the cost of reaching the river banks.
The remedy for this lies in two directions: It
must come either from a rearrangement of freight
schedules, which may involve a complete change

RIVERS 67

in the present policy of the railway companies
with reference thereto; or by means of com-
petition by independent or local companies.

It must be remembered, also, that no interests
inimical to the public welfare should be allowed to
acquire permanent control of the stream banks.
Facilities for ready and economical approach are
practically as important as the channels them-
selves.

River transportation is not usually antago-
nistic to railway interests. Population and pro-
duction are increasing rapidly, with correspond-
ing increase in the demands made on transporta-
tion facilities. It may be reasonably expected
that in the evolution of the transportation busi-
ness, the rivers will eventually carry a large part
of the freight that does not require prompt de-
livery, while the railways will carry that requiring
expeditious handling. This is already foreseen
by leading railway men; and its importance to
the farmer is such that he should encourage and
aid, by every means in his power, the movement
for large use of the rivers. The country will pro-
duce enough business to tax both streams and
railroads to their utmost.

68 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

In many regions the streams afford facilities
for the development of power, which, since the
successful inauguration of electrical transmission,
is available for local rail lines and offers the best
solution of local transportation problems. In
many parts of the country, local and interurban
lines are providing transportation to farm areas,
thereby increasing the facilities for moving crops
and adding to the profit and convenience of farm
life. Notwithstanding this development, how-
ever, there seems to be a very general lack of ap-
preciation, on the part of farmers, of the possi-
bilities of this water-power resource as a factor
in governing transportation costs.

The streams may also be used as a source of
small water power on thousands of farms. This
is particularly true of the small streams. Much
of the manual labor about the house and barn can
be performed from transmission of power from
small water-wheels running on the farms them-
selves or in the neighborhood. This power could
be used for electric lighting and for small manu-
facture. It is more important that small power
be developed on the farms of the United States
than that we harness Niagara.

STREAMS 69

Unfortunately, the tendency of the present
laws is to encourage the acquisition of these re-
sources on easy terms or on their own terms by
the first applicants, and the power of the streams
is rapidly being acquired under conditions that
lead to the concentration of ownership in the
hands of monopolies. This state of things con-
stitutes a real and immediate danger, not to the
country life interests alone, but to the entire
nation, and it is time that the whole people be-
come aroused to it.

The laws under which water is appropriated
or flowage rights secured for power were enacted
prior to the introduction of electrical trans-
mission, and, consequently, before there was any
possibility of water power becoming of more than
local importance or value. Monopoly of water
power was practically impossible while the
sources and uses were alike isolated, but the
present ability to concentrate the power of
streams and to develop transportation, manu-
facturing, heating, and lighting on a vast scale
invites monopolization.

It appears as a result of governmental in-
vestigation that practically in the last five years

70 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

there has been a very significant concentration of
water powers; that this concentration has now
placed about 33 per cent of the total developed
water powers of the country under the control of
a group of thirteen companies or interests; that
there are very strong economic and technical
reasons forcing such concentration. The rapid
concentration already accomplished, together
with the obvious technical reasons for further
control and the financial advantages to be gained
by a substantial monopoly, justifies the fear that
the concentration already accomplished is but
the forerunner of a far greater degree of mono-
poly of water power. Unless the people become
aroused to the danger to their interests, there
will probably be developed a monopoly greater
than any the world has yet seen.

The development of power plants and of in-
dustries using this power ought to be encouraged
by every legitimate and proper means. It should
not be necessary, however, to grant perpetual
rights in order to encourage this development.
There should be no perpetual grant of water
power privileges. On the contrary, the owner-
ship of the people should be perpetually main-

IRRIGATION WATER 71

tained, and grants should be in the nature of
terminable franchises.

The irrigation water should be protected.
Farm life in the irrigated regions is usually of an
advanced type, due principally to the small size
of farms and the resulting social and educational
advantages, and to intensive agriculture. Be-
cause of these facts, the development of the arid
regions by irrigation may be a distinct contribu-
tion to the improvement of the country life of the
nation. In the use of streams for irrigation, as
in other uses, monopoly should be discouraged.
The ownership of water for irrigation is no less
important than the ownership of land; water-
lordism is as much to be feared as landlordism.
In the irrigated regions, the water is more valu-
able than the land to which it is applied; the
availability of the water supply often gives to the
land all the value that it has, and when this is
true it must follow that the farmer must own
both the water and the land if he is to be master
of his own fortunes. One of the very best ele-
ments of any population is the independent
home-owning farmer, and the tendency of govern-
ment, so far as may be practicable, should be to-

72 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

wards securing the ownership of the land by the
man who lives on it and tills it. It should seek
to vest in the farmer of the irrigated region the
title to his water supply and to protect his tenure
of it. The national reclamation act under which
large areas of arid land are now being placed
under irrigation, is commended as a contribution
to the development of a good country life in the
West, not alone because it renders available for
settlement large areas of previously worthless
land, but still more because it insures to settlers
the ownership of both the land and the water.

The need to utilize the streams is to be con-
sidered in the East as well as in the West.

The Commission suggests that a special in-
quiry be made of the control of stream resources
of the United States, with the object of protecting
the people in their ownership and of reserving to
agricultural uses such benefits as should be re-
served for these purposes.

(c) WASTAGE AND CONTROL OF FORESTS.

The forests have been exploited for private
gain until not only has the timber been seriously
reduced, but until streams have been ruined for

FORESTS 73

navigation, power, irrigation and common water
supplies and whole regions have been exposed to
floods and disastrous soil erosion. Probably
there has never occurred a more reckless de-
struction of property that of right should belong
to all the people. These devastations are checked
on the government lands, but similar devastation
in other parts of the country is equally in need of
attention. The Commission has heard strong
demands from farmers for the establishment of
forest reservations in the White Mountains and
the southern Appalachian region, to save the
timber and to control the sources of streams, and
no statements in opposition to the proposal.
Measures should be enacted creating such
reservations. The forests as well as the
streams should be saved from monopolistic
control.

The conservation of forests and brush on
watershed areas is important to the farmer along
the full length of streams regardless of the dis-
tance between the farm and these areas. The
loss of soil in denuded areas increases the menace
of flood, not alone because of the more rapid
run-off, but by the filling of channels and the

74 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

greater erosion of stream banks when soil matter
is carried in suspension.

Loss of soil by washing is a serious menace to
the fertility of the American farm. A high
authority on this subject recently made the
statement that soil wash is "the heaviest impost
borne by the American farmer."

The wood-lot property of the country needs
to be saved and increased. Wood-lot yield is one
of the most important crops of the farm, and is
of great value to the public in controlling streams,
saving the run-off, checking winds, and in adding
to the attractiveness of the region. In many
regions, where poor and hilly lands prevail, the
town or county could well afford to purchase
forest land, expecting thereby to add to the value
of the property and eventually to make the
forests a source of revenue. Such communal
forests in Europe yield revenue to the cities and
towns by which they are owned and managed.

(d) RESTRAINT OF TRADE.

The Commission has heard much complaint,
in all parts of the country and by all classes of
farmers, of injustice, inequalities and discrimina-

RESTRAINT OF TRADE 75

tion on the part of transportation companies and
middlemen. These are the most universal direct
complaints that have been presented to the
Commission. If the statements can be trusted,
the business of farming as a whole is greatly re-
pressed by lack of mutual understanding and
good faith in the transportation and marketing
of agricultural produce.

Without expressing an opinion on these ques-
tions, we feel that there should be a free under-
standing between transportation companies and
farmers in respect to their mutual business. We
find that farmers who have well-informed opin-
ions on tariff, education and other public ques-
tions are yet wholly uninformed in respect to the
transportation man's point of view on freight
rates and express rates that may be in dispute.
A disposition on the part of all parties to discuss
the misunderstandings fairly would probably
accomplish much.

The whole matter of railway freight rates
should be made more understandable. There
should be a simplifying or codifying of rates that
will enable the farmer or a group of farmers or of
other citizens who use the railways, to ascertain

76 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

readily from the published tariffs the actual rate
on any given commodity between two points.
Railway rate-making is fundamentally a matter
of public importance. The rates are a large factor
in the development of population; in many
instances the railway rates determine both the
character of the population and the development
of industry. The railway companies, by their
rates, may decide where the centers of distribu-
tion shall be, what areas shall develop manufac-
tures and other special industries. To the extent
that they do this they exercise a purely public
function, and for this reason alone, if for no other,
the government should exercise a wise super-
vision over the making and publication of rates.
Favoritism to large shippers has been one of the
principal abuses of the transportation business
and has contributed to the growth of monopolies
of trade. While rebating is largely discontinued,
it is very generally believed that this favoritism
is still practiced, in various forms, to an entent
that works a hardship on the small shipper and
the unorganized interests. Complaint is not con-
fined to steam roads alone but is directed towards
the trolley lines as well. There is a feeling that

RATES 77

trolley systems should be feeders to the steam
roads, and that these systems which are rapidly
being extended through rural districts should
afford to farmers a freight service that is ready,
rapid, and cheap. It is charged that this is not
done, that steam lines discourage the use of the
trolleys for freight, or absorb them and eliminate
competition to the detriment of the farm popu-
lation which they should most benefit.

The Interstate Commerce Commission ex-
ercises a most valuable governmental function.
It is a body to which complaint may be made of
any rate considered to be unreasonable. It has
been of great benefit to the farmers of the
country. What is needed now is a careful study
of the railway situation with a veiw to reaching
and correcting abuses and practices still in
existence that operate against the unorganized
and the rural interests.

In this connection, attention is invited to the
fact that many states have railway commissions
charged with the dufy of protecting the public
from paying exorbitant frieght rates, and farmers
who feel that they are charged more than is fair
should see to it, first, that their state railway

78 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

commissions are composed of men who will do
their duty; and, second, that these men are
sustained in honest efforts to do their duty with
fairness to all concerned. The charge is fre-
quently made that these commissions are not
effective, but as they are a part of the machinery
of the state, it would seem that the farmers have
here an excellent opportunity to serve their inter-
ests by active devotion to a plain political duty.
Dissatisfaction with the prevailing systems of
marketing is very general. There is a wide-
spread belief that certain middlemen consume a
share of agricultural sales out of all proportion to
the services they render, either to the consumer
or the producer, making a larger profit — often
without risk — in the selling of the product than
the farmer makes in producing it. We have no
desire to condemn middlemen as a class. We
have no doubt that there are many businesses
of this kind that are conducted on a square deal
basis, but we are led to believe that grave abuses
are practiced by unscrupulous persons and firms,
and we recommend a searching inquiry into the
methods employed in the sale of produce on
commission.

THE FARMER'S INHERENT RIGHTS. .79

(e) REMEDIES FOR THE DISREGARD OF THE INHEB-
ENT RIGHTS OF THE FARMER.

We need, in the first place, as a people, to
recognize the necessary rights of the individual
farmer to the use of the native resources and
agencies that go with the utilization of agricul-
tural lands, and to protect him from hindrance
and encroachment in the normal development
of his business. If the farmer suffers because his
business is small, isolated and unsyndicated,
then it is the part of government to see that he
has a natural opportunity among his fellows and
a square deal.

In the second place, we need such an attitude
of government, both state and national, as will
safeguard the separate and individual rights of
the farmer, in the interest of the public good. As
a contribution toward this attitude, we commend
the general policy of the present administration
to safeguard the streams, forests, coal lands, and
phosphate lands, and in endeavoring to develop
a home-owning settlement in the irrigated regions.

At the moment, one of the most available and
effective single means of giving the farmer the
benefit of his natural opportunities is the enlarge-

80 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

ment of government service to the country
people through the post office. We hold that a
parcels post and a postal savings bank system are
necessities; and as rapidly as possible the rural
free delivery of mails should be extended. Every-
where we have found the farmers demanding the
parcels post. It is opposed by many merchants,
transportation organizations and established in-
terests. We do not think that the parcels post
will injure the merchant in the small town or
elsewhere. Whatever will permanently benefit
the farmer will benefit the country as a whole.
Both town and country would readjust them-
selves to the new conditions. We recognize the
great value of the small town to the country
districts and would not see it displaced or
crippled; but the character of the open country
largely makes or unmakes the country town.

In order that fundamental correctives may be
applied, we recommend that a thoroughgoing
study or investigation be made of the relation of
business practices and of taxation to the welfare
of the farmer, with a view to ascertaining what
discriminations and deficiencies may exist, wheth-
er legislation is needed, and to give publicity to

the entire subject. This investigation should
include the entire middleman system, farmers'
cooperative organizations, transportation rates
and practices, taxation of agricultural property,
methods of securing funds on reasonable condi-
tions for agricultural uses, and the entire range
of economic questions involved in the relation of
the farmer to the accustomed methods of doing
business.

We find that there is need of a new general
attitude toward legislation, in the way of safe-
guarding the farmers' natural rights and interests.
It is natural that the organized and consolidated
interests should be strongly in mind in the making
of legislation. We recommend that the welfare
of the farmer and countryman be also kept in
mind in the construction of laws. We specially
recommend that his interests be considered and
safeguarded in any new legislation on the tariff,
on regulation of railroads, control or regulating
of corporations and of speculation, river, swamp,
and forest legislation, and public health regulation.
At the present moment, it is especially important
that the farmer's interests be well considered in
the revision of the tariff. One of the particular

82 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

needs is such an application of the reciprocity
principle as to open European markets for our
flour, meats and live cattle. One of the great
economic problems of our agriculture is how to
feed the corn crop and other grains profitably,
for it must be fed if the fertility of the land is to
be maintained; to dispose of the crop profitably
requires the best markets that can be secured.

2. HIGHWAYS.

The demand for good highways is general
among the farmers of the entire United States.
Education and good roads are the two needs
most frequently mentioned in the hearings.
Highways that are usable at all times of the year
are now imperative, not only for the marketing
of produce, but for the elevation of the social
and intellectual status of the open country, and
the improvement of health by^ insuring better
medical and surgical attendance.

The advantages are so well understood that
arguments for better roads are not necessary here.
Our respondents are now concerned largely with
the methods of organizing and financing the work.
With only unimportant exceptions, the farmers

HIGHWAYS 83

who have expressed themselves to us on this
question consider that the federal government is
fairly under obligation to aid in the work.

We hold that the development of a fully
serviceable highway system is a matter of na-
tional concern, coordinate with the development
of waterways and the conservation of our native
resources. It is absolutely essential to our
internal development. The first thing necessary
is to provide expert supervision and direction,
and to develop a national plan. All the work
should be cooperative between the federal gov-
ernment and the states. The question of federal
appropriation for highway work in the states may
well be held in abeyance until a national service
is provided and tested. We suggest that the
United States government establish a highway
engineering service, or equivalent organization,
to be at the call of the states in working out
effective and economical highway systems.

3. SOIL DEPLETION AND ITS EFFECTS.

A condition calling for serious comment is the
lessening productiveness of the land. Our farm-
ing has been largely exploitational, consisting of

84 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

mining the virgin fertility. On the better lands
this primitive system of land exploitation may
last for two generations without results perni-
cious to society, but on the poorer lands the limit
of satisfactory living conditions may be reached
in less than one generation.

The social condition of any agricultural com-
munity is closely related to the available fer-
tility of the soil. " Poor land, poor people "
and " Rough land, rough people," have long
since passed into proverbs. Rich land well
farmed does not necessarily mean high ideals or
good society. It may mean land-greed and
dollar-worship; but on the other hand, high
ideals cannot be realized without at least a fair
degree of prosperity, and this can not be secured
without the maintenance of fertility.

When the land begins to yield with difficulty,
the farmer may move to new land; develop a
system of self-sustaining agriculture (becoming
thereby a real farmer) ; or be driven into poverty
and degradation. The first of these results has
been marked for many years, but it is now
greatly checked because most of the available
lands have been occupied. The second result —

SOIL DEPLETION 85

the evolution of a really scientific and self-
perpetuating agriculture — is beginning to appear
here and there, mostly in the long-settled regions.
The drift to poverty and degradation is pro-
nounced in many parts of the country. In every
region a certain class of the population is forced
to the poor lands, becoming a handicap to the
community and constituting a very difficult
social problem.

There are two great classes of farmers: those
who make farming a real and active constructive
business, as much as the successful manufacturer
or merchant makes his effort a business ; and those
who merely passively live on the land, often
because they cannot do anything else, and by
dint of hard work and the strictest economy
manage to subsist. Each class has its difficulties.
The problems of the former class are largely
those arising from the man's relation to the world
at large. The farmer of the latter class is not
only powerless as against trade in general, but
is also more or less helpless in his own farming
problems. In applying corrective measures, we
must recognize these two classes of persons.

When no change of system has followed the

86 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

depletion of the virgin fertility, the saddest
results have followed. The former owners have
often lost the land and a system of tenantry
farming has gradually developed. This is marked
in all regions that are dominated by a one-crop
system of agriculture. In parts of the Southern
states this loss of available fertility is specially
noticeable, particularly where cotton is the main
if not the only crop. In some parts of the country
this condition and the social results are pathetic,
and particularly where the farmers, whether
white or black, by reason of poverty and lack of
credit and want of experience in other kinds of
farming, are compelled to continue to grow cot-
ton. Large numbers of Southern farmers are
still obliged to mortgage their unplanted crop to
secure the means of living while it is growing;
and, as a matter of course, they pay exorbitant
prices for the barest necessities of life. The only
security that the man can give, either to the
banker or the merchant, is cotton, and this
forces the continued cultivation of a crop that
decreases the soil fertility in a country of open
winters where the waste by erosion is necessarily
at the maximum. The tenants have little interest

SOIL DEPLETION 87

in the land and move from year to year in the
vain hope of better luck. The average income of
the tenant farmer family growing cotton is about
$150 a year; and the family usually does not
raise its poultry, meat, fruit, vegetables, or
bread-stuffs. The landlords in large sections are
little better off than the tenants. The price of the
product is manipulated by speculators. The
tenant farmer, and even the landlord, is preyed
upon by other interests and is practically power-
less. The effect of the social stratification into
landlord, tenant, and money-lending merchant,
still further complicates a situation that in some
regions is desperate and that demands vigorous
treatment.

The recent years of good prices for cotton have
enabled many farmers to get out of debt and to
be able to handle their own business. These
farmers are then free to begin a new system of
husbandry. The problems still remain, however,
of how to help the man who is still in bondage.

While these conditions are specially marked
in the cotton-growing states, they are arising in
all regions of a single-crop system, except,
perhaps, in the case of fruit regions and vege-

88 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

table regions. They are beginning to appear in
the exclusive wheat regions, where the yields are
constantly growing less and where the social life
is usually monotonous and barren. The hay-
selling system of many parts of the Northeastern
states presents similar results, as does also the
exclusive corn-grownig for the general market
when stock-raising is not a part of the business.
The loss of fertility in the Northern states is
less rapid because of the climatic conditions that
arrest the winter waste; fewer landlords, and
these for the most part retired farmers who live
near their farms and largely control the methods
of cultivating the land; and a different kind of
agriculture and a different social structure. It
is, however, serious enough even in the Northern
states, and especially in the Mississpipi Valley,
particularly when lands are held as an investment
by capitalists who know nothing about farming
and care only for annual returns, and also when
held by speculators in the hope of harvesting the
unearned increment, which has been large of late
years, due probably to some world-wide cause,
which it is beyond our province to discuss. In
any case, whether North or South, it has become a

SOIL DEPLETION 89

matter of very serious concern, whether farmers
are to continue to dominate and direct the policy
of the people as they do now in large part in the
more prosperous agricultural sections, or whether,
because of soil deterioration they shall become a
dependent class or shall be tenants in name, but
laborers in fact and working for an uncertain
wage.

Fortunately there is abundant evidence on
every hand, both North and South, that the
fertility of the soil can be maintained, or where
it has been greatly decreased can be restored at
least approximately to its virgin fertility. The
hope of the future lies in the work of the public
institutions that are devoted to the new agricul-
ture. The United States Department of Agri-
culture, experiment stations, colleges of agricul-
ture and other agencies are making great progress
in correcting these and other deficiencies, and
these institutions deserve the sympathetic sup-
port of all the people. The demonstration work
of the Department of Agriculture in the Southern
states is a marked example of the good that can
be done by teaching the people how to diversify
their farming and to redeem themselves from the

bondage of an hereditary system. Similar work
is needed in many parts of the United States,
and it is already under way, in various forms,
under the leadership of the land-grant institu-
tions.

The great agricultural need of the open
country is a system of diversified and rotation
farming, carefully adapted in every case to the
particular region. Such systems conserve the
resources of the land, and develop diversified
and active institutions. Nor is this wastage of
soil resources peculiar to one-crop systems,
although it is more marked in such cases: it is
a general feature of our agriculture due to a lack
of appreciation of our responsibility to society
to protect and save the land. Although we have
reason to be proud of our agricultural achieve-
ments, we must not close our eyes to the fact
that our soil resources are still being lost through
poor farming.

This lessening of soil fertility is marked in
every part of the United States, even in the
richest lands of the prairies. It marks the pioneer
stage of land usage. It has now become an acute
national danger, and the economic, social and

FARM LABOR 91

political problems arising out of it must at once
receive the best attention of statesmen. The
attention that has been given to these questions
is wholly inadqeuate to the urgency of the dan-
gers involved.

4. AGRICULTURAL LABOR.

There is a general, but not a universal, com-
plaint of scarcity of farm labor. This scarcity is
not an agricultural difficulty alone, but one
phase or expression of the general labor supply
problem.

So long as the United States continues to be a
true democracy, it will have a serious labor
problem. As a democracy, we honor labor, and
the higher the efficiency of the labor, the greater
the honor. The laborer, if he has the ambition to
be an efficient agent in the development of the
country, will be anxious to advance from the
lower to the higher forms of effort, and from
being a laborer himself he becomes a director of
labor. If he has nothing but his hands and
brains, he aims to accumulate sufficient capital
to become a tenant, and eventually to become the
owner of a farm home. A large number of our

92 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

immigrants share with the native-born citizen
this laudable ambition. Therefore there is a
constant decrease of efficient farm labor by
these upward movements.

At the same time, there is a receding column
of farm owners who, through bad management,
have become farm tenants, and who from farm
tenants may become farm laborers. While the
percentage of this class is small, there are never-
theless some who fail to make good, and, if they
are tenants, farm for a living rather than as a
business, and, if laborers, become watchers of
the sun rather than efficient workers.

(a) STATEMENT OF THE GENERAL FARM LABOR
PROBLEM.

The farm labor problem, however, is compli-
cated byseveral special conditions, such as the fact
that the need for labor is not continuous, the
lack of conveniences of living for the laborer,
long hours, the want of companionship, and in
some places the apparently low wages. Because
of these conditions, the necessary drift of work-
men is from the open country to the town. On
the part of the employer, the problem is com-

FARM LABOR 93

plicated by the difficulty of securing labor, even
at the relatively high prices now prevailing, that
is competent to handle modern farm machinery
and to care for live-stock and to handle the
special work of the improved dairy. It is further
complicated in all parts of the country by the
competition of railroads, mines and factories,
which, by reason of shorter hours, apparently
higher pay, and the opportunities for social
diversion and often of dissipation, attract the
native farm hand to the towns and cities.

The difficulty of securing good labor is so great
in many parts of the country that farmers are
driven to dispose of their farms, leaving their
land to be worked on shares by more or less
irresponsible tenants, or selling them outright,
often to foreigners. All absentee and proxy
farming (which seems to be increasing) creates
serious social problems in the regions thus
affected. There is not sufficient good labor
available in the country to enable us to farm our
lands under present systems of agriculture and
to develop our institutions effectively. Our
native labor supply could be much increased by
such hygienic measures as would lessen the

94 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

unnecessary death-rate among country children
and insure better health to workmen.

So long as the labor supply is not equal to the
demand, the country cannot compete with the
town in securing labor. The country must meet
the essential conditions offered by the town; or
change the kind of farming.

The most marked reaction to the labor diffi-
culty is the change in modes of farm management,
whereby farming is slowly adapting itself to the
situation. In some cases this change is in the
nature of more intensive and business-like meth-
ods whereby the farmer becomes able to secure a
better class of labor and to employ it more
continuously. More frequently, however, the
change is in the nature of a simplification of the
business and a less full and active farm life. In
the sod regions of the Northeast the tendency is
toward a simple or even a primitive nature-
farming, with the maximum of grazing and
meadow and the minimum of hand labor. In
many states the more difficult lands are being
given up and machinery-farming is extending.
This results in an unequal development of the
country as a whole, with a marked shift in the

FARM LABOR 95

social equilibrium. The only real solution of the
present labor problem must lie in improved
methods of farming. These improvements will
be forced by the inevitable depletion of soil
fertility under any and all one-crop systems in
every part of the country, and realized by the
adoption on the part of intelligent, progressive
farmers of a rotation of crops and a system of
husbandry that will enable them to employ their
labor by the year and thereby secure a higher
type of workman by providing him a home with
all its appurtenances. The development of local
industries will also contribute to the solution of
the problem.

The excessive hours of labor on farms must be
shortened. This will come through the working
out of the better farm scheme just mentioned, and
substituting planning for some of the muscular
work. Already in certain regions of well-sys-
tematized diversified farming the average hours
of labor are less than ten.

There is a growing tendency to rely on for-
eigners for the farm labor supply, although the
sentiment is very strong in some regions against
immigration. It is. the general testimony that

96 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

the native American labor is less efficient and
less reliable than much of the foreign labor.
This is due to the fact that the American is less
pressed by the dire necessity to labor and to
save, and because the better class of laborers is
constantly passing on to land-ownership on its
own account. Because of their great industry
and thrift, certain foreigners are gradually taking
possession of the land in some regions, and it
seems to be only a question of time until they will
drive out the native stock in those regions.

The most difficult rural labor problem is that
of securing household help on the average farm.
The larger the farm, the more serious the problem
becomes. The necessity of giving a suitable
education to her children deprives the farm
woman largely of home help; while the lure of
the city with its social diversions, more regular
hours of labor and its supposed higher respecta-
bility, deprives her of help bred and born in the
country. Under these circumstances, she is
compelled to provide the food that requires the
least labor. This simple fact explains much of
the lack of variety, in the midst of the greatest
possible abundance, so often complained of on

FARM LABOR 97

the farmer's table. The development of the
creamery system over large sections of the
country has relieved the farmer's wife of a heavy
burden. This gives the hint for further improve-
ment. The community laundering and other
work could be done in an establishment con-
nected with the creamery. Labor-saving ap-
pliances in the future will greatly lighten the
burdens of those who are willing to use them.
With the teaching of home subjects in the
schools, household labor will again become re-
spectable as well as easier and more interesting.
There is widespread conviction that the farmer
must give greater attention to providing good
quarters to laborers and to protect them from
discouragement and from the saloon. The
shortage of labor seems to be the least marked
where the laborer is best cared for. It is certain
that farming itself must be so modified and
organized as to meet the labor problem at least
half way. While all farmers feel the shortage of
help, the Commission has found that the best
farmers usually complain least about the labor
difficulty.

98 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

(b) THE QUESTION OF INTEMPERANCE.

The liquor question has been emphasized to
the Commission in all parts of the country as
complicating the labor question. It seems to be
regarded as a burning country life problem.
Intemperance is largely the result of the barren-
ness of farm life, particularly of the lot of the
hired man. The Commission has made no
inquiry into intemperance as such, but it is
impressed, from the testimony that has ac-
cumulated, that drunkenness is often a very
serious menace to country life, and that the
saloon is an institution that must be banished
from at least all country districts and rural
towns if our agricultural, interests are to develop
to the extent to which they are capable. The
evil is specially damning in the South because it
seriously complicates the race problem. Certain
states have recently adopted prohibitory regula-
tions, but liquor is shipped into dry territory
from adjoining regions and the evil is thereby
often increased. Dry territories must rouse
themselves to self-preservation in the face of
this grave danger, and legislation must be

FARM LABOR 99

enacted that will protect them. When a state
goes dry, it should be allowed to keep dry.

There is most urgent need for a quickened
public sentiment on this whole question of
intoxication in rural communities in order to
relieve country life of one of its most threatening
handicaps. At the same time it is incumbent on
every person to exert his best effort to provide
the open country with such intellectual and
social interests as will lessen the appeal and
attractiveness of the saloon.

(c) DEVOLOPING THE LOCAL ATTACHMENTS OF THE
FARM LABORER.

The best labor, other things being equal, is
resident labor. Such reorganization of agricul-
ture must take place as will tend more and more
to employ the man the year round and to tie
him to the land. The employer bears a distinct
responsibility to the laborer, and also to society,
to house him well and to help him to contribute
his part to the community welfare.

Eventually, some kind of school or training
facilities must be provided for the farm laborer,
to cause him to develop skill and to interest him
intellectually in his work.

100 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

Some kind of simple saving institution should
also be developed in order to encourage thrift on
the part of the laborer. It would be well, also,
to study systems of life insurance in reference to
farm workmen. The establishment of postal
savings banks should contribute towards greater
stability of farm labor.

The development of various kinds of coopera-
tive buying and selling associations might be
expected to train workmen in habits of thrift, if
the men were encouraged to join them.

5. HEALTH IN THE OPEN COUNTRY.

Theoretically the farm should be the most
healthful place in which to live, and there are
numberless farm houses, especially of the farm-
owner class, that possess most excellent modern
sanitary conveniences. Still it is a fact that there
are also numberless other farm houses, especially
of the tenant class, and even numerous rural
school-houses, that do not have the rudiments of
sanitary arrangement. Health conditions in
many parts of the open country, therefore, are
in urgent need of betterment. There are many
questions of nation-wide importance, such as

HEALTH 101

soil, milk and water pollution; too much visiting
in case of contagious diseases; patent medicines,
advertising quacks and intemperance; feeding of
offal to animals at Ipcal slaughterhouses and
general unsanitary conditions of those houses not
under federal or other rigid sanitary control; in
some regions unwholesome and poorly prepared
and monotonous diet; lack of recreation; too
long hours of work.

Added to these and other conditions, are im-
portant regional questions, such as the extensive
spread of the hook-worm disease in the Gulf-
Atlantic states; the prevalence of typhoid fever
and malaria; and other difficulties due to neglect
in the localities.

In general, the rural population is less safe-
guarded by boards of health than is the urban
population. The physicians are farther apart
and are called in later in case of sickness, and in
some districts medical attendance is relatively
more expensive. The necessity for disease pre-
vention is therefore self-evident, and it becomes
even more emphatic when we recall that infec-
tion may be spread from farms to cities in the
streams and also in the milk, meat, and other

102 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

farm products. Quite aside from the humanita-
rian point of view, the aggregate annual loss to
the nation from unsanitary conditions on the
farms must, when expressed in money values,
reach an enormous sum, and a betterment of
these conditions is a nation-wide obligation.

There is great need for the teaching of the
simplest and commonest laws of hygiene and sani-
tation in all the schools. The people need knowl-
edge, and no traditions should prevent them
from having it. How and what to eat, the nature
of disease, the importance of fresh air, the neces-
sity of physical training even on the farm, the
ineffectiveness or even the danger of nostrums,
the physical evils of intemperance, all should be
known in some useful degree to every boy and
girl on leaving school.

Some of the most helpful work in improving
rural sanitary conditions and in relieving suffer-
ing, is now proceeding from women's organiza-
tions. This wrork should be encouraged in every
way. We especially commend the suggestion
that such organizations, and other interests, pro-
vide visiting nurses for rural communities, when
they are needed.

HEALTH 103

We find urgent need for better supervision of
public health in rural communities on the part of
states and localities. The control is now likely to
be exercised only when some alarming condition
prevails. We think that the federal government
should be given the right to send its health offi-
cers into the various states on request of these
states, at any time, for the purpose of investigat-
ing and controlling public health; it does not now
have this right except at quarantine stations,
although it may attend to diseases of domestic
animals. It should also engage in publicity work
on this subject.

6. WOMAN'S WORK ON THE FARM.

Realizing that the success of country life de-
pends in very large degree on the woman's part,
the Commission has made special effort to ascer-
tain the condition of women on the farm. Often
this condition is all that can be desired, with
home duties so organized that the labor is not
excessive, with kindly cooperation on the part of
husbands and sons, and with household machines
and conveniences well provided. Very many
farm homes in all parts of the country are pro-

104 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

vided with books and periodicals, musical instru-
ments, and all the necessary amenities. There
are good gardens and attractive premises, and a
sympathetic love of nature and of farm life on
the part of the entire family.

On the other hand, the reverse of these condi-
tions often obtains, sometimes because of pioneer
conditions and more frequently because of lack
of prosperity and of ideals. Conveniences for
outdoor work are likely to have precedence over
those for household work.

The routine work of women on the farm is to
prepare three meals a day. This regularity of
duty recurs regardless of season, weather, plant-
ing, harvesting, social demands, or any other
factor. The only differences in different seasons
are those of degree rather than of kind. It fol-
lows, therefore, that whatever general hardships,
such as poverty, isolation, lack of labor-saving
devices, may exist on any given farm, the burden
of these hardships falls more heavily on the farm-
er's wife than on the farmer himself. In gen-
eral her life is more monotonous and the more
isolated, no matter what the wealth or the pov-
erty of the family may be.

WOMAN'S WORK 105

The relief to farm women must come through
a general elevation of country living. The women
must have more helps. In particular, these mat-
ters may be mentioned: development of a coop-
erative spirit in the home; simplification of the
diet in many cases; the building of convenient
and sanitary houses; providing running water
in the house, and also more mechanical helps;
good and convenient gardens; a less exclusive
ideal of money-getting on the part of the farmer ;
providing better means of communication, as
telephones, roads, and reading-circles; and de-
veloping of women's organizations. These and
other agencies should relieve the woman of
many of her manual burdens on the one hand,
and interest her in outside activities on the other.
The farm woman should have sufficient free time
and strength so that she may serve the commun-
ity by participating in its vital affairs.

We have found good women's organizations in
some country districts; but as a rule such organ-
zations are few or even none, or, where they exist,
they merely radiate from towns. Some of the
stronger central organizations are now pushing
the country phase of their work with vigor.

106 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

Mothers' clubs, reading-clubs, church societies,
home economics organizations, farmers' insti-
tutes, and other associations can accomplish much
for farm women. Some of the regular farmers'
organizations are now giving much attention to
domestic subjects, and women participate freely
in the meetings. There is much need among
country women themselves of a stronger organiz-
ing sense for real cooperative betterment. It is
important, also, that all rural organizations that
are attended chiefly by men, should discuss the
home-making subjects, for the whole difficulty
often lies with the attitude of the men.

There is the most imperative need that domes-
tic, household and health questions be taught in
all schools. The home may well be made the
center of rural school teaching. The school is
capable of changing the whole attitude of the home
life and the part that women should play in the
development of the best country living.

Ill

THE GENERAL CORRECTIVE FORCES
THAT SHOULD BE SET IN MOTION

The ultimate need of the open country is the
development of community effort and of social
resources. Here and there the Commission has
found a rural neighborhood in which the farmers
and their wives come together frequently and
effectively for social intercourse, but these in-
stances seem to be infrequent exceptions. There
is a general lack of wholesome societies that are
organized on a social basis. In the region in
which the Grange is strong, this need is best
supplied.

There is need of the greatest diversity in coun-
try life affairs, but there is equal need of a social
cohesion operating among all these affairs and
tying them all together. This life must be de-
veloped, as we have said, directly from native
or resident forces. It is neither necessary nor

108 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

desirable that an exclusive hamlet system
be brought about in order to secure these ends.
The problem before the Commission is to sug-
gest means whereby this development may be
directed and hastened directly from the land.

The social disorder is usually unrecognized.
If only the farms are financially profitable, the
rural condition is commonly pronounced good.
Country life must be made thoroughly attractive
and satisfying as well as remunerative, and able
to hold the center of interest throughout one's
lifetime. With most persons this can come only
with the development of a strong community
sense or feeling. The first condition of a good
country life, of course, is good and profitable
farming. The farmer must be enabled to live
comfortably. Much attention has been given to
better farming, and the progress of a generation
has been marked. Small manufacture and bet-
ter handicrafts need now to receive attention,
for the open country needs new industries and
new interests. The schools must help to bring
these things about.

The economic and industrial questions are, of
course, of prime importance, and we have dealt

COHESION NEEDFUL 109

with them; but they must all be studied in their
relations to the kind of life that should ultimately
be established in rural communities. The Com-
mission will fail of its purpose if it confines itself
merely to providing remedies or correctives for
the present and apparent troubles of the farmer,
however urgent and important these troubles
may be. All these matters must be conceived of
as incidents or parts in a large constructive pro-
gram. We must begin a campaign for rural
progress.

To this end, local government must be de-
veloped to its highest point of efficiency, and all
agencies that are capable of furthering a better
country life must be federated. It will be neces-
sary to set the resident forces in motion by
means of outside agencies, or at least to direct
them, if we are to secure the best results. It is
specially necessary to develop the cooperative
spirit, whereby all people participate and all be-
come partakers.

The cohesion that is so marked among the dif-
ferent classes of farm folk in older countries
cannot be reasonably expected at this period in
American development. Nor is it desirable that

110 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

a stratified society should be developed in this
country. We have here no remnants of a feudal
system, fortunately no system of entail, and no
clearly drawn distinction between agricultural
and other classes. We are as yet a new country
with undeveloped resources, many far-away pas-
tures, which, as is well known, are always green
and inviting. Our farmers have been moving
and numbers of them have not yet become so well
settled as to speak habitually of their farm as
"home." We have farmers from every European
nation and with every phase of religious belief
often grouped in large communities, naturally
drawn together by a common language and a
common faith, and yielding but slowly to the
dominating and controlling forces of American
farm life. Even where there was once social
organization, as in the New England town (or
township), the competition of the newly settled
West and the wonderful development of urban
civilization have disintegrated it. The middle-
aged farmer of the central states sells the old
homestead without much hesitation or regret
and moves westward to find a greater acreage
for his sons and daughters. The farmer of the

INDIVIDUALISM 111

middle west sells the old home and moves to the
mountain states, to the Pacific Coast, to the
South, to Mexico, or to Canada.

Even when permanently settled, the farmer
does not easily combine with others for financial
or social betterment. The training of genera-
tions has made him a strong individualist, and he
has been obliged to rely mainly on himself. Self-
reliance being the essence of his nature, he does
not at once feel the need of cooperation for busi-
ness purposes or of close association for social
objects. In the main, he has been prosperous,
and has not felt the need of cooperation. If he
is a strong man, he prefers to depend on his own
ability. If he is ambitious for social recognition,
he usually prefers the society of the town to that
of the country. If he wishes to educate his chil-
dren, he avails himself of the schools of the city.
He does not as a rule dream of a rural organiza-
tion that can supply as completely as the city
the four great requirements of man — health,
education, occupation, society. While his brother
in the city is striving by moving out of the busi-
ness section into the suburbs to get as much as
possible of the country in the city, he does not

112 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

dream that it is possible to have most that is best
of the city in the country.

The time has come when we must give as much
attention to the constructive development of the
open country as we have given to other affairs.
This is necessary not only in the interest of the
open country itself, but for the safety and prog-
ress of the nation.

It is impossible, of course, to suggest remedies
for all the shortcomings of country life. The
mere statement of the conditions, as we find
them, ought of itself to challenge attention to
the needs. We hope that this report of the Com-
mission will accelerate all the movements that
are now in operation for the betterment of coun-
try life. Many of these movements are beyond
the reach of legislation. The most important
thing for the Commission to do is to apprehend
the problem and to state the conditions.

The philosophy of the situation requires that
the disadvantages and handicaps that are not a
natural part of the farmer's business shall be re-
moved, and that such forces shall be encouraged
and set in motion as will stimulate and direct
local initiative and leadership.

RECONSTRUCTIVE ACTION 113

The situation calls for concerted action. It
must be aroused and energized. The remedies
are of many kinds and they must come slowly.
We need a redirection of thought to bring about
a new atmosphere, and a new social and intellec-
tual contact with life. This means that the habits
of the people must change. The change will come
gradually, of course, as a result of new leader-
ship; and the situation must develop its own
leaders.

Care must be taken in all the reconstructive
work to see that local initiative is relied on to
the fullest extent, and that federal and even state
agencies do not perform what might be done by
the people in the communities. The centralized
agencies should be stimulative and directive,
rather than mandatory and formal. Every effort
must be made to develop native resources not
only of material things but also of people.

It is necessary to be careful, also, not to copy
too closely the reconstructive methods that have
been so successful in Europe. Our conditions
and problems differ widely from theirs. We
have no historical social peasantry, a much less
centralized form of government, unlike systems

114 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

of land occupancy, wholly different farming
schemes and different economic and social sys-
tems. Our country necessities are peculiarly
American.

The correctives for the social sterility of the
xopen country are already in existence or under
way, but these agencies all need to be strength-
ened and especially to be coordinated and feder-
ated; and the problem needs to be recognized by
all the people. The regular agricultural depart-
ments and institutions are aiding in making
farming profitable and attractive, and they are
also giving attention to the social and community
questions. There is a widespread awakening, as
a result of this work. This awakening is greatly
aided by the rural free delivery of mails, tele-
phones, the gradual improvement of highways,
farmers' institutes, cooperative creameries and
similar organizations, and other agencies.

The good institutions of cities may often be
applied or extended to the open country. It
appears that the social evils are in many cases no
greater in cities in proportion to the number of
people than in country districts; and the very
concentration of numbers draws attention to

SPECIAL EFFORTS 115

the evils in cities and leads to earlier application
of remedies. Recently much attention has been
directed, for example, to the subject of juvenile
crime, and the probation system in place of jail
sentences for young offenders is being put into
operation in many places. Petty crime and im-
morality are certainly not lacking in rural dis-
tricts, and it would seem that there is a place
for the extension of the probation system to
towns and villages.

Aside from the regular churches, schools and
agricultural societies, there are special organiza-
tions that are now extending their work to the
open country, and others that could readily be
adapted to country work. One of the most
promising of these newer agencies is the rural
library that is interested in its community. The
libraries are increasing, and they are developing
a greater sense of responsibility to the commun-
ity, not only stimulating the reading habit and
directing it, but becoming social centers for the
neighborhood. A library, if provided with suit-
able rooms, can afford a convenient meeting-
place for many kinds of activities and thereby
serve as a coordinating influence. Study clubs

116 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

and travelling libraries may become parts of it.
This may mean that the library will need itself
to be redirected, so that it will become an active
rather than a passive agency; it must be much
more than a collection of books.

Another new agency is the county work of the
Young Men's Christian Association which, by
placing in each county a field secretary, is seek-
ing to promote the solidarity and effectiveness
of rural social life, and to extend the larger in-
fluence of the country church. The Commission
has met the representatives of this county work
at the hearings, and is impressed with the pur-
pose of the movement to act as a coordinating
agency in rural life.

The organizations in cities and towns that are
now beginning to agitate the development of
better play, recreation and entertainment offer
a suggestion for country districts. It is impor-
tant that recreation be made a feature of country
life, but we consider it to be important that this
recreation, games and entertainment, be devel-
oped as far as possible from native sources
rather than to be transplanted as a kind of theat-
ricals from exotic sources.

IMPROVEMENT HAS BEGUN 117

Other organizations that are helping the coun-
try social life, or that might be made to help it,
are women's clubs, musical clubs, reading-clubs,
athletic and playground associations, historical
and literary societies, local business men's organi-
zations and chambers of commerce, all genuinely
cooperative business societies, civic and village
improvement societies, local political organiza-
tions, granges and other fraternal organizations,
and all groups that associate with the church
and school.

There is every indication, therefore, that the
social life of the open country is in process of
improvement, although the progress at the pres-
ent moment has not been great. The leaders
need to be encouraged by an awakened public
sentiment and all the forces should be so related
to each other as to increase their total effective-
ness while not interfering with the autonomy of
any of them.

The proper correctives of the underlying
structural deficiencies of the open country are
knowledge, education, cooperative organizations,
and personal leadership. These we may now dis-
cuss in more detail.

118 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

7. NEED OF AGRICULTURAL OR COUNTRY LIFE
SURVEYS.

The time has now come when we should know
in detail what our agricultural resources are. We
have long been engaged in making geological
surveys, largely with a view to locating our miner-
eral wealth. The country has been explored and
mapped. The main native resources have been
located in a general way. We must now know
what are the capabilities of every agricultural
locality, for agriculture is the basis of our pros-
perity and farming is always a local business.
We cannot make the best and most permanent
progress in the developing of a good country life
until we have completed a very careful inventory
of the entire country.

This inventory or census should take into
account the detailed topography and soil con-
ditions of the localities, the local climate, the
whole character of streams and forests, the agri-
cultural products, the cropping systems now in
practice, the conditions of highways, markets,
facilities in the way of transportation and com-
munication, the institutions and organizations,
the adaptability of the neighborhood to the es-

SURVEYS 119

tablishment of handicrafts and local industries,
the general economic and social status of the
people and the character of the people themselves,
natural attractions and disadvantages, historical
data, and a collation of community experience.
This would result in the collection of local fact,
on which we could proceed to build a scientifi-
cally and economically sound country life.

Beginnings have been made in several states
in the collection of these geographical facts,
mostly in connection with the land-grant col-
leges. The United States Department of Agri-
culture is beginning by means of soil surveys,
study of farm management and other investi-
gations; and its demonstration work in the South-
ern states is in part of this character. These
agencies are beginning the study of conditions in
the localities themselves. It is a kind of exten-
sion work. All these agencies are doing good
work; but we have not yet as a people come to an
appreciation of the fact that we must take ac-
count of stock in detail as well as in the large.
We are working mostly around the edges of the
problem, and feeling of it. The larger part of
the responsibility of this work must lie with the

120 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

different states, for they should develop their
internal resources. The whole work should be
coordinated, however, by federal agencies acting
with the states, and some of the larger relations
will need to be studied directly by the federal
government itself. We must come to a thoroughly
nationalized movement to understand what prop-
erty we have and what uses may best be made
of it. This in time will call for large appropria-
tions by state and nation.

In estimating our natural resources, we must
not forget the value of scenery. This is a dis-
tinct asset, and it will be more recognized as
time goes on. It will be impossible to develop a
satisfactory country life without conserving all
the beauty of landscape, and developing the
people to the point of appreciating it. In parts
of the East, a regular system of parking the open
country of the entire state is already begun, con-
structing the roads, preserving the natural feat-
ures and developing the latent beauty in such a
way that the whole country becomes part of one
continuing landscape treatment. This in no way
interferes with the agricultural utilization of the
land, but rather increases it. The scenery is in

EDUCATION 121

fact, capitalized, so that it adds to the property
values and contributes to local patriotism and to
the thrift of the commonwealth.

8. NEED OF A REDIRECTED EDUCATION.

The subject of paramount importance in our
correspondence and in the hearings is education.
In every part of the United States there seems to
be one mind, on the part of those capable of
judging, on the necessity of redirecting the rural
schools. There is no such unanimity on any other
subject. It is remarkable with what similarity
of phrase the subject has been discussed in all
parts of the country before the Commission.
Everywhere there is a demand that education
have relation to living, that the schools should
express the daily life, and that in the rural dis-
tricts they should educate by means of agri-
culture and country life subjects. It is recog-
nized that all difficulties resolve themselves in
the end into a question of education.

The schools are held to be largely responsible
for ineffective farming, lack of ideals, and the
drift to town. This is not because the rural
schools, as a whole, are declining, but because

122 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

they are in a state of arrested development and
have not yet put themselves in consonance with
all the recently changed conditions of life. The
very forces that have built up the city and town
school have caused the neglect of the country
school. It is probable that the farming popula-
tion will willingly support better schools as soon
as it becomes convinced that the schools will
really be changed in such a way as to teach per-
sons how to live.

The country communities are in need of social
centers, — places where persons may naturally
meet, and where a real neighborhood interest
exists. There is difference of opinion as to where
this center should be, some persons thinking it
should be in the town or village, others the library,
others the church or school or grange hall. It is
probable that more than one social center should
develop in large and prosperous communities.
Inasmuch as the school is supported by public
funds and is therefore an institution connected
with the government of the community, it should
form a natural organic center. If the school de-
velops such a center, it must concern itself
directly with the interests of the people. It is

SCHOOLS 123

difficult to make people understand what this
really means, for school-teaching is burdened
with tradition. The school must express the
best cooperation of all social and economic forces
that make for the welfare of the community.
Merely to add new studies will not meet the need,
although it may break the ground for new ideas.
The school must be fundamentally redirected,
until it becomes a new kind of institution. This
will require that the teacher himself be a part of
the community and not a migratory factor.

The feeling that agriculture must color the
work of rural public schools is beginning to ex-
press itself in the interest in nature-study, in the
introduction of classes in agriculture in high-
•th««l« »»«i tlccwktrt, a»d im the t »t «]»li«Vi m»»i
of separate or special schools to teach farm and
home subjects. These agencies will help to bring
about the complete reconstruction of which we
have been speaking. It is specially important
that we make the most of the existing public
school system, for it is this very system that
should serve the real needs of the people. The
real needs of the people are not alone the arts by
which they make a living, but the whole range

124 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

of their customary activities. As the home is
the center of our civilization, so the home sub-
jects should be the center of every school.

The most necessary thing now to be done for
public school education in terms of country life
is to rouse all the people to the necessity of such
education, to coordinate the forces that are be-
ginning to operate, and to project the work
beyond the schools for youth into continuation
schools for adults. The schools must represent
and express the community in which they stand,
although, of course, they should not be confined
to the community. They should teach health
and sanitation, even if it is necessary to modify
the customary teaching of physiology. The teach-
ing should be visual, direct and applicable. Of
course, the whole tendency of the schools will be
ethical if they teach the vital subjects truthfully;
but particular care should be taken that they
stand for the morals of the pupils and of the
communities.

We find a general demand for federal encour-
agement in educational propaganda, to be in
some way cooperative with the states. The
people realize that the incubus of ignorance

EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY 125

and inertia is so heavy and so widespread as to
constitute a national danger, and that it should
be removed as rapidly as possible. It will be
increasingly necessary for the national and state
governments to cooperate to bring about the
results that are needed in agricultural and other
industrial education.

The consideration of the educational problem
raises the greatest single question that has come
before the Commission, and which the Commis-
sion has to place before the American people.
Education has now come to have vastly more
significance than the mere establishing and main-
taining of schools. The education motive has
been taken into all kinds of work with the people,
directly in their homes and on their farms, and
it reaches mature persons as well as youths.
Beyond and behind all educational work there
must be an aroused intelligent public sentiment;
to make this sentiment is the most important
work immediately before us. The whole country
is alive with educational activity. While this
activity may all be good, it nevertheless needs to
be directed and correlated, and all the agencies
should be more or less federated.

126 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

The arousing of the people must be accom-
plished in terms of their daily lives, or of their
welfare. For the country people this means that
it must be largely in terms of agriculture. Some
of the colleges of agriculture are now doing this
kind of work effectively, although on a pitiably
small scale as compared with the needs. This is
extension work, by which is meant all kinds of
educational effort directly with the people, both
old and young, at their homes and on their farms;
it comprises all educational work that is con-
ducted away from the institution and for those
who cannot go to schools and colleges. The best
extension work now proceeding in this country—
if measured by the effort to reach the people in
their homes and on their own ground — is that
coming from some of the colleges of agriculture
and the United States Department of Agricul-
ture. Within the last five or ten years, the col-
leges of agriculture have been able to attack the
problem of rural life in a new way. This exten-
sion work includes such efforts as local agricul-
tural surveys, demonstrations on farms, nature-
study and other work in schools, boys' and girls'
clubs of many kinds, crop organizations, redirec-

EXTENSION WORK 127

tion of rural societies, reading-clubs, library
extension, lectures, travelling-schools, farmers'
institutes, inspections of herds, barns, crops,
orchards and farms, publications of many kinds,
and similar educational effort directly in the
field.

To accomplish these ends, we suggest the es-
tablishment of a nation-wide extension work.
The first or original work of the agricultural
branches of the land-grant colleges was academic
in the old sense; later there was added the great
field of experiment and research; there now
should be added the third coordinate branch,
comprising extension work, without which no
college of agriculture can adequately serve its
state. It is to the extension department of these
colleges, if properly conducted, that we must
now look for the most effective rousing of the
people on the land.

In order that all public educational work in the
United States may be adequately studied and
guided, we also recommend that the United
States Bureau of Education be enlarged and sup-
ported in such a way that it will really represent
the educational activities of the nation, becom-

128 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

ing a clearing-house, and a collecting, distribut-
ing and investigating organization. It is now
wholly inadequate to accomplish these ends. In
a country in which education is said to be the
national religion, this condition of our one ex-
pressly federal educational agency is pathetic.
The good use already made of the small appro-
priations provided for the Bureau, shows clearly
hat it can render a most important service ift
sufficient funds are made available for its use.

9. NECESSITY OF WORKING TOGETHER.

It is of the greatest consequence that the
people of the open country should learn to work
together, not only for the purpose of forwarding
their economic interests and of competing with
other men who are organized, but also to develop
themselves and to establish an effective com-
munity spirit. This effort should be a genuinely
cooperative or common effort in which all the
associated persons have a voice in the manage-
ment of the organization and share proportion-
ately in its benefits. Many of the so-called "co-
operative" organizations are really not such,
for they are likely to be controlled in the interest

CO-OPERATION 129

of a few persons rather than for all and with no
thought of the good of the community at large.
Some of the societies that are cooperative in
Dame are really strong centralized corporations
or stock companies that have no greater interest
in the welfare of the patrons than other corpo-
rations have.

At present the cooperative spirit works itself
out chiefly in business organizations, devoted to
selling and buying. So far as possible, these
business organizations should have more or less
social uses; but even if the organizations cannot
be so used, the growth of the cooperative spirit
should of itself have great social value, and it
should give the hint for other cooperating
groups. There is great need of associations in
which persons cooperate directly for social re-
sults. The primary cooperation is social and
should arise in the home, between all members
of the family.

The associations that have an educational
purpose are very numerous, such as the common
agricultural societies and clubs devoted to stock-
raising, fruit-growing, grain-growing, poultry-
keeping, floriculture, bee-culture, and the like,

130 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

mostly following the lines of occupation. These
are scarcely truly cooperative, since they usually
do not effect a real organization to accomplish a
definite end, and they may meet only once or
twice a year; they hold conventions, but usually
do not maintain a continuous activity. These
societies are the greatest benefit, however, and
they have distinct social value. No doubt a
great many of them could be so reorganized or
developed as to operate continuously through-
out the year and become truly cooperative in
effort, thereby greatly increasing their influence
and importance.

A few great farmers' organizations have in-
cluded in their declarations of purposes the whole
field of social, educational and economic work.
Of such, of national scope, are Patrons of Hus-
bandry and the Farmers' Union. These and
similar large societies are effective in proportion
as they maintain local branches that work toward
specific ends in their communities.

While there are very many excellent agricul-
tural cooperative organizations of many kinds,
the farmers nearly everywhere complain that
there is still a great dearth of association that

CO-OPERATION 131

really helps them in buying and selling and de-
veloping their communities. Naturally, the
effective cooperative groups are in the most
highly developed communities; the general farmer
is yet insufficiently helped by the societies.
The need is not so much for a greater number of
societies as for a more complete organization
within them and for a more continuous active
work.

Farmers seem to be increasingly feeling the
pressure of the organized interests that sell to
them and buy from them. They complain of
business understandings or agreements between
all dealers from the wholesaler and jobber to the
remote country merchants, that prevent farmers
and their organizations from doing an indepen-
dent business.

The greatest pressure on the farmer is felt in
regions of undiversified one-crop farming. Under
such conditions, he is subject to great risk of
crop failure; his land is soon reduced in produc-
tiveness; he usually does not raise his home sup-
plies, and is therefore dependent on the store
for his living; and his crop, being a staple and
produced in enormous quantities, is subject to

132 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

world prices and to speculation, so that he has
no personal market. In the exclusive cotton
and wheat regions, the hardships of the farmer
and the monotony of rural life are usually very
marked. Similar conditions are likely to obtain
in large-area stock-ranging, hay-raising, tobacco-
growing and the like. In such regions, great
discontent is likely to prevail and economic
heresies to breed. The remedy is diversification
in farming on the one hand, and organization on
the other.

The Commission has found many organiza-
tions that seem to be satisfactorily handling
the transporting, distributing and marketing
of farm products. They are often incorporated
stock companies in which the cooperators have
the spur of money investment to hold them to
their mutual obligations. In nearly all cases,
the most successful organizations are in regions
that are strongly dominated by similar products,
as fruit, dairy, grain, or live-stock.

Two principles may be applied in these busi-
ness societies : in one class, the organization is in the
nature of a combination, and attempts to estab-
lish prices and perhaps to control the production;

CO-OPERATION 133

in the other class, the organization seeks its re-
sults by studying and understanding the natural
laws of trade and taking advantage of conditions
and regulating such evils as may arise, in the
same spirit as a merchant studies them, or as a
good farmer understands the natural laws of
fertility.

With some crops, notably cotton and the grains,
it is advantageous to provide cooperative ware-
houses in which the grower may hold his products
till prices rise ; and also in which scientific systems
of grading of the products may be introduced.
In certain fruit regions, community packing-
houses have proved to be of the greatest benefit.
In the meantime the cotton or grain in the ware-
house becomes, for business purposes, practically
as good as cash (subject to charge for insurance)
in the form of negotiable warehouse receipts.
This form of handling products is now coming
to be well understood, and, combined with good
systems of farming, it is capable of producing
most satisfactory results.

Organized effort must come as the voluntary
expression of the people; but it is essential that
every state should enact laws that will stimulate

134 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

and facilitate the organization of such coopera-
tive associations, care being taken that the work-
ing of the laws be not cumbersome. These laws
should provide the association with every legal
facility for the transaction of the business in
which they are to engage. They are as impor-
tant to the state as other organizations of capital,
and should be fostered with as much care, and
their members and patrons be adequately safe-
guarded. It is especially important that these
organizations be granted all the powers and ad-
vantages given to corporations or other aggrega-
tions of capital, to the end that they may meet
these corporations on equal legal ground when
it is necessary to compete with them. Such laws
should not only protect the cooperative societies,
but should provide means that will allow the
societies to regulate themselves, so that they
may be safeguarded from becoming merely com-
mercial organizations through the purchase or
control of the stock by dealers in the products
that they handle. It is not unlikely that fed-
eral laws may also be needed to encourage co-
operation.

Organized associative effort may take on spe-

CO-OPERATION 135

cial forms. It is probable, for example, that
cooperation to secure and to employ farm labor
would be helpful. It may have for its object
the securing of telephone service (which is al-
ready contributing much to country life and is
capable of contributing much more), the ex-
tension of electric lines, the improvement of
highways, and other forms of betterment. Partic-
ular temporary needs of the neighborhood may
be met by combined effort, and this may be
made the beginning of a broader permanent
organization.

A method of cooperative credit would un-
doubtedly prove of great service. In other
countries credit associations loan money to their
members on easy terms and for long enough time
to cover the making of a crop, demanding se-
curity not on the property of the borrower, but
on the moral warranty of his character and in-
dustry. The American farmer has needed money
less, perhaps, than land-workers in some other
countries, but he could be greatly benefitted by
a different system of credit, particularly where
the lien system is still in operation. It would
be the purpose of such systems, aside from pro-

136 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE '

viding loans on the best terms and with the ut-
most freedom consistent with safety, to keep as
much as possible of the money in circulation
in the open country where the values originate.
The present banking systems tend to take the
money out of the open country and to loan it
in town or to town-centered interests. We
suggest that the national bank examiners be
instructed to determine, for a series of years,
what proportion of the loanable funds of rural
banks is loaned to the farmers in their localities,
in order that data may be secured on this ques-
tion. All unnecessary drain from the open
country should be checked, in order that the
country may be allowed and encouraged to de-
velop itself.

It is essential that all rural organizations, both
social and economic, should develop into some-
thing like a system, or at least that all the efforts
be known and studied by central authorities.
There should be, in other words, a voluntary
union of associative effort, from the localities
to the counties, states, and the nation. Mani-
festly, government in the United States cannot
manage the work of voluntary rural organiza-

RURAL PROGRAM 137

tion. Personal initiative and a cultivated co-
operative spirit are the very core of this kind of
work; yet both state and national government,
as suggested, might exert a powerful influence
toward the complete organization of rural affairs.
Steps should be taken whereby the United
States Department of Agriculture, the state
departments of agriculture, the land-grant col-
leges and experiment stations, the United States
Bureau of Education, the normal and other
schools, shall cooperate in a broad program for
aiding country life in such a way that each in-
stitution may do its appropriate work at the
same time that it aids all the others and contri-
butes to the general effort to develop a new rural
social life.

10. THE COUNTRY CHURCH.

This Commission has no desire to give advice
to the institutions of religion nor to attempt
to dictate their policies. Yet any consideration
of the problem of rural life that leaves out of
account the function and the possibilities of
the church, and of related institutions, would
be grossly inadequate. This is not only because

138 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

in the last analysis the country life problem is
a moral problem, or that in the best development
of the individual the great motives and results
are religious and spiritual, but because from the
pure sociological point of view the church is
fundamentally a necessary institution in country
life. In a peculiar way the church is intimately
related to the agricultural industry. The work
and the life of the farm are closely bound to-
gether, and the institutions of the country react
on that life and on one another more intimately
than they do in the city. 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 reorganization of rural life.

The great spiritual needs of the country com-
munity just at present are higher personal and
community ideals. Rural people need to have
an aspiration for the highest possible develop-
ment of the community. There must be an
ambition on the part of the people themselves
constantly to progress in all of those things that
make the community life wholesome, satisfying,

COUNTRY CHURCH 139

educative and complete. There must be a de-
sire to develop a permanent environment for
the country boy and girl, of which they will be-
come passionately fond. As a pure matter of
education, the countryman must learn to love
the country and to have an intellectual apprecia-
tion of it. More than this, the spiritual nature
of the individual must be kept thoroughly alive.
His personal ideals of conduct and ambition must
be cultivated.

Of course the church has an indispensable
function as a conservator of morals. But from
the social point of view, it is to hold aloft the
torch of personal and community idealism. It
must be a leader in the attempt to idealize coun-
try life.

The country church doubtless faces special
difficulties. As a rule it is a small field. The
country people are conservative. Ordinarily
the financial support is inadequate. Often there
are too many churches in a given community.
Sectarian ideas divide unduly and unfortunately.
While there are many rural churches that are
effective agents in the social evolution of their
communities, it is true that as a whole the coun-

140 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

try church needs new direction and to assume
new responsibilities. Few of the churches in
the open country are provided with resident
pastors. They are supplied mostly from the
neighboring towns and by a representative of
some single denomination. Sometimes the pul-
pit is supplied by pastors of different denomina-
tions in turn. Without a resident minister the
church work is likely to be confined chiefly to
services once a week. In many regions there
is little personal visitation except in cases of
sickness, death, marriage, christening or other
special circumstance. The Sunday School is
sometimes continued only during the months
of settled weather. There are young people's
organizations to some extent, but they are often
inactive or irregular. The social activity of
the real country church is likely to be limited
to the short informal meetings before and after
services and to suppers that are held for the
purpose of raising funds. Most of the gather-
ings are designed for the church people them-
selves rather than for the community. The
range of social influence is therefore generally
restricted to the families particularly related

COUNTRY CHURCH 141

to the special church organization, and there
is likely to be no sense of social responsibility
for the entire community.

In the rural villages there are generally several
or a number of churches of different denomina-
tions, one or more of which are likely to be weak.
The salaries range from $400 to $1,000. Among
Protestants there is considerable denominational
competition and consequent jealousy or even
conflict. United effort for cooperative activity
is likely to be perfunctory rather than sympa-
thetic and vital. The pastor is often overloaded
with station work in neighboring communities.

It is not the purpose of the Commission to
discuss the difficulties of the rural church at this
time nor to present a solution for them, but, in
the interests of rural betterment, it seems proper
to indicate a few considerations that seem to be
fundamental.

(1) In New England and in some other parts
of the North, the tremendous drawback of
denominational rivalry is fairly well recognized
and active measures for church federation are
well under way. This does not mean organic
union. It means cooperation for the purpose of

142 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

trying to reach and influence every individual in
the community. It means that " some church is
to be responsible for every square mile." When
a community is over-churched, it means giving
up the superfluous church or churches. When a
church is needed, it means a friendly agreement
on the particular church to be placed there.
This movement for federation is one of the most
promising in the whole religious field, because it
does not attempt to break down donominational
influence or standards of thought. It puts
emphasis, not on the church itself, but on the
work to be done by the church for all men,
churched and unchurched. It is possible that all
parts of the country are not quite ready for
federation, although a national church federation
movement is under way. But it hardly seems
necessary to urge that the spirit of cooperation
among churches, the diminution of sectarian
strife, the attempt to reach the entire community,
must become the guiding principles everywhere
if the rural church is long to retain its hold.

(1) The rural church must be more completely
than now a social center. This means not so
much a place for holding social gatherings,

COUNTRY CHURCH 143

although this is legitimate and desirable, but a
place whence constantly emanates influences that
go to build up the moral and spiritual tone of the
whole community. The country church of the
future is to be held responsible for the great
ideals of community life as well as of personal
character.

(2) There should be a large extension of the
work of the Young Men's Christian Association
into the rural communities. There is apparently
no other way to grip the hearts and lives of the
boys and young men of the average country
neighborhood. This association must regard
itself as an ally of the church, with a special
function and a special field.

(3) We must have a complete conception of
the country pastorate. The country pastor must
be a community leader. He must know the rural
problems. He must have sympathy writh rural
ideals and aspirations. He must love the country.
He must know country life, the difficulties that
the farmer has to face in his business, some of the
great scientific revelations made in behalf of
agriculture, the great industrial forces at work
for the making or the unmaking of the farmer,

144 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

the fundamental social problems of the life of
the open country.

Consequently, the rural pastor must have
special training for his work. Ministerial col-
leges and theological seminaries should unite
with agricultural colleges in this preparation of
the country clergyman. There should be better
financial support for the clergyman; in many
country districts it is pitiably small. There is
little incentive for a man to stay in a country
parish, and yet this residence is just what must
come about. Perhaps it will require an appeal
to the heroic young men, but we must have more
men going into the country pastorates not as a
means of getting a foothold but as a permanent
work. The clergyman has an excellent chance for
leadership in the country. In some sections he is
still the dominating personality. But everywhere
he may become one of the great community
leaders. He is the key to the country church
problem.

11. PERSONAL IDEALS AND LOCAL LEADERSHIP.

Everything resolves itself at the end into a
question of personality. Society, or government,

PERSONAL IDEALS 145

cannot do much for country life unless there is
voluntary response in the personal ideals of those
who live in the country. Inquiries by the Com-
mission, for example, find that one reason for
the shift from the country to town is the lack of
ideals in many country homes and even the
desire of the countryman and his wife that the
children do not remain on the farm. The obliga-
tion to keep as many youths on the farms as are
needed there, rests on the home more than on
the school or on society.

It is often said that better rural institutions
and more attractive homes and yards will neces-
sarily follow an increase in profitableness of
farming; but as a matter of fact, high ideals may
be quite independent of income, although they
cannot be realized without sufficient income to
provide good support. Many of the most thrifty
farmers are the least concerned about the char-
acter of the home and school and church. One
often finds the most attractive and useful farm
homes in the difficult farming regions. On the
other hand, some of the most prosperous agricul-
tural regions possess most unattractive farm
premises and school buildings. Many persons

10

146 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

who complain most loudly about their incomes
are the last to improve their home conditions
when their incomes are increased; they are more
likely to purchase additional land and thereby
further emphasize the barrenness of home life.
Land-hunger is naturally strongest in the most
prosperous regions.

When an entire region or industry is not
financially prosperous, it is impossible, of course,
to develop the best personal and community
ideals. In the cotton-growing states, for example,
the greatest social and mental development has
been apparent in the years of high prices for
cotton; and the same is true in exclusive wheat
regions, hay regions, and other large areas
devoted mainly to one industry.

While it is of course necessary that the farmer
receive good remuneration for his efforts, it is
nevertheless true that the money consideration
is frequently too exclusively emphasized in farm
homes. This consideration often obscures every
other interest, allowing little opportunity for the
development of the intellectual, social and moral
qualities. The open country abounds in men and
women of the finest ideals; yet it is necessary to

PERSONAL IDEALS 147

say that other ends in life than the making of
more money and the getting of more goods are
much needed in country districts; and that this,
more than anything else, will correct the un-
satisfying nature of rural life.

Teachers of agriculture have placed too much
relative emphasis on the remuneration and pro-
duction sides of country life. Money-hunger
is as strong in the open country as elsewhere, and
as there are fewer opportunities and demands for
the expenditure of this money for others and for
society, there often develops a hoarding and a
lack of public spirit that is disastrous to the
general good. So completely does the money-
purpose often control the motive, that other
purposes in farming remain dormant. The com-
placent contentment in many rural neighbor-
hoods is itself the very evidence of social incapa-
city or decay.

It must not be assumed that these deficiencies
are to be charged as a fault against the farmer
as a group. They are rather to be looked on as
evidence of an uncorrelated and unadjusted
society. Society is itself largely to blame. The
social structure has been unequally developed.

148 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

The townsman is likely to assume superiority
and to develop the town in disregard of the real
interests of the open country or even in opposi-
tion to them. The city exploits the country; the
country does not exploit the city. The press
still delights in archaic cartoons of the farmer.
There is as much need of a new attitude on the
part of the townsman as on the part of the farmer.
This leads us to say that the country ideals,
while derived largely from the country itself,
should not be exclusive; and the same applies
to city and village ideals. There should be more
frequent social intercourse on equal terms be-
tween the people of the country and those of the
city or village. This community of interests is
being accomplished to a degree at present, but
there is hardly yet the knowledge and sympathy
and actual social life that there should be between
those who live on the land and those who do not.
The business men's organizations of cities could
well take the lead in some of this work. The
country town in particular has similar interests
with the open country about it ; but beyond this,
all people are bettered and broadened by associa-
tion with those of far different environment.

CONSTRUCTIVE LEADERSHIP 149

We have now discussed some of the forces and
agencies that will aid in bringing about a new
rural society. The development of the best
country life in the United States is seen, there-
fore, to be largely a question of guidance. The
exercise of a wise advice, stimulus, and direction
from some central national agency, extending
over a series of years, could accomplish untold
good, not only for the open country, but for all
the people and for our institutions.

In the communities themselves, the same kind
of guidance is needed, operating in good farming,
in schools, churches, societies, and all useful
public work. The great need everywhere is new
and young leadership, and the Commission desires
to make an appeal to all young men and women
who love the open country to consider this field
when determining their careers. We need young
people of quality, energy, capacity, aspiration
and conviction, who will live in the open country
as permanent residents on farms, or as teachers,

150 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE

or in other useful fields, and who, while develop-
ing their own business or affairs to the greatest
perfection, will still have unselfish interest in the
welfare of their communities. The farming
country is by no means devoid of leaders, and is
not lost or incapable of helping itself, but it has
been relatively overlooked by persons who are
seeking great fields of usefulness. It will be well
for us as a people if we recognize the opportunity
for usefulness in the open country and consider
that there is a call for service. ,

L. H. BAILEY.
HENRY WALLACE.
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD.
WALTER H. PAGE.

GlFFORD PlNCHOT.

C. S. BARRETT.
W. A. BEARD.

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