READINGS IN RURAL SOCIOLOGY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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READINGS IN RURAL
SOCIOLOGY
BY
JOHN PHELAN
Professor of Rural Sociology and Director of
Short Courses at Massachusetts Agri-
cultural College
H2eto gorfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920
•
Att rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY THE «MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1920.
PREFACE
The rapid introduction during the past ten years of courses in
rural sociology in universities, colleges, normal schools and other
institutions engaged in the preparation of young men and women
for the rural field has prepared the way for a book of readings
in this subject that may be used as a text for an introductory
course.
Much of the material included in this book has been used with
college classes in this institution and with classes of teachers
in normal schools and in university summer courses. In the
selection of the material it has seemed best to draw upon the
writings of men and women whose long experience or professional
standing entitles them to speak with some degree of authority.
I have assumed that an introductory course in rural sociology
should endeavor: first, to develop a broad, sympathetic under-
standing of the real needs and actual conditions of farm and com-
munity life in the United States ; second, to lead students to ap-
preciate the relationship between life and labor, wealth and wel-
fare on the farm, since farming is not only an occupation but also
a mode of life ; third, to show as concretely as possible the unity
of interest of rural and urban groups based on the fact that the
farm supplies the city not only with food but also with a large
proportion of its population, thus making necessary a sound
rural life as the condition for the development of a permanent
industrial democracy; fourth, to interest students in taking an
active part in the work of those agencies that make for better
conditions on American farms and in American rural communi-
tion; fifth, to endeavor to prevent students from making that
most common of all errors — the undervaluation of the farmer's
own judgment of what is best for himself.
Grateful acknowledgment is here made to the authors and
publishers for their generous contributions and unfailing cour-
tesy. Their names appear from page to page. My thanks are
v
vi PREFACE
due to many colleagues and friends for suggestions and criti-
cisms concerning the organization or selection of the material, and
to President Kenyon L. Butterfield for his interest and encour-
agement in its publication. To my wife, Ida Densmore Phelan,
I am indebted for assistance in the abridgement of selections,
the reading of the proof and the preparation of the index.
JOHN PHELAN.
Massachusetts Agricultural College,
Amherst, Massachusetts,
1920.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 1
Farm Life a Century Ago .... Ethel Stanwood Bolton . 1
Intemperance in Colonial Days . . Percy Wells Bidwell . . 13
What Awaits Rural New England . Thomas Nixon Carver . 16
Facts New England Faces . . . Hampden County Im-
provement League . 20
Agriculture in New England . . . Kenyan L. Butterfield . 20
Bibliography 25
CHAPTER II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST .... 27
The Middle West— The Fiber of the
People Edward Alsworth Ross . 27
The Significance of the Frontier in
American History ..... Frederick Jackson Turner 29
The Spirit of the Pioneer .... Eay Stannard Baker . . 34
The Passing of the Frontier . . . James Bryce .... 35
The Great Southwest . . . . . Eay Stannard Baker . . 36
Life in the Corn Belt Thomas Nixon Carver . 38
Bibliography 44
CHAPTER III
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 46
Social Conditions of the Old and the
New South PHilip Alexander Bruce . 46
Our Carolina Highlanders . E. C. Branson ... 58
The Rural Negro and the South . . Booker T. Washington . 65
Following the Color Line .... Eay Stannard Baker . . 69
Bibliography 72
CHAPTER IV
THE IMMIGRANT IN AGRICULTURE 75
1 Immigration in Agriculture . . . John Olsen .... 75
vii
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
Why Immigrants Go to Cities . . Henry Pratt Fairchild . 86
Immigration as a Source of Farm
Laborers John Lee Coulter ... 88
Bibliography 93
CHAPTER V
PRESENT PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 95
Wanted — A National Policy. in Agri-
culture Eugene Davenport . . 95
Who Is the Farmer? A. M. Simons . . .110
The Point of View in Comparisons of
City and Country Conditions . . Kenyan L. Butterfield . Ill
Soldier Settlements in English-Speak-
ing Countries Elwood Mead .... 114
The Farmer in Relation to the Wel-
fare of the Whole Country . . . Theodore Roosevelt . . 116
Bibliography 117
CHAPTER VI
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 119
A. COOPERATION
The Moral Basis of Cooperation . . Thomas Nixon Carver . 119
Farmers' Cooperative Exchanges . Alexander E. Cance . . 120
Social Effects of Cooperation in Eu-
rope C. 0. Gill 131
B. OWNERSHIP AND TENANCY
Tenant Farming John M. Gillette . . .137
Some Advantages of Tenancy . . W. 0. Hedrick . . . 142
Agrarian Aristocracy and Population
Pressure E. C. Hayes .... 145
C. ADULT LABOR
The Influence of Machinery on the
Economic and Social Conditions of
the Agricultural People . . . H. W. Quaintance . . 147
The Agricultural Element in the Pop-
ulation Eugene Merritt . . . 150
A Point of View on the Labor Prob-
lem L. H. Bailey . . . .152
D. CHILD LABOR
Rural Child Labor John M. Gillette . . . 155
Colorado Beet Workers .... Dr. E. N. Clopper . . 156
CONTENTS
IX
PAGE
Strawberry Pickers of Maryland . . Harry H. Bremer . . 157
Children or Cotton Lewis H. Hine . . . 158
Bibliography 160
CHAPTER VII
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS OF RURAL LIFE 162
Characteristics of the Farmer . . . James Bryce .... 162
The Influence of Farm Life on Child-
hood Charles W. Elliot . . 164
An Appreciation of Rural People . T. N. Carver .... 165
The Rural Environment and Great
Men W. J. Spillman ... 168
Suggestion and City-Drift . . . Ernest R. Groves . . 172
The Mind of the Farmer .... Ernest E. Groves . . 175
The Need of Ideals in Rural Life . Kenyan L. Butterfield . 181
Bibliography 183
CHAPTER VIII
RURAL HEALTH — PHYSICAL AND MENTAL 185
A. RURAL HEALTH — PHYSICAL
A Sociologist's Health Program for
the Rural Community . . . . L. L. Bernard . . . 185
City is Healthier for Children than
the Country Thomas D. Wood . . 193
Rural Sanitation : Definition, Field,
Principles, Methods, and Costs . . W. S. Rankin, M.D. . . 197
B. RURAL HEALTH — MENTAL
Feeble-mindedness Defined . . . E. J. Emerick . . . 203
Fundamental Facts in Regard to
Feeble-mindedness Va. Board of Charities . 204
The Hill Folk Danielson and Davenport 206
The Extent of Feeble-mindedness in
Rural and Urban Communities in
New Hampshire Report of the Children's
Commission . . . 213
Feeble-minded Citizens in Pennsyl-
vania Dr. W. E. Key . . .214
Amentia in Rural England . . . A. F. Tredgold . . . 217
Urban and Rural Insanity . . .U.S. Bureau of Census . 218
What is Practicable in the Way of
Prevention of Mental Defect . . W. E. Fernald . . .219
Bibliography 223
xii CONTENTS
PACE
The Community Fair J. Sterling Moran . . 402
The Smith-Hughes Act v • . . . 407
Bibliography 407
CHAPTER XV
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 411
Ten Years in a Country Church . . Matthew B. McNutt . . 411
Land Tenure and the Rural Church . Henry Wallace . . . 421
Rural Economy as a Factor in the
Success of the Church . . . . T. N. Carver . . . .426
The Church Situation in Ohio . . C. 0. Gill .... 431
The Genoa Parish Rev. A. Ph. Kremer . . 435
Rural Work of the Y. M. C. A. . . A. E. Roberts and Henry
Israel 437
County Work of the Y. W. C. A. . . Jessie Field . . . . 440
Ten Years' Progress in County Y. M.
C. A. Work in Michigan . . . C. L. Rame . . . .441
The Call of the Country Parish . . Kenyan L. Butterfield . 442
Sectarianism Warrer. H. Wilson . . 443
Report of Committee on Country
Church Function, Policy, and Pro-
gram Kenyan L. Butterfield,
Miss Jessie Field,
Charles 0. Gill,
Albert E. Roberts,
Henry Wallace . . . 444
Bibliography 452
CHAPTER XVI -
THE VILLAGE 455
The History of Village Improvement
in the United States W. H. Manning . . .455
Social Privileges of Village or Small
City C. J. Galpin .... 464
The Town's Moral Plan .... llarlan P. Douglass . . 467
Civic Improvement in Village and
Country Frank A. Waugh . . . 471
Bibliography 476
CHAPTER XVII
THE SURVEY 478
The Survey Idea in Country Life
Work L. H. Bailey .... 478
Five Principles of Surveys . . . Paul U. Kellogg . . . 481
CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
A Method of Making a Social Survey
of a Rural Community . . . . C. J. Galpin .... 484
The Social Anatomy of an Agricul-
tural Community C. J. Galpin .... 490
Bibliography 497
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ORGANIZATION OP RURAL INTERESTS t . 500
A. RURAL ORGANIZATION
Rural Organization Kenyan L. Butterfield . 500
B. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
The International Institute of Agri-
culture Official 512
C. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION
"Work of the Office of Markets and
Rural Organization C. J. Brand .... 515
The Place of Government in Agricul-
tural Cooperation and Rural Or-
ganization 516
The County Farm Bureau . . . . L. R. Simons .... 518
Farmers' Clubs Kenyon L. Butterfield . 536
Farmers' Social Organizations . . A. D. Wilson .... 541
D. VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION
Declaration of Purposes of the Pa-
trons of Husbandry Preamble 552
E. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
The National Non-Partisan League 557
F. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION.
How to Organize a Community . . E. L. Morgan .... 567
Definition of a Rural Community . . C. W. Thompson . . . 576
Bibliography 576
CHAPTER XIX
LEADERSHIP 581
Leadership or Personal Ascendency . Charles E. Cooley . . 581
Leadership E. C. Hayes . . . .583
Rural Leadership L. H. Bailey .... 584
The Secret of Influence .... James Bryce .... 584
Training for Rural Leadership . . John M. Gillette . . . 585
The Sources of Leadership . . . John E. Boardman . . 587
The Development of Rural Leadership G. Walter Fiske . . . 589
xiv CONTENTS
PAGE
Seaman A. Knapp Pub. U. S. Bur. of Ed. . 601
Henry Wallace Herbert Quick . . .604
Bibliography 609
CHAPTER XX
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 611
The Sociology of Rural Life . . . A. R. Mann . . . .611
The Scope of Rural Sociology . . John M. Gillette . . .615
The Teaching of Rural Sociology . . Dwight Sanderson . . 620
Definitions of Rural Sociology 622
Bibliography 623
READINGS IN RURAL SOCIOLOGY
CHAPTER I
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND
FARM LIFE A CENTURY AGO 1
ETHEL STANWOOD BOLTON
IN the old days, when methods of work about the house and
farm were prized for their hoary antiquity rather than, as now,
for their novelty, and all farmers did as their ancestors had
done, there was hardly a man in the New England towns who
was not engaged in the pleasant occupation of farming. The
storekeeper and the miller plowed, harrowed, and cultivated in
the intervals of their other work, and the minister himself hung
up his gown after the last service on Sunday, and, like the rest
of the community, worked his land on Monday morning. A
century ago each town owned a farm, the use of which was al-
lowed the minister, rent free, as a part of his salary.
The struggle in modern times is for the money to buy the
necessities of life; then there was less to buy, and each man
was dependent on his own exertions to get the necessities them-
selves from the soil or from the stock which he could afford to
keep.
In those days, aside from the work which the miller or the
itinerant cobbler performed, each farm was a nearly self-sup-
porting entit}T, both for food and clothing. In modern times
the great English artist, printer, and socialist, William Morris,
founded a settlement which tried to be independent of the out-
side world, growing and making all its own necessities and
luxuries. The experiment was no more of a success than Mr.
Alcott's similar scheme at Fruitlands, in the town of Harvard.
i Adapted from a paper read upon several occasions, privately printed.
1
SOCIOLOGY
In our great-grandfathers' time, however, this was no expe:
ment, curious and interesting, but a fact to be reckoned wi
from day to day throughout their lives.
The village store sold the few luxuries of life — white ai
brown sugar, salt, West Indian goods, such as molasses ai
spices, and, most of all, New England rum.
Nearly every town boasted a foundry, where articles we
made by hand, which would be far beyond the ability of 01
modern blacksmith. Here were made the plows and scythes,
the foundry was equipped with a trip hammer; shovels and ho»
for outside work, nails for the carpenter, from the great ire
spike to the shingle nail. The tools the carpenter used also can
from the hands of the local blacksmith. In many country town
old garrets will yield great chisels, primitive axes, and wrong!
iron bit-stocks, all made by hand and testifying to the excellenc
of workmanship by their age and condition. The househol
utensils, too, were his work, the fire dogs, toasting racks, hob;
iron kettles, skillets, and an endless array of less common things
and all this in addition to the shoeing of horses and oxen.
From 1799 to 1853, without a break, a good man of
Massachusetts town kept a line-a-day diary, and from that I as
going to quote, from the four seasons of the year, to show th
dull routine of work in which the lives of our grandfathers am
great-grandfathers were passed; how it lacked the diversifiec
interests which we consider necessary to our happiness to-day
and yet how little the unrest of modern times enters into any o:
its spirit.
Take these short sketches of the life of James Parker, knowi
as ' * Captain James, ' ' a young and newly married man in 1806
" April 1st. I cut Hop-poles at the South End.
2nd. I wrought for Ivory Longl'ey, cart wood. Mr
Edgarton Departed this life.
3d. Fast Day. I and Ruthy (his wife) went to Mr.
Harkness (his wife's father). James came
home with us.
4th. I and Ruthy went to the Funeral of Mr. Edgarton.
Buryed in Mason order. The day was pleas-
ant. A great collection of People.
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 3
5th. I split staves, mortised posts. Ruthy went to
Groton.
6th. I and Ruthy went to meeting 1/2 the day 1/2 went
to funeral of Joel Willard's Child that was
drowneded.
7th. I made a Curb to the well. Went to town Meet-
ing.
8th. I partly made a yoak and it stormed. ' '
Later on, in the summer, his work changed, and was that of a
tiller of the soil about his business:
" July 28th. I mow'd 1/2 the day, 1/2 plow'd hops. Abner
mow'd all day.
29th. I plow'd and how'd hops 1/2 the day. I went and
plow'd Abner 's Corn. Abner helpt me 1/2
the day.
30th. I sow'd some turnips, it rain'd. I went to Davids
(his brother).
31st. I helpt Father plow with my oxen and Vene helpt
Drive.
August 1st. I was haying. Abner helpt me 1/2 the day. I
carted my N to Capt. Edgarton's.
2nd. I was plowing my stubble, it rain'd and Clowdy.
3. I went to meeting. Esq. Tom (the minister's son)
red the Discourse.
And so it is a constant reiteration of plowing, mowing, raking,
hoeing, all done by hand or with the slow-paced oxen. How
many lessons in patience the farmer learned in those days, and
what a dignified ease there was about it all! There were no
complaints when the hay was all cut and the weather turned
bad, but a calm acceptance. In October preparations for the
winter were being made.
" October 1 I began to draw and hew the timber for my hog-
pen.
2nd. I drew and hew'd timber for the same Abner
helpt me.
RURAL SOCIOLOGY
3rd. I hew'd timber, Abner helpt me. I dug some
potatoes.
4th. I kiled my Bull. Abner helpt me.
5th. I and Ruthy went to meeting 1/2 went to Mr.
Harkness's.
6th. I helpt my father 1/2 the day made cider at
Capt, Hazen's. 1/2 dug Potatoes at the
Pond.
7th. I and Ruthy went to Lancaster. I went to
A little later, after frost had set in, more animals were killed
• — cattle, sheep, and pigs — and frozen. The creatures were hung
whole in the attic or in some convenient shed, and represented
the winter's supply. Apples were dried or turned into cider,
for few were kept in barrels for the winter's use, as we now
keep them.
Most towns had cider mills in which the neighbors had rights.
The mills were usually stone-walled and sometimes were cut into
a hillside, like a cellar open in front, Inside was the great press,
which was worked by a horse going round and round, harnessed
to a great bar overhead. The size of the press is evidence of
the universal use of cider.
There is one note which is dominant throughout the diary, and
that is one of mutual helpfulness. When haying time came, it
was not each man for himself, but all the men of a small neigh-
borhood worked together, and harvested the hay from each farm
until it was all well housed. Even then the harvest was slow
in comparison with what our modern machinery will accom-
plish. If any were in trouble, help was immediate and prac-
tical. If a man were sick and the burden fell on the
woman alone, the cattle were tended and the work done by the
neighbors.
Throughout December Captain Parker sledded wood for him-
self and for others with his pair of oxen, and doubtless got some
of the ready money which all men like to have. One entry on
Christmas Day, less than ten years later, shows how much our
forefathers lacked appreciation of the joys of a holiday. Cap-
tain James writes :
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 5
"December 25th. I helpt clean the school-house. The school
kept 1/2 the day."
There was one great industry which brought much money to
New England towns for many years; that was hop growing.
Disease and competition from more Western States finally put
an end to one of the great money-making employments of the
New England farm of those days. In the middle of one Massa-
chusetts town there can still be seen a field plowed and hilled
for the hops that were never planted. Why they were not, no
one can tell now, but there the furrows are, in the midst of a
great wood, with sixty-year-old pine trees reaching far over your
heads, growing in that forsaken field. On many of the farms
one can see the old hop kilns in a more or less advanced state of
ruin adding their picturesque touch to the landscape.
A hundred years ago the vocation of a husbandman or farmer
was as truly a trade to be learned as that of cobbler, miller, black-
smith, or the rest. So young boys were apprenticed to this
trade, as to the others. This custom, also, in large measure,
solved the problem of help for the farmers of that day. The
low wages paid these apprentices for their services gives some
explanation of the reasons for the acquisition of a comfortable
living by many farmers.
Among the Parker papers in Shirley I found an indenture of
about one hundred years ago, which gives a vivid picture of the
duties of the apprentice and his master. The father's caution
in demanding education "if the said apprentice is capable to
learn," shows how meager the learning was in those days among
the poorer classes.
"This Indenture Witnesseth, that David Atherton of Shirley
in the County of Middlesex and Commonwealth of Massa-
chusetts, Yeoman, hath put and placed and by these presents
doth put and bind out his son David Atherton Junr — and
the said David Atherton Junr doth hereby put, place
and bind out himself as an Apprentice to James Parker
Esqr of Shirley in the County and Commonwealth afore-
said to learn the art or trade of an husbandman ; the said David
Atherton Junr after the manner of an Apprentice to dwell with
and serve the said James Parker Esqr from the day of the date
o RURAL SOCIOLOGY
hereof untill the eighth of January one thousand, eight hundred
and twenty four, at which time the said apprentice if he should
be living will be twenty one years of age. During which time
or term the said apprentice his said master well and faithfully
shall serve, his secrets keep, and his lawful commands every-
where at all times readily obey, he shall do no damage to his
said master, nor wilfully suffer any to be done by others, and
if any to his knowledge be intended, he shall give his master
seasonable notice thereof. He shall not waste the goods of his
said master, nor lend them unlawfully to any ; at cards, dice or
any unlawful game he shall not play, fornication he shall not
commit, nor matrimony contract during the said term ; taverns,
ale-houses or places of gaming he shall not haunt or frequent;
from the service of his said master he shall not absent himself,
but in all things and at all times he shall carry himself and be-
have as a good and faithful Apprentice ought, during the whole
time or term aforesaid — and the said James Parker Esqr on his
part doth hereby promise, covenant and agree to teach and in-
struct the said apprentice or cause him to be instructed in the
art or trade of husbandman by the best way and means he can,
and also to teach and instruct the said apprentice or cause him
to be taught and instructed to read and write and cypher to the
Rule of Three if said apprentice is capable to learn and shall
faithfully find and provide for the said apprentice good and
sufficient meat, drink, clothing, lodging and other necessaries
fit and convenient for such an apprentice during the term afore-
said, and at the Expiration thereof shall give unto the said ap-
prentice two good suits of wearing apparel, one for Lord's Day
and the other for working days and also Eighty Dollars in good
curant money of this Commonwealth at the end of said term.
In testimony whereof the said parties have hereunto interchange-
ably set their hands and seals this sixteenth day of October in
the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty."
The food of our forefathers has always had a certain enchant-
ment. Who can read of the chicken roasting on the spit before
the open fire without wanting a taste ; or who can listen to tales
of one's grandmother of the great baking of those days without
a feeling of longing? In hunting over dry deeds in the Court
House in Cambridge, I came across one which interested me very
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 7
much, as it gave an enlightening touch to the question which to
all housekeepers is a most vivid one — the food problem.
In 1823, Hezekiah Patterson, who lived in the eastern part
of Shirley, being old and tired of the responsibility of farming,
sold his forty-eight acres of land and his house to Thomas
Hazen Clark, in exchange for the support of himself and his
wife, Jane, for the rest of their lives. They reserved room
enough for their horse and its hay in the barn, and room enough
in the house for themselves, and then gave an itemized account
of what they called "support" for one year.
"6 bushels of rye
6 bushels of indian Corn
1 bbl. white flour
200 Ibs. Shoat pork
100 Ibs. beef.
1/2 quintal of Cod-fish
60 Ibs. of butter
60 Ibs. of cheese
2 Ibs. of SouChong tea
2 Ibs; chocolate
1 Ib. Coffee
5 Ibs. loaf sugar
30 Ibs. of brown sugar
10 gals. New England Rum
1 gal. West Indian Rum
6 gal. Molasses
2 bushels of Salt
1/2 bushel of white beans
15 bushels potatoes
1/2 of all the cider and enough wood for the fire. ' '
This yearly menu hardly suggests variety, but it was at least
sweet and substantial.
While the men worked in the fields and tended the cattle, the
women had their many duties, too. Their energies were de-
manded for so many things that a housekeeper in those days
need be an expert along many lines. Men in those days ate
simple things, and simple cooking, like very simple clothes, must
8 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
be so much the better intrinsically. The food that is simple
must be well seasoned or well cooked to tempt, while a compli-
cated dish disguises its poor cooking by its high seasoning, as a
badly cut dress may be made to look well by its many furbe-
lows. Baking in a brick oven was an art. The oven was filled
with wood, lighted and burned out, making the bricks of the
right degree of heat. Then the oven must be cleaned. At the
farthest end were put the beans, followed by the brown bread,
Indian pudding, white bread, pies, and cake. They were al-
lowed to stay, and were taken out in the reverse order from
that in which I have named them. All other cooking must be
done over the coals of a great wood fire, or in a tin kitchen
placed on the hearth. We may imagine that the table service
in a country farmhouse was not complicated. It was etiquette
to eat with the knife, as forks had not come into use. Pewter
and old blue iron ware abounded ; copper, also, was much used,
and must have added color to the kitchen. After the inner
man was satisfied, the wife must still clothe her husband, her-
self, and her children. Cloth could, of course, be bought, but
as a rule was far too expensive for anything but a farmer's
very best. Homespun was the general wear, and to make home-
spun the wool had to be taken from their own sheep oftentimes
to make their clothes, and all the process after the shearing and
washing fell to the woman's share. I believe that there were
itinerant tailoresses later on, but of course only the well-to-do
could afford such luxuries. The flax, too, had to be spun and
woven. Many houses throughout the country still show the old
loom room, where the loom stood for generations. Many parts
of old looms can still be found, reeds, shuttles, needles, and
heddles.
Stockings had to be knit and many endless tasks performed
to keep the family warm and dry. Often the man of the family
did part of the cobbling of his children 's shoes and his own.
Candles must be made foe light, and candle dipping was a
hard and dirty task. It took skill to make them round and
even. Later molds came in fashion and made the task easier
and less dirty. Soap had to be made for the family use. These
were tasks in addition to the ordinary sweeping, cooking, and
housework which every house demands. Floors were scrubbed
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 9
with soap and sand until they were white — and they were kept
so by the thrifty housekeeper.
Nearly every town had a man whose occupation must have
been picturesque — the hatter — who made those enormous beaver
hats that looked almost like fur, that men wore years ago. It
took him a long time to make a hat, and when it was done the
owner wore it proportionately long.
We New Englanders are all familiar with the costumes of a
hundred years ago. The Shakers still wear them when they
dress in their uniform. When Mother Ann Lee founded the
order, about 1793, the clothes as you see them now were the
ordinary clothes in vogue then. They have never changed the
style, unless of late years some of them have grown more worldly
and have adopted modern dress. And now, after a hundred
years of disuse, the stylish cloak of a former century is again in
demand.
And when all the work was done, they gathered around the
great fireplace, in the candle-light. The light, even until kero-
sene came to be used, was very poor, and in those days one read
with the paper or book in one hand and the candle in the other,
so that it might be moved back and forth before the print. The
picture that one has is the coziest in the world, but contempor-
aries tell us that the reality was often far from the ideal. The
great chimneys, with their huge fires, created a draught which
brought the outer cold into the room, and fires really warmed but
a small area. Yet here, around this kitchen fire, centered all the
life of the home, all its comfort and its homeliness.
Life was not all a grind to these good people, for they had
their social gatherings, and varied ones, too. First and fore-
most stood the church with its services, the social center of the
town. But when we remember that country towns were nearly
isolated from the outer world ; that the only travel was by the
slow method of stage-coach or private carriage, and was seldom
indulged in ; it seems natural that the people should have turned
to the church, where all were welcome — in fact, where all must
go, or be labored with by the minister and deacons. So it came
to pass that this was the one thing in which all were interested,
in which all had a share. When we remember, too, how large a
part religion played in the minds and hearts of our ancestors,
10 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
it is inevitable that the church should stand as the most im-
portant and the unifying factor of their lives.
On Sundays nearly every one went to meeting and stayed all
day. No one cooked on Sunday, and all the food for that day
was cold. The women were expected to go to church all day, as
well as the men, so that the Saturday baking, which tradition
still holds many a modern household to regard, was then a mat-
ter of urgent need as well as a matter of conscience. The man
who had relatives living near the church, or who lived near by,
was indeed lucky, because a warm fire at noon might then be his.
Otherwise the dinner was carried and eaten in the church in
winter, or outside in summer. JEow many of us would submit
to the discomfort of sitting all day in an unheated building,
regaling ourselves at noon with cold food, with the thermometer
many times in the neighborhood of zero? Yet duty led them
and personal comfort did not enter into their consideration.
We may hope that the dish of gossip, taken with their dinner,
compensated for much which might otherwise have been unbear-
able. Perhaps this human companionship softened the denun-
ciations and threats of the two sermons. The church, aside from
its spiritual teachings, furnished a place in which all the town
met once a week. It was more or less political in a broader sense,
for there matters of national politics, state politics, and even
those of local importance were discussed by the minister. As
he was the best educated man, his opinion and its expression very
often formed that of the majority of those of the other men in
town.
In the church, also, were held the town meetings, with their
serious and sometimes humorous debates, which furnished a
means of growth and expression to others. It was this training
which enabled the colonies to withstand the mother country.
Men had learned to think in a logical way, and to express their
thoughts. They were keen to find the weak places in an argu-
ment and to search out sophistries. When England attempted
to cheat their sense of justice, she found a community made up
of citizens, not of peasants.
The town was divided into districts; the center of each was
the school. Each district met and decided its own educational
problems as best suited it; each engaged its own teachers, and
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 11
disbursed its own share of the school appropriations. Bitter
and often sanguinary were the fights over this important ques-
tion; many and hard were the debates as to whether it should
be a ' ' writing school " or a * ' reading school, ' ' and how they could
make their share of the funds hold out.
These districts also took care of their own roads, and most men,
rather than pay their taxes in cash, "worked out" their taxes
on the roads. So far as one can gather from the records the
roads were treated a good deal like a plowed field, and must
have been exceedingly poor. They were plowed every spring
and heaped up into the middle, with the intention of making a
watershed.
The roads were a constant annoyance at all seasons — mud
spring and fall, dust in the summer, and drifting snow in win-
ter. Complaint was made in a nearby town that a certain man
named Hildreth had put his stone wall so far into the road that
the drifting snow made it impassable. The road commissioner
warned Hildreth to remove the wall, which he refused to do.
So the wall was moved back by those working on the road.
Hildreth tore it down in the night and rebuilt it on the former
site. The wall was torn down again by the road commissioner,
and replaced where it belonged. It was then guarded by men
until the town met and voted that Hildreth leave his wall where
it should be, and write a letter of apology to the commissioner.
All this Hildreth did with a bad grace.
A domestic amusement was a house or barn raising. To this
about every one in the town went, the men to do the actual
raising, the women and girls to prepare and serve the feast
which followed. Their hospitality was generally lavish. To
one who has never partaken of the delights which can be baked
in a brick oven, the tales of those so blessed seem more or less
like those of the ''Arabian Nights." A halo, formed of the
reminiscences of gay good times and the appetite of youth, is
put around these pleasures of a bygone day, making them shine
with a preternatural light. And at these raisings, besides the
baking and the roast meats, was there not cider and Medford
rum to make glad the heart of man ?
Funerals and weddings were also legitimate social times, the
former to afford the luxury of woe, the latter of unalloyed joy.
12 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Then there were the kitchen dances in the winter, and each man
took his turn at entertaining, and showed with pride the good
things that his wife could make. The good times, as we look
back upon them, seem so simple and wholesome, they were en-
tered into with such a spirit of enthusiasm and expectancy, that
it makes one wish that one could now have so whole-hearted a
good time from so little. It seems almost as if the hard work
and drudgery of daily life gave a fine zest to their amusements.
Later on the Lyceum came to try the sinews of men in debate,
came to prove the literary ability of their wives and daughters.
They debated on everything under the sun — huge philosophical
subjects jostled trivialities; questions of morals, religion, and
politics followed discussions of farming and cattle raising. The
records of such a Lyceum lie before me. The members began
their work by this debate, "Resolved, that a scolding wife is a
greater evil than a smoking house. ' ' They decided in the affirm-
ative, and then passed to this, "Resolved, that the old man in
the story in Webster's spelling book was justified in throwing
stones at the boy. ' ' They next discussed the morality of giving
prizes in the schools. Excitement often waxed high, and per-
sonalities were dealt in, but the end of the evening brought calm.
It was devoted to the literary efforts of the women of the Lyceum.
These consisted of recitations, readings, and original essays.
So our fathers on the farm varied their hard work with fun
in much smaller quantities than we enjoy to-day. But in those
days the actual struggle was less; a man toiled for his daily
bread itself with no competitors but the soil, the weather, and
his own temperament. Now a man works at his specialty to
outdo his competitors, to get his goods to the market quicker and
in better condition, to sell that he may buy, not to grow and
tend that he may eat and be warm.
Through all their life there is a note of contentment, and I
think that deep in the heart of most modern farmers that same
note could be struck. For after all is said, the actual owner-
ship of a large piece of mother earth is a continual source of
peace; and the freedom from the oversight and commands of
others, to be at no man's beck and call, lends a dignity to the
farmer, and enhances his self-respect, until he feels himself and
is the equal of any in the land.
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 13
A rhyme on an old English pitcher shows that this feeling has
been through many, many years the underlying one of the Anglo-
Saxon farmers :
Let the mighty and great
Koll in splendor and state,
I envy them not, I declare it.
I eat my own lamb,
My own chicken and ham,
I shear my own sheep and wear it.
I have lawns, I have bowers,
I have fruits, I have flowers,
The lark is my morning charmer ;
So you jolly dogs now,
Here's God bless the plow —
Long life and content to the farmer.
INTEMPERANCE IN COLONIAL DAYS 1
PERCY WELLS BIDWELL
intemperance of the colonial period," says Charles
Francis Adams, " is a thing now difficult to realize ; and it seems
to have pervaded all classes from the clergy to the pauper."
We have -already remarked the large consumption of cider in
the farmers' families and have commented upon the importance
of the retail sale of stronger liquors in the business of the country
stores and taverns. Every important occasion in home or church
life, every rural festivity was utilized as an opportunity for
generous indulgence in intoxicants. Neither the haying-season
in early summer, nor the hog-killing season at the end of autumn
could be successfully managed without the aid of liberal pota-
tions of "black-strap" and "stone-wall." Husking bees, house-
raisings, training days, and even christenings, burials and or-
i Adapted from "Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of
the Nineteenth Century." Publication of the Connecticut Academy of So-
cial Science, 1916, pp. 374-77.
14 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
dinations were often disgraced by the drunkenness of partici-
pants.
The craving for stimulants with its disastrous results on the
fortunes of individuals and on the general moral tone of the
community proceeded partly from the coarse and unvaried diet
of the farming population, and probably to a larger extent, from
a desire to relieve at least temporarily the dreary monotony of
village life. There are always two opposing views current
among the older generation concerning the relative virtues of
their early days as compared with the conditions which they
see about them in their declining years. Some look back to a
sort of Golden Age and view all the features of the past through
rose-colored spectacles. Others with a more optimistic frame of
mind are quite willing to admit that the passage of the years
has brought improvement along many lines and do not hesitate
to glory in the progress that has been achieved under their eyes
during a long life.
There are probably elements of truth in both views, but as
far as the general features of social life are concerned and their
effect in stimulating or in depressing the individual, the latter
view seems to be more in accord with the facts as we know them.
The Rev. Mr. Storrs, in reviewing a pastorate of fifty years
in the town of Braintree, Mass., said: "And when it is remem-
bered that fifty years ago, and for many after years, no post
office blessed the town, nor public conveyance for letters, papers,
or persons, was to be had, even semi-weekly, except through vil-
lages two miles distant ; that but for the occasional rumbling of
a butcher's cart, or a tradesman's wagon, the fall of the hammer
on the lap-stone, or the call of the plowman to his refractory
team, our streets had well nigh rivaled the graveyard in silence,
it can scarcely surprise one, that our knowledge of the outer
world was imperfect, nor that general intelligence and enterprise
was held at a discount ; and if powder, kettle drums, and conch-
shells, proclaimed the celebration of a wedding ; or if wine, and
spirits more dangerous than any from the vasty deep, were im-
bibed at funerals to quiet the nerves and move the lachrymals
of attendants ; or if rowdyism and fisticuffs triumphed over law
and order on town meeting, muster and election days, ... it was
but the legitimate overflow of combined ignorance and heaven-
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 15
daring recklessness. Those days are passed and shame throws
its thick mantle over them. ' '
An isolated community always tends toward social degenera-
tion, and the drunkenness, rowdyism, and general coarseness of
manners of the inland towns at this time were but premonitions
of the more disastrous results which might be expected from
economic and social stagnation. At no time in these commun-
ities was there a distinct criminal class, of the type now tech-
nically known as degenerate ; but petty crimes, stealing, assaults
and disturbances were of frequent occurrence. There are many
indications that the influence of the church was decadent. Up
to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the ecclesiastical or-
ganization had secured, by means of a censorship of the private
life of its members so inquisitorial as to seem nowadays intoler-
able, fairly submissive adherence to a rigid code of morality.
With the decline in the authority of the church in matters of
doctrine came <also a weakening in its control over the conduct of
its adherents.
Another cause of laxity in morals, of probably greater im-
portance, was the general spirit of lawlessness spreading over
the country after the Revolution, which seems especially to have
affected the country districts. The soldiers returning from the
war found it hard to settle down and get their living honestly in
the previous humdrum routine. They brought back with them
new and often vicious habits which the rest of the community
imitated. Then, in the interval between the overturn of the
regularly constituted colonial authorities and the establishment
of the national government under the new federal constitution,
there was a period of semi-anarchy, when obedience to any sort
of law was difficult to enforce. The disrespect for authority in
both church and state which arose from these conditions could
not fail to have a distinctly bad influence on the moral conditions
in inland towns. In the disturbances of those days the inland
farmer was generally to be found on the side of rebellion, and
active in opposing a reestablishment of law and order.
Too much emphasis must not be laid upon the dark features of
the community life of these times. Undoubtedly there were
many advantages arising from the homogeneous construction of
society, from the uniformity of the inhabitants in race, religion
16 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and manners and from the absence of class distinc-
tions based on differences in wealth. The inland villages
were by no means entirely lacking the opportunities for helpful
and stimulating social t intercourse ; but it was from the home
rather than from the community life that the principal virtues
of the agricultural population, of which their descendants have
been so justly proud, were chiefly derived.
WHAT AWAITS RURAL NEW ENGLAND 1
THOMAS NIXON CARVER
MY most salient impression was that agriculture as an inde-
pendent industry able in itself to maintain a community does
not exist in the hilly parts of New England. Outside of such
exceptionally fertile sections as the Connecticut Valley, the
farmers engage in such occupations as lumbering and keeping
summer-boarders, often carrying on farming merely to supply
their own tables with vegetables and their horses and cows with
forage. I found few farmers who could secure sufficient revenue
even from sales of hay and milk, the most profitable of New Eng-
land farm products.
These facts, however, do not indicate a decline in agriculture.
Farming never was a self-sufficing industry in New England.
In the days of so-called prosperity domestic manufactures were
carried on in farm-houses. The transfer of manufacturing from
the farms to the towns accounts as much for the decline of rural
prosperity as anything else — the rise of agriculture in the West,
for example. Moreover, the development of farming, dairying,
and market gardening near the cities offsets the decline in the
remote districts.
Now, domestic manufactures can never be revived in New
England, though an attempt is being made to revive them at
Deerfield, Mass. Summer boarders cannot support the whole
country, nor can lumbering. But, why should not northern
New England become a great stock-raising country? The land
has become so cheap, and the grazing lands of the far West have
i Adapted from World's Work, 9; 5748-52, Jan., 1905.
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 17
become relatively so dear, that New England offers advantages
to sheep- and cattle-breeders. One acre of New Hampshire hill-
side pasture is worth three acres of grazing lands of western
Kansas, Colorado or Montana. There is plenty of water, so that
one western problem does not exist. Fifty men with whom I
talked on my journey agreed that New England is a good cattle
country, but no one knew why more cattle are not raised. I be-
lieve that the two chief obstacles are : first, the difficulties of pro-
viding winter forage, and, second, the small size of the average
farm.
When a man owns a farm of from fifty to one hundred acres,
he must plow some of it if he expects to make a living from it,
but plowing these steep and rocky hillsides is ruinous, for the
rains wash away more fertility than the crops extract. But no
farmers ' family can live from the produce of so small a farm if it
is used only for pasturing. If the farms ran from 400 to 600
acres each, enough stock could be pastured on each one to sup-
port in comfort the average farmer's family. There would still
remain, however, the question of winter forage, for these hillsides
can not even produce hay to advantage — that is, hay-making ma-
chinery can not be used. Profitable stock-raising on a farm of
this kind would therefore be limited by the amount of level
land, relatively free from stones, upon which hay-making ma-
chinery could be used.
But there is another possibility. In Europe, wherever stock-
breeding has developed on a large scale, cattle are driven from
the hills to the valleys in the fall and from the valleys to the hills
in the spring. The owners of pasture lands in the hills and
mountains buy their stock in the spring, pasture them during
the summers, and sell them in the fall to the feeders in the val-
leys ; or the feeders in the valleys drive their stock in the spring
to the hills and mountains for summer pasturage and bring them
back in the fall to be wintered on the forage grown on the valley
land. The next fifty years may see the development of a con-
siderable industry of this kind in New England. Some experi-
ments are already being made. Mr. J. W. Clark, of Wilmot,
N.'H., was formerly a sheep-rancher in Montana. He recently
sold his interests there and returned to New Hampshire to start
a sheep-ranch. He has acquired about one thousand acres of the
18 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ordinary rocky, hillside pasture land, which, he holds, is much
more productive than the Montana land, and about as cheap.
Almost universally, the prosperity of western agriculture and
the poverty of New England farming are explained by the dif-
ference in the fertility of the soil. Yet this difference is offset
in part by the better markets in the East. If a western farmer
should try to make a living at ordinary staple farming on so
small a farm as the average one in New England, using the prim-
itive New England methods, he would have as hard a time as
the New England farmer to make a living. On the other hand,
if the New Englander would use as much land as the western
farmer, and have modern labor-saving machinery, he would
probably be able to make as good a living. A young man wish-
ing to start out as a farmer would do better to invest in New
England land than in western land. A good Iowa farm will
cost from $75 to $100 .an acre ; good New England pasture land
from $10 to $25 an acre.
New England writers on agriculture have made the mistake
of looking to Europe rather than to the West for their models.
They have held up as examples to the New England farmers Eu-
ropean peasants who cultivate a few acres to a high degree of
intensity to yield larger crops per acre. But they forget that
these mean small crops per man. Where labor is cheap and land
dear, as in the Netherlands or in the valley of the Po, it is eco-
nomical to raise crops with much labor and little land. In
the United States, where land is cheap and labor dear, the op-
posite method is better. And it is to be hoped that conditions
will never arise in the United States where labor is so cheap
and land correspondingly so dear, as in densely populated Eu-
rope. Since the price of labor in New England conforms pretty
closely to the price in the West, and general social conditions are
much the same, prosperous parts of the West ought to be the
New England models rather than Europe. With this idea in
view, the managers of New England agricultural colleges have
begun to draw on the West for teachers.
The nearness of eastern markets, too, is a very appreciable
advantage to New England. On the railroads covering the sec-
tion, run the milk-trains which enter Boston every morning.
The farmers along any of these railroads deliver cans of milk
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 19
at the nearest station every morning, and receive the cans there
again in the evening, receiving from twenty to thirty cents for
each eight-and-one-half-quart can, though Boston consumers pay
a considerable advance on that price. A western farmer who
could secure such a price would regard himself as opulent.
Again, Boston is one of the best apple markets in the country,
but the market is supplied largely from New York and Michigan.
Yet New England is an excellent apple country. Every year
seedling apple-trees grow without planting and flourish without
care. Even where grafting is done, it has been the custom to
graft only such trees as come up themselves along old stone walls
and other such places. Apple-growing, then, is a New England
possibility.
In the Connecticut River Valley, where extensive cultivation
is possible, the agricultural prospects are very hopeful. I saw
many fields of corn which would astonish a Kansas farmer. The
census returns show a larger yield of corn per acre in New Eng-
land than in a great part of the Corn Belt itself. It is grown,
however, in small fields highly fertilized and intensively culti-
vated, whereas the western farmer never even hoes his corn, yet
he grows the largest crop per man in the world.
On the whole there is every reason to believe that the decline
in New England agriculture is at an end. With the practical
exhaustion of free public land in the far West, the rise in the
price of land in the middle West, and the development of cities
for their markets, the consequent rise in the price of agricultural
products will give a value to New England farms which they
have not had for many years. It is to be hoped, however, that
the process of "abandoning farms" will continue, if this simply
means that several small farms are to be used in one fair-sized
farm upon which the farmer can economically use superior draft
animals and labor-saving machines; for New England methods
of agriculture are fifty years behind the times.
20 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
FACTS NEW ENGLAND FACES *
FROM 1860 to 1910, 828 New England towns lost in population
337,086.
From 1860 to 1910, New England's improved farm lands under
cultivation decreased from 12,215,771 to 7,112,698 acres, a loss
of 42 per cent.
From 1860 to 1909, New England wage-earners increased from
391,836 to 1,101,290, a gain of 359 per cent.
From 1860 to 1909 New England's population increased from
3,110,572 to 6,552,681.
New England is now producing less than 25 per cent, of her
food supplies, the other 75 per cent, and over coming from with-
out her borders.
AGRICULTURE IN NEW ENGLAND 2
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD
NEW ENGLAND as a whole is distinctively an urban region.
While northern New England, comprising Maine, New Hamp-
shire, and Vermont, has few large cities, populous southern New
England, which includes Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Con-
necticut, is dominantly urban. For example, the percentage of
rural population in Massachusetts is less than ten. Metropolitan
Boston, an urban center of perhaps 1,250,000 people, is the great
consuming center of the region, 'and it is supplemented by a
large group of important residence and manufacturing cities of
lesser size not far away from this center, as well as scattered all
over New England. At least 5,000,000 of the 6,000,000 people
in New England are consumers rather than producers of food.
New England grows only a fraction of its food supply. Ac-
curate figures are not available, but it has been estimated that
probably this region has to purchase at least seventy-five per
cent, of its food supply from outside its borders. Furthermore,
1 Adapted from "Real Preparedness at its Vital Point— The Food Sup-
ply." Published by Hampden County Improvement League, Springfield,
Mass.
2 Adapted from Breeder's Gazette, 72: 1154, December, 1917. Chicago.
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 21
New England never will grow all its food. Wheat does well
enough in New England, but it does not pay to grow it. New
England's bread will always be dependent upon outside sources
for the supply of flour. Unquestionably the supply of New Eng-
land-grown meat can be profitably very greatly increased, par-
ticularly pork, mutton, and fish. It is quite conceivable that
New England will in time supply a very large proportion of
these meats from within its own borders. The beef supply can
also be increased, but it is doubtful whether any large percentage
of the consumptive demand will ever be grown in New England.
It seems reasonable to expect that New England may grow
a large share of certain other items among its food needs. It
is an ideal region for both orchard and small fruits, and the
same is true of most vegetables. Apparently it will be possible,
at least from the standpoint of production, for New England to
take care of itself in these respects. The same is true of poultry
and eggs. The most serious difficulty in New England agricul-
ture is connected with the supply of market milk ; we can hardly
expect New England to supply its own butter and cheese. New
England has excellent meadow lands, probably none better in
America. Corn does extremely well in the valleys, with good
yields of both stalk and ear. There is an abundance of natural
grazing on the hills. It would seem as if New England should
be an ideal dairying region. Yet the dairy business for twenty
years has been, to an increasing degree, precarious. The zone
of market milk supply for the Boston area, for example, has been
pushed constantly farther away from the city, so that the largest
proportion of the supply comes from a distance of more than
seventy-five miles. Some milk is sent to Boston from eastern
New York, and before the war a considerable quantity was im-
ported from Canada.
The low price of milk to producers has not met the increasing
cost of such grain as apparently cannot be easily grown in
New England, nor the high wages for labor, due to the competi-
tion of urban industries for the labor supply. The highly cen-
tralized methods of milk distributors in some places, and the
completely disorganized condition in others, as well as the pop-
ular idea that milk is drink and not a food, have also con-
tributed to make the situation extremely difficult for dairymen.
RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The dairyman himself must have some share in the blame for
the situation. There has been very little attempt among the
smaller dairymen to improve their herds, or in other ways to
reduce production costs for a superior grade of milk. The num-
ber of dairy cows is decreasing, dairymen are going out of busi-
ness, and at present there is no apparent relief in sight, except
that under war conditions the price of milk has gone up rapidly,
as it has in other parts of the country. But the emergency sit-
uation is too uncertain to warrant predicting anything for the
future.
This brief survey of the agricultural situation perhaps better
than anything else indicates the probable future of New Eng-
land agriculture after the war, the one factor most uncertain
being the great market milk industry.
Some of the hopeful considerations may here be mentioned.
There is more to New England agriculture than most people
suppose. If a comparison be made between New England agri-
culture as a unit and that of, say, an average agricultural state
of substantially similar area (about 65,000 square miles), I am
confident from some study of statistics that New England would
not suffer in comparison, if such factors were considered as the
total value of farm property, the total value of farm products,
and particularly the value of farm products per acre of improved
land. In the latter respect, New England probably holds the
record for the country.
Moreover, some of the very best farming in America, if not in
the world, will be found in New England. The Aroostook po-
tato region has justly achieved world-wide fame, not only for
quality of product but for average yield and for intelligent
methods of production. The Champlain Valley in Vermont is
one of the rich dairy regions of the country. When former
Dean Henry of Wisconsin wanted a fruit farm for his son
fifteen years ago, out of the fullness of his knowledge of agri-
cultural conditions, he selected a farm in Connecticut, and the
results have justified his choice. The large specialist poultry
farms of Rhode Island and Cape Cod are models of their kind.
The market gardening area about Boston is one of the most
intensive agricultural regions in the country. The tobacco and
onion growers of the Connecticut Valley are highly skilled; the
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 23
town of Hatfield has been called the * * high-water mark of Amer-
ican agriculture." The average yield of onions per acre in the
valley is greater than in any other part of the country. The
net return for shade-grown tobacco is sometimes as high as $800
or $1,000 per acre.
Of course, there are abandoned farms in New England, state-
ments to the contrary notwithstanding, and there are also
"abandoned farmers." But a very large proportion of the land
thus abandoned never could be farmed under modern condi-
tions. When the farm home was self-sustaining these lands an-
swered very well for a combination of vegetable-growing, cattle
and sheep husbandry, and lumbering; but they were never
adapted to a commercial agriculture, and when commercial agri-
culture appeared these lands had to be given up for profitable
farming. Some of these hill lands can well be used for sheep
and goats, some for cattle grazing, some for • orcharding, but
most of them, let us hope, for intelligent forestry. One thing
in favor of New England agriculture is the rainfall, averaging
approximately forty-two inches per year, and generally fairly
well distributed. The markets are excellent. A good system of
highways is rapidly evolving, and the motor truck will undoubt-
edly play a large part in the marketing of the future. Some
day the trolley companies will awaken to the possibilities of a
trolley freight service.
Another asset of New England agriculture is the large num-
ber of organized agencies working in behalf of agriculture.
The Grange is stronger in New England than in any other sim-
ilar area in the country, with more granges and more members.
Within this area, which is about the size of the average state
outside of New England, there are six agricultural colleges, six
experiment stations and six boards of agriculture. At present
New England is far better organized than any other similar
area in the United States with respect to farm bureaus, prac-
tically every county in the whole region now having a farm
bureau or similar organization. Probably more attention is
given to country life matters in New England than in any other
part of the United States, with many kinds of effort and agencies
for the improvement of the home, the school, the health and play
life and the moral and religious life of the country people.
24 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
As to the specific question, what about New England agricul-
ture after the war? I suppose that what I have thus far said
answers the question in the main. We are not to expect rev-
olutionary changes at once, although unquestionably great
changes will come as the result of the war. The interest of the
people of the cities in the quality and cheapness of their food
supply has been aroused as never before. Alongside of this
new interest has come the more active participation of repre-
sentative urban agencies, such as business organizations and
women's associations. People have learned their dependence
upon the farmer.
The participation by thousands of city and village people,
old and young, in the garden work has given a new respect for
agriculture, and the toil and rights of farmers. People who
heretofore supposed that cabbages came from the grocery now
know that they come from the ground. People who had never
given a thought to the farmer's difficulties now understand some
of the uncertainties of the weather as the farmer has to face
them.
The whole problem of food supply in all its aspects has been
given a new unity. The production of food, the transportation
and distribution of food, and the wise use of food have all been
brought together into one common problem, and the rights and
obligations of all the different groups particularly interested in
this common problem have also been brought together — pro-
ducers, distributors and consumers. The part which each must
play is more clear. The dependence of one group upon the other
stands out prominently. The need of close cooperation among
them all has been emphasized. The power and possibility of the
principles of organization, as applied to the food supply problem,
have been demonstrated as never before. What has been done
in Massachusetts has probably been done with equal thorough-
ness in other states. All over the country the food supply prob-
lem has been brought to a degree of organization that has often
been dreamed of but never before attained. All this has been
done by cooperation, not by compulsion. There has never been
anything like it in the history of America. All this leads to my
last point:
The state and the nation are learning that no man liveth
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 25
unto himself. They are learning that under a great call old
animosities can be buried and new relationships established.
I believe that all these results will be permanent — not com-
pletely, but relatively so. I believe that in every one of the
results that I have suggested we shall find — after the war closes
— a permanent addition to our New England farm life as well as
a general gain. Nobody can tell what percentage, so to speak,
of each of these gains will carry over, but I am certain that it
will be high. It means the writing of an entirely new chapter
in New England agriculture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, T. F. Old Home Week in New England. New England
Magazine, 34 : G73-85, August 1906.
Bailey, Wm. B. Urban and Rural New England. Amer. Statistical
Assn., 8:345-388, March, 1903.
Bid well, Percy Wells. Rural Economy at the Beginning of the Nine-
teenth Century. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts
and Science, New Haven, 1916.
Bolton, Mrs. Ethel Stanwood. Shirley Uplands and Intervales. Lit-
tlefield, Boston, 1914.
Boutwell, George. The Decadence of New England, Forum, 10 : 142-
151, October, 1890.
Butterfield, Kenyon L. The Relationship of New England Agriculture
to Manufacturing. The National Association of Cotton Manufac-
tures. Boston, Mass. April, 1916.
Canee, Alexander E. The Decline of the Rural Population in New
England. American Statistical Association, 13:96-101, May,
1912.
Crawford, Mary C. Social Life in Old New England. Little, Boston,
1914.
Drake, Samuel A. A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore.
Little, Boston, 1910.
Dwight, Timothy. Travels in New England and New York. New
Haven, 1821.
Earle, Alice Morse. Customs and Fashions in Old New England.
Scribner's, New York, 1894.
Fiske, John. The Beginnings of New England. Houghton, Boston,
1889.
French, George. New England : What It Is and What It Is To Be.
Boston Chamber of Commerce, 1911.
Hartt, Roland L. A New England Hill Town. Atlantic, 83:561-74;
712-20, April and May, 1899.
Hartt, Roland L. The Regeneration of Rural New England. Outlook
64:504-632, March 3, 1900.
Howard, J. R, Social Problems of Rural New England. Conference
Charities and Corrections, 416-421, 1911.
26 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Johnson, Clifton. New England and its Neighbors. Macmillan, New
York, 1902.
Johnson, Clifton. The New England Country. Lee, Boston, 1897.
Matthews, Mrs. Lois Kimball. The Expansion of New England, Hough-
ton, Boston, 1909.
Mayo, A. D. New England's Gift to the Republic, New England Mag-
azine, 1 : 221-8, October, 18S9.
MacGill, C. E. The New England Type, New England Magazine, 40 :
667-75, August, 1909.
McSweeney, Ed. F. The Food Supply in New England, the situation
we are facing and what we can and should do. The New England
Federation for Rural Progress, March, 1917.
Sanborn, Alvan F. Future of Rural New England. Atlantic, 80 : 74-
83, July, 1897.
Sanborn, Alvan F. The Problems of Rural New England. Atlantic,
79 : 577-598, May, 1897.
Stone, Mason S. The Restoration of Country Life in New England.
Education, 36 : 630-634. No. 10, June, 1916.
Vallandigham, E. What Ails New England? Putnam's Monthly, 6:
719-24, September, 1909.
Weeden, Wm. B. Economic and Social History of New England
1620-1789 (2 volumes), Houghton, Boston, 1890.
Wells, George F. Rural Life. The Status of Rural Vermont. Vt.
Agric. Report, pp. 61-91, 1903.
Winslow, Helen M. Child-life on a New England Farm, Education,
9 : 466-73, March, 1889.
CHAPTEE II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTKY LIFE IN
THE WEST
THE MIDDLE WEST— THE FIBER OF THE PEOPLE1
EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS
A HUNDRED years ago the Rev. Timothy Dwight Commented
complacently on the benefit to Connecticut from the draining
away to the frontier — then western New York — of the restless
spirits who chafed under the rule of the old families and the
Congregational clergy. It never occurred to him that these
insurgent spirits were carrying with them to the wilderness a
precious energy and initiative.
The unprosperous, the shiftless, and the migratory sought the
frontier, to be sure ; but the enterprising, too, were attracted by
it. The timorous and the cautious stayed and accepted the
cramping conditions of an old society ; but those who dared take
chances, to * i place a bet on themselves, ' ' were likely to catch the
western fever. Among the sons and grandsons of such risk
takers, the venturesome tempers cropped out much oftener than
among the sons and grandsons of the stay-at-homes. Hence,
the strange fact that it was the roomy West that settled the
farther West. On each new frontier have swarmed men from
what was itself a frontier only a generation earlier.
By the time some impression about the West has sunk deep
into the eastern mind, the West has swept onward and falsified
it. The Yankee thinks of the Middle West as a land of priva-
tion and hardship ; it is, in fact, a scene of comfort and plenty.
He regards it as peopled by a hodge-podge of aliens, whereas the
hodge-podge is at his own door. He looks upon New England
as the refuge of the primal American spirit, when, in sooth, Iowa
and Kansas are more evenly American in tone than any like
i Adapted from "Changing America," pp. 145-146 and 137-140. Century
Co., 1912.
27
28 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
population in the East. The Back Bay may think of the Illinois
farmer as raising more corn to feed hogs, which he will sell in
order to buy more land on which to raise more corn to feed
more hogs with which to buy more land, and so on. But the
grandson of the man of whom this was said, sends his daughter
to college, taxes himself for a public library, and is patron of
the local art-loan exhibit.
Nor is the Middle West without its delusions. It imagines
it is growing faster than the East, because the drift from the
crowd toward the edge of things, and from the wearied land to
the virgin soils, has been constant in American history. That
the center of population, which has traveled westward at the
average rate of fifty miles a decade, should halt or even retreat
would be deemed a marvel, like the sun standing still in the
vale of Ajalon. Yet that very portent impends. The center,
which migrated fifty-eight miles in the seventies, and forty-eight
miles in the eighties, shifted only fourteen miles in the nineties.
That it then moved on thirty-one miles was due to the rush to
the Pacific slope, where one family being at the long arm of the
lever, balances half a dozen Slovak families shantied in Pittsburg.
The truth is that the East grew faster than the Middle West
through the nineties, and in the last ten years it has been
gaining nearly twice as rapidly, having added a quarter to its
people while the West was adding a seventh. While in the East
one county out of four lost in population, more than two coun-
ties out of five in the Middle West showed a decrease. One
reason is that the Western farmer resents cramping conditions
more strongly, and responds sooner to the lure of fresh acres,
than the Eastern farmer. The West it is that peoples the newer
West, while the enterprising spirits of the older commonwealths
seek their chance in the near . cities. A lifetime ago the old
Yankee stock was faring overland to settle the wilderness. To-
day only a sprinkling of the native Americans west of the Great
Lakes claim an Eastern state as their birthplace. If in Iowa
seventy-one counties out of ninety-nine have gone back in popula-
tion during the last decade, and an equal number in Missouri ,
it is assuredly not from bad times, but from the call of cheap
land in Texas or the Canadian Northwest.
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 29
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN
AMERICAN HISTORY 1
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER
THE Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur
trader, miner, cattle raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisher-
man, each type of industry was on the march toward the West,
impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each passed in succes-
sive waves across the continent. Stand at the Cumberland Gap
and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file —
the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the
fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer — and
the frontier has passed by. Stand at the South Pass in the
Rockies a century later and see the same procession with wider
intervals between. The unequal rate of advance compels us to
distinguish the frontier into the trader's frontier, the rancher's
frontier, or the miner's frontier, and the farmer's frontier.
When the mines and the cow pens were still near the fall line,
the trader's pack trains were tinkling across the Alleghanies,
and the French on the Great Lakes were fortifying their posts,
alarmed by the British trader's birch canoe. When the trappers
scaled the Rockies the farmer was still near the mouth of the
Missouri.
And yet, in spite of the opposition of the interests of the
trader and the farmer, the Indian trade pioneered the way for
civilization. The buffalo trail became the Indian trail, and
this became the trader's " trace"; the trails widened into roads,
and the roads into turnpikes, and these in turn were transformed
into railroads. The same origin can be shown for the railroads
of the South, the Far West, and the Dominion of Canada. The
trading posts reached by these trails were on the sites of Indian
villages which had been placed in positions suggested by nature ;
and these trading posts, situated so as to command the water
systems of the country, have grown into such cities as Albany,
Pittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kan-
sas City.
i Adapted from American Historical Association Report, pp. 199-227,
Boston, 1893.
30 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Generally, in all the Western settlements, three classes, like
the waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First
comes the pioneer, who depends for the subsistence of his fam-
ily chiefly upon the natural growth of vegetation called the
1 'range," and the proceeds of hunting. His implements of
agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his efforts
directed mainly to a crop of corn and a ''truck patch." The
last is a rude garden for growing cabbages, beans, corn for
roasting ears, cucumbers and potatoes. A log cabin, and, oc-
casionally, a stable and a corn crib, and a field of a dozen
acres, the timber girdled or "deadened," and fenced, are
enough for his occupancy. It is quite immaterial whether he
ever becomes the owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the
time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the "lord
of the manor." With a horse and a cow, and one or two
breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods with his family,
and becomes the founder of a new countrjr, or perhaps a state.
He builds his cabin, gathers round him a few other families of
similar tastes and habits, and occupies until the range is some-
what subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more
frequently the case, till the neighbors crowd around, roads,
bridges and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow room. The
preemption law enables him to dispose of his cabin and corn
fields to the next class of emigrants; and, to employ his own
figure, he "breaks for high timber," "clears out for the New
Purchase" or migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same
process over.
The next class of emigrants purchase the lands, add field to
field, clear out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams,
put up hewn log houses with glass windows and brick or stone
chimneys, occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school houses,
court-houses, and exhibit the picture and forms of plain frugal,
civilized life.
Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enterprise
come. The settler is ready to sell out and take advantage of
the rise in property, push farther into the interior, and become
himself a man of capital and enterprise in turn. The small
.village rises to a spacious town or city; substantial edifices of
brick, extensive fields, orchards, and gardens, colleges and
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 31
churches are seen. Broadcloth, silks, leghorns, crapes, and all
the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions are
in vogue. Thus wave after wave is rolling westward; the real
El Dorado is still farther on.
A portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst
the general movement, improve their habits and condition, and
rise in the scale of society. The writer has traveled much
amongst the first class, the real pioneers. He has lived for
many years in connection with the second grade ; and now the
third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana, Illinois,
and Missouri. Migration has become almost a habit in the
West. Hundreds of men can be found, not over fifty years
of age, who have settled for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time on
a new spot. To sell out and remove only a few hundred miles
makes up a portion of the variety of backwoods life and manners.
First, we note that the frontier promoted the formation of a
composite nationality for the American people. The coast was
preponderantly English, but the later tides of continental im-
migration flowed across to the free lands. This was the case
from the early colonial days. The Scotch-Irish and the Pala-
tine Germans, or "Pennsylvania Dutch," furnished the domi-
nant element in the stock of the colonial frontier. With these
people were also the freed indentured servants, or redemp-
tioners, who, at the expiration of their term of service, passed
to the frontier. Very generally these redemptioners were of
non-English stock. In the crucible of the frontier the immi-
grants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed
race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics. The
process has gone on from the early days to our own. The ad-
vance of the frontier decreased our dependence on England.
The coast, particularly of the South, lacked diversified indus-
tries, and was dependent on England for the bulk of its sup-
plies. In the South there was even a dependence upon the
Northern colonies for articles of food. Before long the fron-
tier created a demand for merchants. As it retreated from the
coast it became less and less possible for England to bring her
supplies directly to the consumers' wharfs, and carry away
staple crops, and staple crops began to give way to diversified
agriculture for a time.
32 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The legislation which most developed the powers of the na-
tional government, and played the largest part in its activity,
was conditioned on the frontier. The growth of nationalism
and the evolution of American political institutions were de-
pendent on the advance of the frontier. The pioneer needed
the goods of the coast, and so the grand series of internal im-
provement and railroad legislation began, with potent nationaliz-
ing effects. Over internal improvements occurred great de-
bates, in which grave constitutional questions were discussed.
Sectional groupings appear in the votes, profoundly significant
for the historian. Loose construction increased as the nation
marched westward. But the West was not content with bring-
ing the farm to the factory. Under the lead of Clay — ' ' Harry
of the West," — protective tariffs were passed, with the cry of
bringing the factory to the farm. The disposition of the public
lands was a third important subject of national legislation in-
fluenced by the frontier. "No subject," said Henry Clay,
"which has presented itself to the present, or perhaps any pre-
ceding, Congress, is of greater magnitude than that of the pub-
lic lands." When we consider the far-reaching effects of the
government's land policy upon political, economic, and social
aspects of American life, we are disposed to agree with him.
But this legislation was framed under frontier influences, and
under the lead of western statesmen like Benton and Jackson.
Said Senator Scott, of Indiana, in 1841 : ' ' I consider the pre-
emption law merely declaratory of the custom of common law of
the settlers."
But it was not merely in legislative action that the frontier
worked against the sectionalism of the coast. The economic and
social characteristics of the frontier worked against sectionalism.
The men of the frontier had closer resemblances to the middle
region than to either of the other sections. Pennsylvania had
been the seed plot of frontier emigration, and, although she
passed on her settlers along the Great Valley into the west of
Virginia and the Carolinas, yet the industrial society of these
southern frontiersmen was always more like that of the Middle
region than like that of the tidewater portions of the South,
which later came to spread the industrial type throughout the
South.
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 33
But the most important effect of the frontier has been in
the promotion of democracy here and in Europe. As has been
indicated, the frontier is productive of individualism. Com-
plex society is precipitated by the wilderness into a kind of
primitive organization based on the family. The tendency is
anti-social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly
to any direct control. The taxgatherer is viewed as the rep-
resentative of oppression. Professor Osgood, in an able article,
has pointed out that the frontier conditions prevalent in the
colonies are important factors in the explanation of the Ameri-
can Revolution, where individual liberty was somewhat confused
with the absence of all effective government. The same con-
ditions aid in explaining the difficulty of instituting a strong
government in the period of the Confederacy. The frontier in-
dividualism has from the beginning promoted democracy.
So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency
exists, and economic power secures political power. But the
democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individual-
ism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and
pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its
dangers as well as its benefits. Individualism in America has
allowed a laxity in regard to governmental affairs which has
rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest evils
that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic spirit.
The most effective efforts of the East to regulate the frontier
came through its educational and religious activity, exerted by
interstate migration and by organized societies. The New Eng-
land preacher and the school-teacher left their marks on the
West. The dread of western emancipation from New England's
political and economic control was paralleled by her fears lest
the West cut loose from her religion. Commenting, in 1850, on
reports that settlement was rapidly extending northward in
Wisconsin, the editor of the Home Missionary writes: "We
scarcely know whether to rejoice or mourn over this extension
of our settlements. While we sympathize in whatever tends to
increase the physical resources and prosperity of our country,
we cannot forget that with all these dispersions into remote and
still remoter corners of the land the supply of the means of
grace is becoming relatively less and less." Acting in accord-
34 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ance with such ideas, home missions were established and west-
ern colleges were erected. Thus an intellectual stream from New
England sources fertilized the West. Other sections sent their
missionaries ; but the real struggle was between sects. The con-
test for power and the expansive tendency furnished to the va-
rious sects by the existence of a moving frontier must have had
important results on the character of religious organizations in
the United States. The multiplication of rival churches in the
little frontier towns had deep and lasting social effects. The
effects of western freedom and newness in producing religious
isms is noteworthy. Illustrations of this tendency may be seen
in the development of the Millerites, Spiritualists, and Mormons
of western New York in its frontier days.
To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking char-
acteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acute-
ness and inquisitiveness ; that practical, inventive turn of mind,
quick to find expedients ; that masterful grasp of material things,
lacking in the artistic, but powerful to effect great ends; that
restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working
for good and for evil; and, withal, that buoyancy and exuber-
ance which comes with freedom, — these are traits of the fron-
tier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of
the frontier. We are not easily aware of the deep influence
of this individualistic way of thinking upon our present condi-
tions. It persists in the midst of a society that has passed away
from the conditions that occasioned it. It makes it difficult to
secure social regulation of business enterprises that are essen-
tially public, it is a stumbling-block in the way of civil-service
reform; it permeates our doctrines of education; but with the
passing of the free lands a vast extension of the social tendency
may be expected in America.
THE SPIRIT OF THE PIONEER1
RAY STANNARD BAKER
THE peopling of the country makes one of the most interesting
and significant stories in the history of the nation. For many
i Adapted from "The Great Southwest," Century, 64:9, May, 1902.
(Copyright by Century Company, 1902.)
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 35
years it was the unknown land, the land of possibilities and
wonders, as well as of danger and death. Therefore it has at-
tracted the hardy pioneer, and here, for lack of any other fron-
tier on the continent, the pioneer, though with the germ of
westward ho! still lingering in his blood, has been compelled
at last to settle down. I shall not soon forget the sorrowful
desert-dweller whom I met in what seemed the ends of the earth
in Arizona. His nearest neighbor was fifteen miles away, his
post-office twenty-five miles, and yet he was bemoaning the fact
that the country was becoming crowded. "If there were any
more frontier," he said, ' 'I'd go to" it."
It is hardy blood, that of the pioneer, good stock on which to
found the development of a country. For years the West has
been the lodestone for those adventurous spirits who love the
outdoor and exciting life of the mining prospector, the cow-boy,
the hunter — a healthy, rugged lot, virtually all pure Americans.
THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER1
JAMES BRYCE
So America, in her swift onward progress, sees, looming on the
horizon and now no longer distant, a time of mists and shadows,
wherein dangers may lie concealed whose form and magnitude
she can scarcely yet conjecture. As she fills up her western re-
gions with inhabitants, she sees the time approach when all the
best land, even that which the extension of irrigation has made
available, will have been occupied, and when the land now un-
der cultivation will have been so far exhausted as to yield scan-
tier crops even to more expensive culture. Although transpor-
tation may also have then become cheaper, the price of1 food will
rise ; farms will be less easily obtained and will need more capi-
tal to work them with profit ; the struggle for existence will be-
come more severe. And while the outlet which the West now
provides for the overflow of the great cities will have become less
available, the cities will have grown immensely more populous;
i Adapted from "The American Commonwealth, II," New Edition, (1916),
p. 913. Macmillan, N. Y.
36 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
pauperism, now confined to some six or seven of the greatest, may
be more widely spread ; and even if wages do not sink work may
be less abundant. In fact the chronic evils and problems of old
societies and crowded countries, such as we see them to-day in
Europe, will have reappeared on this new soil.
THE GREAT SOUTHWEST1
RAY STANNARD BAKER
ONE of the first teachings of the arid land is that the individual
must subserve his interest to that of the community, and that
is a hard matter for many an American to do. In the East a
farmer may settle on his quarter-section, build a home, raise
what he pleases or let the weeds grow, keep up his fences or
let them fall down, and no one says a word in objection; he is
the most independent of men. But in the desert, where the
struggle for existence is more intense, men must march in lock-
step: if one wastes water, allows water to run out on another's
field, does not keep up his ditches, does not cooperate with his
neighbors in the work of cleaning or repairing ditches, he injures
the entire community, and the community must force him
sternly into the line of duty. Moreover, he must join with his
neighbors in the protection of the water-supply, in case some
other community seeks to divert more than its share from the
river above; and in many cases of drought and low water he
must suffer equally with his neighbors, sharing what little water
there is to be had, even though his own orchards are dying. All
this serves to build up such a community spirit in the irrigated
countries as the Easterner cannot appreciate. There are human
bickerings here as everywhere else, but a man soon learns that the
community interest is, after all, greater than that of the in-
dividual, and upon every important subject he submits his will
to that of the community. From this spirit have arisen those
peculiar and powerful cooperative associations of farmers, which
all but control the marketing of crops in parts of the West.
Instead of trusting to avaricious commission men and engaging
i Adapted from Century, 64: 369-371, July, 1902.
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 37
in disastrous competition, the orange-growers, the raisin-growers,
the bee-keepers, and other classes of farmers, have formed
unions and associations which control the whole matter of pack-
ing, shipping, and selling the farmers' products. These as-
sociations further curtail the rights of the individual, hindering
him, for instance, from shipping poor fruit, or poorly packed
fruit, lest it injure the reputation of the community in the
Eastern markets; and if there are k>sses, each man must stand
his share. So powerful, indeed, are these associations that they
can even venture to fight the railroad companies in the matter of
freight rates, as they have done more than once in California.
Farming in the East is a sort of guerilla warfare, every man for
himself; in the arid West, it is a highly organized and disci-
plined struggle.
It is interesting to speculate as to the effect which these new
conditions of life will have on the American character. Irri-
gation requires a greater degree of skill than ordinary agricul-
ture; it is more a matter of exact science, less of chance. The
Easterner sows his crops and depends on the will of Heaven for
his rain ; the Westerner goes out to his head-gate and lets in the
rain, in just such amounts and at just such times as he pleases.
He knows how much water he is entitled to, and its distribution
is a simple matter of calculation. But he must be a careful
student of his crops; he cannot water his strawberries and his
sugar-beets at the same time and in the same amount, for the
strawberries are always thirsty, while the beets require only a
few waterings in the season. He must also know his own peculiar
climate, for fields require much more water in the desert air of
Arizona than in the moister climate of southern California, and
he must have a care that the water leaves no alkali in his soil.
In other words, he must be an intelligent, reading, scientific
farmer if he would outwit the desert and compete with the
energy of his neighbors. Men in the irrigated lands live closer
together than in the East, and farms are smaller. Some valleys,
indeed, seem like villages, each resident of which lives in the
midst of handsome grounds; whole districts in southern Cali-
fornia are veritable parks for beauty. This brings neighbors
closer together, breaks up the deadly isolation of the Middle
States farmers, enables a community to have better schools,
38 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
churches, and places of amusement, tempts the mercurial young
man to stay on the farm.
LIFE IN THE CORN BELT 1
T. N. CARVER
THE average Western farmer is as well informed upon the
questions of the day as the average business or professional man
of our Eastern cities, though he lacks acquaintance with many
things which some regard as essential to culture. He takes a
deep interest in politics, and he is better informed about what
goes on in our legislative halls than any other class.
The corn belt is probably the most prosperous agricultural
region of any considerable size in the world, but success requires
great industry and a degree of knowledge that comes only from
experience. In the East, especially in New England, where
farming is not prosperous and the cities furnish better oppor-
tunities for men of capacity, it happens that the best men are
drawn from the country to the city, leaving, as a rule, only the
less competent to people the country districts. That is why
there has been so much discussion during the last year or two
over the degeneracy of the farming regions. But in the corn
belt the conditions are quite reversed ; the best opportunties are
furnished by the farms, and one of the most striking facts that
one observes on a tour of this kind is the manifest superiority of
the average farmer, physically, intellectually, and morally, to
the average dweller in the towns of that region. With the
exception of the retired farmers, who make up a fair proportion
of the population of the country towns and small cities of the
West, the bulk of the population seems to be made up of people
who are not fit to make good farmers.
Even some of the so-called retired farmers have retired, not
because they have accumulated a competence, but because they
were unable to make farming pay or because they have found
work too hard. They have moved to town, where their wives
keep boarders while they loaf around the stores. For this
i Adapted from World's Work, 7: 4232-9, Dec., 1903.
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 39
reason there is a sharp distinction made between " tired" and
" retired" farmers. The hotels and livery stables also are
generally kept by this class of tired farmers.
It seems that every line of business carried on in the towns
and small cities in the corn belt is largely in the hands of in-
ferior men, though of course there are numerous brilliant ex-
ceptions. Almost every town or city will have one or two news-
papers, which claim to be the organs of the leading political
parties, but which really seem to be published for the purpose
of apologizing for their own existence. The manual labor which
is done about such towns is almost invariably done by men who
are not fit for farm hands. Some are so profane and obscene in
their language that a decent farmer would not have them around,
but they will work as section hands on the railroad for less
wages than farm hands get, and loaf about the depot and the
streets at night, play Sunday baseball, and have other similar
enjoyments not open to the farm hand. Even a good deal of
the mercantile business is carried on by men who do not show
a degree of intelligence at all comparable to that of the average
farmer.
One hears a great deal of shockingly bad grammar in the corn
country, but correct speech is really a matter of conventionality,
and a farmer's success does not depend upon his observance of
conventionalities. On the other hand, there are certain things
which he must know, and which no amount of suavity or grace
or good form will enable him to dispense with. He is dealing
with nature rather than with men, and nature can not be de-
luded by a pleasant front nor a smooth tongue. One must not
be hasty in forming conclusions as to the farmer's intelligence
on the basis of his clothes, his knowledge of the forms of polite
society, nor even his use of grammar.
Though the average family is somewhat larger than that of
the well-to-do urbanite, there is a manifest decline even in the
country districts. Families of four or five children among the
native Americans are quite common, but one almost never finds
such patriarchal families of ten and twelve children as were
common in the days of our grandfathers. The most conspicuous
case of this kind that I saw was a family of eight children be-
longing to an Iowa farmer. The mother, who is still slightly on
40 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the sunny side of forty, was a daughter of a well-to-do farmer
and had excellent ' ' schooling ' ' for the time and place. She was
a country schoolma'am at the age of eighteen, and also gave
music lessons to a few children in the community. She spent one
year at a small Western college, but was married at the age of
twenty-two to a young farmer who was living on a rented farm
and whose only capital consisted of a team and farming im-
plements. She has raised or is raising her eight children ; they
have bought a farm of 160 acres, which is now paid for; they
have a comfortable house; and they are just beginning to feel
in easy circumstances. The long, hard struggle through which
they have gone has in no way embittered their dispositions.
They are active in church work; the mother teaches a class in
Sunday-school ; and the eldest daughter, seventeen years of age,
is the organist. The children were unusually bright and healthy,
and the mother insists that some way must be found to send them
all through college, and I have little doubt that they will succeed.
The husband is a hard working man of kindly disposition, but
considerably her inferior in mental and social endowments, of
which fact, however, both seemed utterly oblivious.
One form of social diversion common throughout the corn belt
is what is known as the "basket-meeting." A basket-meeting
is nothing more nor less than a regular church service turned
into a picnic. Some grove near the country church is selected,
and on Saturday afternoon the men gather and erect an outdoor
pulpit, with a sufficient number of benches for the congregation,
and on the following Sunday, at the regular hour, the church
service is held here instead of in the church. After the service
the members of the congregation, having come supplied with
baskets of provisions, spread them upon the benches and partake
of a bountiful dinner.
But such a minor festivity pales into insignificance in com-
parison with such annual events as the Fourth of July, Old
Settlers' Day, and the County Fair, though the latter has sadly
degenerated since it fell into the hands of city sports, who make
it simply an occasion for horse-racing, accompanied by all the
devices for separating a fool from his money which usually sur-
round a circus.
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 41
The farmer in the corn belt has his labor problem, too, though
I have never heard any one predicting the doom of the corn belt
on that ground. The fact is that while the existence of the labor
problem is recognized, it is of such minor significance as to be
almost negligible. Fortunately for Western agriculture and
American society in general, there is no proletariat of agricul-
tural laborers. There are practically no farm laborers of the
European type — that is, men who expect always to work for
wages as farm hands. The typical farm hand is a young un-
married man, usually the son of a farmer living in the neighbor-
hood— though frequently a foreign immigrant — who "works
out ' ' for a few years merely to get money enough to begin farm-
ing on his own responsibility on a rented farm.
The scarcity of farm labor, however, in no way interferes with
the success of corn-growing. In the first place, the corn-grower
works with his own hands, and so do the other members of his
family. Riding plows and cultivators, disk harrows and corn
harvesters, as well as twine binders and hay stackers, so reduce
the amount of muscular strength needed that a boy of ten years
of age will frequently render almost as much service as a grown
man.
Another factor which contributes to the solution of the labor
problem is the distribution of the work of the farm over the
year. On a typical corn farm there .is no season which is pre-
eminently the 'busy season, unless the corn-plowing has fallen be-
hind because of wet weather. Though farmers with whom I
talked universally agreed that corn was by far their most profit-
able crop, there were very few farms where corn was grown
exclusively. With a given labor force, only a certain amount of
corn can be cultivated, anyway, and it requires no more labor
force to grow a certain amount of other crops in addition.
Wheat and oats are sown before corn-planting time, and are
harvested after the corn has been "laid by" — that is, after the
plowing is finished. The hay harvest also comes in this interval,
and the threshing is usually done before the corn-husking be-
gins. Moreover, the stubble fields can usually be plowed in the
interval between the harvesting of the small grain (wheat and
oats) and the husking of the corn. Thus the farmer in the corn
42 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
belt has practically eliminated the labor problem, so that even
the limited supply of farm hands is no serious handicap upon
the corn-growing industry.
As to the problem of domestic service, there is practically none.
Hired girls are almost non-existent. Every farmer's wife ex-
pects to do her own work, and if in time of sickness or of special
stress of work she can induce some girl from the neighborhood
to come in and help her, she considers herself fortunate.
Like other parts of the West, the corn belt was settled by
people from a great variety of sources, and has not been without
its share of tough communities; but the land was too valuable,
and there was too high a premiun on thrift and industry for
such communities long to remain.
Everywhere in the corn belt, and indeed wherever farming
is prosperous, one meets with the interesting phenomenon of the
retired farmer. In general, he is a man considerably past mid-
dle age, who has by hard work and careful management become
the owner of a fair-sized farm, with perhaps a moderate bank
account besides, and who has either sold or rented his farm and
moved to town to spend his declining years in rest. From the
number of such cases one might almost conclude that the average
farmer's idea of paradise was a country town where he could
live comfortably, supplying his daily needs without denying
himself rest or sleep, and where he would be free from the wear
and tear of continually guessing at the weather, caring for his
live-stock, battling with weeds and the thousand-and-one other
relentless enemies of the farmer. But when he reaches this
paradise, unless he has retired on account of old age, he is almost
invariably disappointed, if not demoralized. The life soon grows
monotonous. Having always been accustomed to an active out-
door life, he becomes restive and discontented. Sometimes he
takes up some other line of business — goes into a store, starts a
hotel or a livery stable, or goes into the real estate business ; and.
again he sometimes degenerates into an ordinary town loafer.
He frequently makes a poor urbanite, for his ideas of living were
developed under rural conditions. He is somewhat slow to ap-
preciate the value of good sewage, generally opposes levying
taxes for street improvements, and is almost invariably disliked
by the merchants because of his parsimonious way of buying
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 43
goods. The habits of his early life stay with him and dominate
all his business transactions. The effect of town life upon the
retired farmer is, however, by no means to be compared with
its demoralizing effect upon his minor children, especially his
boys, if he happens to have any.
As a traveler moves westward, if he keeps his eyes, or rather
his ears, open, he becomes more and more impressed at the
roughness and even profanity of the language which he hears in
public places. This impression, however, is due partly to the
fact that the ordinary traveler only sees and hears what goes on
about the railway stations, hotel corridors, and similar places,
and the class of people who infest such places are by no means
representative. When he gets away from beaten lines of travel,
out into the rural districts, this impression is by no means so
vivid. Nevertheless, it remains, and it is undoubtedly true that
there is more rough language in the West than in the East. At
the same time, if he takes the trouble to attend country churches
and to form some idea of the popular interest in religious matters,
he is impressed with the piety of the people. It will usually
take him some time to reconcile these two apparently contra-
dictory impressions, but the explanation is that as one moves
westward through the agricultural districts he meets fewer and
fewer of that class which is so numerous in cities and also in the
rural districts of the East, who are neither pious nor wicked—
simply indifferent. In other words, it seems that throughout the
West, especially beyond the Missouri River, every man is either
pious or profane, and the prevailing type of piety is of the
Methodistic sort, just as the prevailing type of impiety is of the
turbulent, swearing sort.
Politically, the West is rapidly settling down to more fixed
habits of thought, though it had its period of unrest. In the
early seventies, and again in the early nineties, the "Western
farmer became the spoiled child of American politics. He has
been flattered and cajoled by demagogues until he came to think
himself the most important factor in our social system. This
position he has now been deprived of by the wage-worker, who
is to-day laying the flattering unction to his soul that he is the
most important personage in the universe. To be sure, neither
the Grange nor the Farmers' Alliance in their wildest days ap-
44 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
preached in arrogance the labor organizations of the present;
nor did they ever, either directly or indirectly, countenance
violence or lawlessness of any kind. This is probably due to the
fact that the farmers, as a class, are vastly more intelligent and
law-abiding than the rank and file of the wage-workers, though
they are more numerous and politically more powerful.
The corn belt is the most considerable area in the world where
agriculture is uniformly prosperous. This prosperity is, more-
over, healthful and natural, and not artificial, like the sugar-
beet industry, for example, which has never in any country
shown its ability to stand alone unaided by government favors,
nor, like much of our manufacturing prosperity, based upon
government protection. The people engaged in the corn-growing
industry are an independent, progressive class, drawing their
sustenance from the soil, and not from other people.
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COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 45
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CHAPTEE III
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE OLD AND THE
NEW SOUTH *
PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE
BROADLY speaking, no institutions of the South were so pro-
foundly affected by the failure of secession as the social. It is
true that it was a great economic revolution to pass from slave
labor to free labor, but the ground is still chiefly tilled by the
hand of the Negro. The large plantation has been cut up into
numerous estates, but the same staples continue to be cultivated.
There has been a radical alteration in political conditions, but,
on the whole, the representatives of the Southern States in their
local legislatures and in the national Congress are drawn from the
same general class as they were in times of slavery. The eco-
nomic and political life of the South has been transformed, but
transformed to a degree that falls short of the change that has
taken place in its social life ; here the change has been complete
so far as the rural districts, in which the overwhelming mass of
the Southern people reside, are involved. The French Revolu-
tion, with its drastic laws touching the ownership of land, did
not sweep away the aristocracy of France one-half as thoroughly
as the abolition of slavery swept away the old rural aristocracy
of the South. The social condition of this part of the Union is
now the reverse of what it was before the War of the Secession ;
then all that was best in the social life of the people was to be
found in the country; now all that is best is to be found in the
city.
The close of the great war marked the end of a society that had
safely passed through all the vicissitudes of several hundred
i Adapted from "The Rise of the New South," pp. 421-435, Barrie, Phila-
delphia, 1905.
46
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 47
years. The peculiar social life of the Southern States, as a body,
in consequence of its being coincident with the very existence of
these States, had permeated with its spirit the genius of the
Southern people from generation to generation, until it had
become the most powerful of all the influences in molding their
character and destiny. This social life rested primarily on the
system of large plantations. In the early part of the history
of the older Southern communities — Virginia and Maryland, for
instance — when the plantation system, as it existed before the
war, was founded, this system derived its strength, not from
slavery, but from indentured white service, — which, however,
was not unlike slavery in spirit and influence, — 'but as time went
on, its principal support became the institution of slavery itself.
As the number of Negroes increased, which they did very rapidly
after the beginning of the seventeenth century both by natural
addition and importation, the individual plantation grew larger
and larger in order to create room for the employment of super-
abundant labor. Not even the opening up of new territory could
carry off the surplus slaves. The tendency toward the engross-
ment of the soil in a few hands was just as remarkable in Vir-
ginia, the oldest of the Southern States, as it was in Texas and
Mississippi among the youngest, and it was just as strong in
1861, when the war began, as it was two hundred years earlier.
What did this engrossment of land through so many genera-
tions mean from a social point of view? It meant that from
1624, when the plantation system became firmly established in
Colonial Virginia, down to 1861, when it prevailed in the most
extreme form from one end of the South to the other, there
existed a class in every Southern community, whose social pre-
eminence rested as distinctly upon vast landed possessions as the
like preeminence of the English aristocracy. The South
illustrated anew a fact that had been strikingly illustrated in
the history of England: namely that there is something in the
ownership of the soil, confined to a comparatively small number,
that gives peculiar social distinction to the class possessing it.
The social prestige of great landed property was rendered the
more impressive in the Southern States by the large retinues of
slaves; there was, for that reason, a more baronial importance
about such an estate than about the like estate of the English
48 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
nobleman of the same day, whose dependents and retainers were
at liberty, if they chose, to transfer their services to another
employer. The slave belonged to the master absolutely; the tie
could only be severed by the latter 's will. The complete sub-
serviency of the relation gave a certain barbaric aspect to the
condition of the great Southern landed proprietor, but the social
life which centered in him was on that account not the less truly
distinguished.
In possession of a great estate in a comparatively thinly
settled country, stocked up with hundreds of slaves, who were
in the habit of looking to him for everything in life, the
Southern landowner, under the old system, was, naturally
enough, remarkable for a proud and aristocratic spirit. This
was the general tone which men of his class gave to the highest
social life of the South. There were, of course, no legally de-
termined and fixed ranks in that life, but the line of separation
was as clearly defined, and as firmly drawn as if the hereditary
principle of caste had a distinct recognition, as in France under
the ancient monarchy. The opportunities for accumulating
large estates by the exercise of great talent for heaping up money
were very few. The city shop and the country store of the South
were narrow fields of operation for this purpose. The highest
rank in society was not receiving unceasing additions in great
numbers from the lower, in consequence of success in gathering
together fortunes, as has always been the case at the North,
where trade has ever been an unfailing means of building up new
families. There were, it is true, many accessions in the Southern
States, but it required a full generation at least to envelop the
intruder in the odor of social sanctity, unless he had secured an
exceptional connection by marriage. Pride of ancestry was
one of the most powerful of all social influences in the South, and
the ability to prove a long and distinguished descent one of the
most valued of possessions.
Unlike the society of England, that of the South possessed
no common center resembling London to direct general taste
and govern fashion.
The social life of every large plantation community was re-
stricted to the bounds of the community ; it was the social life of
neighborhoods, which might have a radius of as much as twenty
. THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 49
miles ; in this circuit everywhere in the older States of the South
was to be found a social life reflecting a high degree of culture,
refinement, and intelligence. The direct effect of the plantation
life was to foster all the influences giving strength and per-
manence to the family. The love of home was increased, not
only by long personal association with the spot, but also by tra-
ditions running back many generations into the past. Around it
gathered the memories of a family life as old, in many cases, as
the first settlement of the country. The house in which the
planter resided had been erected perhaps a hundred or more
years before, and was hallowed by innumerable events in the
family history.
The ties of family were strengthened, not only by long trans-
mitted influences of this character, but also by the fact that,
under that system, sons, as a rule, settled on lands which had
been given them by their fathers in the neighborhood of the
paternal estates. In time, there sprang up a community united
by the bonds of closest kinship; and as the years passed, and
brothers and sisters had children of their own, these bonds were
knit more closely together still by the intermarriage of cousins.
A whole countryside was frequently descended from the same
ancestors, and the most skillful genealogist often found it im-
possible to follow the ramifications of the common strain. It
needed but the law of primogeniture to make the state of
Southern society precisely similar in spirit to the society of
England in the previous century.
That society was even more given to hospitality than English
society in the country. There was practically an unlimited
supply of servants ; the abundance of provisions of all kinds was
inexhaustible; and there was no effort at display imposing ex-
pense and inconvenience. The seclusion of the planter's life
threw around the visitor an unusual degree of interest; hospi-
tality, at first a pleasure, took on very shortly a sacred character
—it became a duty which it was always delightful to perform.
The guest, as often a stranger as a kinsman, was rarely absent
from the plantation residence.
Below the highest class of planters there was practically only
one great class among the whites, a class which the general
changes following the war have brought into the greatest promi-
50 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
nence, but which, under the system prevailing before 1860,
occupied a position of small social importance. The class made
up of the small landowners always formed the body of the
white population. Its members, as a rule, owned from fifty to
two hundred acres of land, which they worked themselves, with
the assistance, at the most, of a few slaves.
When the first patents were sued out, it was deemed all-im-
portant to take up the most fertile soil as, in the absence of arti-
ficial manures, the best fitted for the culture of cotton or tobacco,
and such as was least likely to be exhausted by prolonged tillage.
The lands preferred were those situated on the rivers and larger
streams which furnished an alluvial deposit. The constant aim
of the wealthy planter was to engross as extensive an area of these
lands as he could acquire ; broad reaches of upland were patented
or purchased as a means of obtaining wood for fuel and timber for
building, and as affording a wide range for the browsing of
cattle. The mass of the white population, the true yeomanry of
the country, were confined to the ridges and narrow low grounds
of the small streams, the soil of which was inferior in productive
capacity as compared with the grounds lying around the large
streams held by the wealthy planters.
The class of small landowners represented, in many instances,
a high degree of thrift, but in some cases an extreme degree of
poverty, according to the character of the different holdings,
Many of the small estates were cultivated with great care and
enabled the owners to live in comfort and abundance. The tables
were set forth with a considerable variety of food; there was a
slave to furnish the household service ; the residence though plain
was substantially built and sufficiently spacious; to it were
attached small gardens for both flowers and vegetables; also an
orchard of fruit trees enclosed as a pen for the hogs ; and there
were several milch cows, and a horse and vehicle for conveying
the family to church. During the week, the owner with his sons
and a Negro or two hoed and plowed in his tobacco and corn
fields. When the end of the year came, he had perhaps several
hundred dollars in his chest. If ambitious of improving his con-
ditions, he expended his savings in the purchase of more land, by
which he was enabled to plant cotton or tobacco over a larger area
of ground. The increase from one couple of slaves made a con-
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 51
siderable addition to his small fortune. Even when he had no
occasion himself for the labor of the young Negroes as soon as
they were strong enough to work, he could hire them at a profit ;
many small landowners derived a good income from this letting
of slaves who had been trained by them for some mechanical
trade.
The landowner whose entire holding consisted of soil on the
ridge was by no means so well off as the members of his own
class who owned land on the small streams. The expression
' ' po ' white, ' ' so freely used by the slaves as a term of opprobrium,
was applied especially to these inhabitants of the highlands.
The narrowness of their fortunes was disclosed in many ways —
in the sallowness of their complexions, resulting chiefly from in-
sufficient and unwholesome food — in the raggedness of the cloth-
ing— in the bareness and discomfort of their cabins, which were
mere hovels with the most slovenly surroundings — and in the
thinness and weakness of the few cattle they possessed. No-
where could there be found a population more wretched in some
respects than this section of the Southern whites, the in-
habitants of the ridge and pine barrens, men and women who had
no interest in the institution of slavery and whose condition of
extreme poverty was partly due to the system o£ large planta-
tions. The abundance of Negroes diminished the calls for the
labor of white men, which might have been furnished by this
class, and the engrossment of land into great states shut them off
from the most productive soil.
The poor white man of energy and intelligence could look
forward to but one career which gave him a certain opportunity
to improve his condition. He could not hope to get anything but
a bare livelihood out of his impoverished acres; the slave me-
chanics stood in the way of his securing work in any local handi-
craft, and there were no manufacturing towns where he could
obtain a position in a factory; but throughout the South there
was a constant need of faithful and resolute overseers. From
the point of view of the indigent class of whites, the overseerships
were most desirable, not only as indicating a social advance in
life, but as offering a very sure prospect of accumulating a com-
petency. This was the beginning of many considerable fortunes
in lands and slaves.
52 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The relations of the small landowners with their neighbor, the
large planter, were marked by a spirit of kindness, goodwill and
esteem. They looked to him as their natural leader. The line
of social difference was never crossed, but there was no barrier
to the display of the warmest regard in their personal association
with him. The society which they formed among themselves was
noted for its homely respectability, but was not remarkable for
any features of general interest. The simplicity distinguishing
the social life of the leading planters took, in the case of that
of the lower, the form of extreme plainness. The existence led
by this section of the people was one of unusual seclusion; in-
deed, their only places for general meeting were the churchyard,
the courthouse, and the store, while the furthest point to which
they traveled was the town in which they found a market for
the sale of their cotton or tobacco. Their entire withdrawal
from the world produced a marked primitiveness of character
which was transmitted from generation to generation.
There were two influences to maintain great pride of spirit in
persons of this social rank even when they had to endure extreme
poverty. First, they followed the independent life of the plan-
tation; it is true that their estates were small, but they were
absolute masters of their own property. Secondly, the presence
of the slave, a standing object of social degradation, inspired the
plainest white man with a sense of his superiority of race, a con-
viction tending to strengthen his self-esteem as an individual.
These influences gave a prouder tone to the whole social life of
the common people of the South than would otherwise have
distinguished it. On the other hand, the absence of educational
advantages had a considerable effect in sinking this social life
below the point which has been reached by the same grade of
population elsewhere. Illiteracy, as we have already pointed
out, was very prevalent ; it was one of the unfortunate results of
the old plantation system that it curtailed all educational facili-
ties, by its tendency to reduce the number of inhabitants occupy-
ing a given area of country.
Taken as a whole, the common people of the Southern States,
during the existence of slavery, were an unusually intelligent,
conservative, and sturdy population. The rank and file of the
armies of the Confederacy in the War of Secession were chiefly
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 53
drawn from this class, and surely the world never saw a body of
soldiers more distinguished for the qualities that win the respect
and admiration of mankind.
The higher planting class of the South staked everything on
the issue of the war — their lives, their fortunes, the framework
of their social life, their political supremacy, their all. When
the more violent influences which the destruction caused by the
conflict set in motion had practically finished their work, and this
was done in a very few years after the close of the contest, the
society in the rural districts of the South was like a vast field of
grain over which a reaper had passed, cutting off the heads of
the tallest stalks only, while it left practically untouched those of
less height. The great planters were, with hardly an exception,
ruined in the end, even though they succeeded for a short time in
holding on to their estates. But as a body, the small planters,
who had few slaves and who were cultivators of their own ground,
remained upon as good a footing as they occupied before the War
of the Secession began ; indeed, the general position of the lower
whites of the South to-day is, from an economic point of view,
far more advantageous than it was previous to 1860.
This is due to several causes. First, in the breaking up of the
large estates, which, as we have seen, were for the most part
made up of the most fertile and most eligibly situated lands in
the country, the small proprietors, who, before the war, had
been confined to the ridges and creek bottoms, were able to
purchase ground of the finest quality, because offered for sale in
small tracts, without competition on the part of the former great
and wealthy proprietors. This class, of old, always overbid the
would-be buyers of small means. Many of the richest acres to
be found in the Southern States are now owned by such men,
who, had slavery been prolonged, would have spent their whole
lives in cultivating a poor soil with very small returns.
Secondly, the complete alteration in the economic system of
the Southern States has directed the attention of their most
enterprising business men to manufactures of all kinds, but
especially to the manufacture of cotton. The development of this
branch of industry, which, before the war, was carried on in a
very limited way, has given employment to many thousands of
operatives, drawn entirely from among those persons of the rural
54 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
population who earned a livelihood by cultivating the ground
in small tracts with their own hands. Had slavery not been
abolished and the large plantation system destroyed, the manu-
facturing interests would doubtless have continued to languish;
and the opportunities now open in this rapidly expanding de-
partment of industry would perhaps never have arisen to improve
the condition of the poorer classes of the Southern whites.
Thirdly, during the existence of slavery, it was to the interest
of the large landed proprietors, who controlled the industrial
affairs of every rural community, to train their own Negroes in
the different handicrafts; there were blacksmiths, carpenters,
wheelwrights, masons, bricklayers, shoemakers, and saddlers con-
nected with all the most extensive plantations, and, with hardly
an exception, they were the slaves of the owners. The only
white mechanics to be found in those parts of the South where
the black population was very numerous were residents of the
scattered villages and towns. The Negro under the new system
shows in the country a marked distaste for every branch of me-
chanics, and the handicrafts there have in consequence steadily
gravitated to white tradesmen. Thus the poorer class of white
persons have a means of earning a livelihood and even a com-
petence, of which they were practically deprived before the
abolition of slavery; employment in this department of activity
is now afforded to tens of thousands of men of their race where,
during the existence of the large plantation, employment was
afforded to hundreds only, because in reality almost the entire
work in his line was done by slaves.
These are three most important ways in which the old class
of small landed proprietors have benefited by the change in the
economic system of the Southern States. With increased op-
portunity for improving their pecuniary standing, it has followed
that their general social condition is better than it used to be,
but in no social particular as yet has the new order in the
Southern rural districts become a satisfactory substitute for that
old order which gave the South its social charm under slave in-
stitutions. The characteristics of the ruling class of small land-
owners in the country to-day — which before the war was the class
occupying an entirely subordinate social rank — are essentially
what they have always been. The prosperity of this class has
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 55
not been sufficient as yet to allow them to make any real advance
in social attractiveness; the life which they lead still removes
them from the general currents of the world; they are still the
primitive people, as in former times, with social qualities com-
manding respect, but with none to produce a society so notable
as that which passed away. Education is more general, on
account of the establishment of free schools ; some social ad-
vantages are enjoyed, which, under the old system, were beyond
the reach of all except the rich, but in its principal features, the
social condition of the rural population remains as it was when
subordinated to that of the higher planting class during the
existence of slavery. How entirely this latter class has vanished
and how wholly the country is given over to the former lower
rank in society is nowhere more conspicuous than in the rural
churches. Owing to the increase of the white population, these
churches are more fully attended than they ever were, but the
families belonging to the old rural gentry are no longer to be
seen there.
A general social equality prevails among the whites in all the
rural districts. In the agricultural regions, outside of the towns,
there are, as yet, no means of accumulating sufficient fortune to
give superiority to new families possessing talent for getting
money; the old rural gentry has not been succeeded, even in a
comparatively remote degree, by a new gentry which rests its
claims to social distinction upon large estates acquired in recent
years. In the rural district, all the tendencies are toward a
further consolidation of the existing social equality among the
whites, because the subdivision of the land means a further
progress toward the reduction of the whole number of white in-
habitants to the condition of the men who work the soil with their
own hands. There are no substantial social distinctions among
manual laborers of the same race. The small farmer and the
small planter who are making up to an increasing extent every
year the entire body of the rural white inhabitants may hold
themselves a little above their white assistants who are without
property, but there is no real difference in their social level. We
see in the South to-day a vast rural white population, which, as
a whole, stands upon the same footing, a footing of great respect-
ability, but entirely devoid of those charms which made the
56 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
social life of the rural gentry, during the existence of slavery, one
of the most attractive in the world.
What has become of the descendants of this rural gentry ? As
a body they are no longer to be found in the country. While
many have emigrated to other parts of the Union, the far greater
number have settled in the towns of the South. All the in-
fluences of the old system, as we have seen, tended directly to
the discouragement of the growth of cities ; all the currents ran
toward a dispersion of the population over an ever widening
extent of space. It is now precisely the reverse. The drift to-
ward the subdivision of land signifies a drift toward the con-
centration of population. The inability of the petty landholders
to produce on their own estates the artificial supplies they re-
quire, has increased the importance of the local distributing and
manufacturing centers, both great and small; the towns have
become steadily larger each year, partly in consequence of the
rising rural demand for manufactured supplies; while the
villages have grown because they have drawn to themselves a
greater number of tradesmen working in different departments.
The comparative unprofitableness of agriculture under the
present system, unless the land is cultivated by the owner with his
own hands, thus cutting the expenses down to the smallest point,
prompted the descendants of the old higher planting class to re-
move to the Southern cities as offering a better opportunity for
the improvement of their fortunes. In addition, they expected
to find there the best social advantages which the new order
afforded.
If we go to some Southern county, which, in times of slavery
was the seat of an intelligent, refined, and cultivated gentry, we
shall discover that the only society there possessing any distinc-
tion is centered in the courthouse town; and this society is
generally made up of families of professional men whose names
are amongst the most ancient .and honorable in the history of
their State. The gentry of the South, from having been asso-
ciated only with life in the country, have become now thoroughly
identified with life in the city. The energy and ability that have
built up so many Southern towns in so short a time, have been
drawn, in largest measure, from a class that, before the War of
Secession, visited the city only in winter and looked upon the
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 57
country as offering all that was highest and most interesting
in life to people of birth and culture. In the course of the last
quarter of a century many fortunes have been made by repre-
sentatives of the old rural gentry who have emigrated to the
towns,, but there has been no disposition in these representatives
to return to the life of their ancestors; some have purchased
rural estates, but it has been for pleasure and recreation during
the summer, and not for occupation throughout the year.
The social life of the South now rests upon the same general
foundation as the social life of the North, and as time passes the
character of the one will be wholly indistinguishable from the
character of the other. The country districts will be occupied
exclusively by a great body of small farmers, planters, and their
assistants in the field. The whole extent of the soil will become,
in less than a century, so subdivided that two or three hundred
acres will form the average estate. The owners of the land, by
the vast increase in the rural population which will follow this
subdivision, will enjoy to a far greater degree than they do at
the present time all the advantages springing from a teeming
community — a, more frequent and more diversified social inter-
course, more varied and refined amusements, a larger number of
public schools, and a more thoroughly organized and more effi-
cient system of public education. The towns and cities of the
South, on the other hand, will become, as they have done in the
North, the centers of the greatest accumulations of wealth and
the seats of the highest culture and refinement. Here, as in the
Northern towns and cities, society will be controlled, to an ever
increasing degree, by families whose rise to social prominence has
been brought about by the extraordinary talents of the men at
their head for building up great fortunes. The influence of mere
ancestry going back many generations, perhaps several hundred
years, will grow less socially powerful in the Southern centers
of population, where the ability to accumulate money already
gives the highest personal consideration, just as it does in the
like Northern communities to-day. The material spirit will
govern the forces in Southern urban society precisely as it has
always done in urban society of the North. Indeed, time will
only show more clearly that the defeat of the South in the War
of Secession meant the complete social unification of the United
58 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
States as the inevitable result of the economic unification that
followed almost immediately upon the destruction of the institu-
tion of slavery.
OUR CAROLINA HIGHLANDERS 1
E. C. BRANSON
WHAT I shall say or try to say concerns the seventeen High-
land counties of North Carolina, and the 243,000 people who
dwell in this land-locked area. This is the region and these are
the people I best know in our Southern mountain country. I as-
sume to speak for no others.
First of all I want to claim for the whole of North Carolina an
identity with our mountain people. They are our very own kith,
kin, and kind. They are not a peculiar people — in illiteracy,
poverty, degree of isolation, fiery individualism, or organ izable
qualities. They differ in no essential particular from the demo-
cratic mass in North Carolina in mood, humor, temper, and atti-
tudes. Their economic and social problems are not regional;
they are state-wide. There are no differences in kind, and few
in degree, between the civilization of our hill country and that
of the State as a whole. Its virtues and its deficiencies are ours,
and I claim them as our own.
Our civilization in North Carolina is primarily rural. Both
the strength and the weakness of our democracy lie in this fact.
We are saturated with a sense of equality. We stand unabashed
in kingly presences. We revel in assured freedom. We have a
fierce passion for self-government. We have always held high
the spirit of revolt against centralized power, and we have been
quick to wrest from tyranny its crown and scepter. All of
which is magnificent. But we are learning that untaught and
unrestrained individualism needs to develop into the wisdom and
power of safe self-government. The civic and social mind sup-
plants the personal and individual view of life all too slowly
everywhere.
i Adapted from "Extension Bureau Circular, No. 2," University of North
Carolina.
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 59
Our dwellers in the open country number 1,700,000, and they
average only thirty-nine to the square mile.
The ills attendant upon sparsity of population in rural regions
are social isolation and insulation, raucous individualism, illit-
eracy, suspicion, social aloofness, lack of organization and co-
operative enterprise ; but our mountain people suffer from these
deficiencies not a whit more than the people in definite areas of
the tide-water country and in the State at large.
Everywhere in thinly settled country regions we find people
here and there who are suspicious, secretive, apathetic, and un-
approachable ; who live in the eighteenth century and preserve
the language, manners, and customs of a past long dead else-
where, who prefer their primitive, ancient ways, who are ghet-
toed in the midst of present-day civilization, to borrow a phrase
from President Frost. They are the crab-like souls described
by Victor Hugo in "Les Miserables," who before advancing
light steadily retreat into the fringe of darkness. People like
these abound in Clinton and Franklin counties (New York)
where an eighth of the native white voters are illiterate, in
Aroostook County (Maine) where nearly a fifth of the native
white voters cannot read their ballots or write their names; in
Windham County (Connecticut), where an eighth of the white
males of voting age are illiterate. Windham, by the way, lies
midway between the academic effulgence of Yale on the one
hand and of Harvard on the other. You can find within the
sound of college bells anywhere what we found the other day
in a field survey that took us into every home in a mid-state
county in North Carolina — a family of whites all illiterate, half
the children dead in infancy, and never a doctor in the house in
the whole history of the family.
All the ages of race history and every level of civilization can
be found in any county or community, even in our crowded
centers of wealth and culture. We. need not hunt for eighteenth
century survivals in mountain coves alone.
We shall not make headway in well-meant work in the moun-
tains unless we can bring to it what Giddings calls a conscious-
ness of kind. "We need to be less aware of picturesque, amusing,
or distressing differences, and more keenly conscious of the kin-
ship of the mountain people with their kind elsewhere and
60 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
everywhere. Otherwise we shall bring to noble effort in the
mountains a certain disabling attitude that is fatal to success.
And so over against the types we find in the pages of Crad-
dock, Fox, Kephart, and the rest, let us set the mountain people
as they are related to the civilization of which they are a part.
I therefore urge upon your attention the fact that they are not
more poverty-stricken, nor more lawless and violent, nor more
unorganizable than the democratic mass in rural North Carolina.
1. In the first place and quite contrary to popular notions,
our mountains are not a region of wide-spread poverty. In per
capita rural wealth Alleghany is the richest county in North
Carolina. Among our 100 counties, five highland counties rank
1st, 5th, 6th, 13th, and 14th in the order named, in the per
capita farm wealth of country populations; and two more are
just below the state average in this particular. The people of
these counties are not poor, as country wealth is reckoned in
North Carolina. They dwell in a land of vegetables and fruits,
grain crops, hay and forage, flocks and herds. It is a land of
overflowing abundance. It is not easy for such people to feel
that they are fit subjects for missionary school enterprises. As
a matter of fact, they need our money far less than they need
appreciative understanding and homebred leadership. Their
wealth is greater than their willingness to convert it into social
advantages. They need to be shown how to realize the possi-
bilities of their own soils and souls. Mountain civilization, like
every other, will rise to higher levels when the people them-
selves tug at their own boot-straps ; and there is no other way.
Approaching the poverty of our mountain people from an-
other angle, let us consider indoor pauperism in 11 mountain
counties that maintain county homes or poor houses. The 1910
Census discloses an average rate for the United States of 190
almshouse paupers per 100,000 inhabitants. In North Carolina
the rate was 96; in these 11 highland counties it was only 79.
Six of the mountain counties make a far better showing than
the State at large.
But we may make still another and better approach to the
subject of poverty in our mountains by examining the outside
pauper rates; better, because outside help is less repugnant to
the feelings than residence in the poor house. In 1914 the state
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 61
rate for outside pauperism was 234 per 100,000 inhabitants. In
12 highland counties the average rate was 205. Seven of the
counties have rates far smaller than the state average, ranging
from 35 in Mitchell to 184 in Cherokee ; three are just below the
state average ; and only two are near the bottom.
It ought to be clear that poverty in the mountains of North
Carolina is actually and relatively less than elsewhere in the
State. Here both indoor and outside paupers in 12 counties in
1914 numbered only 559 in a population of 209,000 souls.
2. In the second place, illiteracy among native whites in our
mountains is not more distressing than white illiteracy else-
where in the State. The average rate for the mountain region
is 15.1 per cent., due to excessive white illiteracy rates in eight
counties. More than one-seventh or 15.1 per cent, of all the
white people ten years old and older in 17 mountain counties
are illiterate. It is appalling; but the fact that nearly one-
eighth of all the white people of these ages the whole State over
are illiterate is also appalling. But nearly one-fifth or 18.5 per
cent, of all our people, both races counted, are illiterate; and
this fact is still more appalling. There is comfort, however, in
the further fact that with a single exception North Carolina led
the Union in inroads upon illiteracy during the last census pe-
riod, and we are running Kentucky a close second in Moon-
light Schools.
Our mountain people are not peculiar, even in their illiteracy.
Sparsely settled rural people are everywhere apt to be fiercely in-
dividualistic, incapable of concerted effort, and unduly illiterate ;
both behind and beyond mountain walls, in New York State,
Maine, Connecticut, and North Carolina alike. The problems of
developing democracy in our highlands, I repeat, are state-wide,
not merely regional. They concern a sparsely settled rural pop-
ulation, socially insulated, fiercely individualistic, unduly illit-
erate, unorganized, and non-social, both in the mountains and
in the State at large.
3. For instance, the bad eminence held by North Carolina in
homicide rates among the 24 states of the registration area is due
to the slow socialization of a population that is still nearly four-
fifths rural. In 1913, we led the registration states with an
urban rate of 274 homicides per million inhabitants, and a rural
62 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
rate of 173, against a general rate of 72 in the registration area.
I may say in passing that Virginia, Kentucky, and North Car-
olina are the only southern states in the registration area, and
that 24 states are all told still on the outside.
Town rates are higher than country rates in twenty-one states,
largely because the steady coward drift of country people in-
troduces into the organized life of American towns an element
that is slow to learn the lessons of social adjustment. On the
other hand, the high spirited retreat into inaccessible coves be-
fore advancing civilization. They climb into the high levels of
the Great Smokies in Haywood, Swain, and Graham, where they
settle personal difficulties in the highland style of primitive
times. These counties lead the mountain region in homicide
rates. These are the people, by the way, among whom Kephart
dwelt and who colored his impressions of our entire mountain
civilization. But just as might be expected, three of our low-
land counties have just as fearful records. No, our Highlanders
are not peculiar even in their fierce and fiery individualism.
Human life is just as safe west of the Ridge as east of it.
4. Kephart urges that the mountain people cannot pull to-
gether, except as kinsmen or partisans. "Speak to them of com-
munity interests, try to show them the advantages of coopera-
tion," says he, "and you might just as well be proffering advice
to the North Star. They will not work together zealously even
to improve their neighborhood roads. ' ' But these are the faults
of sparsely settled rural populations in the mountains and on
the plains alike. Nothing could be worse, for instance, than the
country roads of southern Illinois in the bad winter seasons.
Failure to organize and cooperate is the cardinal weakness of
country people everywhere.
True, there were no improved country roads in four counties
west of the Ridge on January 1, 1915 ; but also, four neighbor-
ing counties in the Albemarle country fall into the same category.
Thirty-one of our counties in 1914 had ten per cent, or less of
their public road mileage improved. Seven of these were west
and twenty-four were east of the Blue Ridge. Five mountain
counties are among the forty counties that made the best show-
ing in the State in improved public road mileage in 1914.
Avery, a mountain county with no improved roads in the last
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 63
report, is now spending $150,000 in road construction. Our
mountain counties are falling into line about as rapidly as other
sections of the State. And North Carolina is doing well in high-
way building. In 1914 she stood ahead of twenty-nine states
in per cent, of surfaced roads, and outranked thirty-two in the
expenditure of road funds locally raised.
5. As a last word in my attempt to show that our mountain
conditions and problems are state-wide conditions and prob-
lems, let us consider the investment made by our Highlanders in
their schools and children; say, their per capita investment in
country school property in the census year. In 1910 it was only
$1.86 per rural inhabitant. But then, it was only $2.08 the whole
State over. Seven mountain counties were well above the state
average with per capita investments ranging from $2.56 in
Swain, one of the three poorest counties in the State, to $4.56 in
Transylvania.
Our mountain counties are moving forward in rural school
property about as rapidly as the rest of the State. Between
1900 and 1914 the value of such property in seventeen highland
counties rose from $408,000 to $637,000, an increase of 56 per
cent., against an increase of 45 per cent, in the State at large.
Ashe and Yancey more than doubled their investments in rural
school property during these four years. In Cherokee the in-
vestment was more than trebled. And it is proper to add that
under the superb leadership of Hon. J. Y. Joyner, the State
School Superintendent, our State as a whole has made mar-
velous gains during the last ten years in the education of all our
people. As a matter of fact, these gains make a story of un-
paralleled achievement.
The mountain people I know are democratic by nature, high
spirited, self-reliant, and proudly independent. They scorn
charities, and scent patronage afar. They are not a weakling
people. They are sturdy and strong in character, keenly respon-
sive to fair treatment, kind hearted and loyal to friends, quick
to lend help in distress; and salted unto salvation by a keen
sense of humor.
They are not a submerged race. They are not down and out,
after a hand to hand struggle with advancing civilization. They
are not victims of social mal-adjustment. They are, as yet, the
64 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
unadjusted. They are not decadents like the country people in
the densely populated industrial areas of the North and East.
They are a coming, not a vanishing race. Their thews and
sinews are strong, their brains are nimble and capable, and at
bottom they are sane and sound, healthsome and wholesome, in
wind and limb, body and soul. They are a hopeful element in
developing democracy in North Carolina. There is immense
lifting power in the people of our hill country. They need, to
be sure, to be organized for economic, civic, and social efficiency ;
but this need is state-wide, not merely regional.
The Highlanders have long been a segregated, unmixed ethnic
group — a homogeneous mass without organic unity. Miss
Emma Miles, herself a mountaineer, says in "The Spirit of the
Mountains," " There is no such thing as a community of moun-
taineers. Our people are almost incapable of concerted action.
We are a people yet asleep, a race without consciousness of its
own existence." All of which means that here is a social mass
that lacks social solidarity. It lacks the unity in variety and
the variety in unity that social development demands in any
group of people.
A fundamental need .in the mountains is an influx of new
people with new ideas and enterprises. The homogeneity of our
Highlanders has long been a liability, not an asset. Appalachia
needs the mingling of race types. The English Midlands offer
an illustration in point. Here is where the Cymric, Pictish, and
Irish tribes of Celts struggled for long centuries with the Anglo-
Saxons, Danes, and Scandinavians. Here they finally coalesced,
and here is the seed-bed of national supremacy in intellect.
Here is the England of Shakespeare, Macaulay, Ruskin, and
George Eliot, Hogarth, Turner and Burne- Jones, Watt, Hamil-
ton, and Farraday.
But a new era is at hand in our hill country. Industrialism
is rapidly invading and occupying this region. The timber, min-
eral, and water power treasures of the mountains have at last
challenged the attention of organized big business. The blare
of steam whistles, the boom of dynamite, the whir of machinery,
the miracle of electric lights and telephones, the bustle of busi-
ness in growing cities announce an economic revolution in our
mountain country. Industrial enterprises will introduce the
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 65
needed elements of population. They demand railway connec-
tions with the outside world. Automobiles in increasing num-
bers demand improved public highways. This economic revolu-
tion will mean better schools, stronger newspapers, another type
of religious consciousness, and a more liberal social life. The
industrial transformation of Appalachia has begun, and the
next generation of Highlanders will be well in the middle of this
new era.
We ought to keep clearly in mind a concern of primary im-
portance to the mountain people. The question, says President
Frost, is whether the mountain people can be enlightened and
guided so that they can have a part in the development of their
own country, or whether they must give place to aliens and
melt away like the Indians of an earlier day.
That is to say, both the church and the school problems are
fundamentally economic and social. The highest values, of
course, are spiritual. As invading industrialism turns into gold
the natural resources of these mountains, will it enhance the
value of their largest asset — the men and women of the hill
country ?
THE RURAL NEGRO AND THE SOUTH *
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
OF the nine million Negroes, or nearly that number, in the
South, about seven million are in the rural districts. They are
on the farm, the plantation, and in the small town. They in-
clude 80 per cent, of the whole Negro population in the South,
the great bulk of the Negro population in America, in fact. Of
this seven million it is safe to say that 2,200,000 persons are
actually working, either as hired hands, tenant farmers, crop-
pers, or renters and independent owners, upon the land. This
number includes women and children, for, on the farm and the
plantation, the unit of labor is not the individual but the fam-
ily, and in the South to-day Negro women still do a large part
of the work in the fields.
i Adapted from "Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities
and Corrections," Memphis, Tenn., May, 1014, pp. 121-127.
66 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
People who live in the cotton growing States know that a very
large part of the business of those states is based on the Negro
and the mule.
In the South, when a planter wants to borrow money, he finds
his credit at the bank is usually determined by the number of
reliable Negro tenants he can control ; business is based on labor.
In other words, the value of the land and of all that goes with
it and depends upon it, is determined very largely, more largely,
perhaps, than is true of any other part of the country, by the
character and quantity of the labor supply.
The two million and more Negroes who are employed in agri-
culture in the Southern States have in their hands, either as
renters or as owners, 40 per cent, of the tillable land. Some-
thing like 100,000,000 of the 150,000,000 acres of improved land
is cultivated by Negro labor, and of every eleven bales of cotton
produced in the South, seven are raised by Negroes.
The Negro is here and he is likely to remain. First, because
after something like three hundred years he has adapted him-
self to the country and the people ; because experience has taught
him that, on the whole, the vast majority of the Negroes are more
at home and better off in the agricultural regions of the South
than they are likely to be in any other part of the world; and
finally because the Southern white man does not want him to go
away. You may say what you please about segregation of the
races, but when there is work to be done about the plantation,
when it comes time to plant and pick the cotton, the white man
does not want the Negro so far away that he cannot reach him
by the sound of his voice.
At the present time Negroes in the rural districts represent,
in some respects, the best portion of the Negro race. They are
for the most part a vigorous, wholesome, simple-minded people.
They are, as yet, almost untouched by the vices of city life, and
still maintain, on the whole, their confidence in the good will of
the white people by whom they are surrounded.
These seven million people represent, therefore, tremendous
possibilities for good and for evil to themselves, and the com-
munity in which they live. From an economic view alone, this
large actual and potential labor force represents a vast store of
undeveloped wealth, a gold mine of productive energy, in fact.
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 67
Imported to this country at an enormous cost in suffering and in
money; trained and disciplined during two hundred and fifty
years of slavery, and now waiting to be developed, under the in-
fluences of free institutions, the Negro is one of the great nat-
ural resources of this southern community. This being so, the
prosperity of the South is very largely bound up with the latent
possibilities of the Negro. Just in proportion as he becomes an
efficient farmer and a dependable laborer, just to that extent
will the whole country move forward and prosperity be multi-
plied.
If Negro labor is to become more efficient, every effort should
be made to encourage rather than to discourage the Negro in his
ambition to go forward, to buy land and plant himself perma-
nently on the soil. In the long run the planter will not suffer
from the existence in his neighborhood of Negro farmers who
offer an example of thrift and industry to their neighbors. For
example, Macon County, in which I live, was the only one of
the Black Belt counties of Alabama which showed an increase
of Negro population in the decade from 1900 to 1910. The rea-
son was that a special effort had been made in that county to
improve the public schools and this brought into the county a
large number of progressive farmers who were anxious to own
homes in the neighborhood of a good school.
G. W. McLeod, who owns a large tract of land in Macon
County, Alabama, is a good example of the white planter who
treats his tenants well. Mr. McLeod believes in having a good
school in the community, so he gave an acre of ground upon
which the school house was built and $100 in addition to help
put up the $700 school house. He deeded the land to a set of
colored trustees. Mr. McLeod also offers annual prizes for the
best kept stock, best kept houses, best cared for children, best
attendance at Sunday school and church. The man or woman
guilty of taking intoxicating liquors or engaging in family quar-
rels is not eligible to prizes and must go at the end of the
year.
Mr. McLeod by this method of dealing with his tenants has
little if any trouble in finding profitable tenants for his lands.
Not only does he find that this policy pays in cash, but he has
the satisfaction of seeing around him people who are prosperous
68 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and contented, who are every year making progress, who are
growing in intelligence, ambition and the knowledge of all those
things which make life worth living.
From direct investigation I find that many valuable colored
laborers leave the farm for the reason that they seldom see or
handle cash. The Negro laborer likes to put his hands on real
money as often as possible. In the cit3r, while he is not so well
off in the long run, as I have said, he is usually paid off in cash
every Saturday night. In the country he seldom gets cash
oftener than once a month, or once a year. Not a few of the
best colored laborers leave the farms because of the poor houses
furnished by the owners. The condition of some of the one-
room cabins is miserable almost beyond description. In the
towns and cities, while he may have a harder time in other re-
spects, the colored man can usually find a reasonably comfortable
house with two or three rooms.
No matter how ignorant a colored man may be himself, he al-
most always wants his children to have education. A very large
number of colored laborers leave the farm because they can not
get an education for their children. In a large section of the
farming district of the South, Negro schools run only from two
to five months in the year. In many cases children have to
walk miles to reach these schools. The school houses are, in
most cases, wretched little hovels with no light or warmth or
comfort of any kind. The teacher receives perhaps not more
than $18 or $25 a month, and as every school superintendent
knows, poor pay means a poor teacher.
In saying this, I do not overlook the fact that conditions are
changing for the better in all parts of the South. White people
are manifesting more interest each year in the training of col-
ored people, and what is equally important, colored people are
beginning to learn to use their education in sensible ways ; they
are learning that it is no disgrace for an educated person to
work on the farm. They are learning that education which does
not somehow touch life is not education at all. More and more
we are all learning that the school is not simply a place, where
boys and girls learn to read and cipher ; but a place where they
learn to live. We are all learning that education which does
not somehow or other improve the farm and the home, which
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 69
does not make a return to the community in some form or other,
has no justification for its existence.
The possibilities of the Negro farmer are indicated by the
progress that he has made in fifty years. In 1863 there were
in all the United States only a few farms owned by Negroes.
They now (1910) operate in the South 890,140 farms which are
217,800 more than there were in this section in 1863.
Negro farm laborers and Negro farmers in the South now
cultivate approximately 100,000,000 acres of land, of which 42,-
500,000 acres are under the control of Negro farmers. The in-
crease of Negro farm owners in the past fifty years compares
favorably with the increase of white farm owners. The Negroes
of this country now own 20,000,000 acres or 31,000 square miles
of land. If all the land they own were placed in one body, its
area would be greater than that of the state of South Carolina.
The Negro has made his greatest progress in agriculture dur-
ing the past ten years. Prom 1900 to 1910 the total value of
farm property owned by the colored farmers of the South in-
creased from $177,404,688 to $492,898,218, or 177 per cent.
In view of all this it seems to me that it is the part of wisdom
to take hold of this problem in a broad, statesmanlike way. In-
stead of striving to keep the Negro down, we should devote the
time and money and effort that is now used for the purpose of
punishing the Negro for crimes, — committed in many instances
because he has been neglected and allowed to grow up in ig-
norance without ambition and without hope — and use it for the
purpose of making the Negro a better and more useful citizen.
FOLLOWING THE COLOR LINE 1
RAY STANNARD BAKER
GENERALLY speaking, the sharpest race prejudice in the South
is exhibited by the poorer -class of white people, whether far-
mers, artisans or unskilled workers, who come into active com-
petition with the Negroes, or from politicians who are seeking
i Adapted from "Following the Color Line," American Magazine, 64:
381-393, July, 1907.
70 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the votes of this class of people. It' is this element which has
driven the Negroes out of more than one community in the
South and it commonly forms the lynching mobs. A similar an-
tagonism of the working classes exists in the North wherever the
Negro has appeared in large numbers.
On the other hand, the larger land owners and employers of
the South, and all professional and business men who hire
servants, while they dislike and fear the Negro as a race (though
often loving and protecting individual Negroes), want the black
man to work for them. More than that, they must have him:
for he has a practical monopoly on labor in the South. White
men of the employing class will do almost anything to keep the
Negro on the land and his wife in the kitchen — so long as they
are obedient and unambitious workers.
But I had not been very long in the black belt before I began
to see that the large planters — the big employers of labor — often
pursued very different methods in dealing with the Negro. In
the feudal Middle Ages there were good and bad barons; so in
the South to-day there are "good" and "bad" landlords (for
lack of better designation) and every gradation between them.
The good landlord, generally speaking, is the one who knows
by inheritance how a feudal system should be operated. In
other words, he is the old slave-owner or his descendant, who
not only feels the ancient responsibility of slavery times, but
believes that the good treatment of tenants, as a policy, will
produce better results than harshness and force.
The bad landlord represents the degeneration of the feudal
system: he is in farming to make all he can out of it this year
and next, without reference to human life.
Conditions in the black belt are in one respect much as they
were in slavery times, or as they would be under any feudal
system : if the master or lord is * ' good, ' ' the Negro prospers ;
if he is harsh, grasping, unkind, the Negro suffers bitterly. It
gets back finally to the white man. In assuming supreme rights
in the South, political and industrial, the white man also as-
sumes tremendous duties and responsibilities ; he cannot have the
one without the other ; and he takes to himself the pain and suf-
fering which goes with power and responsibility.
Of course, scarcity of labor and high wages have given the
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 71
really ambitious and industrious Negro his opportunity, and
many thousands of them are becoming more and more inde-
pendent of the favor or the ill-will of the whites. And therein
lies a profound danger, not only to the Negro, but to the South.
Gradually losing the support and advice of the best type of
white man, the independent Negro finds himself in competition
with the poorer types of white man, whose jealousy he must meet.
He takes the penalties of being really free. Escaping the exac-
tions of a feudal life, he finds he must meet the sharper diffi-
culties of a free industrial system. And being without the po-
litical rights of his poor white competitor and wholly without
social recognition, discredited by the bestial crimes of the lower
class of his own race, he has, indeed, a hard struggle before him.
In many neighborhoods he is peculiarly at the mercy of this
lower class white electorate, and the self-seeking politicians
whose stock in trade consists in playing upon the passions of
race-hatred.
When the Negro tenant takes up land or hires out to the
landlord, he ordinarily signs a contract, or if he cannot sign
(about half the Negro tenants of the black belt are wholly
illiterate) he makes his mark. He often has no way of know-
ing certainly what is in the contract, though the arrangement is
usually clearly understood, and he must depend on the landlord
to keep both the rent and the supply-store accounts. In other
words, he is wholly at the planter's mercy — a temptation as dan-
gerous for the landlord as the possibilities which it presents are
for the tenant. It is so easy to make large profits by charging
immense interest percentages or outrageous prices for supplies
to tenants who are too ignorant or too weak to protect them-
selves, that the stories of the oppressive landlord in the South
are scarcely surprising. It is easy, when the tenant brings in
his cotton in the fall not only to underweigh it, but to credit it
at the lowest prices of the week ; and this dealing of the strong
with the weak is not Southern, it is human. Such a system has
encouraged dishonesty, and wastefulness ; it has made many land-
lords cruel and greedy, it has increased the helplessness, hope-
lessness and shiftlessness of the Negro. In many cases it has
meant downright degeneration, not only to the Negro, but to
the white man. These are strong words, but no one can travel
72 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
in the black belt without seeing enough to convince him of the
terrible consequences growing out of these relationships.
I made inquiries as to why the Negroes wanted to leave the
farms and go to cities. The answer I got from all sorts of sources
was, first, the lack of schooling in the country; and, second, the
lack of protection.
And I heard also many stories of ill-treatment of various
sorts, the distrust of the tenant of the landlord in keeping his
accounts — all of which, dimly recognized, tends to make many
Negroes escape the country, if they can. Indeed, it is growing
harder and harder on the great plantations, especially where the
management is by overseers, to keep a sufficient labor supply.
In some places the white landlords have begun to break up their
plantations, selling small farms to ambitious Negroes — a signifi-
cant sign, indeed, of the passing of the feudal system. Comment-
ing on this tendency, the Thomaston Post says :
"This is, in part, a solution of the so-called Negro problem,
for those of the race who have property interests at stake cannot
afford to antagonize their white neighbors or transgress the
laws. The ownership of land tends to make them better citi-
zens in every way, more thoughtful of the rights of others, and
more ambitious for their own advancement. The tendency to-
wards cutting up the large plantations is beginning to show
itself, and when all of them are so divided, there will be no
agricultural labor problem, except, perhaps, in the gathering
of an especially large crop."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE SOUTH
Branson, E. C. Farm Life Conditions in the South. Chapel Hill,
N. C. The Church as a Country Life Defense.
Branson, E. C. Rural Life in the South. Am. Statistical Ass'n., Pub.
13:71-75, March, 1912.
Brooks, Robert P. The Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, 1865-1912.
Univ. Wis., Madison, Hist. Series, Vol. 3, No. 3.
Bruce, P. A. Economic History of Virginia, in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury. Macmillan, N. Y., 1896.
Bruce, P. A. The Rise of the New South. Barrie, Philadelphia. The
Hist, of North America, V. 17, 1905.
Bogart, E. L. The Economic History of the United States. Long-
mans, N. Y., 1907.
Cable, George W. Old Creole Days. Scribner, N. Y., 1907.
Cable, George W. The Creoles of Louisiana. Scribner, N. Y., 1884.
THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 73
Coulter, John Lee. The Rural South. Am. Statistical Ass'n., 13 : 45-
58, March, 1912.
DuBois, W. E. The Rural South. Am. Statistical Ass'n., 13:80-4,
March, 1912.
Dunning, W. A. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction. Mac-
millan, N. Y., 1898.
Dyer, G. W. Southern Problems that Challenge our Thought. South-
ern Sociological Congress Proceedings, pp. 25-37, Nashville, Tenn.,
1912.
Frissell, H. B. Southern Agriculture and the Negro Farmer. Am.
Statistical Ass'n., 13 : 65-70, March, 1912.
Glasson, Wm. H. Rural Conditions in the South. Am. Statistical
Ass'n., 13: 76-79, March, 1912.
Gray, Lewis. Southern Agriculture, Plantation System and the Negro
^Problem. Annals, 40 : 90-99, March, 1912.
Hale, Louise Closser. We Discover the Old Dominion. Dodd, N. Y.,
1916.
Haney, Lewis H., and Wehrwein, George S. A Social and Economic
Survey of Southern Travis County. Univ. of Texas Bui., 65, Aus-
tin, 1916.
MacClintock, S. S. The Kentucky Mountains and Their Feuds.
Amer. Jour, of Soc., 7:171-187. September, 1901.
Page, Walter H. Journey Through the Southern States. World's
Work, 14 : 9003-9028, June, 1907.
Kephart, Horace. Our Southern Highlanders. Macmillan, N. Y.,
1913.
Olmstead, Frederick L. The Cotton Kingdom. Mason, N. Y., 1862.
Olmstead, Frederick L. Journey in the Seaboard Slave States. Put-
nam, N. Y., 1904.
Page, Thomas Nelson. Red Rock. 'Scribner, N. Y., 1898.
Southern Agriculture, its Conditions and Needs. Pop. Sci. Mo., 64:
245-261, January, 1904.
Southern Soc. Congress. Proceedings. Nashville, Tenn.
Stone, A. H. Studies in the American Race Problem. Doubleday,
Garden City, 1908.
Vincent, George E. A Retarded Frontier. Amer. Journal Sociology,
4:1-20, July, 1898.
Waldo, Frank. Among the Southern Appalachians. New England
Mag., 14:231-247, n. s., May, 1901.
THE NEGRO
Baker, Ray Stannard. Following the Color Line. Doubleday, Page
& Co., Garden City, 1908.
Commons, John R. Races and Immigrants in America. The Macmil-
lan Company, N. Y., 1908.
DuBois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. A. C. McClurg & Co.,
Chicago, 1907.
Douglass, H. Paul. Christian Reconstruction in the South. The Pil-
grim Press, Boston, 1909.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. Lyrics of Lowly Life. Dodd, Mead & Co.,
N. Y., 1896.
74 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Hart, Albert Bushnell. The Southern South. Appleton, N. Y., 1910.
Haynes, George Edmund. The Negro at Work in New York City, a
Study in Economic Progress. Columbia Univ. Studies in History,
Economics, and Public Law, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Whole No. 124), N. Y.,
1912.
Horwill, Herbert W. Negro Exodus. Contemporary Review, 114:
299-305, Sept., 1918.
Miller, Kelly. The Negro's Part in Racial Cooperation in the Com-
munity. Conf. Social Work, 1918, pp. 481-85.
Negro Education. U. S. Bur. of Ed. Bui., 1916, Nos. 38 and 39, Vols.
I and II.
Negro Migration in 1916-17. Bui. U. S. Dept. of Labor, Div. of Negro
Economics, Gov't. Printing Of., Washington, 1919.
Negro Rural School and its Relation to the Community. The Extension
Department, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee,
Ala., 1915.
Wolfe, Albert B. The Negro Problem in the United States. In Read-
ings in Social Problems, Book V. Grim & Co., Boston, 1916.
CHAPTER IV
THE IMMIGRANT IN AGRICULTURE
IMMIGRATION .IN AGRICULTURE1
JOHN OLSEN
AT the beginning of the nineteenth century the United States
found itself in possession of vast undeveloped resources, which
were tremendously increased by successful purchases and an-
nexations in the course of the century. To secure the rapid de-
velopment of these resources the government not only threw
them open to unrestricted development by private enterprise
but even encouraged such development by public assistance. As
a result of such a policy public lands of apparently unlimited
extent and enormous fertility were offered to any one at a
nominal expense. Later the land acts were multiplied so that
any individual could obtain 480 acres of virgin territory. Fur-
thermore this policy of encouraging private enterprise led to
the extension of the means of communication so that these not
only accompanied but in many cases preceded the growth of
the settlement. Thus access to the splendid public demesne was
assured.
The temptation to enter premises so promising could not be
suppressed by the unfavorable attitude at first assumed by for-
eign governments. Consequently a steady stream of immigrants
commenced flowing into this country. Even though separated
by political boundaries the English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish
still felt that the states were peculiarly their own. Soon the
wanderlust of the Germans, the Danes, the Swedes, and the Nor-
wegians led them to the same destination. There were also some
Swiss and Dutch and a few from southern and eastern Europe
in this first wave which we shall designate the Old Immigration.
i Adapted from a paper prepared by a graduate student in the Editor's
Class in the University of Minnesota, summer 1917.
75
76 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Of the motives which actuated this immigration, the religious
and political, which had been very important, were rapidly
diminishing in influence. In general, hard times in their own
country due to crop failures and fluctuations in industry pre-
ceded the great waves of emigrants. This statement applies prin-
cipally to Ireland and Scandinavia although there were serious
crop failures in Germany, for example the one in Baden in 1825.
The famines in Ireland, however, surpassed all. The first one
occurred in 1826. Far more serious was the one due to potato
rot in 1846-7. As a result emigration and death reduced the
population 50 per cent.
At the same time the general prosperity, which, with the ex-
ception of brief periods designated as panics, continued unin-
terruptedly throughout the century in this country, presented
an attractive antithesis. The liberality of our land laws invited
any foreigner to become a partaker of our prosperity since they
afforded him the opportunity either of securing a farm of his
own or of employment at good wages. The tariff, the invention
of new machinery, and the rapid development of new industries
were auxiliary forces tending at least temporarily to the better-
ment of the conditions of the laborers. The increasing facili-
ties of communication enabled the foreigner to compare the op-
portunities of the New World with those of the Old. Advertis-
ing campaigns by the states and especially by private enterprises,
such as steamship companies, railways, and other American in-
dustrial organizations, which previous to the passage of the
Anti-Contract Immigration Law were absolutely unrestricted,
tended to create a favorable impression. Most influential of
all were letters from countrymen already in America.
Of course there were also a number of other auxiliary causes.
Such were the improved facilities of reaching our country, the
financial assistance which foreigners settled here could render
in enabling relatives to come, and the dread caused by wars and
epidemics in the densely populated communities of Europe.
Back of all these, however, lay the prime psychological instinct
which has been back of all Teutonic migrations in historical
times, the desire for -adventure — the Teutonic wanderlust.
Of these immigrants a relatively large percentage engaged in
agriculture. Of the total number of males of foreign origin
THE IMMIGRANT 77
about 30 per cent, belong to the English-speaking races. They
are distributed fairly equitably throughout the North Central,
Eastern, and Western states although their main strength is in
the first group. This distribution is also true of the Germans.
They are the most important people belonging to this group,
including 775,175 males or 28 per cent, out of a total of 2,-
105,766. In direct contrast are the Scandinavians, of whom a
far greater percentage, 44 per cent, of the Danes and 50 per
cent, of the Norwegians, are engaged in agriculture. Although
found throughout all of the above-mentioned sections, by far the
greatest percentage of those engaged in agriculture are found
in the North Central states. This concentration is most marked
in the case of the Norwegians, of whom 97 per cent, of those in
agriculture are found in that section and Washington. Their
total number is only 140,000. Nevertheless by further concen-
tration in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Illinois, and Iowa within the North Central section they trans-
form those states into a veritable Norway in America. The
Danes, on the other hand, scatter so that it is difficult to point
out a single large and well-defined Danish settlement, while the
Swedes may be termed the compromisers, neither scattering as
much as the Danes nor concentrating as much as the Nor-
wegians. These settlers were further reinforced by a few Ice-
landers. The natives assumed a by no means favorable attitude
towards those who were entering into competition with them;
but the newcomers were on a quest for homes which nothing
except absolute prohibition could prevent. In this search the
similarity of conditions in the various sections of America to
those of their former habitats was their principal guide. Thus
the Germans selected the timber lands of the Northwest; the
Norwegians the rough and hilly lands; the Irish the well-wa-
tered meadows. This conception that agriculture in America
must necessarily resemble their own in Europe was not always
fortunate. Since agricultural conditions in Ireland were
wretched, it deterred a large number of the Irish from going
on the land. As a result only 354 out of every 10,000 Irish
own farm homes while 611 of the Germans, 717 of the Scan-
dinavians, and 721 of the British do. The immigrants were, of
course, influenced by other considerations also. Some had
78 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
friends or relatives in certain localities. Industrious land agents
were always portraying the splendid advantages of the sections
in which they were interested. The building of the railways
facilitated immigration both by providing better markets and
also by familiarizing laborers with the conditions in the unset-
tled sections. Sometimes events which ought to be condemned
had fortunate results. During the canal mania Illinois became
virtually bankrupt. As a result it paid its Irish laborers with
so-called canal scrip. The only thing for which this was ac-
ceptable was land. Consequently a number of the Irish invested
in land and became permanent settlers.
The presence of the Negro in the South caused the foreigners
to avoid that section. It is only in recent years that the in-
creasing demand for labor in order that the South may develop
its resources has met with any distinct response. Of those that
are testing the possible opportunities there the Swedes, Germans,
and Irish are foremost. The exhaustion of the public demesne
forces the immigrants into such new channels. Thus the neg-
lected and abandoned lands of the Middle Atlantic and New Eng-
land states are now being put into cultivation. Among those
who utilize this opportunity the Irish, Swedes, Finns, Norwe-
gians, Dutch, Germans and Poles are the leaders.
The success of these settlers has depended largely on the type
of settlement formed. The joint stock company proved a failure
in promoting settling. Money-making and colonization would
not go together. Communistic enterprises also proved ephem-
eral. More promising were the religious, philanthropic, and
national enterprises, especially when they were provided with
ample funds. In the case of the Irish, the Catholic church tried
to promote colonization. A priest was the first sent so as to
secure effective religious services. The Germans tried to direct
their emigrants to definite sections so that they might be Ger-
manized. In case the expectation that the United States would
break up had been realized those settlements would then have
become independent states. The chief of these attempts cen-
tered in Wisconsin and Texas. All of these attempts failed,
principally on account of mismanagement. Nor was it advis-
able in the earliest period for an immigrant to start out alone.
Great suffering frequently resulted. The best plan was for the
THE IMMIGRANT 79
settlers to settle in groups, but each one independent of all the
others. Germans and Scandinavians often did this following
the instructions either of friends already settled in that locality
or of an agent sent in advance to ascertain conditions there.
These settlers came from the agricultural sections of Europe.
Consequently their success depended on their ability to adapt
themselves to American methods. That such success has been
attained will be questioned by no one who has compared the rude
conditions of the pioneer with those of to-day. Since the great
majority settled in the North Central States, they engaged in
general farming. In this type of farming the Scandinavians
and Germans are leaders. The Danes are noted for their suc-
cess in butter-making and dairying. The Scandinavians are
more likely to waste the fertility of the land than the Germans,
who maintain it through the rotation of crops and the applica-
tion of fertilizers. Wisconsin is the example of German success
just as Utah is of English. The fortunate choice of land con-
tributed to German success while the Welsh succeeded in spite
of an unfortunate choice. The success of the immigrant is by no
means confined to general farming. The Germans raise grapes
in California and carry on truck-raising and dairying in Georgia.
Together with the Irish they raise rice and other southern prod-
ucts in Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama. The Scandinavians
raise grapes in Alabama and truck and fruits in New Jersey.
The German-Russians are especially successful in the beet sugar
sections of Nebraska and the Swiss in the cheese industry in
Wisconsin. Those w(hom we ought to praise the most are the
Dutch who undertake the reclamation of our lowlands. The
best proof of the superiority of the foreign to the native farmer
is that the latter is yielding. The Germans and Irish are se-
curing control of the farm lands of New Jersey, the Scandinav-
ians are replacing the natives in Vermont, the Germans are re-
placing them in New York, and the Poles in Massachusetts.
The desirability of the immigrant does not, however, depend
principally on his ability to accumulate wealth. If such ac-
cumulation is accompanied by a lowering of the American
standard of living, he is undesirable. Among our foreign set-
tlers we find the food simple, the clothes cheap and coarse.
These features seem inevitable in a frontier community. If,
80 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
however, they are retained after the community passes the
frontier stage, the settlers are undesirable. As soon, however, as
the immigrants from northwestern Europe passed that stage,
they commenced imitating American customs. During the
pioneer days any make-shift for a house had to be satisfactory.
Now substantial houses are found almost everywhere. The
early settlers had to work excessively hard to attain success.
With the increase of prosperity they have ceased to do this. A
very influential reason that the Germans, Scandinavians, and
certain minor groups of foreigners outdistanced the natives was
that among the former the women and children did a great deal
of outdoor labor. The generation born in this country do not
put the women and children in the fields. Thus in general the
earlier immigrants are conforming to American standards.
Foreigners on the farms are easily assimilated. The main
factor against assimilation is religion. This statement does not,
of course, apply to the English-speaking peoples who belong in
general to the same church as the natives. Other nationalities
couple their language very closely with their forms of worship.
They therefore try to maintain schools in their own language.
Such attempts fail because of the preference on the part of the
young for the English schools and also because a large number
of the older people realize the paramount importance of Eng-
lish. Attempts were made by the conservatives to introduce
their languages into the public schools. With the exception of
Ohio and Pennsylvania where the Germans succeeded in intro-
ducing German such efforts have been failures everywhere. In
the schools these peoples rank high. In fact the literacy of the
Scandinavian immigrant has been higher than that of the North-
erners as a whole. Their inclination is indicated by the large
number of Germans and Scandinavians who engage in educa-
tional work. To obtain public land they had to become nat-
uralized. Later the questions of local government naturally
aroused interest in politics. The English on account of their
previous acquaintance with our political customs excelled. The
others, however, were also used to fairly democratic institutions
so that they were not at such a great disadvantage. But they
have been rather indifferent in this respect except where they
have composed practically the entire population and therefore
THE IMMIGRANT 81
have been forced to participate. The Germans, as a matter of
fact, looked on politics as a burdensome duty. Many thought
abstinence from American politics creditable on account of the
questionable character of the methods employed. The one ex-
ception is the Norwegian. He is a natural politician. He in-
sists on his right to be recognized, and where due recognition is
not voluntarily given he organizes to secure it. The most cred-
itable feature of the engagement in politics of any of these for-
eigners is that they have generally worked for cleaner politics.
Although with the exception of the Irish they are generally Re-
publicans, they are by no means bound to the party. Exercis-
ing their right of independent thinking they make their vote
depend on the issues.
The final criterion of the desirability of the immigrant is his
character. The earlier immigrants were noted for their indus-
try, economy, and frugality. Upon their arrival in this country
they frequently developed an initiative and self-reliance which
had previously been entirely unsuspected. Even the Irish, al-
though those of them who sought the cities have been denounced
severely, have proven very desirable on the farm. Further-
more ethnically nearly all of the earlier immigrants belonged
to the same Teutonic stock as the natives. The wearing off of the
clannishness of the foreigner and the appreciation by the Amer-
ican of his sterling qualities was followed by rapid assimila-
tion.
During the greater part of the nineteenth century inadequate
transportation facilities prevented a considerable number of im-
migrants from southern and eastern Europe from entering the
United States. Towards the close of the century, these facilities
were improved so as to equal those from northwestern Europe.
As a result, a vast number of immigrants from the former sec-
tions began to arrive. Simultaneously immigration from north-
western Europe decreased both because of the severe strain of
the competition with the newer immigration and also because
the settling of the United States and the industrial improve-
ments of northwestern Europe had eliminated the advantages
of the former. The turning point in immigration was about
1890. Since that time the bulk of the immigrants have been
Jews, Italians, Portuguese, Poles, Bohemians, and Slovaks.
82 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
With the exception of the Jew all of these are laboring under
the most undesirable economic circumstances at home. Out-
of-date industrial organization together with the dense popula-
tion makes the United States seem the Isle of Bliss. The Jew,
on the other hand, although able through his innate shrewdness
to attain an independent economic status, is prevented from
doing so by the racial and religious prejudices of the people.
This is especially true of Russia and Rumania, from which we
obtain the mass of our Jewish immigrants. That such emigra-
tion is not due to economic hardships is perfectly clear in the
case of the latter country, from which practically only Jews emi-
grate while the Rumanians remain at home.
That the Teutonic Americans would not look with as much
pleasure upon the Slavs, Latins, and Jews as they did upon the
entrance of the earlier immigrants who were of their own race
can be explained as being due to unconscious race prejudice. It
can not be said that the recent immigrant is very inferior
morally. It is true that petty thefts occur frequently in Italian
settlements and that the number of lawsuits in Polish settle-
ments is extraordinarily large. The latter fact is largely due to
the preference on the part of the Poles to settle personal differ-
ence involving trifling amounts in court rather than out of
•court as Americans do. None of the excessive criminal tend-
encies which exist among these peoples in the cities extend to
the rural communities. In these communities the Italians and
Slavs utilize all their time and in the case of farm owners and
tenants every available inch of land. They are very frugal.
The opposition they meet from business men may be largely due
to their hesitation to spend. That they do not devote the land
around their houses to trees and flowers, which is often explained
as indicating a lack of the appreciation of beauty, may probably
be just as much due to this characteristic whether we call it
frugality or parsimony. The Jew, on the other hand, meets a
much heartier welcome from the business world on account of his
inclination to spend. He is not as industrious as the Slavs or
Italians. Even in the rural communities his trading propensity
often causes him to devote a part of his time to it.
The decrease in the number of immigrants that engage in agri-
culture may not be entirely due to the change in the type of im-
THE IMMIGRANT 83
migrants but also to economic changes in the United States in
connection with the exhaustion of the public demesne and the
more intense industrial development. In fact this change had
already commenced in the case of the earlier immigrants. For
example a lower percentage of the Scandinavians engaged in
agriculture after 1880 than before. To a large extent it is due
to the foreigners' ignorance of the opportunities in agriculture,
the uncertainty of the returns, and the isolated condition of
American farm life. The friends and relatives of the recent
immigrant are in the cities and thither he goes. With the ex-
ception of a few in Wisconsin we find the Italian farmers in
New England, Middle Atlantic and Southern states, the Slavs
are found in New England, Pennsylvania, and the East North
Central and the West South Central states; the Jews in New
England, New York, and New Jersey; and the Portuguese in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Most of these peoples have been in America too short a time
to enable us to make definite conclusions as to their ability to
conform to our customs. The third generation seems almost
Americanized. Upon their entrance here they retain their typi-
cal food and clothes. Soon they find Old World styles and cus-
toms inconvenient and commence imitating the Americans.
They seem content, however, with the cheapest and coarsest food
and care little about its preparation. In selecting clothes they
often retain their predilection for gaudy colors. Of course, the
custom depends on the people. In general the Latins represent
the lowest type, the Slavs the middle, and the Jews the highest.
The Portuguese are considerably lower than the Italians. The
Bohemians stand foremost among the Slavs, showing a distinct
preference for good living and good clothes whenever they are
financially able to afford them. The same general tendencies are
observed in the case of houses. The Portuguese, Italians, and a
number of the Slavic peoples manage in shacks with gardens
right up to the walls. The Bohemians and Jews are eager for
more substantial dwellings. Many of these peoples care for
cleanliness and neatness neither outside or nor within their
houses. Nevertheless the Portuguese on Martha's Vineyard, who
are considered one of the lowest races in social standards, have
well-kept gardens and even some flowers around their houses.
84 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
One reason for the ill-prepared food and the lack of tidiness is
undoubtedly that the women and children must work so much in
the fields. The entire family spends all the available time out-
doors. Their poverty compels this, consequently these condi-
tions are bound to continue until these peoples have accumulated
a surplus sufficient to afford them some leisure.
Another result of this hard work is the neglect of education, a
tendency furthered by an inclination to under-estimate its value.
In their own countries the educational facilities are very de-
ficient, thus accounting for the high percentage of illiteracy
among them. Since religion and education -are very closely asso-
ciated among them they prefer sending their children to the
Catholic parochial schools in which a minimum emphasis is
placed on English education. Furthermore they are not accus-
tomed to democratic institutions. Therefore it is not surprising
that they take little interest in politics. No free public lands
act as a spur. Gradually but very slowly they are commencing
to take interest in local affairs. Participation in these will un-
doubtedly broaden their conception until they extend their at-
tention to state and national affairs. Here again lies a danger.
Hitherto they have generally acted as a group, following certain
leaders. If these leaders should happen to be unscrupulous, the
result would be detrimental. The exception is again the Jew.
He realized the value of education, and succeeds well in educa-
tional lines. In politics he acts independently although gov-
erned by a strong race-consciousness.
On account of their poverty and the absence of free public
lands, a large number of these immigrants become tenants and
laborers. Practically all the Portuguese labor in the cranberry
bogs where they have become almost indispensable. The Slavic
laborer is very subservient while the Italian is inclined to shirk
if he is not closely supervised. Their type of agriculture differs
from that of the earlier immigrant with respect to the average
acreage. A large number have five acres or less while very few
have eighty which may be considered the minimum holding of
the earlier immigrant. On account of the smaller holdings there
are also fewer general farmers. The agricultural conditions of
their own countries would lead us to expect small scale farming.
The products raised depend, of course, on the section in which
THE IMMIGRANT 85
they are located. They raise tobacco, cotton, truck, and fruit.
The Italian especially may be called the truck and fruit-grower.
Their bank accounts are small because they invest their surplus
in additional land. Consequently the steady growth in their
acreage is an accurate index to their prosperity. Such pros-
perity is, however, due to lower standards of living rather than
to improved methods of farming. They still prefer hand-labor
to machinery. They make only slight use of fertilizers. Again
the Jew is the exception. He is a farm owner and does not hesi-
tate to invest in machinery and fertilizers. In fact he tends to
go to the other extreme. His outlays are often unwise. More-
over, he likes to undertake side occupations. As a result it fre-
quently happens that he does not prosper on the farm. This
condition is the more surprising because he has had more out-
side assistance than any of the others. The best managed effort
for that purpose has been the one financed by the Baron de
Hirsch fund. In fact the Jew would probably never have at-
tempted agriculture to any 'considerable extent if it had not been
for these efforts. The result has been a few colonies of rather
impractical farmers. Colonization efforts in the case of the
other immigrants have frequently been mismanaged and have
failed unless each one has been given sole possession of his
property. Such settlements differ considerably from the group
settlements of the earlier immigrants in that each one is far more
dependent on the others socially.
Recently the impression has been growing that too many un-
desirable immigrants are being admitted. To remedy this de-
fect a literacy test has been provided. The protection which
such restrictive legislation will afford American capital and
labor will undoubtedly be temporary. Far more important is
the question whether we can assimilate the hordes which are
entering. As indicated above, the number entering has in-
creased so rapidly in the last few years that the result is doubt-
ful. Nevertheless a literacy test does not seem the proper
method of securing the result desired. It excludes individuals
who have not had an opportunity rather than those who lack
ability. What is needed is a publicity bureau to inform the
immigrants of the best opportunities in this country. If any one
is admitted without the necessary means to betake himself to the
86 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
proper locality it is our moral duty to aid him. This publicity
and distribution bureau would find no lack of opportunities for
the immigrants. The density of the population of the Southern
States to-day is very low compared with that of the Northern :
Alabama 35 New York 152
Arkansas 24 Illinois 86
Louisiana .*.... 30 Ohio 102
Texas 11 Pennsylvania 140
Florida 9 „ Massachusetts 349
The wonderful resources of those States are almost untouched.
The foreigners are very welcome there. It would be unfair
to the South to deprive her of these immigrants who would de-
velop her agricultural resources merely because the North is more
fully developed. In the West there are still 485,000,000 acres of
idle land. The East has its abandoned farms. If the results
of a policy of internal distribution of the immigrant should prove
unsatisfactory then it would be time to pass laws restricting
immigration. In the meantime we should not forget America's
great debt to the immigrant.
WHY IMMIGRANTS GO TO CITIES1
H. P. FAIRCHILD
IT is apparent that our foreign-born residents tend irresistibly
to congregate in the most densely settled portions of the country,
and in the most densely populated states. But this is not all.
They also tend to congregate in the largest cities, and in the
most congested sections of those cities. In 1890, 61.4 per cent,
of the foreign-born population of the United States were living
in cities of at least 2500 population. In 1900 the percentage
had increased to 66.3, while 38.8 per cent, of the entire foreign-
born population were huddled into the few great cities having
a population of over 100,000. In the same year only 36.1 per
cent of the native-born population were living in cities of over
2500. This tendency appears to be increasing in strength, and
i Adapted from "Immigration," pp. 229-231. Macmillan, New York,
1913.
THE IMMIGRANT 87
is more marked among the members of the new immigration than
among the older immigrants. Thus in 1910 the percentage of
foreign-born living in cities of the specified size had risen to 72.2.
The reasons for this tendency of the foreign-born to congregate
in the most densely settled districts may be briefly summarized
as follows. (1) They land, almost without exception, in cities,
and it is often the easiest thing for them to stay there. It takes
some capital, knowledge, and enterprise to carry the immigrant
any distance from the port of arrival, unless he has a definite
connection in some other place. Yet it is claimed that, land
them where you would, about the same number of immigrants
would find their way to New York within a few weeks.
(2) Economic opportunities are much more abundant and varied
in the cities than in the country. (3) Such occupations as are
obtainable in the city require much less capital than the char-
acteristic country occupations. With a few dollars, an im-
migrant in the city can set himself up in some independent busi-
ness, depending on turning over his capital rapidly to make a
living. There are so many people in the city, that if one can
.manage to serve the most trivial want satisfactorily, he can get
along. But any independent business in the country requires
a larger outlay of capital than the average immigrant can hope
for. The only country occupation open to him is common farm
labor, and there are other reasons which make him ill adapted
for this. (4) In the cities, the newly arrived immigrant can
keep in close touch with others of his own race and tongue. In
the compact colony of his fellow-countrymen, he may be sure
of companionship, encouragement, and assistance when needed.
It is the most natural thing in the world for an immigrant to
want to settle where there are numbers of others of his immediate
kind. (5) Knowledge of the English language is much less
essential in the city than in the country. The presence of others
who can speak the same tongue makes it possible for an immigrant
to make a living without knowing a word of the language of his
adopted country, as many of them do for year after year. In
the rural districts, however, it is impossible for a newly arrived
immigrant to get along at all without a knowledge of the
English language, either in independent business, or as an em-
ployee, unless he settles in a farm colony of people of his own
88 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
race, of which there are, of course, many to be found. (6) Not
only is there more chance of friendly relief from fellow-country-
men, in case of necessity, in the cities, but public relief agencies
and private benevolences are much more available there than in
the country. (7) The excitement and novelty of American city
life is very attractive to many immigrants — just as it is to
natives. Trolley cars, skyscrapers, and moving picture shows
are wonderfully alluring features. In fact, in addition to the
considerations which are peculiar to himself, the immigrant has
all the general incentives to seek the city, which operate upon the
general population, and which have produced so decided a change
in the distribution of population within the last few decades.
IMMIGRATION AS A SOURCE OF FARM LABORERS1
JOHN LEE COULTER
AGRICULTURE has so long been looked upon as the dumping-
ground of all surplus labor in case of city industries, of all
poverty-stricken persons in case of famines, and all revolutionary
individuals in case of disruption in European countries, that it
is hard to realize that we have reached the state where farming
in practically all of its branches requires a very high order of
intelligence and the capacity to grasp and use a great variety of
scientific facts. We may, therefore, say that, although it is true
that we need farm labor very much, as a relief for current im-
migration agricultural distribution is not promising.
There are two great classes of immigrants that can find room
in various branches of the agricultural industry. The first class
is composed of those from overcrowded agricultural communities
in their home countries. On account of the high state of de-
velopment of their industry they can teach us much which we
have failed to take advantage of and which would result in the
uplift of many of the sub-industries in agriculture in this
country. These should be urged to bring with them their home
industries and introduce new phases of agriculture into this
country. The United States has been spending millions of
i Adapted from Annals 33: 373-379, Jan.-June, 1909.
THE IMMIGRANT 89
dollars in introducing new plants, animals, and methods of fann-
ing from other countries. At the same time little groups of
foreigners, such as the Swiss of Wisconsin or later the Italians
in some Southern districts, formerly thought of as the least
desirable immigrants, have settled in our midst and put into
practice their home training, which has resulted in the establish-
ing of great industries, such as the Swiss cheese industry. The
class of immigrants most desired is, therefore, those who will
add most to the industry they enter. But it is not necessary
that the immigrants should introduce some new sub-industry or
be in advance of us in their methods in order to make them
eligible to enter the agricultural industries. We may say as a
general proposition that farmers from nearly any agricultural
community in Europe would be acceptable in some of the agri-
cultural industries of this country. If reasonable pre-
cautions are taken the immigrants referred to, even though
they bring no new industry, will not become public charges, but
will add to the general prosperity of the country. The class
objected to, the refuse from other industries, not only adds
nothing new but is apt either to lower the standard of the agri-
cultural industry or to become a public charge.
But it is not enough to encourage one class of immigrants
and discourage or prohibit others. The immigrants must not
only come from rural districts in their mother-country; if they
are to succeed, they must be properly located here. Probabty
the most important single condition is that immigrants should be
directed toward and urged to locate where their physical en-
vironment will correspond as nearly as may be to that of their
mother-country. By that I mean that not only should the
climate be nearly the same, but the precipitation, the soils, and
the topography should approach that of their former home, if
possible. Failure to satisfy these preliminary requirements has
resulted in almost complete failure or a long period of suffering,
while attention to these factors has produced unpredicted suc-
cesses.
The next consideration of singular importance is that the
social environment should be acceptable. If the agricultural
operations are not close to a city where others of the same
nationality are employed in other industries, it is desirable —
90 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
almost necessary — that a considerable number be allowed, even
induced, if need be, to settle in a community. At first, they will
live as in a world apart, but they give off ideas and take on others
and at the end of a generation or two a few intermarriages will
have broken down the hard-and-fast wall between settlements.
Common markets, interchange of labor supply, contests between
settlements, political and other conflicts, and back of it all the
common-school system, soon result in an amalgamated, assimi-
lated race.
The next consideration which should be held in mind in de-
termining upon the distribution of immigrants among the dif-
ferent branches of the agricultural industry is the economic
status of the people to be distributed and their plans or am-
bitions for the future. Thus, some are independent laborers,
others ready to become tenants, and still others to be landowners.
Some plan to be employees as long as they stay; some of these
would plan to save a snug fortune in a few years and return to
the mother-country, others to earn and use the returns from
year to year. Some plan to step up to the position of tenant and
employer, others are ready to enter that state at once. Some are
ready to become landowners and independent farmers by pur-
chase of land in settled districts, others with less capital would
go to the frontier with poorer markets and grow up with the
country, enduring hardships but accumulating wealth. There
is room for all of these classes of people in nearly all parts of the
country.
The extended successes accompanied by individual failures of
the English-speaking peoples who early entered the agricultural
industry of this country need not be expanded upon here.
Neither will any detailed treatment of the extensive settlement
by Germans in the North Central States during the last half -cen-
tury be made. We may place the general influx of Scandinavians
into Minnesota and the Dakotas in/ the same class and pass by all
of these — which means the great bulk of immigrants of agri-
cultural peoples — with the statement that they represent success
and with the assumption that students of economics know of these
classes and know of their successes. It is because we are too apt
to stop at this point and say that other nationalities as a rule
have little or nothing to offer that this paper is presented. The
THE IMMIGRANT 91
writer would emphasize the fact that we have room for farmers
from many lands, assuming that we act intelligently in our choice
and properly distribute those who come.
The large Swiss settlement in Green County, Wisconsin,
illustrates success in the introduction of a new sub-industry of
great importance. Having struggled for years trying to farm
in the American way, these immigrants finally turned to the
great industry of their home country. They had settled in a
physical enviroment which was very much like what they had
left abroad. Now several hundred cheese factories are prosper-
ing and millions of pounds of cheese are annually placed upon
our markets. Most of it is the famous Swiss cheese. It should
also be noted that nearly all of those engaged in making this
cheese and in buying and selling it are Swiss or of Swiss origin.
The writer feels that this colony is a great success, is the kind
of thing this country wants, is the basis of prosperity in our
agriculture, and must not be condemned because of the fact that
broad Swiss is sometimes spoken or because the thousands of
members of the district are not assimilated during the first
generation. The writer has found individuals and small groups
of settlers from this colony and from "the old country" moving
far up into the Northwest carrying with them the information
and ambition to start other colonies as prosperous as the old one.
The acquisition of such an industry is as valuable to this country
as the introduction of a new plant that may have required the
expenditure of a hundred thousand dollars.
Turning from this prosperous Swiss district, we may direct
our attention to a Bohemian center in northwestern Minnesota.
The Swiss had sent explorers ahead to find a desirable location
before coming to this country and settling down. The
Bohemians were in no greater financial straits in their home
country than the Swiss had been, but they were brought in and
located by great transportation companies. The soil where the
Bohemians were ' * dumped ' ' is very good ; but the country needs
an expensive drainage system. The poor immigrants are not
in a position to establish it. The result is that for some fifteen
years we have had before our eyes a Bohemian colony number-
ing hundreds of people, unable to establish a prosperous com-
munity because of unfavorable natural conditions. These people
92 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
will succeed in time, despite obstacles, but some common-sense
assistance would hasten the day of their prosperity.
In other parts of the United States large settlements of
Bohemians of no higher standard are prosperous and happy.
As an illustration of the status that should obtain the writer
would refer to some of the very prosperous communities of
Poles and Icelanders in North Dakota and elsewhere. No class
of citizens, whether immigrants or descended from immigrants
half a dozen steps removed, could ask for greater material prog-
ress, better buildings — homes, churches, schools, and town build-
ings— than the Polish settlements around Warsaw, Poland,
Minto, and Ardock in Walsh County, North Dakota. The
writer's knowledge of this and other communities of like char-
acter leads him to say that to encourage such settlements is to
foster prosperity and frugality as well as to place the stamp
of approval upon a home-loving, land-loving class of farmers.
If we pass on to settlements of Russians we may say nearly the
same as above. With a love for land and home which is almost
beyond our understanding, these people are too often frugal to
a fault. They come with a low standard of living and during
the first generation the standard does not rise much. But the
change soon comes. The children, or at least the grandchildren,
become thoroughly American unless the immigrants have been
located in an enviroment where success is impossible. In this
connection we might refer to such concrete cases as the settle-
ments in central and western North Dakota, or the large pros-
perous colony in Ellis County, Kansas, or the newer settlements
in the Southwest.
Nor need we stop with the Swiss, Bohemians, Polanders, Ice-
landers, and Russians. If we turn our attention to the Italians
coming into the South we find them filling the various places
demanding attention. There is a large demand for white labor,
and the mass of Italians who do not intend to make this their
life-home more and more fill a long-felt need. With the great
numbers of Mexicans coming across the line for part of a season
this demand may gradually be better and better satisfied. There
is also a large demand for tenants, and this cry is being answered
by Italians. These newcomers are not only fitting into the
cotton-growing industry in competition with the colored people,
THE IMMIGRANT 93
but are proving their efficiency in vegetable and fruit farming.
Of late years such settlements as that of Italians at Tontitown,
Arkansas, in the Ozark Mountains, show also that Italians can
bring their home industry with them and succeed here. They
not only settle down as dignified farmers, but actually teach our
farmers many things. Vegetables, apples, plums, grapes, and,
other fruits are successfully grown. If the colony located at
Sunnyside, Arkansas, at an earlier date was a failure at first, it
is no sign that Italians cannot succeed in agriculture. Immi-
grants, largely from other industries, placed in competition with
Negroes in production of a crop that they knew absolutely
nothing about, under foremen accustomed to drive slaves, in a
swamp country — hot and sickly to newcomers — attacked by
malarial fever and losing a large number of the first settlers, it
is not to be wondered at that failure was threatened. But suc-
cess has come even in that case, where failure at first stared all
in the face.
With colonies like the Brandsville Swiss settlement in Mis-
souri, with the Italians and Russians coming even into old New
England, with Mexicans pushing up into the Southwest, and
with other nationalities gradually finding their own, we may
indeed turn our attention toward the agricultural industry as
a much-neglected field. The cry of "back to the land" will not
go unheeded by immigrants who have come from farms in their
mother-country if any reasonable amount of effort is put forth to
' ' assist them to find themselves. ' '
Reference might also be made to the Jewish farm problems of
the Middle Atlantic States, problems which have importance as
far West as Wisconsin; and to the Japanese and Chinese agri-
cultural labor problems of the far West and Southwest. There
are possibilities here which few people have yet appreciated. The
question of demand for seasonal agricultural labor and the pos-
sibilities of continual labor by passing from one industry to
another in neighboring districts or following the same industry
from one part of the country to another are left untouched.
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CHAPTER V
PRESENT PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE
WANTED: A NATIONAL POLICY IN AGRICULTURE1
EUGENE DAVENPORT
THE purpose of this paper is to invite attention to the very
great need at the present time of a more definite policy regarding
agriculture ; a policy that shall be national in its scope, universal
in its interests, and comprehensive in its procedures.
The term national policy is not intended to mean a policy
of the Federal Government as over against the States, nor in-
deed a governmental policy of any kind as distinct from the con-
victions and the ideals of the people from which and from whom
our democratic government proceeds.
What is meant is rather such consensus of intelligent opinion
and such a deliberate judgment about agriculture as shall repre-
sent the constructive purpose of the American people whether
farmers, laborers, or business men, and whether operating in
their private or their governmental capacities. What is meant
is such a common recognition of certain facts and principles to
be established by investigation and conference as shall amount at
any given time to a national policy about farms and farmers and
farming as over against the policy which assumes a struggle of
each separate interest to maintain its place in a constantly shift-
ing balance of power in which all are frankly antagonistic and
each prospers or suffers in proportion to the force it is able to
exert and the advantage it is able to secure.
This policy is not called a program because programs are made
to carry out fixed and predetermined purposes, while the thing
in the mind of the speaker is rather a status and a procedure
i Adapted from "Proceedings of 32nd Annual Convention of the Assn.
of Am. Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations," pp. 52-68.
95
96 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
under shifting conditions, with the intent always to promote the
prosperity of the farmer, not as a favored class but as a typical
and component part of society, producing the food of the people
and in potential control of the land policies of the commonwealth.
My general thesis is this : That considerations of fairness and
of public safety both demand a higher regard for the affairs and
interests of the open country and for the welfare of the farmer
and his family; that in a real democracy the farmer must stand
higher than hitherto in public esteem, not because of demands he
may make upon society but by reason of his worth and his service ;
and that he should count for more in the management of public
affairs not administratively, in which he has little skill, but in
matters requiring counsel, in which he is comparatively wise and
relatively unprejudiced.
Agriculture, whether considered as a profession or .as a mode
of life, has never figured adequately in world affairs, being re-
garded by publicists mainly as the source of cheap food for
cheap labor and of raw materials good for commerce and for
manufacture, both convenient for holding the balance of trade
upon the right side of the ledger. The farmer himself has been
generally considered as an unskilled laborer, a humble producer
rather than a typical citizen.
Outside the technical journals, the public press is almost as
silent about farmers and agriculture — except for an occasional
poor joke, the annual crop statistics, or the market report — as if
our farming were done upon Mars. The columns are full of the
struggles between labor and capital, of society notes and of busi-
ness schemes, but in general a murder trial with a mystery, or
the love letters in a triangular divorce suit are good for more
space than the greatest livestock exposition in the world. Our
magazines and the public mind are full of modern scientific
achievements and of art, but how much does the world know or
care about the farmer and his phenomenal success in animal and
plant improvement or the pictures he paints every year upon
the landscape? Clearly our public press is animated almost
exclusively by urban interests even in cities that owe their very
commercial existence and financial support to the agricultural
activity of the immediate environs. To be sure, the statistician
and the speculator know something about farming but not about
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 97
the farmer, for their interest is limited to the mass results in the
form of millions of bushels and does not extend to the matter of
their production, the welfare of the producer, or the effect upon
the land.
Everybody agrees that this is to be a different world after the
war, but no thoughtful man can fail to be struck with the char-
acter of the economic and social questions that begin to loom
large in connection with reconstruction : trade routes, the new
merchant marine, raw materials, improved facilities for extending
credit, cooperative business, public ownership of public utilities,
government oversight of private enterprises, excess profits, in-
heritance taxes, prohibition, woman suffrage, the perennial
problems of the relations between capital and labor, the mini-
mum wage, the maximum day, and time and a half for overtime.
Not an item, not a suggestion, of anything agricultural either as
a business or as a mode of life, if we may except the occasional
mention of the word "land" and certain plans for providing
homesteads for the returning soldiers, which is an army, not an
agricultural, proposition.
For the most part our considerable list of reconstruction
problems may be reduced to the two great questions that mainly
concern the public mind to-day; namely, foreign and domestic
trade, and the perennial contest between capital and labor. We
forget the citizen because we have learned to think politically
and socially mainly in terms of commerce based upon manu-
facture, under conditions requiring vast combinations of capital,
concentration of population, and division of labor — the very con-
ditions that inspire not only greed of gain and social unrest, but
international war. Yet our interest lies here rather than with
the peaceful pursuits of the open country.
It may well be said that if there is a dearth of live problems
in the public mind regarding agriculture, it is the fault of the
farmers themselves inasmuch as each interest is assumed to be
responsible for promoting its own affairs. Granted, but even
so the conclusion is irresistible that people generally do not regard
agricultural problems as of public concern, while my chief con-
tention is that the public even more than the farmer is interested
in the discovery and the proper solution of every problem con-
nected with the public domain, with the production of food, and
98 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
with the character and condition of that portion of our popula-
tion that shall live upon the land.
I say that the public is more interested than the farmer in
these matters because "The Farmer" is actually a collection of
individuals who can for the most part extricate themselves from
any intolerable situation that may develop ; while the country
as a whole cannot extricate itself from the consequences of bad
agricultural policies that easily develop when matters of funda-
mental character intimately connected with food production,
home-building, and land ownership are left to shift for them-
selves.
But we are not without a start in the right direction. More
than half a century ago we began to think nationally about
agriculture. The impulse had its origin in our consular service
and in the primitive collecting instinct whereby seeds and roots
of promising foreign plants were sent to America for trial. Out
of this grew the Department of Agriculture, representing the
official determination of America to do whatever could be done
administratively to promote agricultural welfare at home and
marketing facilities abroad.
Again, in the darkest days of our Civil War the United States
established the most unique educational s}7stem which the world
has ever known ; hence this association and the colleges it repre-
sents. Aiming at increased production though it does, and
national in scope though it is, yet after all, the basis of the system
is the education and the initiative of the individual, for it is
founded upon instruction of collegiate grade and based upon
scientific investigation of the highest order. We could not have
a better foundation for 'the edifice that shall one day stand as
emblematical of our national aims and purposes in agriculture
than is the education system represented lby this Association
of American Agricultural Colleges, and there could be no better
corner-stone for the structure than the work of the experiment
stations connected therewith.
But this is only a beginning of a national policy for agri-
culture ; there yet exists a wide gulf between what these public
agencies are doing or can do and what the individual is accom-
plishing or able to accomplish under anything like present or
prospective conditions. If agriculture is to figure as it must
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 99
figure in a successful democracy, then this gulf must somehow
be bridged.
It must never be forgotten in this connection that in a suc-
cessful democracy occuping territory of continental proportions,
approximately one-third of all the people will live upon the land.
Moreover, it is this third and not the mass representing organized
industry or the fraction representing ' l business, ' ' through which
the line of descent will mainly run. Who these people are,
therefore, that live upon the land, which third of our population
they represent, and what they are thinking about day by day
and year by year as the generations come and go, may easily make
all the difference between success and failure in the experiment
of democratic government, to which all the world now stands
committed and in which experiment the United States occupies
a position of associated leadership as conspicuous as it was
inevitable.
Specifically, then, what is it that agriculture needs and does
not have but that is essential to the highest success and the
greatest safety both of the farming people and of the nation as a
whole ? What are some of the things that must be provided from
the national end after the individual, by his education, his in-
dustry, and his thrift, has done all that may fairly be expected
of him, and the State he lives in has done what it can ?
If agriculture were solely >an individual enterprise we should
simply consult the farmer about his needs and desires. But
agriculture is more than farming and the public must be party
to any policies affecting the production of its food, the manage-
ment of its lands, or the social and political welfare of its people.
The question, therefore, what does agriculture need? must
be divided and considered both from the point of view of the
farmer and from that of the public in its largest capacity —
that is to say, the nation, present and prospective.
First of all, then, what more does the farmer need? If this
question should be put to the observer from the parlor car or to
the publicist, he would likely say that the farmer needs to work
to a better purpose and to be more careful of his equipment;
that he doubtless needs more capital as he certainly needs to
organize his affairs according to modern business methods, and to
know better than he does what things cost him.
100 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
But if the same question be asked the farmer, he will have a
different answer. He will say that the farmer needs many
things which he is powerless to provide but without which the
business is becoming less and less desirable from a relative point
of view, therefore declining.
He will probably say first of all that he wants better ed-
ucational opportunities for his children, for as matters stand
now they must leave the parental roof at a tender age or else he
must uproot his "home, abandon his business, and go to town if
his children are not to fall behind those of the butcher, the
baker, and the candlestick maker — to be more specific, of the
carpenter, the plumber, and the day laborer.
But we have the Smith-Hughes bill which in itself is evidence
that the public has not only recognized but acknowledged the
conditions and begun to correct them — in a wise way too, for
in a democracy the people must take the lead or at least carry a
part of the burden of all progress. This plan which we have
begun is a logical extension of the land-grant idea into the domain
of secondary education.
We are evidently headed in the right direction at this point,
but our progress will be insufficient until we succeed in providing
for the children of the farm as wholesome, as adequate, and as
cultural if not as varied, educational opportunities as are pro-
vided in the most favored cities. There are obstacles to be over-
come of course, chief of which are the low tax-paying ability
of the open country as compared with the congested city, and
the high per capita cost of education.
But if we are to remain a democracy and be safe, this burden
must in some way be assumed by the public and not remain a
permanent handicap upon the profession of farming. If it is
not so assumed as a national policy and as .a part of a national
plan, even to the extent of heavily subsidizing rural education, it
is inevitable that we shall ultimately have a peasant population
on the farms, and colleges such as ours will have no students of
collegiate grade except from among land-holding city residents.
It requires no prophet to foresee that when such a time comes
democratic institutions will begin to crumble at their foundations.
Next to the lack of educational opportunities for his children
comparable with those of the city, the farmer will insist that the
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 101
income from his business is inadequate to enable him to main-
tain the same scale of living as that provided through other
occupations requiring equal or even less preparation, industry,
or investment.
Pushed for proof, he will reason substantially as follows : All
studies in cost accounting show a labor income from farming
which in the vast majority of cases is ridiculously small, failing
oftener than not to require more than three figures for its ex-
pression and recognized by the public as a joke. We are not
now considering the exceptional man, or what might be done,
but we are to study deliberately what the great mass of farmers,
our hardest working people, are accomplishing or indeed can
accomplish in earning power through the production of staple
foods under conditions that have prevailed and that are likely to
obtain at the close of the war and afterwards.
The farmer will confess that he has long been criticized for
tight-fistedness in refusing to pay "decent wages" and that he
has thereby lost the bulk of his best labor, even his own sons.
He will point out that a Federal milk commission very recently
after six weeks' deliberation refused to allow a price that would
net him thirty cents an hour for the labor involved in milk pro-
duction, even though the same milk was delivered by drivers
getting a hundred or more dollars a month with no risks and
no expenses.
He will point out how severely he has been criticized in the
press and from the platform for failure to provide bathrooms in
his home and modern conveniences for his wife, whom he loves
as other men love their wives ; but he will also point out that the
policy which refused him thirty cents an hour for his own labor,
permits the plumber in a country town to charge eighty cents
(by the latest information, to be exact, eighty-one and one-
quarter) with fifty cents for a boy helper, who for the most part
does little work, and the like of whom would not be "worth his
salt" upon the farm.
This farmer will be able to show also that if he should attempt
to pay the minimum wage of Mr. Ford or of the labor unions
with an eight-hour day and time and a half for overtime now
recognized by the Federal Government, he would either speedily
lose his farm or else the cost of food would run to a level un-
102 , RURAL SOCIOLOGY
a'pproacneci by the present war prices. Specifically, this would
mean that milk would have retailed in Chicago last winter at
some seventeen cents a quart instead of twelve, as allowed by a
Federal commission, or the thirteen that would have satisfied the
farmers, and that present prices of meat and butter would ex-
pand some twenty or twenty-five per cent.
If he reads the daily papers, as he probably does, this farmer
will also point out that under Federal management of the rail-
ways, his local station agent (not a telegrapher) has just been
granted a minimum wage of ninety-five dollars a month on the
basis of an eight-hour day, pro-rata addition for two days over-
time and time and a half for further excess. Any good farm
laborer can do this work; how, therefore, shall the farmer com-
pete at less than thirty cents an hour and with what arguments
shall he preserve the independence and initiative of his own son
over against a government job, protected by the civil service,
backed by a powerful union, and guaranteeing with no invest-
ment and no risk a minimum wage far in excess of what the father
has ever made upon the farm, with an eight-hour day and time
and a half for overtime, spent wholly under shelter and mostly
in an armchair ?
The situation is illustrated by my own experience within a
fortnight wherein a farm laborer protested against his wage of
seventy-seven dollars per month upon the ground that his son
of seventeen was making one hundred and sixty-five dollars a
month in the railroad yards a mile away.
There are vast wheat growing regions in this country under-
lain by coal deposits. Here farming and mining come together.
Here the farmer's income from wheat growing and the miner's
wage may be directly compared. When this is done, it will be
found that the farmer is unable with the most modern machinery
and methods to cultivate with his own hands land enough to
produce a labor income equal to that of the soft coal miner,
working and living in the same neighborhood, trading at the
same stores, attending the same churches, and sending his
children to the same schools.
Here we have a class of artisans largely of alien birth and not
yet citizens, but protected in their earning capacity by a power-
ful organization whose existence and demands are now recognized
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 103
as a part of our national policy. No preparation is required for
their business, nothing is invested, no taxes paid, and no risks
assumed except perhaps a slightly, a very slightly, increased
hazard of life offset to a considerable degree by easier hours and
healthier conditions of work.
But the citizen farmer who lives in the same community with
the miner, whose children grow up with his own, and who is a
manager in 'a small way, competing in the labor market, must in-
vest in land and buildings, tools and livestock. He must pay
taxes and insurance and repairs and veterinary fees. He must
work often sixteen hours, seldom less than ten, and he must be
on duty day and night, ready always to care for his independent
plant — all this, and yet in order to receive a labor income equal
to that of the soft coal miner, whether citizen or alien, with no
preparation, with nothing invested but a pick and shovel, and
with no risk involved, the farmer must not only work himself
as no professional laborer ever works, but he must also work his
children without pay.
The ultimate consequence of this condition needs no exposition
here. By as much as this country could not permanently remain
half free and half slave, no more can our democracy endure with-
out a national policy and plan that will equalize to some degree
at least the income from the land and investment in the most
perishable of all equipment on the one hand and the rewards of
unskilled labor upon the other.
But if the profits of farming are so meager, how can we have
so many "rich farmers" here and there as to make the term
proverbial? The situation to which this question refers will bear
analysis. There are many rich farmers, as riches go among
common people, but it will be found upon investigation that they
belong to one of four classes, mostly unique or temporary :
First. Exceptional men on large farms or else engaged in
some branch of specialized farming which by its nature is limited
in its application.
Second. Men who have inherited their farms and to whom
these farms therefore represent a capital investment that cost
them nothing.
Third. Men who have deliberately raised large families in
order to have at hand an abundance of unpaid labor, brutalizing
104 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
womanhood from no higher motives than actuated thousands in
raising soldiers for the Kaiser.
Fourth. Men who have obtained their lands in an early day at
a nominal rate, often as low as fifty cents an acre, and who have
worked the land "for all that's in it," mining out fertility as
the operator mines out coal. Here is where most of the rich
farmers will be found — a crop that can be produced once and only
once in any country.
Whoever knows the conditions that actually obtain in respect
to home-building will understand the deep-seated unrest that is
becoming wide-spread in this country because of the increasing
difficulty in securing ownership to land. To the public generally
this is a sealed chapter in the notes of an unwritten history, but
to those of us who can remember when there was no "Great
West," when Cincinnati was called Porkoplis, and when steers
were fed from the open ranges across the prairies to the central
market, this is no mystery. We understand perfectly well what
the mass of Americans do not know, that until about the opening
of the present century, men, women and children worked will-
ingly and often cruelly without money and without price for the
sake of developing out of nature's; raw material "a home of their
own. ' ' That opportunity has now gone and with it the impulse
to labor for something better than money. Hereafter the farmer,
like other people, will have to reckon his income in terms of
cash.
The wave of land hunger now going upf over this country is
but the premonition of what is coming if it is to remain as diffi-
cult as now for country-minded young families to obtain, within a
reasonable period, homes of their own. Here within our midst
almost unnoticed and for the most part unknown is growing up
a situation of vastly more import to public welfare than are all
the questions of merchant marine, trade routes, raw materials,
and preferential tariffs combined. The facts are that as matters
are going now, land is slipping away from the typical farmer, and
his children will soon be disappearing from our colleges.
But why be so solicitous about a class of people who cannot
or will not take care of themselves? That is exactly the point.
We have now reached a time in world development when we
recognize the fact that many very good things cannot take care
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 105
of themselves but must be cared for, even fought for, and that
the policy of laissez faire is often fatal to peaceful progress.
If the farmer is not satisfied and thinks he can better himself
then let him change his profession. Exactly, and that is what
he is doing in an alarming proportion of instances, but what
about the rest of us, and wherewithal shall we be fed ? If farm-
ing were a profession engaging but a few thousand people, we
might afford to let it alone, but it is our largest industry, engag-
ing millions of some kind of citizens. It is a matter of public
concern, therefore, both ways, that they be prosperous and
gradually evolving with the rest of the world.
It is because the farmer as such cannot take care of himself;
because we are drifting rapidly away from conditions that pro-
mote a stable democracy and toward agrarian revolution, that
a national policy about agriculture must be one of the major and
not the minor considerations in readjusting the affairs of this
disturbed country, which is now, in common with the rest of
the world, in a highly fluid condition and ready for the hand of
the molder.
Whatever is true of farmers as individuals or of farming as a
profession, the chief concern about agriculture after all, and
the considerations that demand a national policy and plan, fall
well within the domain of public welfare.
The country as a whole, even more than the average farmer, is
concerned about the housing, the sanitary surroundings, and
the health of that third of our population which lives upon the
farm under what ought to be and what can well be ideal physical
and moral conditions for raising the citizens of a democracy.
Yet no man will admit that even in this great, new, rich country,
with its high percentage of literacy, are these conditions any-
where near ideal.
Again, the country as a whole is more interested than the
average man is likely to be in the kind and amount of education
which is to be combined with the wholesome industry that
naturally attends upon life in the country, and in so far as
either of these considerations is hampered from lack of funds
or ideals, the public is bound to supply both, for the class of
people is too numerous, its power for good or evil too great, to
justify neglect.
106 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The home-building instinct is not only the greatest known
incentive to work but it is also the safety clutch for democratic
institutions. We have enjoyed a half century of unexampled
prosperity, largely because it has been based upon cheap food —
food so cheap as not to repay the labor bestowed upon it, to say
nothing of capital, of which there was little, or the extraction of
fertility, of which there was much. There is nothing that will
get so much work out of a man and his family as the desire to
own the home that shelters them, and we have capitalized this
instinct to the limit, together with an almost total disregard
of virgin fertility. This latter component of cheap food is
gone; it behooves us now to make the most of the former even
though it may somewhat increase the price of food.
Under existing conditions farmers will do one of two things :
require financial returns comparable with those of other people,
or settle back upon the primitive self-sufficing system, producing
not a supply but a simple surplus over their own needs. In
either case more expensive food is inevitable — in the one instance
from an increased initial cost of production and in the other
from a reduced supply.
From the standpoint, therefore, both of the amount and the
price of food it is in every way to the advantage of the public
to stimulate the home-building as against the money-making
motive among farmers. That way too lies safety for our de-
mocracy. To this end it must be made easier for the young
people of each and every generation to acquire the ownership of
land with such betterments and such opportunities for living and
rearing families as may produce ideal Americans. As the land
must change operators every generation, it must not be too diffi-
cult also to change ownership.
And we must go on further in our national plan than to make
it easy to acquire ownership in land. We must care for this
land as a national asset and as a perpetual obligation, in the in-
terest of future Americans. Ownership means at best but tem-
porary control, and whoever carries in his pocket a deed to a
portion of the national domain is in reality a tenant at will, and
the conditions of his tenantry should be such decent regard to the
fertility of the land he occupies as shall insure increasing, not
decreasing, productivity. In no other way can the lives and the
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 107
fortunes, in no other way can the domestic peace of the millions
of coming Americans be guaranteed. This too must go into the
policy.
After all, who is The Farmer? And where is the land which
he wants? The attempt to answer these questions brings us
very near to the crux of the situation. Not far from half the
acreage of our better lands is owned by one group and operated
by another. Who then is The Farmer? When two families are
attempting to live off the same farm, one of them in idleness, or
when eleven families are living off ten farms, with whose in-
terests do those of the public lie ?
In one county of Illinois, twenty per cent, of the farm lands
are said to be owned by men who have never seen their properties
because they live with other interests on the Atlantic seaboard,
collecting rent through agents as they clip coupons from stock
certificates.
It is said that the estate of Lord Scully is just now raising
the rents of some hundreds of thousands of acres of our best
prairie land to ten dollars an acre, or about two thousand per cent,
annually of the original cost. Investments and betterments?
Not a dollar! For the agent is instructed that if the renter
wants a house or a pig pen, let him build it. No investments ex-
cept in additional land. Here is a mare's nest for hatching
trouble, and the tenants are already reported as organizing for
resistance.
Nobody cares how large is the farm that one man operates —
economic limitations will control, and the larger the better so
far as the public is concerned. But when a man deliberately
acquires not one farm but ten farms, not with the intention of
occupying any of them or of producing anything, then the public
will one day have something to say about the matter. It dare not
do otherwise. We shall always have renters, but shall renting
and landlordism become typical in the country as it is now in
the cities? If so, in that direction lies trouble.
Specifically the public wants to know and it will one day in-
quire whether capital is invested in land from a desire to operate
it or merely from a wish to live without labor and at the same
time by speculation to grow rich upon the rise of real estate. In
no other form are investments of moderate amounts of capital
108 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
so influential for weal or woe, not only to men and families, but
to the public at large, as are investments in land. For this
reason, therefore, in one way or another, investments in land
will one day be limited as to amount and prescribed as to condi-
tions. In no other way can private ownership be preserved from
the general wreck of Bolshevism certain to follow a bad land
policy.
We all know what has been done in Russia and what is being
done in Hungary. We know that England has been forced to
control land ownership by limiting the conditions of inheritance,
by progressive taxation, and by applying the principle of excess
profits. Even so, one of the points insisted upon now by the
British Labor Party is the nationalization of land.
Among the achievements necessary to insure the proper de-
velopment of American agriculture whether from a private or a
public point of view, the following at least are of sufficient
significance to be considered as fundamental in a national policy.
First. Subsidization of country schools to an extent that will
insure to every child born upon the farm the opportunity of a
good high school education admitting to college, with choice of
differentiation along agricultural, mechanical, commercial, scien-
tific, or literary lines — and this without leaving the father's
roof or breaking up the home and the business.
Second. Public recognition of the fact that the farmer is
neither a capitalist nor a laborer, as the terms are understood in
the commercial world, but a managing operator of a small busi-
ness of which the home and the family are integral parts, and
therefore entitled to stand in the public esteem as a typical demo-
crat, not as a "rube," or even as an eminently useful laborer
that should be contented with his lot.
Third. Recognition of the fact that the American farmer, as
a typical citizen representing our largest and most fundamental
industry, and as our greatest home-builder, is entitled to an in-
come comparable with his labor, his investment, and his
managerial skill.
Fourth. The assurance of this income, not by arbitrary price
fixing in defiance of the economic law of supply and demand, not
by force, but by conference between producer, distributor, and
consumer.
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 109
Fifth. Requirement by law of minimum housing conditions
upon rented farms, such conditions to be maintained under a
system of adequate inspection.
Sixth. The obligation not only to maintain but to increase
the fertility of land, this obligation to be equally binding upon
landlord and tenant and enforced by public license.
Seventh. Recognition of the fact that as between the owner
and the operator of the land, the sympathy and support of the
public should be with the operator.
Eighth. Recognition of the fact that as between the owner-
operator, the tenant, and the speculator, the sympathy and sup-
port of the public should be with the owner-operator as the
typical farmer.
Ninth. The elimination from the public mind of the idea
that tenantry is to be regarded in America as typical land
occupancy or as the ideal road to ownership, theories for
nationalization and mutualization of land to the contrary not-
withstanding.
Tenth. The appropriation of public funds for financing
young men in prospective ownership as soon as they shall have
fully established a reputation for thrift and shall have ac-
cumulated say ten per cent, of the purchase price of productive
lands.
Eleventh. The establishment of interest rates on funds
loaned upon land for home-building purposes that shall be based
upon those of the most favorable bond issues, not upon current
banking rates for short term loans — rates that cannot be generally
realized in farming and that ought not to be realized in the
business of producing the staple foods.
Twelfth. Discouragement of speculation in land, by means of
graduated taxation and if necessary by prohibiting the ac-
cumulation of large numbers of farms or other acquisition of land
with no intention of occupancy ; in other words, the absolute dis-
sociation of real estate speculation from farming and from the
production of the food of the people. If we are to retain the
principle and practice of private ownership, we must not abuse
the privilege.
Thirteenth. Recognition of agriculture in all its phases as
a matter of deep public concern, whether regarded as the ma-
110 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
chinery for the production of the food of the people, or as the
means of providing ideal conditions for the rearing of children.
Fourteenth. Finally, the determination to maintain upon the
land the same class of people as are those who constitute the pre-
vailing type among the mass of American citizens.
Granted that these or some similar principles are not only
right but desirable, how may we best set about their realization
in the form of a working National Policy ? Upon this point there
is interesting material for reflection in the methods by which
we have arrived at other convictions that may fairly be called
national.
Second only to the need of a new national policy regarding
any important matter is the method by which in a democracy
such new policy may be elqyated from the plane of discussion
into the realm of conviction and finally established as a per-
manent part of our national habit of thought. In this connection
it is both interesting and profitable to note with some care the
various and diverse processes by which our own particular and
characteristic national policies have not only come into being
but have developed sufficient strength to determine and to domi-
nate the everyday life of the people.
For example, our fundamental doctrine that all men are equal
in respect to their right of life and the pursuit of happiness, was
declared and formally^ adopted in a document published to the
world.
WHO IS THE FARMER1
A. M. SIMONS
IF we are to select any particular section or type, which shall
it be? Shall it be the New England Yankee wresting from his
stumpy and rocky soil a niggard subsistence and swapping prod-
ucts with his neighbors? If so, when we seek him in his native
states we shall find him displaced by French Canadians, Italians
and Irish immigrants. If we follow up his children we shall
hardly recognize them in the tillers of the broad prairies of the
i Adapted from "The American Farmer," p. 15, Kerr, Chicago. (Copy-
right holder A. M. Simons.)
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 111
West with a mind and hospitality as wide and as fertile as the
teeming soil beneath their feet. OF is the American farmer
best typified by the early pioneer, — that strange combination of
hunter, fisher, lumberman, farmer, trapper and scout, now well-
nigh extinct, but to whom we owe Lincoln, the best and most
typical American citizen? Or shall we find him in the South,
amid the cotton, rice and sugar plantations? And if here, is he
white or black — a member of ante-bellum aristocracy or ''poor
white trash"? If purity of American blood is to be the test, the
latter will demand first consideration, for in few places is the
foreign strain less present than among the moonshining, feud-
fighting mountaineers of Kentucky and the Carolinas. Is he cow-
boy, rancher or sheep farmer on the Western plains? Or is the
typical American farmer the resident of the great arid irrigated
belt, a dependent upon a great water company, raising almost
fabulous crops and receiving a beggarly return? Or is he the
Slav, or Italian, or Dutch truck farmer of the city suburb, work-
ing beneath glass and aided by steam and electricity ? Or shall
we find him upon the dairy and stock farms of Illinois, Iowa and
Wisconsin? Or is he a fruit farmer, and if so is he in tropic or
temperate climes? Is it all of these, or none, or part of each, or
a composite picture of the whole that makes up the American
fanner ?
THE POINT OF VIEW IN COMPARISONS OF CITY AND
COUNTRY CONDITIONS1
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD
IN view of this apparent change in the attitude of people
toward the farm problem, it may not be idle to suggest some
possible errors that should be avoided when we are thinking of
rural society. The student will doubtless approach his prob-
lem fortified against some misconceptions — he probably has
thoughtfully established his view point. But the average per-
son in the city is likely to call up the image of his ancestral home
i Adapted from "Chapters in Rural Progress," pp. 4-5. ( Copyright by
University Chicago Press, 1907.)
112 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of a generation ago, if he were born in the country, or, if not,
to draw upon his observation made upon some summer vacation
or on casual business trips into the interior. Or he takes his
picture from ' * Shore Acres ' ' and the ' ' Old Homestead. ' ' In any
case it is not improbable that the image may be faulty and as a
consequence his appreciation of present conditions wholly inade-
quate. Let us consider some of these possible sources of mis-
conception.
In the first place it is not fair to compare the country life as
a whole with the best city conditions. This is often done. The
observer usually has education, culture, leisure, the experience
of travel, more or less wealth; his acquaintance is mostly with
people of like attainments. When he fails to find a rural en-
vironment that corresponds in some degree to his own and that
of his friends, he is quick to conclude that the country has noth-
ing to offer him, that only the city ministers to the higher wants
of man. He forgets that he is one of a thousand in the city,
and does not represent average city life. He fails to compare
the average country conditions with the average city conditions,
manifestly the only fair basis for comparison. Or he may err
still more grievously. He may set opposite each other the worst
country conditions and the better city conditions. He ought in
all justice to balance country slum with the city slum ; and cer-
tainly so if he insists on trying to find palaces, great libraries,
eloquent preachers, theaters, and rapid transit in rural com-
munities. City life goes to extremes ; country life, while varied,
is more even. In the country there is little of large wealth,
luxury, and ease; little also of extreme poverty, reeking crime,
unutterable filth, moral sewage. Farmers are essentially a mid-
dle class and no comparison is fair that does not keep this fact
ever in mind.
We sometimes hear the expression, ' ' Country life is so barren ;
that to me is its most discouraging aspect." Much country life
is barren ; but much more of it is only relatively and not essen-
tially so. We must admit that civilization is at least partially
veneer; polish does wonders for the appearance of folks as well
as of furniture. But while the beauty of ''heart of oak" is
enhanced by its "finish," its utility is not destroyed by a failure
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 113
to polish it. Now, much of the so-called barrenness of country
life is* the oak minus the polish. We come to regard polish as
essential; it is only relative. And not only may we apply the
wrong standard to our situation, but our eyes may deceive us.
To the uninitiated a clod of dry earth is the most unpromising
of objects — it is cousin to the stone and the type of barrenness.
But to the elect it is pregnant with the possibilities of seed-time
and harvest, of a full fruitage, of abundance and content for
man and beast. And there is many a farm home, plain to the
extreme, devoid of the veneer, a home that to the man of the
town seems lacking in all the things that season life, but a home
which virtue, intelligence, thrift, and courage transform into a
garden of roses and a type of heaven. I do not justify neglect
of the finer material things of life, nor plead for drab and
homespun as passports to the courts of excellence; but I insist
that plainness, simple living, absence of luxury, lack of polish
that may be met with in the country, do not necessarily accom-
pany a condition barren of the essentials of the higher life.
Sometimes rural communities are ridiculed because of the
trivial nature of their gossip, interests and ambitions. There
may be some justice in the criticism, though the situation is
pathetic rather than humorous. But is the charge wholly just?
In comparing country with town we are comparing two environ-
ments; necessarily, therefore, objects of gossip, interests, and
ambitions differ therein. We expect that. It is no criticism to
assert that fact. The test is not that of an existing difference,
but of an essential quality. Is not Ben Bolt's new top buggy
as legitimate a topic for discussion as is John Arthur Smythe's
new automobile ? Does not the price of wheat mean as much
to the hard-working grower as to the banker who may never
see a grain of it? May not the grove at Turtle Lake yield as
keen enjoyment as do the continental forests? Is the ambition
to own a fine farm more ignoble than the desire to own shares in
a copper mine? It really does not matter so much what one
gossips about or what one's delights are or what the carvings on
the rungs of ambition's ladder; the vital question is the effect
of these things on character. Do they stunt or encourage the
inner life? It must be admitted that country people do not al-
114 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ways accept their environing opportunities for enjoying the
higher life of mind and heart. But do they differ in this respect
from their cousins of the town ?
SOLDIER SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLISH-SPEAKING
COUNTRIES 1
ELWOOD MEAD
ALL English-speaking countries except the United States have
passed special soldier settlement legislation and made appropria-
tions therefor. Where good free land exists he is usually given
assistance in the individual purchase of private land, or such
private land is purchased by the State in blocks. In countries
like England, New Zealand, Victoria, and New South Wales it
is largely a question of resuming land.
When land-settlement boards do not already exist they have
had to be created, except in the case of Ontario and some of the
other Canadian Provinces, which are using their minister of
lands, their agricultural, and forestry departments for this
purpose.
Handling applications and placing soldiers is largely decen-
tralized and in the hands of voluntary local committees.
The English and Canadian method of settlement is to estab-
lish central farms on which to try out crops, to employ and train
settlers, stock them with animals and implements for the use of
the settlers, and about these farms to lay out farm blocks of
varying dimensions. The Australian plan is to follow the policy
of closer settlement already laid down and so successfully
prosecuted.
Explicit data concerning total appropriations are not avail-
able. The usual method is to start the work with a small appro-
priation and to add to it as required. In the case of Canadian
Provinces and the Dominion, funds come from an appropriation
for general development, probably derived from taxation; in
England it is a disbursement from the treasury; in New Zea-
land and Australia the funds are derived wholly from the sale
of bonds in the London market.
i Adapted from Bulletin. Department of the Interior, U. S. Reclamation
Service (1919).
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 115
In the two countries where a Federal Government exists,
namely, Canada and Australia, tentative steps have been taken
toward working out a cooperative plan the general nature of
which is for the general Government to supply the land and to
supervise its division, and maybe control. A general board has
been appointed in each case and on which each of the states or
provinces is represented. Undoubtedly when the period of de-
mobilization approaches this plan in the case of Canada and Aus-
tralia will be carried out in great detail.
Aid to the soldier takes a variety of forms. There are, first,
the allowances which are given a soldier for himself and family
in the probationary period of working and beginning of expe-
rience; under this head might be mentioned transportation
which all of the countries offer the soldiers when they are travel-
ing to training stations or to the land ; second, either the giving
of land or the pricing it to the soldier at the cost of purchase
and subdivision; third, the supplying of advice, guidance and
instructions by all countries; fourth, the supply of grading, farm
tools and sometimes farm animals free or at cost (under this
head may be mentioned the supply of seeds and fertilizers) ;
fifth, credit advances for the taking up of mortgages and incum-
brances, for clearing, leveling, and ditching of lands, for erec-
tion of fences, buildings, barns and houses, for the building of
homes; sixth, assistance in the organization of cooperative buy-
ing and selling associations and the giving of whatever aid the
State Governments ought to give in this direction.
In every instance the payments for the purchase of the land
or for the reimbursement to the State for advances are stretched
over a long period of time. The period of payment varies from
20 years, as in the case of Ontario, to 36Vs> years, which is the
case in the Australian States. Advances for stock and develop-
ments are repayable in from 10 to 25 years. The interest
charged is seldom more than % cent more than the interest paid
on public securities.
In Canada freehold rights prevail In England the perpetual
lease predominates. In New Zealand both the lease and .the
freehold are given. In Australia some of the States, such as
New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland, do not
give a freehold title. The occupier pays a rent- of about l1/^ per
116 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
cent, of the capital value of the land and receives a perpetual
lease which is inheritable and, under certain restrictions, trans-
ferable. The other States offer a freehold title or a lease. The
governments of all these countries- are not inclined to part with
their grazing lands or lands that are suitable for further sub-
divisions. They are usually leased for short or long terms.
In nearly all cases, while the soldier is not legally required to
maintain a residence, he can not lease his land or transfer it
within a stated period and he can not meet his payments on the
advances received unless he is giving his whole attention to his
land. Residence, therefore, is practically assured.
The selection of soldiers and the advice they receive is largely
in the hands of local committees in the case of Canada, England,
and Australia. Such local committees are usually expected to
give their advice in the selection of lands to be purchased by
the State.
Some training of the soldier in agriculture, and some practi-
cal farm experience is always expected. Such training and ex-
perience are obtainable from three sources: Employment on
farms, from agricultural colleges, or from farms associated with
the colony enterprise.
The legislative acts in all countries are practically complete.
The organization for the administration of the acts is largely
completed. Some private lands have been purchased and public
lands set aside by all the English-speaking countries.
It is not possible at this time to give a table of the amount of
land so acquired.
THE FARMER IN RELATION TO THE WELFARE
OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY1
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THERE is but one person whose welfare is as vital to the wel-
fare of the whole county as is that of the wage-worker 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
iFrom "The Man Who Works With His Hands," U. S. D. /»,.,' Office of
Secretary, Circ. 24. 1912.
PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 117
greatness of any State must ultimately 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 a
loss in either the number or the character of the farming popula-
tion. In the United States more than in almost any other coun-
try we should realize this and should prize our country popula-
tion. When this Nation began its independent existence it was
as a Nation of farmers. The towns were small and were for the
most part mere sea-coast trading and fishing ports. The chief
industry of the country was agriculture, and the ordinary citizen
was in some way connected with it. In every great crisis of the
past a peculiar dependence has had to be placed upon the farm-
ing population ; and this dependence has hitherto been justified.
But it can not be justified in the future if agriculture is per-
mitted to sink in the scale as compared with other employments.
We can not afford to lose that preeminently typical American,
the farmer who owns his own farm.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antrim, Ernest I. Fifty Million Strong. Pioneer Press, Van Wert,
0., 1916.
Anderson, W. L. The Country Town. Baker, N. Y., 190G.
Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 40,
March, 1912.
Bailey, L. H. The Country Life Movement. Macmillan, N. Y., 1911.
Cyclopedia of American Agric., Vol. IV. Farm and Community,
Macmillan, N. Y., 1909.
The State and the Farmer, Macmillan, N. Y., 1908.
Bookwalter, J. W. Rural vs. Urban, Knickerbocker, N. Y., 1910.
Buck, S. J. The Granger Movement. Harvard Univ. Press, Cam-
bridge, 1913.
Butterfield, K. L. Chapters in Rural Progress. University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1907.
Farmer and the New Day, Macmillan, N. Y., 1919.
Carver, T. N. Principles of Rural Economics, Ginn, Boston, 1911.
Carver, T. N. Selected Readings in Rural Economics. Ginn, Boston,
1916.
Country Life Commission (Report). Sturgis, N. Y., 1909.
Davenport, E. Education for Efficiency. Heath, Boston, 1909.
Douglass, Harlan Paul. The Little Town. Macmillan, N. Y., 1919.
Fiske, G. W. The Challenge of the Country. Association Press, N.
Y., 1912.
Gillette, John M. Constructive Rural Sociology. Sturgis, N. Y., 1912.
Groves, Ernest R, Rural Problems of To-day. Association Press, N.
Y., 1918.
118 9 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Hart, J. K. Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communi-
ties. Macmillan, N. Y., 1913.
Herrick, M. T. Rural Credits, Land and Cooperative. Appleton, N.
Y., 1914.
Howe, Fred. The Land and the Soldier. Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1919.
Morman, J. B. Rural Credits. Macrnillan, N. Y., 1915.
Nourse, E. G. Agricultural Economics. The Univ. Chicago Press,
1916.
Plunkett, Sir Horace. The Rural Life Problem of the United States.
Macmillan, N. Y., 1910.
Proceedings of the First National Country Life Conference. Balti-
more, 1919. Pub. by Secy. Natl. Country Life Association, Ith-
aca, N. Y.
Proceedings of the Natl. Conference of Social Work, Pittsburgh, 1917,
315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, 111.
Roberston, J. W. Conservation of Life in Rural Districts. Assoc.
Press, N. Y., 1911.
Ross, E. A. Folk Depletion as a Cause of Rural Decline. Pub. Am.
Sociological Society 11 : 21-30, 1916.
Sociology of Rural Life. American Sociological Society, Vol. XI, 1916.
Taylor, H. C. Agricultural Economics. Macmillan, N. Y., 1912.
Vincent, Geo. E. Countryside and Nation. Pub. Am. Sociological
Society, 11 : 1-11, 1916.
Vogt, Paul L. Introduction to Rural Sociology. Appleton, N. Y.,
1917.
Weld, L. D. H. Marketing of Farm Products. Macmillan, N. Y.,
1916.
Wilson, W. H. Evolution of the Country Community. Pilgrim, Bos-
ton, 1912.
Country versus City. Pub. Am. Sociological Soc., 11:12-20, 1916.
CHAPTER VI
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS
A. COOPERATION
THE MORAL BASIS OF COOPERATION 1
THOMAS N. CARVER
So far as I know, everybody agrees that cooperation would
be a good thing. Nevertheless, there is little cooperation as yet.
If we all agree that it is a good thing, why do we not cooperate ?
This is a question which has puzzled many of us. I believe I
have one or two suggestions which go pretty nearly to the root
of the matter. The causes of this lack of cooperation are funda-
mentally moral, and we must attack the problem at this point
before we can make much progress. All problems hang in clus-
ters. You can't separate from our moral problems the eco-
nomic problems that all hang on the same stem. I believe if you
will look about your own neighborhood you will find that if you
have a neighbor who is very careful about his own rights and
your obligations, he is not an easy neighbor to work with.
These two things mean the same. His rights are your obliga-
tions, his obligations are your rights. They are different names
for the same thing, different sides for the same shield. Suppose
3'ou are the same way. You two will never get along together
and work together in this world. A whole community made up
of people of this kind will never cooperate. On the other hand,
if your neighbor is very careful of his obligations and your
rights, he is easy to get along with. And if you are very care-
ful of your obligations and his rights, you are also easy to get
along with. You two can work together peaceably and amicably.
A whole neighborhood made up of people of that kind can work
together and cooperate. Here is some work for the moral and
religious agencies.
i Adapted from "Proceedings of National Farmers' Congress," p. 191.
119
120 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
There is a story of an aged savage who, after having lived in
civilized communities most of his life, returned in his old age
to his native tribe, saying that he had tried civilization for forty
years and it wasn't worth the trouble. Much of the philosophy
of civilization is summed up in that remark. Civilization con-
sists largely in making trouble. Genius, in the individual, has
been said to consist in the capacity for taking pains in one's
work. It is this capacity which marks the superior race as well
as the superior individual. They who find the taking of pains
too burdensome to be borne, will naturally decide that civiliza-
tion is not worth the trouble. They who do not find it so very
burdensome to take pains, will naturally decide that civilization
is worth the trouble, and will therefore become civilized.
This principle applies to every stage of civilization and prog-
ress. The greatest advancement is made by those who are cap-
able of taking the greatest pains. It applies especially to agri-
cultural progress. It is more trouble to select than not to select
seed, and to select it in the field than in the bin. It is more
trouble to test cows than to not test them, to keep accounts than
not to keep them, to diversify or rotate crops than not to diver-
sify or rotate, to mix fertilizers intelligently than to buy them
already mixed, to cooperate with one's pig-headed neighbors,
especially if he himself is a little pig-headed, than to go to it
alone. It is also more profitable. In all these and a multitude
of other cases it is found that it pays to take trouble.
Suppose we can secure a higher development of these two
moral qualities: first, the deep sense of loyalty and obligation
to the neighborhood; and second, the willingness and capacity
for taking trouble. Then I believe the cooperative movement
among farmers would make rapid headway.
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE EXCHANGES1
ALEXANDER E. CANCE
WITHIN the past few years very much has been said and writ-
ten about the unprofitableness of agriculture, and on the other
i Adapted from Bulletin of the Extension Service, Massachusetts Agricul-
tural College, Amherst, 1914.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 121
hand much complaint has been made of the high cost of living
and the desperate straits of the consumer. Many causes have
been advanced to account for this state of affairs, but probably
none more frequently than the somewhat vague accusation that
the middlemen take all the profits.
It is asserted that the farmer must take what he is offered for
his products and pay what he is asked for his supplies and equip-
ment— that he fixes the price neither of what he sells nor what
he buys. In a general way and considering farmers individ-
ually, this is undoubtedly true. When it is said that this is due
to the machinations of predatory middlemen the statement needs
some qualifications.
In the main, the system of middlemen has arisen and developed
with the growth of farming for the market. As soon as farmers
began to give up producing solely for themselves and to raise
crops to sell, the question of means of disposal of crops became
very important. One of the first middlemen was the local
buyer, often the storekeeper, who took the farmer's produce,
sold him dry goods, groceries and supplies, and in his turn
passed the corn and eggs, feathers and honey, on to the user or
manufacturer.
But division of occupations and industries resulting in the
growth of cities and the concentration of population on the one
hand and the call for more raw materials of agriculture on the
other, gradually separated the countryman from the urban
dweller geographically, commercially and socially. Commer-
cially the division meant that the farmer must devote himself
to growing crops and producing raw materials of food and
clothing, that the manufacturer and artisan give themselves up
to their vocations; hence of necessity there grew up a lot of
marketmen, transporters, storage men, purveyors and the like,
who made a business of getting goods from the farmer to the
consumer and from the manufacturer to the farmer.
This body of men holds a strategic position which has been
strengthened by combination, capital investments, natural and
trade monopolies, and a beneficent Congress. It is not difficult
to understand that they are powerful because they have by
organization and superior bargaining ability come to dominate
122 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
almost the entire trade in raw materials and manufactured
products.
It is only natural that the middlemen should endeavor to in-
crease their gains by buying cheap and selling dear, that they
should specialize and multiply as the wants of consumers grow
and the sources of supplies become more and more distant. The
widening gap between the farmer and the users of the farmer's
product makes a place for a large number of go-betweens.
Aside from the fact that these men are specialists in their
various activities, that they furnish the money to store and
distribute the products of producers, to find markets and facili-
tate trade, they have in many instances taken over all the mar-
keting activities of the farmer. They often purchase apples
upon the tree, pick them, grade them, pack them and ship them,
severing all connection between the farmer and his product be-
fore his fruit is harvested. Differing somewhat in degree, the
same may in many instances be said of tobacco, live stock, poul-
try, eggs, potatoes, grain, etc. The farmer buys his fertilizer
and feed prepared, mixed, bagged, labeled, delivered by the re-
tail dealer into his wagon and paid for by the dealer, who gives
the farmer credit. The farmer is a producer of goods, nothing
more. Possibly that is sufficient, but if so, he should be an in-
telligent producer, purchasing shrewdly and selling his produce
at a reasonable margin of profit.
Now it is very evident that farm methods are improving; the
farmer is a better producer than he was years ago. But it is
also evident that much of the advantage he has gained through
education, applied science, government aid, better equipment
and more intelligent practice, has been altogether lost because
he has not been able to dispose of his crop or to buy his supplies
and equipments advantageously.
In some agricultural industries in the United States and al-
most everywhere in Europe, farmers have secured great financial
advantages and acquired a keen sense of business by combining
their interests, by buying and selling together. In some coun-
tries the results of cooperative business methods are marvelous.
Denmark has become rich and world-famous, and little Ireland,
for years known as the very poorest agricultural country in Eu-
rope, has made remarkable progress, simply because the farmers
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 123
of these countries have learned to sell their products in a business-
like way and buy their agricultural requirements together. They
give their attention to production but they also see to it that
their products are sold intelligently and wisely by their own
paid agents. The farmer cannot very well learn all there is
to know about any market but a hundred farmers can hire a
marketing expert to handle their products and can afford to
pay him a good salary out of increased returns that otherwise
would go to a host of middlemen.
The market of to-day demands two or three very simple things
of the producer. One of the first and simplest is that the quality
of the product be dependable. The market desires such products
as are of known quality, whether this quality be first, second
or third. One great reason why farmers do not receive the
highest price for their crops is that they have not learned to ship
to the market uniform grades or qualities. When, for example,
a barrel of apples is packed it is likely to contain apples of the
first grade, second grade and culls; perhaps a large part of the
barrel cannot be used at all. The second barrel may be just like
the first or it may be something very different.
In the second place, the market demands a neat and uniform
package. Every marketman in the country complains of the
fact that farmers have little real business sense in the matter of
putting up their products in packages. One finds potatoes com-
ing into the market some in barrels, some in boxes, some in bags,
some in other packages of every description and degree of de-
crepitude. A uniform, neat and tasty package suited to the
commodity which it contains is a great factor in increasing the
price of the product.
In the third place, the market wants products shipped reg-
ularly in quantities sufficient to supply the demand. It is no
little matter to the marketman that he can get all the potatoes
he wants one week and cannot get any the next. What he de-
sires is, perhaps, a carload of potatoes every other day for six
months and a carload every three days for the other six months.
At any rate, it is essential that he receive his shipments regularly
from the shipper.
These simple essentials — dependable goods, packed uniformly
and neatly, well graded, shipped regularly in sufficient quantities
124 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
to meet the demand, can hardly be supplied by the small indi-
vidual farmer ; and because they cannot be supplied in that way,
the marketman and consumer naturally go to the jobber to get
their goods. The jobber pays the farmer as small a price as
he can and charges the consumer as high a price as he can for
his costly services of packing, grading and distributing the prod-
uct uniformly.
European farmers in England, Ireland, Denmark and other
countries found themselves confronted with the same marketing
conditions which the farmers of the United States have found.
They struggled with it just as the farmers of the United States
are struggling, but unlike the majority of the farmers of the
United States, they struggled to some effect. The farmers of
the Old World are small farmers. Not many of them produce
more than a mere handful of products of any one sort. Some of
them found themselves with no home market and were obliged
to ship their products across the seas into foreign countries.
Some of them found an organized opposition to the sale of their
goods in other countries. Nevertheless, the European farmers
in the countries mentioned found the way out by organizing
themselves into small cooperative selling associations. By pool-
ing their products they were able to facilitate their marketing
because, in the first place, they were able to pack uniformly,
supply the market sufficiently and regularly, and because of the
supply which they controlled, they were able to meet success-
fully organized opposition to their interests.
No other poultry in the world is packed as well as Danish
poultry; no other eggs are graded as well as Danish eggs; there
is no bacon that commands a higher price than Danish bacon,
This is true chiefly because Danish poultry, Danish eggs, and
Danish bacon are skillfully packed, uniformly graded and
shipped regularly under the guarantee of the shipper. It is
known the world over that this cooperation has been the salva-
tion of Danish agriculture, that the farmer of Denmark is to-day
the most important man in his country and is important chiefly
because he has known how to organize. It is said that the
number of cooperative organizations in Denmark is four times
the number of farmers ; that is to say, on the average, each far-
mer in Denmark belongs to four cooperative organizations,
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 125
In Ireland and England cooperative buying and selling have
not yet reached the perfection they have in Denmark. Never-
theless, the Irish farmer has for some years been selling his
bacon, eggs and poultry on the markets of the world very suc-
cessfully because he has been shipping them through his local
cooperative societies.
The United States has lagged somewhat behind in the matter
of cooperative endeavor among farmers; nevertheless, there are
some examples of very successful cooperation even in our own
country. Perhaps nowhere in the world is there a stronger sell-
ing organization than the California Fruit Growers' Exchange.
The Exchange has passed through various vicissitudes and has
met successfully the most serious opposition from railroads, com-
mission men and other opposing interests. It is now so strongly
entrenched in handling the citrus fruit of the Far West that it
is a mere truism to say that without it citrus fruit growing on
the Pacific Coast would be an utter failure.
The Hood Kiver and other northwestern apple-shipping asso-
ciations have been almost as successful in marketing apples as
the citrus fruit men have in handling their California oranges.
The Hood River apple growers have a world-wide reputation for
neat and uniform packages of thoroughly dependable apples
which are absolutely guaranteed to the consumer. These apples
are packed by authorized inspectors and shipped by experts.
They are sold on the markets of the world by agents of the fruit
growers' association and all the returns for the apples go to the
grower after deducting the charges of transportation and the
services of agents employed* by the association itself.
Moreover, the truck growers of the Atlantic Coast and the
Gulf region have made use of associated selling for some years.
The example of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Exchange
is most worthy of imitation. Beginning a few years ago with a
number of disgruntled farmers who had been shipping their per-
ishable products individually to the markets of Philadelphia and
other cities, it has grown to be one of the strongest marketing
associations in the United States, doing millions of dollars worth
of business and putting upon the market products guaranteed by
the Exchange in which the commission men and retailers have
the utmost confidence.
126 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
These cooperative associations, in fact, are becoming more and
more numerous wherever specialized products, usually of a per-
ishable nature, must be put upon a market at some distance.
Wherever they have been established successfully they have suc-
ceeded in bringing to the producer a higher price for his product,
a cheaper charge for transportation, a more dependable and a
wider market, and consequently an increased prosperity. On
the other hand, the consumer has been able to get a product of
standard and dependable grade at a price not exceeding very
greatly, if at all, the price which he paid for a poorly graded
product unreliable in quality.
Nowhere is it more true that "In union there is strength"
than in the shipment of perishable products to commission men.
The united farmers have been able to protect themselves in a
way the isolated individual farmer could never hope to do,
against commission men, transportation agencies, and other al-
lied interests. The fact that they were a'ble to choose between
twenty or thirty different markets during the season gave them
an added advantage in selling their products.
Cooperation among farmers in New England has never been
very enthusiastically received although it must be said that
several very successful farmers' cooperative societies, both for
purchase and for sale of products, have been formed in our east-
ern states. Some of the alleged reasons for the lack of enthus-
iasm on the part of our New England farmers are first, the in-
dividualism of the farmer, his desire to do his own marketing
and to make his own bargains, and perhaps his dislike of inter-
fering in his neighbor's business or to permit his neighbor to
interfere in what he considers private matters. As a matter of
fact, the old independent farmer about whom so much has been
said has practically gone out of existence. The farmer of to-day
depends upon his market quite as much as the grocer does. His
products are frequently prepared for market, shipped to mar-
ket, handled by marketmen in precisely the same way as are
the products of the manufacturer. Consequently the farmer
is interested in the amount his neighbor sells and in the quantity
the consumer in his marketing town purchases. He is interested
in railroads, transportation, banking, and all means of exchange,
and the markets of the world measurably affect him.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 127
In the second place, it is said that the farmer has not sufficient
business ability to conduct a cooperative organization. While
this is true in a number of instances, it should not be true of the
farmers of New England who are said to be as shrewd bargainers
as any farmers in the world. The farmers of New England are
intelligent and should be as enterprising and as capable of han-
dling the cooperative associations as the farmers of Ireland, the
farmers of Denmark or the farmers of Texas.
Another legitimate reason for the failure of cooperative or-
ganizations among farmers has been the fact that most organiza-
tions of farmers have had so many purposes that the real object
of the association has become obscured. This has been one diffi-
culty in the formation of business cooperative associations by
the Grange. Again, too, a good many of these cooperative so-
cieties have failed because the members of them have had no
common interest; a cooperative organization is a very simple
thing but each should be composed of men who are bound to-
gether by some common interest. A large number of purposes
or objects is likely to defeat the whole end and aim of a business
enterprise.
One of the first essentials to successful cooperation is suffi-
cient material in a given community with which to do a coopera-
tive business.
On the other hand, for purposes of cooperation, it is alto-
gether best that the cooperating area be rather small. It is
much easier for a number of farmers in a small community to
organize for purposes of purchase or sale than it is for the far-
mers scattered over a county or two counties to organize. Con-
sequently intending cooperators might well consider the growing
of one or two special crops by all the members of the cooperative
association.
The third great essential to cooperation is loyalty. There
is no use considering a cooperative society unless the members
are loyal to the association even to the point of suffering some
loss for the sake of keeping the association alive and prosperous.
This loyalty is one of the most noticeable features of cooperative
societies abroad and of successful cooperative societies in the
United States. The members uphold their societies against all
charges, furnish the required raw material even when the coop-
128 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
erative society pays them less than they could receive outside,
and sometimes even when cooperative selling is not always as
successful as individual selling.
The fourth essential is singleness of purpose. It is true that a
great many of the cooperative societies in the United States both
buy and sell but it is also true that most of these successful so-
cieties are organized either for buying or for selling only. A
cooperative society should be organized to sell apples, or to buy
feeds, fertilizers or other agricultural requirements, or to store
cabbages or onions, and if these same farmers desire to cooper-
ate with others for some other purpose they should form a sec-
ond association.
The fifth essential is incorporation. Nearly every success-
ful cooperative society in the United States and many abroad
are incorporated under state laws. The incorporation of a so-
ciety is a simple matter but very many fine results accompany
it. In the first place, the management is a board of directors
definitely provided for in the articles of incorporation. In the
second place, an incorporated society cannot go out of business
during the limit of time fixed by the articles of incorporation,
whereas, a society organized otherwise may stop business at any
time, frequently with disastrous results. In the third place, the
members of an incorporated society are liable for the debts of
the society only in proportion to the number of shares which
they have taken ; and finally, the incorporated society is subject
to the inspection of the state and all its business must be con-
ducted on approved business lines.
The sixth essential is paid, efficient management. A great
many of our cooperative societies have gone to the wall because
the management was inferior or because the management was in
too many hands. The best societies in the United States, in fact
almost the only societies that are successful, are those that have
a single manager. Moreover, if this manager does any business
at all and is at all capable he should be paid and well paid.
Managers of some of the larger cooperative societies are paid
remarkably good salaries. For example, the manager of one
of the vegetable exchanges is receiving $10,000 a year.
The seventh essential is absolute publicity regarding the af-
fairs of the society; this includes a full and complete oversight
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 129
of the books, papers, and policies of the exchange by its mem-
bers and, in addition, a careful supervision of the accounts at
stated intervals.
Another essential to successful cooperation is that the business
be done as far as possible on a cash basis. Extension of credit
has been a rock on which a good many otherwise successful or-
ganizations have been wrecked beyond repair. The temptation
to extend credit to members or to outside interests is very great,
and though sometimes a credit business may be carried on very
successfully, in general it is decidedly safer to make all business
cash business. A corollary to this is that sufficient cash should
be provided to carry on the work of the exchange effectively.
Finally, every cooperative association should be organized on
strictly cooperative principles. A number of cooperative so-
cieties, both in this country and abroad, are merely joint stock
companies, and some of them are operating more or less suc-
cessfully. Nevertheless, there are some principles which are es-
sential to the true spirit of cooperative endeavor and which, in
the long run, give better financial and social results than others.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF COOPERATION
The essential difference between a cooperative society and a
joint stock company is this: A joint stock company is a com-
bination of capital or shares. Capital is invested in the busi-
ness and all the profits are supposed to accrue from the use of
capital, consequently all profits are returned as dividends to the
shareholders. It makes no difference whether the dividend be 2
per cent, or 20 per cent, or 200 per cent., it is distributed among
the men who hold the shares.
Again, the men who hold the capital stock in a joint stock
company are the men who do the voting. They do not vote
as men, they vote as shares ; the man who has ten shares has ten
votes; he who has but two shares has two votes; the thought
being that the more shares a man has the more powerful he
should be in determining the policy of the company.
Now the principle of a cooperative society is fundamentally
different. A cooperative society recognizes the need of capital
but it also recognizes the fact that a reputable concern may ob-
tain capital anywhere at the ruling rate of interest. The ruling
130 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
rate of interest is now between 5 and 6 per cent. Why should
a man who invests only his money in any business receive more
than the 5 or 6 per cent, that is recognized as legitimate pay-
ment for capital, the rate that a bank will charge? So in a
strictly cooperative society it is agreed that capital shall be paid
merely the ruling rate of interest, say 6 per cent., and that all
further profits shall be returned to the men who have supplied
the business of the cooperative society, on the basis of the amount
of business they have furnished. That is to say, in the coopera-
tive creamery, the profits will be distributed among the mem-
bers who have furnished milk to the creamery, in proportion
to the amount of milk they have furnished. The man who has
purchased shares will draw 6 per cent, on his capital invest-
ment, but the men who have been responsible for the success of
the exchange will receive whatever profits there are in accord-
ance with the amount of business they have done.
In the next place, the cooperative society is democratic ; it is a
union not of shares, but a union of individuals. Instead of
allowing each share to have a vote, each man is given one vote.
The principle is this : It is believed that each member, no mat-
ter what his contribution to the capital of the association, has
as much right to vote concerning its policies as any other share-
holder; just as a citizen, no matter how many children he has or
whether he has any children at all, has a right to vote for
school officers. In a democracy every man has a vote; so it is
in a cooperative society. One man, one vote.
Further than this, the cooperative society recognizes that
there should be a limitation on the amount of capital stock any
man may control. Surely, in a cooperative society the capital
should be contributed by members approximately according to
the amount of business which each man expects to do with the
society. If a cooperative society is established with 200 shares,
it is quite legitimate to say that no member shall hold more
than one-tenth of the total number or twenty shares. This keeps
the shares well distributed and makes for democracy.
Another point of importance is the transfer of shares. It is
ordinarily unwise to have men investing money in a cooperative
concern in which they are not interested. A cooperative so-
ciety, in the first place, should be formed of men who are inter-
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 131
ested in a particular line of cooperation. Consequently, when
any member drops out and wishes to dispose of his shares, he
should not be permitted to sell them to any person he pleases
for, in that case, he might sell them to some person opposed to
the interests of the cooperative society. Hence, the proviso that
a member may not make a transfer of his shares that is not
first approved by the board of directors.
These are the fundamentals upon which a cooperative society
should be founded. If placed on this foundation, and the mem-
bers remain loyal, success is reasonably assured.
SOCIAL EFFECTS OF COOPERATION IN EUROPE *
CHARLES O. GILL
THE expansion and magnitude of the cooperative movement
are no more impressive than are its social effects. In mention-
ing these it is not intended to give the impression that in every
community where there is a cooperative society all the good
results are observable which are commonly attributed to co-
operation. Doubtless large numbers of cooperators think chiefly
of the reduced cost of their purchases, of the higher prices they
have received for their products, or of other material benefits.
But it is none the less true that in this economic movement the
application to business of certain ethical principles of a high
character has produced a variety of other good results which
also are well worth consideration.
The good results of cooperation among the poor farmers in
Europe are incalculably great. It has emancipated them from
the usurer. In many places small farmers had never known
freedom from oppressive creditors until the founding of rural co-
operative institutions. By these they have been released from
this bondage. Whole communities of people have been emanci-
pated. By capitalizing the common honesty of the poor, cooper-
ation has secured for the small farmer at the lowest rates of
interest, money to be used by him for productive purposes while
1 Adapted from Report of Commissions, pp. 127-143. Federal Council
of the Churches of Christ in America. Missionary Education Movement of
the U. S. and Canada, X. Y., 1916.
132 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the time fixed for payment is well suited to his convenience and
to the needs of his occupation. Agricultural cooperation in dis-
tribution has enabled the farmer to work for his own support
instead of for the support of a large number of superfluous dis-
tributors who constituted an enormous burden resting upon his
shoulders. Before the introduction of the cooperative system
the small farmer in all business operations had been discriminated
against. He had been forced to buy inferior goods at high prices
and to sell his products at prices unreasonably low. Probably
the farmer 's business was the only one where products were sold
at wholesale while its requirements were purchased at retail
prices. But cooperation has changed all this. It has enabled
the small farmer to place himself on a level with the large farmer
in producing articles of good quality as well as in the matter of
prices received for them. It has enabled the smallest holders
to obtain at moderate prices goods of guaranteed quality. Thus
while it promotes efficiency on the farm, cooperation secures
freedom in the market and so contributes to the highest life in
the home.
Agricultural cooperative societies engage in many benevolent
enterprises for their members. The Raiffeisen banks in Ger-
many, for example, support infant and continuation schools.
They furnish the ordinary schools with maps, musical instru-
ments and other equipment. They make grants to village
libraries, organize circles for reading and acting and establish
evening clubs and clubs for juvenile members. They conduct
village institutes, build meeting halls and establish children's
savings banks, telephone services and arbitration courts. They
appoint local cattle shows and hold regular meetings at which
instructive lectures on cooperation and agriculture and other
topics are delivered. They form gymnastic societies and bath-
ing establishments, cattle and poultry breeding societies, singing
societies, local nursing centers, infant aid associations and anti-
consumption leagues, and engage in other good works of great
variety.
Not only does the increased prosperity of cooperators secure
for them better education through the ordinary channels but
the special facilities provided by the society, the training in
doing cooperative business, together with mutual association
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 133
under these favorable conditions, the close contact and associa-
tion with the larger world which cooperation always assures, all
result in intellectual development and help to increase the in-
telligence and add to the fund of general information of the co-
operators.
It has been observed both in country and in city that coopera-
tion has a most marked effect on the promotion of thrift. The
cooperative society provides the farmer with the means of pur-
suing productive enterprises and consequently he engages in
them. He gets out of debt and as a rule begins to save. In the
urban movement it is often the case that the hard drinking la-
borer who is head of a wretched family is induced to trade with
the cooperative society and finds in a few months that he has
money to his credit drawing interest. It is likely that he has
never had in his possession money enough to supply his family
with food for a week in advance. But his accumulated savings
give him hope and he is encouraged to save further. Many a
man of this sort, whose original investment had been only a
dollar and twenty-five cents, eventually has acquired as much
as five hundred dollars. The condition of his family of course
becomes greatly improved.
When a man begins to save, his money, instead of going into
the dram shop, is invested in the cooperative institution. In the
country as well as in the city the wastefulness and the evil effects
of alcoholic intemperance become recognized and the influence
of the cooperative society is thrown against it. In Dungloe,
Ireland, the cooperative store is the only one in the village
which does not sell spirituous liquors, though it is doing a
larger business than any other drug store. In another place
where the people wished to form a cooperative society and run
a store for household goods the Irish Agricultural Organization
Society refused assistance because the people who desired to co-
operate thought it necessary to sell whiskey in order to hold
their business in competition with the other stores, all of which
engaged in the liquor traffic. In Austria and Hungary the
priests are the more active in the promotion of the cooperative
movement because the members spend their evenings in the co-
operative society rooms instead of in the public houses. In Bel-
gium the influence of the cooperative societies is strongly used
134 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
in favor of abstinence from strong drinks. In nearly all the cafes
and restaurants connected with the cooperative institutions
spirits are not sold while customers are encouraged to drink
light beer or non-alcoholic beverages. Thus the cooperative
movement has become one of the strongest movements in the old
world both in city and in country for the promotion of tem-
perance.
One of the most marked effects of the movement is the pro-
motion of business integrity. This is a matter of common ob-
servation and experience and is well known throughout the co-
operative world. For example where there is a small rural
cooperative credit society, a person ordinarily cannot borrow
from it unless he has acquired a reputation for reliability. As
a consequence a loan comes as a certificate of character, while
a refusal of one may well be a cause of serious reflection on the
part of the would-be borrower. As a result, people learn to
care more for their character and reputation in their dealings
with one another. It becomes manifest to all that honesty is an
essential quality for business efficiency.
In agricultural cooperation high prices are secured only be-
cause the good quality of the produce is guaranteed by the so-
ciety. Any member who fails to conform to the standard will
be fined or excluded from its privileges. The consumer and the
careful producer therefore are protected from loss resulting
from the misrepresentation of the careless or dishonest producer.
By making the producer more careful, much waste and injustice
is avoided, while it is continually being demonstrated that a
high standard of business morality in the individual is an as-
set both for himself and for his community.
The promotion of honesty by the cooperative movement comes
also more directly through the atmosphere it creates. Coopera-
tive business promotes what is called the cooperative spirit. It
is a consciousness of brotherhood. Under its influence one does
not wish to injure one's neighbor. Cheating and sharp practice
are so out of place and altogether discordant with the cooperative
spirit as to insure their infrequency.
The independence, courage and self-respect, induced by free-
dom from debt, material prosperity, thrift, and temperance are
also increased by reason of membership in a firmly knitted self-
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 135
help association of responsibility and power. In one community
visited it was remarked to the investigator that you can tell a
cooperator by his independent bearing'. In more than one
locality attention was called to the fact that on the part of the
bankers and business men in their dealings with the small
farmers and the poor people, there has been a marked disap-
pearance of condescension and the air of favor and patronage.
In parts of Ireland visited the respectful treatment on the part of
others is keenly appreciated by the cooperators, while the system
has caused a greater fellowship and better mutual understanding
between the classes. There is a social and industrial leveling up
which is satisfactory to all concerned.
All this points to the powerful influence of cooperation in the
promotion of democracy. The cooperative movement was essen-
tially democratic in origin. Both the original founders and the
prime movers were mainly from the class most directly benefited.
That the democratic principle is the basis of success in agri-
cultural cooperation is proved by the fact that attempts of
farmers to combine on other principles almost invariably have
failed, while in cities no other industrial system has been attended
with social results which are so satisfactory. True cooperation
which alone can hope for enduring prosperity is founded on the
principle of pure democracy.
The educational effect of the cooperative system is such as
to give the wage earners a keen interest in public affairs and to
cause them to realize their own power and responsibility in them.
That the cooperators use this power intelligently may be seen in
the large number of their representatives in the public bodies
and the creditable manner in which they acquit themselves. It
is confidently asserted that 70 per cent, of the cooperators are
on the side of political progress. Cooperation is becoming one
of the strongest aids to efficiency in political democracy.
It is the hope of most leaders in the cooperative movement
that it will do much to make war less frequent. The cooperative
alliances of different countries will undoubtedly increase their
trade with one another. Already reference has been made to
an international alliance of cooperators. The members of a great
international business organization will understand the folly
of going to war with one another. Among cooperators there is a
136 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
minimum of mutual suspicion. "With them the recognition of
brotherhood and community of interest is a habit of mind. Add
to this their increased intelligence, larger information, broader
outlook, and increased political efficency, and we must recognize
that the bonds which hold the people of the earth together in
peace will be strengthened as the cooperative movement advances
throughout the world.
The experience of the cooperative movement indicates that the
application of right ethics to business results well, not only to
business itself but to the character of those engaged in it and
to all parts of the social fabric.
It was observed by members of the American Commission
that in nearly all the European countries from Italy to Ireland
"the great body of cooperators, especially among the leaders,
think of agricultural cooperation as a sort of social reform and
in some cases almost as a religion." The admirable moral and
social results are recognized nearly everywhere. Not only has
it taught illiterate men to read, made " dissipated men sober,
careless men thrifty, and dishonest men square" but it has
made friends out of neighbors who had always been enemies,
while estrangements among men through religious antipathies
and the inheritance of ancient feuds have yielded to its influence
and have disappeared.
It is natural that sound principles of economic justice and the
spirit of brotherhood should create enthusiasm in those who are
engaged in the movement. In the cooperative enterprises there-
fore laborers are more contented, enjoy their work better and
labor and live with more zest. Large numbers of capable
executives are engaged in the movement at great personal sacri-
fice to themselves of time and money. Many men, because of the
same spirit, are living in great frugality though rendering invalu-
able service. Frequently organizers of cooperative societies in
whole hearted devotion live on the lowest possible salaries, suffer-
ing hardships and prolonged absence from congenial homes. The
Agricultural Organization Society in Ireland impressed the in-
vestigator as a Christian institution quite as really as did the
churches in that country. The movement in the vicinity of
Dungloe, Ireland, has an atmosphere like that of a Christian mis-
sionary enterprise in its pioneer stage of development. In two
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 137
other places in Donegal, Ireland, two meetings attended were
like religious services. The cooperative movement in the vi-
cinity of the Temple Crone Society is regarded by the people
as divinely inaugurated, inspired, directed and sustained.
It could scarcely be expected that a movement with such bene-
ficial results could have been inaugurated and successfully
furthered apart from close association with the Christian
churches. In many of the cooperative enterprises it was found
that the clergymen have played an important part.
B. OWNEKSHIP AND TENANCY
TENANT FARMING1
JOHN M. GILLETTE
THERE is a tendency somewhat pronounced toward the opera-
tion of farms by tenants rather than by the owners. The owners
ceased operation to the extent of almost ten per cent., in the
twenty years between 1880 and 1900, and tenantry was sub-
stituted. The results appear to ensue chiefly from three causes.
First, the investment in farm lands by city residents — generally
in proximity to their municipality, and second, from the retire-
ment of well-to-do farmers into the neighboring city or village.
Third, a larger period is required to save money with which to
buy a farm than was previously the case. As a consequence, each
successive generation of farmers must remain longer in the
tenant class.
The tendencies in the United States are not decisively toward
extended consolidation and enlarged holdings. In the regions
where the enlargement is most noteworthy, it is apparently due
to the operation of causes other than the advantage in production
which arises from large holdings. Quick and large rises in land
values, as in Iowa and Illinois, have induced multitudes of
i Adapted from "Constructive Rural Sociology," pp. 130-137, by permis-
sion, copyright 1913, 1916, by Sturgis & Walton Company, N. Y. Copy-
right now held by The Macmillaii Company.
138 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
owners to sell out and go to newer regions in the United States
and Canada where several times the amount they owned can be
purchased for what they received. In the Southeastern States
it is the outcome of the dependency of agriculture on an ignorant,
colored, labor population.
Further, it is likely that when the possibility of procuring
cheap land in the United States and Canada has passed farmers
in the improved agricultural regions will cease to sell to neigh-
boring farmers. When this point is reached, and when, also,
estates begin to be divided among the descendants of present
farmers, we may expect to see the cessation of the consolidation
tendency and the development of small and intensive farming.
Farms are almost always leased in Great Britain. In France
77.6 per cent., and in Germany 83.6 per cent, of the farmers own
all or a part of their farms, while in the United States 35.3 per
cent, are tenants.
There are two opposing views as to the effects of tenant farm-
ing and small proprietorship.
1. Young and Mill held that small proprietors form the basis
of individual prosperity, independence, and well being. Young,
who traveled through Europe in 1787-8, and who believed in
large agriculture, testified that while there was much poor farm-
ing on small properties, "yet the industry of the possessors was
so conspicuous and meritorious that no commendation would be
too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land
is, of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant
labor. ' ' He thinks the way to get mountains farmed to the very
top is to let them out as property to small owners.
Mill reviewed the facts and literature of the continental method
of small holdings as opposed to the English practice of large
estates in his attempt to get England to see the mistake and loss
incident to its practice. He believed the evidence proved that
peasant properties conduced to the moral and social welfare of
the laboring class by increasing their industry to what a Swiss
statistical writer described as "almost superhuman industry";
that territorial arrangement is "an instrument of popular edu-
cation." "The mental faculties will be most developed where
they are most exercised; and what gives more exercise to them
than the having multitudes of interests, none of which can be
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 139
neglected, and which can be provided for only by varied efforts
of will and intelligence ? ' '
Small proprietorship is ''propitious to the moral virtues of
prudence, temperance, and self-control. ' ' Laborers are liable to
spend their entire wage. ' * The tendency of peasant proprietors,
and of those who hope to become proprietors, is to the contrary
extreme ; to take even too much 'thought for the morrow' " ; to be
penurious. Even among the pleasure-loving French people of
the agricultural sort ' ' the spirit of thrift is diffused through the
rural population in a manner most gratifying as a whole, and
which in individual instances errs rather on the side of excess
than defect."
Mr. Mill further holds that small holdings would not interfere
with the desirable and much needed purpose on the part of the
workers to exercise prudence and restraint in the increase of
population. Some writers had held that peasant proprietors
would be likely to multiply up to the limits of food production
and thus force a minute subdivision of land. Mr. Mill believes
that without education and habituation into the exercise of pru-
dence the land proprietors, like other workers, would increase
in number up to the food limits. But that if indoctrinated — like
their urban brothers — they would exercise due restraint.
Furthermore, he marshals facts from Switzerland, Norway,
Prussia, and other continental countries to demonstrate that
peasant proprietorship not only did not evoke over-population
but rather checked it.
Concluding his chapters on peasant proprietors he says :
"As a result of this inquiry into the direct operation and in-
direct influences of peasant properties, I conceive it to be
established that there is no necessary connection between this
form of landed property and an imperfect state of the arts of
production ; that it is favorable in quite as many respects as it is
unfavorable, to the most effective use of the powers of the soil;
that no other existing state of agricultural economy has so bene-
ficial an effect on the industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and
prudence of the population, nor tends on the whole so much to
discourage an improvident increase of their numbers; and that
no existing state, therefore, is on the whole so favorable, both to
their rural and their physical welfare. Compared with the
140 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
English system of cultivation by hired labor, it must be regarded
as eminently beneficial to the laboring class. French history
strikingly confirms these conclusions. Three times during the
course of ages the peasantry have been purchasers of land ; and
these times immediately preceded the three principal eras of
French agricultural prosperity."
2. The other view is that effective farming in the future can
only be done by a system of large properties and tenant renters
whose rights are protected by legal provision. It is held that
the capital which needs to be invested in machinery and equip-
ment in order to make farming competitively profitable and pos-
sible cannot be provided by small owners. They will be forced
to sell to capitalistic owners who can make the large investments
needed. Moreover, the fall in prices places a shock on the land-
lords and farmers which is not felt by other callings in the same
manner. Small proprietors have nothing to shield them from
the shock and must give way to men of larger resources.
It would seem that recent events and the spirit of present times
is in favor of the position held by Mill. The progress that is
being made in agricultural development in Europe and Great
Britain is most conspicuous just where the larger estates are
being broken up, parceled out, and vested in numerous small
proprietors. This is notably the case in Ireland and in Den-
mark and in both countries farming and dairying have made
prodigious progress, and in both the consequences have been of
the best for the character and intelligence of the citizenship.
New interest in life, renewed industry, progressive and coopera-
tive undertakings, enriched social and moral life, have been the
results.
Of much importance to rural sociology is the effect on rural
social life of absentee landlordism and of tenant farming. The
economic effects of absentee landlordism with its attendant
abuses has had historic examples. Perhaps the most notable
recent one has been that of Ireland. The profits of the large
estates were spent abroad, draining Ireland of its productive
capital; the best land of large estates was turned into pasture
land ; and when tenants made improvements on farms to enlarge
the production the rents were systematically raised to absorb
the reward of initiative and industry. Consequently a premium
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 141
was placed on neglect, shiftlessness, drunkenness, and social
squalor, and agricultural Ireland was emigrant as to its best and
most vigorous element, decadent economically and socially, and
rapidly increasing in pauperism and insanity. The various
Land Purchase Acts passed by Parliament revolutionized Irish
society, for it was mostly agricultural and rural. Small estates
could be purchased on one hundred year payments. Buildings
and sanitation were fostered. Agriculture and education were
promoted. Cooperative undertakings took root. As a con-
sequence the inhabitants are becoming thrifty, industrious, in-
terested in their own community affairs, temperate, and a
larger life is full of promise.
In America social degeneration due to tenancy has been noted.
Absentee landlordism visits on the given region heavy economic
injuries. The tenant who keeps up the buildings, grounds,
fences, and fertility of a farm as he would were he owner is rare
indeed. No doubt juster laws and more progress in scientific
agriculture would form a basis for the correction of some of
these matters. Now the tenant sees no profit in the upkeep of the
farm. He believes he obtains the greatest advantage in getting
the largest returns with the least effort. Could just returns for
his efforts be secured the results would be better.
But the economic phase is less important than the social. The
community interests are at stake, and are put in jeopardy
wherever a neighborhood is given up to renters dominantly.
This fact has been observed frequently. Strong spoke of it in
his "New Era" many years ago. It has received passing atten-
tion now and then since that time. Near Syracuse, New York,
(1894), life in certain tenant communities seemed pathetic.
Church, school, and home indicated systematic neglect. In
north central Kansas (1895) renters exercised neither interest
nor influence in community matters. Observations in Mont-
gomery County, Illinois, (1901-1903), resulted in the belief that
schools and churches were declining under tenant conditions.
Resident owners recognized and deplored the fact. Observers in
North Dakota report similar conditions wherever renting pre-
dominates.
As an accompaniment of the neglect of church and school the
moral and cultural tone of the neighborhood sink low. Coopera-
142 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
tive ethical activities of country districts usually reside with, the
church. The larger cultural and social outlook associate them-
selves with church and school and are products of their life.
Immorality, vulgarity, low ethical ideals, insufficiency of infor-
mational and esthetic agencies and outlets result from irrespon-
sibility and transiency.
SOME ADVANTAGES OF TENANCY1
W. O. HEDRICK
THE public has become interested only recently in the size of
businesses generally, but since 1890 our census bureau has col-
lected statistics relative to the size of farms. Speaking generally,
the public cares not at all whether factories and stores and rail-
roads are rented or are owned by their operators, but it has
given much attention to the ownership and rental tenures of land
since 1880.
The curious fact is revealed by the last census enumeration
(1910) that it is the very large farm which has been notable
during the past ten years. The farms of from 500 to 999 acres
have had second place in growth of numbers, have exceeded all
others in absorbing total farm area, have exceeded all others in
enlarging improved acreage per farm, have shown the biggest in-
crease in value of total farm property of any class, were second
greatest in increased building valuation, have had greatest in-
crease in machinery valuation and third greatest in livestock in-
crease. The relatively small number of these farms, however,
robs this record of much significance in characterizing American
farm sizes.
With regard to landlordism and tenantry, the same motive
which is relied upon by society to secure effective farm handling,
that is, "self interest," is the very one which stimulates tenants
to rent farms. The farm business requires a combination of
several factors — notably land, labor, and equipment — for its best
success. The extremely high price of all these elements renders it
sometimes necessary that two enterprisers should combine their
i Adapted from Publications American Sociological Society, Vol. 11:
94-96, Dec., 1916.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 143
factors, one furnishing land, the other labor and equipment, and
we have, therefore, the landlord and tenant relation. Farm-
management studies show almost invariably that tenant farmers
make good labor incomes, and no little care should be taken in
disturbing a system not adverse to public policy which with all
its faults is distinctly profitable to the farmer.
Country-life improvement may indeed be hindered in its
cooperative aspect by the presence of the shifting tenant, but an
even more fundamental wrong may be done by striking at the
productivity of agriculture itself in the attempt to eliminate this
sort of farmer. Commonly it is assumed that tenancy is a step-
ping-stone to ultimate land ownership. The young farmer or
the needy farmer may come to own a farm through a preliminary
period spent as a tenant farmer, or he may attain full ownership
through the mortgage-indebtedness route. Comparing only the
more superficial features of these two methods of reaching the
same end and we have the following results. Through having
the stimulus to industry which comes from ownership and
through directing his business at will, the mortgagor is ad-
vantaged, but he is limited in his farm operations through having
invested his capital in land. On the other hand, the tenant leaves
to the landlord the burden of carrying all the unproductive farm
parts, such as buildings, fences, lanes, wood lot, etc. He is
further advantaged through putting all his capital into livestock
and equipment, thus being enabled to operate to the maximum
of profitableness. He gains nothing, however, by the apprecia-
tion in value of land.
The suppression of tenancy restricts the young farmer or the
impecunious farmer to alternatives which may prove hurtful
from the business standpoint. The going in debt for a full-sized
farm, as we have seen, is likely to leave the farmer short-handed
in the means for the operation of this farm. Another alternative
is the little farm — one which he is able to pay for and yet have
some means left over — but every study of the little farm has con-
vinced the student of the utter unprofitableness of this style of
farming. Farm machinery is standardized in size to the needs of
the full-sized farm ; a profitable number of labor hours for man
or team can be found only upon the full-sized farm. Insufficient
variations of enterprises and too high costs in overhead expenses
144 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
are only a few of the many reasons given for the unprofitableness
of the small farm.
The sharing of the expenses of carrying on a farm business
between two parties, one furnishing the land factor and the other
the labor and equipment, has afforded a successful farm business
in the past and still has merits for the future. We find nothing
to justify the belief that the landlord's share is to grow larger to
the disadvantage of the tenant through the income-absorbing
power of land. Landlords will doubtless always secure the re-
turns which are possible to them through owning advantageous
differentials in land. The differentials tend to become accen-
tuated with the increase in price of farm products, but the means
have not yet been shown whereby the landlord may wrest away
from the renter any share to which this renter is properly
entitled.
Tenancy, it may be said in conclusion, has stood the test of
experience. We do not mean by this every tenancy system —
absentee landlordism, or rack renting, for example — but good
systems have survived. The greatest system of farming in the
world measured by the test of endurance is a tenant system.
English farming, where all but 4 or 5 per cent, are tenants, has
given us our leading types of livestock, our best farm practices,
such as marling, drainage and rotations and the measure in acres
of our customary farm. On the other hand, among the farm-
owning peasants of Continental Europe (other than the ex-
tremely recent notion of cooperation) scarcely a single fruitful
farm notion has developed. Few farm animals or practices
have been originated. Women customarily do the farm work
and the peasant himself is frequently unable to speak the
language of the country in which he lives. The test of a system
of agriculture is the character of its professional representatives,
and without doubt the British farmer, though a tenant, ranks
high among farmers everywhere. The constantly enlarging
growth in numbers of population in this country makes ever-
increasing demands upon the output from the farms. This in-
evitably leads to intensive cultivation with all its expensiveness
in land, equipment, and labor. It seems almost unthinkable
under these circumstances that a normal tenancy system should
not develop here as in England.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 145
AGRARIAN ARISTOCRACY AND POPULATION
PRESSURE *
E. C. HAYES
THE agricultural sections of America have in general by no
means reached that balance between population and resources
which tends ultimately to establish itself. They are in a period
of transition. The coming changes will offer opportunity for
great improvements, but they will bring with them one great
danger, namely, that of too rigid social stratification.
At first sight such stratification seems inevitable. Omitting
qualifications, this tendency may be thus stated : when land be-
comes worth hundreds of dollars per acre, as it already has in
certain sections, the landless youth can seldom, if ever, succeed
in buying a farm, and if he remains in the country must be a
tenant or a hired laborer. On the other hand, those who own
land will be in a position to buy more. Thus ownership of land
may be expected to concentrate and the number of landless
dwellers in the country to increase. This tendency will be
strongest where land is most productive and most valuable, and
therefore hardest for the landless to purchase, and at the same
time requiring the employment of a large number of hands to
tend its heavy crops. The application of scientific methods to
agriculture which will be necessary to make the best lands pay
for their cost requires capital, and this will put an additional
obstacle in the way of the landless youth and add to the tendency
created by the high cost of land to develop a small body of
wealthy agrarian aristocrats with a large body of tenants or paid
farm hands.
There are, however, three counteracting tendencies. First, the
more intensive the agriculture, the smaller the number of acres
which the landless youth must buy in order to become inde-
pendent and to support a family. The increased price of good
land and the demand for fine fruits, vegetables and meats may be
expected to force a more intensive cultivation, which makes
fewer acres suffice for the maintenance of a household. So long
i Adapted from "Introduction to the Study of Sociology," Appleton,
N. Y., pp. 47-50.
146 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
as wasteful, extensive modes of cultivation prevail, the growth
of cities clamoring for food and raw materials powerfully tends
to increase both "the cost of living" and the monopoly of land.
It is true that intensive agriculture .by increasing the pro-
ductivity of the land tends to increase its price. But in in-
tensive agriculture the part played by labor is greater and the
proportional part played by land is less, so that the land values
do not increase as rapidly as does the product, and there is a
gain in position to those who contribute the labor required for
production.
Whether the rural population is made up of independent
farmers or of tenants and hired laborers, increase in the number
of those who dwell in the country and maintain a high standard
of living there, is dependent upon the increase of manufacturing
cities, either of the same nation or abroad, to absorb their prod-
uct of food and raw materials. Thus the high rate of urban
increase is favorable to intensive agriculture, and to the increase
of rural population in numbers and prosperity.
A second and more important qualification of the tendency to
form an agrarian aristocracy and proletariat is found in the
absence of laws of primogeniture and the wish of parents, as
testators, to divide their holdings among their children.
A third counteracting tendency is in the fact that in the long
run farming land is worth more to the man who cultivates it
than to any one else, because it gives him a steady job, inde-
pendent of the will of any employer. The price of farming land
contains at least three elements: first, a sum which if invested
at interest would yield annually an amount equal to the rental
of the land ; second, a price paid for the expected unearned in-
crement ; third, a sum paid by the purchaser for the opportunity
of independent self-employment. In time the second element
will dwindle, for there will no longer be so great an expectation
of unearned increment; indeed, that expectation might largely
be extinguished by taxation, as the next paragraph will show.
Then, unless land be valued as a basis of social prestige, or for
some other extraneous consideration, the third element will tend
to become the decisive factor in its ownership, for it will raise
the price of land above the capitalized value of its rental, and
only he who values it as an opportunity for independent self-
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 147
employment can afford to pay this third element in the price of
land.
An artificial barrier to the concentration of land in large
holdings would be the heavy taxing of unearned increments.
The motive for land purchases by the wealthy who do not farm is
largely the hope of enjoying the unearned increment which is
resulting from population increase, improvements in transporta-
tion and general progress. Deeds might be required to state the
true price paid, and the proof of fraud in the statement might
invalidate the deed. The purchasers would then have two strong
motives for having the price correctly recorded, first, in order to
get a valid title, and second, because whenever in the future the
purchaser became a seller it would be advantageous to him to
have had the full price recorded, since it would be the only
amount which he could receive untaxed. On the other hand, he
would not overstate the price lest he invalidate the title, and the
seller would not allow it to be overstated, if there had been an
increment since the previous transfer, because the seller is taxed
on that increment. If the actual price at successive sales were
recorded the unearned increment could readily be taxed.
To cheapen land by taxing the unearned increment, and
rendering it unattractive to speculators, would tend to make
it more valuable to the man who would labor on it than to any
one else, and so to distribute it among independent farmers in
holdings no larger than they could properly cultivate.
C. ADULT LABOR
THE INFLUENCE OF MACHINERY ON THE ECONOMIC
AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF THE AGRI-
CULTURAL PEOPLE *
H. W. QUAINTANCE
THE social conditions resulting from the use of machinery are
even more difficult to trace than are the economic. Yet, even
i Adapted from Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, Vol. IV: 110-113.
(Copyright, 1900, by The Macmillan Company.)
148 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
here, some measure of the truth may be indicated with approxi-
mate certainty. Whatever the social conditions of a people may
be at any given time, they are largely the product of wealth and
intelligence. That the farmers of the United States have ad-
vanced in material welfare has already been shown, and this ad-
vance has been, and is, a prerequisite to intellectual growth and
social attainment. For, "as long as every man is engaged in
collecting the materials necessary for his own subsistence, there
will be neither leisure nor taste for the higher pursuits." That
the use of machine power stimulates mental growth and activity,
even in the operator himself, is too clear to require demonstration,
for the men who work most with machines are among those
properly classed as the most intelligent.
It has been noted that, principally as a result of the intro-
duction of farm machinery, the agricultural population of the
United States decreased from 47.6 per cent, of the total popula-
tion in 1879, to 35.7 per cent, in 1900. The urban population
classes have increased, of course, by the same amount.
Among those who have continued on the farms, socialization
has become a struggle for place against greater and constantly
increasing odds ; and this, too, in spite of the fact that not only
the general level but also that of the lower classes is much higher
than before. If we look to the proprietor, or independent class
of farm workers, we shall find a great difference between the
farmers of the period just before the introduction of machinery
and the farmer of to-day. The life of the farmer was charac-
terized by isolation. Cooperation was. largely limited to house-
raisings and husking-bees, -and these were so infrequent as to be
real social events.
Self-sufficiency is no longer the ideal. The farmer has be-
come a specialist, devoting himself to particular branches of
farm work, as stock-raising; dairying; potato-, corn-, or wheat-
culture ; or to the raising of fruits, vegetables, cotton, or tobacco,
having in mind to secure the other things for which he has need
by means of exchange. The farmhouse is no longer isolated.
Good roads, the free delivery of mails, the telephone and the
electric car lines bring the farmhouse into the very suburbs of
the city.
The home is supplied with conveniences undreamed of by
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 149
farmers of fifty years ago. The farmer and his wife are no
longer to be set aside as "from the country. " They are people
of consequence, and their voices are heard in institutes, in clubs,
federation meetings, and at the polls — the man everywhere and
the woman also in some states. What they say is listened to with
respect due to one who knows whereof he speaks. The farmers
are coming forward also as members of the state legislature and
as governors of states ; and many of those who lead in the national
affairs are proud to claim some farmstead as the place of their
early training. They are practical politicians, and if less crafty,
are less unscrupulous than their associates from the cities.
But there is another phase of farm life the social import of
which must not be overlooked. Along with the increasing
wealth, home comforts and influence of the proprietor class, there
has been an increase also in the material welfare and general
intelligence of farm laborers. But where machine power is used,
the laborers have not advanced as rapidly as have the proprietors.
During the twenty-year period, from 1880 to 1900, the farm-
laborer class, in all the states, increased 35 per cent. The farm-
proprietor class increased 34.2 per cent. Taking the country
as a whole, these classes were evidently keeping a fairly equal
pace. But, turning to the seven leading cereal-producing states,
—those especially using complex and expensive machinery, — we
find the population was distributed as follows:
1900 1880
Proprietors 1,073,911 836,969
Agricultural laborers 631,740 363,233
The farm-proprietor class here increased 28 per cent., but the
farm-laborer class increased 74 per cent, In 1880, the laborer
class constituted only 30.3 per cent, of the total pupulation
engaged in agriculture in these seven states; but, in 1900, this
class constituted 37.1 per cent, of the population, The difference,
6.8 per cent., represents a loss of 115,984 persons from the farm-
proprietor class and an addition of that number to the farm-
laborer class.
The reasons for unequal growth of these two classes of the
agricultural population is not deeply hidden. It is the greater
advantage that the possessor of a machine has over another who
150 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
has only his hands. The farm laborers of to-day, like the work-
men in the factories, are being more and more separated from
the proprietors whom they serve. These classes understand
each other less and tend more and more to become as lords and
proletariat. The larger farms, moreover, are passing out of the
hands of resident owners and, like factories, are being run by
managers whose primary duty is to return profits.
The more intelligent of the farm laborers, those who must
be depended upon to operate the machines, fare very well; but
the ignorant and the unskilled are probably as ill-conditioned now
as before the introduction of machinery.
The decadence, or disintegration of the agricultural popula-
tion due to the use of machinery, is evident even in the pro-
prietor class itself. The group (of states) showing the highest
percentage of decrease (from farm ownership to tenancy) is
composed of those states in which large farms and costly ma-
chinery are plainly the characteristic feature. It contains, in
fact, the seven leading cereal-producing states of the country.
The rate of decline from ownership to tenancy is nearly four
times as rapid in the states where much machinery is used as
in the states where comparatively little machinery is used.
THE AGRICULTURAL ELEMENT IN THE POPULATION *
EUGENE MERRITT
IN practically all countries where the number dependent upon
agriculture is known, they form -a decreasing proportion of the
total population. Wherever a comparison of the male agri-
cultural workers with the total males gainfully employed is
available, the agricultural workers form a decreasing proportion
of the total. Thus is released to engage in other occupations
a corresponding percentage of the total workers. Apparently
the principal reasons for this decreasing percentage are that the
agricultural element in the population is becoming more efficient
and that in the readjustment or changes in the methods of pro-
i Adapted from Publications of the American Statistical Association,
March, 1916, pp. 50-65.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 151
ducing and distributing agricultural products, the agricultural
people now perform a smaller part of the complete operations
than was the case formerly. For example, cheese was manu-
factured in the home; now it is a factory product. There is a
smaller proportion of meat slaughtered and cured on the farm
than formerly. Farmers perform a smaller part of the hauling
of farm produce to market because the railroads more thoroughly
cover the country.
Many persons, in calling attention to the decreasing propor-
tion of the population living in rural districts, feel that this is a
national calamity. Indeed if it should happen that an increas-
ing proportion of our people were found on farms it would be a
sure sign that our agricultural people were losing their efficiency
and should be cause for alarm. If conditions in the United
States were similar to those in China there would be between
70 and 75 per cent, of the population engaged in agriculture
or dependent on it for their subsistence, whereas in the United
States in 1910, only 35 per cent, were so engaged. In other
words, the agricultural element in the population of the United
States is twice as efficient as the agricultural element in the
population of China, to say nothing of the difference in the
standards of living of the population of China and that of the
United States.
The evidence of the fact that the agricultural element in the
population of the United States is becoming more efficient is
abundant. The per capita crop production based on total
population increased 30 per cent, between 1856 and 1915, while
the percentage that the males engaged in agriculture formed of
those engaged in all occupations decreased from 50 to 35 per
cent, in the last 30 years. In other words, we are producing
more crops per capita and use a smaller percentage of our total
population for the purpose.
Thus it is evident that the reason for the decreasing per-
centage of all peoples found in rural districts and the migration
of young men and women from our farms, is that as the agri-
cultural element in the population becomes more efficient, a
smaller percentage of them is needed on farms and they have
to seek employment in the non-agricultural industries.
The higher death rate, age for age, in urban districts depletes
152 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the ranks of the workers so that the rural peoples are called upon
not only to furnish raw material to feed and clothe the nations,
but to fill up the ranks of the city workers and to contribute to
the supply of labor demanded by our growing industries.
A POINT OF VIEW ON THE LABOR PROBLEM 1
L. II . BAILEY
IT is a general complaint in the United States that there is
scarcity of good labor. I have found the same complaint in
parts of Europe, and Europeans lay much of the blame of it on
America because their working classes migrate so much to this
country; and they seem to think we must now be well supplied
with labor. Labor scarcity is felt in the cities and trades, in
country districts, in mines, and on the sea. It seems to be serious
in regions in which there is much unemployed population. It
is a real problem in the Southern States.
While farmers seem now to complain most of the labor short-
age, the difficulty is not peculiarly rural. Good farmers feel it
least ; they have mastered this problem along with other problems.
As a matter of fact, it is doubtful whether there is a real labor
shortage as measured by previous periods ; but it is very difficult
to secure good labor on the previous terms and conditions.
The supposed short labor supply is not a temporary condition.
It is one of the results of the readjustment and movement of
society. A few of the immediate causes may be stated, to illus-
trate the nature of the situation.
1. In a large way, the labor problem is the result of the passing
out of the people from slavery and serfdom — the rise of the work-
ing classes out of subjugation. Peoples tend always to rise out
of the laboring-man phase. We would not have it otherwise if we
desire social democracy.
2. It is due in part to the great amount and variety of con-
structive work that is now being done in the world, with the con-
sequent urgent call for human hands. The engineering and
i Adapted from "The Country Life Movement in the United States," pp.
134-148. Macmillan, 1911.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 153
building trades have extended enormously. We are doing kinds
of work that we had not dreamed of a half-hundred years ago.
3. In some places the labor difficulty is due to the working-men
being drawn off to other places, through the perfecting of in-
dustrial organization. The organization of labor means com-
panionship and social attraction. Labor was formerly solitary;
it is now becoming gregarious.
4. In general, men and women go where things are " doing."
Things have not been doing on the farms. There has been a
gradual passing out from backward or stationary occupations
into the moving occupations. Labor has felt this movement
along with the rest. It has been* natural and inevitable that
farms should have lost their labor. Cities and great indus-
trialism could not develop without them ; and they have made the
stronger bid.
5. In farming regions, the outward movement of labor has
been specially facilitated by lack of organization there, by the
introduction of farm machinery, by the moving up of tenants
into the class of renters and owners, by lack of continuous em-
ployment, by relatively low pay, by absence of congenial asso-
ciation as compared with the town. Much of the hired farm
labor is the sons of farmers and of others, who "work out" only
until they can purchase a farm. Some of it is derived from the
class of owners who drift downward to tenants, to laboring men,
and sometimes to shifters. We are now securing more or less
foreign-born labor on the farms. Much of this is merely
seasonal; and when it is not seasonal, the immigrant desires to
become a farm owner himself. If the labor is seasonal, the man
may return to his native home or to the city, and in either case
he is likely to be lost to the open country.
There is really no "solution" for the labor difficulty. The
problem is inherent in the economic and social situation. It
may be relieved here and there by the introduction of immigrants
or by transportation of laborers at certain times from the city;
but the only real relief lies in the general working out of the
whole economic situation. The situation will gradually correct
itself; but the readjustment will come much more quickly if we
inderstaud the conditions.
As new interest arises in the open country and as additional
154 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
values accrue, persons will remain in the country or will return
to it ; and the labor will remain or return with the rest. As the
open country fills up, we probably shall develop a farm artisan
class, comprised of persons who will be skilled workmen in certain
lines of farming as other persons are skilled workmen in manu-
factures and the trades. These persons will have class pride.
We now have practically no farm artisans, but solitary and more
or less migratory workingmen who possess no high-class manual
skill. Farm labor must be able to earn as much as other labor
of equal grade, and it must develop as much skill as other labor,
if it is to hold its own. This means, of course, that the farming
scheme may need to be reorganized.
Specifically, the farm must provide more continuous employ-
ment if it is to hold good labor. The farmer replies that he
does not have employment for the whole year; to which the
answer is that the business should be so reorganized as to make
it a twelve months' enterprise. The introduction of crafts and
local manufactures will aid to some extent, but it cannot take care
of the situation. In some way the farm laborer must be reached
educationally, either by winter schools, night schools, or other
means. Every farm should itself be a school to train more than
one laborer. The larger part of the farm labor must be country
born. With the reorganization of country life and its increased
earning power, we ought to see an increase in the size of country
families.
The real country workingmen must constitute a group quite
by themselves. They cannot be organized on the basis on which
some other folk are organized. There can be no rigid short-hour
system on a farm. The farm laborer cannot drop his reins or
leave his pitchfork in the air when the whistle blows. He must
remain until his piece of work is completed ; this is the natural
responsibility of a farm laborer, and it is in meeting this re-
sponsibility that he is able to rise to the upper grade and to
develop his usefulness as a citizen.
It is a large question whether we are to have a distinct work-
ing-class in the country as distinguished from the land-owning
farmer. - The old order is one of perfect democracy, in which
the laboring-man is a part of the farmer 's family. It is not to be
expected that this condition can continue in its old form, but the
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 155
probability is that there will always be a different relation be-
tween workingman and employer in the country from that which
obtains in the city. The relation will be more direct and per-
sonal. The employer will always feel his sense of obligation and
responsibility to the man whom he employs and to the man's
family. Persons do not starve to death in the open country.
Some persons think that the farming of the future is still to be
performed on the family-plan, by which all members of the family
perform the labor, and whatever incidental help is employed
will become for the time a part of the family. This will probably
continue to be the rule. But we must face the fact, however,
that a necessary result of the organization of country life and
the specialization of its industries, that is now so much urged,
will be the production of a laboring class by itself.
D. CHILD LABOR
RURAL CHILD LABOR1
JOHN M. GILLETTE
IT has been the customary assumption that the child labor
evil is confined to our cities and manufacturing villages. Un-
doubtedly the more vigorous and unwarrantable conditions rel-
ative to youthful workers do entrench themselves in those places.
Another familiar assumption is that the child labor performed on
the farm is entirely wholesome and is therefore to be encouraged.
But it is largely the product of those who are ignorant of farm
life, or of those who have seen agriculture at a distance or in
certain favored regions.
It can hardly be questioned that much of the work which farm
children do is a distinct advantage to them. Work which is
suited to the growing boy and girl is conducive to a better de-
velopment of body and mind. The chores about the house and
barn, and the lighter forms of labor which may be engaged in
outside of school hours are distinctly favorable to the estab-
i Adapted from Child Labor Bulletin, No. I, p. 154. National Child
Labor Committee, New York.
156 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
lishment of a disciplined ability to carry on useful activities,
which is deadly lacking in urban children. It is one of the
recognized defects of city life that there is nothing at which to
set the boys and girls outside of school hours and in vacation
periods. Idleness and idle habits, bad associations, and irregular
wayward tendencies are often directly traceable to this void in
the city boy life. It is not the adjusted, timely work of children
in the country which is the question. There is far more labor
of an excessive nature placed on children, particularly boys, who
live on farms than we would suspect.
COLORADO BEET WORKERS *
DR. E. N. CLOPPER
WE have been undertaking some isolated investigations of child
labor in agriculture because it is a subject about which we know
very little although the 1910 census reports that almost 72 per
cent, of all the children between ten and fifteen years of age
engaged in gainful occupations in the United States are in agri-
cultural pursuits and that 18 per cent, of them or 260,000 are
farm laborers working for other than their own parents.
In a recent study of the employment of children in the cultiva-
tion of sugar beets in Colorado we found an interesting situation.
There are about 5,000 children between six and fifteen working
in the beet fields, practically all of them with their own parents.
These children of course are under the compulsory education law
of Colorado which requires them to attend school nine months,
but as the local system is organized on the district plan the local
truant officer does not always enforce the law because he would
be required to prosecute his own immediate friends and neigh-
bors. The remedy seems to lie in a large unit of organization
that would remove enforcement outside the immediate locality.
We found that the best working children were kept out of
school about three months in the fall and lost about three and a
half times as many days of school as the non-beet workers. This
makes it impossible for the teachers to do the same work with
i Adapted from Child . Labor Bulletin. May, 1916. P. 38. National
Child Labor Committee, New York.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 157
them as the other children and hence the beet-workers were
found to be very much retarded.
STRAWBERRY PICKERS OF MARYLAND *
HARRY H. BREMER
TWENTY-EIGHT farms were visited in a brief investigation last
spring. On none of these was provision for family privacy made.
In one or two cases only one family was found occupying a
single house but this was not from any desire of the farmer to
meet the lowest possible standard of decency, but simply be-
cause only about half of the usual number of pickers had been
taken out, owing to the poor crops. On one farm the farmer
pointed with pride to his pickers' shanty and claimed it was the
best on all the farms. He boasted that in its construction he had
paid especial care to ventilation and the general well-being of
the pickers. What I saw was a two story building I would
have taken for a barn, with four windows and two doors on the
first floor, and two windows and one door on the second. The
building contained but a single large room on each floor, and
showed absolutely no provision for comfort or privacy. In this
he housed his pickers, men, women, and children, without regard
to age, sex, or relationship. And as a sort of explanation of
such meager provision, he went on to expatiate on the low
standard of morals and the promiscuous living he thought
characterized the lives of the people when in the city, "In the
city," said he, "they live like cattle. Go into any house in
Bond Street and you will find them crowded in worse than
they are here." The other farmers, I found, held the same
mistaken idea. This is a base libel on these people. Preceding
the investigation of the farms nearly four hundred families were
visited in their homes. In not one instance was more than one
family living together and most families had three or four rooms.
For the most part these homes were clean and showed care.
i Adapted from Child Labor Bulletin, No. 4. P. 71. National Child
Labor Committee, New York.
158 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
CHILDREN OR COTTON 1
LEWIS H. HINE
No wonder a school superintendent told me : " Cotton is a curse
to the Texas children." I was then just beginning a detailed
investigation of conditions on Texas farms. For two months I
went from farm to farm through forty counties from the "Pan-
handle" to the Gulf, where I saw Mellie and Millie and Edith
and Ruby and other tiny bits of humanity picking cotton in
every field.
We have long assailed (and justly) the cotton industry as the
Herod of the mills. The sunshine in the cotton fields has blinded
our eyes to the fact that the cotton picker suffers quite as much
as the mill-hand from monotony, overwork and the hopelessness
of his life. It is high time for us to face the truth and add to our
indictment of King Cotton, a new charge — the Herod of the
fields.
Why ? What is it that is actually happening to these children ?
Come out with me at "sun-up" and see them trooping into the
fields with their parents and neighbors. At first the morning
will be fresh, and nature full of beauty. You will see kiddies
four or five years old picking as though it were a game of imita-
tion and considering it great fun, and you will think (perhaps)
that it is a wholesome task, a manifestation of a kind Providence.
But watch them picking through all the length of a hot summer
day, and the mere sight of their monotonous repetition of a simple
task will tire you out long before they stop. Their working day
follows the sun and not until sundown do they leave the fields for
the night. Then turn to the "older" children of six or seven,
who are considered steady workers, and responsible for a share
of the output, and you will realize that for them even in the
beauty of the early morning the fun has quite lost its savor.
Here and there a strong voice is raised in protest. Such a
one was Clarence Ousley, who addressed the Southern Commer-
cial Congress. He said :
* * We all are exercised about the hours of labor, the wages and
the living conditions, of the women and children who work in the
i Adapted from the Survey, Vol. 31, pp. 589-592. 1913-14.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 159
mills, stores and offices, but we take little or no thought of the
hours of labor, the wages and the living conditions of the women
and children who furnish the raw material of the looms. It is
for the comfort and happiness of these primarily, for the greater
prosperity of the South secondarily, and finally for the social
and political blessings to come to the republic through a thriving
yeomanry, through the strength and virtue of a contented and
cultured rural population, that I beg your patience."
It is quite possible that the Texas farmer is not so indifferent
to the exploitation of his children as he appears to be, for he is
literally "up against it," and he may be applying the common
anodyne of accepting and even justifying that which appears to
him to be inevitable. It is obviously easier for outside observers
to tell him that child labor is only making matters worse and
that there is no way out until he abolishes it, that it is for him to
appreciate and act upon such a long plan.
More than half of the farmers in' Texas are transient renters,
moving on every two or three years in a hopeless search for better
things. They are weighed down with debt ; mortgages are high
and climbing higher; illiteracy and dependence upon the one
crop keep them treading a vicious circle. The cotton picker's bag
hanging about the neck of every child, bending his head with
its weight and tripping him as he walks, is a symbol of the life his
father leads and the life to which the child himself will come.
He may be just on the verge of better things when the boll-weevil
will blight his entire crop and reduce him again to hopeless ruin.
Years, decades, of such experiences have broken many a spirit.
They have lost the little interest they had in education and the
younger generation has been growing up in ignorance.
Therefore it is that I place first and foremost in any program
of change the restriction of child labor. Children must be left
free to go to school. The school year must be lengthened and
attendance required through the entire term. This is obviously
and immediately necessary.
160 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
COOPERATION
Austin, C. B. and Wehrwein, G. S. Cooperation in Agriculture, Mar-
keting and Rural Credit, Bulletin 60, Extension Service, Univer-
sity of Texas, Austin, 1914.
Buck, S. J. The Granger Movement. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 1913.
Cance, Alexander. The Farmer's Cooperative Exchange. Mass. Ag.
Col. Extension Bui., 1914.
Coulter, John Lee. Cooperation Among Farmers. Sturgis, N. Y.,
1914.
Fay, C. R. Cooperation at Home and Abroad. King, London, 1908.
Filley, H. C. Cooperation. Bulletin 31. June, 1915, Agricultural
Experiment Station, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Ford, James. Cooperation in New England. Survey Associates, Inc.,
N. Y., 1913.
Hibbard, B. H. Agricultural Cooperation. Bulletin 238. Jan., 1917.
Agricultural Experiment Station, Madison, Wisconsin.
Jefferson, Lorian P. The Community Market. Massachusetts Agri-
cultural College Extension Service Bui. No. 21, Amherst, April,
1918.
Poe, Clarence. How Farmers Cooperate and Double Profits. Orange
Judd, N. Y., 1915.
Powell, G. Harold. Cooperation in Agriculture, Macmillan, N. Y.,
1913.
Report of U. S. Am. Comm. to Study Cooperation in Europe. Senate
Doc. 214, 63rd Cong., 1st Session, Washington, 1913. Part I.
Sinclair, John F. Cooperation and Marketing. Report Wisconsin
State Board of Public Affairs, Madison, 1912.
Tousley, E. M. Cooperation Among Farmers — Ethical Principles In-
volved. Minneapolis, Minn., 1910.
Wolff, Henry M. Cooperation in Agriculture. King, London, 1912.
MARKETING
Holmes, Geo. H. Systems of Marketing Farm Products and Demand
for Such Products at Trade Centers, U. S. D. A. Report No. 98,
1913.
Huebner, Grover G. Agricultural Commerce. Appleton, N. Y., 1915.
Miller, Cyrus C.; Mitchel, John Purroy, and McAneny, Geo., Report
of the Mayor's Market Commission of New York City, Dec., 1913.
Weld, L. D. H. The Marketing of Farm Products. Macmillan, N.
Y., 1916.
TENANCY
Ely, R. T. and Galpin, C. J. Tenancy in an Ideal System of Land
Ownership. Am. Econ. Assn. Proc., pp. 180-212, March, 1919.
Ely, R, T. Private Colonization of Land. Am. Econ. Rev., Sept.
1918.
SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 161
Haney, Lewis. Studies in the Land Problem in Texas. Bui. Univ. of
Texas, No. 39, 1915.
Hibbard, B. H. Farm Tenancy in the U. S. Int. Rev. of Agri. Eco-
nomics, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 90-99, April, 1917. Found also in
Annals 40:29-39, March, 1912.
Kent, Wm. Land. Tenure and Public Policy. Am. Econ. Assn. Proc.,
pp. 213-225, March, 1919. Found also in Yale Review, pp. 5(>4-
579, April, 1919.
Mead, Ehvood. The Tenant Farmer and Land Monopoly. Conf. of
Social Work, pp. 373-382, 1918.
Nourse, E. G. Agricultural Economics. Chapter XII, Univ. of Chi-
cago Press, 1916.
Putnam, G. E. Tenancy and Land Reform. Univ. of Kansas Bui.,
Vol. 17, No. 18, pp.' 73-91, Dec. 1, 1916.
Spillman, W. J. and Goldenweiser, E. A. Farm Tenantry in the
U. S. Yearbook, U. S. D. A., pp. 321^6, 1916.
Stewart, C. L. Tenant Farming in the U. S. with Special Reference to
Illinois. Univ. of 111. Studies in Soc. Sci., Vol. 5, No. 3, Sept.,
1916.
Taylor, H. C. Landlordship and Tenancy. In Cyclo. of Ag., Bailey,
Vol. IV: 174.
Vogt, Paul L. The Land Problem and Rural Welfare. Proc. Am.
Econ. Soc., pp. 91-114, March, 1917.
Wallace, Henry. Land Tenure and the Rural Church. In Church
and Country Life, Vogt, Paul L., pp. 232-242.
LABOR
Barber, M. A. On the Recollections of a Hired Man. In Readings in
Rural Economics, Carver, T. K, pp. 547-557. Ginn, N. Y., 1916.
Coulter, John Lee. Agricultural Laborers in the U. S. Annals 40 :
40-44, March, 1912.
Country Life Commission Report, pp. 28, 39, 43. Sturgis, Walton Co.,
N. Y.
Nourse, E. G. Some Problems of Agricultural Labor. In his Agri-
cultural Economic, Chap. XVI. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1916.
Powers, G. L. Agricultural Labor. Cyclo. of Am. Agri., IV: 198.
Wilcox, E. V. The Farm Labor Problem. Am. Econ. Assn. Proc.,
pp. 158-170, March, 1918.
CHILD LABOR
Child Labor on English Farms. School and Society, May 5, 1917,
p. 525.
Child Labor Bulletins. National Child Labor Com., 105 East 22nd
Street, New York.
Monahan, A. C. Rural Child Labor Problem. Reprint, Child Labor
Bull, Vol. VI, No. 1, May, 1917. National Child Labor Com.,
105 East 22nd Street, New York.
CHAPTEE VII
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS OF RURAL LIFE
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FARMER1
JAMES BRYCE
I BEGIN with the farmers because they are, if not numerically
the largest class, at least the class whose importance is most
widely felt. As a rule they are the owners of their land; and
as a rule the farms are small, running from forty or fifty up to
three hundred acres. In a few places, especially in the West,
great land owners let farms to tenants, and in some parts of the
South one finds large estates cultivated by small tenants, often
Negroes. But far more frequently the owner tills the land and
the tiller owns it. The proportion of hired laborers to farmers
is therefore very much smaller than in England, partly because
farms are usually of a size permitting the farmer and his family
to do much of the work themselves, partly because machinery is
much more extensively used, especially in the level regions of the
West. The laborers, or as they are called "the hired men," do
not, taking the country as a whole, form a social stratum distinct
from the farmers, and there is so little distinction in education
or rank between them that one may practically treat employer
and employed as belonging to the same class.
The farmer is a keener and more enterprising man than in
Europe, with more of that commercial character which one ob-
serves in Americans, far less anchored to a particular spot, and
of course subject to no such influences of territorial magnates as
prevail in England, Germany, or Italy. He is so far a business
man as sometimes to speculate in grain or bacon. Yet he is not
free from the usual defects of agriculturists; he is obstinate,
tenacious of his habits, not readily accessible to argument. His
i Adapted from "The American Commonwealth," volume II, pp. 293-4.
Revised edition. Macmillan, N. Y.
162
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 163
way of life is plain and simple and he prides himself on its
simplicity, holding the class he belongs to is the mainstay of the
country, and regarding city folks and lawyers with a mixture of
suspicion and jealousy, because he deems them inferior to himself
in virtue as they are superior in adroitness, and likely to out-
wit him. Sparing rather than stingy in his outlays, and living
mainly on the produce of his own fields, he has so little ready
money that small sums appear large to him; and he fails to see
why everybody can not thrive- and be happy on $1,500 a year;
he thinks that figure a sufficient salary for a county or district
official, and regulates his notion of payment for all other officials,
judges included, by the same standard. To belong to a party
and support it by his vote seems to him part of a citizen's duty,
but his interests in national politics are secondary to those he
feels in agriculturist's questions, particularly in the great war
against monopolies and capitalists, which the power and in some
cases the tyranny of the railroad companies has provoked in the
West. Naturally a grumbler, as are his brethren everywhere,
and often unable to, follow the causes which depress the price of
his produce, he is the more easily persuaded that his grievances
are due to the combinations of designing speculators. The agri-
cultural newspaper to which he subscribes is of course written
up to his prejudices, and its adulation of the farming class con-
firms his belief that he who makes the wealth of the country is
tricked out of his proper share in its prosperity.
Thus he now and then makes desperate attempts to right him-
self by legislation, lending too ready an ear to politicians who
promise him redress by measures possibly unjust and usually un-
wise. In his impatience with the regular parties, he is apt to
vote for those who call themselves a People's party or Farmer's
party, and who dangle before him the hope of getting ''cheap
money," of reducing the expenses of legal proceedings, and of
compelling the railroads to carry his produce at unremunerative
rates. However, after all is said and done, he is an honest,
kindly sort of man, hospitable, religious, patriotic, the man whose
hard work has made the West what it is. It is chiefly in the
West that one must look for the well-marked type I have tried
to draw, yet not always in the newer West ; for, in regions like
northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Dakota, the farming popula-
164 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
tion is mainly foreign, — Scandinavian and German, — while the
native Americans occupy themselves with trading and railroad
management. However, the Scandinavians and Germans ac-
quire in a few years many of the characteristics of the native
farmer, and follow the political lead given by the latter. In the
early days of the Republic, the agriculturists were, especially in
the middle and newer parts of the Southern States, the backbone
of the Democratic party, sturdy supporters of Jefferson, and
afterwards of Jackson. When the opposition of North and
South began to develop itself and population grew up beyond the
Ohio, the pioneers from New England who settled in that country
gave their allegiance to the Whig party; and in the famous "log-
cabin and hard cider" campaign, which carried the election of
General Harrison as President, that worthy taken as a type of
hardy backwoodsman made the Western farmer for the first
time a noble and poetical figure to the popular imagination.
Nowadays he is less romantic, yet still one of the best elements in
the country. He stood by the Union during the war, and gave
his life freely for it. For many years afterward his vote carried
the Western and especially the Northwestern states for the Re-
publican party, which is still to him the party which saved the
Union and protects the Negro.
THE INFLUENCE OF FARM LIFE ON CHILDHOOD 1
CHARLES W. ELLIOT
CHILDREN brought up in the country get a deal of invaluable
training from their rural surroundings. They roam the fields
and wade in the waters, observe plant and animal life, use and
take care of domestic animals, and help their fathers and mothers
in the work of the house and the farm, and thereby get invaluable
training — first, in observation, secondly, in attention to the task
in hand, and thirdly, 'in good judgment which prevents waste of
strength and distinguishes between the essential or immediately
necessary in productive labor and the unessential and deferable.
i Adapted from Report of the Board of Education, Connecticut, 1903, p.
290.
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 165
A roaming child brought up on a farm, learns from nature what
it is almost impossible to impart to a city child. In city schools
we have been for twenty years past laboriously trying to provide
substitutes for this natural training in country life. The recent
natural history study from specimens used indoors, the manual
training given in carpentr}r, forging, filing and turning, the
garden plots and roof gardens, the vacation schools, and the
excursions to parks and museums, are all sincere efforts to replace
for urban children the lost training of eye and hand which
country life supplied. It is impossible to exaggerate the im-
portance of these substitutes ; but after all, these substitutes are
inferior to the spontaneous, unenforced results of living in con-
tact with nature, and of taking part with mother and father in
the productive labors of a farm, a market garden, a hennery, or
a dairy. What children acquire in the spontaneous, intense, self-
directed use of their faculties is always more valuable than the
results of a less eager though more prolonged attention to en-
forced tasks.
AN APPRECIATION OF RURAL PEOPLE l
T. N. CARVER
NOTHING can give us a clearer idea of the failure of urban
people to appreciate rural people than the names which are
sometimes applied to the latter. Saying nothing of such recent
slang as "hayseed," "rube," "clod hopper," etc., we have such
ancient words as heathen, pagan, boor and villain, all of which
meant originally the same as these modern epithets. Even the
modern word peasant has come to have, in the ears of the typical
urbanite, a somewhat opprobrious sound. The reason is not
difficult to find.
One characteristic difference between rural and urban industry
is that in the former, men get their living out of the soil and
in the latter, the dominant element gets its living out of other
men. They who coax their living out of the soil must become
expert in the knowledge of the soil and the things pertaining to
i Adapted from Rural Manhood, March, 1910, pp. 7-10.
166 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
it, such as crops, implements, and live stock. But they who coax
their living out of other men must of necessity become expert
in the knowledge of men and the things which please them, such
as fair speech, manners and dress. It is as much a part of their
business to become expert in these things as it is of the farmer
to become expert in his work of subjugating nature and directing
its forces. The dominant element in a city is always one which
makes its living by talking (or writing and picture making,
which amount to the same thing). This is the element which
makes the sentiment of the city, coins its slang and determines its
tastes.
Since such element has so little in common with those whose
work consists in manipulating things rather than men, who are
therefore less adroit in the amenities of social life, and less expert
in the complexities of drawing room etiquette, it finds itself
unable to appreciate them. That is the reason why urban people
have always found occasion to reproach rural people with their
lack of urbanity.
But to the discriminating mind there are abundant grounds for
an appreciation of those who make their living by tilling the
soil. In consequence of the antiquity and universality of the
agricultural industry there has developed a body of rural lore
and rural technique the like of which is found nowhere else. Our
attention is sometimes attracted by the peculiar wisdom of the
sailor people; but that of the farmer people is vastly greater
though less peculiar and therefore considered less interesting.
But because so much of it is learned outside of the schools by the
actual process of doing rural work — father and son working
together generation after generation — it does not commonly go
under the name of learning. The marvelous technique of rural
work is acquired in such a commonplace way that we usually re-
gard it as a matter of course and do not realize that it is a real
technique. But there are probably no tools or implements
known to any craft or profession which are more perfect in their
adaptation, with more fine points known only to the initiated,
upon which excellence in form and structure depends, than some
of the common implements of modern husbandry. The common
plow is an example. The shaping of the mold board in such
a way to give the maximum efficiency with the minimum of re-
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 167
sistance is a result of generations of experience and adjustment.
Another significant characteristic of the agricultural industry
is that it is still, and shows no sign of ceasing to be, an industry
of small units. A small unit in the agricultural industry means
merely a small number of persons employed on each unit and
not a small acreage. This characteristic of agriculture is of great
importance because it signifies that a very large proportion of
those engaged in it are self-employed and only a small propor-
tion, as compared with other industries, are employed. This fact
of self-employment means, among other things, self direction,
initiative, independence, and responsibility for the success of the
business. This requires qualities never demanded of the wage
earning or salaried employee.
The demand for these qualities is still further heightened by
another significant characteristic of the agricultural industry,
viz, its seasonal character. The farmer's work not only changes
from season to season, but from day to day, and even from hour
to hour. Besides there are multitudinous, unexpected and un-
foreseeable changes made necessary by the instability of the
natural forces with which he has to contend, such as changes of
the weather, etc. All this means that the farmer must reorganize
the work of the farm frequently, sometimes at an hour's notice.
He never knows what it is to carry on a single operation the year
round as is often possible in the mechanical trades. He must
always be on the alert and ready to decide what is to be done
next. They to whom this everlasting deciding what to do next
is a painful process must leave the farm and go where that
question is decided for them by a boss or manager.
Again it is a fact which educators still have to lament that no
substitute has yet been found for the schooling which the boy
gets on the farm as a matter of course. Here is where the boy
on the farm has a priceless advantage over his city cousin. He
can watch his father at work, and, as soon as he is old enough,
may help. There is no schooling equal to this ; but it is seldom
open to the city boy in these days.
The intimate association of parents and children in the work of
the farm and the farm household gives a common interest to the
rural family which is not always maintained under urban con-
ditions. The rural family is a stable institution as compared
168 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
with the city fa:nily. This is shown by the larger divorce rate
in the cities, and the lower rate of multiplication. This dif-
ference in the stability of the rural and urban families explains
why it is that city populations have to be continually replenished
from the country districts.
It has been said that the greatest social distinction is that be-
tween those who live in town and those who live in the country.
Were it not true that city people are themselves country people,
not more than three generations removed, there would be some
truth in this statement. The differences between country life
and city life are so wide as to produce inevitable divergences of
great width in their ideals, their manners and their outlook upon
life were it not that nature has a way of exterminating city
people when they get too far away from the rural point of view.
If we may assume that nature knows what she is about it is safe
to conclude that the rural point of view is the correct one. It
therefore behooves us to ponder seriously what seems to be the
maturer preference before we affect to despise the homely virtues
of rural people.
THE RURAL ENVIRONMENT AND GREAT MEN *
WILLIAM J. SPILLMAN
DR. WOODS has shown that at the time when the average man
noted in "Who's Who" was a boy, about 16 per cent, of our
population lived in the cities. He further showed that about 30
per cent, of the individuals in "Who's Who" were brought up in
the city. He accounts for this excess of city men amongst men
of note by the fact that the city attracts talent, the percentage of
ability in the city, therefore being greater than in the country.
He would, therefore, explain the excess of city men mainly as
the result of heredity. He may be correct in this position. I
am inclined at present, however, to believe that while this excess
may be partly due to the fact that talent is attracted to the city
and that, therefore, the city child has a better chance of inheri'-
ing talent, part of it is due to that fact that cities in general hav;»
i Adapted from Science, 30: 405-7, Sept, 24, 1900.
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 169
better school facilities than the country. Most of the men in
" Who's Who" are those who had good educational advantages.
I suspect, therefore, that if an adequate study were made we
should find that in this case environment has had something to
do with the fact that 30 per cent, of the men in "Who's Who"
are from the city. But for the sake of argument let us accept
Dr. Woods 's point of view. It would then follow that 30 per
cent, of our leading men should be accredited to the city if their
leadership is due entirely to heredity. Now for the facts in the
case. It is recognized that the following statistics are meager and
that conclusions can only be drawn from them tentatively, but the
fact that the figures are consistent with each other confirms their
correctness.
The following table gives statistics for the three classes of men
who may be, perhaps, placed highest amongst the list of our
leading men :
Per Cent.
Class of Men City Country and from
Village Country
Presidents 2 23 92.0
.Governors 4 41 91.2
Cabinet Officers 9 47 83.9
Totals 15 111 88.2
The figures for presidents include all the presidents this
country has had. Of course in the early days a smaller pro-
portion of our population lived in the cities. But this criticism
can not be applied to the list of governors. Figures from this
class of men relate to the present governors of the states. It
is seen that 91.2 per cent, of this class of men are from the
country or village. The figures for cabinet officers include
members of cabinets between 1869 and 1903. The average of
these three classes of men shows 88.2 per cent, of them from the
country. Now, if we accept Dr. Woods 's view that the cities
furnish a larger proportion of our leading men for the reason
that talent is attracted to the city, the proportion of these men
coming from the country should be considerably less than the
proportion of our population in the country, but the facts show
that the proportion of these men from the country is actually
170 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
greater than the proportion of country population. This seems
to me to argue strongly for farm life as an educational force.
I have received replies from forty-seven railway presidents
in this country. Of these 55.4 per cent, are credited, to the
village and country. When we remember that preferment in
this industry is greatly influenced by hereditary wealth it seems
to me that the fact that so large a percentage of these men are
country bred is somewhat significant. Statistics for members
of the house of representatives are of less value for our present
purpose than most of the other statistics given here, for the
reason that nativity is a distinct force in politics, and that many
representative districts are wholly city while others are wholly
country districts. Sixty-four per cent, of the present members
of the house of representatives are from the country. Figures
for members of the senate are of more value in this respect, since
senators represent states. Yet the fact that most of our senators
are very wealthy men would seem to justify the inference that
the city has more than its share of this class of men, yet 70.6 per
cent, of the eighty-five members of the present senate for whom
data could be obtained are from the country. Taking all six
of these classes of men, the average per cent, from the country
is 69.4. It will t>e noted that the higher we go in the scale of
leadership in those classes which are least influenced by ex-
traneous considerations, the higher is the per cent, of country-
bred men. I believe these figures substantiate the claim made in
my original article, namely, that country life has a distinct
educational value. But what is it in country life that gives this
advantage? President Lucius Tuttle, of the Boston and Maine
Railroad, in answering my circular letter answers this question.
He says:
Among other things, the farm boy learns methods of economy and, in-
cidentally, the value of money. He is a part of the business machinery
of the farm and is brought into close contact with all its affairs. He
learns methods of trade and how to buy and sell, as well as possible, with-
out incurring losses, and, later on when he leaves the farm and goes into
a general business, the education he has acquired during his farm life be-
comes a fundamental and valuable part of his after business life.
As a general rule, the city boy has no connection with his father's busi-
ness and knows nothing about it. His father may be eminently successful
but the boy has nothing to do with making his success and is very seldom
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 171
allowed to be cognizant of the methods of business his father uses. Under
modern conditions, school life gives the boy very little business knowledge
and, at the end of his school education, when he enters business, he is
obliged to begin at the bottom of the ladder without knowledge of many
things that the farm boy has learned in connection with his daily home life.
To my mind this is the fundamental reason why boys brought up on the
farm appear to make better successes in their after business life than
do city boys who have not had the advantages of a similar business train-
ing in their earlier days.
President White, of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Po-
tomac Railroad Company, in discussing the effect of life on the
farm, says :
It is preeminently, in my judgment, an experience which develops in-
dependence and self-reliance and, therefore, I think, the spirit of achieve-
nfent, more than any other I know of.
Another railroad president remarks:
I believe that farm life lays a good and broad foundation for a healthy,
vigorous manhood in both mind and body.
Another noted railway man, who never spent a day on the
farm, says :
I am inclined to think boys brought up on the farm have better con-
stitutions and are less liable to temptations.
President L. W. Hill, of the Great Northern Railway, says :
My present home is on a farm and my principal reason for making my
home there, rather than at some of the lakes or in the city, is that I have
three boys of my own I am trying to give a fair start in life. I believe
there is no end of arguments that living on the farm gives the best chance
for a growing boy. While my making the farm my home sometimes
works an inconvenience to me, I realize that the benefits to my children are
-well worth the inconvenience to me of getting in and out between my
office and the farm.
I have always contended that the value of farm rearing lies in
the fact that on the farm there is a chance to place responsibility
on the growing boy. I firmly believe that it is possible to work
out a system of education that will give our schools all the ad-
vantages of the farm life. This is being done, to a certain extent,
in the cities, and I believe that this fact has something to do with
the increasing number of strong men who come from the city.
172 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
But I must admit that the actual data on this subject are very
meager.
SUGGESTION AND CITY-DRIFT *
ERNEST R. GROVES
THE present movement of population toward urban centers, so
strongly expressed in Europe and America at the present time,
deserves study in the light of the modern teaching of psychology
concerning the meaning of childhood experiences as determining
adult conduct. It is everywhere admitted that this urban at-
traction of rural population is socially significant, and that its
causes are many. It is even -feared by many that it represents aji
unwholesome and dangerous tendency in modern life, arid that
it should be investigated for the purpose of discovering a reason-
able check upon this drift to the cities.
No study of the mental causes behind this urban enticement
can fail to discover the importance of the suggestions received
by country Children during their preparation for life. (See
"The Mind of the Farmer"— Ed.)
Rural education, of course, provides many opportunities for
penetrating suggestions, and any one who knows the schools of
the country will affirm that their suggestions are not always
friendly to rural interests. The character of some studies makes
it difficult for the teacher not to emphasize urban conditions. In
the endeavor for the dramatic and the ideal, the teacher is likely
to draw upon urban life.
It is fair to state that a beginning has been made in the effort
to utilize the country life possibilities in teaching material. But
one usually finds in the ordinary text book an unconscious ten-
dency to emphasize the urban point of view and to accept it as the
social standard. Many of the striking experiences of modern
life necessarily culminate amid urban conditions even when
caused largely by rural influences. The urban center is the pas-
sion spot, and affords more opportunity for the dramatic.
The same fact is true of ideals. The teacher is often tempted
to use urban illustrations in her effort to establish ideals of con-
1 Adapted from Rural Manhood, 7: 47-52, April, 1910,
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 173
duct. The spectacular character of moral struggle and ethical
effort in the city makes urban life a source from which to draw
interesting moral appeal. This bias in teaching is magnified not
infrequently by the attitude of the teacher toward rural life,
consciously or unconsciously. The suggestion of the urban
minded teacher and the urban inspired school system are bound
to provide effective suggestions that will later provide a basis for
rural discontent.
The early experience on the farm may leave a suggestion of
unreasonable toil. Romantic youth can not rest content with
a vision of endless, lengthened hours of work and merely a living.
Other opportunities provide a living also, with less toil. Parents
have at times been responsible for this conception of farming,
because they have insisted upon having their sons and daughters
work unreasonably during vacation and after school. The
parent, who looks backward upon a generation more given to
long toil than this, and uses his own earlier experience as a
standard, may the more easily commit this mistake and teach
his children to hate the farm and rural life.
The boy on the farm finds at times that his holiday and vaca-
tion are encroached upon by needed labor. Weather and harvest
conditions rob him of the pleasures that his village chum enjoys.
Some definite plan for an outing,, or some greatly desired day > of
sport has to be given up that the crop may not be injured.
Doubtless parents allow these disappointments to happen with
little reason, and looking at the matter from an adult point of
view, do not regard the boy 's feelings as of serious significance ;
and yet, in the light of modern psychology, we know that such
experiences may build up a very significant hostility to the rural
environment that appears to be the cause of the agonizing disap-
pointments. The cumulative effects of a few bitter experiences
of this nature may be' sufficient to turn the boy away from the
country in his heart of hearts for all time. In such cases the
first opportunity to leave the country for the town vpll be ac-
cepted gladly, as a way of escape from a life emotionally in-
tolerable.
The student of rural life is tempted to look too much to the
country and too little to the city for the cause of rural migration.
It is not easy to value properly the constant and impressive sug-
174 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
gestions of urban opportunity furnished by the city. It is im-
portant to recognize that the prosperity of the city requires that
it exploit itself in ways that bring people to the city to live, as
well as to trade. Better business is obtained by methods of ad-
vertising that naturally lead to more people.
Modern advertising is in itself a supreme illustration of
effective suggestion, and its development has been for the most
part in the hands of urban interests. Such advertising has
forced rural people to contrast their manner of life with urban
conditions and often with the result of discontent. They are
drawn to the city on special o'ccasions by a luring city publicity
manipulated with scientific skill by experts, and often return to
their country homes dissatisfied because of false notions regard-
ing the pleasures of the city. Of course this is more largely true
of young people as they are more open to suggestion.
Spectacular success is largely dependent upon urban con-
ditions of life, and such success obtains public attention. Even
in the country the successes talked about are likely to be those
made possible by city life. These are given space in the maga-
zines and daily papers edited and published in cities, and so they
naturally occupy the minds of rural readers of such periodicals.
The young man who feels the attraction of such enterprise,
who wishes to have a part in big things, even if an insignificant
part, who craves knowing big business at first hand, receives a
suggestion that invites him cityward. When a community is
itself represented by some former resident in some spectacular
success, it is certain that many young men will question their
future on the farm in that locality. Thus the human product
of a rural community robs it of its personality resources — and
the career of the man of fame may continue to act as a tradition
long after his death, and still add to the rural migration.
It is not altogether clear what effect visitors in the summer
from cities have upon rural people with reference to city drift.
Although a matter of accident, perhaps, dependent upon the
character of the city people, and only important in a limited area
of the country, summer visitors, nevertheless, must provide sug-
gestions that occasionally operate powerfully upon some young
people in the country in encouraging their going to the city.
Certain facts in some of our New England country towns where
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 175
visitors from the city return summer after summer, appear to
indicate that this condition does encourage young people in going
to the city to live.
THE MIND OF THE FARMER1
ERNEST R. GROVES
THE difficulty is to find the typical farmer's mind that in the
South, in the East, and in the West will be accepted as standard.
In our science there is perhaps at present no place where general-
ization needs to move with greater caution than in the statement
of the farmer's psychic characteristics. It is human to crave
simplicity, and we are never free from the danger of forcing con-
crete facts into general statements that do violence to the op-
posing obstacles.
The mind of the farmer is as varied as the members of the
agricultural class are significantly different. And how great
are these differences! The wheat farmer of Washington State
who receives for his year's crop $106,000 has little understanding
of the life outlook of the New Englander who cultivates his
small, rocky hillside farm. The difference is not that one does
on a small scale what the other does in an immense way. He who
knows both men will hardly question that the difference in
quantity leads also to differences in quality, and in no respect
are the two men more certainly distinguishable than in their
mental characteristics.
It appears useless, therefore, to attempt to procure for dis-
section a typical rural mind. In this country at present there is
no mind that can be fairly said to represent a group so lacking in
substantial unity as the farming class, and any attempt to con-
struct such a mind is bound to fail. This is less true when the
class is separated into sections, for the differences between
farmers is in no small measure geographical. Indeed, is it not
a happy fact that the American farmer is not merely a farmer?
Although it complicates a rural problem such as ours, it is
fortunate that the individual farmer shares the larger social mind
i Adapted from Publications of the American Sociological Society, Vol.
XI, 47-53.
176 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
to such a degree as to diminish the intellectual influences born of
his occupation.
The method of procedure that gives largest promise of sub-
stantial fact is to attempt to uncover some of the fundamental
influences that operate upon the psychic life of the farmers of
America and to notice, in so far as opportunity permits, what
social elements modify the complete working of these influences.
One influence that shows itself in the thinking of farmers of
fundamental character is, of course, the occupation of farming
itself. In primitive life we not only see the importance of
agricultural work for social life but we discover also some of the
mental elements involved that make this form of industry socially
significant. From the first it called for an investment of self-
control, a patience, that nature might be coaxed to yield from
her resources a reasonable harvest. "We therefore find in primi-
tive agriculture a hazardous undertaking which, nevertheless,
lacked any large amount of dramatic appeal.
It is by no means otherwise to-day. The farmer has to be
efficient in a peculiar kind of self-control. He needs to invest
labor and foresight in an enterprise that affords to the usual
person little opportunity for quick returns, a sense of personal
achievement, or the satisfaction of the desire for competitive face-
to-face association with other men which is offered in the city.
Men who cultivate on a very large scale and men who enjoy un-
usual social insight as to the significance of their occupation are
exceptions to the general run of farmers. In these days of ac-
cessible transportation we have a rapid and highly successful
selection which largely eliminates from the farming class the
type that does not naturally possess the power to be satisfied with
the slowly acquired property, impersonal success, and non-dra-
matic activities of farming. This process which eliminates the
more restless and commercially ambitious from the country has,
of course, been at work for generations. This has tended, there-
fore, to a uniformity of mental characteristics, but it has by no
means succeeded in producing a homogeneous rural mind. The
movement has been somewhat modified by the return of people to
the country from the city and by the influence on the country
mind of the more restless and adventurous rural people
who, for one reason or another, have not migrated. In the far
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 177
West especially attention has been given to the rural hostility to,
or at least misunderstanding of, city movements which attempt
ambitious social advances. It is safe to assume that this attitude
of rural people is widespread and is noticeable far West merely
because of a greater frankness. The easterner hides his attitude
because he has become conscious that it opens him to criticism.
This attitude of rural hostility is rooted in the fundamental
differences between the thinking of country and of city people,
due largely to the process of social selection. This mental dif-
ference gives constant opportunity for social friction. If the in-
dividuals who live most happily in the city and in the country are
contrasted, there is reason to suppose that the mental opposition
expresses nervous differences. In one we have the more rapid,
more changeable, and more consuming thinker, while the thought
of the other is slower, more persistent, and less wasteful of
nervous energy.
The work of the average farmer brings him into limited asso-
ciation with his fellows as compared with the city worker. This
fact also operates upon him mentally. He has less sense of social
variations and less realization of the need of group solidarity.
This results in his having less social passion than his city brother,
except when he is caught in a periodic outburst of economic dis-
content expressed in radical agitation, and also in his having a
more feeble class-consciousness and a weaker basis for coopera-
tion. This last limitation is one from which the farmer seriously
suffers.
The farmer's lack of contact with antagonistic groups because
his work keeps him away from the centers where social discontent
boils with passion and because it prevents his appreciating class
differences makes him a conservative element in our national life,
but one alwa\rs big with the danger of a blind servitude to tradi-
tions and archaic social judgments. The thinking of the farmer
may be cither substantial from his sense of personal sufficiency or
backward from his lack of contact. The decision regarding his
attitude is made by the influences that enter his life, in addition
to those born of his occupation.
At this point, however, it would be serious to forget that some
of the larger farming enterprises are carried on so differently that
the manager and owner are more like the factory operator than
178 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the usual farmer. To them the problem is labor-saving ma-
chinery, efficient management, labor cost, marketing facilities,
and competition. They are not especially influenced by the fact
that they happen to handle land products rather than manu-
factured articles.
Much has been made of the farmer's hand-to-hand grapple
with a capricious and at times frustrating Nature. This em-
phasis is deserved, for the farmer is out upon the frontier of
human control of natural forces. Even modern science, great
as is its service, cannot protect him from the unexpected and the
disappointing. Insects and weather sport with his purposes and
give his efforts the atmosphere of chance. It is not at all strange,
therefore, that the farmer feels drawn to fatalistic interpretations
of experience which he carries over to lines of thought other than
those connected with his business.
A second important influence that has helped to make the
mind of the farmer has been isolation. In times past, without
doubt, this has been powerful in its effect upon the mind of the
farmer. It is less so now because, as every one knows, the farmer
'is protected from isolation by modern inventions. It is necessary
to recall, however, that isolation is in relation to one's needs and
that we too often neglect the fact that the very relief that has
removed from country people the more apparent isolation of
physical distance has often intensified the craving for closer and
more frequent contact with persons than the country usually
permits. Whether isolation as a psychic experience has de-
creased for many in the country is a matter of doubt. Certainly
most minds need the stimulus of human association for both
happiness and healthiness, and even yet the minds of farmers
disclose the narrowness, suspiciousness, and discontent of place
that isolation brings. It makes a difference in social attitude
whether the telephone, automobile, and parcel post draw the
people nearer together in a common community life or whether
they bring the people under the magic of the city's quantitative
life and in this way cause rural discontent.
The isolation from the great business centers which has kept
farmers from having a personally Vide experience with modern
business explains in part the suspicious attitude rural people
often take into their commercial relations. This has been ex-
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 179
pressed in a way one can hardly forget by Tolstoy in his * * Resur-
rection ' ' when his hero, from moral sympathy with land reform,
undertakes to give to his tenants land under conditions much
to their advantage and, much to his surprise, finds them hostile
to the plan. They had been too often tricked in the past and
felt too little acquainted with business methods to have any con-
fidence in the new plan which claimed to have benevolent motives.
It is only fair to admit that the farmer differs from others of his
social rank only in degree and that his experiences in the past
appear to him to justify his skeptical attitude. He has at times
suffered exploitation ; what he does not realize is that this has
been made possible by his lack of knowledge of the ways of
modern business and by his failure to organize. The farmer is
beginning to appreciate the significance of marketing. Un-
fortunately, he too often carries his suspiciousness, which has
resulted from business experiences, into many lines of action and
thinking, and thus robs himself of enthusiasm and social con-
fidence.
A third important element in the making of the farmer's mind
may be broadly designated as suggestion. The farmer is like
other men in that his mental outlook is largely colored by the
suggestions that enter his life.
It is this fact, perhaps, that explains why the farmer's mind
does not express more clearly vocational character, for no other
source of persistent suggestions has upon most men the in-
fluence of the newspaper, and each day, almost everywhere, the
daily paper comes to the farmer with its appealing suggestions.
Of course the paper represents the urban point of view rather
than the rural, but in the deepest sense it may be said to look at
life from the human outlook, the way the average man sees
things. The newspaper, therefore, feeds the farmer's mind with
suggestions and ideas that counteract the influences that specially
emphasize the rural environment. It keeps him in contact with
thinking and events that are world-wide, and unconsciously
permeates his motives, at times giving him urban cravings that
keep him from utilizing to the full his social resources in the
country. Any attempt to understand rural life that minimizes
the common human fellowship which the newspaper offers the
farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate misinterpretation.
180 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his experiences,
for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as he once
was. This constant daily stimulation from the world of business,
sports, and public affairs at times awakens his appetite for urban
life and makes him restless or encourages his removal to the city
or makes him demand as much as possible of the quantitative
pleasures and recreations of city life. In a greater degree, how-
ever, the paper contents his mental need for contact with life in
a more universal way than his particular community allows.
The automobile and other modern inventions also serve the
farmer, as does the newspaper, by providing mental suggestions
from an extended environment.
A very important source of suggestion, as abnormal psychology
so clearly demonstrates, at present, . is the impressions of child-
hood. Rural life tends on the whole to intensify the significant
events of rural life because of the limited amount of exciting ex-
periences received as compared with city life. Parental influence
is more important because it suffers less competition. This fact
of the meaning of early suggestions appears, without doubt, in
various ways and forbids the scientist's assuming that rural
thinking is made uniform by universal and unvaried suggestions.
The discontent of rural parents with reference to their environ-
ment or occupation, due either to their natural urban tendencies
or to their failure of success, has some influence in sending rural
people to the city. Accidental or incidental suggestion often re-
peated is especially penetrating in childhood, and no one who
knows rural people can fail to notice parents who are prone to
such suggestions expressing rural discontent. In the same way
suspiciousness or jealousy with reference to particular neighbors
or associates leads, when it is often expressed before children, to
general suspiciousness or trivial sensitiveness. The emotional
obstacles to the get-together spirit — obstacles which vex the rural
worker — in no small degree have their origin in suggestions given
in childhood.
The country is concerned with another source of suggestion
which has more to do with the efficiency of the rural mind than its
content, and that is the matter of sex. Students of rural life
apparently give this element less attention than it deserves. As
Professor Ross has pointed out in South of Panama, for example,
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 181
the precocious development of sex tends to enfeeble the intellect
and to prevent the largest kind of mental capacity. It is unsafe
at present to generalize regarding the differences between country
and city life in matters of sex, but it is certainly true when rural
life is empty of commanding interests and when it is coarsened by
low traditions and the presence of defective persons that there is
a precocious emphasis of sex. This is expressed both by early
marrying and by loose sex relations. It is doubtful whether the
commercializing of sex attraction in the city has equal mental
significance, for certainly science clearly shows that it is the pre-
cocious expression of sex that has largest psychic dangers. In so
far as the environment of a rural community tends to bring to
early expression the sexual life, we have every reason to suppose
that at this point at least the influence of the community is such
as to lead to a comparative mental arrest or a limiting of mental
ability, for which the country later suffers socially. Each
student of rural life must, from experience and observation,
evaluate for himself the significance of this sex precociousness.
When sex interests become epidemic and the general tendency is
toward precocious sex maturity, the country community is pro-
ducing for itself men and women of inferior resources as com-
pared with their natural possibilities. Even the supposed social
wholesomeness of earlier marrying in the country must be
scrutinized with the value of sex sublimation during the forma-
tive years clearly in mind.
THE NEED OF IDEALS IN RUEAL LIFE l
KENYON L. BUTTERPIELD
ONE grave danger to permanent rural progress is the low level
of ideals, determined by community standards. It is not that
the average ideals are lower than in the city. I think they are
higher. But they come perilously close to a dead level in im-
mense areas of country. There is an absence of that high
idealism that acts as yeast upon the whole mass, which often pre-
i From "The Country Church and the JUiral Problem," pp. 75-78,
(Copyright 1911, the University of Chicago Press.)
182 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
vails in cities. It is harder to rise above the conventions in the
country, simply because there are few strata of popular habit.
In the city there are many ; the individual can pass from one to
another. Things are reduced to simpler terms in the country.
This has its advantages, but it tends to blight budding ideals or
to drive them out for development elsewhere — usually in the city.
As a consequence the rural community is in constant danger
of stagnation — of settling down into the easy chairs of satisfac-
tion. Rural life needs constant stimulus of imported ideas — a
stimulus of suggestion apart from its daily routine.
Moreover, rural ideals sometimes lack breadth and variety.
Life in the country easily becomes monotonous, humdrum. It
needs broadening, as well as elevating. It needs variety, gaiety.
But these changes can find their proper stimulus only in motives
that are high and worthy. Hence an appeal must be made for
the cultivation of ideals of personal development and neighbor-
hood advancement.
When ideals do come into country life, they are apt to be not
indigenous, but urban notions transplanted bodily. Urban ideals
may often be grafted onto some strong rural stock. Transplan-
tation is dangerous. Some one must be at work in the country
neighborhoods breeding a new species of aspirations out of the
common hardy varieties that have proved their worth.
Lack of ideals is in a sense responsible for the drift away
from the farm. Some people leave the country because they can
not realize their ideals in the existing rural atmosphere. Others
go because they have no thought of the possibilities of country
life.
In a former chapter attention was called to the fact that rural
life is more full of poetry than any other. But rural romance is
often stifled in the atmosphere of drudgery and isolation. This
high sentiment is of the soul and can come only as the soul ex-
pands. It is not merely an enjoyment of trees, crops, and ani-
mals. It is in part a, sense of exaltation born of contact with
God at work. It has in it an element of triumph because great
powers are being harnessed for man's bidding. It has in it
somewhat of the air of freedom, because of dealing with forces
free and wild except as they are held in leash by an unseen Mas-
ter driver. It has in it much of worship, because of all the deep
MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 183
mysteries of seed and soil, and because of the everlasting, patient
procession of the seasons and their vicissitudes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, W. L. The Country Town. Baker, N. Y., 1906.
The Rural Mind. Homiletic Review, N. Y., July, 1009.
Bailey, L. H. Countryman and Cityman. In his The Outlook to Na-
ture, pp. 90-97, Macrnillan, N. Y., 1905.
The Democratic Basis in Agriculture. In his The Holy Earth, pp.
139-150, Scribner, N. Y., 1916.
The Farmer's Fatalism. In his Training of Farmers, pp. 71-73,
Century, N. Y., 1909.
The Spiritual Contact with Nature. In his The Holy Earth, pp.
75-80, Scribner, N. Y., 1916.
The Underlying Training of a People. In his The Holy Earth,
pp. 39-42, Scribner, N. Y., 1916.
Why Do Some Boys Take to Farming. In his Training of Farmers,
pp. 89-115, Century, N. Y., 1916.
Bernard, L. L. Theory of Rural Attitudes. American Jour, of
Sociology, 22 : 630-49, March, 1917.
Butterfield, K. L. Culture from the Corn-Lot. In his Chapters in
Rural Progress, pp. 66-77, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1908.
Coulter, John B. Marriage and Divorce in North Dakota. Amer.
Jour, of Sociology, 12^: 398-417.
Country the Natural Birthplace of Talent. Harper's Monthly;
106 : 649-53, March, 1903.
Davies, George E. Social Environment and Eugenics. In his Social
Environment, pp. 82-131, McClurg, Chicago, 1917.
deCrevecoeur, J. H. St. John. Letters from an American Farmer.
Duffield, N. Y., 1904.
Emerson, Ralph W. Society and Solitude. In his Complete Works,
7:9-20, (Riverside Edition), Houghton, N. Y., 1898.
Fairchild, George T. Personal Attainments. In his Rural Wealth and
Welfare, pp. 45-48, Macmillan, N. Y., 1900.
Gold, Guy D. The Psychology of the Country Boy. Rural Manhood
2:107-109, April, 1911.
Groves, Ernest R. The Mind of the Farmer. In his Rural Problems
of To-day, Chap. 8, pp. 117-33, Assn. Press, N. Y., 1918.
Holmes, Roy Hinman. The Passing of the Farmer. Atlantic
110 : 517-23, October, 1912.
Lewis, 0. F. The Tramp Problem, Annals, 40:217-227, March, 1912.
Lighton, William R. Letters of an Old Farmer to His Son. Doran,
N. Y., 1914.
Plunkett, Sir Horace. The Human Factor in Rural Life. Outlook,
94:354-9, Feb., 1910.
Ripley, W. Z. Ethnic Stratification and Urban Selection. In his
Races of Europe, Chapter 20, Appleton, N. Y. Found also in
Carver's Sociology and Social Progress/ pp. 676-696, Ginn, Boston,
1906.
Ross, Edward A. Folk Depletion as a Cause of Rural Decline. Amer.
Sociological Society Publications, 11 : 21-30, December, 1916.
184 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Sanderson, Dwight. The Farmer and Child Welfare. Conf. of Social
Work, 1919, pp. 26-33.
Smith, Asa D. Soil and Mind Culture. 4th Annual Report of the
New Hampshire Board of Agriculture, pp. 257-265, Concord, 1874.
Vogt, Paul L. Rural Morality. In his Introduction to Rural So-
ciology, pp. 203-220. Applet on, N. Y., 1917.
Wallace, Henry. Description of an Ideal Rural Civilization. Men and
Religion Messages — Rural Church, pp. 14—27, Vol. VI, Association
Press, New York, 1912.
Wallace, Henry. Letters to the Farm Boy. Macmillan, N. Y., 1902.
Waters, H. J. The Means at Hand for the Development of an Ideal
and Rural Civilization. Men and Religion Messages — Rural
Church, pp. 27-47, Vol. VI, Association Press, N. Y., 1912.
Where the Great are Born, World's Work, IS : 11645, June, 1909.
Woods, Frederick A. Birthplaces of Leading Americans and the
Question of Heredity. Science, N. S. 30: 17-21, July 2, 1909; also
205-9, August 13, 1909.
City Boys vs. Country Boys. Science, N. S. 29 : 577-9, April 9, 1909.
The Share of Vermont in the Production of Distinguished Men.
Amer. Statistical Assn. Publications, pp. 761-3. Boston, Septem-
ber, 1911.
Woodward, M. Influence of the Summer Resident upon Country Life.
Countryside Magazine, 22 : 320, May, 1916.
CHAPTER VIII
EUEAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL AND MENTAL
A. RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL
A SOCIOLOGIST'S HEALTH PROGRAM FOR THE
RURAL COMMUNITY1
L. L. BERNARD
NOT the only dangers to human beings come from physical
violence, although in these times of war and international unrest
we are too prone to forget or neglect the subtler evils. The
menaces to morals and to health have much more disastrous
effects, not alone because they claim more victims by actual
count, even in war time, than does physical violence, but also
because they are so much more secretive in their methods, and
of all enemies their approach is the most unseen. As Professor
Carver says, "When people realize clearly that babies can be
killed with fly-infected food as well as with an ax, they ought
to be as willing to work as hard to exterminate the fly as they
would to exterminate a gang of murderers who went about killing
babies with axes. ' ' But the problem of getting people to realize
the dangers of germ diseases and moral pitfalls is a very difficult
one. Merely the relatively uneducated eye can perceive the
dangers of physical violence, but it requires a mind educated in
at least the rudiments of the theory of germ diseases and sanita-
tion to apprehend the dangers to both young and old from flies,
mosquitoes, tubercle, and intestinal bacilli. The one is capable
of dramatic presentation, while the other is for most people in-
formation of a highly prosaic character.
Likewise, warfare against the one appeals readily and vividly
to the imagination and can be waged more or less directly, while
i Adapted from "The New Chivalry— Health," pp. 349-358. (Southern
Sociological Congress, May, 1915.)
185
186 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
war against bad health or bad morals requires much more thought
and constancy of purpose for its planning than most people are
willing to give. For these reasons it may be worth while to set
forth here a few suggestions for a program which may be of some
value both for acquainting the people of the rural community
with the hidden menace to their health and for enabling them to
overcome these dangers by eradicating their causes. Good health
is one of the primary conditions of a strong and progressive civil-
ization. Where it is lacking most of the other human ills flourish
also. Where it is present there is energy and will for the most
difficult tasks of society.
The country is behind the city in both the matter of informa-
tion regarding sanitary conditions and in the application of the
methods of sanitation. This is true in spite of the fact that the
country has some decided hygienic and sanitary advantages in
the way of an abundance of sunlight and fresh air and, for a
large portion of the year, of fresh food in greater quantities than
the city can afford. There is also an abundance cf physical
exercise in the country, but unfortunately of such a one-sided
character that it does not develop the body harmoniously, but
tends in many cases to strain and to impair certain tissues and
organs. These are largely natural advantages. For the most
part the disadvantages of the country in a sanitary way are the
result of man's own negligence rather than inherent in the nature
of the country itself. In the country as yet there is almost every-
where less sanitary inspection, and there is consequently less
sanitary control over such matters as the drainage of mosquito-
breeding swamps, the disposal and destruction of noxious refuse
and dead animals, the inspection of the water supply and the
milk supply, and less control of diseased and poisonous animals,
such as the dog infected with rabies and dangerous snakes. This
lack of sanitary inspection and control is not alone due to
ignorance, but is also in large part traceable to the economic
costs of carrying out such programs of sanitation, and perhaps
equally as often to the lack of proper social and economic ma-
chinery or organization for getting it done.
The country is also less well supplied with many of the san-
itary and health aids which are coming to be relatively so plenti-
ful in the cities, such as good physicians within reasonable calling
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 187
distance, the district or visiting nurse, hospitals and dispensaries.
The country also is too frequently lacking in such other hygienic
and health aids as public and private bathing facilities, regular
and well regulated exercise and recreation, protection from sud-
den changes in temperature and inclement weather. But on the
other hand the country does not suffer so extensively from the
health-destroying vices which are so common in the cities,
especially excessive alcoholism, drug addiction, and the venereal
diseases. Most of the leading diseases, in fact, are recorded in
census returns as being more prevalent in the cities than in the
country districts. There are certain notable exceptions to this
general rule. The rural communities exceed in malaria, in-
fluenza, dysentery, peritonitis, and the diseases of the nervous
and circulatory systems, and possibly also in pellagra and hook-
worm. Some health authorities have also attributed much of the
cities' excess rate of typhoid to rural vacations and an infected
milk supply, though the responsibility probably rests more
properly upon the cities' infected water supply. The cities'
excessive rate in certain of the largely prevalent diseases, such
as measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, croup, scarlet fever, and
pneumonia, is due primarily to the high contagiousness of these
affections which operates to advantage in crowded communities.
The country's excess in the diseases earlier enumerated above, on
the other hand, is not traceable to the contagiousness of the
diseases, but to the inferior sanitation which exists there, and in
some cases to physical and nervous overstrain.
Thus the comparative statistics of rural and urban health
indicate clearly to us the difficulties in each case. In the country
the difficulty is clearly lack of sanitation and physical and mental
hygiene. What then is our program for removing these abnor-
mal conditions? There are a great many things that can and
should be done. It will suffice here perhaps to suggest and out-
line a few of the more important of these.
Perhaps the primary condition for the establishment of better
health in the rural community is the provision of a competent
health officer and sanitary inspector, one who not only under-
stands the dangers and difficulties of rural sanitary conditions,
but who also has the legal powers arid the courage to enforce the
changes which are necessary. A number of states already make
188 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
provision for a county health officer, but usually he has insuffi-
cient powers with which to enforce reforms or he is paid for too
small a portion of his time, or his appointment is of too political
a character, to secure the efficiency which so important a function
as his requires. The fact remains that rural health inspection
is far behind that which is carried on in the cities, and sanitary
enforcement is much more nearly adequate in the cities than in
the country districts. In order to secure the greatest efficiency
in this work its administrative direction should center in the
State Board of Health, which should have adequate powers of
control over it.
A closely related need for the protection of rural health is
the collection and publication of vital statistics, including statis-
tics of disease as well as of births and deaths. This function may
be performed by or under the direction of the rural health
officer or by a separate agency. In either case the statistics entire
should be made immediately available to all civic and private
agencies interested in the health of the rural community. Sta-
tistics of health and of births and deaths have the same value for
the rural community as for the urban; they point out the weak
spots in the community's health and thus indicate where work
needs to be done. By the aid of such statistics polluted water
supplies, soils polluted with hookworm, larva?, breeding places
for flies and mosquitoes, the need of instruction in dietetics and
other matters of household science and management can be
indicated. It is therefore absolutely essential to proper health
administration in the rural community that accurate and ade-
quate vital statistics be collected and published.
It must not be forgotten, of course, that no community, urban
or rural, can be given proper sanitary and hygienic conditions
unless there are proper laws prescribing minimum sanitary con-
ditions and giving adequate powers to the officer or officers having
the protection of health in charge. Therefore most, if not all, of
our states will have to legislate anew for the control of rural
sanitation. The large essentials of the health code should be
uniform over the state, as uniform in fact as are the health needs,
while the problems of a purely local nature may conceivably be
left to the administrative discretion of the county courts or boards
of commissioners. But whatever body may enact the health laws
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 189
they should be reasonably uniform, and adequate and thorough
administrative enforcement should be provided for, But where
adequate laws and administrative machinery for rural sanitary
protection do not exist — and such apparently is everywhere the
case at the present time — much may still be accomplished through
community cooperation, provided only there is leadership and the
dwellers in the community are made to see clearly the connection
between sanitary measures and improved health. The health of
most of the rural communities of the South could be vastly im-
proved without any considerable visible economic outlay merely
through voluntary cooperative drainage of swamps or wet places,
oiling, covering, or filling unused wells, the disposal of all wastes,
and the formation of rural improvement societies or clubs for the
purpose of observing properties for the detection and reporting
of improperly cared for manure piles, the accumulation of rain
water in bottles and barrels and other receptacles about the house,
and other nuisances, and for the creation of an effective public
opinion regarding these evils. Here the problem is primarily one
of education and effective leadership rather than of laws, or
cooperative labor rather than of a budget raised through taxation.
Valuable as such cooperative enterprise must always be for the
protection of rural health, with or without laws and administra-
tion, it can never completely take the place of the latter, nor will
it work with anything like the uniformity which the other pro-
vides.
No rural health program can claim even approximate adequacy
which does not provide for the district or visiting nurse. The
visiting nurse has been an indispensable factor in the health im-
provement of the cities and is coming to be recognized as one of
the first objectives in rural health campaigns. Where the rural
district nurse has been emplo3red results have amply justified
the expenditure required. Whether the nurse operates over the
whole county or a smaller division must necessarily depend pri-
marily upon the density of the population and the value of
property for taxation, though at least one visiting nurse to the
township, or consolidated school district where such exists, should
be the ultimate goal. In those States where township divisions
do not exist, commissioner districts or other similar divisions may
well serve as geographic units for her services. The function
190 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of the visiting nurse is normally pretty much the same in rural
and in urban communities. She should be available for advice
and help wherever there is illness and her services should be as
much educational and preventive as curative or ministrative.
Her spare time might well be spent in instructing mothers' clubs
and similar organizations, in social center or institute and other
extension talks, in inspecting school children, and in giving
occasional instructive talks to them regarding the care of their
health and that of the community. No other person perhaps
can be of equal help to a community in health protection, for no
other comes so intimately into the lives of the people. It is
probably desirable that a small fee, of 25 or 50 cents, should be
charged for each visit she makes, but this fee should always be re-
mitted upon the request of the person benefiting from the services.
In no case should her salary depend in whole or in part upon the
fees collected, but it should be met out of the regular funds of the
county treasury, and the laws of the State should be so modified
as to permit of this, where such modification is necessary. Hers
is as important a function as that of any other public servant in
the county. Transportation is one of the most difficult problems
to be met in this connection, but it is by no means insurmountable.
Another urgent health need for the rural community is that
every dweller in the country should have easy access to a hospital
when there is need for such. Most of our larger cities are more
or less adequately supplied with hospitals and in most of these
there is always a limited number of beds which are available even
to the very poor. Only the wealthier country people can now
afford to make use of the city hospitals. There is great need of
county or district hospitals in sufficient number and with facili-
ties adequate for the care of those who cannot receive proper
attention at home. In most cases the oversight of the visiting
nurse will insure sufficient expert sanitary care for the person
who is ill in his own home, but in a certain number of cases
either the gravity of the disease, the lack of home facilities, or
some other consideration makes it highly desirable, if not im-
perative, that hospital treatment be available. Hospitals are,
of course, expensive and rarely pay for themselves, much less
would they be able to do so if operated on the scale and for the
purposes here suggested. But hospitals are not so expensive as
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 191
disease unchecked or improperly cared for, and this is a fact
which should be more generally appreciated. In connection with
the hospitals there should be provided dispensaries from which
medicines may be distributed to the poor, who would not other-
wise procure them, at cost or even in some cases free. Ultimately
we may also hope for public physicians, though such does not
seem to be immediately realizable. If the other health agencies
here described are effective, there should be less need for the
physician, and perhaps the fact that his services come high may in
some degree help to reenforce the value of the counsels of the
visiting nurse.
Already I have mentioned medical inspection of schools as
one of the distinctive health needs of the rural community. Its
value is now too generally recognized to require argument by way
of reinforcement. To supplement it, however, there should be
provided a carefully planned and well executed educational pro-
gram for the improvement of rural health. Of primary im-
portance in this program is the instruction of school children in
the essential facts of sanitation and personal hygiene. In
many of the better rural schools much has already been accom-
plished in this direction. There are now some good text books
on the subject which teach in a practical and intelligible way the
most necessary facts regarding health. Perhaps the weakest spot
in the scheme is the teacher who usually has studied ancient
languages or some equally esoteric subject to the neglect of such
practical matters as hygiene. As a consequence she has not the
experience and background to give her teaching the requisite
reality. It is here therefore that occasional lectures by the visit-
ing nurse can be most effective. There is a very pressing need
that we revise the course of study in the rural as well as in the
urban schools until they inform us about the lives of our own
times and people rather than about the lives and languages of
peoples who lived a long while ago and whom we shall never see.
It is indeed a poor culture which does not teach one how to live
well in his own day and world.
The teaching of health and hygiene in the schools will reach
the young people, whom after all it is most important to reach.
But we must not neglect the older people of the community, for
their attitudes of encouragement or discouragement will affect
192 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
profoundly the value of the lessons to the young, as well as hasten
or delay the actual application of our program to their lives.
Therefore we need an abundance of plain, practical extension
teaching on this subject. Most of our state universities are
making some efforts in this direction and the State Boards of
Health are frequently doing good work and can do more still.
There is no good reason why health extension teaching should
not be made available wherever it proves valuable. It can be
carried on through local clubs, farmers' institutes, the social
center where one has been developed, the rural lecture course, and
even the rural church. All of the leading facts about health and
sanitation can be easily and clearly presented in public lectures
and through bulletins, and people will be interested in them
when so offered. Of a more general educational nature, but
distinctly valuable in its way, is the rural health survey.
Two diseases from which the rural population suffers more
than the urban are nervous and circulatory derangements.
Clearly then more than sanitation alone, perhaps more even than
health teaching, must be provided for the rural community.
There is too much isolation, life is too monotonous, there is too
much introspection, too much brooding over problems and dif-
ficulties by the rural dweller and too little self-forgetfulness in
the presence of others. For this difficulty we must prescribe a
better social life, intercourse which gives to the thought new
objects of attention and makes life seem less of a struggle and so
little a pleasure. Farm women especially are lacking in such
contacts. The best remedy here is the social center which
cooperates with the home. If contacts are to be broadened, as
they should be, care must be taken that they be made restful
rather than competitive and destructive of energy. Another in-
direct menace to health comes from the excessive severity and
duration of labor on the farm at certain times of the year. It
may not be possible to abolish seasonal labor altogether, nor to
find machines to do all of the excessively difficult tasks, but a
better system of farm management, more cooperation in farm
labor, and a better understanding of the dangers of physical and
nervous overstrain should do much to remove some of the worse
evils in this connection.
The various methods of improving rural health here suggested
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL lS3
will not come of themselves. If we wish to see them realized, we
shall have to work for them at least as strenuously as we strive for
the other good things of life.
CITY IS HEALTHIER FOR CHILDREN THAN
THE COUNTRY1
THOMAS D. WOOD
MORE than half of the 20,000,000 school children in the United
States are attending rural schools.
Country children attending the rural schools are less healthy
and are handicapped by more physical defects than are the
children of the cities (including all the children of the slums).
And this is true, in general, of all parts of the United States.
My conclusions are based upon all the available official sta-
tistics of school children gathered from all parts of the country.
As many as 50 or more sources of information were used, and
the results compared and collated. These statistics lack uni-
formity. They contain, doubtless, many errors, but there are
probably as many errors in the statistics of the city school chil-
dren as in those of children in the rural schools. The com-
parative result, therefore, is accurate.
In every health item the country child is more defective than
the city child. This is a most surprising reversal of popular
opinion. More than twice as many country children suffer from
malnutrition as do city children; the former are also more
anemic, have more lung trouble, and include more mental de-
fectives than do the latter.
In an impartial effort to ascertain the causes of present-day
country life, so far as health and welfare are concerned, this fact
must not be overlooked : Artificial selection, during the last half
century especially, has drawn much of the best human stock
from the country to the cities. Before that time the tide in the
movement of population apparently carried more good human
material to the rural regions than away from them.
Another reason for the physical inferiority of country school
i Adapted from Philadelphia Public Ledger, April 2, 1916.
194 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
children and of country people in general is that the science and
art of human living, of conserving and improving human health
and general human welfare, have advanced much more rapidly
in the cities than in the country districts. The problems of
safety and comfort as affected by congestion of population and
many other conditions of urban life have thrust themselves upon
human attention and have received much consideration.
The art of human care has progressed much more slowly in
the country. The father in the city spends, on the average, a
larger percentage of his income for the welfare of his children
than does the father on the farm. The farmer, relatively, raises
everything else more carefully and, as a rule, more successfully,
than his children.
Still another condition which helps to explain this astonishing
inferiority of the country child is the environment. The country
home and the country school are, on the average, less sanitary
and healthful than the city home and the city school.
It has been assumed that because the country child has all
the features of the country, he is, of course, surrounded by for-
tunate and wholesome conditions. But the possession of all
outdoors is far from enough. The farmer's home is, as a rule,
insanitary in many respects. It is often terribly unventilated,
and the dwellers in the house are fed many hours of the day with
bad air. Country water and food are less wholesome than water
and food in the city. The standards of living on the American
farm, when tested by the accepted principles of sanitation and
hygiene, are alarmingly defective.
The rural school, from the standpoint of health and general
fitness for its important use, is the worst type of building in the
whole country, including not only all types of buildings used for
human buildings, but also those used for livestock and all do-
mestic animals. Rural schools are, 011 the average, less adequate
for their use than prisons, asylums, .almshouses, stables, dairy
barns, pig pens, chicken houses, dog kennels are for their uses.
In the city the best ideas are more readily brought into contact
with all of the people. For many in our cities, deprived through
poverty of the material necessities of life — intellectual and social
as well as physical — a bounteous philanthropy frequently sup-
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 195
plies the lack. In the country, on the other hand, the farmers
must be persuaded to use their own resources to provide ade-
quately for the welfare of their families, and, most of all, for
their children.
To carry this proposal for child betterment directly to the
country household would be inadvisable and ineffective; would
often arouse resentment. In this phase of human education the
direct approach to the home is much less feasible in the country
than in the city. The school is, however, the agency endowed by
every circumstance for the accomplishment of this great special
task of a higher civilization.
After careful consideration of this serious problem of the
relatively deficient health of the children in rural schools, the
Health Committee of the National Council of Education, in
cooperation with the corresponding Health Committee of the
American Medical Association, strongly recommend the follow-
ing measures as a practical program for the solution of the dif-
ficulty :
First — Health examination and supervision of all rural school
children.
Second — The service of the school or district nurse to provide
the practical health service and follow-up work, which (it has
been so clearly demonstrated in our cities) can be best accom-
plished by the school nurse. The work of the nurse is even more
vitally important in rural than in city schools.
Fourth — Warm school lunches for all children in rural as well
as in city schools. The indirect educational benefits of the school
lunches upon the children and the homes are even more important
than the immediate health improvement of the children them-
selves.
Fifth— Correction of physical defects which are interfering
with the health, the general development and progress of rural
children. For this remedial and constructive health service,
practical rural equivalents of medical clinics, dental clinics and
community health centers of the cities are urgently needed in all
parts of the United States. The county unit organization and
administration for health as well as other rural interests has
already proved successful and promises the best results. Every
196 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
county should have one full time health officer, one or more school
and district nurses, and one or more community health centers
to provide rational, self-supporting health and medical service
for all the people.
Sixth — Cooperation of physicians, medical organizations,
health boards, and all other available organizations in the rural
health program.
'Seventh — Effective health instruction for the rural schools
which shall aim decisively at the following results :
(a) Establishment of health habits and inculcation of lasting
ideas and standards of wise and efficient living in pupils.
(b) Extension of health conduct and care to the school, to the
homes, and to the entire community.
Eighth — Better trained and better paid teachers for rural
schools, who shall be adequate to the health problems as well
as to the other phases of the "work of rural education.
Ninth — Sanitary and attractive school buildings, which are
essential to the health of pupils and teachers.
Tenth — Generous provision of space and facilities for whole-
some play and recreation.
Eleventh — Special classes and schools for the physically and
mentally deficient, in which children may receive the care and
instruction requisite for their exceptional needs.
Better health is to a striking extent a purchasable commodity
and benefit. Vast sums of money are expended from public and
private funds for the amelioration of human suffering and dis-
ability in the attempt to salvage the wreckage resulting from un-
favorable earlier conditions, which with foresight and at very
moderate cost might in large measure have been prevented.
Our schools are spending millions in educating, or trying to
educate, the children who are kept back by ill-health, when the
expenditure of thousands in a judicious health program would
produce a-n extraordinary saving in economy and efficiency. A
dollar saved in a wise, constructive effort to conserve a child's
health and general welfare will be more fruitful to the child and
for the general good than a thousand times that sum delayed for
twenty years. The principle of thrift in education finds its
first and most vital application in the conservation and improve-
ment of the health of the children.
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 197
HEALTH WORK IN CITY AND RURAL SCHOOLS OF THE
UNITED STATES
ACTIVITY. FOB CITY CHILDREN FOR COUNTRY CHILDREN
Medical inspection laws Mandatory for cities Mandatory for rural
in 23 States only in 12 States schools in 7 States
Mandatory laws Apply to all cities In 7 States
Permissive laws Enforced in most cities In 6 of the 13 States
having such laws
Medical inspection In 13 States, in parts
practiced In over 400 cities of 130 counties
Dental inspection by Permitted in 2 States,
dentists In 69 cities but not yet provided
Dental clinics In 50 cities In one rural county
( St. John's County,
Fla.)
Clinics for eye, nose,
throat and other de-
fects In cities None
Nurses 750 in* 135 cities In 12-20 rural districts
Open air classes In cities only
Athletics and recrea- Virtually all cities and Little provision in
tion; organized with large towns rural schools
appropriate facilities
and equipment
Warm lunches in In over 90 cities in 21 In a few scattered
schools States schools in 9 States
RURAL SANITATION: DEFINITION, FIELD, PRIN-
CIPLES, METHODS, AND COSTS1
W. S. RANKIN, M. D.
THE word sanitation refers to civic life ; 'the term rural sanita-
tion refers to rural civic life; the constituted and the common
i Adapted from American Journal of Public Health, Vol. VI, pp. 554-
558, June, 1916.
198 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
organ through which rural civic life finds expression is the county
government; therefore, we may define rural sanitation as the
administration of sanitary measures by or through the county
government. Rural sanitation finds its parallel in urban sanita-
tion, and county sanitation its parallel in municipal sanitation.
The field of rural sanitation includes more than 99 per cent,
of the area and more than half of the population of the United
States.
Rural sanitation should be initiated by the state, but executed
through the rural civic machinery, the county government. The
state should initiate, because the state is the only existing force
that can initiate rural or county health work. The county gov-
ernment must carry on the rural sanitation initiated by the state
for two reasons: First, should the states undertake to execute,
as well as initiate, rural sanitary measures, all of the states, with
a few exceptions, would soon realize that their undertaking was
far beyond their means ; second, no one, or no agency should do
for otbrrs what they can do for themselves, as such practice leads
toward dependence and indifference a«d away from independence
and appreciation. The people are able, when properly shown, to
care for themselves, and it is better for them to do this than to
have it done for them.
The independence of the county as a governmental unit de-
mands a plan of rural health work that will permit the more
progressive counties to go forward, liberating such counties from
the possible retarding influence of the backward counties — in
short, a plan that permits of leadership and healthy rivalry
among counties.
The multiplicity of rural governments is a greater rural sani-
tary asset, affording a corresponding multiplicity of opportunity.
There are 2,953 county governments in the United States, an
average of 66 to the state. The county governments of the
average state hold over a thousand meetings a year; at practi-
cally all of these meetings the state 's representatives .are welcome
and can get a hearing. If the state health officer has a reasonable
proposition, with good argument behind it and not too big a
budget in front of it, he can influence the county to take one,
two, or three steps toward a cleaner civic life. Every meeting
of the county government is a challenge to the state department
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 199
of health to show the county its sanitary needs and how to meet
them.
Rural sanitation must be developed on a smaller budget than
the budget for urban sanitation. The country is poor. What
the exact difference between the urban and rural per capita
wealth is in the United States, no one knows, but we do know
that rural per capita wealth is much less than the urban per
capita wealth.
The influence of epidemicity is weaker in rural than in urban
life, and rural quarantine measures need not be as rigid as
urban quarantine measures.
Rural sanitation will be influenced by the individualism of
the country. The ruralite (a term more expressive than
orthodox) is individualistic; the urbanite is communistic. The
errors of individualism are best treated by education ; the errors
of communism are best treated by legislation ; therefore, sanitary
education is relatively more important in rural sanitation than
in urban sanitation, while the reverse is true for sanitary legis-
lation.
There are two general methods by which a county may have
sanitary measures carried out: First, the county may do its
own work; second, the county may have its work done by some
outside agency. The whole-time county health officer is usually
regarded as the best solution by the first method, while the unit
or contract system of county health work furnishes, probably,
the best solution by the second method.
The unit system of county health work assumes, first, the
divisibility of county health problems into fairly independent
units of health work ; second, that a county may get better work
for less money by paying the State Board of Health just what it
costs to complete a certain piece of work than by attempting to
do the work itself. Several illustrations will make the practica-
bility of the unit system clear and perhaps better appreciated.
Illustration No. 1. — The North Carolina State Board of Health
proposed to and contracted with ten counties for a county ap-
propriation of $500 to administer free typhoid immunization to
those citizens of the ten counties who wished to be immunized.
In the first set of five counties we gave complete treatment to
26,537 people; when we completed the work in the next five
200 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
counties, 50,000 people in the ten counties will have been vacci-
nated against typhoid fever. This is about one-eighth of the
population of the counties treated. In several counties about
one-third of the population has been treated.
Illustration No. 2. — Our principal fall and winter work in
rural sanitation will be executing contracts for the following
unit of school work: For a county appropriation of $10 for
each school in the county the State Board of Health agrees to
arrange through the county school authorities and with the
teachers a program of consecutive health days for each school as
follows : Two weeks before health day the principal of the school
receives from the State Board of Health a batch of hand bills
announcing a date and program for health day. The hand bills
also carry an invitation to the patrons of the school to attend the
exercises. The teacher distributes these notices through the
children to the school community. The representative of the
State Board of Health arrives at the school at ten A. M. on
health day. He makes a fifteen minute talk to the children and
visitors on the importance of a knowledge of the laws of health.
He then makes a medical inspection of the pupils and gives each
defective child a card to its parents, notifying the parents of the
nature of the defect and urging the parents to see the inspector
after the evening exercises. The inspector mails a report of the
inspection to the State Board of Health, which, through a system
of follow-up letters, keeps in touch with the parents of the de-
fective children until they are treated. The inspector then
questions the children after the manner of the old-time spelling
match on a health catechism, which has been supplied to the
school in sufficient number at least one month prior to health
day. The health day exercises then adjourn until 8 P. M., at
which time the exercises are resumed. The evening exercises
consist of from three to four short illustrated lectures by the
inspector on the more important subjects of sanitation, inter-
spersed with the reading of selected compositions by the school
children. The last item on the program will be the awarding
of prizes, the first for the best knowledge of the catechism and
the second for the best composition. The inspector will grade,
score-card manner, each school on the excellence of its showing,
on health day. When this county unit is completed, a county
RURAL HEALTH— PHYSICAL 201
prize will be awarded to that school giving the best cooperation
in the work ; a county prize will be awarded for the best com-
position, and another prize for the best knowledge of the health
catechism. The inspector can handle one rural school a day.
It will take two or three days to handle some of the larger vil-
lage and town schools. In the first county to adopt this unit
there are fifty-seven schools which will require a program of
practically three months. The inspector will have very hard
work for five days in the week, like all school workers, but like
them will have Saturday and Sunday to rest. This unit of
health work couples medical inspection of school children with
the sanitary instructions of the entire community, young and
old alike — the young through the catechism, compositions, and
lectures, and the old through the lectures, but most of all
through the help the children will demand of their parents in
learning the catechism, and in preparing the compositions.
This plan of contract county health work greatly increases
the appropriation of the State Board of Health; an appropria-
tion from a county is just as useful in doing health work as an
appropriation from the state. This plan has great adaptability,
and I might say extensibility in proportion to the ingenuity of the
operator; under it a. unit of infant hygiene work may be de-
veloped; under it a unit of anti-malaria work may be carried
out; under it a unit of anti-pellagra work may be executed;
under it many other more or less independent county health
problems may be successfully attempted.
Comparative Value of Methods. — The whole-time county health
officer idea proposes a means — an officer; the unit or contract
system of county health work . proposes an end — the execution
of the plans and specifications for a definite piece of work.
The whole-time county health officer idea, if carried out by
the county authorities, is subject to local politics; if adminis-
tered under state supervision it is in conflict with the principle
of local self-government. The unit system of county health
work is not subject to local politics and does not conflict with
the principles of local self-government.
The whole-time county health officer plan costs the county
from $3,000 to $4,000 a year, and is available to only a compara-
tively few counties; the unit system of work costs the county
202 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
from $500 to $2,000 a year, and is available to nearly all
counties.
There are certain counties that should employ whole-time
health officers, but the contract or unit system of county health
work is better adapted to a variety of county conditions, and
will be, in all probability, far more effective than the whole-
time county health officer plan in reducing the state's death-
rate. The unit system of 'county health work is important as
a stepping stone to the whole-time county health officer. In
leading up to the whole-time count}^ health officer, the unit sys-
tem standardizes county health work, so that, when a whole-
time county health officer is employed, an effective plan of
county health work will have been established.
The unit system of work or proposed contract submitted by
the average state to the county should not call for an appropria-
tion of more than $1,000; $500 is better. The smaller the cost
of the unit, the greater is the probability of securing the funds
with which to start county health work. After one appropria-
tion is obtained the responsibility is then largely with the state
for making such use of it as to pave the way for easier and
more liberal funds. The game of sanitation, like the game of
life, to use the other fellow's grammar, "is not in holding a
good hand but in playing a bad hand good." Even the novice
can get results with plenty of money. The intelligent health
officer never loses sight of relative values, and the real fun of
the game is in getting big results with little budgets. "We shall
be able to handle the county contagious disease problem for
the average county for $300 to $400 per year. We will carry
out the school unit for from $500 to $600 a year for the average
county or for fifteen cents per pupil. We will have vaccinated
50,000 people in ten counties by September 11, for a cost to the
counties of about ten cents for each person immunized.
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 203
B. RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS DEFINED l
E. J. EMERICK
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS is due to an arrested or imperfect cere-
bral development. By most authorities, a person who is three
or more years retarded is considered feeble-minded ; for instance,
a child of twelve years, whose mental development is that of a
child of nine, would be feeble-minded.
The feeble-minded have been divided into three classes: (1)
the idiot, (2) the imbecile, and (3) the moron.
(1) The idiot has a mentality of less than three years. He
cannot protect himself from common dangers.
(2) The imbecile has a mentality of from three to seven years.
He can protect himself from common dangers, but cannot be
made self-sustaining.
(3) The moron has a mentality of from seven to twelve years.
He is ''capable of earning his living under favorable circum-
stances, but is incapable. ... (a) of competing on equal terms
with his normal fellows, or (b) of managing himself and his
affairs with ordinary prudence."
No one needs to be told how to recognize the idiot or imbe-
cile. Their inability to care for themselves, their physical stig-
mata, and obvious mental limitations make them easily dis-
tinguished. For this reason, they do not constitute a serious
problem ; they are recognized for what they are, and disposed of
accordingly.
The moron, on the other hand, may present no physical evi-
dence of deficiency ; may be able to perform quite difficult tasks ;
may read and write ; and may talk fluently, sometimes even with
a certain superficial cleverness.
This is the class that makes for us our social problems. Here
are the individuals who are put down as dull, ignorant or shift-
less, or unwilling to exercise their judgment, common sense and
will-power. Their resemblance to the normal makes it difficult
i Adapted from "The Problem of the Feeble-minded," Publication No 5,
March, 1915. Ohio Board of Administration, Columbus.
204 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
for many to believe that they cannot be trained to do as normal
people do. Bad environment, lack of opportunity, ignorance,
and what not, are given as causes for their failure to function
normally. But those who have had these brighter defectives in
institutions for the feeble-minded, and have watched them from
childhood, under most careful training and instruction, know
that they never develop bej^ond a certain stage : and know that
there is in these morons a lack as definite as in any other form
of feeble-mindedness ; a lack which makes it impossible for them
to become thoroughly responsible.
At large, the moron may become an alcoholic, prostitute, sex
offender, thief, or graver criminal; he is almost sure to be on
the very edge of the poverty line, if not an actual pauper. Dr.
'Goddard tells us "Every feeble-minded person is a potential
criminal," and this is particularly true of the moron — the high-
grade defective, who passes for normal, yet who lacks in whole
or part the sense of values and the will-power so necessary to
the law-abiding citizen. He has been misunderstood; he has
been credited with a degree of responsibility he does not and
cannot possess ; he has been sent to correctional institutions time
after time only to come out unimproved ; and he has been left
free to perpetuate his irresponsibility, because we have not
realized :
( 1 ) That the moron is not a normal person mentally.
(2) That he can never be made normal, and
(3) That feeble-minded invariably produce feeble-minded un-
less combined with normal stock.
FUNDAMENTAL FACTS IN REGARD TO
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS 1
SEVERAL important facts regarding mental defectives have been
clearly established :
1. Feeble-mindedness is incurable.
2. The feeble-minded reproduce twice as rapidly as normal
stock.
i Adapted from "Fifth Annual Report Virginia State Board of Chari-
ties," pp. 11, 12, Richmond.
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 205
3. Feeble-mindedness' is hereditary. There has never been
found a normal child both of whose parents are feeble-minded.
4. From 25 to 50 per cent, of our law-breakers are feeble-
minded. They are dominated by an inherited tendency to crime.
The percentage of commitments for major crimes, such as mur-
der, arson and rape, is apparently twice as great among mental
defectives as among normal people.
5. From feeble-mindedness springs, by inheritance, insanity,
epilepsy and all forms of neurotic degeneracy.
6. A very large percentage of prostitutes are feeble-minded.
In 1911 the Department of Research of the New Jersey Training
School for Feeble-minded tested fifty-six delinquent girls, "all
of whom had probably committed the worse offense a young girl
can." Fifty-two were found to be mental defectives. A test
recently made of one hundred girls taken at random from the
New York Reformatory for Women at Bedford, by the Bureau
of Social Hygiene, established by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
showed that all were apparently feeble-minded. Their average
physical age was twenty years, nine and seven-tenths months;
their average mental age, ten and five-tenths years. As shown
elsewhere in this report, a test of inmates of our reformatory
for delinquent white girls revealed the fact that thirty out of
thirty-five were mental defectives. Out of 300 women examined
by the Massachusetts Vice Commission only six were found to
have ordinary intelligence.
In view of these facts it is apparent that our great problems
of crime, insanity and the social evil are inseparably intertwined
with the problem of feeble-mindedness. Whatever progress we
may make in the treatment of criminals there can be no great
reduction of crime so long as we ignore the fact of criminal
inheritance, and whatever we may do toward the segregation
of the insane, or toward the suppression of the social evil, we
shall contribute little toward the actual solution of these prob-
lems so long as we make no attempt to stem the appalling tide
of feeble-minded offspring that is increasingly pouring forth
from our large and ever-growing class of mental defectives. So
far as modern investigation enables us to see, the most pressing
social need of our time is the segregation of the feeble-minded.
206 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
THE HILL FOLK1
FLORENCE H. DANIELSON AND CHARLES B. DAVENPORT
THE following report is the result of an investigation of two
family trees in a small Massachusetts town. It aims to show
how much crime, misery and expense may result from the union
of two defective individuals — how a large number of the present
court frequenters, paupers and town nuisances are connected
by a significant network of relationship. It includes a discus-
sion of the undesirable traits in the light of the Mendelian
analysis. It presents some observations concerning the relation
of heredity and environment, based on their effects upon the
children. While it is not an exhaustive study of all the ramifi-
cations of even these two families and their consorts, it may be
sufficient to throw some light on the vexed question of the pre-
vention of feeble-minded, degenerate individuals, as a humane
and economical state policy.
The town in question lies in a fertile river valley among the
New England hills. It is on the direct railway line between
two prosperous cities. East and west of it are more hilly,
less productive towns. Its present population is about 2,000.
Most of the people are industrious, intelligent farmers. A
lime kiln and a marble quarry are the only industries of im-
portance. In summer the population is nearly doubled by city
boarders.
Into one corner of this attractive town there came, about
1800, a shiftless basket maker. He was possibly of French
origin, but migrated more directly from the western hill region.
About the same time an Englishman, also from the western
hills, bought a small farm in the least fertile part of the town.
The progeny of these two men, old Neil Rasp,2 and the Eng-
lishman, Nuke, have sifted through the town and beyond it.
1 Adapted from Excerpts from Report on a Rural Community of Heredi-
tary Defectives. Eugenics Record Office — Memoir No. 1, Cold Spring Har-
bor, X. Y.
2 The few names which are used in the description of this community are
fictitious. The local setting and the families and all the other details
actually exist, but for obvious reasons imaginary names are in every case
substituted for the real ones.
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 207
Everywhere they have made desolate, alcoholic homes which
have furnished State wards for over fifty years, and have re-
quired town aid for a longer time. Enough of the families
still live in the original neighborhood so that, although they
occupy tenant houses of respectable farmers, for they own no
land now, the district of the "Hill" is spoken of slurringly.
Where the children have scattered to neighboring towns, they
do not remain long enough to secure a residence and are conse-
quently referred back to the original town when they require
outside aid. As the younger generations have grown up, they
have, almost without exception, married into American families
of the same low mental grade, so that the "Hill" people are
linked by their consorts to a similar degenerate family a hun-
dred miles away.
The attitude of the townspeople is that of exasperated neigh-
bors. They have lived beside these troublesome paupers for so
long that they are too disgusted with them, and too accustomed
to the situation, to realize the necessity for aggressive work upon
it. A few of them realize that hard cider is a large factor in
the cause of their neighbors' poverty, but more of them, appar-
ently ignoring the fact, keep it on tap free or sell it. This poor
class of people are left largely to themselves until they need
town aid, or some member becomes so drunk that he disturbs
the peace, or some girl becomes pregnant and has to be taken
to an institution. About once every eight or ten years, a state
agent is informed of the conditions, and four or five children
are removed from the families. Then the father and mother find
that their financial problems are relieved for the time and settle
down to raise another family.
A few of the men and some of the women have soldier's or
widow's pensions and state aid, but most of them work, when
they do work, as wood choppers or farm laborers. Most of
their wages go for hard cider or, if handed to the wives, are
spent in other equally foolish ways. They move frequently from
one shanty or tumbled down house to another. So long as food
and a small amount of clothing are furnished by some means,
they live in bovine contentment.
From the biological standpoint, it is interesting to note that
mental defect manifests itself in one branch of the pedigree by
208 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
one trait and in another branch by quite a different one. Thus,
in one line alcoholism is universal among the men ; their male
cousins in another line are fairly temperate, plodding workers,
but the women are immoral. Another branch shows all the men
to be criminal along sexual lines, while a cousin who married into
a more industrious family has descendants who are a little more
respectable. These people have not been subjected to the social
influences of a city or even of a large town, so that the traits
which they show have been less modified by a powerful social
environment than those of urban dwellers.
The conclusion of this brief survey, then, must be that the
second and third generations from a union of mentally defective
individuals show an accumulation and multiplication of bad
traits, even though a few normal persons also appear from such
unions. It is also evident that certain traits tend to follow
certain lines of descent, so that after one generation, related
families may each have a different characteristic trait. Feeble-
mindedness is due to the absence, now of one set of traits, now
of quite a different set. Only when both parents lack one or
more of the same traits do the children all lack the traits. So,
if the traits lacking in both parents are socially important the
children all lack socially important traits, i.e., are feeble-minded.
If, on the other hand, the two parents lack different socially
significant traits, so that each parent brings into the combination
the traits that the other lacks, all of the children may be with-
out serious lack and all pass for "normal." However, inasmuch
as many of the traits of such "normals" are derived from one
side of the house only (are simplex), that may, on mating per-
sons of like origin with themselves, produce obviously defective
offspring.
The large majority of the matings which are represented in
this report are of defectives with defectives. A few of those
who have drifted into a different part of the country have mar-
ried persons of a higher degree of intelligence, but the most of
such wanderers have, even in a new location, found mates who
were about their equal in intelligence and ambition.
In a rural district which supports such a class of semi-paupers
as has been described the social advantages which come to them
are meager and narrow. After a long day's work on the farm
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 209
or in the kitchen, the farm laborer and kitchen girl find their
recreation in an evening of gossip, for they know every one in
the neighborhood. They may live near enough to their homes
to go there at night. If such is the case, one dirty kitchen may
hold half a dozen men and the women of the house. They
smoke and drink cider and pass rude jests together and in the
end sometimes fight. Away from home, they are ostracized by
the other social classes. They occasionally have a dance which
will bring together many of the same class from neighboring
towns.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that early
marriages are the rule. After the legal age is passed, school
work is dropped and, for a girl, the servant's life often begins,
unless she is married at once. At any rate she anticipates mar-
riage and works with that as a goal, not to escape work, but to
gain a certain independence and that end of all effort, "to be
married." Nor is it surprising that cousin marriages are fre-
quent. In fact, even where no known relationship exists be-
tween the contracting parties, it is probable that they are from
the same strains. The early marriage is usually followed by a
large family of children. Some die in infancy in nearly every
home, but most of them survive a trying babyhood and develop
fairly robust pl^sical constitutions. They are born into the
same narrow circle that their parents were, and unless some
powerful factor changes the routine, they are apt to follow the
same path until past middle age. For, except where tuberculosis
has ravaged, disease has spared these people. So it is that the
meager social life, the customs of their parents, the natural ostra-
cism of the higher classes, and the individual's preference for a
congenial mate induce endogamy, or in-marriage, among the
mentally deficient.
It has been maintained that the dispersion of such communi-
ties of feeble-minded persons would stimulate out-marriage and
that this would increase the chance of marriage with different
and perhaps better blood and thus diminish the frequency of ap-
pearance of defects in the next generation. The instances of two
daughters who married comparatively normal men supports
this view. Their progeny are, as a whole, a better class of citi-
zens than the progeny of their sisters who mated with feeble-
210 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
minded men. Nevertheless, the 50 per cent, of the offspring
who were feeble-minded or criminal, even in these cases, consti-
tute a menace which should be considered. Another case was
from a criminal, alcoholic family and possessed both of these
traits. He migrated to another state and married a woman
who had more intelligence than either of the normal husbands
(before mentioned). Only one of their children shows the crim-
inal tendencies of the father, though the two youngest are neu-
rotic, and backward in school. After the mother found out the
real character of her husband and his family, she left him.
While such repression of defective traits in the progeny by mar-
riage into normal strains is beneficial to the community, it in-
volves a great sacrifice on the part of the normal consort. How-
ever, the consort is only one ; the progeny many. The more fre-
quent result of the migration of a feeble-minded individual is
his marriage into another defective strain in a different part of
the country. The change in locality usually means that two
different kinds of feeble-mindedness are united instead of two
similar types.
Looking at the relation of the Hill families to society on the
financial side, we see the three chief ways in which they have
been an expense to the public are through town relief, court
and prison charges, and their maintenance as the State wards.
The town of about 2,000 inhabitants in which the original an-
cestors settled has had to bear most the burden of the petty bills
for relief. The poor records of this one town have been used to
get an estimate of the cost of these families to the town, and these
records run back only to war time. From 1863-64 to the present
time, some families of the Hill have had partial or entire public
support. In the first decade 9.3 per cent, of the town 's bill for
paupers was paid for the Hill families. In the second decade,
29.1 per cent of the total bill was paid for the same families or
their descendants. During the thirty years covered by these de-
cades, the total aid given to paupers increased 69.4 per cent., but
that given to the Hill families increased 430 per cent. It is
probable that more than 9.3 per cent, of the $15,964 expended
from 1879-89 went to these people, for in some instances the
names of those aided were not recorded. Besides the usual bills
for rent, provisions, fuel, and medical attendance, the last decade
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 211
contains the item of partial support of three children in the
State School for Feeble-minded. The births, minus the deaths,
during this same period caused an increase of about 59 per cent,
in the number of individuals connected with the Hill families.
This means, then, that for 59 per cent, increase in numbers,
their expense to the public has increased 430 per cent.
Turning to the court and prison records for the last thirty
years, we find that at least sixteen persons from the Hill fam-
ilies have been sentenced to prison for serious crimes during that
time. A majority of these crimes were against sex, and the
sentences varied from ten years to two months, or were inde-
terminate. The cost of these sixteen persons to the county and
State through the courts and institutions has been at least $10,-
763.43. The arrests for drunkenness and disorder have not been
included. They are very frequent and the cases are usually
disposed of by a fine or thirty days' imprisonment. About a
third of the business of the district court comes from these
families.
The third large item of expense which falls upon the public,
through the State treasury, is the maintenance of the wards
which have been taken from their homes.
Of the thirty-five, twenty-one are still under the control of
the State as institutional cases or because they are under twenty-
one years. The expenses of commitment, board, clothing, school
tuition and officers' salaries is difficult to compute, but as ac-
curately as can be estimated, these children, during the last
twenty-three years, have cost the State $45,888.57. This means
that for nine families about $2,000 each year has been expended
to maintain children whose parents were unfit to care for them.
The financial burden, then, which the Hill people entail is
constantly increasing, and that far beyond the proportion of
their increase in numbers. This burden rests especially upon
the town in which they live. The 400 per cent, increase in the
finacial aid which they have required in the last decade pre-
sents this fact in a startling manner. The large percentage of
the crimes which were against sex indicate that the influence
which such persons exert in a community is of far more im-
portance than the 10,700 odd dollars spent in punishing the
criminals after the influence has been established. The money
212 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
expended on the State wards is well spent where even half of
them are trained for useful citizenship, but the imposition upon
society of an equal number of undesirable citizens calls for a
policy of prevention which will work hand in hand with the
present one of partial alleviation.
Most of the previous discussion has been in regard to the first
four generations, — those individuals who are old enough to have
their traits fully developed and their habits firmly established.
There is, however, a comparatively large number of children
between the ages of six and sixteen years who are growing up
to form the fifth generation of the Hill people. A brief study
of the school record of seventy-five of these children may give
one an idea of the prospect for the next generation.
The school record of seven of them is not known. The others
have been divided into two classes, those who are up to grade
and those who are below the grade they should be in. Brief
descriptions of the mental traits which they have exhibited in
school serve as an index of the characteristics which are develop-
ing. Glancing down the list of thirty-eight children who are
below grade, two causes for their backwardness stand out most
prominently. Either they are unable to fix their attention upon
one thing long enough to grasp it, or else they require so much
more time to comprehend ideas upon which they have concen-
trated, that they progress only half as fast as the average child.
They are frequently irregular in attendance so that they even
lose the stimulus of regular systematic work. All of these chil-
dren attend rural schools where no special provision is made for
the backward child. Because the schools are so small, this class
of children not only constitute a drain upon the teacher's time
and resources, but retard the progress of the entire class in
which they are studying. Occasionally they develop mischievous
qualities, but usually they are quiet, stupid laggards. They will
leave school as soon as the law will allow and go to form the
lower strata in the industrial world as they have in the aca-
demic. Five of these thirty-eight have one parent who is ap-
proximately normal.
Thirty children from similar families have kept up to their
grade. Most of them do as well as children of ordinary parent-
age, though only eleven of them have one or both parents whc
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 213
are not feeble-minded. A few of them are the slow ones in their
classes.
This brief survey, then, indicates that before adolescence half
of the children from the Hill families show evidences of their
mental handicap. The detrimental influence which such chil-
dren may exert upon the rural schools which they attend is an
important matter for consideration. How many of the other
half, who have held their own with children of average par-
entage, up to adolescence, will be able to keep up to the same
standard from sixteen to twenty-five is an open question. Its
solution depends largely upon the comparative weight of heredi-
tary and environmental influences during that period.
THE EXTENT OF FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS IN RURAL
AND URBAN COMMUNITIES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE x
ONE of the most significant studies that can be made in the
survey of these counties is the geographic distribution of the
feeble-minded and the proportion of the entire state population
that falls within this defective class. Since there has been a
report from every town in the State, either by questionnaire or
personal canvass, this proportion may be considered fairly cor-
rect even though many cases have not been reported.
One of the most significant revelations of this table is the
range of feeble-mindedness gradually ascending from the small-
est percentage, in the most populous county of the State, to the
largest percentages, in the two most remote and thinly populated
counties. It speaks volumes for the need of improving rural
conditions, of bringing the people in the remote farm and hill
districts into closer touch with the currents of healthy, active
life in the great centers. It shows that a campaign should begin
at once, — this very month, — for the improvement of rural living
conditions, and especially for the improvement of the rural
schools, so that the children now growing up may receive the
education that is their birthright. Let us have compulsory super-
vision of schools all over the State, as well as compulsory school
attendance.
i Adapted from Report of the Children's Commission, Concord, N. H.
214 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The feeble-minded population of the State does not appear
to be a shifting one. Of the 8.9 per cent, of cases born in New
Hampshire, but outside the town of present residence, the ma-
jority were born within the county as well, often in an adjacent
town, and the majority of those born in the United States, but
outside of New Hampshire, were born in one of the other New
England states.
FEEBLE-MINDED CITIZENS IN PENNSYLVANIA *
DR. WILHELMINE E. KEY
DR. KEY'S report is based upon a four months' intensive study
of a rural community in northeastern Pennsylvania, containing
about 700 square miles and a population of 16,000.
The purpose of the study was to determine the number of men-
tally defective persons in this community, and their cost to the
people of Pennsylvania, as well as to discover possible remedies
for a condition that experts agree becomes rapidly worse wher-
ever left unchecked.
Dr. Key found in this district 508 persons, ranging in age from
six years upward, who were feeble-minded — that is, who were
either clearly mentally defective, or who, being members of the
family of such a defective, have been so affected by their associa-
tions and environment as to be indistinguishable from mental
defectives in their conduct and social and family relations.
In other words, more than three defectives not in institutions
were found for every 100 of the population of this Pennsylvania
community. This enumeration did not include a considerable
number of shiftless, indolent, inefficient persons, who had no clear
mental or physical defect, but who, in a stricter classification,
might be classed with the defectives, so far as their effect upon the
community is concerned. Nor did it include children under six,
unless they were obviously and unmistakably defective.
A careful house-to-house study, oft-repeated, verified and am-
plified by examination of official records and family histories and
by consultation with well-informed neighbors and social workers,
developed several striking conclusions:
i Adapted from Report of The Public Charities Association of Pennsyl-
vania, pp. 8-9; 36-46; 61-62. Publication No. 16. Phila., 1915.
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 215
(1) Certain centers of mental and moral degeneracy and defect
were found, which corresponded closely with the distribution of
certain well-known mentally tainted family stocks. In two little
settlements, for instance, on the edge of the area studied, it was
found that 57.7 per cent, and 26.6 per cent, of the population
were mentally defective, in the sense above indicated. Examina-
tion revealed the fact that these settlements were the original
seats of two families that were notably defective. By inbreeding
and inter-breeding, the original small groups, after several gen-
erations had brought forth hundreds of their own kind, and other
hundreds who were on the borderline of inefficiency and mental
defectiveness.
Not only by drawing together representatives of their own
and other bad strains, but by attracting weak members of better
and normal families, these settlements became centers of con-
stantly widening and contaminating influence, the more aggres-
sive members going out to found other centers of contamination.
(2) From figures supplied by the officers of the county most
directly concerned, Dr. Key shows that the actual financial cost
to the county, for caring for and protecting against these defec-
tive groups during the last twenty-five years, has been at least
$265,000, of which $125,000 was actually spent for maintenance
of representatives of these families in the county home for vary-
ing periods ; $30,000 for care of orphans ; $75,000 for settlement
of criminal cases outside of court ; $15,000 for settlement of crim-
inal cases in court, and $20,000 for outdoor or home relief.
This takes no account of the cost of their private depredations,
nor of private charity, nor free medical attendance, nor neces-
sary extra police service, nor drink bill, etc.
In this connection Dr. Key says:
"Could this sum have been applied to the segregation of its
feeble-minded women, it would have sufficed to rid the county of
the whole of its younger generation of undesirables. We must
bear in mind, however, that at present the State has no institu-
tion for the care of such women . . . The training-schools for the
feeble-minded are overcrowded and have long waiting lists . . .
Our short-sighted policy . . . has not even the merit of being
inexpensive. It costs a great deal of money and then serves only
to aggravate the evils which it is designed to cure. . . . The
216 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
county has done the best it could with the means at hand.
Surely it is high time that the State inaugurate a more intelli-
gent and far-reaching policy which shall forever rid these sections
of their unequal and undeserved burden."
(3) There is a very distinct tendency for mental defect to run
in certain families, indicating the strong hereditary influence,
which can only be checked by steps to prevent marriage and
continued propagation of the kind.
(4) Comparisons between groups of forty-five defective
women, and forty-five normal women in the same area, showed
that the average birth-rate for defectives was seven children to
each mother, while that of the normal women was two and nine-
tenths children for each mother. This excess of defective births
was not offset by higher mortality rate among defectives, the
actual survivals of children of defective mothers being twice as
great as in normal families.
While it is recognized that this narrow inquiry, covering so few
cases, is not to be accepted as conclusive, it seems clear that in
this particular area, the tendency to multiplication is consider-
ably greater among defectives than among normals, thus intensi-
fying and emphasizing the problem of caring for and preventing
the unlimited propagation of mentally tainted children. .
(5) Centers of defectiveness have flourished where remedial
agencies have been most active for relief of external conditions.
The lightening of the struggle for existence which this relief
brings only makes it easier for the defective to live on, procreate
and multiply his kind. The root of the evil lies not primarily
in external conditions, but in the failure to separate and restrain
inherently defective individuals from propagation.
An interesting sidelight on the situation is contained in Dr.
Key's study of the rural school, in relation to the defective.
This disclosed 160 pupils whose inability to advance could be laid
primarily to hereditary defect. The detailed histories of fifty
such children are given in the report. An instance is cited,
where, of forty children in a certain school, ten were defective, or
retarded in their revelopment from two to four years. The ef-
fect of these children upon the normal children, and the waste
effort expended by and for the defectives is one of the sound
arguments for wider State supervision and care of defectives.
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL
217
In conclusion, Dr. Key remarks :
"No sensible person to-day questions the State's authority to
cleanse a polluted water supply or take any measures deemed
necessary to stop the spread of disease. . . . Why should it not
exercise the same jurisdiction with regard to these plague spots,
the sources of moral contagion?"
She strongly urges the need of locating the worst centers of
degeneracy and defect; registration of notoriously bad strains;
marriage laws to restrain marriage into these strains; establish-
ment of adequate institutions immediately, for the custodial care
of those whose continued multiplication cannot be prevented by
these means.
AMENTIA IN RURAL ENGLAND 1
A. W. TREDGOLD
SHOWING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF AMKNTS, AND IDIOTS, IMBECILES, AND
FEEBLE-MINDED, RESPECTIVELY, PER 1,000 POPULATION, IN CERTAIN DISTRICTS
OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, ACCORDING TO THE INVESTIGATION OF THE ROYAL
COMMISSION, 1904.
Feeble-minded
DO
03
m
9
1
a
,
g"
"o
'o
GO
1
3
JU
2
"
h- 1
s
rrf
'S
h-H
*^
1
H
Manchester ....
0.05
0.32
1.20
2.10
3.74
Birmingham . . .
0.09
0.27
1.70
1.60
3.76
Hull
0.02
0.20
0.55
0.58
1.35
Urban
Glasgow
0.07
0.23
0.32
1.00
1.68
Dublin
0.19
0.57
1.20
2.10
4.14
Belfast
0.13
0.63
0.70
0.97
2.45
fStoke-on-Trent..
0.21
0.45
2.10
1.10
3.96
Industrial ~\ Durham
0.02
0.34
0.56
0.56
1.48
[Cork
0.07
0.32
0.16
0.54
1.10
Mixed Industrial ["Nottinghamshire
0.30
0.66
1.50
1.20
3.81
and Agricultural "^Carmarthenshire
0.59
0.65
0.51
1.20
3.05
rSomersetshire . .
0.18
1.00
2.10
1.10
4.54
Wiltshire
0.35
0.69
2.20
0.90
4.25
Agricultural
Lincolnshire . . .
0.44
0.98
1.40
1.70
4.68
Carnarvonshire.
0.24
0.58
2.10
0.94
3.96
Galvvay
0.13
1.00
1.00
2.20
4.49
Adanted from "Mental DpfirioTu-v " n. 12. Wood. M. Y.. 190S.
218 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
URBAN AND RURAL INSANITY *
IN general the statistics indicate that there is relatively more
insanity in cities than in country districts and in large cities
than in small cities, although to some extent the difference may
be accounted for by difference between city and country as re-
gards the tendency to place cases of insanity under institutional
care. The figures may also be affected in some degree by the
accident of the location of the hospitals for the insane. Studies
made in New York State show that the proportion of admissions
from a county in which a hospital is located is always greater
than from other counties and that the proportion decreases with
the distance from the hospital. The influence of this factor
upon the comparison between city and country, however, would
not everywhere be uniform. Whether it tended to increase the
ratio of admissions from country districts or that from city dis-
tricts would depend entirely upon the location of the hospitals.
Probably it does not go very far toward explaining the higher
ratio of admissions from the urban population.
The ratio of admission to hospitals for the insane is higher
for urban than for rural communities for both males and fe-
males, and the difference is about as marked for one sex as for
the other. It follows that the difference between the sexes with
regard to this ratio is about as marked in urban communities
as it is in rural, the one statement being a corollary of the other.
One difficulty, however, about all comparisons of this kind as
applied to the United States as a whole is that the urban popula-
tion and the rural are very differently distributed over the ter-
ritory of the United States. New England and the Middle At-
lantic divisions together include 45 per cent, of the total urban
population of the United States, as compared with only 13.5 per
cent, of the rural population. If to these two divisions is added
the East North Central the combined area includes 67.6 per cent.,
or about two-thirds, of the urban population, but only 31 per
cent., or less than one-third, of the rural population. The three
southern divisions, on the other hand, contain a much smaller
i Adapted from "Insane and Feeble-minded in Institutions, 1910."
Dept. of Commerce, U. S. Bur. of Census, pp. 49-51. Published 1914.
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 219
proportion of the urban population than of the rural — 15.5 per
cent, of the one as compared with 46.1 per cent, of the other.
The characteristics of the rural population of the United States,
therefore, are affected to a large degree by conditions peculiar
to the South, while those of the urban population largely reflect
conditions in the North and East ; and, in general, any com-
parison between urban and rural population is to a considerable
extent a comparison between the North and East on the one
hand and the South and West on the other.
WHAT IS PRACTICABLE IN THE WAY OF
PREVENTION OF MENTAL DEFECT x
WALTER E. FEENALD
DURING the last decade four factors have materially changed
the professional and popular conception of the problem of the
feeble-minded.
1. The widespread use of mental tests has greatly simplified
the preliminary recognition of ordinary cases of mental defect
and done much to popularize the knowledge of the extent and
importance of feeble-mindedness.
2. The intensive studies of the family histories of large num-
bers of the feeble-minded by Goddard, Davenport and Tred-
gold have demonstrated what had hitherto only been suspected,
that the great majority of these persons are feeble-minded be-
cause they come from family stocks which transmit feeble-mind-
edness from generation to generation in accordance with the
laws of heredity. Many of the members of these families are
not defective themselves, but these normal members of tainted
families are liable to have a certain number of defectives among
their own descendants. The number of persons who are feeble-
minded as a result of injury, disease or other environmental con-
ditions without hereditary predisposition is much smaller than
had been suspected, and these accidental cases do not transmit
their defect to their progeny.
i Read before the National Conference of Charities and Correction, Balti-
more, 1915, being the report of the Conference Committee on State Care
of the Insane, Feeble-minded and Epileptic. Reprinted from the Pro-
ceedings of the Conference.
220 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
3. The cumulative evidence furnished by surveys, community
studies, and intensive group inquiries has now definitely proved
that feeble-mindedness is an important factor as a cause of
juvenile vice and delinquency, adult crime, sex immorality, the
spread of venereal disease, prostitution, illegitimacy, vagrancy,
pauperism, and other forms of social evil and social disease.
4. Our estimates of the extent and the prevalence of feeble-
mindedness have been greatly increased by the application of
mental tests, the public school classes for defectives, the inter-
pretation of the above mentioned anti-social expressions of
feeble-mindedness, and the intensive community studies.
It is becoming evident that some central governmental author-
ity should be made responsible for the supervision, assistance and
control of the feeble-minded at large in the community who are
not properly cared for by their friends. This proposal is not so
revolutionary as it seems, for a large proportion of feeble-
minded people at some time in their lives now come under the
jurisdiction of public authorities or private societies as de-
pendents or as irresponsible law-breakers. Many feeble-minded
persons eventually become permanent public charges. Many
run the gauntlet of the police, the courts, the penal institutions,
the almshouses, the tramp shelters, the. lying-in hospitals, and
often many private societies and agencies, perhaps, eventually
to turn up in the institutions for the feeble-minded. At any
given time, it is a matter of chance as to what state or local or
private organization or institution is being perplexed by the
problems they present. They are shifted from one organization
or institution to another as soon as possible. At present there
is no bureau or officer with the knowledge and the authority
to advise and compel proper care and protection for this numer-
ous and dangerous class.
This state supervision of the feeble-minded might be done
successfully by some existing organization like a properly con-
stituted state board of health, or state board of charities, or by a
special board or official; but the responsible official should be a
physician trained in psychiatry, with especial knowledge of all
phases of mental deficiency and its many social expressions.
The local administration of this plan could be carried out by
the use of existing local health boards, or other especially quali-
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 221
fied local officials or, perhaps better, by the utilization of properly
qualified volunteer social workers, or existing local private or-
ganizations and societies, already dealing with dependents or
delinquents. This systematic supervision and control, could eas-
ily be made to cover an entire State, and would obviate the
present needless, costly and futile reduplication of effort.
The most immediately practical method of prevention is that
of intelligent segregation. The average family is entirely free
from mental defect. It is possible that a real eugenic survey of
a given locality might show that 90 per cent, of the feeble-
mindedness in that locality was contributed by 5 per cent, of
the families in that community. The proposed governmental
supervision of the feeble-minded, with its sequence of registra-
tion, extra-institutional visitation, accumulation of personal and
family histories, cooperation with private organizations, public
school classes for defectives, and mental clinics, would soon indi-
cate the individuals most likely to breed other defectives. The
families with strong potentiality of defect would be recognized
and located. We know that if both parents are hereditarily
feeble-minded, all the children will be defective, and that if one
parent is feeble-minded, on an average half of the children will
be defective. Families and settlements of the Kallikak, Nam or
Hill-folk class, the so-called hovel type, can be broken up and
terminated by segregation of the members of the child-bearing
age. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type,
especially of the moron class, not adequately protected,, should
be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise she
is almost certain to bear defective children, who, in turn, breed
other defectives. The male defectives are probably less likely
to become parents, but many male morons also should be segre-
gated. This segregation carried out thoroughly for even one
generation would largely reduce the number of the feeble-
minded.
The cost of segregation will be large, but not so large as the
present cost of caring for these same persons, to say nothing of
their progeny in future generations. These people are seldom
self-supporting and most of them are eventually supported by
the public in some way. From the economic standpoint, alone,
no other investment could be so profitable. The present genera-
222 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
tion is the trustee for the inherent quality as well as for the
material welfare of future generations. In a few years the ex-
pense of institutions and farm colonies for the feeble-minded
will be counterbalanced by the reduction in the population of
almshouses, prisons and other expensive institutions. When the
feeble-minded are recognized in childhood and trained properly,
many of them are capable of being supported at low cost under
institution supervision.
The State will never be called upon to place all the feeble-
minded in institutions. Many cases will never need segregation
— small children of both sexes, cases properly cared for at home
with or without supervision, many adult males and adult fe-
males past the child-bearing period. Eugenic study will recog-
nize the non-hereditary cases who cannot transmit their defect,
and who do not need segregation for this reason. The one great
obstacle to effective prevention of f eeble-mindedness is the lack of
definite, precise knowledge. This knowledge can only be sup-
plied by long-continued scientific research along many lines of
inquiry. We do not even know the exact number of the feeble-
minded. This fact will be supplied by the future community
surveys and other extensive and intensive studies.
And, after all, the meaning of this report is that in the long
run education in the broadest sense will be the most effective
method in a rational movement for the diminution of feeble-
mindedness. One of the principal advantages of the proposed
plan for state registration and supervision of the feeble-minded
is the opportunity it gives for the general education of the people
of the State upon this subject. The public generally should be
persistently informed as to its extent, causes and results by means
of suitable literature, popular lectures, and other means. This
field offers a great and useful opportunity to mental hygiene so-
cieties and other similar organizations for disseminating knowl-
edge on this subject, for, under present conditions, it will be
many years before local communities have an equal realization
of the nature of the problem, or are prepared to deal with it.
The principles of heredity as they are unfolded, and especially
of morbid heredity, should be taught in the colleges, the normal
schools, and, indeed, in the high schools. The adolescent has a
right to be informed upon a subject which is of supreme im-
RURAL HEALTH— MENTAL 223
portance to himself, to his family and to his descendants. The
great majority of these young people will later marry and become
parents. The dangers of marriage with persons of diseased stock
should be presented plainly. The most important point is that
feeble-mindedness is highly hereditary, and that each feeble-
minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of
defect. No feeble-minded person should be allowed to marry or
to become a parent.
Even the normal members of a definitely tainted family may
transmit defect to their own children, especially if they mate
with one with similar hereditary tendencies. If the hereditary
tendency is marked and persistent, the normal members of the
family should not marry. Certain families should become ex-
tinct. Parenthood is not for all. Persons of good heredity run
a risk of entailing defect upon their descendants when they
marry into a family with this hereditary taint. Intelligent peo-
ple are usually willing to forego a proposed marriage if the possi-
bilities of defective heredity in that mating are fully under-
stood. The immediate sacrifice is less painful than the future
devoted to the hopeless care of feeble-minded children. The
class of people who are not amenable to reason in respect to this
question must be dealt with through the general educational in-
fluences which have been outlined in this report.
When the natural leaders of thought in the community — the
teachers, physicians, lawyers and clergymen — are fully informed
on this subject they will help to create the strong public senti-
ment which will demand the passage of necessary laws, and will
secure sufficient appropriations to eventually ensure the intelli-
gent protection and control of the feeble-minded persons in that
community.
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Kite, Elizabeth S. The Binet-Simon Measuring Scale for Intelligence.
Bulletin No. 1, Committee on Provision for Feeble-minded, Phila.
Lundberg, Emma 0. A Social Study of Mental Defectives in New
Castle Co., Del. U. S. Dept. of Labor, Children's Bureau, Pub.
No. 24, Washington, D. C., 1917.
Mental Defectives in Indiana. A Survey of Ten Counties. Second Re-
port of the Indiana Committee on Mental Defectives, Indianapolis,
Ind., 1919.
Surveys in Mental Deviation in Prisons, Public Schools and Orphanages
in California. Cal. State Bd. of Charities and Corrections, Sacra-
mento, 1918.
Tredgold, A. F. Mental Deficiency. Wood, N. Y., 1908.
Winship, A. E. Jukes-Edwards, A Study in Education and Heredity.
Myers, Harrisburg, Pa., 1900.
CHAPTER IX
RURAL RECREATION, DRAMA, ART
EXTRACT FROM THE WILL OF
CHARLES LOUNSBURY
* * ITEM : I devise to boys jointly all the useful fields and com-
mons where ball may be played; all pleasant waters where one
may swim; all snow-clad hills where one may coast; and all
streams and ponds where one may fish, or where, when grim
winter comes, one may skate ; to have and to hold the same for
the period of their boyhood.
"Item: To young men jointly I devise and bequeath all
boisterous, inspiring sports of rivalry, and I give to them the
disdain of weakness and undaunted confidence in their own
strength, though they be rude ; I give them the power to make
lasting friendships, and of possessing companions, and to them
exclusively I give all merry songs and brave choruses, to sing
with lusty voices."
THE NEED OF PLAY IN RURAL LIFE x
HENRY S. CURTIS
IN the early days there was plenty of hunting and fishing, and
there was an occasional scalping party, conducted by the Indians,
which gave variety to life and prevented it from being dull.
Such conditions brought out the manhood in boys and awoke
the heroic in girls. There was not the time or energy or often
the opportunity for vice. Men and women living under such
conditions did not see the need of play. Life itself was a des-
perate game of engrossing interest. The farmer has been too
i Adapted from Introduction, "Play and Recreation," pp. 13-16, Ginn,
Boston, 1914.
226
RURAL RECREATION 227
busy improving his farm to take thought of social conditions
or to notice the change. In his haste to be rich, he has forgotten
to live. He has not learned to love nature or his work. He
and his wife are working too long hours themselves, and working
their sons and daughters too long. Following a plow or a drag
over a cultivated field is not as interesting as felling the trees
in the forest and burning the clearing. Much farm machinery
has been introduced and the work and hardships have become
less. Perhaps the farm is not less interesting to the adult far-
mer who is trained to handle machinery and to understand the
problems with which he has to deal, but country life is vastly
less interesting to children and young people, because its danger
and romance are gone. The nature appeal of great forests,
and wild animals and a wild life is gone. The adventure and
romance and exploration are gone. The opportunities of taking
up new land and becoming a proprietor have largely gone. The
cooperation and sociability of the pioneer have been replaced
by the independence that has come with safety and labor-saving
devices. The rural school is no more a social center. The re-
sults of these conditions are upon us. Forty-three per cent, of
American farms are now held by tenants. It is very difficult
if not impossible to get either a hired girl or a hired man in
most sections. The more capable members of the population are
drifting toward the city, and there is a vague but general unrest
and dissatisfaction among the younger generation, which is the
outward expression of this hunger for a larger life.
The country must take seriously this problem of readjust-
ment. It must provide some substitute for the adventtfre and
romance and sociability that have disappeared. It must break
the isolation and spirit of self-sufficiency of the* modern farm
that has replaced the interdependence and sociability of the
pioneer. It must restore to the country school at least as much
of social value as it had in the old days of spelling matches
and debates. It must appropriate for itself the message of the
modern gospel of play. This should not come to the country as
something wholly new, but rather as a restoration and a read-
justment. It is essentially an effort to give back to life those
fundamental social values of which changing conditions have
deprived it.
228 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Rural life has become over-serious and over-sordid. It must
perceive that life and love and happiness, not wealth, are the
objects of living. There must be injected into it the spirit of
play. The isolation of the farm home must be broken by estab-
lishing some place where farm people will frequently meet to-
gether, and the colder and freer months must be more largely
utilized for education, recreation, .and the public good. The
hours of work must be reduced, and the half holiday must -be
brought in. The country must discover again in its daily life
the adventure and romance and beauty that have passed.
All too often in these years of earnest struggle for success,
the children have been only a by-product of the farm. The
farmer has loved and cared for them, but the rearing and
training of a worthy family has not been one of his objects in
life. He has cared for his corn and potatoes, but his children
have "just growed." Play he has often confounded either with
idleness or exercise, deeming it only a useless waste of energy,
better devoted to pulling weeds or washing dishes. Yet play-
fulness is almost synonymous with childhood; it is the deepest
expression of the child soul, and nature's instrument for fash-
ioning him to the human plan. Play is needed by the country
child no less than by the city child ; but, with decreasing families
and enlarging farms, it is becoming increasingly difficult. The
equipment that is necessary must be introduced into the home
and the yard. Play must be organized at the country school, as
it is coming to be at the city school. The social center, the Boy
Scouts, and the Camp Fire Girls must bring back the adventure
and ro'mance that the country has lost. The rural school must
train the child to perceive and love the beauty of the open coun-
try, to hear the thousand voices Jn which Nature speaks to her
true worshipers.
RURAL RECREATION 229
PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN RURAL SCHOOLS *
LAURENCE S. HILL
PHYSICAL education in rural schools is a problem that has not
yet been satisfactorily solved. It is a problem that presents sev-
eral angles. We must determine the needs not alone of the boys
and girls of the rural schools but also the needs of the rural com-
munities in a physical, moral and social way. We must deter-
mine what physical education should include and how to in-
augurate and organize its various phases.
There has been rather consistent opposition to physical edu-
cation in the rural communities. Judging from the testimony
of several district superintendents and many teachers of rural
schools and from our own experience in New York State, we
must conclude that opposition to this so-called "fad" has its be-
ginning in several facts. First, it involves the expenditure of
money. This has been our experience in the solution of most
problems as well as in the accomplishment of most aims. The
problem is indeed difficult of solution when communities come to
value money more highly than they do activities that make for
greater social, moral and physical efficiency. It is easy to meas-
ure the value of tangible things, but difficult to estimate the
growth in education, refinement and culture on the part of the
child. This is the reason why people generally are willing to
spend money in those things the results of which are apparent
at once and measurable in dollars and cents, but hesitate and
often refuse to give to their own community those things which
are necessary for the fullest development of the boys and girls.
Another reason for opposition to physical education in the
rural schools is that the people of these communities do not
realize the value of this phase of education. They do not ap-
preciate the need for a well-organized health program. They
haven't the right conception of what it is, what it includes and
what it should accomplish. The feeling is general that they are
getting all the physical education they need in their daily labors.
They point with complacency to the fact that they have all the
i Adapted from American Physical Education Revieic, Jan.. 1010, pp. 27-
32. Read before the Physical Education Dept, N. E. A., Pittsburgh, Pa.,
Julv 2, 1018
230 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
fresh air there is ; the city people may need physical education,
— not they. They do not know the corrections necessary for oc-
cupational defects, the physical need of social life, and of that
type of activity which will diminish the exaggerated awkward-
ness of the country lad. Here, too, the rural school-teacher is
apparently lost. She is apt to know nothing or very little about
physical education and health education. She takes a very
small part in the affairs of the community. She has not made
herself felt in the life of the child out of t-he school. The teach-
ing of physical training seems but to add one more burden to
the many she is already carrying. She is not capable of giving
a good account of herself in the health education of the child.
She therefore is opposed to it. Not the least of all causes for
opposition is that in many of those districts where physical train-
ing has already been inaugurated the instructors supervising
the work have not been • properly trained. Their knowledge of
physical education is limited. Is it not just possible that this
last-mentioned fact may in some degree be attributed to the sys-
tems of physical training J common in various institutions of
learning throughout the country in which the supervisor, per-
chance, has learned gymnastics but missed the mark in physical
education ? From some of these institutions one gets the notion
that athletics is physical training, or calisthenics is physical train-
ing, and that these activities comprise all there is to physical
training. The institutions themselves seem to have the idea that
they are promoting physical training, for upon investigation we
find published in their catalogs the statement that they have
courses in physical culture and naturally we find the students
going out from these institutions to promote the same type of edu-
cation. With such conditions it is little wonder that we find op-
position to physical training as a part of the school curriculum.
Now what can we do to overcome this opposition? We must
go slowly. We may give entertainments, play and athletic festi-
vals with as many children taking part as is possible. This is the
best means of popularizing the work I know of. At these festi-
vals offer games or events suitable for adults, especially those
activities that bring back fond memories. Don't lose an oppor-
tunity of getting the parents to the school or playground to in-
spect the work.
RURAL RECREATION 231
I have received many reports from rural school supervisors
of physical training concerning the ctifficult task of winning the
support of teachers, parents, and trustees. In every instance
where festivals or physical training demonstrations have been
given these supervisors and their superintendents have been en-
thusiastic over the support of the community won for the work
as a direct result of these demonstrations. People will listen to
talks on various health topics and become enthusiastic supporters
of a health program once they are won over to what physical
education means. You must show them what they are getting
for their money.
The most vital factor in the physical education program is after
all the teacher and the supervisor. People of proper training, of
faculty for the work, with enthusiastic interest, and with a vision
of the possibilities of the work and opportunity for service will
do more to develop wholesome recreational and civic activities
than any other possible agency. They will popularize this train-
ing in the rural communities and wipe out the opposition to it.
And now we must determine the needs of the boys and girls of
the rural schools and of the rural communities. These must
necessarily be stated in general terms. In the first place health-
ful and attractive surroundings are essential to the physical,
mental, social and moral welfare of the children and to the life of
the community. Instruction in personal hygiene and sanitation
of the schoolroom and yard is needed, and in order not to blush
with embarrassment and to teach effectively, hygienic and sani-
tary conditions must exist, beginning with the teacher and the
buildings. It is useless to preach if preaching is all we do. It
is absolutely necessary for the boys and girls to learn these laws
of health through observation and practice. Attention must be
called to them of course. Morning inspection of pupils' room,
buildings and yard must be conducted. These must be followed
up by visits to the home to see that instructions are carried
out.
School life is a severe nervous strain if the child is expected to
always observe proper decorum and to sit still for long periods.
We are fighting nature if we compel the child to do this. On the
other hand school life will not become a nervous strain if suffi-
cient periods are given for relaxation and physical exercise. In-
232 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
hibition is one of the needs of the child, but all inhibition and no
relaxation makes of the child a nervous wreck. It is not a ques-
tion of whether the school program affords time for this relaxa-
tion through activity, it is a matter of changing our school pro-
gram if necessary to meet the needs of the child. We are begin-
ning to get away from the obsolete idea of fitting the child to our
system of education. In the rural communities, this idea makes
way very slowly. In making our education satisfy the needs of
the child the first need which appears is his physical need.
Traditional school life has a harmful effect upon the normal
posture of the body, and poor posture in turn works great havoc
with the health of the child because of the crowding of the vital
organs of the body. Muscular weakness, fatigue and the occu-
pations of rural life are common factors of bad posture. The.
rapid growth of children which saps the power and efficiency
of the muscles, the excessive fatigue of supporting muscles which
results from hard labor, and long periods of sitting and standing
are other common causes of bad posture. The need of postural
exercise is apparent. The natural tendency to avoid the fatigue
of holding one fixed position is one cause of the restlessness of
children.
Rhythm and grace of movement is a need of the child. Ob-
serve how one moves, walks, and talks and you will learn a great
deal about him. The habitual rhythm of motion is fundamental
for full intellectual development. There is a profound and close
relationship between our muscle habits and thinking. The rural
child is conspicuously wanting in spontaneous graceful move-
ments. We know, now, enough about the developments of chil-
dren and adolescents to know that the powers of activity are
always developed before the powers of control. A great many
people live and die undeveloped. They have no control. No
phase of our education can train the individual in this respect
quite as well as can games, athletics, rhythmic exercises, exercises
to response commands, and other branches of physical training.
Nowhere will boys and girls receive this type of training if not
during the years of school life.
The children of the soil need physical, mental and moral cour-
age. Exercises and games which require nerve, daring, courage
and skill should be given. Through the appointment of leaders
RURAL RECREATION 233
the individuals acquire confidence in themselves and the ability to
lead others. They will acquire the ability to stand defeat as
gracefully as victory, recognition of the rights of others, coop-
eration, self-subordination for the good of the majority, and
leadership through team games and athletics. These rural chil-
dren need, perhaps more than any other one thing, the social
aspect of these games and contests. Rural communities must
have more wholesome social life. There is a dire need for social
centers in the country. Entertainments, festivals, and commu-
nity "sings" will do more to bring our country brothers out of
their shells than any type of activity yet observed, and the vehicle
for inaugurating these social gatherings is the supervisor of
physical training, who must act as a general community leader.
We must give these children something they can use when
through school as well as develop them while in school. We must
develop the habit of wholesome exercise for after school life.
Activities that develop health, strength, intelligence and char-
acter must be given in order to give the rural children the fullest
measure of physical education. Those activities are manifold.
They should be utilized during frequent periods in the school pro-
gram during recess and after school. Directed play is needed
for the rural children far more than for their city cousins.
To sum up these needs we may say that the rural child requires
a special type of activity. It is useless to preach morality, self-
control, recognition of the rights of others, altruism, self-confi-
dence, determination, loyalty, cooperation, courage, skill, and a
host of other attributes which the individual should acquire in
school, if mere preaching is all that is attempted. It is necessary
to give the individual opportunity to learn these valuable lessons
for himself, and this he can do through normal directed activity
better than he can in any other way. Children need activity in-
tended to promote health, and body as well as moral discipline;
activities for the health and happiness of all boys and girls at the
same time as the mental and moral training. They need to real-
ize the obligations to the society in which they live, and to have
a readiness of spirit and body to meet those obligations in daily
life. They need to be made conscious of the fact that it is not
for themselves alone that they sing patriotic songs, perform daily
drills, play games and undergo health examinations, but for
234 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
themselves as happier, healthier, more efficient members of the
community in which they live.
Space should be provided to serve not only for the drills, plays,
games, competitions and the like but also for entertainments and
community gatherings.
In order to inaugurate a program of this character it is neces-
sary that each community should have a general community
leader. Whatever the future may develop in bringing this need
to a practical realization in terms of specific organization, for the
present, at least, this work must be done by the local leader of
physical education. Now the usual instruction afforded by the
majority of courses in physical education fails properly to equip
its product with the necessary training. The physical director
in a rural community, to be able properly to work out this pro-
gram, must have a very definite and concrete notion of personal
and school hygiene, health and sanitary inspections, inspection
for signs of abnormality, and injury or illness, for conditions
which call for immediate attention on the part of the teacher,
and for signs of disordered health for which children should be
kept at home ; for conditions productive of bodily deformity, pos-
ture, and the like; of the detection of defective sight and hear-
ing; of the organization and duties of health officers and pupil
sanitary inspectors; she must have a very definite and concrete
notion of physical training, including calisthenics, athletics,
games, dancing, swimming, etc., and all those terms imply, and
the practical conduct and organization of these various phases of
physical training into a rational health program; she must have
a very definite and concrete notion of the nature and function
of play, of child nature, of festivals and entertainments for old
and young, of the social center or community center; and she
must have a vision of the service and duties of a general com-
munity leader as well as a technical knowledge of her subject.
I wish I had time to elaborate on the training of a so-called
general community leader. At Cornell University we have made
a special study of the needs of the rural boys and girls and of
the rural communities. A Division of Physical Education in the
Rural Education Department of the Summer Session of the Col-
lege of Agriculture has been organized for the purpose of train-
ing teachers of physical education as general community leaders
RURAL RECREATION 235
for the rural districts. Besides the general training courses for
physical directorships, special emphasis is made on personal
hygiene and school hygiene and school inspection, physical diag-
nosis, first aid and home nursing, with opportunities for hos-
pital practice for the training in the duties of the rural school
nurse ; games,- athletics and folk dancing with special reference
to organized, directed rural recreation; psychology and child
study, rural leadership and administration and rural sociology;
and the practical organization and conduct of a department of
entertainments, demonstrations, festivals and pageants. "We feel
that teachers with faculty for the work, with enthusiastic inter-
est and such training will solve the health problem in the rural
districts of New York State.
The oft-repeated assertion — that the rural communities are the
basic social organization upon which rests the stability of the na-
tion— still holds true. A proper conception, therefore, of rural
physical education, is a fundamental educational necessity if
a definite program of development is needed. An adequately
trained personnel to put this program in operation is the first
step in this direction. In some of the states, this idea is already
taking definite form in legislation and in educational organiza-
tions. A nation-wide movement to this end is indicated for the
near future. This body can do no more constructive service for
the general advancement of physical education in America than
by a sane and enthusiastic support of that important phase of
physical education so urgently needed in rural communities.
WHAT THE PEOPLE LIKE 1
523 COMMUNITIES IN PENNSYLVANIA
WARREN H. WILSON
Baseball 29 per cent. Skating 3 per cent.
Social and picnics. .18 per cent. Dancing — ... 3 per cent.
Pool and Billiards.. 13 per cent. Cards 3 per cent.
Moving picture Basketball 3 per cent.
shows 11 per cent. Football 3 per cent.
i Adapted from "Rural Survey in Penna.," p. 17. Department of the
Church and Country Life, Pres. Board of Home Missions.
236 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Gymnasium athletics 5 per cent. Tennis 3 per cent.
Concerts and Bowling 2 per cent.
lectures 3 per cent. Golf 1 per cent.
THE FARM PLAYGROUND *
W. H. JENKINS
THE following words were spoken by a very successful far-
mer, who brought up a fine family of boys on the farm :
I brought up seven boys on the farm. Every one wanted to stay on the
farm until they grew to manhood. They are successful business men with
good habits of life. Some are farmers, and some in other occupations for
which their gifts best fitted them. The boys stayed at home and worked
with me, because there were more attractions and enjoyments for them
there than in any other place. We all worked together. We paid for
one farm and then bought another and paid for it, and when one of the
boys went into business for himself, his training, habits of life, and a
little capital we had for him, assured his success. One of the main reasons
why my boys loved the farm life and home so well that they never wanted
any of the dissipations that are demoralizing, and which the young people
on the farm engage in because there is nothing that satisfies their natural
love for play and recreation, was that I spent $30 to build a playground
where they could play baseball, tennis or croquet, and I played with them.
I have stopped work right in haying time to play with the boys and then
we all worked better for the change.
The above is the testimony of a man who was successful both
in making the farm pay, and in bringing out the best qualities
of manhood in boys, so that they made men of such intelligence
and vitality and character that they were prepared to overcome
difficulties and win the battle in the struggle of life.
DRAMA FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES 2
ALFRED G. ARVOLD
THE United States Department of Agriculture recently sent
out hundreds of letters to farmers' wives asking them what
would make life on the farm more attractive. Hundreds of the
1 Adapted from the Rural New Yorker, N. Y., June 29, 1912.
2 Adapted from American Review of Reviews, 54: 309-311, 1916.
RURAL DRAMA 237
replies, which were received from practically every section, told
the story of social starvation. They wanted some place to go.
They wanted to be entertained. Moral degeneracy in the coun-
try, like the city, is usually due to lack of proper social recrea-
tion. When people have something healthful with which to oc-
cupy their minds they rarely think of wrongdoing.
The impulse of building up a community spirit in a rural
neighborhood may come from without, but the real work of
socialization must come from within. The country people them-
selves must work out their own civilization.
With a knowledge of these basic facts in the mind the idea
of the Little Country Theater was conceived. The theater be-
came a reality when a dingy old chapel on the second floor of
the administration building at the North Dakota Agricultural
College, located at Fargo, was remodeled into what is now known
as the Little Country Theater. It is simpty a large playhouse
placed under a reducing-glass, and is just the size of the aver-
age country town hall. The decorations are plain and simple,
the color scheme being a green and gold.
Simplicity is the keynote of the theater, for it was not meant
for the institution alone, but for every rural community in
North Dakota and the rest of America as well. It is an ex-
ample of what can be done with hundreds of village halls, un-
used portions of school-houses, and garrets and basements of
country homes and country churches.
The object of the Little Country Theater movement is to pro-
duce such plays and community programs as can be easily staged
in just such places, or, in fact, in any place where people as-
semble for social betterment. Its principal function is to stim-
ulate an interest for good, clean drama and original enter-
tainment among the people living in the open country and
villages, in order to help them find themselves and become
better satisfied with the community in which they live. In
other words, its real purpose is to use the drama, and all thfiat
goes with the drama, as a sociological force in getting people
together and acquainted with each other, so that they may find
out the hidden life forces of nature itself. Instead of making
the drama a luxury for the classes, its aim is to make it an in-
strument for the enlightenment and enjoyment of the masses.
238 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The work of the Little Country Theater has more than justi-
fied its existence. It has produced scores of plays and com-
munity programs. The people who have participated in them
seem to have caught the spirit. One group of young people
from various sections of the State represented five different na-
tionalities— Scotch, Irish, English, Norwegian and Swedish—
successfully staging "The Fatal Message," a one-act comedy
by John Kendrick Bangs. In order to depict Russian life, one
of the dramatic clubs in the institution gave "A Russian Honey-
moon." Another cast of characters from the country presented
"Cherry Tree Farm," an English comedy, in a most accept-
able manner. "Leonarda," a play by Bjornsterne Bjornson,
was presented by the Edwin Booth Dramatic Club and was un-
doubtedly one of the best plays ever staged in the Little Coun-
try Theater. An orchestra played Norwegian music between
the acts.
An illustration to demonstrate that a home-talent play is a
dynamic force in helping people to find themselves is afforded
in the presentation of "The Country Life Minstrels" by the
Agricultural Club, an organization of young men coming en-
tirely from country districts. The story reads like a romance.
The club decided to give a minstrel show. At the first re-
hearsal, nobody exhibited any talent except one young man.
He could clog. At the second rehearsal a tenor and a mandolin
player were discovered; at the third, several good voices were
found; whereupon a quartet and a twelve-piece band were
organized. When the play was presented, twenty-eight young
men furnished an excellent entertainment. During the last three
years nearly twenty young ladies, the majority from country
districts, have presented short plays. Each of them has also
selected the production, but they have promoted the play and
trained the cast of characters as well. When Percy MacKaye,
the well-known dramatist, visited the Little Country Theater,
four young men presented "Sam Average." "The Traveling
Man," a miracle play, was presented, in honor of Lady Gregory,
of Ireland, on her last tour of America. Many other stand-
ard plays have also been presented by these rural amateurs as
well as a number of original productions.
RURAL DRAMA 239
Several original plays have been presented to large crowds.
Three of these, "For the Cause," "A New Liberator" and
"Bridging the Chasm," made an unusually fine impression
upon the audiences. They were written under the direction of
Abbie Simmons, writer of plays and a splendid student of the
drama.
Perhaps the most interesting incidents which have occurred
in connection with the work of the Little Country Theater were
the presentation of "A Farm Home Scene in Iceland Thirty
Years Ago," "The Prairie Wolf," "Back to the Farm" and "A
Bee in a Drone's Hive." All of these productions have come
out of the country people themselves. Standing room was at a
premium. The Little Country Theater could not hold the
crowds, 80 per cent, of the people being farmers who were eager
to see the drama of their creation.
"A Farm! Home Scene in Iceland Thirty Years Ago" was
staged by twenty young men and women of Icelandic descent
whose homes are in the country districts of North Dakota. The
tableau was very effective. The scene represented an interior
sitting-room of an Icelandic home. The walls were whitewashed ;
in the rear of the room was a fireplace ; the old grandfather was
seated in an arm-chair near the fireplace reading a story in the
Icelandic language. About the room were several young ladies
in native costumes, busily engaged in spinning yarn and knit-
ting, a favorite pastime of an Icelandic home. On a chair at
the right was a young man with a violin playing selections from
an Icelandic composer. Through the small window rays of light
were thrown, representing the midnight sun and the northern
lights. Just before the curtain fell, twenty young people, all
Icelanders, joined in singing their national song, which has the
same tune as "America." The effect of the tableau was far-
reaching. The two hundred people who saw it will never for-
get it.
"The Prairie AVolf," a play written by a young man named
John Lange, was staged in the Little Country Theater before an
audience representing more than thirty rural communities in the
State. The play was not only written by a young farmer, but it
was staged and rehearsed by country people. It was a tre-
240 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
mendous success. Dozens of communities in the State have al-
ready asked for permission to present it. The action throughout
the play was superb.
"Back to the Farm," written by a student of the Minnesota
Agricultural College, was presented on three successive nights
during the Tri-State Grain-Growers' Convention, which is held
every year in the city of Fargo. Seven hundred and fifty per-
sons, 90 per cent, of them country people, witnessed this produc-
tion. Hundreds were turned away from the theater. The cast
of characters in the play was made up entirely of young people
from the country.
Last fall, Cecil Baker, a young farmer from Edmunds, N. D.,
who has caught the social vision of the soil, came to my office
with a manuscript of a play which he had written entitled "A
Bee in a Drone's Hive, or a A Farmer in the City." Mr.
Baker wanted his friends to present it, and they did. Two
hundred and fifty people saw the production. Some said it was
the greatest argument in favor of country life that had ever
been presented. Others were astounded at the naturalness of
the make-up and the costuming of the characters. Everybody
was more than satisfied.
The influence of the Little Country Theater in the State as
well as the Nation has been far-reaching. Scarcely a day passes
but somebody writes asking for data in regard to it, or for
copies of plays, and matter for presentation on public programs.
These letters tell an intensely interesting story of the social
condition of the community. During the past few years, in
North Dakota, hundreds of people young and old have partici-
pated in home-talent productions and community programs.
Thousands of pieces of play-matter and pamphlets have been
loaned to individuals, literary societies, farmers' clubs, civic
clubs, and other organizations. While the Little Country
Theater is located in North Dakota, it nevertheless stands ready
to assist other communities in every way possible to develop
community life.
RURAL DRAMA 241
THE MIRACLE PLAY AT POMFRET, CONNECTICUT x
ELLA M. BOULT
Two months earlier our Neighborhood Association had been
organized, and had already proved itself responsible to every
call upon it. We had not believed that its varying elements
would make common cause so readily. It had developed a sur-
prising unity of interests, and a sympathetic and hearty coopera-
tion in developing those interests. And now Christmas was
approaching, supreme season of festival and celebration. What
should we do to commemorate it — we, whose very foundation
stone was brotherhood, community of interests, fellowship, good-
will?
Back of us were three church societies: the Congregational,
sentinel and saint of every New England village ; the Episcopal,
always proudly assured in its sense of power ; and the far-reach-
ing, never flagging Roman Catholic. All three are generous in
their response to the material demands of Christmas, as they
are devout in spiritual ministrations at this and all seasons of
the year. From all three, and from without the church, we draw
our membership. Not only are we of many creeds but of many
vocations, and especially of many nations. Our Irish and
Swedish membership equals our native Puritan elements; we
have a number of English and Scotch members, and a few Swiss,
Italian, Portuguese, Canadians and Negroes.
As to vocation we are largely working people, and are of all
trades — domestic workers, day-laborers, carpenters and builders,
preachers, teachers, painters, plumbers, merchants, farmers. It
is true that in our community we have a large number of the
leisure class, so called. Who shall say that they are not the
busiest of all classes? Certainly from them we may draw a sym-
pathetic and helpful portion of our membership.
Above all it (the festival) must be expressive of the great event
that it commemorates. Throughout the ages Christmas has never
weakened in its tremendous significance. Bells ring, candles
glow, greetings and gifts and good cheer abound ; but always, be-
low these surface manifestations, there is the Manger at Bethle-
i Adapted from Country Life in America, 25:49-56, December, 1913.
242 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
hem, the transfigured Mother, the pondering Joseph, the dumb
brutes, the night, the stars, the shepherds keeping watch over
their flocks by night, the glory of the Lord, the heavenly hosts,
the miracle of miracles. Our impulse was toward the wonderful
reality. We did not approach the undertaking without trepida-
tion. With material so heterogeneous could we maintain the
solemnity of our subject, sacred in itself and wrapt round with
centuries of mystical beauty?
Our shepherds were boys from the farms ; our angelic hosts
were made up of girls in their teens ; our wise men were, one a
Frenchman, one a Moor, and one a native of New England stock;
by trade they were a plumber, a day laborer and the village
storekeeper and postmaster ; the retinues of the Magi were school
boys as full of life and spirit and mischief as the average boy;
Joseph was an Italian laborer, Mary a young Irish girl. The
only representative of the brute world was Laddie, our beautiful
collie, typical of the shepherd's -calling. Laddie had had no
more dramatic training than the others, but his instinct proved
like theirs, perfect. When, a few months later, he died, he
was mourned far and wide as the ' ' dog that came with the shep-
herds to see the Babe in the manger."
The event proved that faith in our people, however great, was
still less than their due. Nothing more beautiful came of our
miracle play than the devout spirit of our young actors. It
seemed to our Italian workman an astounding thing that he
should take the role of San Giuseppe but no art could have taught
him the profound gravity that he assumed. It came from
within, from the solemn realization of the verities. There is
sometimes in human nature a certain simplicity that responds
like the heart of a child to the elemental without. This quality
nurtured beyond any doubt by country life, has shown itself
more and more to be a characteristic of our people.
When the curtain fell upon the last scene of our little drama
there was silence — a silence of deep emotion. The lights came
on with an incongruous glare, thrusting us with a rude jolt
forward into the twentieth century. They disclosed an audience
unable to speak. The "Silent Night" melody that still filled
the air resolved itself again into words in an effort to make ar-
ticulate the spell that kept us dumb. Haydn, even in his great-
RURAL DRAMA 243
est masterpieces, never surpassed this theme in its elemental, pas-
toral quality, so touchingly eloquent of the open country, the
starlight, the rudeness and homeliness of the stable, the peace,
the calm, the vastness of the event.
WHAT THE PAGEANT CAN DO FOR THE TOWN 1
GEORGE P. BAKER
HOLIDAYS, which should be of interest to all, and not a mere
excuse for idleness that leads to drinking or other vice, are in far
too many cases ill used. The growth of competitive outdoor
sports in fitting season is a move in the right direction, for they
employ many and entertain more ; they are democratic and
healthful. Clearly the desideratum for our holidays is some-
thing which interests and occupies, as participants or audience,
as many people as possible, which does not emphasize social or
money distinctions, and which produces something more than
momentary pleasure. This is just what the modern pageant, as
to some extent already developed in the United States and widely
successful in England, provides.
What is a pageant then? "Something between a play and a
procession." It is not merely processioning by people in fancy
costumes, nor tableaux on fixed or movable stages, nor dancing,
nor instrumental or vocal music, nor dramatic scenes in prose or
verse. It may be all of these, or some of these, combined. It is
a composite form that stands between a procession like that of
the trades or of the Antiques and Horribles and a regular play.
As to place or scene it is not limited, but may be given indoors or
outdoors, though outdoor performances are usually more pic-
turesque, make it possible to use more performers and provide
comfortably for a larger audience. Its aims in setting are pic-
turesqueness and space sufficient for free movement by the many
people taking part.
Nor is the pageant limited as to subject. It may revivify the
history of state, city, town, village, college, school or individual.
It may be an allegory conveying some stimulating idea or moral
1 Adapted from Ladies' Home Journal, April, 1914, p. 44.
244 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
lesson, or a pageant of education, of beauty or of poetry. It may
re-create the past, explain the present, suggest the future. In
a word the pageant is what our enthusiasm, imagination and in-
telligent cooperation can make it ; it is, and should be, the play-
thing and the playtime of the masses. A small pageant, to be
sure, may employ only two hundred or three hundred people,
though a large pageant requires the cooperation of several thou-
sand. But even a small pageant, especially if given outdoors,
may each time be played to from three thousand to five thousand
people.
Some of the most successful pageants here and abroad have
been given in the smaller places. Even fifty people may give a
creditable pageant. Nor is it true that only places rich in history
should attempt pageantry. Different conditions demand differ-
ent pageants ; that is all. There is the Pageant of the River, for
the river town which is lacking in beauty or scanty in history;
there is the Pageant of the Woods for the lumbering town ; there
is the Pageant of Grain for the farming community, the Pageant
of Steel for the manufacturing town, and the Pageant of the
Mountains for the village among the hills. Given imagination
and constructive skill on the part of the maker of the text, with
hearty cooperation by all concerned in the work, and any town
not far distant from railroads or with roads not too bad for
automobiles may have a pageant without fear of going into debt.
It is not true, then, that only rich and large communities, or
those containing a few citizens able to be large guarantors, may
attempt a pageant. The great desideratum is time — not in which
to prepare the actors, but in which to make ready a finished text,
to provide appropriate costumes and to foresee all the details
which provide for the comfort and artistic satisfaction of the
public. If possible some eight to twelve months before a pageant
begins, plans for it should be roughed out and committees or-
ganized.
The text, which has been gone over again and again for the
largest dramatic effectiveness in the smallest space, the greatest
clearness of meaning as a whole and the largest effect of beauty,
should be ready in proof at least a month before rehearsals begin.
Thus the parts may be learned without too great a strain, and
changes which are first seen to be necessary in the rehearsals
RURAL DRAMA 245
may be made in time to allow an early final printing of the text.
Costumes should be made slowly and systematically, either by
the persons taking part or by seamstresses directed by some Mis-
tress of the Robes. Time in this provides inexpensively costumes
which, hurriedly prepared or rented in quantities, would be both
less artistic and very expensive. A book called " Festivals and
Plays," by P. Chubb, contains many valuable suggestions as to
economies in such preparations.
Time means, too, a chance to work up wide enthusiasm among
the townspeople and to spread far and wide a knowledge of the
coming pageant. In the first days of many a pageant townspeo-
ple have said that local history, costumes of the past, old firearms
and domestic utensils were lacking. In the last days of prepara-
tion, however, costumes, souvenirs, relics have come flowing in
from all sides, resurrected from garrets and cellars. In one in-
stance a town that had been strangely lethargic, when urged by
an enterprising citizen to found a historical museum, took hold
of the plan with vigor after its pageant, placing in the museum
many of the costumes, implements and firearms which the
pageant had brought together.
On one other account people of small communities are some-
times kept away from pageantry. "We are not an artistic com-
munity, ' ' they say. ' ' They are four or five among us who have
acted a little as amateurs, and still more who sing well, but there
is no widespread, marked artistic ability. Who is to prepare our
text and rehearse the pageant ? Who are to act, sing and dance
in it?" At first any pageant master must be prepared to meet
in the native American man an ill-concealed feeling that art —
music, acting, painting, even singing, and, above all, dancing —
is for women, not for men. It was certainly evident at first in
Peterboro, New Hampshire ; but as the pageant shaped itself be-
fore those who came somewhat timidly to watch rehearsals, those
who at the outset lacked the interest or the courage to take part
came in one by one. In the beginning it was hard to find men
enough for the necessary parts. But in the final rehearsals there
were enough, and among the most enthusiastic participants were
men who had at first stood aloof. Nc community that has co-
operated— men, women and children of all ages — in producing a
local pageant will ever again look down on art as effeminate-
246 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
They will foster the artistic power any one of them may possess
and will welcome art of all kinds, grateful for the uplifting
pleasure and the beauty it brings into their lives. Again and
again American pageants, large and small, have proved this true.
And the artistry revealed in those who never suspected that
they even possessed it ! I remember one quiet, self-contained
farmer of nearly seventy who, though willingness itself to help
in every way, bewailed his inexperience and probable lack of all
ability. Even in the first rehearsal of a scene arranged to illus-
trate MacDowell's "Deserted Farm" he caught exactly the re-
quired spirit of delicate, wistful pathos. He "lived his part,"
though it had to be expressed in the art most difficult for the
inexpressive New Englander, the art of pantomime. A hint, a
suggestion, he took instantly and developed with keen intelli-
gence. At the end of the first rehearsal, when he came for some
directions, I said: "How did you know so quickly exactly what
that man should do ? "
"Ah," he said sadly, "years ago it was no uncommon thing
for me to be saying 'Good-by' to old friends that were going
westward to the Middle States or California, and so I just re-
membered and let go."
Day by day, filled with growing enthusiasm, he came to me
with illuminating suggestions of business which characterized his
part. My task was merely helping him to express largely enough
for an audience of a thousand people what he felt perfectly and
even at the outset expressed adequately for those within short
range. And his is the story of many men, women and children
in all these pageants.
He is a foolish pageant master, indeed, who does not encourage
his actors to suggest business and even lines for the scenes in
which they take part. What will come to them, absorbed as they
are in their work, is often far more vivid and right than the
lines of the author, no matter how carefully selected. One of
the most effective details in a Revolutionary scene was entirely
rephrased and infinitely bettered by an old man of eighty-seven
playing a part. He had never acted before. At first he looked
on the whole experiment a little doubtfully ; but, once stirred by
what had meant so much to his forebears, he quickened in imag-
ination. Enthusiastically living the scene over and over both at
RURAL DRAMA 247
rehearsal and away from it, lo ! one day he thought of lines far
more characterizing than those he had originally been given.
Moreover the pageant that does not reveal unexpected powers in
more than one youth, and perhaps determine a later career, is
unusual. A pageant is to the artistic youth of the community
a great opportunity for self-revelation.
The most essential matters in preparing for a pageant are text
and trainer. To handle a mixed crowd of several hundred men,
women and children so as to discover and reveal to them any ar-
tistic power they may possess, so as to keep them contented and
even happy when working hard, and so as to get ultimate order
out of original chaos, may require the trained hand. It is prob-
ably safer, therefore, to call on somebody experienced in this
work, and to pay him or her well. If, however, there is any
man or woman in the community who feels competent to pro-
vide the text don't put that person aside until an outline of
what he or she wishes to do has been considered by the commit-
tee, or, better still, passed on by some person experienced in
pageantry. If several people prepare the text, rather than have
it ineffective let the pageant master decide whether the scenes
may stand as written or should be simply the basis of a rework-
ing by him or some other skilled hand.
Indeed writing pageants is not so easy as many seem to think.
Given outdoors or in large halls the pageant cannot depend to
the extent the play can on the spoken word. Pantomime of a
large, free sort, choral effects and processioning must in many
instances replace the spoken word.
A pageant should as far as possible have some unity of idea,
to bind part with part and to give it meaning as a whole. Audi-
ences do not like evenings of one-act plays. Nor, in a pageant,
do they like a dozen one-act episodes of singing, dancing or act-
ing. Let the early parts of the pageant create interest for later
parts, arouse query. Carry some characters over from episode
to episode or division to division ; contrast similar conditions in
different periods. In brief, bind the parts together all you can.
But it is meaning as a whole that a pageant most needs, for one
of the great dangers of American pageantry to-day is commer-
cialism. Commercialism means that instead of writing a pag-
eant for each place growing out of its peculiar history, interests
248 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and traditions, some one stands ready with a scheme of pageantry
which, if slight adaptations are made in the scenes, may be used
almost anywhere. With this plan all that is most desirable in-
stantly disappears, for in pageantry of the right sort a com-
munity not altogether understanding itself seeks to know itself
better, and tries in self-expressive, artistic action to review its
past, know the meaning of its present and appreciate rightly the
latent beauty of its life.
An auditor leaving the pageant field or hall should feel that
he understands as never before the special significance of the past
and present life of that town. The common share of all workers
in the inspiration of dreams, that is what the hearer should have
brought away. Individuality, a special meaning that grows out
of right interpretation of the life of a particular community —
that, then, is the great desideratum of the best type of pageant.
Is not, then, the pageant worth while ? It spreads widely the
name and reputation of a town. It brings trade to it. It rouses
and sustains civic pride. It reveals and develops artistry. It
gives the fine arts their right position in the life of the people.
Above all, it is to the people who share in it a pleasure in the
doing, and a proud and delightful memory. When our young
people, indeed the people of the country at large, have by popu-
lar vote chosen the drama as our chief interest in the fine arts,
when the great essential for our proper growth in drama is to
give our people right standards, can there be any question that
it is wise to foster pageantry in this country ?
RURAL ART 1
FRANK A. WAUGH
THE term is one which is coming into use in certain circles.
Some of the universities now offer courses in rural art. The
present article can hardly do more than survey the field and
indicate the scope of the subject.
Art is, of course, universal, and its principles are the same in
the country as in the city. All we can mean therefore by rural
i Adapted from Business America, Feb., 1914, pp. 164-167.
RURAL ART 249
art is the application of art principles to rural problems. When
we reach this ground, no one can doubt that art is able to render
a service to the country as much as to the city. Its purpose is
to bring order and beauty in place of disorder and ugliness.
Beauty seems to be more natural to the country than to the city,
and more indispensable. Perhaps it would be wise therefore to
make a stronger effort to preserve and enhance the beauty of the
country districts.
But the country needs also to be orderly. An orderly arrange-
ment of roads, farms, fields, public grounds, buildings and of the
whole landscape will have considerable practical value. In-
deed, order, heaven's first law and the foundation of art, has
also great practical value. The ministrations of art may be justi-
fied, therefore, on wholly practical grounds. It is wise to pre-
sent this argument in most cases, though it would be wrong to
make the final test of the service which art would render to the
country.
It will be worth while to point out in beginning that rural art
in America is entirely different from ''peasant art" in the old
country. The artists of the Old World recognize and value very
highly what they know as bauer-kunst. Perhaps nothings would
differentiate more clearly the spirit of American country life
from the spirit of Bavarian peasant life than this very difference
between American rural art and bauer-kunst.
It seems to me that rural art in America ought to deal first
with rural architecture. Farmhouses ought to be essentially and
typically rural. In the past twenty-five years we have seen
many horrible examples of town houses built in the country.
The architects have been designing city houses almost exclu-
sively and the only new ideas in circulation have been developed
to meet urban conditions. In most instances they are wholly
unadapted to rural conditions and the results are often genuinely
grotesque.
It should be remembered distinctly in this connection that some
of the best American domestic architecture has been developed
in the country. The old-fashioned New England farmhouse and
the good old Southern ante-bellum plantation house were fine
types. The modern bungalow in its pristine purity is essen-
tially a country house and suited to certain types of rural seen-
250 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ery. Unfortunately it is being badly misused by unskillful de-
signers and badly misplaced on city streets amidst incongruous
surroundings so that one has to be very careful of his admiration
for bungalows.
It ought to be plain, however, that what we want in the
country, and especially on the farms, is good country houses,
native to their surroundings and suited in all respects to the life
which goes on in them. The same desire may be freely expressed
in reference to all other rural and semi-rural buildings, such as
schoolhouses, country churches, country libraries, village stores,
etc. For the most part these buildings also are copied from city
models and the results are depressing. There have been built in
all parts of the country a number of fine examples in recent
times to show what can be done in the way of country banks,
schoolhouses, stores, etc., and these models ought to be followed.
The improvement of farmyards is always spoken of in connec-
tion with rural art, and frequently as though it were the main
issue. Farmyards ought, doubtless, to be embellished and made
attractive everywhere, but it seems preposterous to be planting
Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora in the front yard while the
kitchen sink drains into the well. In other words, the problems
of mere ornamentation ought to be the last to be taken up, rather
than the first. In this work simple, clean arrangement, tidiness
and good order, are worth a great deal more than flower beds and
shrubbery. The special value of good shade trees, however,
should not be overlooked.
The proper application of art to the planning of the farm would
reach far beyond the front yard. Every farm needs to be
planned as a whole. Different fields and buildings should be ar-
ranged in a logical system, in proper relation to one another.
This is essentially an art problem, and unless rural art can help
in its solution, it has failed at an important point.
Landscape gardening, which deals with all these subjects, has
in recent years developed on a large scale a special branch of
study known as civic art. Like every other line of human en-
deavor this has been carried farthest in urban civilization, — in its
application to cities ; but it has its equally important applications
in the country. Rural civic art simply means the application of
art principles to all the public affairs in the country. The most
RURAL ART 251
important of these are (a) roads and streets, including bridges,
street railways and street trees; (b) all public grounds such as
parks, picnic grounds, commons, lakes, water fronts, school
grounds, cemeteries; (c) all public and semi-public buildings such
as schoolhouses, libraries, churches; (d) public recreation facili-
ties, especially playgrounds; (e) all public service utilities, such
as telephone lines, electric light lines, railway stations and station
grounds. All these items of the material equipment of the coun-
try should be improved in beauty and in usefulness. Such civic
improvement is greatly to be desired in the county as well as in
the city and constitutes one of the large fields of rural art.
As art deals essentially with what is beautiful, rural art strives
to conserve and increase the stock of rural beauty on every hand.
It is easy to see that there is a great deal of beauty in the coun-
try and to determine what some of the main features are. For
example, the country roads are extremely beautiful. They are
in a good and important sense the best kind of public parks.
Everybody enjoys them whether a-foot or driving, or even tour-
ing in an automobile (though this last is the poorest way of all).
Much can be done to preserve and even develop the beauty of the
country roads. It hardly needs to be added that very little has
thus far been done. Any local improvement organization could
hardly attempt a better line of work or one in which success is
more likely than in this line of preserving the beauties of the
country lanes. These country roads are beautiful for their trees
and for the wild shrubbery and ferns and flowers which border
them. Such native growth, within reason, ought to be preserved ;
and it would be an excellent plan t6 use favorable strips of coun-
try road as special preserves for wild plants. There are many
parts of the country, especially where agriculture is highly suc-
cessful, where the wild plants are in imminent danger of extinc-
tion. Hundreds of the native species are already almost eradi-
cated. No better public place could be found for making a col-
lection of these for general instruction and enjoyment than along
suitable strips of country road.
Many persons are also giving serious thought to the preserva-
tion of native birds, fish and small animals. To some extent
these objects can be accomplished, especially the protection of the
birds, in connection with these roadside plant preserves.
252 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
One of the crying evils of modern country life is the rapid re-
moval from general use of all streams, stream banks, lakes, lake
shores, forests and hills. Within the memory of all elderly peo-
ple such sources of recreation were open freely to the world.
Every boy could hunt, swim and fish where he liked ; and all peo-
ple, old and young, held their picnics on the river banks or went
boating on the lakes as they pleased. All this property is now
being rapidly taken up by private owners and common people
stringently excluded. The only way to preserve any of these
ancient and highly valuable rights to future generations is to
have them taken very soon under public control. All these
ponds, lakes, streams, hills, forests, or at least the best of them,
ought to be free for the public use forever; and it is the most
immediate and important work of rural civic art to secure these
reservations. Of course after the public has secured title to such
properties, their various beauties and utilities remain to be de-
veloped. Such development will be the natural field before long
of rural art.
Aside from these park reservations to which the public should
hold a legal title there is a much larger sum total of beautiful
rural scenery which the public does not need to own, but which
everybody can enjoy. This scenery does not need to be neglected
simply because it is owned by private individuals and exploited
as farms or forests. Every wise community will appreciate its
resources of beautiful landscape and will make the most of them.
The final test of rural art must be a love of rural beauty. If
people will not see the beauty of the country, especially those
people who live in it, it is useless to talk to them of art in any
other form. There are many ways in which this appreciation
of the country beautiful may be developed. It may even be
taught in the schools. It is quite as easy to convince one of the
beauty of native trees or of the neighborly hills or the local lake
as of the Sistine Madonna, or the Hermes of Praxiteles, which
most of us never saw. Genuine, thoroughly organized campaigns
for the appreciation of local scenery would do more for many
communities than organized efforts to produce more corn.
RURAL RECREATION 253
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Community Music. The Playground, Vol. 8; 139-142, 1914-1915.
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CHAPTER X
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION
THE FUTURE OF GOOD ROADS IN STATE AND NATION 1
EDWIN A. STEVENS
IN no country has the growth of the highway problem in im-
portance and in difficulties been greater than in the United States,
and in none does it seem likely to -be greater in the future. Our
motor- vehicle registry is already the largest in the world.
The effect of these industrial phenomena on our roads is
worthy of most careful thought. The problem in its most simple
and general statement is one of transportation. The cost of
transporting one ton a mile at any given speed will divide itself
naturally into two parts : first, the cost of providing and running
the vehicle, in-eluding up-keep, fuel, and lubricants ; second, the
cost of providing and maintaining the roadway in such shape
that the sum of both parts of the cost of transportation shall be
a minimum. The latter is the special province of highway ad-
ministration. To discharge this duty, provision must be made
for the future traffic.
To do this intelligently we must form some idea of the traffic
of to-day and of its past growth. The horse-drawn traffic is prac-
tically unknown ; it will probably not show any material increase,
though, in the minds of many authorities, it is not likely to de-
crease. It is also less trying on our road surfaces. The following
statistics as to automobile registration in ten States that have
undertaken the systematic improvement of their roads affords
us a means of foretelling what is to be expected within the next
few years for the nation :
i Adapted from Berliner's magazine 59: 181-190, Feb., 1916, copyright,
1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
255
256
RURAL SOCIOLOGY
MOTOR-VEHICLE REGISTRATION AND POPULATION
State
1911
1914
Esti-
mated,
1915
Popula-
tion,
1915
Inhabit
ants per
motor
vehicle.
1915
* Motoi
vehicles
1918
Motor
vehicles
1919
Popula-
tion,
1919
Inhabit-
ants per
motor
vehicle,
1919
Mass. ...
R. I
Conn. . .
New York
N T
38,907
7,262
16.372
83.969
55,913
48,108
7 ^1'
4 020
45.788
42,615
77,246
13.530
32,790
168.428
70,910
125.189
20.238
13.984
122.504
145,992
99,000
15,600
39.000
222.000
91,500
180,000
33.000
22.000
184.000
190,000
3,700,000
618.000
1,235,000
10,300,000
2.960,000
8,500.000
1.350,000
2.180 000
5.100,000
6,100.000
37.4
39.6
31.6
46.4
32.4
47.2
40.9
99.
27.7
32.1
J39
193,497
30,595
84.902
457^924
154,870
393.972
78,146
72.228
417.400
389.135
250,800
42,000
105,419
600,000
192,000
414,485
104,353
94,100
511,500
478.450
3,889,607
648,964
1.307,163
10.833,795
3,936,091
8,936,091
1,395,405
2,255.036
5.335,543
6.400.473
15.5
15.5
12.4
18.
16.4
21.7
13.3
23.9
10.4
133
Jlfil
Penn. . .
Md
Virginia
Ohio
Illinois .
Totals
350,227
790,811
1.076,100
42,043.000
2,272,669
2.793.107
44.937,168
See Editor's note.
t Average
(Mr. Stevens' table brought the figures to 1915 only. The motor-vehicle
registration for 1018 and 1019 is added from a recent count by the B. F.
Coodrich Rubber Co., based on official figures from every State. It ex-
cludes dealer and motorcycle registrations. The population by States is
taken from the World Almanac for 1920. According to the Goodrich
count the total motor-vehicle registrations for the United States for 1910
was 7,555,269, or one for every 14.2 inhabitants. This greatly exceeds
Mr. Stevens' estimate. — ED.)
If the average life of a car be three years, it seems possible
that by 1920 we shall have on our highways a total of not less
than 6,000,000 motor-vehicles, or one for every twenty in-
habitants. This is about three times our present registration.
To care for this traffic we have in the United States about
2,125,000 miles of country roads, not counting streets. What
mileage has been "improved" it is impossible to say, for the word
has no standard meaning. We are probably safe in assuming
that for a satisfactory system not less than 1,250,000 miles of
road must still be improved. With the ever-growing traffic and
with the consequent demand for better construction, the ultimate
cost of this system will not fall short of $10,000,000,000, and its
construction will probably cover a period of not less than forty
years. These figures do not overstate the case. Many roads have
been and will be built too narrow, too crooked, with excessive
grades and inadequate pavements. These should be widened,
straightened, regraded, and repaved. They will also have to be
provided with bridges designed for the increasing weight of
vehicles. However this may be, it seems safe to say that we have
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 257
a big job on our hands, and that if we are to plan for its execution
we must do so in a big way.
Let us consider the full extent of the problem — what we are
now doing to solve it and what is needed to obtain good roads.
Assuming for a moment that in 1920 we shall have 6,000,000
motor-vehicles and 6,000,000 teams using our roads, that the
motors will average 200 days at thirty miles and the teams 180
days at fifteen miles, we have totals of 36,000,000,000 motor-
vehicle miles and 16,200,000,000 team miles. The difference in
cost of operation on an improved as against an unimproved road
may be safely put at not less than six cents per mile for both
motor and teams. On this basis we would have 52,200,000,000
vehicle miles at six cents, or $3,120,000,000— the total yearly
saving.
I need only allude to the other gains due to good roads —
the opening up of the country, the development of industries,
the improvement of the conditions of agricultural life. These
cannot be readily estimated in figures, but the value is certainly
not less than the reduction in cost of haulage and probably ex-
ceeds it manyfold.
The importance of the interests involved would seem to war-
rant the expense of scientific and businesslike administration.
Such administration we lack ; we seem to have formed but a faint
idea of our woful state of unpreparedness and of the seriousness
of the results. Our present methods of road administration are
inadequate.
While most of the States have preserved the common-law doc-
trine of the king's highway, the treatment accorded to our roads
has not matched the dignity of their title. Generally, the roads,
except in the case of city streets, are in the hands of some local
body or of a turnpike company. The care they have received
is such as might have been expected in a community descended
from pioneer ancestry. The traditions still survive of the days
when each man raised his own food, built his own house, and
looked to no policeman to enforce his rights. Any man, in those
days, was supposed to be able to build and keep a road, and this
belief is by no means dead. It shows itself in the underlying
idea of our road administration, the turning over to township
committees, selectmen, or by whatever name they may be known,
258 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the management of the greater part of our road systems. In
most of our States we have placed bridges under the care of
somebody other than that in charge of the road.
On this substructure many of the States have built, each in its
own way to provide for our increasing highway traffic. The
laws passed for this object may be grouped into two general
classes, following the lead set by the two States that first .took
up road improvement as a field for State activity, namely, New
Jersey and Massachusetts. The former undertook to aid counties
in the building of improved roads, leaving the care of the roads
thus built to the county authorities ; Massachusetts, on the other
hand, set herself to building and maintaining a system of State
roads made up of the most important through lines of traffic.
Both of these represent correct principles. The State should
care for the important through lines. Local bodies should be
encouraged to improve roads of secondary importance. Neither
of these States, however, undertook to thoroughly provide for the
proper care of all of its country roads, nor, as far as I know, has
any other State. Nothing less than this will meet the need.
Every public road should be insured such intelligent care as to
furnish the best service of which it is capable.
My own experience as a road official may be enlightening. A
mechanical engineer by training, with scanty knowledge of road-
work and even less experience in public office, I was appointed
five years ago head of the New Jersey Road Department. The
appointment, I believe, was considered a good one.
I expected to find very simple engineering, an ill-organized
repair system, and more or less * ' graft. ' ' I found the engineer-
ing by no means simple, that proper reorganization of the repair
system would require voluntary cooperation and acceptance of
State control by the counties, many of which were jealous of
each other and of the influence of the department. I found no
legal evidence of "graft" and no reason for suspicion against
the force under my control. This force had been formed and
had worked under department heads not one of whom had any
previous engineering experience ; it was personally well fitted for
its work, but hardly large enough for its statutory duties and
utterly insufficient for the work necessary to insure thoroughness.
There was much duplication of work between the State and
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 259
county forces and ill-located responsibility. While I cannot
complain of any lack of good will, the work has been and is being
done under conditions that exclude any high standard of attain-
ment and with the knowledge that no one expects results to
measure up to any such standard.
I may be slow-witted. I.have had to waste much time in plan-
ning how to get the work done under legislation both unreason-
ably restrictive and often inconsistent and in learning to tie the
red tape thereby required into the regulation bow-knots.
During my term of office almost every one of our neighboring
States has changed the head of its road department. This brings
us to a most serious defect -of our road administration, namely,
that the head, whether a commissioner or a board, is a political
appointee, usually unskilled in road-work and frequently without
any engineering training. Holding office for a term of years,
subjected to great political pressure, and intrusted with wide
powers, it would, indeed, be wonderful if these men did not
frequently yield to considerations other than the best interests of
our roads and err by dabbling in engineering matters.
Instead of appreciation of the seriousness and the needs of the
situation, one generally finds in our legislatures a faith in the
efficacy of certain pet remedies and a leaning to numerous checks,
safeguards, and investigations, the outgrowth of lack of con-
fidence in the road administration, fruitful sources of delay, red
tape, and waste, and godsends for the muckraker.
I have said that European experience is of but limited value
to us in the solution of our problem. The weight given in
Europe to the administration of their roads is, however, in-
structive. The French Republic has been the classic example
of road administration. It compares with our ten States as
follows, the French motor-vehicle figures being for the period
before the great war :
Road
mileage
Area
Population
Motor-
vehicles
France
Ten States
357,000
457,000
207,000
261,000
40,000,000
42,000,000
122,000
1,070,000
In France all national roads and most of the departmental
roads are under the care of the celebrated ''Fonts et Chausees"
260 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
corps. This corps is the best and most thoroughly trained body
of civil engineers in the world. Their men are especially trained
for the work from boyhood, as are cadets and midshipmen.
Their life-work is in the corps. Their instruction covers the
engineering, the administrative detail, and the law referring to
the subject. The standing of the corps personally and profes-
sionally is of the highest.
Contrast for a moment our conditions. There is no legal
standard of qualifications for an engineer, least of all a highway
engineer. The job is seldom permanent. There is but little
confidence in the ability and but too often in the integrity of
highway officials. This is hardly to be wondered at when we
recall that we are trying to care for a fast-growing motor traffic,
to-day sixteen times that of the French Republic, under the
leadership of political appointees holding office for limited terms
and working under ?aws that make efficiency impossible.
To avoid any misunderstanding as to our highway engineers,
let me, in this connection, bear witness to the devotion and
ability of those with whom I have been thrown in contact. There
are, of course, lamentable exceptions, but as a whole they are
morally and technically of higher class than one would expect
under the conditions. There is, however, little organization, no
recognized standard of qualifications, and practically no inter-
state cooperation. Road societies there are, but these are or-
ganized to " boost" the cause of roads and only incidentally to
afford technical training and interchange of data.
The very evident cure for our present evils and the best pro-
vision for the future is such legislation as will establish in each
State a highway force that will command respect and confidence
in its ability. We must then state our problem, and this, too,
will generally require legislation. Even in the smallest and in
the sparsely settled States the cost and importance of .the work
will warrant thorough preparatory study. But little of this
has been done. ~,Ve have tackled the job of improving our roads
with an insouciance that would be almost laughable if its results
were less ominous. Few, if any, States have any accurate idea
of their country-road mileage, much less of its proper and
economical development, and, I may add, practically none at all
of the ultimate cost nor of the duration of the period of improve-
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 261
ment. Yet all these can at least be approximately ascertained,
and the public which pays the bill is entitled to the information.
For this purpose we should lay out a road system for each
State. Such a system will include roads of all classes. If
national roads become a fact they will form a separate class.
There will also be the main lines of intra-State traffic, then roads
of secondary importance furnishing the principal feeder lines
for the State highways and connecting towns of secondary im-
portance, and, lastly, the lesser roads corresponding to the capil-
laries in the system of blood circulation. Each of these classes
will call for different features of design and for different types
of paving. For our greatest roads it would seem that the best
will be none too good, for the smallest our means will demand
that we adopt the most economical construction. Without
thorough preliminary study and planning we shall, beyond doubt,
build roads, some insufficient for their loads and others more
costly than their traffic will warrant. I may here point out that
the permanent investment in a road is made up of the cost of
the right of way and of grading. Drainage works and founda-
tion courses may be or may not be permanent ; the same is true
of bridges; but surfaces are never permanent. If, however, we
secure enough land and grade it properly at the outset, our in-
vestment to that extent is secure.
Our legislation should extend to all country roads. Streets
present another problem. Just as physically and commercially
all roads in a State form part of one system, so the State must
provide that they be administered under uniform laws and in
coordination. The public has a right to expect and the State
should provide that every road be so kept as to give the best
service of which it is capable.
There must be a strict, uniform, and scientific system of ac-
counting and audit, including an accurate census of road traffic.
The resulting data must be carefully analyzed to enable those
in charge not only to make comparisons but also clearly to account
for the discharge of the trust imposed on them.
We must, in all cases, have such elasticity in statutory provi-
sions as will cut the red tape down to a minimum.
The importance of the work to be done will justify provisions
that will make highway^ engineering a career that will attract
262 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and hold young men of ability and energy. Material of this
character can be trained to high efficiency if politics be excluded,
if promotion follow on proven fitness and discipline be rigidly
enforced.
Road-work calls for analytical study requiring the combination
of experience, common sense, and technical training. It involves
also, in the higher grades, difficult administrative work, which
cannot be readily separated from the engineering and executive
ability of no mean order. This always demands and must receive
good pay. A high professional standard for such a force gives
the members a pride in their organization and a confidence in
its ability to do its work, without which it is useless to expect
any full measure of success or of public trust. This latter, I
repeat again, is essential to any satisfactory solution of our prob-
lem. Without it the public will not insist on the exclusion of
politics from road-work, and before they will so insist the people
must know that their business is being handled by experts and
honest men.
The technical work to be performed by such a body should
consist, in addition to the preliminary study needed for the laying
out of road systems, of design, construction, and maintenance.
"Safety first," of which we have heard much of late, needed
but little consideration in the road design of the ante-automobile
age. Any road was safe enough if it was good enough. Guard-
rails on high embankments, avoidance of sharp turns at the foot
of steep grades, and a little care at approaches to bridges were
enough to make a road reasonably safe at the speed and weights
for which they were designed, say ten miles an hour and about
three tons. It is no wonder that they have become * ' death-traps ' '
when called on to carry traffic at forty miles with maximum loads
of from twelve to fifteen tons. The solution of the guard-rail
question is yet open. Any obstruction to the view within a
distance of from 350 to 400 feet is highly dangerous. Curves on
or at the lower end of steep grades, narrowness, excessive crown,
unprotected ditches, badly placed trees or poles, and even the
pipes often used to carry water across entrances, have become
dangers that are taking a heavy toll of human life.
The most apparent dangers on our highways are the crossings
over railroad and trolley tracks at grade. The elimination of
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 263
these death-traps should never be overlooked. The cost of this
work will form no small part of our future highway disburse-
ments. Even when elimination is impossible, much may be done
to decrease danger at crossings.
As to pavements, for minor roads this will always depend on
the relative costs of locally available materials. Gravel, oyster-
shells, and macadam will probably always be able to provide for a
considerable mileage of the lesser roads. Macadam with a
blanket coat of tar or asphalt, well maintained, will carry a con-
siderable traffic, but only at a fairly high maintenance cost. For
more important roads Portland cement concrete and bitumi-
nous concretes seem the most promising solution. Block pave-
ments, brick, wood, asphalt block, and granite on a concrete base
will be required for the heaviest traffic and for such grades on
bituminous concrete roads as may be found too steep for that
material.
Roads must be designed for the speed and weights that will
be used on them. Whether there be a statutory speed limit or
not, it is not seriously regarded and will in time probably dis-
appear. Any prudent designer to-day will count on not less
than forty miles. There is little use in providing a surface suited
for such a speed without giving the corresponding widths and
curvatures. Without knowledge of weights to be carried, bridge
design is but guesswork. Pavements and foundation courses
must be suited to the weights to be carried. These should be
regulated by legislation uniform in all the States. The paved
way for important roads should not be less than eighteen feet on
tangents ; curves should have radii of not less than 1,000 feet with
increased widths of paved surface.
Grades -are a matter of both economy and safety; with
Bituminous surfaces anything in excess of five per cent, becomes
too slippery for horses ; automobiles also skid dangerously thereon.
Many of the minor appurtenances of our roads deserve and
should receive more thorough study than has generally been
given them. Road signs, for example, should be legible from
whatever side approached. Running beyond a sign before being
able to read it destroys, to a great extent, its usefulness and is a
source of actual danger. Dust in excessive quantities is not only
a nuisance, but has become a serious danger.
264 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The correct placing of shade-trees and the selection of the
species used are matters of importance. Trees must not be placed
so near the driveway as to be dangerous. The same is true of
telegraph-poles, sign-posts, etc.
The military features of our roads have been all but entirely
overlooked. A few years ago a request for the vie'ws and advice
of the War Department met with a polite but entirely unenlight-
ening answer. Strategically, roads must connect points of mili-
tary importance. Tactically, they must be designed to carry
necessary military traffic. In the light of the experience of the
great war, this means that very heavy loads, guns of six and eight
inch caliber, heavy motor-trucks, high-speed cars, cavalry and
infantry must be accommodated. Less than three lines of traffic
will hardly meet the requirements. Nothing less than thirty feet
of graded width will do. Bridges must also be strengthened. It
may well be that screening will be required.
The designer must also carefully weigh the advantages of any
proposed feature of design against its cost. He must bear in
mind that the total road cost is divided into three parts : interest
on the first cost; depreciation and up-keep, including the over-
head charges due to administration, use of machinery, and, what
is usually called the repair charge, the cost of the actual labor
and materials used in repair. What he now has in most cases
is the repair charge only and that without traffic data. This
charge may be easily kept low by an expensive construction. It
may well be that a low-priced road with comparatively high re-
pair charge will be the cheapest solution. Yet, on the other
hand, too cheap a construction is sure to prove wasteful. It can
easily be imagined that the designer has ample field in which to
show his ability.
We have generally built good roads as far as construction work
is concerned. We have probably -been a little too impatient for
results and too easy-going to obtain all the accuracy in following
a specification that we find abroad. Our inspection, too, in many
cases, may have lacked in intelligence and thoroughness, but on
the whole we have not done badly in this respect.
The up-keep of our roads has, on the whole, been disappointing.
There are, of course, brilliant exceptions. If we are to have good
roads we must provide a system that will make good minute
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 265
defects as soon as they appear. This cannot be done without
constant and competent inspection. The best way to provide this
service will vary with roads of different materials and subject to
different traffic intensities. Whatever method, however, is
adopted, the importance of accurate accounting for all mainten-
ance expenditures will remain undiminished.
Our task is such a huge one that for success we must have team-
work. Our federal scheme of government is a hindrance in
securing the interstate cooperation that the situation demands.
It is not only in the planning of interstate lines of traffic and in
securing uniform laws as to classification of vehicles and regula-
tion of traffic that this need exists. We should have standardiza-
tion of nomenclature so that, for instance, "improved road" will
mean the same thing in Indiana and in New Jersey; standard
system of road signs, standard methods of accounting, standard
units of traffic and wear, and, in general, cooperation and co-
ordination between our forty-eight State-road forces and the
federal government.
That this coordination and the leadership needed for any team-
work can be supplied only by the general government is, to my
mind, the unanswerable argument for federal aid. The gain by
united and concerted effort will be greater than that due to any
federal appropriation.
The financial problem involved is by no means the least of the
many road questions that we must settle.
While building and after having finished the work, we shall
have to keep up the roads already built. This will involve a
tremendous outlay. The present total road repair charge in this
country is unknown, but we do know that much of it is wasted
on unintelligent work.
A\re must evidently look to our sources of revenue. Benefits
are conferred by road improvement on both the land-owner and
the user of the road. The former pays through the ordinary tax
levy. The latter pays a so-called license fee for his automobile
only and nothing for his horses. It seems rational to look to the
business on the roads for part of the cost of building and main-
taining them.
Enough has been said to outline roughly, indeed, the many and
very serious problems suggested by a forecast of our road-work.
266 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The lesson to be drawn therefrom is the need of thorough or-
ganization of our road forces and of careful preliminary study.
The interests affected are among the most important to the wel-
fare of the nation. The investment will be gigantic in size, but
can be made to return a benefit far beyond its cost if we will
handle it as a business proposition. If, on the other hand, we
rush into work of unparalleled magnitude without adequate
preparation, if we continue to intrust its execution to men un-
skilled in the work, chosen mainly on account of past political
services and lacking public confidence, and if we keep changing
them as various parties may command popular pluralities, we
shall pay the price of our folly.
MITIGATING RURAL ISOLATION x
JOHN MORRIS GILLETTE
THE statement is often made that the great urban problem is
that of congestion of population while the chief drawback to
rural life consists in the isolation of families and people. It is
held that life in cities is too compact while that in the country
is characterized by too great an aloofness. Isolation is not solely
a matter of spatial separation; the greater the distance persons
are removed from one another the more intense the consequent
social aloofness. On the contrary, isolation is in part a state of
mind, one of the chief factors of which is a feeling of loneliness,
and such a state frequently occurs among persons living amid
dense urban populations. Perhaps the greatest hunger for
human association and friendship is often to be found in the
midst of the throngs of great cities. Neighboring in cities is not
always or mostly with those who live next door or in the same
block. The urbanite's closest friends may be blocks or miles
removed, necessitating the occurrence of social exchanges at in-
frequent intervals. Similarly the church and other institutions
that are attended, the theater, the recreation place and the like,
may be far distant, requiring a considerable journey to attend
them.
i Adapted from a Reprint from the Quarterly Journal of the University
of North Dakota, Vol. VII, No. 2, University, January, 1917.
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 267
Nevertheless, although there is danger of exaggerating the
isolation obtaining in the country, the social aloofness that exists
there is real, considerable, and serious. Grant to individuals
living in cities friends and a standing in some circle or set of
persons, and unquestionably opportunities for intercourse and
amusement, culture and social service are not only much more
numerous in cities than in country but in general the distance
traveled to reach them is less; and perhaps it should be added
that transportation and communication facilities are better.
There are three proximate conditions which account for the
rural social isolation existing in the United States; namely,
spatial separation of families, fewness of social institutions, and
what may be called the rural state of mind. These will be con-
sidered for the purpose of evaluating the difficulty of overcoming
or mitigating them.
A fairly approximate perception of the degree of separation
obtaining among persons and families in each of the nine
geographical divisions of the nation may be gained by dividing
the rural population by the appropriate division area. This is
only approximately correct for rural density since, besides the
rural territory, the total division area contains the urban area;
and further the rural population includes that of towns and
villages, or all segregated populations of less than 2,500 in-
habitants each. The latter statement is undoubtedly of greater
import than the former, creating the likelihood that the rural
population density is somewhat, though not greatly, less than the
accompanying figures indicate. The following table sums up the
data:
Population Families
Division Division Rural Per Square Per Square
Area Population Mile Miles
New England 62,000 1,097,000 16 4
Middle Atlantic -100,000 . 5,593,000 56 T2.7
E. N. Central 246,000 8,633,000 35 8.1
W. N. Central 511,000 7,764,000 15 3.3
South Atlantic 260,000 9,103,000 34 6.8
E. S. Central 179,000 6,836,000 38 7.9
W. S. Central 430,000 6,827,000 16 3.2
Mountain 859,000 1,686,000 2 0.47
Vacific 318,000 1,810,000 6 1.4
(Abstract 13th census, pp. 29 and 60.)
268 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
According to this table, four of the divisions have thirty-four
or more persons or practically seven or more families per square
mile, the Middle Atlantic having fifty-six persons and almost
thirteen families per such area. Where there are eight families
to the square mile they might be so located in that space that the
homes need be only about one-fourth of a mile apart. What
really occurs is that the homes are placed along adjacent lines
of travel and lie comparatively near each other. In the case of
three divisions, containing over three-tenths of the total rural
population of the nation, there are from three to four families
to the square mile, requiring a separation of homes of perhaps
one-half mile or more. The Mountain and Pacific divisions con-
tain about one-twelfth of the rural population and in these divi-
sions the families must be on the average from a mile to over two
miles removed from one another.
In the typical rural community are to be found church and
school generally, although there are many neighborhoods without
churches. Farmers' clubs are developing rapidly but are not yet
sufficiently numerous and universal to be considered typical of
farm communities. But perhaps Grange, Society of Equity, the
Union, or some such organization might well be included. This
list which is liberal practically exhausts the list of institutions
which rural neighborhoods commonly possess and enjoy. In the
town-country communities (villages with the closely associated
surrounding agricultural region) no doubt should also be in-
cluded the lodge. The typical city community supports school,
church, saloon (save in prohibition territory), lodge, play houses,
dance halls, movies, pool halls, and kindred places. Besides these
the shops, stores, factories, and streets bring individuals into fre-
quent contact. Certainly institutional facilities for social inter-
change in the typical urban neighborhood are far more abundant
than in the typical farm community.
Relative to their quality for purposes of social interchange the
institutions of the city communities are likely to be superior.
The average rural church is an anachronistic, semi-decadent
affair. It typically comprises a one-room building where all
activities must be accommodated. It practices what aptly has
been called "ministerial vivisection," the distribution of a
minister's services between two or more churches, with the prob-
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 269
able consequence of being ministered to by a man of inferior
training or ability. In consequence of these conditions, not to
speak of others, its activities are few and listless.
The typical country school is likewise a backward institution.
It, too, is a small one-room affair, without facilities for diversified
instruction, sustaining an ill-adapted course of study, with too
few pupils to create competitive interest in class work or to
sustain organized play. It is ungraded, demands a multiplicity
of brief classes daily, and is taught by a poorly paid, poorly
trained pedagog. In contrast with these the average city church
and school appear to be very progressive and efficient institutions,
and the other agencies found in urban neighborhoods but not in
rural are of equally prepossessing character.
Rural consciousness, or the form the rural social mind takes, is
a large factor in the production of rural isolation. What may
be phrased "passive rural-mindediiess ' ' operates as an efficient
but indirect cause of such isolation. This form of consciousness
consists in being satisfied with aloofness, paucity of social or-
ganizations, dearth of contact and community activities, with the
consequence that the individuals so conditioned do nothing and
want to do nothing toward improvement. Of course those who
are so minded are not aware of it any more than do the mass of
people take cognizance of the social customs and modes of pro-
cedure of the national, class, or local groups.
Not all inhabitants of country districts are possessed by passive
rural-mindedness. Some there are who are "urban minded,"
being discontented with rural life and having a strong desire to
dwell in the city. Probably only the powerlessness to secure the
financial means to carry out a successful removal stands in their
way of joining the urban ranks.
Again there is a state of consciousness which may be called
"active rural-mindedness." Those who are actively rural
minded dwell in the country because they wish to do so. Never-
theless, they are intelligent regarding the deficiencies in rural
community matters and positively desire and strive to remedy
them. This body of citizens constitute the hope of the country-
side. However it is likely that the passively-minded individuals
are in the majority, thus making changes toward a better situa-
tion difficult and slow.
270 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
That rural social isolation is regarded as undesirable by coun-
try people is attested by several sets of events to be mentioned
without discussion: the flow of large numbers of persons from
country to city ; the settlement of retired farmers in neighboring
towns and villages; the frequent testimony of intelligent rural-
ites to the irksomeness and the undesirability of the customary
social poverty; and the response to the introduction of social
facilities by practically every class of non-urban residents, in-
cluding the group we have alluded to as the passively rural-
minded. That the latter class respond is not inconsistent with
calling them passively rural-minded, since they may take ad-
vantage of privileges without participating in their establishment.
Perhaps the most severe strain arising out of this situation is
suffered by the women of the farm homestead, especially by the
mother. Her sphere of practical action is within the confines of
the house, she cannot meet the neighbors at the borders of the
adjoining fields as city women may talk across lots, nor in the
exchange of tools and work does she have the opportunity to con-
verse as do the men of the farm, and her field of cooperative
exchange is limited. Neither does she go to the neighboring
town for marketing and repair purposes as often as the men.
Further, her work is of a routine nature, lacking the variety
and the occurrence of new situations that call for inventive
talent which the activities of the outdoor workers involve. That
farm women age much earlier in life than do the men is no
doubt partly due to the greater absence of intellectual incitement.
The problem of rural isolation has attracted much attention
and naturally has brought forth a number of proposals for solu-
tions and panaceas. One of the most short-sighted and brutal
suggestions is what may be called "familism." It is asserted
that the social activities and satisfactions of rural inhabitants
inevitably must be limited to the sphere of the family, since that
institution represents the scope of normal human association pos-
sible to country districts. This proposal flies in the face of
accomplished facts and is only a dogmatic generalization from a
narrow range of data, It is doubtless true that the majority of
rural inhabitants realize the larger portion of their associational
life within the family and that many will do so for some time to
come. But notwithstanding the fact that the family is a most
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 271
worthy and indispensable institution and that it is destined to
furnish much of the social contact for both rural and urban
inhabitants in future, it must be said that it is too small, un-
resourceful, and monotonous to supply complete associational
satisfaction. Moreover, multitudes of country neighborhoods
have established and now enjoy larger community organizations.
The trend of the rural movement without question is toward the
creation and. the adaptation of varied recreational and social
facilities.
Another proposition is that American farmers shall abandon
their present system of widely distributed, separate homesteads
and segregate themselves in some kind of central farm village.
Various actual and ideal types of such communities present them-
selves, some of which deserve attention.
The European form of farm village is generally thought of
when the proposal in question is considered. European farmers
almost universally live in small segregated communities, proceed-
ing from these during the daytime to prosecute their agriculture
on the outlying farms. In America, also, are to be found a few
types of agricultural village. In various sections of the United
States immigrant Mennonites have established themselves in such
communities, very largely reproducing here the customary Euro-
pean prototype. The most indigenously American farm village
is to be found among the Mormon settlements of the western
portion of the United States and Canada. When the Mormons
settled Utah they designated an agricultural community some-
what peculiar to themselves. The Mormon settlers and recruits
were to settle in centers, all of which were built from a common
plant. Each village resident had a considerable plot of land
surrounding his house, another plot of a few acres just outside
the center, a still larger piece still farther removed, and might
have more land still farther distant. The dwellings are char-
acteristically arranged relative to each other to secure family
privacy. A further important characteristic is that the church
is the center of community interest and lies at the foundation of
the Mormon farm village plan.
Besides these existent types of agricultural villages, a strictly
cooperative farm, village community has been urged. It is pro-
posed that not only dairies and creameries, but also laundries,
272 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
kitchens, dining halls, and all phases of domestic and distributive
economic business should be cooperative.
These plans of and proposals for farm villages possess both
interest and value, nevertheless they are confronted by several
obstacles and objections. First, the great majority of American
farmers have much capital invested in houses, barns, other build-
ings, orchards, and other home equipment on their separate allot-
ments of land. To make a change to such a completely different
system of living as the farm village represents would involve the
destruction of much of the capital so invested and the incurring a
large removal expense. The economic loss involved in the pro-
posal is so heavy that we cannot expect seriously to see it
executed.
Second, to the average farmer it would seem a costly incon-
venience to drive daily several miles to carry on his farm work.
Where farms are small, as most of them are in Europe and to a
less extent in the irrigable sections of the United States, the dis-
tances to the outlying land are not great. But the average size
of farms in the United States is 138 acres. Were the farm vil-
lage large enough to be of any great social advantage it should
contain probably 100 families. This being so, in a district com-
posed of average sized farms, the more remote farms would be
about four or five miles removed from a centrally located village.
This would mean a daily drive of eight or ten miles, which is
practically prohibitive because of the economic loss involved.
Third, a small village of the usual type possesses questionable
advantages, socially, when compared with open country com-
munities. Without the fuller social life, intellectual interests,
ideals, and resources of the larger urban aggregations, the petty
gossip, jealousies, and bickerings are not conducive to increased
satisfaction or a higher existence. The paucity of recreational
and amusement facilities, the almost entire absence of those of a
wholesome kind, especially for boys from ten to sixteen years of
age, engenders idleness and the resorting to vicious gangs and
forms of sport which are demoralizing. The average small vil-
lage in the United States represents one of the most deadening
and disheartening forms of community, and, as a problem, chal-
lenges the serious attention of the American nation.
The suggestion of a cooperative form of farm village is worthy
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 273
of consideration. That the scheme is Utopian should not con-
demn it in advance. Its real test is, can it overcome the diffi-
culties just presented relative to farm villages in general ?
In the case of the establishment of new agricultural communi-
ties, especially in irrigation districts where farms are small, the
cooperative proposal is most deserving of attention. Aside from
these relatively infrequent situations, the heavy investment in
separate farm plants and the remoteness of the majority of
farms from the central villages would appear to make the pro-
posal impracticable.
In view of these considerations we may regard our present
system of distributed and separate farm homesteads as perma-
nent, and are forced to conclude that the mitigation of rural isola-
tion must come from other directions. In this connection it is
worthy of note that in agricultural Utah there is an observed
tendency toward independent farm homes. From the top of the
divide between Cache and Salt Lake valleys in Northern Utah
it is seen that in the former valley, which was settled very
early, there is an occasional homestead in the open country while
in the northern portion of the former, a region settled more re-
cently, separate farm homes appear to be the rule.
Considerable may be expected from the improvement and ex-
tension of the rural communicating system, including under this
caption roads, rural delivery, automobiles, interurban trolleys,
telephones, and periodical literature. Each of these agencies is
making its contribution toward the establishment of a more ef-
fective rural solidarity and also toward bringing country and
urban districts into closer touch.
Improved and extended roads are essential to the development
of the economic interests of agriculture and are the indispensable
foundation for all larger community organizations and activi-
ties. The larger organizations which the improved rural church,
the consolidated school, farmers' clubs, and recreational and
community centers are demanding can materialize only as the
highways are built to permit rapid and comfortable transit.
The automobile and rural delivery are serviceable in creating
larger contacts and in stimulating the building of a better high-
way system. Where population density warrants the establish-
ment of rural free delivery of mail, rural routes are assigned by
274 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the national government on condition that the routes to be used
in carrying the mail should be put and kept in passable shape.
Organizations and individuals interested in the extended use of
the automobile are promoting both local and inter-community
highway improvement. Since so many farmers have become
owners of cars, they have the more heartily joined the move-
ment for the establishment of good roads.
The automobile quickens rural life by bringing families and
communities into closer and more frequent contact. Distances
which once took hours or days to compass by horse or horse-
drawn vehicle, now are covered in a few minutes or hours.
Could every farmer possess an automobile, the problem of es-
tablishing larger and better rural institutions in considerable
measure would be solved because transit would be speedy and
easy and because the care of teams involved in travel by horse-
drawn vehicles would be obviated.
Rural free mail delivery and the circulating library are effec-
tive agencies for reducing isolation. The former places within
reach of out-of-town residents the possibility of daily contact
with the world of events by means of the daily press ; makes pos-
sible more frequent correspondence with friends and relatives;
and helps cultivate a habitual perusal of periodical and library
literature. In its turn the circulating library brings to neigh-
borhoods which command its services the enlivening store of
fiction, the inspiration of good literature, and the practical
knowledge of the whole range of natural and social science.
A definite local communitization of rural districts constitutes
a further method of mitigating rural isolation. Communitiza-
tion takes place to the degree to which the inhabitants of a par-
ticular locality think and act together, the alternative, individ-
ualization, being most often observed in the country, in that
residents of such locality think and act as if they were only indi-
viduals. It is highly desirable that people generally, and rural
inhabitants especially, should cultivate a neighborhood outlook,
appreciate the good results which flow from increased cooper-
ation, and set about establishing the agencies for realizing the
community spirit.
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 275
SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL
PRESS 1
J. CLYDE MARQUIS
THE influence which the printed page has had upon agriculture
cannot be definitely measured. The idea has been generally ac-
cepted that practical and, especially, successful farming has un-
til recently been conducted apart from the directions given in
books. The disfavor with which the countryman who considers
himself especially practical has regarded those who consult the
written experiences of others in books has been too generally
dwelt upon in discussions of the literature of agriculture.
The influence of the printed page is particularly subtle. The
casual reader often believes that he has received no benefit from
an academic treatment of a topic, yet his subsequent methods
are indisputable evidence that he has absorbed an idea and
adopted the suggestions, even though he believes he has not.
To say that the most important single influence for the improve-
ment of agriculture has been the periodical press would be both
trite and unnecessary, yet no discussion of the influence of the
printed page upon agricultural methods would be complete did
it not begin with this premise.
A sketch of the development of agricultural literature is neces-
sary to secure an adequate appreciation of its importance. Its
beginnings are unknown, and there were probably treatises on
practical agriculture in early periods of Chinese history of
which we now have no record. There are only occasional glimpses
of the development of the art of husbandry in the early history
of man. These appear in Biblical literature and in Egyptian
records and later become more evident in the writings of the
Greeks and Romans.
The first foundations of the literature of husbandry which
may be said to support the present structure were laid by the
Roman writers, and many of the fundamental propositions
presented by them may still be accepted with trifling modifica-
tions. The husbandmen of to-day would be benefited greatly by
a thoughtful perusal of the advice of Cato and Columella.
i Adapted from Annals of the Amer. Acad., 40: 158-162, March, 1912.
276 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Following the Eoman period there is a stretch of centuries
until the time when the early English writers appear. Arthur
Young has been mentioned as the forerunner of our modern
agricultural writers, and he unquestionably set a standard
which has been seldom equaled and rarely surpassed in descrip-
tive and helpful writing on rural topics. The awakening which
resulted from the entertaining works by Young was the begin-
ning of the agricultural revival in England, and was also coin-
cident with the beginning of modern agriculture in America.
The friendly relations between Young and George Washington
unquestionably had considerable to do with the popularity of
the writings by the former in America.
Among American pioneers were a few capable, foresighted men
who appreciated the importance of permanent records in agri-
culture, and their work is principally to be found in the pro-
ceedings of the various agricultural societies then in the fore-
front of the agricultural advance. Even before the opening of
the nineteenth century there was a considerable volume of help-
ful agricultural literature not only in proceedings of societies
but in a few periodicals and in a number of excellent books.
Following the opening of the new century the increase in printed
matter relating to the farm and the field was steady but slow.
Periodicals appeared and after more or less successful careers
were absorbed, transformed or abandoned until the end of the
first quarter of the century found very little substantial ad-
vancement. Beginning about 1830 the quantity and the char-
acter of books and journals on agriculture received a consider-
able impetus. Capable men began to realize that an interchange
of ideas was necessary. Books for farmers could no longer sat-
isfy those who were interested in a given subject because of the
distribution of the people over a wider area and the growing
complexity of rural problems. The earlier journals were pub-
lished and edited by men of ideals, backed by the courage of ac-
complishment, who looked upon their journals as agencies for
progress rather than mere commercial enterprises. They stood
for certain reforms and improvements, and though sometimes
radical and extreme in their methods, their purpose was on the
whole to improve agriculture, which they unquestionably did.
The three prime divisions of agricultural literature then, as
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 277
to-day, were : First, the periodical ; second, the public and semi-
public document, and third, the book, the three standing in this
order as to numbers distributed. Periodicals reach a larger au-
dience than either the proceedings of societies, some of which
are private and others semi-public documents, or books which
have a more limited circulation but perhaps a greater influence
upon those who are actually reached.
As a conclusion of this hasty glance at the development of
agricultural literature, we find at the beginning of a new cen-
tury that periodical literature is most highly developed and spe-
cialized, and, in the opinion of many, commercialized to an ex-
treme degree which must sooner or later result in the consolida-
tion or transformation of many journals. With approximately
five hundred periodicals devoted to one or many of the phases
of agriculture and related topics, the field of periodical literature
may be said to be crowded. These numerous periodicals send
out literally millions of copies each week, and while a large pro-
portion of the rank and file of rural people do not read a
periodical regularly, all are touched directly or indirectly by the
ideas thus distributed. Were they properly distributed, there
would be several copies each month for each person engaged in
agriculture in the entire country. This consistent dissemina-
tion of literature, going on as it does without ceasing and with
growing force, constitutes the greatest agency for agricultural
improvement.
Next in order of importance must be placed the public docu-
ments. They have increased in numbers within the last decade
with great rapidity, and within the past five years the quantity
of reliable free literature for the man on the farm has been al-
most doubled. There is little doubt that this increase will con-
tinue for some time to come. The recognition by the daily news-
paper of the importance of agriculture, and consequently the
regular appearance of departments concerning such matters is
one of the newest and most significant phases of this rapid in-
crease of printed matter on farm topics.
For the books on agriculture there is less to be said. The
most valuable works now found in our libraries are the product
of the last decade. The tendency for more popular and attrac-
tive literature has unquestionably brought down the average
278 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
quality of the books produced. The new book that will remain
authentic for a decade is the exception, yet there are many books
now near the end of their second decade of popularity that con-
tinue to meet with a large demand. The character of the new
works on agriculture is on the whole entirely helpful, since a
new type of literature which is both interesting and instructive
is certain to be evolved through the experience of the publishers.
To pass to the social significance of this literature, its im-
provement in quality and its increase in distribution and in
influence are due to the appearance of a generation that is pre-
pared to be benefited by it. As soon as men are trained to put
human experience in rural affairs into forceful, convincing writ-
ing, the reader will be able to secure more material aid from
such writings. The facility with which reliable matter may be
secured is the greatest point in favor of its development. We
receive our new agricultural thoughts in our daily press along
with the news of progress in other industries. The organiza-
tion of press bureaus within the last few weeks by the agricul-
tural colleges, state experiment stations, boards of agriculture and
federal organizations is an important advance step in this direc-
tion. Few items of particular significance in agriculture now
escape the daily press, and whereas such news was previously
written in a form designed to be of general interest, it is now
prepared by a special writer often trained in agriculture, so
that it is both interesting and accurate.
Plans are in operation in several state experiment stations to
send regularly to the local newspapers carefully prepared mat-
ter designed to meet local needs. This newspaper matter on
agriculture is closely followed by the dissemination of clearly
written and attractive circulars and bulletins dealing with spe-
cial topics. These appear either as reading courses or as separate
publications just as the subjects are timely. Bulletins of this
character are now being issued regularly by a large number of
the leading experiment stations and boards of agriculture, and
are being distributed through the mails, at farmers' meetings,
banks, etc., until the numbers that are actually placed in the
hands of working farmers aggregate millions of copies each year.
The printed proceedings of state and local associations of stock-
men, horticulturists, grain-growers, etc., are distributed to mem-
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 279
bers and others at practically no cost to the recipient. A library
comprising literally tons of material, most of it trustworthy, is
being assembled by many farmers at absolutely no cost beyond
the postage on their letters of request. The consumption of agri-
cultural books has increased markedly during recent years. The
extension of lecture courses into outlying districts has gained the
attention of several people who as a consequence become inter-
ested in following up these addresses by a careful study of the
books written by the same men. Once the working farmer has a
taste of the benefits which he can secure from a careful study of
such literature he demands large quantities of printed matter.
Much of the agricultural literature of the past decade has
been local and specific in that it has dealt with particular prob-
lems as they exist in a particular community, and has not been
designed to broaden the farmer's social relations. It is note-
worthy that a large percentage of the newer literature deals with
his social relations; the periodical press as well as books and
public documents now deal with social questions. The travel-
ing library, which is growing rapidly in favor in rural communi-
ties in many states, now has its quota of good books and bulletins
dealing with agriculture. The shelves of the reading-rooms of
all kinds of gathering places for country people now bear their
burden of the new literature. While much of it falls far below
the standards established by the best writers, the influence which
it has is on the whole beneficial. Agricultural literature is on
the average of as high a quality as the technical literature of any
industry, and if judged with consideration of its quantity it
perhaps exceeds in interest and helpfulness the average of the
printed page of other industries.
The present need is not so much more literature as a better
interpretation of farm problems, both economic and social.
There is a vast amount of repetition and generalization in pres-
ent-day writings. New ideas and details are growing less fre-
quent from day to day. In the mass of literature a signboard is
needed to point the way for the uninitiated. This interpretation
of the printed page is expected to be the next important ad-
vance in the field of the literature of the farm.
280 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE TELEPHONE *
G. WALTER FISKE
AMONG these modern blessings in the country home, one of the
most significant is the telephone. A business necessity in the
city, it is a great social asset in the rural home, like an additional
member of the family circle. It used to be said, though often
questioned, that farmers' wives on western farms furnished the
largest quota of insane asylum inmates, because of the monotony
and loneliness of their life. The tendency was especially notice-
able in the case of Scandinavian immigrant women, accustomed
in the old home to the farm hamlet with its community life.
To-day the farmer's wife suffers no such isolation. To be sure
the wizards of invention have not yet given us the teleblephone,
by which the faces of distant friends can be made visible ; but the
telephone brings to us that wonderfully personal element, the
human voice, the best possible substitute for the personal pres-
ence. Socially, the telephone is a priceless boon to the country
home, especially for the women, who have been most affected by
isolation in the past. They can now lighten the lonely hours by
a chat with neighbors over household matters, or even have a
neighborhood council, with five on the line, to settle some ques-
tion of village scandal! All sorts of community doings are
speedily passed from ear to ear. Details of social plans for
church or grange are conveniently arranged by wire. Symp-
toms are described by an anxious mother to a resourceful grand-
mother and a remedy prescribed which will cure the baby before
the horse could even be harnessed. Or at any hour of the day or
night the doctor in the village can be quickly summoned and a
critical hour saved, which means the saving of a precious life.
On some country lines a general ring at six o'clock calls all
who care to hear the daily market quotations ; and at noon the
weather report for the day is issued. If the weather is not
right, the gang of men coming from the village can be inter-
cepted by 'phone. Or if the quotations are not satisfactory, a
distant city can be called on the wire and the day's shipment
i Adapted from "The Challenge of the Country," pp. 66-68. Association
Press, New York, 1912.
COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 281
sent to the highest bidder — saving money, time, and miles of
travel.
All things considered the telephone is fully as valuable in the
country as in the city and its development has been just as re-
markable, especially in the Middle West where thousands of in-
dependent rural lines have been extended in recent years, at very
low expense.
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CHAPTER XI
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE AND RURAL
POLICE
A. CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE
THE OUTDOOR TREATMENT OF CRIME *
HARRIS R. COOLEY
THERE is no distinct outcast class of offenders. The establish-
ment of the outdoor or farm prison is one expression of this new
attitude. It is a long step from the gloom and depression of the
felon's cell to the sunlight and fresh air of the open field. The
normal environment of the country tends quickly to reestablish
a normal life. The open-air treatment is as helpful to the victim
of vice and crime as to the victim of tuberculosis.
In a number of the institutions of our country the outdoor
methods have been tried with marked success. Dr. Leonard,
Superintendent of the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield, has
the spirit and attitude toward his young men which arouse in
them a surprising sense of honor and fidelity. There are nearly
a thousand prisoners, many of them committed for most serious
offenses. A school of conduct or of ethics helps to maintain the
moral atmosphere of the institutions. The trusted men enter
into a formal bond with the superintendent. Out of eighteen
hundred young, vigorous fellows who have been trusted to work
out on the six-hundred-acre farm, only nine have violated their
trust and run away. As one sees these men in the open, sunny
fields, many of them without guards, doing faithfully their daily
tasks under normal conditions, it is difficult to realize that a
few years ago they would have toiled inside crowded, gloomy
prisons with heavily barred windows. They themselves have
constructed their shop buildings within the wall for the employ-
1 Adapted from the Outlook, Vol. 07: 403-8, Feb. 25, 1911.
283
284 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ment for winter months and stormy days, but these are as full
of light and fresh air as a model factory. The institution im-
presses you as a training-school with a helpful, hopeful attitude
toward life.
The Province of Ontario, under the direction of the Provin-
cial Secretary, W. J. Hanna, is developing an outdoor prison at
Guelph. The spirit of fellowship, cooperation, and confidence
prevails. Some temporary buildings shelter the prisoners who
work under the open sky, cultivating the soil, ditching, grading,
and making roads. One of the Canadian pastors, who perhaps
had been skeptical about the project, walked over the farm and
saw the groups of men laboring in the fields. He said to me, "I
was so moved by it that I went off by myself and cried." In
his enthusiasm the head officer declares that "the prisoners
have done a great work." With this attitude the Guelph Prison
Farm will do much for the imprisoned, and still more for the
citizenship of Ontario.
In Cleveland we began the outdoor treatment by purchasing
a group of farms ten miles from the city, and before any perma-
nent buildings could be erected we tested the plan by taking
"trusties" and other prisoners from the City Workhouse and
lodging them in the old scattered farm-houses. Our farmer
neighbors were frightened. Our friends prophesied that the
prisoners would all run away. The plan worked. Most of the
men completed their sentences, giving faithful and willing ser-
vice. We ourselves have been surprised at times at the results
of some of our ventures with these men. The confidence placed
in them, the useful work in garden and field, the tonic of the sky
and trees, developed a new sense of honor and a common senti-
ment that it is a mean and cowardly thing to ' ' take a sneak from
the farm."
In four years five thousand prisoners served time on the
Correction Farm. These men have worked at excavating for
our buildings, quarrying and crushing stone, grading, road-mak-
ing, under-draining the land, clearing dead timber from the
forest, and doing general farm labor. They have had better
food, for they have raised it themselves. The officers in charge
of the working groups of laborers have been really foremen
rather than typical prison guards. The purpose has been not
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 285
simply to locate the institution in the country, but to have a
great estate as a basis for unlimited useful employment, and
also as a means of controlling and shaping a large environment.
The Correction Farm is part of a great tract of nearly two thou-
sand acres, or more than three square miles, on which are the
Tuberculosis group, the Almshouse group, and also an extensive
municipal cemetery to be graded and developed by prison labor.
The area is so large and diversified that the Almshouse group is
a mile and a half from the Correction group, and two hundred
feet higher. Each of the four divisions is distinct on its own
five hundred acres, yet out on the broad fields and in the light,
airy shops of the Correction buildings every prisoner can be
used at his best in the raising of food and the making of all
those things which will add to the life and comfort of them-
selves and the other unfortunates who are the residents of the
Farms.
A visiting judge said to me, "It is so fine out here, I should
be afraid some of these prisoners would want to stay." Near
by a group of men were shoveling dirt into a grading wagon. I
said to him: "Judge, you see those men at work; they are
drinking an abundance of pure water, they eat heartily, they
sleep well. They say to themselves, 'This is not "made work,"
this is real, genuine work. Free men right over there are getting
a dollar and a half a day for doing this/ The old prison cell,
the food, the confinement of their labor, tended to depress them
and to make them hopeless. This treatment quickly brings them
to themselves and, arouses the normal man. There is a psycholog-
ical element, which you have not thought of and which we did
not fully foresee, which makes these men more anxious to go
back and again take their places in society and industry. At
the expiration of their sentences they go out without the prison
pallor, stronger in the face of temptation, and ready at once to
do a full day 's work. ' '
For the friendless prisoners when released a Brotherhood
Home Club grew up in the city, largely through the efforts and
support of the men themselves. The purpose of the Brotherhood
is to find them employment and to provide for them a comfortable
place in which to live until their first pay day.
That the colony movement is the outgrowth of a common feel-
286 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ing and attitude is manifest from the fact of its springing up
under varying conditions in different countries. In 1892 the
Belgian Government began the organization of Merxplas in a
barren and desolate region twenty-five miles from Antwerp.
This is a penal colony established primarily for vagrants, but
which receives offenders with sentences as long as seven years.
There are at present about five thousand prisoners. The grounds
are laid out on a broad, general plan. The men have con-
structed the buildings, including a fine church. They take
pride in caring for the surrounding lawns, the trees and flowers,
the gardens and orchards. The group is in the midst of a great
tract of cultivated fields, green pastures, and planted pine for-
ests. Director Stroobant estimates the present value of the
estate at a million dollars. To develop all of this out of the
naked, barren land must awaken interest and hope in the hearts
of many of the laborers. Those who had special tasks in the
care of the stock seemed to feel an ownership in the horses and
cattle. One prodigal son showed us a young pig which he had
in his arms.
With a small military guard as a reserve, these five thousand
irregulars and unfortunates are controlled and directed by a
staff of only eighty wardens. Some of the better prisoners as-
sist in the supervision of the work. The most serious offenders
are confined in buildings with large interior courts. They are
thus held more securely, and also kept from direct association
with the others. Their open courts, however, furnish oppor-
tunity for much outdoor life and labor.
In addition to work on the farm, other industries are carried
on, such as brick and tile making, wood-working, mat, boot and
shoe making, weaving, and tailoring. The men receive small
wages, a part of which is paid in colony money, which they can
spend. The balance is paid to them on their discharge. As one
sees the multitude of men, quiet arid orderly, going to their va-
ious places of employment, he is convinced that it is possible
to conduct even a great centralized prison on the general colony
plan.
In many ways the model prison farm of Europe is Witzwill.
It is on a mountain-girt plain about thirty miles west of Berne,
Switzerland. The great tract of two thousand acres, which for-
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 287
merly was wet, boggy, and known as the great Moss, has been,
by draining and cultivation, transformed into a beautiful and
valuable estate. There are two hundred and fifty prisoners, with
sentences of from two months to five years. The men themselves
have constructed the Swiss buildings, the barns, workshops, dor-
mitories, and dwellings. They seem fond of working with the
animals. With the oxen and heavy wagons, they came trudg-
ing in from the harvest-fields for their noonday rest. They have
fifty horses and seven hundred head of cattle. Accompanied by
twelve of the prisoners, the young stock had been sent for the
summer months to the pastures of the higher mountains. They
sell butter, cheese, and vegetables, but all manufactured goods are
for the institution or the State.
The spirit of confidence and democracy is manifest. The
guards or foremen were washing up for dinner along with the
other men. The children of the employees were playing about.
The Superintendent, Mr. Kellerhals, who has been with the farm
from the beginning, said to us, "Yes, these men, when well
dressed, look just like the people outside." About one-half turn
out well, one-fourth are doubtful, and one-fourth come back.
In a year only three had run away.
In the hospital we found clean beds with outlook on the gar-
den and pastures. The windows were open and the fresh moun-
tain air was blowing in, but there were no patients in this out-
door prison ward. It stood out in marked contrast to many of
our own institutions, which by their construction and environ-
ment are the breeding-places of tuberculosis and other physical
and moral diseases. Recent research has brought to light the
fact that the mortality from tuberculosis among our own pris-
oners is three times as great as in our general population.
Germany is making extensive use of the farm colony method
in dealing with vagrancy and minor misdemeanors. At the
Labor House of Rummelsburg, near Berlin, out of two thousand
prisoners, one thousand were working outside on the sewage
farms owned by the municipality. In France, Holland, Hun-
gary, and Italy the Government has made successful experiments
with the colony system for the treatment of offenders. The testi-
mony is that it is less expensive for the State and much better
for the health and reformation of the prisoners.
288 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The reflex influence on society of more rational and humane
treatment of its erring members is the larger part of this bene-
ficence. For its own sake society cannot afford to be cruel and
brutal to its meanest and most unworthy member. Russia is
to reap a more bitter harvest than her exiles. Love your enemies
is a good social law. If we lift society from the bottom, we all
move upward together. We thus rise not to decline and fall.
To be helpful to ''one of the least" who is in prison is not sim-
ply a religious sentiment ; it indicates the only method of social
development which will conserve and make permanent the
achievements of our civilization.
OUTDOOR WORK FOR PRISONERS1
THOMAS J. TYNAN, WARDEN, COLORADO STATE PENITENTIARY
I THINK the ideal work for convicts is outdoor work, prefer-
ably farm work, which puts them back on the soil and takes them
away from the cities and their temptations. I believe every
state should have large farms whereon they might work their
prisoners with profit to the state and the men as well. Men who
work in the open air become strong physically and it is much
easier to reform a strong healthy man, than a poor weakling,
who has not proper balance. When men are taught farm work,
they can easily obtain positions on farms after their release,
where they are as a rule kindly treated and where they will have
some social standing, which is an impossibility in the crowded
cities. By the use of convict labor on the roads the taxpayers
have been more than reimbursed by the value of the roads built.
This labor does not enter into competition with free labor, as
these roads could not otherwise have been built on account of the
expense. The counties pay for the maintenance of the camps in
which the men are worked, but the men are in charge of overseers
from the prison, who thoroughly understand the handling of this
class of labor and the building of roads. Our report will show
you the immense saving in this way of road building, and the
state is thus acquiring hundreds of miles of good roads, which
i Adapted from Report of Convict Labor Commission, State of Con-
necticut, Public Document — Special, Hartford, Conn.
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 289
could not otherwise have been built. We expect to more than
double our mileage during this present period and also to double
the value of our farm products.
THE PRISON FARM1
WM. J. HOMER
WAEDEN, GREAT MEADOW PRISON, COMSTOCK, N. Y.
I AM much in favor of the plan in operation here, i.e., a number
of farms, or a farm connected with each prison as they are es-
tablished. I believe there should be some shops maintained in
which, perhaps, certain men, though well behaved and amenable
to discipline and absolutely to be trusted, should be retained
throughout the extent of their sentences, because there are a cer-
tain number of men in every prison population who have come
from the cities, have been in factory work all their lives, and in
order to support their families will have to return to factory life
on release. To take such men for a year or two and put them on
the farm would not make farmers of them but would spoil a
factory hand. But with these exceptions, I think all those who
show themselves fit for it, should be sent to farms where they
may gain strength of body and cleanliness of mind which farm
work seems to bring to men, that they may be able to go back
to liberty stronger and better men than they were on entering
prison.
HEALTH ON PRISON FARMS 1
W. O. MURRAY
CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF PRISON COMMISSION
WE employ the greater part of our labor on farms. The State
owns eight farms, aggregating about 32,000 acres, and we have
four plantations rented or leased, aggregating about 18,000 acres,
i Adapted from Report of Convict Labor Commission, State of Con-
necticut, Public Document — Special, Hartford, Conn.
290 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
making in all about 50,000 acres. The land actually in cultiva-
tion on these farms in the aggregate amounts to about 46,000
acres. We employ in the cultivation of these farms forces rang-
ing from 2,800 to 3,500 convicts. A small farm is located in
an isolated section, separate from the male convicts, and it is
gratifying to state that they have been nearly self-sustaining.
We also have another farm near Huntsville Prison owned by
the State where we have segregated the tubercular and trachoma-
tous convicts. Also upon this farm we have what we call the
"Old Soldiers' Home," where we keep and care for the old and
decrepit convicts of both the Confederate and Union forces.
This has proven to be rather an expensive department of our
Prison System. However, we have the satisfaction of having a
remarkable record with reference to the deaths caused by tuber-
culosis in this System. Out of a prison population averaging
something over 4,000 convicts last year we had only seven deaths
from tuberculosis, and it is my candid opinion that if the jails
of the State could be put in a sanitary condition, such that
the convicts would not contract tuberculosis before being trans-
ferred to the penitentiary, it would be but a few years until we
would have eradicated tuberculosis from the Prison System, or
at least the ratio of tuberculosis among the convicts would be a
negligible quantity in the System.
IN THE HEALING LAP OF MOTHER EARTH *
WINTHROP D. LANE
THE Indiana Village for Epileptics, opened eight years ago
and just coming to full development, comprises 1,246 rich acres
about two miles north of Newcastle and forty-five miles from
Indianapolis. It lies in a country of rolling farm land that
rises and falls through an altitude of 100 feet or more. Old
Indian mounds dot the landscape and frequent groves of walnut,
ash, maple, oak and poplar help to break the view.
The visitor for the first time will not know when he reaches
the village. No walls enclose it, no impressive architecture bor-
i Adapted from the Survey, Vol. 35: 373-380, Jan., 1916.
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 291
rowed from the monasteries of another age stamp it as an
"asylum." It is just another farm. Groups of attractive, two-
story brick buildings, where patients live, eat and sleep, lie back
from the road, but even these are more than likely to be passed
without notice.
"The scientific treatment, education, employment and custody
of epileptics," says the law, shall be the object of this farm
community. Translated, this means that here the epileptics of
the state may lead as nearly as possible the normal life of farm-
ers. Those for whom most can be done educationally are given
the preference; purely custodial cases and persons violently in-
sane are not received, though the law does not prohibit them.
Inmates do not have to work quite so hard as most farmers,
for they are the wards, not the servants of the state. Nor can
they come and go entirely as they please, for epilepsy is usually
accompanied by mental defectiveness and supervision is there-
fore necessary. This supervision may amount to no more than
being constantly within sight of other inmates, for epileptics dis-
play the same fellow-feeling and care for one another as the
deaf. An epileptic who stands by and does nothing while his
fellow has a seizure often finds himself an outcast for a time
from his associates.
Two hundred and thirty men and boys are now living in
comfort on this farm. When the land has been fully improved
and all buildings have been erected the village will be equipped
to care for about 1,000 or 1,200. Women, it is hoped, will be
admitted next year. They will live in separate buildings a mile
from the men.
The care of epileptics, like that of feeble-minded, is in the main
an educational problem. A school is to be erected, and shops
for various forms of industrial activity. The work of the farm
also is given an educational value. There is almost no kind of
farm labor in which the epileptics do not assist. They help in
the growing of crops, the care of live stock and poultry, in
building fences, in making and repairing roads, and in keeping
the weeds down at the sides of the road. Sixteen epileptic
teamsters, whose seizures come only at night or can be predicted
beforehand, water, feed and bed their own horses. "I do not
believe," declares Dr. W. C. Van Nuys, superintendent of the
292 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Village, "that I could get sixteen paid teamsters who would
give us as little trouble in their work as these selected patients."
The village for epileptics is more than, a place in which to
keep busy. It is a place in which to enjoy some degree of indi-
vidual life. The congregate plan of housing inmates, which
brings them all together under one roof, has been abandoned,
and instead patients are scattered about the farm in small
groups, carefully selected to be as nearly homogeneous as pos-
sible.
When women are received the Blue River will be used as a
natural division for the sexes. On each side three separate
colonies will be built : one will be devoted to adults of the bet-
ter class, one to children of the better class, and one to low grade
adults and children. The colonies for the men are already partly
built and occupied. The low grade adults and children, while
in the same group, live apart from each other.
Each colony has its own orchard, garden and small fruits,
its own horses, pigs, chickens, ducks and turkeys. The living
rooms are provided with phonographs, newspapers and maga-
zines. Some of the inmates receive their own home papers.
Leslie's Weekly, Judge and Life are the most popular of the
magazines taken, and "Robinson Crusoe" is most in demand of
the books.
While Indiana is not the first state to make special provision
for her epileptics, the movement is comparatively new. The first
special public institution for epileptics was established in 1867
at Bielefeld, Germany. In 1886 a colony was opened in England
by private philanthropy. Ohio opened its institution for both
sane and insane epileptics at Gallipolis in 1892. From these be-
ginnings the movement has grown rapidly. There are to-day
fifty institutions in Germany having special provisions for
epileptics, nine in England and several in Switzerland, Holland,
Belgium, Australia and Canada.
New York was the second state in this country to found an
epileptic coloi^, her institution for sane epileptics at Sonyea
being open in 1894. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kansas, Mis-
souri, Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa,
Michigan and Wisconsin have since been added to the list of
states making special provision.
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 293
Some of these states have been quick to see the advantage
of the true farm village type of institution. Michigan acknowl-
edges her debt to Indiana in the plan and arrangements of cot-
tages on her 1,510 acre farm at Wahjamega, Tuscola county,
bought in 1913. Dormitories, dining-room and day room oc-
cupy the ground floor, and employees' quarters the second. An
old two-story hotel on the site, was remodeled into a cottage for
twenty- four patients. There are now living in cottages pro-
vided out of the original appropriation of $200,000 for the estab-
lishment of the institution, 155 patients.
Illinois is laying out her village of 1,100 acres at Dixon on
the small group plan. No buildings for inmates are to be more
than two stories high, some of them being limited to one story.
All buildings are to be of fireproof construction. Iowa is dis-
tributing groups of cottages about her 1,144 acre farm. The
buildings for patients, both hospitals and cottages, are one-
story and of fireproof construction.
The Indiana farm community for misdemeanants is a city
hewn from the wilderness. Already within its first year this
farm is actually emptying the jails of nearby counties.
Indiana has long hated her jails. For a score of years in-
vestigations, newspaper exposure, commission reports and all the
artillery of denunciation availed nothing against these " agencies
of vice and training schools of crime." Now, by the simple ex-
pedient of providing a wholesome, bracing substitute, Indiana
is literally starving her jails and work-houses out of existence.
Some that heretofore aspired to a nightly population of eight
or ten now find themselves caring for only two or three.
If the besetting evil of jails is idleness, the outstanding virtue
of this farm community is industry. Perhaps it was well that
the institution got its start when the ground was covered with
snow and there were only tents to live in. To work was the
only way to be comfortable, and the spirit then engendered has
been maintained. It is now kept before the minds of the pris-
oners in many subtle ways. " Positively no loafing" read signs
at a score of points, giving those who pass a sense of choice that
can have but one psychological effect — a desire not to exercise
that choice.
Perhaps it is the frontier character of the work that gives the
294 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
air of industrious cooperation so noticeable in the present stage
of the farm's development. Few people could be put at the
task of building a town where none had been before and not be
interested. Each prisoner can see the beginning and end of his
own job, and its relation to the work of others. He can see a
bustling community taking form before his own eyes and as a
result of his own efforts. Work, under circumstances like these,
is more than a mere means of passing time ; it is fascinating, con-
structive, creative, and it has caught the slumbering interest of
many a roving spirit whose previous acquaintance with the law
was limited to iron bars and walled idleness.
A large part of the work in walled prisons is either not found
at all outside of these prisons or is monopolized by women or
handicapped classes like the blind. It is not educative and adds
little to the prisoner's wage-earning capacity. Nothing could be
stronger than the contrast between this and the industrial op-
portunities on Indiana's penal farm. The buildings, even to the
cutting and sawing of much of the timber, have been erected by
the prisoners. The sewer system is now being installed by pris-
oners. Prisoners are building two and one-half miles of railway
switch over rough land, doing the grading themselves. They are
building their own roads. They are laying thirty miles of fence.
They will install their own power plant. They are now mak-
ing handles for all their implements and tools. This winter
they will make brooms. They not only erected, entirely unaided,
the toilet facilities in the dormitories, but installed the plumb-
ing and shower-baths as well.
Indiana is not the first to establish a penal farm. Such farms
are common in Europe. There are three in this country besides
Indiana's, one at Cleveland, Ohio, one at Kansas City, Kan., and
one at Occoquan, Va.
Indiana has learned that she cannot build congregate insti-
tutions fast enough to take care of her insane. So she has
changed her plans. She has decided to provide the tonic of
farm life for all her insane who can profit by it. When the leg-
islature of 1911 appropriated $75,000 for the purchase of such
a colony, Governor Marshall and his advisers selected the East-
ern Hospital for the parent institution.
Unlike the villages for epileptics and the farm for misde-
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 295
meanants, which are technically "villages," this tract is a real
colony. It draws its population direct from the Eastern Hos-
pital, instead of from the whole state, and it is administered
through that institution.
On the rich acres of Wayne Farms, as the colony has been
christened, thirty patients of varying degrees of insanity are
now living the simple life. Eleven occupy a remodeled farm
dwelling called Cedar House; another group a remodeled school
building called Maple House. An old tavern, built about 1840
for the convenience of immigrants to the West, is being made
over and will house twenty-five more patients.
Patients now at Wayne Farms do teaming, plowing, grass-
cutting and similar occupations under little or no supervision.
Some are put in charge of the farm machinery in the fields. On
the day of my visit five patients were digging a cellar at Cedar
House under an employed foreman. Others were hoeing beans.
One sturdy workman stopped chopping wood long enough to
urge us to collect for him some unpaid bills, fictions of his dis-
eased mind.
In Wisconsin districts containing one or more counties have
established small agricultural communities for their insane, only
the most acute cases being consigned to hospitals.
This plan was worked out thirty-three years ago, and for the
past eighteen years Wisconsin has kept abreast of the demands
of her insane population for institutional care. The counties
build the farm communities (asylums) and each county sending
patients to one pays one-half the maintenance of its own charges,
the state paying the other half. This is the best system of state
care for the insane yet devised in this country.
FARMING AS A CURE FOR THE INSANE 1
W. E. TAYLOR
I AM fully convinced that a thoroughly equipped farm prop-
erly conducted will contribute more to the cure of the insane
i Adapted from National Conference of Charities and Corrections,
17:943-4, F. 23, 07.
296 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
than any other one thing we may resort to. I base my asser-
tion upon experience and experiments of ten years and the re-
sults obtained are most gratifying.
In order to obtain the best results, farming or gardening
should be done in a strictly scientific manner and the patients
should be partners in the work, and in a manner enjoy a part
of the benefits ; that is, one or two acres should be attended by a
few patients and a premium offered for the best products.
The seed should be selected to suit the soil or the soil analyzed
and fertilized to meet the requirements of the seed planted.
The crops should be rotated scientifically to prevent an exhaus-
tion of the nutriment in the soil. This should all be done under
the direction of a thoroughly competent foreman, and the pa-
tients should be taught and made to understand the purpose
of analysis, fertilization and rotation, as well as how to plant
and cultivate. Experiments in this line are carried on at this
institution and we get splendid results. At a small cost for
proper fertilizers our soil is made to yield three and four times
more than previously raised with no more work or seed re-
quired.
Employment of any kind is always good, but when some in-
centive is offered, the patient is stimulated to greater activity,
and the old morbid concentration is changed and the mind under-
goes a phenomenal transformation. Drudgery and routine will
not accomplish the desired results any more than a wagon wheel
running in the same track for months will obliterate a rut.
Every state institution for the care of the insane should have
at least one half acre of good tillable land for each patient.
None but thoroughbred stock should be raised as they cost no
more to feed and care for than the ordinary scrubs and the
profits are much greater.
The plan of allotting stock to patients as well as land, results
in a rivalry, which brightens the patient's mind and in a short
time restores him to his normal condition if his case is at all
curable.
Aside from the great curative benefit the patient receives,
the institution is provided with an abundance of vegetables,
which materially reduces the cost of maintenance. Again, the
state farm should be conducted on a high scientific plan as an
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 297
example to the community. Reliable and adaptable seed should
be provided the neighboring farmers and they should be per-
mitted to purchase at a nominal cost thoroughbred stock.
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN RURAL NEW YORK1
KATE HOLLADAY CLAGHORN
A GENERAL impression is abroad that juvenile delinquency is
peculiarly a problem of the cities and especially of the foreign
population of the cities. In so far as this impression is based
upon statistics of arraignments or commitments it must be veri-
fied from some other source, because of the unfitness of such
statistics to give adequate information about the problem. In
cities many acts which are disregarded in the country districts
are punishable by law: and in cities the standard of enforce-
ment of law, especially against children, is much more rigorous,
than in the country. The result is that the official record of
rural juvenile delinquency is unduly low because it fails to in-
clude much bad conduct that is passed over without court action
and soon forgotten but which, if committed in the city, would
bring the children concerned to the judgment of the court and
add their names to the list of delinquents.
We can say, however, from the facts brought to light, that
there is a problem of juvenile delinquency in rural districts and
that it is a serious one. During the investigation little com-
munities were found which at first sight appeared to have no
problem yet, after study, each yielded up a quota of "bad"
children of various grades. The showing in the pages of the
report may well bring doubt into the minds of readers who are
under a delusion that their own neighborhoods are free from
taint.
Looking over the case histories and such summary figures as
we are able to use, we find emerging distinctly two general types
of character: The active, enterprising, intelligent child — the
born leader — and the duller and more stupid child, the natural
i "Juvenile Delinquency in Rural New York," U. S. Department of
Labor, Children's Bureau, Washington, D. C., pp. 11, 15, 21-31, 40, 54;
Bulletin Pub. No. 32.
298 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
complement and accomplice and victim of the first type. Many
instances of such partnerships will be seen in the case histories.
The obviously defective child is in the minority.
What have community influences to do with producing juvenile
delinquency? First let us look at the general setting — physical
and social.
Within the bounds of our definition of "rural" the separate
communities studied had a considerable range of variation in
character. One type is the little country village — the trading
center of a surrounding agricultural district. Its population is
made up mainly of the native-born white of native parentage —
the old American stock — and is decreasing rather than increas-
ing because its young men and women, as fast as they grow up,
are caught in the current flowing to the large towns and cities.
Going out of the village center, and "on the hill" perhaps,
we come upon little aggregations of people, not big enough for
a village group nor yet wholly isolated on scattered farms.
Such aggregations may gather about some crossroads or straggle
along some secondary highway. Here the conditions described
for the village are in most respects exaggerated for the worse.
These little centers, too, are often the survival of better days,
and there has been an even greater drain on the population than
on that of the village. And this has resulted even more definitely
in a survival of the least fit. As a net result the little isolated
settlement is apt to be of a distinctly lower grade. There is
less intelligence and activity ; the social standard is lower.
Still farther away from the center we come to the isolated farm
where many of our cases are found. This may be a good, pleas-
ant, decent home, but its owners are so far away from social
influences of any kind that they find it hard to take advantage
of them. On the other hand, the isolated dwelling may be a
tumble-down old shack to which have withdrawn a family group
too inefficient to maintain themselves in an organized commun-
ity, or too vicious to be tolerated there. Here we reach almost
the negation of social life. Practically all good influences are
wanting. This is such an extreme type, and the evil influences
so obvious, that it was thought undesirable to devote much time
to hunting out examples of it. It seemed better to lay emphasis
on the normal community, the "country village" that even yet
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 299
holds a large proportion of our native citizens, rather than on
the degenerate "hill people" who are comparatively few in num-
bers. But such families were not avoided when they came within
the range of our study, and several instances will be found
described.
A step was also taken in the other direction — into villages
where there is a background of agricultural prosperity in the
surrounding farming district, and into villages feeling the stimu-
lus of industrial development and either growing into towns or
showing the social effects that come from contact with such towns.
Sometimes being in the neighborhood of the large town empha-
sizes the "deadness" of the little town. The young people get
away more easily to cheap amusements — the moving pictures, the
cheap theaters, the garish saloons, the evening promenade along
the brightly lighted town thoroughfare — and find their own vil-
lage the duller by contrast. And they are more rapidly drained
away permanently by the industrial opportunities nearer at hand.
Industrial activity may strike the village itself. Small fac-
tories start up, and a factory population is established. Foreign-
ers begin to come in, and the original social homogeneity of the
American country village is lost. It is interesting to note, how-
ever, that foreigners appear to have been little involved in the
delinquency found.
Still another type is the country village which has felt the
stimulus of industry by becoming the summer or suburban resi-
dence of people who have achieved prosperity in the industrial
centers. Here a very distinct social stratification is set up, in
which "the natives" is a term in common use almost as patroniz-
ing as * ' the foreigners, ' ' used in the cities. Such activity — better
schools, better churches, organized play — for the building up of
the social ideal. The danger here is that the improvements may
not really take root in the community on which they are super-
imposed.
Next to take into account is the economic background. In gen-
eral, in the communities studied it is that of the farm and of
agriculture. The usual complaint in the average country district
is that "farming does not pay." This means that the old-
fashioned farms and farming of our early years are being dis-
placed by the opening of more fertile districts, the introduction
300 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of more effective methods, requiring greater intelligence and more
capital than the old-style farmer had. In one region studied the
•attempt is made to carry on farming in the old ways. Here a
large proportion of the farmers are poor. Two-thirds of those
who have records in the farm bureau have labor incomes varying
from below $200 to $500 a year. Of this two-thirds, one-fourth
make from $100 to $200, while one-fifth have no labor income at
all. And in the hill districts the abandoned farms are more
numerous than the cultivated.
Such unfavorable economic conditions mean poor and insani-
tary living conditions, overwork, lack of recreation, and diffi-
culties in the way of making use of educational opportunity.
Another region studied is, as a whole, rich and flourishing.
Its population is increasing rapidly. Land values are constantly
rising everywhere. It is, in fact, a land of milk and honey, of
large, imposing farmhouses and enormous barns, of beautiful
automobile highways winding their way between miles and miles
of apple trees and peach trees and vineyards. Nearly every
farmer owns an automobile, their boys go to college and their
girls go to the various normal and training schools. There is a
high level of comfortable living and progressive Americanism.
The village population is largely made up of retired farmers,
who have either leased their farms or sold them and come to the
village to live.
These villagers are often wealthy, owning several farms within
a radius of five or six miles. There are high schools in the larger
villages and the children of the well to do drive in from their
farms in comfortable carriages drawn by sleek horses.
But in this region, too, out from the villages, back from the
fertile farms, will be found rocky, infertile districts where
poverty-stricken tenant farmers find it hard to make a living.
In all but one of the communities studied the farm and its
work are seen to be a powerful influence in the child's life, espe-
cially that of the boy. The boy living in a farming district is
expected, as soon as he is big enough to hold a hoe, to do his part
in the work of either his father 's or some one else 's farm.
Even where farmers are prosperous and farming pays, the
work the boy has to do is hard and lonesome. If the boy is at
work on his father's farm, the father is in no hurry to pay him
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 301
wages, wishes to keep up the parental control indefinitely, and
the boy gets tired of it and wants to get away.
Then somebody else's boy must be hired. And the farmer
is not always considerate or reasonable in his treatment of him.
In the cases studied are a number of instances where a boy has
gone to work for a farmer or has been placed with one by some
society or institution and has been badly overworked and misused.
More than once the act of delinquency covered under the former
charge "incorrigible" or "vagrant" consisted in running away
from a farmer for whom the boy was working. It must not be
concluded that in all these cases there was misuse of the boy, but
it may be assumed from the evidence at hand in these instances
and others that usually there was some bad condition from which
the boy wished to get away.
One of the cases was that of an eleven-year-old boy at Industry
who, before his commitment to the institution, had been placed
with a farmer, but was so abused by these foster parents that he
was removed by the truant officer. An interview with the boy
brought out the fact that the farm where he lived was seven miles
from the village. When asked what he did to have a good time
he replied that he "used to plow and drag and milk and go to
see the boys evenings." The farmer used to whip him for poor
work and also refused to buy the necessary school books for
him.
Besides being hard on the boy physically, farm work causes
truancy, since there is a constant inducement to keep the boy out
at harvest time and at spring planting to work.
Farm work under prevailing conditions in the rural districts
is, then, not only hard on the children while they are young, but
affords little opportunity for the future.
This evil, however, is becoming more and more clearly recog-
nized, and plans of one kind and another are already being tried
in many places for the betterment of farm conditions.
The one active but disavowed rival to the church as a social
center for old and young is the village tavern.
In some cases the village itself is ' ' dry, ' ' but any one in search
of refreshment can easily find the way to a neighboring town or
village where rules are not so strict. The tavern is the catchall
for every sort of amusement proscribed by the church and the
302 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
stricter people of the town. Here dances may be given, here
there may be a pool room or bowling alley, and here sometimes
may be found rooms to let for immoral purposes. Here all the
gossip of the neighborhood is interchanged ; and here, in the bar,
pool room, or bowling alley, may be found — legally or illegally —
numerous little boys who learn to drink, smoke, swear, steal, tell
dirty stories, and amuse the adult crowd thereby.
After so many years of agitation the large part drink plays
in all social problems hardly needs to be stressed. Perhaps, after
all, it should be stressed, because with the discovery of other
sources of evil has come a tendency to minimize the one about
which we have heard so much. But certainly the present investi-
gation shows anew and decidedly the great harm done by drink,
not only through tavern training of the young but also in making
parents and guardians cruel or idle or inefficient, as found in case
after case, and creating those bad home conditions which are
most favorable to the development of juvenile delinquency.
No account of social centers in a country district would be com-
plete without mention of the village store. It is the clubhouse
for men and boys who do not like to go to the length of haunting
the village tavern ; or for all, in * ' dry ' ' villages where no tavern
exists. Here neighborhood matters are discussed, personal af-
fairs, politics, the latest scandal. Here it may happen that
"racy" stories are told and matters of sex held up to indecent
comment and ridicule. The store is to a startling extent the
place where social ideals are formed and where the minds of
the young are impregnated with the principles which later will
govern their work and play.
Here, too, a taste for gambling may be fostered. This is a form
of recreation greatly under the ban of opinion in rural communi-
ties, but as a matter of fact, quite frequently indulged in. It
may be carried on in connection with games of various kinds —
pool, poker, and so on — entered into spontaneously. But worthy
of special note are cases mentioned in the investigator's report
of petty gambling schemes, devised to play upon and encourage
the gambling instinct, run in connection with the store. Such
devices are familiar in city neighborhoods where they are with
greater or less severity suppressed by the police. They are no
doubt introduced into country districts in the process of organ-
RURAL POLICE 303
ization of trade from some large center which is so characteristic
a feature of economic life to-day.
Beyond these main centers of social life there is little in the
average rural district. Grange meetings, farmers' picnics, neigh-
borhood parties occur, but they are few and far between. The
great complaint of the young people in the country neighborhood
is "nothing to do." This gap they try to fill with sex excitement
and with riotous mischief that may end in larceny and burglary.
The political unit — the village as a whole — should also be
doing some true social work. One task peculiarly appropriate
is the improvement of vocational opportunities. Towns and vil-
lages are already active along this line in the formation of boards
of trade and other organizations intended to build up business
in the town. For the farmers, greater use of cooperative methods
of marketing and extension of rural credits will help.
The political unit is also responsible for its share in enacting
and enforcing social legislation, and civic organization is needed
to arouse community feeling along these lines. The evils of child
labor, of truancy, of drink can be cured only when the' communi-
ties themselves want them cured.
Village and town boards and officials charged with the duty of
giving poor relief also have a direct responsibility in the matter
of juvenile delinquency. Lack of judgment in caring for a
dependent family may result in the delinquency of the neglected
children. The official who carries on such work as this should
not only realize his responsibilities, but have some adequate train-
ing in the principle underlying social work.
B. BUBAL POLICE
RURAL POLICE 1
CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON
THE law is the law of the state. Municipal corporations have
no original authority to enact legislation ; their ordinances cannot
go beyond charter limitations. The enforcement of law, the
* Adapted from Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 40:230-233. March, 1912,
304 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
punishment of crime, the prevention of dangerous acts are all
functions of the commonwealth. And this with good reason : it
would be intolerable to have an independent law-making au-
thority set up within the territory of a state. No local com-
munity can be permitted to become a nursery of criminals, a cave
of Adullam serving as a resort for dangerous elements. Horse
thieves and burglars will not restrict their malignant activity to
the township of their residence. They may even spare their
neighbors and live by spoiling persons at a distance.
The criminals of a city go out to plunder rural banks and
stores. The common interest does not stop at city lines. The
common enemy must be caught where he can be overtaken. The
recent extension of trolley lines into the country and the intro-
duction of swift automobiles have widened the field for profes-
sional burglars of cities. Against these trained villains the thin
safes of country merchants and banks are mere tissue paper.
The rural constabulary is no match for city bred criminals,
skillful in the use of dynamite and electricity, and shrewd in
studying the hours best adapted for their exploits. The sheriff
at the county seat is a toy in the hands of a professional sneak
thief or burglar. Even if he can spare time from collecting the
fees which fall to him as spoils of his office, he has no natural
or acquired qualifications as a detective ; he is both awkward and
ignorant. Local agents of peace and justice have only a local
knowledge of persons bent on crime, usually those who are most
harmless, stupid inebriates, naughty boys whose mothers have
neglected to spank them. Rural sheriffs and constables know
nothing of sleek, well dressed, polite criminals who reside in com-
fort in the city and put up at the best inn of the country town
while planning to rob a bank or a merchant 's cash drawers. The
big, burly sheriff is a baby in cunning when pitted against a wily
safe-blower who from childhood has lived by his wicked wits and
fooled professional detectives. The rural officials are made cow-
ardly by their habits of life ; they know nothing of the daring
which is characteristic of urban firemen and policemen who face
death daily and never think of shrinking. A desperate fellow
may dynamite fish, contrary to law, in a lake near a state uni-
versity; but farmers and professors are afraid to inform, and
county officials are too timid to arrest. State game wardens,
RURAL POLICE 305
just because they move about on large areas, seem to have some
influence on killing game out of season, but their organization
leaves much to be desired.
What is needed may be inferred from the statement of essential
facts in the situation. We need a larger unit of police control ;
under our political arrangements the governor is the natural head
of all the forces of public safety. It would be a good beginning
to clothe the chief magistrate of every commonwealth with au-
thority to direct county sheriffs and to hold them to strict account.
But a more important measure would be to furnish the governor
with a complete and thoroughly organized corps of detectives,
plain clothes men and mounted police, under a professionally
trained chief responsible to the governor for methods and results.
In the central office would be found an identification bureau, with
Bertillon and finger print records, in close and regular corre-
spondence with the federal bureau of identification; and this
office would furnish descriptions at a moment's notice for any
point in the state or elsewhere. The state police force of a
state would cooperate with those of other states in matters of
detection, arrest and extradition. Suspicious characters in
villages and cities would be kept under espionage and plots would
be discovered and thwarted. Of the necessary legal adjustments
between municipal police, sheriffs and the state force this is
not the place to write. Such adjustments could easily be made in
accordance with precedents already established.
The men of this country owe it to the wives and daughters of
farmers to provide for them better protection. Self-appointed
patrols are not enough, and the state ought not to leave private
citizens to guard their own barns and homes. The insolence, the
fierce passion and the dangerous brutality of certain types of
negroes in the South could be effectually curbed by a guard of
mounted police. It is the hope of immunity which nurses sexual
passion into assault. Animal impulses meet with their best
counter-stimulus and inhibition in the frequent and unexpected
appearance of alert and omnipresent mounted policemen.
Certain results may fairly be expected : In the war with
crime it is essential to make the way of the transgressor as hard
as possible, and, at the same time, open ways to honest industry.
Wild animals disappear before the hunters of civilization. Gangs
306 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of criminals are like predatory animals and must be harried and
watched until this mode of living becomes unendurable. Swift
and sure justice begins with a trained corps of detectives. All
admit that mobs and lyncnings are a disgrace and menace to our
civilization. They arise out of prolonged neglect and freqeuent
miscarriage of justice. They would diminish and disappear with
a well disciplined and effective rural police.
A LAND OF LAW AND ORDER *
ELMER E. FERRIS
THE development of a new, prosperous country attracts the
adventurous as well -as the enterprising. Young unmarried men
come West in large numbers. The restraints of former home
life and social customs are absent. Under such circumstances
it is easy to form habits of drinking and gambling and to fall
into other forms of moral looseness. Personal safety and prop-
erty rights are more or less insecure. Society tends toward law-
lessness.
Such, however, is not the case in Northwest Canada. Quite to
the contrary, it is doubtful if there is any country where person
and property are better protected. The Albertan farmer was
right when he said that this is a country of law and order.
One must travel through the country to appreciate it properly.
One finds himself in an atmosphere of respect for law. The
people feel safe. They assume that the law will be enforced.
The amount of crime and disorder that comes under one's per-
sonal notice is so small as to be negligible, and one sees com-
paratively little of it in the newspapers — at least crime occupies
a relatively insignificant part of their space.
The question then arises, What makes it so? What is there
about the social organization and the underlying forces of this
young civilization that gives it this distinctive feature? It is
evident that in the thought of the farmer it was largely due to the
efficiency of two institutions, the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police and the courts. "When a man commits a crime here,"
i Adapted from the Outlook, Vol. 98, 685-690, July 22, 1911.
RURAL POLICE 307
said he, ''these mounted police get after him, and they land him."
Such is certainly the reputation of the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police. It is an organization that is unique among world-famous "
constabularies. It is a body of men numbering 651; composed
of 51 officers and 600 men, commissioned officers, and constables,
with 558 horses. They police a territory composed of the prov-
inces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the extensive districts of
Mackenzie and Keewatin, excluding, of course, the larger cities,
which have their own constabulary. The most distant detach-
ment is on the Arctic Ocean, 2,500 miles from headquarters at
Regina — a distance that requires two months to travel.
The entire force is under the command of Commissioner A. B.
Perry, with headquarters at Regina. The whole territory is
divided up into eight districts, each of which is under the charge
of a superintendent with headquarters respectively at different
points in the two provinces. At each divisional point there are
barracks, a jail, and complete equipment. There are many duties
performed by the force in addition to what may be termed regular
police duties. They maintain the common jails, escort all prison-
ers to trial and those who are convicted to the penitentiary, attend
upon all criminal courts, serve all criminal processes, escort luna-
tics to the asylum, etc., etc. They also conduct important patrol
expeditions through unsettled and unsurveyed regions, visit the
settlers once a month in sparsely settled sections, make investiga-
tions and report upon the condition of the natives, the state of
immigration, the nature of the soil, crops, etc., in all outlying
regions that are beginning to be settled up — all this in addition
to their regular police duties.
One gets an idea of the nature and amount of work done in
the detection and punishment of crime and the preservation of
order from the report of Commissioner Perry ; it shows for eleven
months of the year 1909 that 6,888 cases of crimes, misdemeanors,
and petty offenses were handled by the force, and that convic-
tions resulted in 5,849 cases, being 86 per cent, of cases tried.
The special reports filed by the divisional superintendents, which
go into the facts with more or less detail, are full of interesting
cases showing the courage and esprit de corps of the force.
308 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE *
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THE Pennsylvania State Police is a model of efficiency, a model
of honesty, a model of absolute freedom from political contamina-
tion. One of the great difficulties in our large States has been
to secure an efficient policing of the rural sections. In communi-
ties where there are still frontier conditions, such as Texas and
Arizona, the need has been partially met by establishing bodies
of rangers; but there is no other body so emphatically efficient
for modern needs as the Pennsylvania State Police. I have seen
them at work. I know personally numbers of the men in the
ranks. I know some of the officers. I feel so strongly about them
that the mere fact that a man is honorably discharged from this
Force would make me at once, and without hesitation, employ
him for any purpose needing courage, prowess, good judgment,
loyalty, and entire trustworthiness. This is a good deal to say
of any organization, and I say it without qualification of the
Pennsylvania police.
The force has been in existence only ten years. It has co-
operated efficiently with the local authorities in detecting crime
and apprehending criminals. It has efficiently protected the
forests and the wild life of the State. It has been the most
powerful instrument in enforcing law and order throughout the
State.
All appointments are made after the most careful mental and
physical examination, and upon a thorough investigation of the
moral character, and the past record, of the man. All promo-
tions have been made strictly from the ranks. The drill is both
mounted and dismounted. The men are capital riders, good
shots, and as sound and strong in body and mind as in character.
This is the force which Katherine Mayo describes in a volume
so interesting, and from the standpoint of sound American citi-
zenship, so valuable that it should be in every public library and
1 Adapted from the Introduction, by Theodore Roosevelt, to "Justice for
All, the Story of the Pennsylvania State Police," by Katherine Mayo, pp.
8-11. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, (copyright Katherine Mayo, Bed-
ford Hills, N. Y.)
RURAL POLICE 309
every school library in the land. In the author's foreword the
murder of gallant young Howell, and the complete breakdown
of justice in reference thereto under our ordinary rural police
system, makes one 's blood boil with anger at the folly and timid-
ity of our people in tamely submitting to such hideous condi-
tions, and gives us the keenest gratitude to the founder of the
Pennsylvania State Police. This was a case of ordinary crime,
in which the sheriff and county constable were paralyzed by fear
of a band of gunmen. Other forms of crime are dealt with in
connection with industrial disturbances. The author shows how
until the State Police Force was established the State, in times
of strikes, permitted the capitalists to furnish their own Coal
and Iron Police, thus selling her police power to one of the con-
tending parties, that of the vested interests.
The author also shows how after the establishment of the Penn-
sylvania State Police this intolerable condition was ended ; local
demagogues and foolish or vicious professional labor leaders in
their turn attacked the Pennsylvania State Police with the foul-
est slander and mendacity, because it did impartial justice. The
prime lesson for all true friends of labor to learn is that law and
order must be impartially preserved by the State as a basis for
securing justice through the State's action. Justice must be
done ; but the first — not only the first, but a vital first — step to-
wards realizing it must be action by the State, through its own
agents, not by authority delegated to others, whereby lawless vio-
lence is summarily stopped. The labor leader who attacks the
Pennsylvania State Police because it enforces the law would, if
successful in the long run, merely succeed in reentrenching in
power the lawless capitalists who used the law-defying Coal and
Iron Police.
No political influence or other influence avails to get a single
undesirable man on the Force, or to keep a man on the Force who
has proved himself unfit. I am informed and I fully believe,
that not a single appointment has ever been made for political
reasons. The efficiency with which the Force does its duty is ex-
traordinary. Any man who sees the troopers patrolling the
country can tell from the very look of the men what invaluable
allies they are to the cause of law and order. In the year 1915
the force made 3,027 arrests and secured 2,348 convictions — 80
310 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
per cent, of convictions. The men are so trained and schooled
in the criminal laws of the State that they know just what evi-
dence is necessary. They^deal admirably with riots. Perhaps
there is nothing that they do better than the protection of women
in sparsely populated neighborhoods. Small wonder that the
criminal and disorderly classes dread them and eagerly hope for
their disbanding!
Year by year the efficiency of the force has increased and its
usefulness has correspondingly increased. All good citizens in
Pennsylvania should heartily support the Pennsylvania State
Police. The sooner all our other States adopt similar systems,
the better it will be for the cause of law and order, and for the
upright administration of the laws in the interests of justice
throughout the Union.
CANADA'S ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE1
AGNES DEAN CAMERON
THE Royal North- West Mounted Police, a handful of men less
than a thousand in number, maintain order over an extent of
country as large as Continental Europe and do their work so
well that life and property are safer on the banks of the Atha-
basca and on Lesser Slave Lake than they are to-day in many
crowded corners of London and Liverpool. How largely looms
the individual in this vast land of Canada, this map that is half
unrolled ! Men, real men, count for more here than they do in
Old World crowded centers.
This is the most wonderful body of mounted men in the world.
Surely more individuality goes into the make-up of this force
than into any other ; it is a combination of all sorts of men drawn
together by the winds of heaven. Five years ago the roll-call of
one division disclosed an ex-midshipman ; a son of the governor
of a British colony ; a medical student from Dublin ; a grandson
of a captain of the line : a Cambridge B.A. ; three ex-troopers of
the Scots Greys; the brother of a Yorkshire baronet, and a
goodly sprinkling of the ubiquitous Scots. For years a son of
i Adapted from Littell's Living Age, 276: 658,659, March 8, 1913.
RURAL POLICE 311
Charles Dickens did valiant service with this force, and has left
behind him a book (as yet unpublished), "Seven Years Without
Beer! "
Far back in the year 1670 another body of men dominated
Canada, the staunch Scottish servants and officers of the Ancient
and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company whose character-mark
for loyalty and fair dealing remains indelible on the early pages
of the history of this land. The charter which was granted to
them in the reign of Charles II had run for two hundred years
and expired in 1870, leaving all Canada west of the Great Lakes
in a condition of readjustment and unrest.
Illicit whisky-dealers, horse-thieves, and smugglers poured
into Western Canada from the United States to the south over
the invisible and unguarded parallel of forty-nine degrees, and
Canadian Indians and Canadian interests needed protection.
This condition of affairs was the immediate cause of the forma-
tion of the R. N. W. M. P. in the early seventies, the launching
of the project and the forming of the force being the pet scheme
of the then premier, Sir John A. Macdonald.
The 300 charter-members of the Mounted Police had their work
cut out for them in the early days on this far frontier where
cupidity and lawlessness reigned and no law of God or man had
previously been enforced north or south of this part of the inter-
national boundary line. The profit to the American "wolfers"
had been great and was measured not in dollars but largely in
buffalo-robes and sometimes in squaws. The traders from the
United States brought bad whisky and worse ammunition and
fire-arms to the Canadian Indians and for their own gain en-
couraged tribal wars and the stealing of horses.
In the forty years of its existence the R. N. W. M. P. has closely
identified itself with the growing history of Western Canada,
being the greatest moral ally to every creative factor of the
country's growth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE
Cooley, H. R. Correction Farm of Cleveland. Annals, 46 : 92-96,
March, 1913.
Farm Colony: Our Experiment in Cleveland, Proceedings National
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Conference of Charities and Correction, 1912, pp. 191-195, 315
Plymouth Court, Chicago, 111.
Elwood, Everett S. Mental defect in relation to alcohol with some
notes on colonies for alcoholic offenders. Proceedings National
Conference of Charities and Correction, 1914, pp. 306-314.
Fernald, W. E. Massachusetts Farm Colony for the Feebleminded.
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pp. 487-490.
Goodyear, Anna F. Description of German and other labor Colonies,
beneficient and penal, showing what we can do with our abundant
land. Old Corner Book Store, Boston, 1899.
Jackson, F. J. Farm Treatment of Misdemeanants. Proceedings Na-
tional Conference of Charities and Correction, 1911, pp. 70-72.
Royaard, A. Farms for the City Poor. Craftsman, 25 : 168-177, No-
vember, 1913.
Famous penitentiary sanatorium at Witzwil. Amer. Rev. of Re-
views, 54 : 441-442, October, 1916.
Haggard, Sir H. Rider. The Poor and the Land; being a report on
the Salvation Army colonies in the United States and at Had-
leigh, England, Avith scheme of national land settlement and an
introduction, p. 157, Longmans, N. Y., 1905.
Potts, C. S. The State Farm System in Texas. Proceedings National
Conference of Charities and Correction, 1914, pp. 54-61.
Scott, E. L. Municipal Correction Farms. American City, 15 : 623-
630, December, 1916.
Whittaker, W. H. Industrial Farm. Proceedings National Confer-
ence Charities and Correction, 1914, pp. 45-48.
RURAL POLICE
Cameron, A. D. Riders of the Plains. Living Age, 276:656-63,
March 15, 1913.
Ferriss, E. E. Land of Law and Order. Outlook, 98 : 685-93, July,
1911.
Haydon, A. L. Riders of the Plains. Nation, 92:425-6, April 27,
1911.
Henderson, C. R. Rural Police. Annals, 40:228-233, March, 1912.
Lewis, C. F. The Tramp Problem. Annals, 40 : 217-28, March, 1912.
Mayo, Katherine. Justice to All. The story of the Pennsylvania State
Police. Putnam, N. Y., 1917.
Mott, L. Day's Work in the Mounted Police. Outing, 48:96-100,
April, 1906.
Ogden, G. W. Watch on the Rio Grande. Everybody's, 25 : 353-65,
September, 1911.
State Constabulary. Nation, 98: 5-6, Jan., 1914.
State Constabularies Needed. Outlook, 106 : 145-6, January 24, 1914.
Thompson, H. C. Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. Outing, 32:
75-80, April, 1898.
CHAPTEE XII
A. THE BUBAL HOME
WOMEN ON THE FARMS1
HERBERT QUICK
MY explorations of the souls of farmers, backed by my own life
on a farm, and the lives my mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, and
women neighbors lived, lead me to the conclusion that the " drift
to the cities" has been largely a woman movement. I have found
the men on farms much more contented and happy than the
women. My mother wanted my father to leave the farm, and
move to a college town where the children could have "a better
chance. ' ' He did not accede to her wishes ; and one bit of spirit-
ual drift was checked. But just to the degree that farmers have
reached the plane of letting the wife and daughter vote on the
future of the family, they have been pushed toward the city.
Out on broad cattle-ranges I have found the men and boys filled
with the traditional joy of open spaces and the freedom of spirit
which goes with it ; but in many, many cases, their women were
pining for neighbors, for domestic help, for pretty clothes, for
schools, music, art, and the things tasted when the magazines
came in.
There is a movement for better things among the farmers'
wives of the land. There is a new organization on an interna-
tional scale. There are questioning and revolt and progress in
the rural homes. This idea is finding recognition among them:
that all the prizes of progress are no longer to be allowed to go
to the man-life on the farm, while the woman-life is left to
vegetate.
I spent a day in a New England neighborhood recently, and
at the sight of the old stone walls which divide field from field,
iny prairie-bred back ached, and my fingers bled in spirit at the
i Adapted from Good Housekeeping, Vol. 57: 426-36, Oct., 1913.
313
314 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
thought of the awful labors of the farmers of old who dug those
stones, carried them off the land, and aligned them in those old
fences. But progress came along and emancipated the man. He
found that it paid to abandon the stonefields and work the richer,
kinder Western lands with machinery. He could make more
money by the use of tools on which he rode. It became profitable
to thresh by steam, harvest by horse-power, put the corn in the
soil by machinery, bind the grain with twine and hoe with a horse-
drawn machine. To handle manure with a fork does not pay
when it can be spread by means of a machine. Potatoes are
sliced, dropped, dug, cleaned, and elevated into wagons by ma-
chines. Tomato plants, cabbage plants, and the like are planted
by machines.
The farmer has come to be a man who operates machines, and
his life is made more interesting and easeful thereby. There is
still a great deal of hard drudgery in his life, but progress and
invention have been busy in relieving him of that dreadful bur-
den under which our farming ancestors bowed, grunted, and
sweated. The internal-combustion engine, while it has trans-
formed the lives of so many city people through the motor-car,
has become the chore-boy and handy-man of the farm.
But all these improvements have come into the life of the man
on the farm because they have been profitable. I do not know
of one which the American farmer has generally adopted merely
because it gave him ease. He has not spared himself. He has
been emancipated in large measure because the easier ways of
doing things have promised better pay for his labor.
And here is where the farm woman has not received a fair
deal in the partnership. Not that she has been entirely without
relief from the march of progress. The wind-mill, or the gas-
engine which pumps water for the live stock, also saves her the
back-breaking carry from the spring-house which sent our mothers
to town invalids, or made their lives a burden. The invention
of the cream-separator and the establishment of the creamery
have freed woman from some of the drudgery of the old-fashioned
dairy.
The farm woman no longer makes cheese, because the cheese-
factory can do it better and more cheaply. The introduction of
labor-saving machinery has decreased the number of ravenous
THE RURAL HOME 315
mouths which she must satiate with food. The steam-thresher,
carrying its own cook and crew, saves her the labors of serving
hordes of threshers.
These things helped her because they were introduced as profit-
able innovations, and not as woman-saving ones. More ameliora-
ions of woman-life on the farm will come in for the same economic
reason. In many parts of the country women milk the cows ; but
the next development is sure to take the form of the general
adoption of mechanical milkers. These machines are being thor-
oughly tried out, and where twenty or more cows are kept in a
herd, the milking-machines pay. Therefore they will be adopted ;
and thereby both women and men will be able to lead easier and
fuller lives of greater happiness on the farms.
The present woman movement on the farm is toward. a higher
plane than the economic plane. It is a demand for happiness and
ease and the fruits of progress in the house, as well as out of it.
In brief, the farm woman is now demanding, and receiving, bet-
ter things in the order of their nearness to her daily life — first,
things in the house for her housekeeping; secondly, things in
the house for her children's happier and fuller home life; and
thirdly, things outside the house, in the neighborhood, for the
better and fuller community life of herself, her children, her hus-
band, and her neighbors. This is the outline of the rural uplift
which is gathering force every day.
Millions of farmers' wives do their own housework. The
problem of domestic help is more difficult on the farm than in the
city. They care for their children — and their families average
larger, I am sure, than do the families of city women. They
have been emancipated to a large degree by the factory system
from the task of making the clothes of their families; but they
still make their own clothes, in the main, and much of the
clothing of their families. They cook, cure meats, make sausages,
bake their own bread and pastry, churn, make butter, tend gar-
dens, and once in a while lend a hand in the haying, or other
out-door work. The women of the cities complain that they have
lost their economic usefulness in the household, and demand a
share in the productive work of the world. No such wail ever
arises from the women of the farm. Their hands are full of
necessary and productive work from morning till night.
316 RURAL SOCIOLOGY .
In a large measure this work is done without the modern aids
to housework which city women possess. If a vote could be taken
of the farmers ' wives of the nation as to the improvement in the
house most generally needed, I think there can be no doubt that
the referendum would be overwhelmingly to the effect that the
first great need is running water in the house ! And this is the
first concession to progress that farm women are getting. Mil-
lions of them have no cisterns, and the simple first step toward a
parity of women's work with men's is to put a cistern of soft
water in commission, with a pump plying into a kitchen sink.
The next thing is a water-back to the kitchen range, and a faucet
of hot, water. These lead directly to a washing-machine for the
laundry work.
Not in words, but in deeds, and still more in thoughts, the in-
sistent need of emancipation from drudgery is making itself felt
in rural homes. Not in words, but in spirit, these things are
appearing in the current thought of American rural life. It
pays to make the women happy. It pays to emancipate slaves,
and especially when those slaves are our wives, our mothers, our
daughters. It pays in money, indirectly, if not directly; but
whether or not it pays in money, it must be done. Any farm
that can afford a silo can afford a bathroom and a septic-tank
sewage-disposal system. Any farm that can afford a cream
separator can afford a washing machine. Any farm that can
support pumping and storage facilities for the live stock can
afford running water, hot and cold, in the house. Any farm that
can maintain a manure spreader can afford an acetylene, gaso-
line, blaugas, or electric lighting system. Any farm that can
afford self-feeders for the cattle can afford vacuum cleaners and
electric labor-saving devices for the women. Any farm that can
justify binders, silage-cutters, hay-forks, pumping engines, shred-
ders, side-delivery rakes, corn harvesters, potato planters, and
finely equipped barns can afford every modern convenience for
making the home a good place for women to live, work, rear chil-
dren, and develop in them the love for farm life.
A corn-shredder or a silo costs more than an electric lighting
system for the farm home — a system which will give the women
all the things that city women receive in the way of electric
THE RURAL HOME 317
service. A modern hog-house, a thoroughly good set of poultry
buildings, a concrete feeding floor, an improved equipment of
stanchions for the dairy barn, or a good bull to head the herd, is
not much, if any, less expensive than a system of water-works for
the house, which places water under pressure in the bathroom,
kitchen, and bedrooms.
Let no one understand from what I say here that the condi-
tions of work and living which weigh down upon millions of farm
women, and which account for much of the prevailing discontent
with farm life, have caused, or will result in, much of that sex
revolt which is so much talked of in feminist circles all over the
world. The farmer 's wife is not discontented with her husband,
nor with his treatment of her. She may even in many cases
throw the weight of her vote against the expenditures necessary
to emancipate her from unnecessa^ drudgery. To her the mort-
gage on the farm is a nightmare as baleful as it is to her husband.
She knows her husband 's business, and is as solicitous as he is for
management which will bring profits.
But there is a woman here and a woman there who sees that
the whole scheme of family life falls to ruin if the home suffers
in comparison with homes of those friends and relatives who live
on wages in the towns. She and her husband begin to realize
that it does not pay to build the farm up into a profitable prop-
erty which is despised by the very children for whom they are
giving their lives. And they are studying statistics, too. They
find that such facts as have been compiled by Dr. Otis, of Wis-
consin, establish the fact that farms pay just in proportion to
the amount of the farm value which is invested in equipment,
rather than in mere land. And myriads of farmers are fore-
warned by their wives' discontent with farm life that a crisis
is approaching in which the decision will have to be made between
removing the family to town or bringing the things of the town
to the family.
When, however, the tired and harassed farm wife comes to
the point of asking herself whether it is worth while to stay on
the farm, she thinks secondarily of the disadvantages of work
and living which have frazzled her nerves and depressed her
spirits. She thinks first of her children. That is the Eternal
318 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Mother. She finds that the children are, in most parts of the
country, deprived of the school advantages and social advan-
tages which the city gives even to the slum-dweller.
The American farm women constitute our largest class of eco-
nomically useful women. This is shown by the fact that mar-
riage is regarded as a burden by the poor man in the city, but is
almost a necessity for the poor man who owns and works a farm.
The poultry products of the nation are worth as much as the
cotton crop, exceed the wheat crop by four hundred millions of
dollars yearly, and are worth more than the combined values
of the oat, rye, barley, and potato crops. This enormous product,
if lost to us, would be felt ruinously at once in increased cost of
living. It must be credited mainly to the woman of the farm.
For she it is who produces nine-tenths of the poultry products —
the fowls and eggs — of the nation. Give her credit also for but-
ter, cheese, vegetables, pickles, preserves, and a thousand other
things. Allow her, too, her share in preparing the means for
men who grow the rest of the food for us, and for keeping their
houses.
Remember also that she bears our sturdiest children while she
helps to feed us all. And then ask yourself who has done any-
thing for the farm woman? She has been left to shift for her-
self, and must still do so. She still bakes her own bread; she
still scrubs her own floors. She washes her own dishes ; she cans
and preserves and dries her own fruit and vegetables. She has
bent faithfully, dutifully, uncomplainingly over these appointed
tasks while, to the rhythmic swing of its pounding machinery,
the march of modernity has borne class after class out beyond
her. On her rests the burden of emancipating herself from the
things that weigh upon her life; and she is rising nobly to the
task.
There are clubs and societies already formed and forming.
Thousands of farm women are making up their minds that their
sisters who have abandoned the farm and farm life have deserted
the field on which they should have fought and triumphed.
They are studying, where they formerly succumbed ; and advanc-
ing, where they formerly retreated. There is revolt in the air
against counsels of submission and fatalistic retreat. The twen-
tieth century is to see a renaissance of farm life. And the women
THE RURAL HOME 319
who formerly led the fight are to head the counter-charge for
better things on the farms.
AN OPEN LETTER TO SECRETARY HOUSTON 1
FROM A FARMER'S WIFE
MARY DOANE SHELBY
I THINK that I must tell you first that country living is com-
paratively new to me. To my four years of life on a farm I
have a background of many years of city life, during which I did
the strenuous things which women of leisure are apt to do to-day.
In the midst of these activities a great doctor told my husband
that he was in a bad way physically and must henceforward lead
an out-of-doors life. It was decided that we should try farming.
Health was the first consideration in the selection of our new
home, but we must make the enterprise a paying investment.
We chose a beautiful stock farm in the foothills of the Ozarks,
in a sparsely settled neighborhood which had had no newcomers
for years.
The roads are poor. When crops fail, our neighbors accept
the situation philosophically and keep their families in food by
cutting timber and hewing railway ties. They are a simple
people whose wants are easily satisfied. They know little of the
outside world save as an adventurous son or daughter has left
home to seek employment as a streetcar conductor or domestic
servant. Their forebears have lived here for nearly a hundred
years. While their opportunities for "book learning" have been
incredibly meager, they come of such fine stock that the lack of a
formal education serves to emphasize native ability. I feel very
modest when I am with them.
Within a radius of ten miles I am familiar with family con-
ditions. Unless the mother is still a young woman, one finds from
seven to sixteen children in each household. I have given the
two extremes. I humbly confess that I fall below a fair city
average in this regard. With this exception, and the fact that
I have more material possessions, my problem and my neighbors'
i Adapted from the Outlook, Vol. Ill, 923-5, Dec. 15, 1915.
320 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
as women trying to make a home in a promising but undeveloped
farming community are the same.
What does every home-maker want primarily ? Health, and a
chance at the higher life for her family — an education for her
children.
The farmer's wife should find these things possible to attain.
As a matter of fact, they are out of reach of most of the women
of this neighborhood. The reason for this, I believe — and here is
a conclusion which surprised me — is that the Government does
not give the country woman the protection which the city woman
receives and which she should have if she is to be the economic
factor in the National life which she will become if she intelli-
gently follows the path marked out for her by your Department.
Of late, when I have been reading your bulletins on sanitation,
Mr. Secretary, I have been reminded of Moses. He had probably
given the Children of Israel such instruction with regard to
matters pertaining to health before he realized the necessity of
putting his farm bulletins into law. It is to remind you of this
that I am writing you now.
On a neighboring farm, where the barns are not far from the
house, there is a large pile of stable manure. It has been stand-
ing there for weeks. My neighbor's wife knows why she has so
many flies; she also knows the menace to health. Her husband
knows too. Your information has reached them. But it seems
that at the present time there is no available field for this fertil-
izer ; no man and team to haul it ; sometime it will be attended to ;
just now "he" is busy with other work. The city man would be
prevented by law from thus jeopardizing the health of those
around him. The farmer is permitted to dally with the situation.
Why could there not be rural health departments to insure
sanitary conditions? The farmer and his family are said to be
National assets. Why not protect them? The forest has its
rangers; conservation of forces would suggest a like protection
for farm folk.
Another neighbor is permitted to let the drainage from his
farm buildings pollute his water supply. Why not have build-
ing restrictions for the farm ?
At our annual "graveyard cleaning/' when the valley people
meet at the burying-ground next the school-house, every family
THE RURAL HOME 321
has its little mounds from which the father cuts the long grass
and weeds, and over which the mother allows herself time for
the luxury of tears. A conference with our overworked country
doctors would reveal the many causes for a high death rate in
naturally healthy regions. The city slogan "save the babies"
might well be extended to the country.
I will frankly confess that I had much more reason for confi-
dence in the milk which I used to buy in bottles in the city than
I have now that it comes from our own cows. I have obtained
tolerable conditions through strikes and boycotts, refusing for
days to accept milk until the stables were properly cleaned.
That I have been successful in these hazardous domestic enter-
prises is entirely due to my family's sense of humor, which has
never yet failed me. I could not advise my neighbors to resort
to my methods, although their need is greater than my own. I
am sure the course pursued by Moses would be better for family
tranquillity.
It is a usual thing, when the summer exodus comes, for the
newspapers and family physicians to warn city people of the
probability of finding contaminated water and unsanitary con-
ditions generally in the country. There seems to have been little
thought of the helplessness of the women and children who are
compelled to live (or die) in those regions. One must conclude
from the universal warning that the problem is a National one,
calling for new legislation and its enforcement.
I have mentioned our roads. In certain stretches they are
tragically, laughably, hysterically rocky. In other stretches they
are punctuated with stumps. Few women would venture to drive
a team over them for any distance, although the men, through
practice in driving, are able to cover the rough miles at a remark-
ably good gait.
It is a matter of record that on the ground of bad roads alone
the Government has so far refused our community free rural
delivery, although there are many men who could easily qualify
as carriers, covering the territory in the time required by the
Government and serving ninety families three times a week.
Don't you think, Mr. Secretary, that bad roads are a very good
reason for having a free delivery of mail? Isn't it better for
one responsible man to go over the road than that ninety families
322 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
should have to send for their mail or go without? I am not
speaking for Big Hawk Valley alone. In these stretches of
country where money is not plentiful, and where the farmers and
their wives are dependent upon their own physical exertions for
everything necessary for living, Governmental and newspaper
urging doesn't take us very far on our way toward good roads.
When we shall have automobile roads we shall not need rural
delivery. In the meantime we are paying our taxes and are
really a part of the United States of America, although we should
hardly realize it save for sentimental attachments.
Since I have been living in Big Hawk Valley, Mr. Secretary,
I have often wished for a vote, although it was far from my inten-
tion to express my wish in this letter. But here, more than any
region I have known, the ballot seems to be a subtle but insur-
mountable barrier between me and all questions subject to a vote.
Our women take part in the work of men. If necessary, they
help take care of the live stock, gather wood, and work in the
fields, but their sphere most emphatically does not include "med-
dling ' ' with questions to be decided by men alone.
I am reminded of this by a placard which is posted upon the
door of the school-house. It calls attention of parents to the
State law which requires six months ' yearly school attendance of
every child of the required age. Owing to a curious knot which
no one attempts to cut, the children of this neighborhood are
getting only four months' schooling in a year, although we are
paying taxes for an eight-month term.
The situation has been brought about through a mistake in dis-
tricting the county. Our district includes a near-by mountain
and is of illegal length. Since the mountain children must be
taught as well, or as poorly, as the valley children, and since
neither the mountain, fathers nor the valley fathers are inclined
to two wagon trips daily to take the children to school, two little
school-houses were built, one in the valley, the other on the
heights. One teacher divides the eight months ' term between the
highlanders and the lowlanders. This year she serves the moun-
tain folk from July through October. The valley children will
attend school from October through January.
I should be an ingrate, Mr. Secretary, if I closed without tell-
ing you that I owe my vocational training as a farmer's wife
THE RURAL HOME 323
almpst entirely to your Department. My text-books have been
the Government bulletins. I have them bound, indexed, and
catalogued. There is not a day ,when some one of the household
does not refer to them. Yesterday I heard one of my aides, a
neighbor's daughter, say to the other: "Marthy, if you take
that jelly off now, you will be goin' right against the Gov-
ernment ! ' '
WOMEN IN RURAL LIFE 1
SIR HORACE PLUNKETT
IN the more intelligent scheme of the new country life, the
economic position of woman is likely to be one of high importance.
She enters largely into all three parts of our program — better
farming, better business, better living. In the development of
higher farming, for instance, she is better fitted than the more
muscular but less patient animal, man, to carry on with care that
work of milk records, egg records, etc., which underlies the
selection on scientific lines of the more productive strains of
cattle and poultry. And this kind of work is wanted in the
study not only of animal, but also of plant life.
Again, in the sphere of better business, the housekeeping
faculty of woman is an important asset, since a good system of
farm- accounts is one of the most valuable aids to successful
farming. But it is, of course, in the third part of our program,
—better living, — that woman's greatest opportunity lies. The
woman makes the home life of the Nation. But she desires also
social life, and where she has the chance she develops it. Here it
is that the establishment of the cooperative society, or union, gives
an opening and a range of conditions in which the social useful-
ness of woman makes itself quickly felt. I do not think I am
laying too much stress on this matter, because the pleasures, the
interests and duties of society, properly so called, — that is, the
state of living together on friendly terms with our neighbors, —
are always more central and important in the life of a woman
than of a man. The man needs them, too, for without them he
i Adapted from "The Rural Life Problem in the United States," pp.
139-141, Macmillan, N. Y., 1910.
324 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
becomes a mere machine for making money ; but the woman, de-
prived of them, tends to -become a mere drudge.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CHANGING RURAL HOME *
GEORGIA L. WHITE
THE committee on Rural Home Making begs to submit the fol-
lowing report of its plans for work for the coming year. In
looking over the available material for a study of the problem of
the rural home and its relation to the rural community and rural
life, the committee finds little that can be utilized for a careful
study of the present problems. There has been much generaliza-
tion concerning the rural home but this generalization has been
based upon material which is inadequate and seemingly contra-
dictory.
This lack of reliable material about the home seems to be
due to several causes.
(1) The tendency we all have to take for granted the things
with which we are most familiar and to assume that the condi-
tions with which we are acquainted are typical.
(2) The intimacy of home relations which makes a study of
the conditions in the home, except possibly of the economic con-
ditions, seem to be an intrusion.
(3) The fact that many of those who in recent years have been
interested in studying rural conditions and the rural home have
been town or city born and bred and, therefore, when they have
attempted to make a survey they have used the town home as the
standard and have interpreted the phenomena which they found
in terms of the town home.
(4) The fact that many investigators have studied the home
with reference to some particular reform which they wished to
introduce into rural life or with reference to some social scheme
which they wished to justify.
(5) The inability of many of those interested in country life
i Adapted from Proceedings 1st Natl. Country Life Conf., Baltimore,
1919, pp. 117-119. National Country Life Assn., Dwight Sanderson, Ex.
Secy., Ithaca, N. Y.
THE RURAL HOME 325
to realize the change in rural home conditions, and the tendency
they have shown toward assuming that the function which the
rural home should perform and does perform in the community
has remained unchanged in spite of the great economic and social
changes outside the home.
Because of this scarcity of reliable material on which to base
attempts to solve some of the problems of the rural home, it
seems to the committee that the most important pieces of work
that it can undertake for the coming year will be those of —
(1) Gathering together the few studies which have already
been made of the rural home and —
(2) Making new studies in different sections of the country
and under different conditions, in order to secure, if possible, suf-
ficient material for formulating some tentative statements as to
the present status of the rural home in the community, its func-
tion, and its problems.
The committee feels that further information should be
gathered concerning the following points and it expects, also, to
add others to the list :
(1) The functions that the home is performing in the rural
community and the degree to which it is necessary or desirable
at the present time, with our present community organization, for
the home to provide food, shelter, clothing, recreation, sanita-
tion, religious life, etc., for the family.
(2) The relative emphasis now placed in the rural home upon
the satisfaction of the desires of the members of the family for
(a) food, (b) shelter, (c) clothing, (d) "higher life."
(3) The relationships existing among individuals in a family
which tend to retard or accelerate progress in the community.
It is felt by the committee that the study of the relationships be-
tween men and women and between adults and children in the
family may indicate whether the rural home is tending to retain
a form of despotism — even though at times benevolent despotism
— which is out of harmony with the democratic standards being
introduced into the community, because of its failure to provide
for a division of rights and responsibilities among its members;
or whether the retention of the older form of family organization
is lending advantageous stability to the community. For exam-
ple, when the war made it necessary for the food administrator
326 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
to utilize the schools and the agricultural extension service in all
its branches to educate the women and the children, — so that
food habits could be changed and food saved without great
detriment to health, — it was found that much of the time, energy
and money used in educating the women and children was wasted
and the results postponed because of the form of control within
the home, and the question arises whether there is a compensating
advantage to the community from this form of organization. It
is felt that a careful study of present relationship may not only
throw light upon the home conditions but also bring out some
interesting facts concerning th*e relation between the amount of
force exerted in the community for bringing about progress and
the actual results produced. It may also help to determine
whether the relationship that is found to exist is based upon an
economic basis or a basis of tradition.
(4) The actions and reactions 'of the home, the school, the
church, the rural government, etc.
(5) The effect upon the integrity of the home of the new
interests which are being introduced into the rural communities :
i.e. whether they are tending toward the disintegration of the
home or the integration of the home on new lines.
(6) The fundamental, as well as the immediate, effects upon
the rural homes of
(a) The introduction of automobiles, telephones, better trans-
portation facilities and improved roads, especially in so
far as they bring the city and country more closely
together.
(b) The organization of the Farm Bureau and the introduction
into the counties of the Home Demonstration Agents
and the Boys and Girls Clubs.
(c) The emergency work which the men, women and children
of the rural districts have been doing during the period
of the war and the local emergency organizations, such
as those formed by the Red Cross, the Council of Na-
tional Defense, the Y. W. and Y. M. C. A., etc.
These indicate some of the lines of inquiry which the committee
would like to follow, though the committee realizes the difficulties
attending the securing of reliable material along these lines.
RURAL HOUSING 327
B. RURAL HOUSING
RURAL HOUSING1
ELMER S. FORBES
%
RURAL housing as a whole exhibits the same differences, the
same degrees of excellence as does the housing of the towns.
There are numbers of farms where the dwellings are well' built
and provided with modern systems of heating and lighting and
with every convenience for the economical dispatch of the work
of the household, where the barns and outhouses are well kept
and clean, and where the sanitation is all that can be desired. At
the other end of the scale there are to be found here and there in
the country single houses or small groups of houses which exhibit
many of the characteristic marks of the slum. Not all, for in'
the open country at the worst, there is plenty of fresh air and
sunlight and space; but there are dirt and filth indescribable,
the most primitive sanitation, serious overcrowding and indecent
promiscuity. These slum spots exist not only in remote dis-
tricts far from the railroads, but close search will find them in
many communities where they would not be expected and where
their presence is known to but few, on narrow country by-ways
and lanes, in wild places in the vicinity of the railways, in ne-
glected woodlands; indeed, there is scarcely a hamlet or town
within whose limits these disreputable shacks may not be dis-
covered.
Two or three cases may be instanced by way of illustration.
The family of a small farmer on the outskirts of a country village
was found living in a one room log cabin in utter disregard of
the ordinary laws of health and decency. As a consequence, two
of the children had been attacked by tuberculosis, and unless im-
mediate action were taken there was every reason to believe that
all would become affected. Another such family lived in a dilapi-
dated combination of dwelling and barn, not fit to be the habita-
tion of either cattle or human beings, Inhere the overcrowding was
equal to that in the most 'congested districts of the cities and all
i Adapted from the Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
Science, January, 1914, pp. 110-116.
328 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
sanitary conveniences were conspicuous by their absence. As an
example of still lower type there may be instanced a degenerate
group of four men, two women and three children who occupied
a shack in a clearing of the woods in the neighborhood of a New
England town until they were finally dispersed by the authori-
ties.
Such cases can be duplicated almost anywhere. In all of them,
with scarcely an exception, the housing conditions are vile, the
equal of anything in the slums of the towns, and yet in the opin-
ion of the writer the problem which they present is not essentially
one of housing reform. In this respect the particularly bad hous-
ing of the rural districts is quite different from that of the towns.
City slums are due in large measure to land and business specula-
tion, utilization of land for dwelling house sites which is too
valuable for this purpose, an inequitable system of taxation, the
lack of any housing law worth the name, inadequate supervision,
and a disposition on the part of some landlords to exploit their
tenants. These are causes which are in no way connected with
the character of the families living in the slums, and their opera-
tion can be checked by right legislation honestly enforced.
The slum spot in the open country, however, is not so much due
to social or economic causes beyond the control of the occupant
as it is to his own mental and moral deficiencies. Land specula-
tion, speculative building, methods of taxation, the greed of land-
lords, none of these in most cases has anything to do with it.
Such dwellings are the natural expression of the lives of the
shiftless, feeble-minded, immoral, drunken or criminal people
who inhabit them. It is not a better housing law which is re-
quired here so much as it is the labor colony, the penitentiary,
the almshouse, and the home for moral imbeciles. These social
plague spots are the cause of enormous public expense and are
a steadily increasing burden upon the industry and thrift of the
community. They should be accurately registered, carefully
studied, and each one should be disposed of upon its own merits.
All this will cost much effort and money but not a tithe of what
it will cost twenty, thirty, or fifty years hence, and incidentally
it will wipe out the country slum.
Dr. W. C. Stiles, of the U. S. Marine Hospital Service, states
that of 3,369 farmhouses in six different States 57 per cent, have
RURAL HOUSING 329
no privies of any kind. The better grade of farm house is always
provided with some sort of sanitary convenience, but the number
where it is anything more than the ordinary outdoor privy is com-
paratively small. The neglected privy is the greatest danger to
the health of the farming community, and a menace to the popula-
tion of the towns through the part which it must play in the
contamination of milk, vegetables, and fruits sent to city markets.
It denies the soil all around it, and unless carefully located may
pollute the family water supply. The fact is so generally known
that it is not necessary to give statistics showing that serious epi-
demics have been started by the use of water from country wells
polluted by the disease-infected privy. It is the breeding place
of countless generations of flies, and when used by persons suf-
fering from any kind of infectious disease, as fevers, dysentery,
diarrhea, and the like, the contagion may be spread far and wide
by their agency. The family cess pool is but one degree less
dangerous than the outdoor privy, and together they have un-
doubtedly been responsible for a vast amount of sickness and
death.
OVERCROWDING AND DEFECTIVE HOUSING 1
HARVEY BASHORE
WHAT is the result of this overcrowding and lack of proper
housing in the country? Just exactly the same as in the great
cities. Lack of efficiency, disease, and premature death to many.
We have been talking much lately of our conservative policy of
lumber, coal and wild animals, but in many instances fail to see
the great loss due to human inefficiency brought about by lack of
suitable environment. While the great majority of people sub-
jected to overcrowding and bad housing conditions do not prema-
turely die, j^et they have lessened physical and mental vigor, are
less able to do properly their daily work, and not only become a
loss to themselves and their families, but to the State ; and for-
ever stand on the threshold of that dread disease — tuberculosis;
for tuberculosis is the one great disease of the overcrowded.
1 Adapted from "Overcrowding and Defective Housing," pp. 8O-92, John
Wiley and Son, N. Y.
330 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Just how much tuberculosis we have in the rural districts in
proportion to the great cities is pretty hard to say: but every
one who has investigated it is -positive in the opinion that there
is just as much in the country districts : indeed, some report more
in the country than in the adjoining cities. We find it in the
farmhouse and the mountain home : habits of carelessness possibly
keep up the infection. We do not have "lung blocks," like the
large cities, but we do have "lung houses," where case after case
of tuberculosis has lived and perhaps developed.
The prevalence of tuberculosis in the country is so evidently
marked that there is a growing interest in the subject in many
places. The Wisconsin Antituberculosis League, a year or so
ago, made a very careful and exact sanitary survey of a certain
rural district in that State, relative to the amount of this dis-
ease, and found that in some parts of this district the death-rate
from tuberculosis exceeded that of Milwaukee, Wisconsin 's largest
city.
Minnesota also discovered that it had much tuberculosis in its
rural districts. "As serious," says Dr. Daugherty, who investi-
gated the subject, ' ' as that in the congested areas of the cities. ' '
Following a rural survey of several townships, under the auspices
of the State Antituberculosis Association, there were found hous-
ing conditions much as I have described in the preceding pages
as existing in Pennsylvania. "The average number of people
sleeping in one room," says the report, "was four." In one
house there were eight, in another nine, and it was not at all
uncommon to find five or six. This was not due to the fact that
there was not enough room, for in many of the houses the whole
family would sleep in one room, use one for the kitchen, and
leave two, three, and in some cases four, rooms vacant.
Coincident with this bad housing there was found one township
where there were twenty-two deaths from tuberculosis in a popu-
lation of 500 in ten years : a death rate of 44 per 10,000. These
investigators in Minnesota also found that "contributing causes,
as overwork and poor food, which play such an important part
among the inhabitants of the crowded tenement districts, do not
usually count for much in the country. Bad housing and unre-
stricted exposure to contagion seem to be the great factors. ' ' Of
course, in certain well-to-do farming districts, such as were under
RURAL HOUSING 331
investigation, this would hold good, but in many other places, es-
pecially in parts of Pennsylvania known to the author, poor
food and lack of food are a vast contributing cause of this dis-
ease. A poor constitution to start with, and insufficient food,
soon engender a condition which quickly yields to the inroads
of the bacillus. As a corollary to this is the rapid improvement
of such incipient cases, when put on the food and under the
proper environment of a sanitarium.
And now a word, a very short word, about the remedy for over-
crowding and bad housing in the country. This probably can
not be attacked as in the great cities, by legislative enactment or
resort to legal measures, but the solution lies, it seems to me, in
proper education by the yarious health authorities, by the schools,
and by the press, and the crusade must be kept up until the peo-
ple understand that it pays — pays in real dollars and cents — to
live in sanitary homes. Educate the rural dweller in regard to
the penalties for bad housing, show him how tuberculosis follows
in the wake of overcrowding, poor food, and dissipation: in a
great many instances he will mend his ways. In Pennsylvania
this work is carried on by the Tuberculosis Dispensaries of the
State Department of Health scattered all through the State,
where they have become the foci for spreading sanitary knowl-
edge of just the sort needed in rural communities. Visiting
nurses from these dispensaries go to the homes, and to my per-
sonal knowledge do much, very much, to remedy the defects of
bad and improper living, and do it without resort to any legal
means. There is no factor so potent for good as the work of
the visiting nurses of this great health department; and many
other States are taking up the work and carrying it forward
on the same lines.
HOUSING CONDITIONS ON FARMS IN
NEW YORK STATE 1
L. H. BAILEY
HOUSING conditions in the country run all the way from very
cheap and poor tenant houses to well-appointed large farm res-
i Adapted from "York State Rural Problems," Vol. 1 : 55-59, Lyon,
Albany, 1910.
332 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
idences. Between these two extremes there is every range of
condition. The better class of farm residences is all that can be
desired. The poorer class is, of course, quite the opposite.
Even the better class of farm residences does not represent money
value as measured by city and town values. This is largely due
to the fact that most of them were built many years ago, when
materials were cheap, and also before the addition of water-
works and other modern improvements. A residence in the
farming region that is valued at one thousand dollars may be
actually more roomy and comfortable than one in the town
that is valued at more than twice that sum. In this letter I am,
of course, omitting all reference to the country seats of non-
residents or absentees.
I have asked Professor Warren to give me his comment on
housing conditions as found in his surveys; and most of the
following statements of fact are his.
Practically all of the farmhouses in New York State, as in the
northern states in general, are made of wood. In the northeast-
ern states nearly all of these houses were built at least fifty years
ago. Only a small percentage have been constructed along the
newer lines. In Livingston county, which is one of the richest
agricultural regions in the country, Warren found that the
average value of these houses in 1909 was not quite $1,600. Of
course, it would cost much more than an average of $1,600 to
build these houses, but this is the estimated average value of the
house as it stands. Perhaps $1,000 would be nearer correct
for the average value of the farm residence in the State, but it
would take over twice this much to build these houses at the
present time. The new houses would probably also be worth
twice as much, because new and better adapted to the needs.
The average number in the family in Livingston county is 4.2
persons, and the average of boarders or hired men .8, making
a total of five persons as the size of the average farm family.
Of course, this gives no suggestion as to the number of children
away from home. In Tompkins county the average farm fam-
ily, exclusive of hired help, was found to be 3.55.
The size of the farmhouse is, of course, exceedingly variable,
but the average would probabty be about six or seven ro.oms.
The farm water-supply is practically always situated at some
RURAL HOUSING 333
distance from the house. On some farms running water is piped
to the house, but these are exceptions. Bathrooms are yet rare
in general farming regions. In western New York, along the
lake shore, a considerable number of farmers are installing water-
supply and bathrooms, but outside of this section probably not
more than one in several hundred of the farms has a bathroom.
In one county less than one in 500 was found to be thus sup-
plied. The heat is nearly always provided by a kitchen stove,
and in colder weather often one additional stove is used. The
chief fuel is wood, but a considerable amount of coal is used in
winter, particularly for the second stove. The almost universal
system of lighting is with kerosene lamps, although acetylene
is used by a small number of farmers. Perhaps more persons
have acetylene for lighting than have bathrooms. The privy is
located largely by chance, so that it is often near the wells, but
in the great majority of cases it is not close enough to be a
serious menace to the water-supply. The fact that it is often
left open so as to provide a feeding-place and gathering-place
for flies is perhaps the greatest source of danger.
All of the above discussion refers to the main house on the
farm. The houses occupied by hired help are usually smaller
and not in so good repair as are the farmhouses discussed above.
Probably tenant houses do not average more than five or six
rooms. The difference between them and the other house is
likely to be more striking in questions of repair than in actual
size.
The change from old housing conditions to new is very grad-
ual. Perhaps it ought to be accelerated by having more atten-
tion given to the subject in public lecture and teaching work.
It is customary not to discuss personal questions so much as
crops and live-stock and commercial situations. If the farmer
lacks in some of the mechanical conveniences of city dwellers, he
gains in space to each person, light, outlook, storage place, room
to move, and ability to control his premises. If he were to add
more freely of mechanical conveniences and contrivances, his
conditions of housing would be enviable. We need now to have
as much ingenuity applied to housing conditions as has been
applied to farming practices.
334 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE
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Baldensperger, J. Beekeeping for Women. American Bee Journal,
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RURAL HOUSING 335
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Warwick, Frances Evelyn. Hodge in Petticoats. Fortnightly Re-
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THE RURAL HOME
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336 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
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CHAPTER XIII
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL
AN EPIGRAM1
T. J. COATES
' * THE average farmer and rural teacher think the rural school
as a little house, on a little ground, with a little equipment,
where a little teacher at a little salary, for a little while, teaches
little children little things."
THE STATUS OF THE RURAL SCHOOL2
ERNEST BURNHAM
THE value of the school as an integrating agent in rural com-
munity life lies primarily in the success of its work as a school.
No single institution can so cheapen rural community life as a
poor school, because next to the common industry — agriculture
— the school is the greatest mutual interest. Besides doing what
it is specifically directed to do — interpret to children their in-
heritances— the school may react as a unifying agent through
the school library, the annual meeting, the course of study, the
social activities of the pupils, cooperation between school and
home, through being the leader in, or at least the host for, the
intellectual and a?sthetic community meetings and through sym-
pathetic, voluntary, competent and unostentatious promotion
of the best things by the teacher.
The chief elements of efficiency in the rural schools are : first,
individual objective in instruction; second, simple and natural
stimulations; third, the inter-action of all grades and ages;
1 Adapted from a circular letter issued by United States Bureau of
Education.
2 Adapted from Rural School Efficiency in Kalamazoo County, Michigan,
Bulletin No. 4, 1900, pp. 22-25. Published by State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, Lansing.
337
338 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
fourth, the constant, though not often consciously realized, tui-
tion of nature.
The chief elements of efficiency now absent from the rural
schools are: first, conscious integration of the work by teachers
and pupils ; second, the best physical and mechanical accessories ;
third, due appreciation of the value of education by many par-
ents and pupils; fourth, adequately qualified and efficiently di-
rected teachers.
The unexhausted resources of the rural schools are: first, an
equalized and proportionate use of local and state funds; sec-
ond, a comparatively well trained and experienced staff of teach-
ers, well led and themselves capable of leadership ; third, a con-
sciously intelligent interpretation of nature; fourth, the im-
petus of Awakened community consciousness.
The state cannot afford supinely or ignorantly to neglect fully
to develop the unexhausted resources of the public schools. It
is true that the rural schools are less well cared for to-day than
the urban schools. It is historically true that the country bred
citizen has been the nation's most valuable human asset. He has
had a longer childhood and youth. He has come to maturity
with a greater potential of nervous energy. He has, by constant
association in work and play, absorbed the wisdom of the parent
generation. Nature has had him largely to herself, and —
"Whenever the way seemed long,
Or liis heart began to fail,
She sang a more wonderful song,
And told a more marvelous tale."
President Roosevelt said, "The small farm worked by the
owner has been the best place to breed leaders for both city and
country."
The conservation of that wholesome country life which pro-
duces the greatest human excellence, is the first public considera-
tion. The rural school is the most peculiarly public institution
in country life. It is the shortest cut to planned public par-
ticipation in rural progress. The rural school teacher is the
largest factor in the problem. The teacher is the publicly ap-
pointed executive partner of the parent generation, of nature,
and of God. The small community integrates the elemental
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 339
sources of life. It is, therefore, an oasis capable of producing
the richest human fruitage. Selected fertilization, industrial,
educational, social, political and spiritual, is the supreme need.
Equipped and inspired leaders incarnate and communicate se-
lected fertilization. The state may, if she will, put such leaders
into the life of every rural community.
The four inequalities in the state's provision for the intel-
lectual uprearing of her youth are :
1. The collection and use of the public funds.
2. The agencies instituted for the qualification of publicly em-
ployed teachers.
3. The supervisory control of the schools.
4. The years of instruction offered at public expense.
Two groups of questions immediately suggest themselves to the
student of rural schools :
First group —
1. To what extent are these inequalities due to defects in the
statutes?
2. What amendments are necessary?
Second group —
1. What inequalities are not due to defects in the statutes?
2. How may these be reached and remedied?
The answers to these questions, which the facts presented in
this report suggest, are :
First group —
1. Inequalities
(a) in the collection and use of the public funds,
(b) in supervision,
(c) in the years of free public instruction,
are due to inadequate statutory provisions.
2. The amendments suggested are —
(a) the enlargement of the area unit for taxation pur-
poses from an ungraded district to a township ;
this not necessarily to involve the centralization of
the schools, ample provision for which, when de-
sired, has already been made ;
(b) the provision of sufficient means for securing effi-
cient supervisory direction of all the schools ;
340 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
(c) the extension of the privilege of free secondary in-
struction to pupils in schools not giving such in-
struction, through the payment of tuition and
transportation by the township.
Second group —
1. Inequalities in the qualification of publicly employed
teachers are human considerations largely not subject to
legal control.
However, there is at present a very noticeable difference in the
preparation by the state of teachers for ungraded rural schools
and graded urban schools. This condition is not due to defec-
tive statutes. It is due largely to an interpretation of the
statutes which has permitted a concentration of the state's ap-
propriations for teacher training, more than five-thirteenths of
which has been paid by rural ungraded districts, upon the
preparation of teachers for graded urban schools.
2. This condition has come into public attention and in recent
years a redirection of part of the normal school activities to the
service of the ungraded rural schools has begun in a small way
to make good to these schools the accumulated loss of the years.
Further attempts have been made to refund the rural communi-
ties that which has been taken from them by the state without
practically any direct return, by the remitting of tuition in the
normal schools to teachers preparing for country service and by
the institution of the county normal training classes, largely sup-
ported by the state, for rural teachers.
REHABILITATING THE RURAL SCHOOL1
L. L. BERNARD
IT is the contention of the present writer that the heart of the
problem of functionalizing the rural school is the question of
the curriculum. Therefore, in the following brief outline of
changes most urgently needed to be wrought in the general or-
ganization of the rural school this change is placed first,
i Adapted from "School and Society," Vol. IV, Xo. 100, p. 810-16, Nov.
25, 1916.
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 341
We must fall back upon the rural school as the only agency
which fulfills all the fundamental conditions necessary to equip
it for the work of educating the rural population up to the new
requirements of country life in our day. The rural school, under
proper conditions as to organization and curriculum, should be
able to give this information most effectively to the largest num-
ber and in the shortest time. Therefore all reforms of the rural
school should aim directly or indirectly at functionalizing its
curriculum. The changes which might be immediately brought
about in the rural school's course of study, without arousing un-
necessary opposition or disturbance, are three in number.
1. Certain of the old and well established subjects, such as
arithmetic, grammar (language study), biology (nature study),
geography and physiology (sanitation and hygiene), should be
brought down to practical and local application. Educational
theory as applied to the rural community has already gone this
far. It is only necessary to infuse the political state educational
administrations with the knowledge of the desirability of this
change to make it fairly effective, and there is some cause for
encouragement in believing that this desired end may be at-
tained even before politics is eradicated from these state educa-
tional administrations. Some text-books and teaching outlines
looking in this direction have already been prepared in each of
the subjects mentioned. The general effect of such a change
would be to bring the formal instruction of many of the standard
courses in the rural school into direct and functional contact
with the techniques of the occupation of farming. Nor would
any general or cultural educational values adhering to these sub-
jects be lost, for the general underlying principles of knowledge
in each would of course remain the same. Only the illustrative
material would change.
2. The courses mentioned above can at their best be made to
deal only with the techniques of production and sanitation.
They can not be made to reach over into the constructive eco-
nomic and social activities of country life.
At present there are no courses in the country school which
perform this wide function, and such courses must be introduced.
The knowledge for which there is now the most crying need in
the rural community is that which will enable the farmer to
342 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
understand the fundamentals of his business, social, institutional
and civic life. The modern farmer, regardless of the size of his
acres, must be a business man, whether he wishes it or not. He
has at last been caught in the swirl of the industrial revolution
with its emphasis upon division of labor and specialization ; upon
markets and credits; and above all upon science and efficiency.
For the sake of greater productivity he has lost his self-suffi-
ciency. A half-hearted teaching of agriculture has been added
to the rural course of study, but the farmer has not learned to
enter the markets to the best advantage nor to protect himself
once the requirements of his occupation have brought him in.
His institutions are largely outgrown survivals of pioneer con-
ditions and have neither the organization nor the grasp neces-
sary for adjusting him to modern life. They are largely inert
and parasitic, not virile with the spirit of leadership. The gov-
ernmental aspects of rural life are so little in the farmer's con-
sciousness that he scarcely realizes that he has any such connec-
tions at all. Although the plan of organization of county and
rural governments is not beyond the powers of comprehension
of the most ordinary normal intellect, very few farmers who have
no political ambitions for themselves really understand it.
Government means to them national government, and no other
group so complacently takes its political opinions ready made
or so universally fails to take any opinion on matters of most
intimate personal concern to it. Organization for independent
political expression, especially on local matters, is extremely ex-
ceptional among farmers.
Th6 explanation of such a wholesale abdication of the priv-
ileges of democratic control over his destiny can be explained
only in terms of the farmer's lack of information regarding his
broader social and economic needs and the techniques of organiz-
ing his interests effectively. The most hopeful proposition for
meeting this need is to introduce just this subject-matter into
the rural school curriculum. The time has arrived when we can
no longer forbear to add courses of regular instruction in mat-
ters of such intimate concern to the farmer's welfare.
3. A third change in the rural school curriculum capable of
accomplishing much good would be to make the school readers
truly supplementary to the general purposes of education. The
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 343
reader should supplement the two types of instruction outlined
above, but particularly the second, the more general economic,
social and civic type of teaching. The readers should be dis-
tinctly supplementary, their general function being to stimulate
interest in more intensive study and to give coloring and emo-
tional content through personal instances and sidelights. Thus
a description of cooperation in Denmark or of the work of Pastor
Oberlin or the story of the founding of the John Swaney School
could not but give the student an impetus to the discovery
through his formal courses of the techniques for bringing about
such changes in his own community.
One of the most frequent objections to proposals to expand
the curriculum on its civic side is that there is not time for such
a modified curriculum in the one-teacher rural school. That is
true in essentials. It is also true that there is not time for the
efficient teaching of any curriculum in a school consisting of
eight grades and presided over by one teacher only. Where at
all possible the old one-room school must go. It belongs to the
age when farming was carried on by means of a single horse and
a double shovel or a "bull tongue" plow and each family was
a self-sufficing unit with but few and simple contacts with the
outside world. This is the age of machine farming and it is also
the age of efficiency in education. The consolidation movement
is so well under way that it scarcely needs the support of argu-
ment ; it is much more in need of guidance. There are three
kinds of consolidation, and of these complete consolidation of
enough districts to make the school really efficient and to pro-
vide high-school facilities is by far the best type where it is at all
possible. This sort of consolidation involves transportation,
which is at once the most expensive and the most combated fea-
ture of consolidation. But even transportation pays in the long
run. Where complete consolidation with transportation does not
appear to be feasible many districts are consolidating for high-
school purposes and leaving the district schools intact for the
elementary students. Such a policy seems of doubtful wisdom.
While there is a saving due to the lack of community transpor-
tation, the cost in duplication and inefficiency probably overbal-
ances the saving. The third type of consolidation is to be found
where two or three or four districts unite, usually for fiscal
344 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
rather than primarily for educational purposes. Such limited
consolidation may be better than none, but it by 110 means ap-
proximates the ideal.
For one reason or another there will probably always be some
isolated one-teacher schools. What can we do with these?
Surely we must have a fairly uniform curriculum for country
schools. Our revised course of study could probably be adapted
to these schools quite as well as the present one is, especially if
the great amount of dead matter which now exists in the rural
school curriculum were eliminated. And the resulting benefits
to the community should be much greater.
The best effects from such a change in curriculum can not be
realized until the rural school is brought into closer contact with
the adult members of the community. Already in certain
isolated instances much has been done in the way of rural school
extension, especially through agricultural club work, school fairs,
cooperative instruction in farm practice and home economics on
the farms and in the homes of patrons; and in some cases the
schools have attempted to give some formal instruction to adults.
The busy teacher of a one-room school is necessarily limited
by lack of time, and possibly by her sex, in the amount that may
be accomplished in these directions. Both these limitations may,
however, be removed if the consolidated school and its extension
work can be so expanded as to include not only agriculture and
home economics, but also cooperative endeavor in the wider
forms of social and civic interests.
Along with these more definitely educational modifications in
the rural school should come certain administrative changes
which we need only mention briefly here. The value of medical
and dental inspection and supervision in rural schools is now
conceded. It is one of the improvements which will soon come
regardless of other changes here suggested. And there is also
great need of better state and county administration, super-
vision and inspection of rural schools. Likewise our taxing sys-
tem as at present applied to country schools does not secure
anything like equality of educational opportunity. These and
other problems are coming into the public consciousness.
But the heart of the rural school problem is that of the cur-
riculum. For as it is, so will be in large degree the intellectual,
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 345
civic and occupational outlook of the farmer of to-morrow. It
should be repeated that without knowledge the fanner can not
even understand his problems ; much less will he be able to solve
them. It is because of the crucial nature of this knowledge
problem that the rural school is the determinative institution of
rural life. If it fails the farmer all else must assuredly fail
him.
THE COUNTY AS A UNIT OF ADMINISTRATION l
A. C. MONAHAN
WE find four units of organization for the administration of
the rural schools in the United States — the district, township,
magisterial district, and county. The district, or the single dis-
trict, as it is sometimes called, is the unit in twenty-one states
and in parts of four others. The township is the unit in ten
states and in parts of three others. The magisterial district is
the unit in two. The county is the unit in eleven states and in
part of one other.
On the whole, the county unit has most to commend it. The
territory included in a county is usually small enough for a
county board to keep in touch with the entire county, and it is
large enough for school districts to be arranged to the best ad-
vantage, both for the convenience of the pupils and for economy
in management and support. It is the unit of supervision in
the great majority of states. For efficiency the supervision and
administration must be closely united. This is possible in the
best way only when the unit of supervision and the unit of or-
ganization are identical. Another consideration in favor of the
county unit is the question of support. The county is now the
unit in most states for the assessment and collection of taxes, the
building and care of roads and bridges, and maintenance of crim-
inal and civil courts. To make it the unit for school purposes
would do away with local district taxes for education, equalize
the tax rate for the county, and distribute the cost of the sup-
port of the schools over the entire county, so that equal educa-
i Adapted from "The Need of a County Unit," U. S. Bur. of Ed., Bul-
letin No. 30, 1913, pp. 52-54.
346 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
tional opportunities would prevail .throughout the county. It
must be clearly recognized that education is a matter of concern
not only to the local district but also to the county, and to the
state and nation as well.
The ideal county system, judging from the most successful
elements in various state systems where the county is the unit of
organization, is probably as follows: The entire management
and control of the schools of the county rests in the hands of a
county board of education composed of three, six, or nine mem-
bers, one-third of whom are elected by the voters of the county
at each annual or biennial election. This insures a continuing
board. The county board should have the selection of a county
superintendent of schools, who becomes the agent of the board
in the management of school affairs. In the administration of
the course of study, however, the county superintendent should
be independent of the county board, as that is a professional task
which requires the expert judgment of a professionally trained
man. The county superintendent should be a man who has had
a good general education, professional education in psychology
and pedagogy, and successful experience as a teacher. In the
administration of the course of study his only responsibility
should be to the state department of education.
The county superintendent should select all teachers for the
county, final election being a prerogative of the county board.
The county board of education should divide the county into
school districts, for convenience in locating schools and assigning
pupils to the various buildings. In each district there should be
a trustee or a board of trustees, either appointed by the county
board or elected by the people of the district. This local board
would have no absolute power, but would have the immediate
oversight of the local school and act in a supervisory capacity to
the county board in all affairs dealing with their school.
School funds should be assessed and expended on the county
as a unit. If the county contains independent school districts,
the school tax should be levied on all taxable property in the
county including that in the city districts. The funds collected
should be divided between the county as a whole and the inde-
pendent districts, probably on the basis of school population.
The basis of division would depend upon local conditions in
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 347
each state. The independent city districts might raise further
funds for the support of their schools, if they so desired. The
school districts in the county might also raise an additional sum
for the support of their school, although in the ideal system the
county funds should be sufficient for all school purposes. It is
essential that the county board of education have power to ex-
pend the county funds wherever they are most needed, regard-
less of the portion of the funds coming from any particular
school district.
The average county in the United States is too large an area
for adequate supervision of its rural schools by the county super-
intendent, unless enough assistance is furnished him so that the
schools may be visited and the teachers assisted in their work
at regular, frequent periods. In the eighteen larger cities in the
United States in 1910 there was one supervisor for every nine-
teen teachers, devoting half or more than half of his time to
supervising. Such close supervision is probably not necessary
in the country schools. The county superintendent, however,
should have at least one assistant devoting his entire time to
supervising the instructional work of the schools for every thirty-
five or forty teachers. Massachusetts and Oregon, both of which
require all schools to be under expert supervision, have set the
maximum as fifty country schools in each supervisory district;
that is, fifty schools to one supervisor. In only a few cases, par-
ticularly in Massachusetts, do any supervisors have as many as
fifty.
THE CHANGE FROM AMATEUR TO PROFESSIONAL
TEACHING *
HAROLD W. FOGHT
THE change from amateur to professional teaching may be
hastened in several ways: (1) Salaries should be increased
enough so a teacher with family may live on his income with-
out worrying how to make ends meet. Provision should also
be made, by legal enactment, for a liberal sliding-scale salarj^,
allowing the teacher's income to increase in direct ratio to
i Adapted from "Efficiency and Preparation of Rural School Teachers/'
Bulletin 49 (1914), U. S. Bureau of Education.
348 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
length of service in the same community. This is only fair,
since teachers of the right sort will unquestionably grow in
value to the community year by year. (2) The entire school
plant should be reconstructed to answer present needs and be
attractive and sanitary. This would be another inducement for
the teacher to spend his best years in the open country. (3)
The community should be obliged by legal enactment to erect
a teacher's cottage close by the modern school building and pref-
erably upon the same grounds. (4) Teachers' colleges, normal
schools, and other schools with teacher-training classes should
be encouraged to organize distinct departments in rural life and
rural teaching, from which to draw teachers prepared and will-
ing to undertake work in the new farm schools.
THE RURAL HIGH SCHOOL1
GEORGE H. BETTS AND OTIS E. HALL
WILLINGNESS of the rural community to provide high school
education for its youth is one of the first tests of its right to
the loyalty of the young people. The four years of school
privileges above the elementary grades now so generally avail-
able to urban children must be similarly open to country boys
and girls, else we can not blame them for deserting the farms
for the better educational opportunities afforded by the town.
The high school must be free and must be accessible to the boys
and girls of the farm.
The high school is not yet free to the majority of rural chil-
dren, even if they are willing to go to town for their high school
training. In many states the rural youth must himself pay a
tuition of from three to five dollars a month if he attends the
nearest town high school. His district disclaims all responsibility
for his education after he completes the elementary school. Some
states, as Iowa, for example, have recently provided that grad-
uates of rural schools may attend the nearest high school, the
district to pay the tuition fees. But in the Iowa law, reasonable
i Adapted from "Better Rural Schools," pp. 258-202. The Bobbs-Mer-
rill Company, Indianapolis, 1914.
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 349
as the demand on the district is, the liability is limited to three
dollars and fifty cents a month, any amount in excess of this de-
volving on the pupil.
But even where the rural district freely pays the tuition in
the town high school, such a situation is far from satisfactory.
The high school training afforded rural children should be in
rural high schools arid not in town and city schools. Not only
in curriculum but in spirit and in teaching, the rural high school
should represent the life and activities of the farm. If the rural
high school is to maintain an adequate standard of efficiency,
if it is to serve its patronage aright, it must take into its pro-
gram of studies training in the concrete affairs awaiting its
graduates. There are at present more than two thousand public
and private high schools in the United States teaching agricul-
ture, but comparatively few of these have actual country environ-
ment, most of them being situated in towns and cities. Such
is also true of the more than one hundred special agricultural
schools of secondary grade 'located in seventeen different states.
While the agricultural ^courses taught in the city school are val-
uable as educational material and well worth while from the
standpoint of general culture and development, yet of neces-
sity they lack the vitality and concreteness possessed by similar
courses taught with an immediate environment of farm life and
conditions. In the reorganization of rural education that is now
going on, therefore, there must be definite provision for the in-
stallation of high schools as a part of the rural system.
The rural high school is a natural outgrowth of the movement
toward consolidation. It need hardly be argued that the one-
room school can never support a high school course, nor ought
it under any circumstances to undertake the teaching of high
school branches, except in rare instances where a number of the
elementary grades are lacking from want of younger children
in attendance. It has been almost uniformly found that the
consolidating of a number of elementary schools into one school
has brought about a demand for the introduction of high school
subjects. Hence a large majority of the fully consolidated
schools are now offering two or even four years of high-school
work. Not a few of the consolidated rural schools in Indiana,
Ohio and many other states, are fully equal in the scope and
350 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
character of the curriculum and in the quality of teaching to
the best town and city schools. The rural high schools in such
communities are recognized by the colleges and universities, and
their graduates are accepted on the same terms as those from
urban schools.
It may therefore be concluded that the policy of consolida-
tion ultimately commits to the introduction of rural high schools
as a part of the system. This is natural and right, since con-
solidation not only encourages the regularity of attendance that
allows completion of an elementary course preparatory to the
high school, but also provides the type of curriculum and teach-
ing necessary for such preparation. Further, the educational
standards of communities supporting consolidated schools de-
mand opportunities for high school education for their children.
Certain regions, as in Illinois, have developed the township
system of high schools independently of consolidation. Many
of these township secondary schools are of high grade, fully the
equal of town and city schools; indeed, not a few of them are
conducted in some convenient town or cky of the township and
are in effect not rural high schools at all. They offer the tra-
ditional high school course of study, are governed by the typical
urban high school spirit, which looks not toward farming but to
other lines of occupation, and are therefore not the type of sec-
ondary education most useful to rural communities.
In other sections of the country, county high schools prevail,
the county supporting one secondary school open to all qualified
residents within the county. The county high school can be
approved only as a temporary expedient to supply secondary edu-
cation at a time when the economic ability is not equal to the
burden of supporting high schools available to every community.
In order to be wholly efficient, the high school must, like the ele-
mentary school, be brought to the door of those for whom it is
intended — and must not require traveling half-way across a
county in order to obtain its advantages. Nor must it demand
that the pupil leave his home and enter the school as a boarding-
school. To be truly a school of the people the rural high school
must be connected with the rural elementary school, which is
equivalent to saying that it will become a part of the consolidated
school of the future.
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 351
THE SPREAD OF THE SCHOOL MANSE IDEA 1
GEORGE E. VINCENT
THE older countries of Europe have long recognized that the
proper housing of teachers is as much a duty of school authori-
ties as the provision of class rooms, laboratories and gymnasia.
In Denmark every rural school has its teachers' house with
kitchen garden and flower garden. The schoolmaster and his
assistants live on the school grounds. The institution is not a
place deserted for all but a few hours in the day; it is rather
a permanent residence of community leaders. Little wonder that
the Denmark schoolmaster holds his place year after year. It is
not unusual for a principal to devote his whole life to one or two
communities. Throughout Germany practically the same system
prevails with the same results in educational efficiency and com-
munity leadership. In France every rural teacher is provided
at public expense with living quarters. The same system is well
established and is spreading in Sweden, Norway and Finland.
In various parts of the United States significant experiments
in providing houses for teachers have been made. In Hawaii
one-third of the schools have cottages built at public expense.
In the state of Washington notable progress has been made in
furnishing living quarters for teachers. North Dakota has
twenty-two schools equipped in this way. Mississippi, North
Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee and Oklahoma have made promis-
ing experiments. In St. Louis County, Minnesota, twenty-five
rural school teachers live, in groups of two and three, in cottages
built and completely furnished at public expense.
A teachers' house or school manse is peculiarly necessary to
the success of the consolidated rural school which, it is now
agreed, is to be the typical country school of the future. There
should be built, in connection with the consolidated school on the
same grounds with the school building and heated by the same
plant, a permanent house for the use of the teaching staff. This
building should contain a wholly separate apartment for
the principal and his family, living room and bed-rooms for the
1 Adapted from Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, Vol. 67: 167-160, 1010.
352 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
women teachers, laundry, kitchens, etc. It should be equipped
with a view to providing in the community a model of tasteful
and economical domestic furnishing and decoration. The rentals
and other charges should be so regulated as to provide for the
maintenance, insurance, repairs and renewals of equipment, but
not for a sinking-fund. The house should be regarded as a part
of the school plant and included in' the regular bond issue for
construction. A privately owned manse in Illinois is netting 8
per cent, on an investment of $10,000.
The manse has a bearing in several ways upon the educational
work of the school. Flowers and vegetable gardens are natural
features of school premises which are also residence quarters.
The domestic science work of the school can be connected in
valuable ways with the practical problems of manse management.
The cost accounting offers a capital example of bookkeeping.
The use of the school as a community center is widened and its
value enhanced. The school as art institution takes on a more
vital character in the eyes of the countryside.
Most important of all is the effect upon the teacher. Com-
fortably heated, well-lighted quarters, comradeship with col-
leagues— and at the same time personal privacy — a satisfying,
cooperatively managed table, independence of the petty family
rivalries of a small community, a recognized institutional status,
combine to attract to the consolidated rural school manse teachers
of a type which will put the country school abreast of the modern
educational movement. It is futile to preach the gospel of sacri-
fice for the cause of rural education. There is no reason why
rural teachers should be called upon to sacrifice themselves.
They ought not to do it, and they will not do it. The school
manse is not a fad, nor a luxury ; it is a fundamental necessity.
AGRICULTURE AND THE CURRICULUM1
EVELYN DEWEY
MOST states are now recognizing the necessity for making
some effort to promote agricultural stability through the schools.
i Adapted from "New Schools for Old," pp. 252-259. Button, N. Y., 1919.
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 353
Since the exodus from farms begins with the young people, legis-
latures realize that influences which will affect children directly
may result in checking that exodus. They also see that regions
where farmers are poor and farm methods backward are the
most seriously depleted by cityward migration. It is natural
then to think that equipping the children to earn more money
on the farm will tend to keep them there. Therefore, they say
country schools ought to teach agriculture; and they pass laws
making so many hours of study of the subject obligatory during
the school year. They are not teachers and it is not their affair
to say how it shall be taught ; this important detail is left to the
state educational administrators. They in turn find themselves
confronted with the duty of laying out a course of study which
shall fill up the required number of hours, adopting text-books
for the pupils' use and telling every teacher what lessons they
shall give, regardless of varying agricultural conditions in the
state. If the farmers in the legislature are skeptical of the
results of this method of attack, they are still glad to have
any attention paid to their profession, and they are usually so
vague as to a better way of dealing with the problem that they
gladly give their support to such bills. Every country teacher
knows the futility of simply going through the required lessons
in the agricultural text-book, in order to make better farmers
or keep children on the farm. The prejudice against book farm-
ing is very general in farming regions. This fact alone dis-
counts most of the knowledge that pupils might gain from their
lessons. Besides this, the same text-book is used for a whole
state, regardless of the particular conditions of soil, climate, mar-
kets, etc. ; so that it is entirely a matter of chance if the informa-
tion has any application to the agricultural needs of a particular
district. A visitor asked the teacher in a typical one-room
school if she taught any agriculture or gardening ; the reply was :
"No, we are not able to manage any at all." Later the teacher
returned to the subject, saying: "Of course we use the lessons
in agriculture prescribed in the state curriculum." This indi-
cates the value the teachers themselves attach to this type of
agricultural teaching if it is not vitalized by the addition of
practical work adapted to local conditions.
Even if it were desirable to teach grade pupils trades, farm-
354 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ing does not lend itself to the usual state curriculum, or to any
prescribed methods. It is a profession, not a mechanical trade
where practice in routine acts brings skill, and one set of facts
illustrates all its principles. Young children may be able to
understand these general principles, but reciting long prescrip-
tions for soil treatment under theoretical conditions for crops
they have never seen, has no bearing whatever on their future
as farmers, and hinders their education as it takes time which
might be spent in worth-while work.
If there is nothing educational in abstract lessons in agricul-
ture, engaging in agriculture with an open mind is an education
in itself. City and country teachers alike are agreed in testify-
ing to the value of real work in gardens for children of all ages.
The work is valuable because through it the children learn so
much about the commonest things about them, plants, earth,
water and sunshine, not because it teaches them processes which
will enable them to earn more money when they grow up. The
teaching method which looks to the environment of the child
to furnish most of the class-room material makes the teaching
of agriculture a necessity. When children learn to understand
the things around them and learn the possibilities and rela-
tionships of the local environment, there is no danger of train-
ing mere technicians, who are capable only of mechanical work,
nor yet of developing abstract theorists, whose contact with life
is confined to books and ideas.
Using the world for a text-book insures the children's being
fitted to live in that world efficiently. Since the modern world
even in a simple farming district is much too complicated to
give one person a grasp of all its phases, the important thing in
education is to give every person a good working point of view
towards life. Mrs. Harvey believes that there are two essential
sides to this point of view, and that it is equally important that
pupils acquire them both in their school life. The first is suffi-
cient practical knowledge of the industrial and economic life
about them from the side of its underlying principles to insure
their being able as adults to control their material environment,
not to be at its mercy. This work should always be taught with
scientific principles and social relationships in mind ; because it
is no part of the duty of the public schools of a democracy to give
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 355
trade training. It is their duty to teach so that every one can
approach a trade with general skill and critical faculties de-
veloped so that he can learn the trade as a whole, not simply one
process of it. This involves for a school in an agricultural com-
munity, not only theory and practice in gardening and farm-
ing, but general book work which will enable the pupil to under-
stand the business aspects of farming, its place in national life,
markets, buying and selling; the relations of the farmer to the
rest of the world.
The other side to this point of view is the understanding of
the rest of the things in life, which is just as important in a
democracy as the ability to earn a living. Every child should
have a chance to learn how to think for himself ; how to under-
stand national and social aims, how to appreciate beauty and
wholesome pleasure, how to be healthy, self-reliant and cour-
ageous, and how to find out things for himself. Real work pre-
sented in the right way promotes both these phases of efficient
social equipment. It no longer becomes necessary to argue the
advantages of vocational versus cultural teaching; the teacher
can devote her entire time to giving her pupils an education.
No demonstration is necessary to prove the place of agriculture
in the curriculum of a school which sets out to educate farm
children. It belongs there just as much as an adjustment of
the program to the climate, or of the seating capacity to the
number of pupils.
The results of a curriculum made up and starting from the
child's environment are sure to be both vocational and cultural.
The difference between teaching a trade in school and using the
prevailing industrial conditions for 'education, can be demon-
strated by a description of Mrs. Harvey's methods of using
agriculture in the curriculum of Porter, better than by a more
theoretical discussion. From the very first she saw that the
children could be brought up to adopt the best farm methods
as a matter of course, if their intelligence could be enlisted at
the outset. She selected the vegetable and flower gardens as the
best point of attack for the school. Owing to conditions in the
corn belt little attention has been paid to the garden on the indi-
vidual farms. The farmer, busy with the planting, cultivation
and harvesting of the larger crops, had come to feel that he
356 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
could spare no time for the garden. The work of gardening fell
to the lot of the already overworked woman. Usually, there-
fore, the plot cultivated was small and the vegetables were few
and insufficient in variety and quantity. By enlisting the chil-
dren in garden work several purposes were served. The garden
serves as a laboratory for teaching the fundamental principles
of agriculture. The children find a healthy summer occupation,
and those who are too young for the heavier farm work are
unconsciously acquiring knowledge and skill which is certain to
make farm life attractive and satisfying to them eventually
while it gives them an immediate consciousness of and pride in
adding to the family comfort and in saving "mother's" strength.
School gardening can be made a valuable adjunct to country
schools in the corn belt because of its educative value to the
child and its effect upon the community as well. In truck grow-
ing regions some other form of agricultural work should be
employed because children are pressed into service at home so
young that gardens lose their educational value. In using the
environment, emphasis must always be put upon the principles
involved and immediate things should be used as stepping stones
to more remote things. The gardening work was in no sense
supposed to react immediately upon family incomes by pro-
ducing vegetables that could be sold; but was expected to react
indirectly through the added understanding of agricultural
principles and through a raised standard of living. Through the
school garden the child at an age when he is forming tastes and
habits for life can learn all the fundamentals of farming in
which he is expected to take an interest later on.
THE MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS OF KENTUCKY1
CORA WILSON STEWART
THE various impressions which have prevailed throughout the
country in regard to moonlight schools have been amusing in-
deed. Some have imagined them to be schools where children
studied and played and scampered on the green like fairies in
the moonlight. Others have believed them to be ideal courting
i Adapted from Survey, Vol. 35: 429-31, Jan., 1916.
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 357
schools, where lovers strolled arm in arm, quoted poetry, and
told the old, old story by the light of a bewitching moon. Others
have speculated upon their being schools where moonshiners,
youthful and aged, were instructed in the most scientific methods
of extracting the juice from the corn, and, at the same time,
the most secretive, to prevent government interference.
When I was superintendent of Rowan county (Kentucky)
schools, I served as secretary to a number of illiterate folk — a
mistaken kindness. I ought to have been teaching them to read
and write. Among these folk was a woman whose children had
grown up without education, except one daughter, who had had
limited schooling. She had gone to Chicago, and there had
profited by that one advantage at least which the city possesses
over the rural district, the night school. Her letters were the
only source of joy that came into that aged mother's life, and
the drafts which they contained were the only means of reliev-
ing her necessities.
Often she brought the daughter's letters over the hill, seven
miles, to the county seat, for me to read and answer for her.
After an absence of some six weeks, she came in one morning
fondling a letter. I anticipated her mission, and said: "A let-
ter from your daughter ? Shall I read and answer it for you ? ' '
With dignity and pride, she replied: "I. kin answer it fer
myself — I 've lamed to read and write. ' '
In amazement I questioned her, and this is the story she told :
' * Sometimes I couldn 't get over here to see you and the ' cricks '
would be up between me and the neighbors, or the neighbors
would be away from home, and I could not get a letter read
and answered for three or four days ; and, anyway, it jist seemed
like thar wuz a wall 'twixt Jane and me all the time, and I
wanted to read with my own eyes what she had writ with her
own hand. So I went to a store and I bought me a speller, and
I sot up at nights till midnight, and sometimes till daylight —
and I learned to read and write. ' '
And to demonstrate her accomplishment, she slowly spelled
out the words of that precious letter, and she sat down and,
under my direction, answered it — wrote her first letter, an
achievement which pleased her immeasurably, and one which
must have pleased the absent Jane still more.
358 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Shortly after this, there came into my office one morning a
middle-aged man, handsome and intelligent in appearance.
While waiting for me to dispatch the business in hand, I gave
him two books. He fingered the leaves hurriedly, like a child,
turned the books over and looked at the backs, and laid them
down with a sigh. Knowing the scarcity of interesting reading
through the country, I proffered him the loan of these two books.
He shook his head, and said: "No, I cannot read or write."
And then the tears came into the eyes of that stalwart man,
and he added: "I would give twenty years of my life if I
could."
A few evenings later I attended an entertainment in a rural
district school. A stalwart lad of twenty sang a beautiful bal-
lad, mostly original, but partly borrowed from his English an-
cestors. When he finished, amid deafening applause, I went
over and congratulated him. "Dennis, that was a beautiful bal-
lad— it is worthy of publication. Will you write it down for
me?" "I would if I could write," he replied, crestfallen, "but
I cannot. I've thought of a hundred of 'em better 'n that, but
I 'd forget 'em before anybody came along to set 'em down. ' '
These three incidents led directly to the establishment of the
moonlight schools. Not merely the call of three individuals was
sounded, but the appeal of three classes: illiterate mothers sep-
arated from their absent children farther than sea or land or any
other condition than death; middle-aged men shut out from the
world of books and unable to cast their ballot with intelligence
and in secrecy and security ; young people who possess undevel-
oped talents which might yet be made to contribute much to
the world of literature, art, science or invention.
The public school teachers of the county were called together.
These specific incidents were related to them, and the fact that
there were 1,152 such men and women whom the schools of the
past had left behind was dwelt upon. The teachers were asked
to volunteer for night service, to open their schools on moonlight
evenings — to give these people a chance.
This they cheerfully agreed to do, and on Labor Day, Septem-
ber 4, 1911, these teachers celebrated by visiting every farm-
house and every hovel, inviting people of all classes to attend
the moonlight schools which were to open their sessions the next
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 359
evening. They expected some response and hoped for from one
to three pupils in attendance at each school — perhaps one hun-
dred and fifty the county over.
These country folk had all the excuses that any toil-worn
people ever had. There were rugged roads to travel, high hills
to climb, streams without bridges to cross, children to lead,
and babes to carry; but they were not seeking excuses, they
were seeking knowledge. And so they came. They came, some
singly and alone; they came hurrying in groups; they came trav-
eling for miles; they came carrying babes in arms; they came
bent with age and leaning on canes; they came 1,200 strong.
The youngest student was eighteen, and the oldest eight3r-six.
Some learned to write their names the first evening, and some
required two evenings for this feat. Their joy in this achieve-
ment, simple though it was, is beyond the power of pen to de-
scribe. They wrote their names on trees, fences, posts, barns,
barrel-staves, and every available scrap of paper. Those who
possessed even meager means drew it out of hiding and deposited
it in bank, writing their checks and signing their names with
childish pride. Letters soon began to go to loved ones in other
counties and far distant states.
Usually the first of these letters came to the office of the
county superintendent. Romantic in the history of this move-
ment is the fact that the first three letters written from the
moonlight schools came in this order: the first from a mother
who had children absent in the West ; the second from the man
who had said he would give twenty years of his life if he could
read and write, and the third from the boy who would forget
his ballads before anybody came along to set them down.
Educators were skeptical of the plan, and freely predicted
that after the novelty had worn off, the interest would wane.
But in the second session, the first year's record was surpassed
in every particular: 1,600 were enrolled, 350 learned to read
and write, and a man eighty-seven years old entered and put to
shame the record of the proud il school-girl" of eighty-six of the
year before.
There were many incidents of really remarkable individual de-
velopment. A man who had labored for years at $1.50 a day
enrolled, specializing in mathematics — in that particular branch
360 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
in which he was interested, lumbering. At the end of the six-
weeks' session he was promoted at a salary double that which he
had received before. It was not unusual in traveling over the
county to find in the day schools here and there, after the moon-
light schools had closed, a man or a woman seated at the desk
with a child.
In March, 1913, the teachers of Rowan county met in the office
of the county superintendent and declared their determination
to wipe illiteracy out of that county that year. First, the school
trustees were induced to take a census of the illiterates. When
this was completed, an illiteracy record was made. On the rec-
ord was not only the name and the age of every illiterate in the
county, but his history as well: his home environment, family
ties, religious faith, political belief, weaknesses, tastes and pe-
culiarities, and the influence or combination of influences through
which he might be reached in case the teacher failed with him.
Each teacher was given a list of the illiterates in her district
when she opened her day school. She called on these people and
cultivated their acquaintance before the moonlight schools began
their sessions. The home department of the moonlight schools
was established that year, in which the indifferent, the disin-
clined, the stubborn and the decrepit were taught by the teacher
or by some one under the teacher's direction at home. "One
for every one," was the slogan which brought into service doc-
tors, who could teach their convalescent patients ; ministers who
might find a pupil among the members of their flocks; stenog-
raphers who could interest waitresses in the small-town hotels,
and any others who would seek and teach a pupil. Each dis-
trict was striving to be the first to completely stamp out illit-
eracy.
We tried, by every means, fair and foul, to get illiteracy out
of the county to the last individual. At the close of the third
session, we had but a straggling few who could not read and
write — twenty-three in all, mainly defectives, invalids and the
blind.
Meanwhile, the moonlight schools had been extended to twenty-
five other counties in the state, and whether it was in distillery
section or among the tenant class, or in mining region or among
the farmers, it was ever with the same results. Men and women
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 361
thronged to the schools, striving to make up for the time they
had lost, and they pleaded for a longer term when the session
closed.
The Governor of Kentucky, seeing the determined warfare
which was being waged against illiteracy, urged in his message
to the legislature that an Illiteracy Commission be created to
drive illiteracy from the state. The measure creating this com-
mission passed the legislature of 1914 without a dissenting vote,
and the seat of the war against illiteracy in Kentucky was trans-
ferred from the Court House in the county seat of Rowan to
the state capitol at Frankfort. The commission is directing the
state-wide campaign to remove illiteracy from Kentucky by the
time the census of 1920 is taken.
One of the first activities of the Illiteracy Commission was to
enlist the various organizations in the state to aid the teachers
in their warfare on illiteracy. The Kentucky Educational As-
sociation was induced to pass a resolution expressing commenda-
tion and pledging its support. The Kentucky Press Association
was approached for assistance, which was cheerfully given. The
Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs, the Society of Colonial
Dames, and other organizations, were among those to early lend
their aid.
Governor James B. Mc^Creery of Kentucky issued, in Septem-
ber, 1914, the first proclamation against illiteracy in the history
of the world, urging all classes to join in the fight. Again, in
1915, he issued a similar proclamation. Kentucky has celebrated
"no illiteracy" Sunday in October, for the past two successive
years. A galaxy of one hundred and twenty speakers covered
the state during the summer of 1915, condemning the evils of
illiteracy and advocating moonlight schools as a remedy. These
speakers consisted of the governor, state officials, United States
senators, congressmen, judges of the court of appeals, circuit
judges, prominent educators and club women.
Moonlight school graduates have been asked to volunteer to
teach at least one to read and write. Individuals and organiza-
tions have offered prizes to stimulate teachers in their moonlight
schoolwork. A teacher who has taught sixty-two illiterates dur-
ing a session this year believes that he is very close to the $100
state prize. Yet he, like thousands of other volunteer teachers,
362 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
trudges back to the school at night with no thought of reward,
save that of the joy of service and the emancipation of those en-
slaved in the bondage of illiteracy.
Kentucky will owe her public school teachers a debt that can
never be estimated when they shall have wiped out her illiteracy,
which they propose to do by 1920, and in many counties will do
even before that time. That county in the state which has the
largest percentage of illiteracy has taught 1,000 persons in the
moonlight schools this year to read and write, while many coun-
ties have taught two and three hundred, besides raising the
standard of education of many semi-illiterates and others who
have enrolled.
The moonlight school curriculum embraces more than read-
ing and writing: It includes arithmetic, history, geography,
civics, agriculture, horticulture, home economics and road build-
ing. A special method of writing is taught — a moonlight school
tablet, with indented letters for acquiring the form, and ruled
sheets with wide spaces, designed especially for adult pupils.
Readers have also been prepared for such beginners, dealing with
roads, silos, seed-testing, crop rotation, piping water into the
house, value of the daily bath, extermination of the fly, ways of
cooking, and such problems as the people are facing every day.
For example, a lesson on roads reads :
This is a road.
It is a good road.
It will save my time.
It will save my team.
It will save my wagon.
The good road is my friend.
I will work for the good road.
The script lessons follows: "I will work for the good road,"
which pledge the student writes ten times, and if the law of
suggestion works, he becomes truly a friend and promoter of
good roads.
Moonlight schools are conducted in seventeen states, Okla-
homa, Alabama and North Carolina following closely Kentucky 's
lead. These schools minister equally to illiterate Indians in
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 363
Oklahoma, illiterate negroes in Alabama, and illiterate whites in
North Carolina and other states. California and New Mexico,
the last states to adopt the institution, are finding it useful in
the education of the immigrant population of the one, and the
large Mexican population of the other.
There are 5,516,163 illiterates in this country, according to
the federal census of 1910 — more than the entire population of
Denmark, also more than the population of Sweden or Norway,
and of several other prosperous countries. Some countries
thrive, support churches, schools and industries on the number
of people that America is permitting to go to waste. Illiteracy
in the United States is largely a rural problem ; it exists in rural
districts in double the proportion found in urban communities.
Until the moonlight school was established, there was absolutely
no provision for the education of illiterate adults in rural sec-
tions, and there is none in urban districts now, save the city night
school, which receives illiterate foreigners, but in most cities, at
least, does not coax or compel them to attend.
It is the privilege of American public school teachers to wipe
out America's illiteracy. Back to the school-house twenty to
twenty-four evenings, and, with proper organization, the deed is
done ; for experience has proved that all but abnormal adults
can escape from illiteracy in a month's time, and some in even
less.
Could there be more valiant and heroic service to humanity
than the stamping out of illiteracy, the most insidious foe of the
nation ?
A NATIONAL PROGRAM FOR EDUCATION *
(A statement issued by the National Education Association Commission
on the emergency in education and the program for readjustment during
and after the war.)
THE time has clearly come when we in America must think
and plan for education on a scale commensurate with the magni-
tude of the task that lies before us and in terms consistent with
i Adapted from Commission Series No. 1, pp. 10-20; National Educa-
tion Association, Washington, D. C., June, 1918.
364 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the obligations that the coming generations will be called upon
to discharge. Heretofore our educational policies have been con-
fined and cramped by the narrow boundaries of our local units
of school taxation and control. Our conception of education has
been essentially a neighborhood conception. This principle of
local responsibility for the support and control of schools has
undeniable elements of strength. It is an expression of that will
to independence, self-reliance, and individual initiative which
constitutes so striking a quality of American democracy. It
must not and need not be sacrificed. But while the interests of
the local community must still be the determining factor in school
organization and administration, events are rapidly teaching us
that our local interests are genuine interests only when framed
in harmony with our national needs and our international obliga-
tions and responsibilities.
There can, then, be no fundamental antagonism between local
and national needs. There are certain phases of public educa-
tion with which the federal government may properly concern
itself to the immediate and permanent advantage of the schools,
and with an effect upon local initiative and local control that
will be stimulating and salutary. Indeed, the outstanding weak-
nesses and inequities of our public schools to-day are such as to
make their reform on a national scale impossible without federal
cooperation, and here as elsewhere in a true democracy it is to
cooperation and not to domination that we must look for the
solution of our problems.
It is futile to speak of our public schools as the bulwark of
American democracy when tens of thousands of the teachers in
these schools are only sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen
years old ; when more than one hundred thousand are less than
twenty-two years old ; when more than a quarter of a million have
not passed the age of twenty-five.
There are no fewer than five million children in the United
States to-day whose teachers have not passed the age of twenty-
one, and whose teachers have themselves had as preparation for
their responsible work not more than one, two, or rarely three
or four years of education beyond the eighth grade of the com-
mon schools. Every six or seven years these five million children
are replaced by another group equally numerous, subject to the
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 365
same limited opportunities for instruction and guidance. In
the course of a single generation, these groups now aggregating
twenty million men and women will be among the voting citi-
zens of the nation. The intelligence that directs their skill and
industry will be an important factor in determining the nation's
wealth. The ideas and ideals which were impressed upon them in
school will form the background against which they will interpret
and evaluate the nation's policies. Their judgment, guiding
their votes, may make or mar the nation's destiny.
It is in the little schools of the villages and the rural districts
that the youngest, most experienced, and least well-trained teach-
ers are to be found. Little schools they are individually, but
large in the aggregate and big with national significance, for in
them more than one-half of the nation's children are enrolled.
And of all phases of the teaching service that which is repre-
sented by these rural and village schools is the most exacting,
the most arduous, and in many ways the most responsible.
While the teacher of the graded city school instructs a single
group of children approximately equal in age and attainment,
the rural teacher must cover a wide range of subjects with many
groups, adapting himself, a score of times each day, to the vary-
ing levels of growth and attainment. While the city teacher is
helped by expert principals and supervisors, the rural teacher is
all but absolutely isolated, and must supply through his own
initiative, enthusiasm, and resourcefulness many of the elements
of good teaching that one working in an urban community gains
through contact with his fellows.
And yet the environment of these small and isolated schools is
in many ways the best that could be provided for the education
of boys and girls. The equipment of libraries, shops, and labora-
tories may be lacking, but potential resources in abundance lie
round about. What is needed is the mind to interpret them
and translate their lessons. But this is the hardest kind of
teaching, far harder than to assign lessons in books and hear
recitations. It is a kind of teaching that requires knowledge,
insight, and skill to be obtained only through a broad and
thorough training followed by a faithful and carefully super-
vised apprenticeship.
Nor does this tell the whole story of the possibilities and diffi-
366 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
culties of rural-school teaching. The right man or the right
woman in this office may become a real leader in the community,
knowing its people intimately and sympathetically. Under his
or her tactful direction, the schoolhouse may become a true com-
munity center, enriching the social life with a round of whole-
some activities. It would be hard indeed to overestimate what
two hundred thousand mature, well trained, and permanently
employed teachers in these small schools would mean both to
rural America and to the nation as a whole. They could do for
America and American democracy what the village dominies
have done for Scotland and what the rural schoolmasters have
done for Denmark and Norway. They could make these lonely
outposts of culture what they should be, strategic centers of na-
tional strength and national idealism — for outposts though they
may be in one sense, in another and a deeper sense these little
schools, of all our educational institutions, are closest to what is
formative and virile and abiding in our national life.
The urban centers are not wholly blameless for this neglect
of the rural school. They have required in general higher
standards of maturity and preparation for their teachers, but
they have fallen far short of recognizing public-school service as
a worthy profession or of setting a standard of recognition and
rewards that might well have had a stimulating effect upon the
outlying rural districts. By limiting its teaching-appointments
especially in the elementary schools to young women living with
their parents in the home community, the typical American city
has been able to recruit its teachers at the smallest possible wage.
The effect of this upon the development of a true professional
spirit among the teachers can be readily conjectured. It has
kept the standards of professional preparation deplorably low,
it has encouraged young women to enter the work of teaching
merely as a temporary occupation, and in many cases it has led
the public to look upon teaching-appointments, not as positions
of trust and honor, but as jobs to be distributed, either to the
deserving poor or to those who can enlist "influence" in their
behalf.
Again it is beside the point to say that there are communities
that have risen far beyond this primitive estimate of the teacher's
work. There are many such communities, it is true, but their
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 367
influence again has been local and circumscribed. It has not
sufficed to raise the general level of the teacher's calling. It is
not, indeed, through individual and local advances that the na-
tion's problem is to be solved.
There is, in fact, but one way in which the evils that are in-
herent in the transient and unprofessional character of the gen-
eral teaching population can be remedied, and that is the crea-
tion of conditions that will make teaching throughout the length
and breadth of the land, a permanent occupation, a real career.
Larger appropriations for teachers' salaries are needed, and in
view of the alarming shortage in the supply of teachers and
the decreasing attendance upon the normal schools, such appro-
priations should certainly be made at once if a situation worse
than that which exists to-day is to be avoided. But higher sal-
aries alone will not solve the problem. What is needed at basis
is a different conception of the teacher's work, and what is
needed first of all is an adequate appreciation of the importance
of a thoroughgoing preparation for its responsibilities.
It cannot be a source of pride to our people that the United
States gives less attention to the training of teachers than does
any other great nation. It cannot be a matter of pride to our
people that, of all our professional institutions, those who have
been intrusted with the preparation of teachers for the public
schools are the most penuriously supported and the least attrac-
tive to ambitious youth.
Nor can these normal schools with their inadequate support
supply more than a fraction of the teachers annually needed for
the public schools. Their total output each year is scarcely
enough for the needs of the urban communities, leaving the
rural and village schools almost entirely dependent upon un-
trained recruits. In a typical state — a state that is perhaps mid-
way between the most progressive and the most backward edu-
cationally— 80 per cent, of the rural-school teachers this year
are boys and girls fresh from the eighth grade of the common
schools — and even under these inadequate standards this state
reports a shortage in teachers, so keen is the demand for their
services in other occupations.
For the national government generously to cooperate with the
states, first in meeting the emergency which is drawing so many
368 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
teachers away from the schools, and then in supporting institu-
tions and agencies for the preparation of competent teachers,
would be to rake at once the status of the teaching profession
and thereby enhance the efficiency of the schools throughout the
land. Without encroaching upon the autonomy of the several
states, such cooperation would recognize in a most effective way
the dependence of the nation's welfare upon the public schools
and the significance of the teacher's service to the nation's life.
The country child to-day is at a distinct disadvantage educa-
tionally as compared with the city child. Not only are his
teachers immature, transient, and untrained, but his term of
schooling in the average of cases is from one to three months
shorter each year, and from two to three years shorter in its
entirety. Attendance laws are often laxly enforced or not en-
forced at all. The expert supervision, which could do something
to offset the immaturity and lack of training upon the part of
the teachers, is practically non-existent. The course of study is
ill-adjusted to the needs of rural life.
For fifty years and more the difficulties of the rural school
situation have constituted the most serious and perplexing prob-
lem of American education. During all of these years courageous
efforts have been made throughout the country to find a solution
of this problem. While these efforts have enlisted the service of
hundreds of competent and devoted leaders, they cannot be
said as yet to have done more than touch the surface. When
one remembers that one-half of the nation's children are en-
rolled in the rural and village schools it is not difficult to under-
stand why the largest advances have been at best only local and
sporadic. The problem is of too vast a magnitude to be af-
fected fundamentally by anything short of a great national
movement. The time for that movement has clearly come.
At basis the difficulty is economic and social rather than edu-
cational. If the country child is to have opportunities for
schooling equivalent to those provided for the city child, pro-
portionately more money must be spent on the country schools
than on the city schools. The one-room, ungraded schools are
small schools, and the ratio of teachers to pupils is necessarily
high. The consolidation of the one-room schools will reduce this
ratio and make for economy; but consolidation is impossible in
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 369
some districts, and even where it is practicable, the consolidated
school, pupil for pupil, will always be more expensive to oper-
ate than the city school. Not only must the cost of transporta-
tion be met, but expert teachers for these schools must be paid
higher salaries than are demanded by teachers of the same ability
and training in the city schools. Indeed, in the few states
where a consistent effort has been made to furnish the country
child with teachers as well qualified as those in the city schools,
it has been found necessary to increase the rural teachers' sal-
aries from 10 to 20 per cent, above the city level.
As long as schools are supported entirely or almost entirely
by local taxation, then, it is clear that the country child cannot
have the educational advantages of the city child. The per
capita wealth of the rural districts, taking the country as a
whole, is very far below the per capita wealth of the urban dis-
tricts. School funds raised by general state taxation and dis-
tributed to the local communities in proportion to their educa-
tional needs have done something to reduce these inequalities,
but except in a very few cases the state funds are so meager
that their influence is almost negligible.
It is again the narrow neighborhood conception of educational
responsibility that has stood squarely in the way of progress.
In general, each local community has been educationally self-
sufficient. The American people have accepted the principle
that it is just and equitable to tax individuals in proportion to
their wealth for the education of all the children of the com-
munity. They have not as yet followed the course of reasoning
to its logical conclusion. They have n-> ; thoroughly accepted
the equally sound principle that it is just and equitable to tax
communities in proportion to their wealth for the education of
all the children of the state.
Combined with the neighborhood conception of educational re-
sponsibility as a handicap to progress is a tendency still to think
of the public school as an essentially philanthropic enterprise.
In the arguments for increased funds for school support, the
value of education to the individual and the disadvantage under
which the individual suffers when he is denied educational
privileges have had a preponderant place. ' The claims of the
state and of the nation for an enlightened citizenship have been
370 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
recognized, it is true, but largely in a perfunctory way. At
basis the appeal has been to philanthropy and has laid its chief
emphasis upon the injustice of denying to the children of the
poor the advantages that the children of the rich enjoy.
It is in no sense derogatory to our people that they have sup-
ported and extended educational opportunities primarily from
this essentially philanthropic motive ; but the exclusive appeal
to this motive has been unfortunate. It has intensified the lo-
calism of education. It has led the richer communities to self-
satisfaction with their own educational efforts on the ground that
they were doing their best for all the children within their
own borders. If children beyond their borders were less well
circumstanced the richer communities might lament the fact,
but they could hardly be expected to divide their wealth and
their advantages with their less fortunate neighbors. Thus the
fact that American communities are interdependent educationally
as well as commercially and industrially has been obscured.
That the wealth and prosperity of a great city are directly re-
lated to the prosperity of its tributary area is clear to all. That
the prosperity of this tributary area depends upon the intelli-
gence of its inhabitants, that the schools of this area should be
matters of concern to those who have the city's prosperity at
heart, and that the city has an obligation to the outlying dis-
tricts from which its wealth has been derived, these are truths
not so readily grasped.
It has indeed taken the experiences of the past year to drive
home this basic fact of educational interdependence. It has
taken the crisis of the great war to prove convincingly that
there can be no such thing as an American community that
lives to itself alone, whether in industry, in politics, or in edu-
cation. With seven hundred thousand illiterate young men sub-
ject to the draft, the educational backwardness of any single
district or area becomes at once a matter of national concern.
Modern warfare is a conflict in which mental efficiency and
physical efficiency combine to play the leading roles, and even
the kind o~ physical efficiency which modern warfare demands
is the intelligent kind — the counterpart of adequate knowledge
and clear thinking.
The war has revealed all this with startling clearness. It is
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 371
for us now to generalize the lesson. If the safety of democracy
in a time of great crisis is so clearly dependent upon a high level
of enlightened intelligence, we may be sure that the passing of
the crisis will not change this fundamental condition.
The rural and village schools are by far the weakest links in
the educational chain. There is no way in which these links can
be strengthened save through expenditures vastly greater than
the local communities can supply. General state taxation has
already proved itself inadequate to a solution of the problem on
a national scale. The welfare of the nation itself is more inti-
mately bound up with the intelligence of that majority of its
children now enrolled in the rural and village schools than
with any other single factor. Federal cooperation in the sup-
port and development of rural education is clearly and un-
equivocally the only solution of the problem.
THE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL AS A COMMUNITY
CENTER 1
JOHN H. COOK
THE consolidated school ministers to the educational needs of
a larger community than is served by the one-room school. A
minimum number of interested people are essential to an abid-
ing interest in a social community center. The number of
patrons in the sub-district school is below the minimum, while
the consolidated school may have sufficient numbers to main-
tain this interest. Many forms of community recreation and
activity are made possible by the support of this larger num-
ber. Among such activities may be mentioned lecture courses,
interscholastic contests, both athletic and intellectual, home-
talent plays, farmers' institutes and extension schools, and other
entertainments of various sorts.
Talented leadership is indispensable to success in making an
institution a social or community center. There is a dearth of
leadership in the one-room school district unit, owing to small
numbers and the lack of interest of the natural leaders of the
i Adapted from Publications American Sociological Society, XI : 97-105,
1916.
372 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
community in the one-room school. For the class from which
leaders are recruited is composed partly of those parents who
are divided in school interests on account of children attending
foreign high schools and partly of those who hold in entire dis-
dain the inferior schools of the community. The functions held
in the one-room school are not likely even to secure the patron-
izing presence of those whose standing and attainments fit them
for leadership. Without the hearty cooperation of the nat-
ural leaders of a community no institution can be a successful
social center.
The consolidated or centralized school offers bountiful op-
portunity for the extension of mutual acquaintance among the
residents of a rural community. Children from distant por-
tions of the township form friendships which tend to create
ties of interest in the parents. One resident of a centralized
district describes the results of centralization in extending ac-
quaintance thus : . ' ' Before the schools were centralized my son
seemed to know no one when we rode about the township. Now
as we ride about, a boy or girl will yell, 'Hello, Sammy/ or
wave greetings from a distance. When I inquire, 'Who is
this ? ' he often gives names entirely unfamiliar to me. Through
my son I have become acquainted with many excellent people
whom, otherwise, I would have never known. ' ' This is a typical
experience.
Another beneficent result, permanent in effect, will be the
formation of lasting friendships among the citizens of the fu-
ture. This will more than neutralize the disintegrating forces
resulting from changed industrial conditions. Not only does
the centralized school offer a wider acquaintanceship than is
offered by the one-room school, but in addition a longer period
of acquaintance is offered by the consolidated schools. The high
school will continue the associations of childhood through the
adolescent period. These constructive features of the consoli-
dated school do not exist in the one-room school or in any other
rural institution except the consolidated school.
Another service offered by the consolidated school is of far-
reaching effect in the social life of rural communities. Rural
folks have long been characterized by bashf ulness and the lack of
capacity for social enjoyment. This is caused largely by lack of
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 373
opportunity to play in childhood. Schools should develop the
social power of pupils as well as their mental power. Social
power, like other powers, can be developed only by its growth
through exercise in a favorable environment. In the one-room
school, where a child meets with only one or two of his own age
and where wholesome play and social enjoyment are lacking,
there can be no development of the social power. The habits
thus formed are difficult to overcome in after-life ; for the social
powers of the pupils in such an environment are stunted. The
consolidated school offers a wider acquaintance and a higher
standard of social behavior. School activities stimulated by a
commendable school spirit will establish the habit of cooperation.
Thus, the increased social opportunities offered by the consoli-
dated school will lay the foundations of a higher type of social
activities in the rural communities of the future, so that the cul-
tured classes of the community will be glad to cooperate in the
social uplift of all.
In the consolidated or centralized school there is also a better
opportunity to secure constructive leadership from among the
teachers. The consolidated school with its high school depart-
ment demands better trained and better prepared teachers than
does the typical one-room school which is content with a teacher
who has a modicum of scholarship, training, and initiative. The
college graduate who teaches in the high school and the normal
graduate who teaches in the grades offer better material for
leadership by reason of their scholarship, their special training,
and their social experience.
In the corps of teachers of the consolidated school, there is
usually one who has specialized in music and who is capable of
teaching and drilling children, so that appropriate music, an
essential of all community gatherings, may be furnished by the
children of the parents of the community. Under the direction
of the domestic science teacher the pupils of the school may dem-
onstrate the quality of their work in the culinary art to the
satisfaction and pride of parents and friends. The one-room
school system is defective in providing capable leadership from
among its teachers. The consolidated school need not be handi-
capped by this defect, as it has opportunity to provide fit ma-
terial from among its corps of high-class teachers.
374 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Suitable buildings and adequate equipment are necessary for
modern community centers. A well-lighted and well-arranged
auditorium, a piano, a library and reading-room, a gymnasium
for winter functions, and financial backing sufficient for the
maintenance of these essentials are needed in a modern com-
munity center. A modern consolidated school usually provides
the requisites mentioned above. If not, because of the union of
financial resources that obtains in a consolidated school dis-
trict, these things may usually be provided without financial
strain. Community meetings held under favorable conditions
will secure a larger attendance and greater enjoyment than when
held in buildings poorly arranged, badly lighted, and scantily
equipped. AVhen meetings with helpful, interesting, and ele-
vating programs are held in a properly equipped building under
competent management in connection with an institution in
which all are interested, there can be no serious doubt as to the
successful future of such efforts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Indianapolis, 1914.
Betts, G. H. New Ideals in Rural Schools. Houghton, Boston, 1913.
Brittain, H. L. Report of the Ohio State School Survey Commission.
Published by State of Ohio, Columbus, 1914.
Brown, H. A. The Readjustment of a Rural High School to the Needs
of the Community. Bui. 20, U. S. Bureau of Education, 1912.
Burnham, Ernest. Rural School Efficiency in Kalamazoo County,
Mich. Bui. 4, 1909, published by State Supt. of Public Instruc-
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Two Types of Rural Schools with Some Facts Showing Economic
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Rural Teacher Preparation in State Normal Schools. U. S. Bur. of
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Carney, Mabel. Country Life and the Country School. Row, Chi-
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Gary, C. P. Rural School Board Conventions. National Education
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Cook, Katherine M., and Monahan, A. C. Rural School Supervision,
U. S. Bureau of Education, Bui. 48, 1916.
Cotton, F. A., and O'Shea, M. V., and Larson, W. E. Consolidation
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Crocheron, B. H., and others. The Rural School as a Community Cen-
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THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 375
Crosby, Dick J., and Crocheron, B. H. Community Work in the
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1910, pp. 177-88.
Cubberley, E. P. The Improvement of Rural Schools. Houghton,
Boston, 1912.
Rural Life and Education. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1914.
State and County Educational Reorganization. Macmillau, N. Y.,
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Cubberley, E. P., and Elliott, E. C. State and County School Admin-
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Cutler, H. M., and Stone, Julia M. The Rural School, its Methods and
Management. Silver, N. Y., 1913.
Davenport, E. Education for Efficiency. Heath, N. Y., 1909.
Davis, E. E. A Study of Rural Schools in Travis County, Texas.
Univ. of Texas, Bui. 07, Austin, 1910.
Dewey, Evelyn. New Schools for Old. Dutton, N. Y., 1919.
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Macmillan, N. Y., 1916.
Dresslar, F. B. Rural Schoolhouses and Grounds. U. S. Bureau of
Education, Bui. 12, 1914.
Eggleston, J. D., and Bruere, R. W. The Work of the Rural School.
Harper, N. Y., 1913.
Field, Jessie. The Corn Lady. Flanagan, Chicago, 1911.
Foght, H. W. The American Rural School. Macmillan, N. Y., 1910.
Rural Denmark and its Schools. Macmillan, N. Y., 1915.
The Rural Teacher and His Work in Community Leadership. In
School Administration, and in Mastery of the School Subjects.
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Hamilton, John. The Township High School. Pennsylvania Dept. of
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Hart, Joseph K. Educational Resources of Village and Rural Com-
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Hart, W. R. The Work of the Massachusetts Agricultural College for
the Schools of Massachusetts. Mass. Agric. College Extension
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Johnson, A. A. County Schools of Agriculture and Domestic Econ-
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S. D. A., 1911.
Kennedy, Joseph. Rural Life and the Rural School. American, N.
Y./1915.
Kern, 0. J. Among Country Schools. Ginn, Boston, 1906.
Larson, W. E., and others. Social and Civic Work in Country Com-
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Wis., 1913.
Larson, W. E. The Wisconsin County Training Schools for Teachers
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376 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Lewis, Howard P. The Rural School and the Community. Badger,
Boston, 1918.
Miller, James C. Rural Schools in Canada. Teachers College, Colum-
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Monahan, A. C. Consolidation of the Rural Schools. Bui. 604, U. S.
Bureau of Education, 1915.
The Status of Rural Education in the United States. U. S. Bureau
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Monahan, A. C., and Wright, R. H. Training Courses for Rural
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Murphy, C. R. Country and Town Students in High Schools. (A
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February, 1916.
Pickard, A. E. Rural Education a Complete Course of Study for
Modern Rural Schools. Webb, St. Paul, 1915.
Preliminary Report of the Committee of Fifteen Appointed by the
State Superintendent of Schools to Investigate Educational Needs
and Conditions in Wisconsin. State Supt. of Public Instruction,
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Report of the Committee on Industrial Education in Schools for Rural
Communities. National Education Assn., Winona, Minn., 1905.
Reynolds, Annie. The Training of Teachers for the Country Schools
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Ryan, Bridget A. A Redirected Rural School. Mass. Agric. College
Extension Service, Bui. 6, Amherst, 1916.
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Waugh, F. A. Country School Grounds. Mass. Agric. College Ex-
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White, E. V., and Davis, E. E. A Study of Rural Schools in Texas.
Univ. of Texas, Bui. 364k, Austin, 1914.
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CHAPTER XIV
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES
EDUCATION THROUGH FARM DEMONSTRATION l
BRADFORD KNAPP
IN 1903-04 Congress made an appropriation authorizing work
to counteract the ravages of the Mexican cotton boll weevil in
Texas and other cotton states. This insect pest was laying waste
the cotton fields of the Southwest, leaving abandoned farms and
business failures in its wake. A small portion of the funds so
appropriated was devoted to a work conducted by the late Dr.
Seaman A. Knapp to enable him to try out his method of teach-
ing by conducting a large number of demonstrations on farms
as described above. Dr. Knapp was then seventy years of age.
He had been a stock farmer in Iowa in the '70 's, and afterwards
Professor of Agriculture and President of the Iowa Agricultural
College. lie had come to the South in 1885 and had devoted
a great deal of his time to the development of the rice industry
in Louisiana. In that work and in some of his work in Iowa he
had used simple, direct methods of reaching farmers through
practical field examples and, out of that experience, had sug-
gested that he be permitted to try his plan of teaching farmers
through demonstrations conducted on their own farms.
The work was actually begun in January, 1904. The main
features consisted of personal visits of the department's repre-
sentatives to a large number of farms scattered over the coun-
try then seriously affected. Demonstrations were carried on by
these farmers under the careful instruction of these representa-
tives. At first the work was devoted mainly to improving the
cultural methods of raising cotton in order to minimize the
damage from the weevil. However, it was soon seen that the
i Adapted from Annals of tUe American Academy of Political and Social
Science, Vol. 07: 224-240, 191(5.
377
378 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
difficulty could be met only by a general campaign of the same
character for the purpose of bringing about a diversification of
crops and better agricultural practices. The purpose was to
bring about such a change that the farmer would not be de-
pendent entirely upon cotton for both income and maintenance.
Therefore, demonstrations in corn and many other crops were
instituted in the same way.
The work was almost an immediate success. Thousands of ex-
amples or "demonstrations" were created by farmers through
the instructions of the department's agents under Dr. Knapp's
leadership. Meetings were held at the demonstrations and expe-
riences compared at the end of the season. During the first year
or two the work covered a great deal of territory. The demon-
strations were scattered along railroads and main highways
where they could be easily reached and seen. One agent was
compelled to cover considerable territory. However, the effect
was to restore confidence, and give the people hope and some-
thing to live on while they readjusted their agriculture to meet
the new conditions. Gradually the farmers began to understand
that they could raise cotton in spite of the weevil, and the full
restoration of prosperity was only a matter of time and the ex-
tension of the new type of education.
The General Education Board of New York was, at that time,
engaged in an earnest effort to assist southern education, not
only in colleges, but in secondary schools, and even the primary
rural schools. Their attention had been called to the rural prob-
lem and to the rural schools and the general educational needs
of the country. While studying the situation with a view to
greater assistance, they came in contact with the work of the
department under Dr. Knapp. Their representatives visited
Texas, met Dr. Knapp and studied his work. They were in-
terested and impressed with Dr. Knapp's statement that in
meeting an emergency he had found an opportunity to put into
practice an idea he had worked out which he believed to be of
universal application. They, therefore, offered to furnish the
necessary funds to permit Dr. Knapp to try his plan in sections
of the South far removed from the influence of the boll weevil,
if arrangements could be made with the department of agricul-
ture for the trial. As a result of their effort the offer was ac-
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 379
cepted and Dr. Knapp was furnished with funds from the Gen-
eral Education Board in addition to the funds from Congress.
With the federal funds work was done in boll weevil territory
and the territory immediately in advance of the weevil, which
was gradually migrating from year to year north and east
through the cotton states. With the funds of the General Edu-
cation Board work of the same kind for the general improve-
ment of agriculture and rural economic conditions was begun
in Mississippi and Virginia in 1906, and was extended to Ala-
bama, South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina in 1907.
The direct federal funds carried the work in Texas, Louisiana,
Oklahoma and Arkansas. As the weevil advanced eastward,
the states were transferred in succession from the General Edu-
cation Board fund to the federal fund. The funds from both
of these sources increased from year to year as the work grew
in popularity. In 1909 the federal funds amounted to $102,000
and those from the General Education Board to $76,500.
In 1906 and 1907 such was the demand for the work that it
was impossible to reach all who were insisting that they needed
the help. When advised that financial assistance was the limit-
ing factor in spreading the work, business men in some of the
counties offered to assist in the payment of the salary of an
agent if his activities could be restricted to their county. This
was done. It had been fully realized by Dr. Knapp that the
work would be improved by limiting the territory served by
each agent. This led to the adoption of the title ''County
Agent" afterward so well known in the South.
In 1909 the state of Mississippi took the lead in recognizing
the new type of education by enacting a law under which the
county might pay part of the salary of the agent. In the years
from 1909 to 1915, every southern state having power to grant
such authority to the county passed some sort of law permitting
the county government to cooperate with the United States De-
partment of Agriculture in this work and to pay part or all
the salary of the county agent. State appropriations were made
also in a number of cases, the first in 1911 in Alabama.
The growth of the work was phenomenal. It soon became the
rule rather than the exception for the county to furnish at
least one-half of the money necessary for the salary and expenses
380 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of the county agent. Of late years the financial cooperation
from local sources has practically doubled the service and met
the appropriations dollar for dollar or more. During the early
days of the development of the work men often served for the
love of the service, and hence the rule was rather low salaries
considering the service rendered. The work was always prac-
tical and direct. As it grew and developed and the men became
more expert, the whole system gradually took form and certain
well recognized methods were followed.
What does a county agent do and how does he teach by dem-
onstrations? The county agent goes to the farm and gives his
instruction while the farmer is at his everyday duties. The aim
of the work was and is to place in every community practical
object lessons illustrating the best and most profitable method of
producing the standard farm crops, or of animal feeding, etc.,
and to secure such active participation in the demonstration on
the part of the farmers as to prove that they can make a much
larger average annual crop, or feed or produce livestock more
economically, and secure a greater return for their toil. Dr.
Knapp said that it might be regarded as a "system of adult edu-
cation given to the farmer upon his farm by object lessons in the
soil, prepared under his observation and generally by his own
hand."
The teaching was very effective because at first it was simple
in character, direct, and limited to a few fundamental things,
such as the preparation of a good seed bed, deep fall plowing,
the selection of good seed, and shallow and intensive cultiva-
tion. In the early stages of the work Dr. Knapp framed what
he called the "Ten Commandments of Agriculture," as follows:
1. Prepare a deep and thoroughly pulverized seed bed, well
drained ; break in the fall to a depth of 8, 10 or 12 inches, ac-
cording to the soil ; with implements that will not bring too much
of the sub-soil to the surface; (the foregoing depths should be
reached gradually).
2. Use seed of the best variety, intelligent^ selected and care-
fully stored.
3. In cultivated crops, give rows and the plants in the rows, a
space suited to the plant, the soil and the climate,
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 381
4. Use intensive tillage during the growing period of the crop.
5. Secure a high content of humus in the soil by the use of
legumes, barnyard manure, farm refuse and commercial fer-
tilizers.
6. Carry out a system of crop rotation with a winter cover
crop on southern farms.
7. Accomplish more work in a day by using more horse power
and better implements.
8. Increase the farm stock to the extent of utilizing all the
waste products and idle lands on the farm.
9. Produce all the food required for the men and animals on
the farm.
10. Keep an account of each farm product in order to know
from which the gain or loss arises.
These became very widely known in the South and formed the
basis for much of the work done by the agents.
The demonstrations were extended from crop to crop. With
the fundamental idea that it was necessary to readjust the agri-
culture of the South and make it more profitable and to make
the country life better, Dr. Knapp taught the great lesson of
diversification or a self-sustaining agriculture. The preserva-
tion of the fertility of the soil and the furnishing of the living
of the people on the farm from its products, were two necessary
changes if the South was to prosper. With these things taken
care of, that great section was well supplied with cash crops
which it could produce and exchange in the markets of the world
for the money with which to improve her life and her indus-
tries. The trouble was that the South was producing these
splendid crops of cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar and exchang-
ing them for her living.
One of the problems was to reach as many farmers as possible.
The county agent could not possibly carry on a demonstration on
every farm in the county. Two plans proved effective. The
first was to rely upon the fact that farmers, like other people,
would imitate what they saw tried with success. It became very
evident that one good demonstration in a neighborhood reached
more people than the farmer who carried on the demonstration.
A varying number of the neighbors copied the practices and
382 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
profited by the lesson because it was simple, and close by where
they could see it. But some effort was also made to assist this
process. Farmers around the demonstration were notified of the
agent 's visit and invited to come to the demonstration farm for a
conference. These informal meetings were called field meetings
or field schools. Neighboring farmers who were sufficiently in-
terested agreed to carry on a demonstration on their own farms
and to obtain their instruction from meeting the agent at the
demonstration farms. These men who were not visited were
called ' l cooperators. " Out of these meetings grew neighbor-
hood organizations of farmers or community clubs which now
form an important part of the work.
About 1908 Dr. Knapp first began what was known as the
Boys' Corn Club Movement in the South. It is true that there
had been corn clubs in a number of the northern states and in
one or two of the southern states prior to that time. However,
Dr. Knapp should receive the credit for systematizing this very
important and excellent piece of work. He established it on an
acre contest basis and arranged for the giving of prizes, not on
the maximum yield alone, but upon the maximum yield at mini-
mum cost, with a written essay describing the work done and an
exhibit of the product. The objects of the Boys' Corn Club
Work were:
1. To afford the rural teacher a simple and easy method of
teaching practical agriculture in the schools in the way it must
be acquired to be of any real service; namely, by actual work
upon the farm.
2. To prove that there is more in the soil than the farmer
has ever gotten out of it. To inspire boys with a love of the
land by showing them how they can get wealth out of it by
tilling it jn a better way, and thus to be helpful to the family
and the neighborhood, and
3. To give the boys a definite, worthy purpose and to stimulate
a friendly rivalry among them.
The first effort in this direction was in Mississippi when Mr.
W. H. Smith, then County Superintendent of Schools for Holmes
County, did the work in cooperation with the demonstration
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 383
forces. Results of this work were extended gradually to the
other states until the Boys' Corn Club Movement as a part of
the general scheme of education through demonstration became
a very large factor in southern agricultural work.
The Boys' Club Work was organized mainly through the
schools. The county agent was recognized as the agricultural
authority and gave the boys instruction. The school teachers
generally acted as the organizers of the clubs. The county super-
intendent was a good cooperator. The state superintendent often
assisted materially with the work. Prizes were contributed by
local business men ; the bankers became interested and often
gave considerable money for prizes for these contests. The
local co-ntest and the county and state contest soon became very
important and interesting events. In 1909 four state prize win-
ners received free trips to Washington, D. C. For a number of
years these annual trips attracted much attention. This plan
was abandoned in 1914 for the better system of scholarship
prizes. Since then the chief annual prize in the state has been
a scholarship at the Agricultural College. Pig Clubs, Baby Beef
Clubs, Clover Clubs, etc., are but a natural evolution which
came with the years.
In 1911 the number of county agents had reached 583, the
number of demonstrators and cooperators had reached 100,000,
and the number of boys approximately 51,000.
In 1910 Dr. S. A. Knapp began to develop a part of the work
for women and girls. It was his belief that he had thus far
planned the work for the father and son. He desired to com-
plete the work by doing something for the mother and daugh-
ter.
In October, 1910, he wrote:
The Demonstration Work has proven that it is possible to reform, by
simple means, the economic life and the personality of the farmer on
the farm. The Boys' Corn Clubs have likewise shown how to turn the
attention of the boy toward the farm. There remains the home itself and
its women and girls. This problem can not be approached directly. The
reformer who tells the farmer and his wife that their entire home system
is wrong will meet with failure. With these facts in view I have gone to
work among the girls to teach one simple and straight-forward lesson
which will open their eyes to the possibilities of adding to the family
income through sin: pie work in and about the home.
384 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Beginning in the states of South Carolina, Virginia and Mis-
sissippi, there were developed that year a number of Girls' Can-
ning Cubs. This work increased rapidly.
In the broad development of the work as a whole the county
agents, both men and women, naturally divide their activities
into three general classes :
First: Their actual demonstrations with farmers, their wives,
and the boys and girls.
Second: The giving out of general information through
speeches, meetings, etc.
Third: Efforts to stimulate organization.
In the South organization work has proceeded mainly on a
community basis. Community interest and activity have been
often stimulated by the demonstrations, and the collecting of
people together at the demonstrations has furnished a ready
means of natural organization of communities. In many com-
munities there were already organizations such as the Farmers'
Union. These are assisted by the county agents. As a rule the
community organization has some definite object in view such
as the improvement of agricultural practices, standardization of
production, maintenance of pure varieties of seed and standard-
izing the production of various kinds of livestock. Very often,
also, they have engaged: in the cooperative purchase of supplies,
mainly fertilizers, and in some cooperative marketing.
In the northern states there has grown up a type of organiza-
tion known as the County Farm Bureau, which is mainly an or-
ganization of individual farmers who interest themselves in se-
curing a county agent and assisting in the general work in the
county. These organizations have proved quite effective in han-
dling a large amount of business and creating greater interest in
agriculture.
In many counties in the South the type of organization for
the whole county consists in the confederation of representatives
from the community organizations to form a county association
for the general improvement of agriculture in the whole county.
It is not possible in this short article to discuss the merits of the
two types of organization. Each type has many points of merit
and each seems to be meeting the present needs of the people.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 385
The ultimate type may be a combination of the good features of
both plans.
Thus in brief we have the complete work involving the service
of an educational system for the men, women, boys and girls on
the farm. It should be fully understood that the county agent,
either among the men or the women, is not left to his own fancy
or whim in the work. First there are the state agents or leaders
who look after the work in an entire state, with assistants, called
by that name, or district agents in case they are given a portion
of the state.
There are also*specialists to complete the work. These are men
who have been trained especially along some particular branch
of agriculture and therefore have studied and prepared them-
selves to meet special problems or sets of problems. These men
are entomologists, agronomists, horticulturists, dairymen, pathol-
ogists, etc. A few such specialists are employed to assist the
county agents along these special lines. There are also such
men as market experts and farm management experts who as-
sist the county agents in their various special problems. All of
these together, under a general director, constitute what is
usually known as the Extension Work or the Extension Service
of the state.
Dr. Seaman A. Knapp died in the spring of 1911 at the ripe
age of seventy-seven years. After his death the work was con-
tinued without interruption. In these years it grew as before
and its various parts were perfected as the men engaged in-
creased in knowledge and understanding of the work they were
doing. In 1911 the work had been extended to all of the south-
ern states with the exception of Kentucky, West Virginia and
Maryland. In these states it was begun in 1913.
As early as the fall of 1911, an effort was made in South
Carolina to bring together all the extension work in the state
and to join the federal and the state forces into one organiza-
tion managed under a cooperative agreement. The cooperative
agreement was actually perfected in December, 1911, and put
into operation in January, 1912. Under this plan the College
of Agriculture of the State and the Federal Department agreed
on a joint representative to administer the work in the state and
386 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
agreed on the details and method under which he was to carry
the. work along. This plan proved an immediate success and
was copied in Texas in 1912 and in Georgia in 1913. Florida
fell in line in the early spring of 1914.
In 1911 some experiments in reaching farmers directly through
a resident instructor were tried in the northern states under the
direction of the Office of Farm Management of the Federal De-
partment of Agriculture. In the early part of the year 1912
the same office was authorized to begin a systematic effort to
extend this practical direct work among farmers into the south-
ern states. The problems to be met were different and it re-
quired time and experience to enable the workers to adapt the
fundamental principles involved in the demonstration work to
the new field. North Dakota began an independent demonstra-
tion work early in 1912, afterward uniting with the department's
general work of the same character. In addition to North Da-
kota, New York and Indiana were among the first to develop the
work in the northern states. In all the northern and western
work the well trained county agent was the necessary part of
the plan as in the South.
Beginning in 1862 with the Morrill Act for the endowment
of the state colleges of agriculture, the Congress of the United
States had passed a series of acts to assist the states in agricul-
tural education and research. The Nelson Act increased the
funds for teaching agriculture in the colleges, and the Hatch
and Adams Acts created and supported the state experiment
stations.
It would be impossible to say just when the colleges had first
begun to think about some act to assist them with the extension
work or direct work with farmers, but certainly a number of
years before the passage of the Smith-Lever Act the Association
of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations had
been interested and active in that direction. Many of the lead-
ing agricultural colleges of the northern states, and especially
of the middle western states, had established extension depart-
ments of considerable proportions. Their work consisted mainly
of the sending out of specialists, the conducting of institutes,
movable schools of agriculture and home economics, short courses
at the colleges, and boys' and girls' club work. Some plot work
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 387
and a few demonstration farms of the kind first referred to in
the early part of this article were also a part of the work. As
already stated, the Office of Farm Management of the United
States Department of Agriculture began actual work in the
North in 1912. This work of putting county agents into north-
ern counties grew rapidly and appropriations were increased to
meet the expense.
It is not the purpose here to trace the history of the passage
of the Smith-Lever Act. The Act was finally approved by the
President May 8, 1914. It provides for the establishment of co-
operative extension work in agriculture and home economics.
Each state was to establish a division for such work at its land
grant college, that is, the college which had received the benefits
of the Morrill, the Nelson, the Hatch and the Adams Acts.
The act provides that the work shall consist of instruction and practical
demonstrations in agriculture and home economics to persons not attending
or resident in said colleges in the several communities, and imparting to
such persons information on said subjects through field demonstrations,
publications and otherwise; and this work shall be carried on in such
manner as may be mutually agreed upon by the Secretary of Agriculture
and the State Agricultural College or colleges receiving the benefits of
this Act.
The appropriations from the federal treasury, under this act,
began with $480,000 for the year ending June 30, 1915, which
was divided equally, $10,000 to each of the forty-eight states.
For the next year an additional appropriation of $600,000 was
made and then the amount increases by $500,000 per annum
until the amount reaches $4,100,000 in addition to the original
$480,000, or a total of $4,580.000. As to all the additional ap-
propriation above the $480,000, it is provided that it shall be
divided between the states in the proportion that the rural pop-
ulation of each state bears to the total rural population, on con-
dition that "no payment out of the additional appropriation
herein provided shall be made in any year to any state until
an equal sum has been appropriated for that year by the Legis-
lature of the State, or provided by state, county, college, local
authority, or individual contribution from within the state for
the maintenance of the cooperative agricultural extension work
provided for in this act." This means that -at the end of the
388 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
year 1922 there will be an annual appropriation from the federal
treasury amounting to $4,580,000, and annual contributions from
within the states amounting to $4,100,000 for the support of the
work, or a grand total of $8,680,000. This will be the annual
expenditure in this new and important system of agricultural
education.
It should be remembered that the law itself makes this a co-
operative work. The enormous annual economic loss in , the
United States by reason of soil depletion, insect ravages, dis-
eases of crops and animals, improper cultural methods, and lack
of proper marketing systems has been increasing from year to
year. The nation, the states, the colleges and many public and
private organizations have been attempting to correct these
evils, each in its own way and with its own machinery and inde-
pendent of the others. The resulting effort could not be other-
wise than wasteful, more or less inefficient and often misdi-
rected. Wrong principles were often advocated or correct ones
improperly presented. Expensive effort was duplicated many
times. Rivalries and competition were more common than har-
mony and cooperation. The result of it all was doubt, con-
fusion and lack of confidence on the part of most of the people
in agricultural work. The new act provides for unity and co-
operation. The field force represents both the United States De-
partment of Agriculture and the state colleges of agriculture.
Shortly after the passage of the act the Secretary of Agricul-
ture put the act into effect by making an agreement with each
state which brings all the work into harmony and unity through
the one state organization representing both the state and the
nation. Within the department he established the States Rela-
tions Service, the two divisions of which, under the director,
handle the relations with the states under this act and also ad-
minister all extension work of the department carried out
through the state extension divisions.
Under the present plans there will eventually be a county agri-
cultural agent in every county and also a county woman agent,
each supported in their work by a trained force of specialists and
a competent administrative staff.
So we have the new system of instruction with its full force of
instructors and its plans being worked out. A great public
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 389
•
service organization has been created. The effect of this great
movement can not be estimated. In the South, where it has
been the longest in operation, the improvement in agriculture is
most noticeable. Thousands of community organizations are
drawing together for better rural life, hundreds of thousands of
demonstrations are conducted each year and the actual number
of persons reached already mounts into the millions. The wastes
are being stopped, the bad practices remedied, the diseases eradi-
cated, tne fertility of the soil conserved and built up, the market-
ing systems improved, and country life is beginning to take on an
air of interest and attractiveness which will hold its people and
draw others to the great life of this foundation calling of the
people.
The work is yet in its infancy. With the years there will be
improvements. What -are now regarded as experiments will
settle into accepted practices. Skill, form, system, all will grow
and be developed as they have with the teaching in the schools.
But the fundamental principle of having the teacher go to the
one to be taught and to illustrate the lesson by a demonstration
conducted by the one receiving the lesson will remain the very
foundation of the new educational system. It has already tri-
umphed where the word of mouth instruction failed. The dream
of the founder has become the reality recognized and established
by law.
HOME ECONOMICS WORK UNDER THE SMITH-LEVER
ACT1
THE chief objections of women to country life are usually (1)
the generally small returns in farming, (2) the drudgery of farm
work, and (3) the social isolation. More money for home con-
veniences and greater efficiency in household management both
have in view the lessening of the drudgery of farm work and
the securing of certain periods of leisure to farm women which
may be used in productive, social, and recreational ways.
i Adapted from Journal of Home Economics. 7: 357-358. The American
Home Economics Assn.. Baltimore, 191.5. Office of Information, U. S.
Dept. of Agriculture.
390 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Extension work designed to be fundamentally helpful to farm
women would seem, therefore, to include within its scope certain
matters, as follows:
1. Plans to increase the net income of the farm. Farm women
need more money for home purposes. The purchase of home
conveniences, the installation of water, sewerage, lighting, and
heating systems, kitchen and other conveniences, and the bring-
ing of literature and music into the home are, in the majority
of country homes, dependent upon greater net profits in farm-
ing. Knowledge of these conveniences and other desirable things
is good, but money to buy these desirable things is a vital neces-
sity if country life is to be made as acceptable to women as town
life. The county agent is giving especial attention to this phase
of the work.
2. Plans to teach and demonstrate efficiency in farm home
management. These include such matters as wholesome food
properly prepared and served in adequate supply and variety
throughout the year, the care of the home and the family linen
and wardrobe, the care and management of children, and some-
times the handling of certain farm enterprises like poultry and
eggs, milk and butter, the garden, small fruits, etc. Efficiency
in farm home management contemplates the maximum of accom-
plishment with the minimum of effort to the end that the farm
family may find satisfaction and contentment in the home, and
that the time of the farm woman may be conserved.
3. Plans for leisure and development. The farm woman needs
time for reading, self -development, child teaching, social life, and
recreation.
In the development of Home Economics demonstration work,
there needs to be kept in mind the point of view that the prob-
lems of country women must chiefly be solved by country women.
The county agent movement in some sections of the North and
West started out primarily as a city man's movement, but it has
succeeded in exact proportion as the farmers of the country have
taken hold of the work and made it their own.
City women can help in the development of the forthcoming
demonstration work in Home Economics for country women.
One of the ways in which city women can be of direct help in
the movement is through greater social intercourse with farm
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 391
women, through direct purchases of poultry, eggs, butter, fresh
and canned fruits and vegetables, and by cooperating with them
in the maintenance of rest rooms, nurseries, etc., for farm women
when they come to town. But what farm women need and how
to meet these needs are matters which must be worked out chiefly
by farm women themselves. The criticism sometimes heard
with reference to much of our Home Economics teaching is
that such teaching is done primarily from the standpoint of
the town woman. The country woman's problems are the prob-
lems of the country and must be approached from that stand-
point.
BOYS' AND GIRLS' CONTEST CLUBS1
L. II. BAILEY
AMONG the many enterprises that are at present undertaken
for the betterment of country life and agriculture, boys' and
girls' clubs are holding much public attention. These clubs
are in the nature of organized contests, with emoluments, prizes
or public recognition standing as rewards. Contests may lie in
the growing of prize crops, in the feeding of animals, in the
making of gardens, in the organizing of prize-winning canning-
clubs, bread-clubs and others. The organization of these clubs
in recent years has undoubtedly constituted a distinct contribu-
tion toward the stimulation of interest in rural affairs and the
development of pride and incentive on the part of many of the
country people.
I have watched their growth with much interest and have had
something to do in giving them encouragement and facilities.
However, there are certain perils in this kind of effort, and I
desire to offer some suggestions of warning, while at the same
time reaffirming my approval of the general idea of organizing
boys and girls for mutual emulation and improvement. We are
now coming to a new era in our agricultural work, consequent
on the passage by Congress of the great extension bill and the
beginning of the organization of many kinds of rural betterment
i Adapted from "York State Rural Problems," 2: 71-79. J. B. Lyon Co.,
Albany.
392 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
enterprises on a national basis. It is time, therefore, that we
challenge all our old practices and make plans in a new way.
I see considerable dangers in the boys' and girls' club work,
as some of it is undertaken at the present time or into which
it may drift in the future. Perhaps there are other dangers,
but four will be sufficient for discussion at the moment.
(1) These clubs or contests may not represent real effort on
the part of the child. Work that is credited to the child may
be done by father, mother, brother, sister, or by associates.
Probably in many cases the child's responsibility is only nom-
inal. The boy or girl may receive credit for accomplishments
that are not his or hers and that therefore are not real ; and if
they are not genuine, then, of course, they are dishonest. They
start the child on a wrong basis and on false pretenses. All
such work should be under careful and continuous control.
(2) The rewards may be out of all proportion to the effort
expended. The prize should have relation to the value of the
effort or the earning-power of the work, or it is likely to be
damaging to the child and to arouse opposition in his community
or among his associates. Rewards in agriculture have not come
easily, and this has been one of the merits of the occupation in
the training of the race, and it is one of the reasons why agricul-
ture is a strong and important national asset.
When we make the rewards too easy, we not only cheapen the
effort, but we lose the training value of the work. We must be
careful that we do not let the rewards in agriculture come more
cheaply or more easily than in other occupations. The person
must work for what he gets and really earn it, or else the oc-
cupation will lose in dignity and standing with the people.
Agriculture should not accept gratuities.
Some time ago a young woman came to my office to secure a
subscription, saying that if she accomplished a certain number
of hundreds, she would win a scholarship. She was willing to
expend weeks of very hard work, to go to much inconvenience
for the purple of earning the scholarship. About the same
time, certain young boys were brought to my office as one stage
in a trip that was given them for relatively unimportant effort
in an agricultural contest. I could not help feeling that the
rewards of exertion were unjustly distributed. The travel-prizes
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 393
are specially likely to be out of keeping with the original effort
expended by the child.
We should take every pains to let the children feel that the
rewards in life come only with the expenditure of adequate effort.
(3) The effect of these contests may be to inflate the child
and to give him undue and untruthful estimate of his own im-
portance. A shrewd observer of a boy's prize excursion re-
marked that every boy after he got home should be punished;
but another observer suggested that the boys in the neighbor-
hood would probably prevent him from getting the bighead. I
do not indorse these remarks, but it illustrates the dangers that
are likely to accrue unconsciously to the child. It is a doubtful
undertaking to single out certain children in a community for
unusual recognition or reward.
(4) The children are liable to be exploited, and this is one
of the most apparent dangers in the whole situation. They are
likely to be used in the making of political or other public reputa-
tion, or in accomplishing advertising and propaganda for insti-
tutions, organizations, publications, commercial concerns, and
other enterprises, or to. exploit the resources of the state or the
agriculture of a region. Children should never be made the
means of floating anybody's enterprise.
Every part of the "boom" and "boost" element must be taken
out of this work, and all efforts to make a display or a demonstra-
tion. Substantial enterprises may stand on their own feet, and
the work with children may stand on its own feet and not be
tied up to undertakings to which it does not belong.
Recognizing the dangers that may come from the organization
of boys' and girls' clubs, how can we so safeguard them in the
new time that these dangers will be eliminated or at least re-
duced to the minimum? I think that we can safeguard them if
only we recognize the essential nature and function of such
contests.
The fundamental consideration is that all this kind of work
is educational. It is not primarily agricultural work, not under-
taken directly to improve the farming of a region. The primary
consideration is its effect on the child. If we cannot accept these
propositions, then I should be in favor of giving up the boys' and
girls' contests.
394 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
It is legitimate to use domestic animals and crops for the
primary purpose of improving and advertising the agriculture
of a region ; but we must not use children in this way. Animals
and crops are agricultural products; children are not agricul-
tural products.
If these positions are granted, we shall agree that this con-
test work between children must be put more and more into the
hands of those who are trained in education and who carry the
responsibility before the public for educational effort. I think
that this kind of work should be a part of the public school sys-
tem. On their own account, schools must take up this and
similar work if they are to secure the best results for themselves
and to cover their own fields. The organizing or laboratory work
at home under the direction of the teacher is one of the most
important means of tying the schools and the homes together
and making the school a real part and parcel of the community.
When this time shall come, the work with crops and domestic
animals and home practices will be a regular part of the school
day, incorporated inseverably with the program of education.
We must hope for the time when there shall be no necessity for
the separate organization of such clubs, the school having reached
and stimulated the situation on every farm and in every home.
It is sometimes said that the agricultural agents organize the con-
test work better than the teachers. Perhaps; but the work is
essentially school work, nevertheless, and we should now be look-
ing for results in the long future.
Supervisors and superintendents of schools and teachers will
need the demonstration-practice and the subject-matter that the
agricultural agent can give them; they will increasingly call on
this agent ; and herein will be another effective means of tying all
rural work together on a basis of cooperation and coaction.
THE RURAL BOOK HUNGER1
M. S DUDGEON
PROBABLY no enterprise for rural betterment has borne more
fruit than the traveling library system, and certainly few have
i Adapted from Rural Manhood, Vol. 6:303-307, April, 1915. County
Work Dept, International Com. Y. M. C. A., N. Y.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 395
more promptly shown results. Begun as a benevolence, it has
grown to be an important part of an educational system.
The dearth of reading matter in many rural homes is almost
beyond the belief of those to whom the daily paper, the weekly,
monthly and quarterly magazines, the well-filled private book
shelves, and the public libraries, general and special, have always
been a matter of course. To one accustomed to these, they are
necessities, and he little realizes the conditions which led that
child of a backwood community to cherish the catalogue of a
mail-order house as a choice possession. In order to show this
lack of reading matter more specifically it may be well to cite
the case of a certain township in the Middle West, where an in-
vestigation was carried on to learn just how much reading was
done. The principal of the schools of a small city near by, in co-
operation with the state library commission, made a survey of
the twenty-one homes in this sparsely settled township. The first
important discovery was that not one adult had read a book
during the last year. It is little wonder, for there was not a
new or attractive book in the whole three hundred owned in this
whole territory, covering one hundred and fifty square miles.
The investigator found that at four homes there was not even
a Bible, which he had wrongly assumed would be in every home,
and did not at first count as a book, while five homes had no
other book than the Bible. A little more than half of the books
of fiction in the community were of the dime-novel variety. In
one American home, the family consisting of father, mother, and
ten children under seventeen, the total literary equipment con-
sisted of "The Foreman's Bride," "Wfio is the Creator?"
"Twenty Years of Hustling," and a Bible. The boy of thir-
teen years of age said that "The Foreman's Bride" was his favor-
ite book and that he had read it several times. Another home,
where both father and mother were Indians, contained about fifty
dime novels, with no other books or periodicals of any kind, al-
though both parents were educated at Carlisle.
In two homes there were no periodicals, and in the others the
magazines were chiefly of the light literature type, Comfort,
Good Stories, Happy Hours, etc. One home had The Woman's
Home Companion, the Cosmopolitan, the American Home, and
Extension. Forty weekly papers and eight dailies were taken,
396 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
two of the latter being Bohemian papers with strong Socialistic
tendencies.
Another investigation made in a seaboard state, not more than
three hundred miles from New York City, reveals conditions even
more startling, the data being collected with the assistance of the
school teachers throughout the community. Great care was
taken and the conditions found should be fairly representative,
as the rural population of the state is almost exclusively native
born ; there is scarcely a district in the state more than ten miles
from a railroad ; the rural free delivery brings mail to every
door; there is a compulsory school law; and the state maintains
a system of traveling libraries, whereby any school, church, or
club might have one free of charge upon application.
The conditions show even greater lack of reading matter than
in the West, More than 50 per cent, of the families reported
owned no books whatever. More than 25 per cent, of the homes
reported that they took no periodicals of any kind, not even a
local newspaper. About 94 per cent, took no periodical of a gen-
eral or. literary character. Of every thousand children in one
county, 44 per cent, reported that they read nothing. More
than 50 per cent, of the households in this same county reported
that they owned no books.
In a district from which thirty-one replies were received, rep-
resenting nineteen families, not a single pupil reports having
read a book. Only two of these families own a book, ' ' The Life
of McKinley" in both cases. In eleven of the nineteen homes
there was not a newspaper, a magazine or a book. Only two of
seventeen families in*another district own books; one has lt Rob-
inson Crusoe" and the other has "The War with Spain."
These investigations show the value of traveling libraries. In
one school from which seventeen replies came (representing nine
households) three homes were utterly without books, yet sixteen
of the seventeen children had read books from the traveling
library; four of the sixteen had never read a book from any
other source, and the sixteen pupils had read sixty-one books
from this library. While these data indicating a dire need for
books are the result of recent investigations, librarians have for
a long time appreciated the rural need for good literature, and
have done much to relieve this book hunger. Before the phrase
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 397
"rural betterment'' passed current, if not, indeed, before it had
been coined, many attempts were made to open to the country
boy and girl the educational opportunities found in good books
and to relieve the dull monotony of the country life by attractive
reading matter. In at least thirty-three states efforts are now
being made to send good books to country districts.
Sometimes the books are furnished by the public library of an
adjoining city. Occasionally a township supplies its own needs
with local funds. In many cases the county is the unit and owns
and circulates the books. Most frequently, however, the work is
done by state library commissions, which, by sending out travel-
ing libraries, reach hundreds of communities which otherwise
would be without books. In a few instances the books have been
taken to the very door of the farmhouse, as in Delaware and in
Maryland, where book wagons. make periodical rounds. There
traveling libraries are collections of from thirty-five to one hun-
dred books which are packed in stout wooden cases and sent out
by the state or the county, as the case may be. They are made
up of the best popular books in fiction, history, travel, biography,
science and literature, and are suited to the needs of both adults
and children. Where there is a local need there may be added
a selection of books printed in German, Norwegian, Bohemian,
Danish, Polish or Yiddish in order that those older rural resi-
dents who cannot read the English language may be served.
All forms of the traveling library are intended for farming
communities and for those small villages which do not enjoy
public library privileges.
If a few persons in a community are sufficiently interested in
any subject to make a serious study of it they are furnished a
collection of books which, with a study outline, enable them to
constitute themselves a study club. There is practically no limit
to the number of topics which may be studied in this way. Ma-
terial of various kinds, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and pic-
tures will be sent upon any subject from Egyptian history to
the latest phase of the up-to-date sociological problem. The de-
sires of every one are met as nearly as possible, whether he wishes
to make a study of Flemish art or to learn the best way of pre-
venting potato scab.
When the people of any community have read a library it is
398 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
returned to the state or county authorities where the books are
checked up, a record of their circulation is taken, and necessary
repairs are made, after which it is sent to another community.
The rural community is at no expense except that the cost of
transportation is generally paid by the local patrons. In no
event, however, is even an insignificant financial payment on the
part of the patrons made the condition of obtaining the books
from the local custodian.
The rule is that the traveling library shall be kept in the most
centrally located and most easily accessible place that can be
found. The local postoflfice is an ideal place, but a general store
often serves the purpose well. Frequentty the local merchant
finds that his increased trade well repays him for the time spent
in caring for the library, since the presence of the books attracts
the public to his place of business. Where there is no postoffice
or store, a creamery, a cheese factory, or a private residence be-
comes the home of the little group* of books. Sometimes the
library is located in a schoolhouse, but since a schoolhouse is
closed evenings,. Saturdays, and during long vacation periods,
the books so located are not always accessible. It is found also
that adults do not usually patronize libraries which are located
in schoolhouses.
Records indicate that the tastes of country readers differ very
little from the tastes of city people. An examination of the re-
corded circulation of certain books explodes the theory that the
interests of country people are peculiar to country districts.
Farmers refuse to read the books which theorists think they
ought to read. For example, even the best book on farm topics
is rather less popular in the country than in the city. On the
other hand, a book that is popular in the city is likely to be
popular in the country. Further, however, a good book sent to
the country is more likely to be read there than in the city, since
there is in the country little or no competition from the poor,
but possible more attractive, best-seller.
It is an interesting fact that the country boy or girl is very
much the same sort of an individual as is the city youth and
likes the same sort of books. Prof. B. A. Heydrick, of the High
School of Commerce of New York City, asked six hundred city
boys to give him a list of the twenty books which they liked best.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 399
Care was taken to secure the independent, individual preference
of each. At about the same time Mr. O. S. Rice, of the State
Superintendent's office, in Wisconsin, made a similar request of
the boys and girls in attendance in one hundred and fifty high
schools in the state, many of these being, the smaller village and
country high schools. The result of the vote among the city boys
was as follows :
Author and Title Votes
Stevenson — Treasure Island 222
Dickens— Oliver Twist 100
Cooper — Last of the Mohicans 81
Dumas — Three Musketeers 78
Cooper — The Spy , . 61
Stevenson — Kidnapped 58
Barbour— Half Back 57
Dumas — Count of Monte Cristo 55
Barbour — Crimson Sweater 51
Doyle — Sherlock Holmes . 46
Tarkington — Monsieur Beaucaire 44
Twain — Tom Sawyer 44
Scott — Talisman 43
Dickens— Tale of Two Cities 42
Longfellow — Courtship of Miles Standish 37
Hughes — Tom Brown's School Days 35
Longfellow — Evangeline 34
Thurston — Masquerader 34
Doyle — Sign of the Four 33
London— Call of the Wild 33
The country boys in Wisconsin, some of whom were in smaller
villages and cities, chose the following books as their favorites :
Author and Title
Stevenson — Treasure Island.
Scott — Ivanhoe.
London— Call of the Wild.
Cooper — Last of the Mohicans.
Churchill— The Crisis.
Twain — Tom Sawyer.
Wallace— Ben-Hur.
Eliot — Silas Marner.
Cooper — Pathfinder.
Cooper — The Spy
Dickens— Tale of Two Cities.
400 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Cooper — Deerslayer.
Wright— Shepherd of the Hills.
Doubleday — From Cattle Ranch to College.
Eggleston — Hoosier Schoolmaster.
Fox — Trail of the Lonesome Pine.
Dickens — David Copperfield.
Wister — The Virginian.
Eggleston — Last of the Flatboats.
Dixon — Leopard Spots.
s
It is to be noted that "Treasure Island" heads both lists and
the presence of the "Last of the Mohicans," "The Spy," "Tom
Sawyer," "Tale of Two Cities" and "The Call of the Wild"
upon both lists indicates that boys are boys in the country and
in the city. 'It is rather interesting to note also that in addition
to these excellent books which are indicated upon both lists,
the country boys selected Scott's "Ivanhoe," Dickens' "David
Copperfield," Eliot's "Silas Marner," and Wallace's "Ben-
Hur. ' ' While some deplore that only fiction is represented upon
these lists we suspect that a perfectly sincere expression from a
group of adults would have given much the same results in this
particular. On the whole the investigation indicates that the
tastes of the American boys, whether in the city or country, are
clean and wholesome. City and country boys alike have an evi-
dent fondness for books of violence and heroism, but the vio-
lence is not lawless and the heroism is genuine.
The vote taken by the boys living in rural Wisconsin bears evi-
dence that good use will be made of book facilities when they
are offered. The Wisconsin boy's acquaintance with the best
books grows out of the fact that under the Wisconsin law each
school district is required to expend for books out of the funds
coming to it from the state at least ten cents for each person
of school age within the district. Something over sixty-five thou-
sand dollars is thus spent annually for books in these school-
houses. None of this is spent in the large cities, so that this
sum goes into the smaller cities and villages and into the coun-
try districts. In addition to this the state expends a consider-
able sum of money in maintaining a state traveling library sys-
tem, and during the last year over forty thousand volumes were
sent out to over six hundred different rural communities scat-
tered OTjer the entire state.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 401
Some time since a rather careful investigation was made of
the efficiency of different library systems. It was discovered that
the state traveling library systems circulated every volume owned
with greater frequency than did the average city library in six
representative states chosen at random. The average city library
circulated each volume owned only 2.22 times during the year,
whereas one state traveling library system, according to its
actual recorded circulation, circulated every volume 2.77 times
per year. As it is very difficult to get unpaid custodians of
traveling libraries to record every circulation, it is likely that
the actual circulation much exceeded the recorded circulation.
It is also probably true that each time a book is taken from a
traveling library situated in the country it is read by many more
persons than is a book taken from a city library by a resident of
the city. Several members of the farmer's family are likely to
read every book which gets into the farm-house. The records of
another state traveling library system showed that each volume
owned was circulated 4.07 times per year.
The average city library in the six states tested expended 12.6
cents for each time a volume was circulated, whereas the two
state traveling library systems tested spent 7 cents and 7.7 cents
respectively for each time a volume was circulated. Fourteen
county traveling library systems in one state expended only 5
cents for each time a volume was circulated.
We think we may safely assume that the need for books in the
country is greater than the need in the city. If this is correct
amd if the traveling library systems circulate the books on their
shelves more frequently than do city libraries, and if it costs the
traveling library systems less to deliver good books in book hun-
gry rural districts than it costs' to deliver the less needed books
to urban dwellers, are not the traveling library systems more
efficient than are city libraries?
The data collected seem to indicate clearly four points: first,
many rural communities are sadly in need of reading matter;
second, country people will read when given the opportunity ;
third, country people do not differ greatly from city people in
their choice of books; fourth, money invested in traveling
libraries is well invested.
402 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
THE COMMUNITY FAIR1
J. STERLING MORAN
THE COMMUNITY FAIR is a miniature county fair conducted by
the people of a community to promote its social and economic
life. It arouses interest and pride in local achievement by afford-
ing an opportunity for the exhibition of the best products of the
community, fosters the spirit of cooperation by bringing the
people together in friendly rivalry, and affords an opportunity
for wholesome community recreation.
These fairs are held quite generally throughout the country and
are known in different localities as community fairs, district fairs,
township fairs, school fairs, grange fairs, and farmers '-club fairs.
The fall festivals, harvest home festivals, and farm, home, and
school festivals, which are held in certain localities, are adapta-
tions of the same general idea.
The community, township, or district fair makes its appeal di-
rectly to all members of the community, while the fair conducted
by the farmers' club appeals especially to the members of the
organization concerned.
The school fair in its simplest form is an exhibition of the
work done and the products grown by the school children. From
the school fair, with its community-wide interest, it is an easy
step to include the products of the older girls and boys who are
not in school, and ultimately the products and work of all the
members of the community.
Other types of community fairs vary from the "harvest home
thanksgiving festival" of New 'England, which was originally
dominated by the religious motive and had very few exhibits
aside from those brought for decorative purposes, to the "farm,
home, and school festivals" of the Middle West, where the main
feature is the exhibition of products and where recreation of all
kinds forms a prominent part.
A single organization is seldom influential enough to enlist
all the elements in a community for the purpose of conducting a
i Adapted from Farmers' Bulletin 870, United States Department of
Agriculture.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 403
community fair. Every organization in the community ought to
feel responsible for the success of the enterprise.
The first step is to get together the leaders of the different
organizations in the community for the purpose of considering
whether or not it is advisable to hold a community fair. It is
well to present at this meeting a general outline of the method
of procedure for the conduct of the fair. If the plan is ap-
proved by this group, a community meeting is called, at which
full explanation is made regarding the nature and purposes of a
community fair and the methods of conducting it. This meeting
should be well advertised by posters, newspaper notices, and post
cards addressed to each family, calling attention to the place and
date and emphasizing the importance of the meeting. If the
community decides to hold a fair, the next step is to form an
organization, either temporary or permanent, and elect officers,
consisting of a president, a vice-president, and a secretary-treas-
urer. Committees should also be chosen.
The president keeps in close touch with the other officers and
the chairmen of all the committees and is the correlating force
and executive officer of the fair. The other officers perform the
duties usually pertaining to their offices. The committees should
have from three to five members each, including at least one
young person of school age.
The amusement and entertainment committee has charge of all
athletics and field sports, games, folk dances, pageants, and
parades, and also arranges for music, motion pictures, speakers,
and other attractions.
The arrangements and decorations committee arranges for a
place to hold the fair and looks after the decorations, using
flowers, autumn leaves, evergreens, bunting, flags, and other
available material. This committee cooperates with the several
committees having charge of the different exhibit departments
and assigns such tables, shelves, and wall space as are needed.
The publicity committee enlists the help of the local news-
papers and supplies them regularly with articles concerning
the fair and with a comprehensive report after it has been held.
Regular notices are given in schools and churches and at all
public gatherings for several weeks prior to the holding of the
fair. Handmade posters are often used, and when well made
404 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
they give individuality and attractiveness to the advertising.
Printed handbills or "fliers" giving detailed lists of articles that
may be exhibited in each department are distributed to every
family in the community several weeks before the fair. In the
preparation of these suggestive lists the publicity committee
works with the chairman of the committees having charge of the
several exhibit departments of the fair.
While it is to be expected that the exhibits at a community
fair will receive special attention for the purpose of exhibition,
nevertheless they should represent as nearly as possible the nor-
mal production of the community, for one of the purposes of
holding a community fair is to stimulate a desire to increase the
quantity and to improve the quality of the average product.
Freak exhibits of all kinds are to be avoided.
Personal solicitation has been found to be a most effective
means of inducing people to make exhibits. Each exhibitor
should realize that he is in competition only with other members
of the community and that it will not be possible for some
stranger to take all the prizes.
Satisfactory results are usually obtained in community fairs
by grouping certain classes of exhibits. Thus, in the live-stock
department, horses, cattle, swine, poultry, and pets are exhibited.
In the farm-products department are shown different varieties of
grains and seeds, grasses and forage crops, field beans and peas,
peanuts and potatoes, together with dairy products and bee
products. The orchard and garden department includes such
exhibits as fruits and vegetables, ornamental shrubbery, and
flowers.
The woman 's-work and fine-arts department includes prepared
foods, canned goods, jellies, preserves, and pickles, and all kinds
of needlework, together with such exhibits as paintings, metal
work, raffia and reed basket work, pottery, painted china, and
handmade jewelry.
The school and club department includes all exhibits from or-
ganizations in the community which wish to bring the results
of their work before the community in this way.
The historical relics department includes firearms, swords,
caps, and other war relics, old looms, spinning wheels, and arti-
cles produced on them, old pictures, drawings, documents, Indian
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 405
relics, family relics, geological specimens, and objects of interest
from other lands.
Besides the committees having charge of these departments,
there are often others that conduct such activities as a better-
babies contest, a health exhibit, or a parcel-post exhibit.
Judges of ability and experience should be secured. The state
agricultural colleges and other institutions are usually willing to
render such assistance as their force of workers and means will
permit. There are often other individuals with exceptional ex-
perience who may be available at little or no expense. When
possible, judges should be chosen from outside the community.
The relatively small number of exhibits at a community fair
makes it possible for the judges to explain the basis upon which
the awards were made. Besides allaying criticism, this plan has
great educational value. If standard score cards can be ob-
tained from reliable sources, they should be put into the hands
of prospective exhibitors several weeks prior to the fair, and all
judging should be done on this basis.
It has often been found that community fairs do not appeal to
certain persons who have been in the habit of making exhibits at
fairs where cash premiums are awarded. The primary aim of an
exhibitor at a community fair, however, should not be to win a
money prize as compensation for preparing his exhibit. Expe-
rience has proved that the awarding of money prizes not only
makes the cost of a fair prohibitive, but, by placing the emphasis
on money instead of on the honor of achievement, defeats the
purpose of the fair.
The best results have been obtained where ribbons have been
awarded, the color of the ribbon denoting the grade of the prize.
If money is available for printing the ribbons, each one should be
so printed as to show the occasion, place, and date. Awards
should be made on the basis of the excellence of the exhibit, and
no premium should be awarded to a poor exhibit. Accordingly,
for the information of exhibitors, it is well to publish for each
class of exhibits the requirements that are to be considered by
the judges in awarding premiums.
There are numerous instances where valuable premiums have
been given by commercial concerns for awards to individuals or
organizations that have been successful along the line in which
406 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the donors were particularly interested. In a Middle Western
State premiums were offered for the best kept farm and home
premises and to the farm and home showing the greatest im-
provement in a given time.
The community fair does not require large sums of money for
premiums or other expenses, and for this reason no charges are
made for entry of exhibits or gate admissions. A small amount
of money, however, is necessary to pay for printing and general
advertising, lumber for tables, shelves, and live-stock pens, rib-
bons for premiums, and such decorative material and incidentals
as are needed. This money is raised either by subscription or by
selling advertising space in the premium list or fair catalogue.
The managements of county fairs are beginning to realize the
value of the community exhibit as a factor in making the county
fair serve its purpose as an agricultural exhibition. Liberal pre-
miums have been offered for these community exhibits, either in
cash or in such form as to be of community use, as, for example,
reference books on agricultural subjects to be kept in the com-
munity library, a watering trough conveniently located, or a
drinking fountain.
One state has recently passed a law providing for the holding
of community fairs and appropriating money for the purpose
of packing community exhibits and transporting them to the
larger fairs.
An interesting county fair, made up of seventy-two community
exhibits, was recently held in a county in the Middle West.
There were no races or sideshows. The 10,000 people in attend-
ance spent their time for two days in visiting and inspecting the
exhibits and in wholesome recreation under the supervision of an
expert recreational director from a neighboring city. The ex-
hibits, occupying in all about 15,000 square feet of floor space
and 55,000 square feet of wall space, were housed in vacant
buildings on the business street and in tents. Each community
had its booths and the several communities vied with each other
in making attractive exhibits of the products of the farm, home,
and school.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 407
THE SMITH-HUGHES ACT l
THIS act is quite similar in some of its features to the Agricul-
tural Act of 1914. There is the same provision for continuing
and increasing appropriations, beginning with $1,700,000 in
1917, and rising to $7,200,000 in 1925. The available money will
be distributed among all states which agree to contribute sums
equal to their allotments and to conform to the terms of the act.
The appropriation provides for the creation of three distinct
funds, viz., (1) for paying salaries of teachers, supervisors or
directors of agricultural subjects; (2) for paying the salaries of
teachers of trade, home economics and industrial subjects, and
(3) for training the teachers and others mentioned under (1)
and (2). The basis of distribution among the states is rural
population under (1), urban population under (2), and total
population under (3). A state may accept benefits under one or
more of these funds, as it prefers.
The act creates a Federal Board of Vocational Education,
consisting of the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce and La-
bor, the United States Commissioner of Education, and three
other members, to be appointed by the President, of whom one
is to represent manufacturing and commercial interests, one agri-
cultural interests, and one labor interests. The board, besides
administering the act and supervising the work in the several
states, will carry out investigations of various kinds relating
to vocational education, cooperating, so far as may be advisable,
with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Com-
merce and the Bureau of Education.
i Adapted from "The Smith-Hughes Act for Vocational Education,"
Scientific American, p. 130, N. Y., Aug. 25, 1917.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAUTAUQUA
Elude, G. L. Leaven of Chautauqua. World To-day, 21:1120-2,
Sept., 1911.
Chautauqua: Symposium. Independent, 82:497-504, June 21, 1915.
McClure, W. F. Chautauqua of To-day. Review of Reviews, 50 : 53-
9, July, 1914.
408 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Pearson, Paul M. The Chautauqua Movement. The Annals, 40 : 211-
216, March, 1912.
Ransom, W. L. Founding of the Chautauqua. Independent, 89 : 380,
Feb. 26, 1917.
Strother, F. Great American Forum. World's Work, 24:511-64,
Sept., 1912.
Vincent, G. E. What is Chautauqua ? Independent, 79 : 17-9, July 6,
1914.
CLUBS— BOYS AND GIRLS
Benson, 0. H. School Credit for Boys' and Girls' Club Work and
Extension Activities in Agriculture and Home Economics. Jour-
nal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Education Asso-
ciation, August, 1915, pp. 1144-1154.
Creswell, Mary E. Girls' and Boys' Club Work— A Manual for Rural
Teachers, Bulletin 101, Vol. 4, No. 11. Georgia State College of
Agriculture, Athens, 1916.
Kercher, 0. Boys' Agricultural Clubs, Kentucky Agricultural Exten-
sion Circular, Vol. 46, pp. 1-51, Lexington, 1917.
Johnson, Stanley. Youth Leads the Way — The Corn Club Boys.
American Magazine, Vol. 80, pp. 8-13, September, 1915.
Youth Leads the Way — The Canning Girls. American Magazine, 80 :
20-25, October, 1915.
Youth Leads the Way — Pigs and Baby Beef (Boy's Clubs). Amer-
ican Magazine 80 : 43-47, November, 1915.
Organization and Instruction in Boys' Corn Club Work. U. S. D. A.
Bureau of Plant Industry, Cir. 803, 1915.
Swain, J. E. Hand Book for Boys' Agricultural Clubs with Sugges-
tions to Teachers, and Bibliography of Bulletins and Books. Okla-
homa Agricultural Extension Circular 43, pp. 1-90, 1917.
EXTENSION SERVICE AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
Lapp, John A. Important Federal Laws, pp. 96-106. B. F. Bowen
& Co., Indianapolis, 1917.
National Aid for Vocational Education, School and Society, Vol. I,
pp. 649-657, May 8, 1915.
Leake, Albert H. Vocational Education for Girls and Women. Chap.
I. Macmillan, N. Y., 1918.
Monahan, A. C. Federal Aid for Vocational Training: The Smith-
Lever and Smith-Hughes Bills. Journal of Home Economics 7:
245-248, May, 1915.
Pearson, R. A. Organization and Administration under the Smith-
Lever Act. Proceedings of the Association of American Agricul-
tural Colleges and Experiment Stations, pp. 116-129, 1916.
Second Report of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, 1918.
Government Printing Office, Washington.
Stimson, Rufus. Vocational Agricultural Education by Home Pro-
jects. Macmillan, N. Y., 1919.
True, A. C. Federal Legislation, Regulations, and Rulings Affecting
Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations. U. S. Department
of Agriculture States Relations Service, August 25, 1917.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 409
Home Economics Work Under the Smith-Lever Act. Journal of
Home Economics, 7 : 353-355, August, September, 1915.
Woolman, Mary Schenck. The Smith-Hughes Bill. Journal of Home
Economics, 8 : 241-245, May, 191G.
FAIRS
Bailey, L. H. County and Local Fairs. In his The Country Life Move-
ment, pp. 165-177, Macmillan, New York, 1011.
Community Service Week in Nortli Carolina, by the Community Ser-
vice Week Committee, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ra-
leigh, N. C., 1914.
Hamilton, John. Influences Exerted by Agricultural Fairs. The An-
nals, 40 : 200-210, March, 1912.
Jordan, S. M. Agricultural Exhibits and Farmers' Institutes. Mis-
souri State Board of Agriculture, Monthly Bulletin, Vol. 14, Jan-
uary, 1916, Jefferson City.
Meisnest, C. W. Harvest Fairs in County and Township Schools.
American City (T. and C. ed.), 15: 255-S, September, 1916.
Morgan, E. L. The Community Fair. The Massachusetts Agricultural
College Extension Service, Extension Bui. No. 27, Amherst, May,
1919.
Nelson, W. L. The County Fair in Missouri. Missouri State Board of
Agriculture, Monthly Bulletin, Vol. 14, No. 7, July, 1916.
Rubinow, S. G. Community Fair — A Factor in Rural Education,
School and Society, Vol. 6, pp. 96-101, July 28, 1917.
Vogt, Paul L. The County Fair. In his Introduction to Rural So-
ciology, Chapter XIX, 331-341, Appleton, N. Y., 1917.
FARM BUREAUS AND FARM DEMONSTRATION WORK
Bailey, L. H. The Farm Bureau Idea, In his York State Rural Prob-
lems, 1 : 132-146, Lyon, Albany, 1915.
The Farm Bureau Movement. In his York State Rural Problems, II :
80-102, Lyon, Albany, 1915.
Bronson, W. H. Farm Management Demonstration Work in Massa-
chusetts. Massachusetts Agricultural College Extension Bui. 9,
Amherst, 1916.
Burrit, M. C. The Farm Bureau as an Agent in Local Development.
Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Education
Association, 1916, pp. 614-619.
The County Farm Bureau Movement in New York State. Bui. 60,
New York Department of Agriculture, Albany, 1914.
Hurd, W. D. Farm Bureau and County Agent Movement. American
City, (Town and County Edition), Vol. 12, pp. 100-2, February,
1915.
Johnson, Edward C. The Agricultural Agent and Farm Bureau Move-
ment in Kansas. Extension Bui. 2, Kansas State Agricultural
College, Manhattan, 1914.
Lloyd, W. A. Status and Results of County Agricultural Agent Work
in the Northern and Western States, 1915. ^ U. S. D. A. States Re-
lations Service, Document 32, Circular 1, Ext. N.
410 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Knapp, S. A. Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work, U. S. D. A.
Yearbook, 1900, pp. 153-00.
How the Whole Country Demonstrated. U. S. D. A., Yearbook, 1915,
pp. 225-48.
FARMERS' INSTITUTES
Carney, Mabel. Farmers' Institutes and the Agricultural Press. In
Country Life and the Country School, pp. 90-102, Row, Chicago,
1912.
Hamilton, John. Farmers' Institute and Agricultural Extension Work
in the United States in 1913, U. S. D. A., Office of Experiment
Stations, Bui. 83, 1914.
RURAL LIBRARIES
Dudgeon, M. S. The Rural Book Hunger, Rural Manhood, Vol. VI,
p. 303, September, 1915.
Dyer, Walter A. The Spread of County Libraries, World's Work, 30 :
609-613, September, 1915.
Eddy, Harriet G. California County Free Libraries. Journal of Pro-
ceedings and Addresses of the National Education Association,
1911, pp. 1026-1029.
Magill, H. N. W. The Rural Library in Practice. Library Journal,
43 : 84-86, Jan., 1918.
Preston, Josephine C. The Country Child in the Rural Library. Na-
tional Education Association, 1914, pp. 796-798.
Rice, 0. S. Rural School Libraries: Their needs and possibilities.
National Education Association, pp. 740-774, 1913.
Tarbell, Mary Anna. A Village Library. Massachusetts Civic League,
Leaflet No. 3, Boston, 1909.
Utley, George B. The Rural Traveling Library. The Playground 6:
486, 487.
CHAPTER XV
THE COUNTEY CHUECH
TEN YEARS IN A COUNTRY CHURCH 4
MATTHEW B. MC NUTT
THE simple story of a decade of ministerial work, such as the
magazine has requested me to write, is this :
One cold Saturday morning in February, 1900, a seminary
fellow-student chanced to meet me.
"Hello, Mac," he said, "don't you want to preach to-morrow,
thirty miles out of Chicago? I have two appointments."
I told him that I would go. I boarded the first train and
landed about noon in Naperville, 111. I was met at the station
by an old gentleman whom I took to be a farmer. I was right,
and he informed me that his church was six miles in the coun-
try. This was rather unwelcome news, for the day was dis-
agreeable and I was not clad for such a drive ; but I was treated
to a good dinner and we made the venture. The good roads at-
tracted my attention at once, and my farmer friend told me
that all the roads were thus paved with gravel. And such
splendid farm-buildings as we passed I had never before seen
on my travels. We saw horses and cattle that looked as if they
had just come from a state fair. My expectations had risen high
at what I had observed and I was eager to see that country
church.
At last it hove in sight — a very plain structure, built half a
century before, with a single room and with surroundings that
gave a stranger the impression that the church was the last
thing in the community to receive any consideration. It was
altogether incommensurate with its thrifty surroundings. The
fences about the manse and church-lots had toppled over, and
the old horse-sheds were an eye-sore to every passerby. The
i Adapted from World's Work, 21: 13761-13766, December, 1910.
411
412 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
manse seemed to be about the only house in the community that
was void of all comforts and conveniences. One of the elders,
a farmer, had been preaching for three years, until he died ; and
the last regular minister had resigned with $400 due on his
salary, which the church borrowed to square the account. Six
of the nine Sunday-school teachers were members of one family
— and they were good teachers, too. The three elders were also
trustees, and each taught a class in the Sunday-school. One
of these elders was also Sunday-school superintendent, Sunday-
school treasurer, church treasurer, and treasurer of benevolences.
A hall had been fitted up in the neighborhood to be the home
of an organization that called itself "The New Era Club."
But dancing seemed to be the only amusement, though the club 's
original promoters had hoped for better things. No one had
united with the church for five years. The only services were
preaching and Sunday-school on the Sabbath, and a meeting of
the Women's Missionary Society. Collections were taken once
a year for missions and ministerial relief, and this was practically
the extent of the benevolence.
Here was a church that had lived in a community for sixty-
seven years. Its organization had been effected beneath some
trees with a tribe of Indians curiously watching the proceeding
from a distance. Many of the original Scotch, English and
Yankee families had moved away or died; and their places had
been often filled by Germans, who were invariably of a different
faith. How to sustain the life of this institution had become a
serious problem that worried those who were responsible for its
direction. Some of the people were thinking that the country
church had outlived its usefulness. None knew better than the
leaders that things were not going well with their kirk, and
none were more grieved about it.
I preached that Sunday and was invited to preach again the
following Sunday. I did so, and at the close of the service was
asked if I would consider a call. I replied that I would finish
my work in the seminary in May and would then be ready for a
job somewhere; and that I saw no good reason why I should
not become the pastor of a farmers' church. The salary pro-
posed was $600 a year, with a manse and fiv^ acres of land. In
the meantime a letter came from a presbytery in the West (where
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 413
I had preached during two summer vacations), strongly urging
me to go there and take charge of three churches at nearly
double the salary offered here. That looked like a much larger
proposition — financially and otherwise — and I was drawn to-
ward it.
The Du Page people were to decide by vote the following Sun-
day whether or not they wanted me. Sick from a cold that I
had contracted on the first trip, I had asked a classmate to go in
my stead — requesting him to wait at his room until I had pre-
pared a message asking the congregation not to consider me as a
candidate. For some reason the classmate did not wait. I
hastened downtown, tjiinking that I could overtake him at the
station, but I reached the gate just in time to see the train dis-
appearing round the bend. The vote was taken and the result
came to me two days afterward in a letter from one of the elders,
saying that out of forty-eight ballots there had been only one
"no." A letter from the same man came the next day explain-
ing that the one negative vote had been cast by a little 13-year-
old girl who had not understood how to prepare her ballot.
Here was truly a great opportunity, looking me squarely in
the face — a call from the country ! I reconsidered the matter
and concluded that I would cast my lot with those country-folk
— for better or for worse.
Why I came to this country church, six miles from a railroad
and without even a village surrounding it, I cannot explain. I
had received no special training for it other than that I had
been born on a farm and brought up in a country church. The
days spent in college and in the seminary were so full of hard
study that the thought of where my "homiletic bias" should
eventually be turned loose never once entered my mind. I sim-
ply had a general feeling that in due time there would be some
good, hard work for me somewhere, I cared not where.
When I came to the field the first of May, I was surprised
and not a little disappointed to find that these good people would
not consent to an installation until they had tried the new min-
ister at least a year. This was the Scotch conservatism that was
lurking in the congregation. However, I did not feel so badly
when I discovered that this was their regular custom.
There was no one to occupy the manse with me, so I furnished
414 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
two rooms for myself and arranged to take my meals with a
neighborly farmer. When a year had passed, the people were
then willing enough to install ; but the pastor, somewhat dissatis-
fied with this lonely way of living and with no immediate pros-
pects of anything better, thought it unwise to form a permanent
relationship with the church. Another year fled and there was a
"better-half" in the manse. The congregation voted again —
unanimously as before — and the installation took place.
One of the hardest things to overcome was their preconceived
notions about the church and about country life. I found it diffi-
cult to change the old way of doing things. The only hope of
progress seemed to be in training the younger generation. But
how to train it and in what, were the great problems to be
solved. One thing was certain: the church society as it was
organized and conducted did not seem to be all that the com-
munity needed. Many of the people had grown indifferent to
the church, and those who were interested did not seem to know
just what was lacking. Where could this country church and
pastor look for light? Not to other country churches, for they,
too, were in the dark. Not to the town and city, because their
methods were devised for an environment presenting altogether
different conditions. There was nothing left for us to do, there-
fore, but to study the situation and work out the solution our-
selves. And that is just what we have been doing.
I soon realized that, in order to succeed in a community like
this, a country parson must do a great deal more than preach
and visit his flock. His duties must vary, as mine did, from
janitor to head financier, — depending upon how much the people
have been trained to do, and also upon how much they are able
to do.
The first work that we attempted (apart from what is ordi-
narily considered church work) was to develop systematically the
musical talent of the community. This was done through an old-
fashioned singing-school. All the young people were taught to
read music and to sing. Quartettes were formed; musical in-
struments of various kinds were purchased by individuals; and
an orchestra was started. There are few homes in the parish now
that do not have music of some kind. A great many of the young
men and women have been encouraged to take private lessons in
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 415
voice and on the piano, violin, and cornet. Some of them had
thought that they possessed no talent for music ; they got their
start in the singing-school.
This musical talent was put to good use. The chorus choir
has done fine work — singing around in the different homes one
or two evenings every week — for the sick, for the aged, and for
those who can not go anywhere to hear music. Our quartettes
have been in demand to sing in the surrounding towns on special
occasion, such as funerals and farmers' institutes. There are
many special entertainments at the church in which our musi-
cians take a prominent part. At our last Children's Day service
a chorus of eighty voices sang, accompanied by a number of in-
struments. Some of our young women are now teaching music
in the community.
Parallel with the music, we cultivate the art of public speak-
ing. Even the very small children are given places on our pro-
grams. Extemporaneous speaking is practiced in all our so-
cieties.
These public occasions are a great stimulus to our young folks
to do their best in declaiming. In many cases the parents be-
come interested and send their children to some teacher in elocu-
tion for more thorough training, especially when the son or the
daughter is to read or debate at some big event. Last fall a
team from our young men's society debated the income tax ques-
tion with a team of business men from town. At different times
we have given plays in the church. The last was a story from
one of the magazines which a woman of this parish dramatized
for the occasion.
These home-talent entertainments have proved to be more pop-
ular than the attractions we get from the lyceum bureaus, some
of which cost $100 a night. We have had audiences of between
400 and 500 people. Many town-folks drive out to their country-
neighbors ' entertainments. We have found that to the great
majority of our people this kind of work is far more attractive
than the cheap amusements which they are apt to get outside
of the community at the public parks and shows in the surround-
ing towns.
The pride of the community is our band of athletes. It is a
sight to see these husky farmer boys in base-ball suits. We have
416 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
a number of teams ; and if a stranger were to come along almost
any Saturday afternoon in the base-ball season, he would find a
game in progress near some farm-house. No Sunday base-ball
here ! It is no less a delight to see a goodly number of country
"fans" in evidence, from both sides of the house. The annual
field-day is one of the notable events of the year. Hundreds of
people assemble to witness the athletic contests and its ball-
games.
The young men of the church, prompted by a spirit of patriot-
ism, have undertaken to rescue the Fourth of July from the
shameful and degrading way in which it is so often celebrated.
They plan to make it first of all a day of patriotic inspiration.
A good local program is provided, supplemented by the best
public speaker that can be secured from outside. Then it is
made a social event as well as a day of innocent sports and
pastimes. Some of the folks who went last Fourth to an adja-
cent city, to see a flying-machine that didn't fly, came back in
the afternoon to .our celebration, saying that it was "lots bet-
ter fun" to watch the country sports.
Come with me now to one of our young men's meetings — the
young men's Bible-class. The program for this evening is a mock
court-trial. The case in hand is Jones vs. Brown, for assault and
battery with intent to do great bodily injury. The judge, very
dignified, sits on the bench. Before him are the plaintiff and
the defendant, with their favorite attorneys and all the neces-
sary court-officers. The jury is carefully selected; the witnesses
are examined ; the case is tried in due form ; the jury is charged,
and the verdict returned. It is needless to say that there is "a
heap of fun" at such a trial. Besides, the boys learn a great
deal about practical affairs, for each is required to look up the
duties of his office beforehand and explain to his associates.
Perhaps a watermelon is devoured at the close; then the fellows
visit and sing for a while and go home feeling that they have had
"a grand time."
Next time it is something else — an old-fashioned spelling-bee,
or a story-night, or what-not. They discuss all sorts of ques-
tions and do all sorts of things. There are upward of fifty en-
rolled in the class now. It also meets every Sunday morning for
Bible-study, and these Sunday sessions are quite as well at-
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 417
tended as the monthly meetings. It is taught by the pastor.
These same lads conduct a lecture-course — not for pecuniary
profit, but for the sole purpose of bringing wholesome entertain-
ment within reach of all. Everybody attends, irrespective of
creed.
The young men own and operate a small printing-press and
(with the assistance of the pastor) do all the church printing.
They hold religious meetings and entertainments in the public
school-houses during the winter and in a grove during warm
weather. In the pastor's absence a number of the men speak
at the Sunday service. This class and the young women's class
have become great powers in the church. From them we select
teachers and officers for the church and Sunday-school.
If you were to accompany me to one of our young women's
monthly meetings, you would find thirty or more girls and young
women with needles, busily engaged in making little garments
for poor children in the city, chatting as they sew. Some mem-
bers of the society, who have completed courses in sewing, in-
struct the others. Or, if we arrive in time for the beginning
of the meeting, we might find them studying "On the Trial of
the Immigrants," "The Uplift of China," "Korea in Transi-
tion," or some other live book or subject. This study is sand-
wiched in between music and devotional exercises. At the
proper time, a signal is given and the young ladies arrange their
chairs in groups of four and have placed upon their laps lunch-
boards laden with good things to eat that have been prepared by
the member or members of the society at whose home the meeting
is held. Then, home they go. These meetings are much en-
joyed by our young women and it is no task to secure their
attendance.
You would see similar proceedings at the monthly women's
meetings except that (if it were winter) you would find a sprink-
ling of men in the assembly. The husbands and fathers come
— mostly for the sociability afforded, though they do discuss, in
a very informal way, the leading topics of the day and the busi-
ness of farming and stock-raising. The mothers, in addition to
their mission-study, consider topics pertaining to housekeeping,
the care and training of children, home-building, and other prac-
tical subjects. The society has forty members.
418 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
We are obliged to minimize the number of meetings held, on
account of the great difficulty that country people have in get-
ting together. We have few meetings and make each count for
much.
A great deal is made of sociability and fellowship. In fact, the
church is practically the social center of the neighborhood. The
best socials that we have are those attended by all the family—
the older people and the children taking part in the games and
the frolic. We are, indeed, just like one family. The mothers
come and bring their babies. The little ones romp and play till
they grow tired and sleepy; then they are taken. to the mothers'
room and tucked away in a little bed provided for the purpose
— and all goes merrily on.
Perhaps the greatest day in all the year is what we call our
"Annual Meeting," which is held on the third Saturday in
March. Its principal objects are inspiration and fellowship, and
it certainly does give the dead-level gait a severe jolt. It is an
all-day meeting, and the whole country-side assembles in full
force. The ladies serve a banquet at noon — sometimes to 250
people. We usually have two or three good speakers from out-
side, besides the best music that our home talent can produce.
This is the grand round-up of the year's work. Reports and
letters from absent members are read. Some one always speaks
tenderly and lovingly of those who have passed away during the
year. A blessed day, this !
Other inspirational meetings are held once in awhile for the
various societies. One was held recently for the young men's
Bible-class and was attended by 100 young men.
A new feature which we are planning for this winter is a
number of study courses — in Scientific Farming, Domestic
Science, Sociology, and Civil Government. Landscape Garden-
ing will also be taken up with a view to encourage the country
people to beautify the environment of their homes.
It is not our intention to make of the church a knowledge-im-
parting institution, but rather, through it, to foster the spirit of
inquiry and to encourage the investigation of truth by supplying
the occasion and the opportunity for such investigation. The
desire for knowledge and development once inspired, the way
is found and things get done.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 419
Symbolical of this new life in Du Page Church and one of our
greatest achievements is the new church-home recently dedicated.
It cost, including furnishings, $10,000. This building enter-
prise was a good test of the confidence and the interest which
the community has in the church. Everybody gave to the build-
ing-fund— Protestants, German-Lutherans, Catholics, and men
of no church — and they all helped willingly to haul the ma-
terials. A new pace was set in church building by this people
when they subscribed all the money before the work of building
was begun. No collection was taken at the dedication for build-
ing or furnishing purposes.
The new church, with a maximum seating-capacity of 500 peo-
ple, is a model of neatness and comfort. It has a separate Sun-
day-school apartment (with a number of class-rooms), pastor's
study, choir-room, cloak-rooms, mothers' room, and vestibule —
all on the first floor. These floors are all covered with cork car-
pet. In the basement are the dining-room, kitchen, toilet, and
furnace-room. The building is equipped with lighting-plant,
water-works, and hot-air furnaces. We entertained the Chicago
Presbytery last fall, and the city brethren all said that they had
never seen the like of this church in1 the open country. And, by
the way, more yellow-legged chickens entered the ministry that
day at Du Page Church than ever before or since !
Three doors in the old structure and twenty-one in the new —
that is an intimation of the increased efficiency and of the
greater number of avenues of usefulness which this modern
country-church seeks to enter. It aims to be of service to the
whole man — body, mind, and spirit. It seeks to surround him
with an atmosphere that will stimulate him to live his own life
and to cultivate a harmonious development of all his faculties
and powers.
With all this practical work, the spiritual has not been neg-
lected nor minimized. In fact, more attention has been given to
it — in training the youth and in making the public worship at-
tractive and helpful. The people have not grown less religious
or less reverent. Quite the opposite. The Sunday services have
never been so largely attended nor the interest so well sus-
tained. The membership of the church has increased from 80 to
163, and the Sunday-school from 100 to 300. And, in addition
420 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
to building the church, remodeling the m-anse, making other re-
pairs, and increasing the pastor's salary 40 per cent., the people
have contributed to benevolences in the last decade $5,270 — as
against $6,407 contributed during the fifty years preceding.
The effect that this new life is having upon the people of the
parish is remarkable. Whole families that formerly had no in-
terest in the church or in the uplift of the community have be-
come active members. Some of them are now officers and lead-
ers. They not only lend their service but they give freely of
their means to support the work. Their conception of life is
growing larger. They are buying books, pictures and musical
instruments. They are installing in their dwellings the modern
comforts and conveniences, including the daily newspapers, maga-
zines, and religious weeklies, where formerly there were none
of these. Many who once gave nothing to benevolences are now
regular contributors. Others that formerly gave but a pittance
have grown generous.
We see in the young people a growing ambition to get an edu-
cation. They seem to be inspired with a determination to make
the most out of their lives. The honor students at a neighboring
high school in town for the last five years have been young people
from our community. A number of these young men and women
have taken honors at our State university. Nor is the studying
all done in college and away from home. The fireside university
is becoming more and more popular.
There is noticeable in the people an increased willingness to
take part in the various activities of the community's life, which
may be attributed to the fact that they are better prepared for
service. A new community-spirit and harmony have sprung up,
with a wholesome pride. This has been brought about by making
the church serve the whole community rather than minister to a
particular part of it.
Whether it be the result of a more abundant life in this vicinity
or not, farms here are at a premium. Whenever a farm is adver-
tised for rent, half a dozen applicants are after it the next day.
Persons living outside the parish have remarked to pastor and
people again and again : * ' How we wish we lived nearer to your
church!' And there has not been in our community the ten-
dency for farmers to sell or rent and move to town.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 421
The greatest achievement of all, however, is the orderly, peace-
loving, enterprising community that surrounds the church, and
the lot of clean, sturdy, capable young people that are growing
up in the church. These are the fruits we covet most and by
which we wish to be known and judged.
LAND TENURE AND THE RURAL CHURCH 1
HENRY WALLACE
THE prosperity of the rural church has in all ages and in all
countries been determined largely by the tenure by which farmers
hold their lands. A prosperous country church means a rela-
tively large rural population — large enough to support a minis-
ter, to push the work of the church vigorously, to impress its
ideals of life and character on the community, and to do its part
in extending the gospel to outside sections and to foreign lands.
It requires, second, that farming be on an economic basis ; that
is, that farmers are making money. For the church is always
and everywhere supported, not by capital, but by profits ; and if
the farmer is not making a comfortable living or is sinking his
capital, he does not have the means of supporting the church.
And if he does not have the means, his will to support the church
will be ineffective.
In the third place, the prosperous rural church requires a rea-
sonably stable population. So much of the Christian life lies in
Christian relations with neighbors, with employees, with employ-
ers, with the whole community life, that a roving farm popula-
tion cannot, even if it would, develop Christian graces or impress
itself favorably on a community of unbelievers. The farm owner
who has moved to town and is renting his land cannot be expected
to be a real, vital force in the rural church. Nor can the tenant
who has a one-year lease, or whose tenure is uncertain, be ex-
pected to cultivate the Christian graces by intimate fellowship
with his neighbors and associates or fellow church-members; in
other words, to take root in the community and become a part
of it.
i Adapted from "The Church and Country Life," pp. 232-242, Missionary
Education Movement of the U. S. and Canada, New York City, 1916.
422 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
One thing more. The prosperous country church requires that
there be an agreement among the members as to the big things
for which the church stands: the sinfulness of men; the possi-
bility of redemption from sinfulness ; growth in Christian graces ;
the efficiency of the gospel to make better husbands, better wives,
better parents, better children, better farmers, better business
men, better neighbors, better citizens. Success need not be ex-
pected if minor things of which Jesus said nothing and upon
which the apostles laid no emphasis, such as forms of church
government and modes of baptism, are regarded as the essential
things for which the church stands. If the church is to be suc-
cessful, there must be toward these matters a body of sentiment
which makes hearty cooperation and Christian fellowship possible.
These, as I see it, are the conditions of the prosperous rural
church. These conditions prevailed when the rural church was
in the height of its prosperity in the early part of the last century.
There was then a dense population per square mile in the settled
portions of the country, because the farmer was then a child
of the woods, hewing his way painfully through the forests of
the Eastern and Middle States, and requiring a lifetime to clear
up a quarter section or even an eighty. He was a man of the
ax and cradle and scythe and flail. Rural congregations were
large then ; and the spirit of the farmer of that day is reflected
in the names that he gave to his church, — names fragrant of
the spirit of piety and devotion and showing close acquaintance
with the Bible, — Bethel, Rehoboth, Mount Zion, Ebenezer.
There was then no pull to the city, for the cities were small,
as they must needs be, since there was not the wherewithal to
feed a large city population, nor adequate means of transporta-
tion. Labor was cheap, land was cheap, living was cheap ; and
the farm was mainly a means of supporting a large family
cheaply. There was no landlord, no tenants. While no one was
getting rich, all but the incompetent were getting ahead, and the
minister was the outstanding big man in the community — "guide,
philosopher, and friend" to all, a consoler in sickness or sorrow,
an adviser in trouble. There was unity as to the great doctrines
of Christianity. Not that all were agreed; but the various na-
tionalities, with their forms of worship and religious thought and
customs, grouped themselves together in localities — the Pennsyl-
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 423
vania Dutch here, the Scotch and Scotch-Irish there, the Quakers
elsewhere, the Yankees in other groups.
All this changed when the farmer emerged from the woods and
drew long furrows in the rich, fertile soil of the prairies; and
still greater was the change when, at the close of the war, the
government gave one hundred and sixty acres of land at the cost
of surveying ($1.25 an acre) to any landless man in the wide
world who wanted it and who would become a citizen of the
United States.
Then began the rush for these cheap lands, a rush from New
England, from the Middle States, from the South, and from Eu-
rope. The farming population began a game of leap-frog. The
church organizations, awake to the importance of securing a foot-
hold in this new land, pushed their missionary enterprises, aiming
to occupy strategic points. The result was a mingling together
of men who, while they agreed on fundamentals, gave special
importance to distinctives ; and a still further result was the over-
churching of the entire prairie country.
Then the rural church began to decline; for the introduction
of railroads and of farm machinery and a far greater use of horse
power decreased rural population per square mile. It has con-
stantly been decreasing ever since from purely economic causes.
Still the rural church did fairly well, although gradually declin-
ing in the size and number of congregations, until the last thirty
years, when another set of economic conditions began to render
it less efficient.
When thoughtful men began to see that there was no more
choice land to be given away ; when the great growth of city popu-
lation not merely in the United States but in the Old World (the
result of cheap food furnished by the farmers of the United States
at less than the cost of growing it) began to bring the price of
grain up to the cost of production and above it, land began to
advance. In the corn belt, the wheat belt, and the fruit belt land
has increased at the rate of about 10 per cent, per annum.
The country church then began to decline more rapidly.
Farmers began to rent their farms and move to town. Capital-
ists began to invest in lands as soon as the net income would equal
the interest on savings, and speculators began to buy land far in
advance of its productive value, on the assumption that this 10
424 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
per cent, per annum increase in price would continue. One re-
sult of this was an enormous increase in tenancy, until about
37!/2 per cent, of the tillable lands of the United States was
farmed lay tenants. In the corn belt from 40 to 50 per cent, of
the land is farmed by tenants, and in the cotton belt from 50 to
70 per cent.
Meanwhile the use of improved machinery and of horse power
instead of man power tended to increase the size of farms and
to decrease the population per square mile. A recent investiga-
tion by the Iowa Agricultural Department shows that, while the
increase in the size of farms that are farmed by their owners is
less than 4 per cent., the increase in the size of those farmed by
tenants is 16 per cent. It shows further that in sections in which
land is bought for speculation tenancy has increased very rapidly.
We have three main classes of landlords: retired farmers, capi-
talists, and speculators, or speculating capitalists ; and the lands
of all these classes are necessarily farmed by tenants.
Inasmuch as we have not yet really begun to farm in the West,
but are simply mining our soil and selling its fertility ( at present
at a profit), the tenure of the tenant is mainly for one year; this
condition makes about 45 per cent, of the population of the open
country in Iowa more or less unstable. The tenant who goes into
a new community for a year does not usually align himself with a
church unless he is a man of very positive religious convictions.
Neither does the church look upon the tenant as anything more
than a pilgrim and a stranger, and hence it is apt to think it not
worth while to gather him into the fold.
Another influence is powerfully effective. Members of
churches who bought land, especially in the corn belt, at from
$25 to $50 an acre thirty years ago, could not resist the tempta-
tion to harvest the unearned increment and invest it in the newer
lands of the spring wheat belt, or the plains, or the Northwest.
They moved to the new country, taking their families with them.
This has decreased the financial ability of the congregation of
the country church, has reduced the salary of the minister to the
starvation point, or has perhaps compelled the congregation to
have preaching for but one-half or one-third of the time, and in
certain sections, for only one-fourth of the time. This deprives
the community of the pastoral labor and the example of a Chris-
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 425
tian leader and his family ; and the result is that the church de-
clines and then dies. In fact, the churches in the towns of the
corn belt are largely built up by the removal of members of
country churches to the towns.
The farms are becoming larger, and the population of the rural
community smaller and more unstable because of tenantry. The
population remaining is divided up into various denominations
and sects through difference of opinion about church government
and baptism and other things, the inheritance of a past genera-
tion.
There are two remedies for this condition, one industrial and
the other spiritual. Neither is capable of instant application, but
each is certainly applicable in the somewhat distant future. The
first is such a system of leasing as will make the tenant a reason-
ably permanent citizen in the community, — in other words, longer
leases. Tenancy is not in itself an evil, but uncertainty of tenure
and short leases are evils that vex humanity. We cannot expect
to see a prosperous rural church until the tenant can make some
arrangement with his landlord by which he can stay on the same
farm indefinitely, take root in the community, become an active
member of the church, and make of his children real members of
the Sunday-school and rural school. Economic causes themselves
will force upon the landowner this system of longer leases. The
constant decrease of soil fertility through the bad farming of
the short-lease tenant and the fact now becoming evident that it
it more profitable to the enterprising farmer to rent land than
to own it, must work for the greater permanency of the tenant.
The first will wipe out speculation and reduce land values in the
richer sections until it will be possible for the tenant by renting
land to become the owner of the land. This will give us a stable
population and greatly increase the efficiency of the rural church.
The second remedy is in the change of view of the Christian
ideal. We must now get back to the original Christian idea : that
salvation is for every man and for every part of the man — body,
soul, and spirit; that it involves loving ''thy neighbor as thy-
self, ' ' and cooperation in every good work instead of competition.
A church united on the fundamentals, and with a reasonably per-
manent tenure of lands by ownership or lease, will enable us in
time to build up a civilization on the prairies, and the cleared
426 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
timber lands more satisfying than that which can be found any-
where else on earth.
RURAL ECONOMY AS A FACTOR IN THE
SUCCESS OF THE CHURCH1
THOMAS N. CARVER
IT may be laid down as a general law of rural economy that
the productive land in any farming community will tend to pass
more and more into the hands of those who can cultivate it most
efficiently, — that is, into the hands of the most efficient farmers, —
unless it is prevented from doing so by some kind of military
force exercised by an aristocratic ruling class. In a democratic
country, like the United States, where there are so few impedi-
ments in the way of the free transfer of land, we need look for
nothing else. The men who can make the land produce the most
will be able to pay the most for it, and in the end they will get it
and hold it. This looks simple enough, no doubt, and may not at
first seem to signify much, but it is weighted with consequences
of the most stupendous and far-reaching character, — conse-
quences which it would be suicidal for the church to ignore.
It means simply and literally that the rural districts are never
to be thoroughly Christianized until Christians become, as a rule,
better farmers than non-Christians. If it should happen that
Christians should become really better farmers than non-Chris-
tians, the land will pass more and more into the possession of
Christians, and this will become a Christian country, at least so
far as the rural districts are concerned. The first result would
probably be to paganize the cities, since the non-Christians dis-
placed from the rural districts by their superior competitors
would take refuge in the towns. But since nature has a way of
exterminating town populations in three or four generations, and
the towns have therefore to be continuously recruited from the
country, the Christianizing of the rural districts would eventually
mean the Christianizing of the towns also. But, vice versa, if
non-Christians should become the better farmers, by reason of
i Adapted from American Unitarian Association, Social Service Bul-
letin No. 8., 25 Beacon St., Boston.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 427
some false philosophy or supercilious attitude toward material
wealth and economic achievement on the part of the church, then
this would eventually become a non-Christian country, for the
same reason.
But if, as a third possibility, there should be no perceptible
difference between Christians and non-Christians as to their
knowledge and adaptability, or as to their general fitness to sur-
vive and possess the earth, — fitness, that is, as determined by
nature's standard rather than by some artificial standard of our
own devising, — the result would be that Christians would remain
indefinitely a mere sect in the midst of a non-Christian or a non-
descript population. The only way of avoiding this rather un-
satisfactory situation would be to force the whole population into
a nominal Christianity by military force. But, assuming that
physical force is not to be used, and that the ordinary economic
forces are to operate undisturbed by such violent means, then the
contention will hold. This is what is likely to happen if certain
religious leaders should succeed in identifying Christianity with
millinery, or with abstract formulae respecting the visible world,
or with mere loyalty to an organization, rather than with rational
conduct. By rational conduct is meant that kind of conduct
which conserves human energy and enables men to fulfill their
mission of subduing the earth and ruling over it, which enables
them to survive in the struggle with nature, which is the essence
of all genuine morality.
But why confine these observations to agriculture and rural
economy? Are not the conditions of economic success the same
in the city as in the country? And must not religion prevail
over irreligion in the city as well as in the country, provided
religion secures a greater conservation of human energy than
irreligion secures ? In a certain very broad sense, or in the long
run — with a great deal of emphasis upon the word "long" — that
is probably true. But the conditions of individual economic suc-
cess in cities are so complex, there are so many opportunities . . .
"for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain"
as to obscure, if not to obliterate entirely, the working of this
law.
428 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
In agriculture one must wrest a living from nature, and nature
cannot be tricked or deluded. But a large element of city popu-
lations,— and generally they are the dominant element, — get their
living out of other people; and people are. easily deceived. In-
stead of laboring to make two blades of grass to grow where one
had grown before, their business is to make two dollars emerge
from other people's pockets where one had emerged before.
Neither impudence, nor a smooth tongue, nor a distinguished
manner, nor lurid rhetoric, ever yet made an acre of land to yield
a larger crop of grain ; but they have frequently made an office,
a sanctum, a platform, and even a pulpit yield a larger crop of
dollars. They who get their living out of other people must, of
necessity, interest those other people, and men are so constituted
that queer and abnormal things are more interesting to them than
the usual and the normal. They will pay money for the privilege
of seeing a two-headed calf, when a normal calf would not interest
them at all. The dime museum freak makes money by showing
to our interested gaze his physical abnormalities. He is an eco-
nomic success in that he makes a good living by it, but it does not
follow that he is the type of man who is fitted to survive or that
religion ought to try to produce. Other men, going under the
names of artists, novelists, or dramatists, of certain nameless
schools, make very good livings by revealing to interested minds
their mental and moral abnormalities. They, like the dime
museum freaks, are economic successes in that they make good
livings, but it does not follow that they are the type of man
fitted to survive or that religion ought to try to produce. This
type of economic success is an urban rather than a rural type, and
it flourishes under urban rather than rural conditions. So long
as it flourishes there is no reason why religious men who conserve
their energies for productive service should succeed in crowding
them out of existence. The only chance of attaining that end
will be for religion to give people a saner appreciation of things,
teach them to be more interested in normal calves than in two-
headed calves, in normal men than in dime museum freaks, in
sane writers than in certain degenerate types now holding the
attention of the gaping crowd. If this can be brought about,
then it will result that the religious type of man, even in cities,
will more and more prevail over the irreligious, provided the
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 429
religion itself is worth preserving, — that is, provided it becomes
a positive factor in the conservation of human energy.
As has already been suggested, there is a great deal more in-
volved in making a good farmer than in the teaching of scien-
tific agriculture. Mr. Benjamin Kidd has done well to empha-
size the importance of moral qualities as compared with intel-
lectual achievements. In the first place, intellectual achieve-
ments, or their results, can only be utilized where there is a sane
and wholesome morality as a basis. In the second place, the
results of intellectual achievement of one race or one man may
be borrowed freely by the rest of the world, provided the rest
of the world have the moral qualities which will enable them to
profit by them; whereas moral qualities can not be borrowed
from one race by another. Japan, for example, could easily
borrow from European nations the art of modern warfare, to-
gether with its instruments of destruction ; but it did not borrow,
and could not borrow, that splendid courage and discipline which
enabled her to utilize so efficiently the inventions which she bor-
rowed. So, one nation can easily borrow farm machinery and
modern methods of agriculture, but it cannot borrow the moral
qualities which will enable it to profit by them. Saying nothing
of mental alertness and willingness to learn, which might be
classed as mental rather than moral, it could not borrow that
patient spirit of toil, nor that sturdy self-reliance, nor that fore-
thought which sacrifices present enjoyment to future profit, nor
can it borrow that spirit of mutual helpfulness which is so essen-
tial to any effective rural work. Again, a nation cannot easily
borrow a sane and sober reason, a willingness to trust to its own
care in preparing the soil rather than to the blessing of the priest
upon the fields, nor can it borrow a general spirit of enterprise
which ventures out upon plans and projects which approve them-
selves to the reason. And, finally, it cannot borrow that love
for the soil, and the great outdoors and the growing crops, and
the domestic animals which marks every successful rural people.
These things have to be developed in the soil, to be bred into the
bone and fiber of the people ; and they are the first requisites for
good farming. After them come scientific knowledge. In the
development of such moral qualities as these the church has been,
and may become again, the most effective agency.
430 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
It is said that the great problem of the country church is that
of an adequate support of the ministry. But how can the minis-
try be adequately supported? One obvious answer is to reduce
the number of churches. This is a good answer, perhaps that is
the easiest way ; but it is the second best way. Another way is to
build up the community in order that it may furnish adequate
membership and adequate support for all the churches. This
may be a harder way, but where it is not impossible, it is the best.
Of course there should be continued emphasis, in the teachings
of the church and the pulpit, upon the plain economic virtues of
industry, sobriety, thrift, practical, scientific knowledge, and
mutual helpfulness ; but much more emhasis than hitherto should
be placed on the last two. Practical, scientific knowledge of agri-
culture, and mutual helpfulness in the promotion of the welfare
of the parish are absolutely essential, and unless the churches
can help in this direction they will remain poor and inadequately
supported. For those who think that the church should hold
itself above the work of preaching the kind of conduct which pays,
or the kind of life which succeeds, the economic law stated above,
is the strongest argument.
Organized efforts in the churches for the study of parish
economy, for gaining more and more scientific knowledge of agri-
culture, for the practical kind of Christian brotherhood which
shows itself in the form of mutual helpfulness and cooperation,
in the form of decreasing jealousy and suspicion, in the form of
greater public spirit, greater alertness for opportunities for pro-
moting the public good and building up the parish and the com-
munity, in helping young men and young women to get started in
productive work and in home building, in helping the children to
get the kind of training which will enable them to make a better
living in the parish, — efforts of this kind will eventually result
in better support for the churches themselves, because the com-
munity will then be able to support the church more liberally;
and, what is more important, it will then see that the church is
worth supporting.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 431
THE CHURCH SITUATION IN OHIO x
C. O. GILL
THE rural church survey of Ohio now complete is the first
church survey covering an entire state. The state contains in
its area of 40,000 square miles some 1,388 townships. Reports
are at hand from every one of these. If we exclude the town-
ships in which the population is urban, those in which there are
villages of more than 2,500 inhabitants and those in which are
parts of large town or city parishes, there are in the state about
1,200 townships which may be classed as rural. In these town-
ships there are more than 6,000 rural churches and more than a
million and three quarters persons. In each there is on an aver-
age a population of 1,470, while there are five churches, a church
to every 286 persons.
It must not be inferrred, however, that there is an even distri-
bution of the churches. As a matter of fact, in many districts,
there are not enough of them. How excessive the overchurching
is in some regions may be well illustrated by the condition in
Morgan County. Meigsville Township with a population of 846
persons has nine churches or one church to 94 persons. Union,
another township in this county with a population of 1,048 per-
sons, also has nine churches. Neither township has a resident
pastor. This is true of seven townships in the county. In these
seven townships there are 41 churches or one church to 142
persons.
The significance of the excessive number of churches can only
be appreciated by coming into close contact with the communities
themselves. Very rarely have I visited an overchurched com-
munity in the country without finding a condition of harmful
competition often resulting in an anemic condition of the religious
institutions. In most of the communities several churches are
trying to do what one church, if left to itself, could do far more
effectively. Under present conditions the churches commonly
constitute the greatest obstacle to progress they themselves have
i Adapted from a preliminary report of a state wide survey made by the
Commission on Church and Country Life of the Federal Council of Churches
of Christ in America in cooperation with the Ohio Rural Life Assn. Pub.
Missionary Edu. Movement of the U. S. and Canada, N. Y.
432 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
to encounter. According to data gathered by the Ohio Rural
Life Survey, the churches, as a rule, whose membership is less
than 100 do not prosper, while the smaller the membership the
greater the proportion of the churches which are dying; yet in
rural Ohio it appears that more than 4,000 churches have a mem-
bership of 100 or less, more than 3,000 a membership of 75 or less,
more than 2,000 a membership of 50 or less.
Membership must not be confused with attendance. I have
personally visited a considerable number of churches on Sundays,
have counted their congregations and have compared the attend-
ance with the membership. In this State I have, in no case, found
the attendance as large as the membership. In this respect the
best record in any church I have attended is that of a church
whose membership is sixty and the attendance forty. In one
church the membership was 125, the attendance 34; in another
church the membership 300, the attendance 136.
One of the striking facts brought to light through the survey
is the lack of an adequate number of resident ministers. "While
a reasonable degree of interchurch cooperation should result in
the maintenance of a resident pastor in nearly every inhabited
township, at the present time the church falls far short of real-
izing this possibility. In fact nearly 4,000 or about two-thirds
of the churches in rural Ohio are without resident ministers.
In 26 per cent, of the townships no church has a resident pastor.
More than 5,000 of the churches are without the undivided
service of a minister. More than 2,200 churches have only one-
fourth of a minister's service or less, more than 3,300 have only
one-third of a minister's service or less, while more than 700 have
no part of a minister's service. These figures do not take into
consideration the fact that a considerable number of the ministers
have other occupations than the ministry. I personally have met
several ministers who have secular occupations and yet are each
serving two or more country churches.
One of the most striking features of the situation is the fact
that whereas there are superintendents who are responsible for
the supervision of churches of their own denominations, there is
no superintendent, or official, who accepts responsibility for the
general moral and spiritual conditions in any considerable area.
However bad condidtions in a county or region may be there is no
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 433
organization or person whose business it is to know about it.
Consequently decadence and degeneration may go on in an exten-
sive territory without any responsible body or responsible person
becoming aware of it. The defectiveness of the organization of
the church, as a whole, therefore, demands our serious considera-
tion and the application of a remedy. On the other hand the
promise in a movement such as is now on foot under the auspices
of the Ohio Rural Life Association and its Committee on Inter-
church Cooperation is a cause for congratulation. It may be pre-
sumed that in some areas conditions existing to-day would never
have come to pass had the church, itself, as a whole, been aware
of what was going on.
Areas of the most pronounced ecclesiastical decline and moral
degeneration are found in some of the eastern, southeastern and
southern counties. A striking illustration of the failure of our
present church organization appears in one of these southern
counties. The aim of the typical and most influential religious
leaders in this county is to stir up an emotional excitement with-
out regard to its effect upon character. These religious leaders
apparently are not conscious of an ethical end. By the use of
music well adapted to the end sought, by adaptation of the voice,
sometimes even by the use of the hypnotic eye and suggestion of
emotional experience to be expected, an excitement is produced
which is accepted as a substitute for the more worthy aims of
religion. They report additions to the membership of the
churches and even the organization and building of churches.
The so-called evangelist at the end of a period of protracted meet-
ings leaves the locality having accomplished no good thing. He
returns period after period, season after season, year after year
and the same activities are repeated. This has displaced a more
wholesome type of church life with disastrous results to the com-
munity. For at least fifteen years this type of religion has been
gaming in popular favor, while it is displacing other forms of
religious activities.
In the year 1883 there were 96 churches in this county. In the
following thirty years there were 1,500 religious revivals or on an
average fifty each year. During that period there was a decline
of no less than five hundred in the membership of the churches,
while thirty-four churches were abandoned; the production of
434 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
corn declined from thirty-four to twenty-eight bushels to the
acre; a larger proportion of the population are afflicted with
tuberculosis than in any similar area in the United States ; a
trained hygienic expert who has made careful investigations de-
clares that the prevalence both of infectious disease and feeble-
mindedness is extreme; politics are corrupt, the selling of votes
common, petty crimes abound, the schools are badly managed and
poorly attended while there is much illiteracy.
The itinerant evangelists who come into the county each year
are the chief religious leaders. The ministers who live in the
county usually remain but a year. They have several churches
each and direct their efforts to increasing the membership of the
particular churches they serve. They have no intimate relation
with the people and exert very little influence upon them. One
minister serves no less than ten churches.
The type of religion here described is strongly intrenched in
parts of many counties while its influence through the migration
of farm laborers is seriously affecting the religious and social life
in some of the more prosperous and progressive counties. In one
of these in an area of sixteen miles long and from seven to eleven
miles wide there are three abandoned but no living churches.
One of the causes of this condition is the fact that the farm
laborers, imported by the owners of large tracts of land, have
never been made familiar with a normal type of religion. In-
vestigation has disclosed the fact that they come from the regions
where the excessively emotional type of religion prevails.
In no less than nine counties conditions such as we have de-
scribed may be found in localities. In two of the counties homi-
cides are common and frequently go unpunished. In Vinton
County there are two Mormon Churches. It has been truly said
that in this southeastern section of the State our civilization is
not being conserved.
A fairly good community, typical of a considerable area, may
be found in a certain township in the northwestern section of the
state. In this township one-half of the inhabitants are descend-
ants of the early settlers who came from New England. The tra-
ditions of these people are good, but they are too conservative
to encourage progress in agriculture. The other half of the
population consists of farmers coming mostly from the western
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 435
part of the state or from still farther west. These are pro-
gressive, but in applying the methods of farming to which they
have been accustomed under different conditions they sometimes
fail. They have a fairly good centralized school and desire to
have good educational facilities. Little is done to encourage the
social life of the community, nothing for the promotion of scien-
tific agriculture or to promote the general welfare of the com-
munity outside of what little is done in the school. Formerly it
was the custom to have at least one resident pastor in the com-
munity, but for ten years or more they have had none. There
are three churches, the Methodist Episcopal with forty-eight, the
Disciples with forty-three families, represented in their member-
ship, and a Baptist Church with a membership of only three, but
holding a Sunday School of considerable size. In this township
there are forty vacant houses. Large numbers of the farms are
very imperfectly cultivated, yet it is said by an agricultural ex-
pert that drainage and scientific farming will greatly add to the
production and the wealth of the township.
THE GENOA PARISH, WALWORTH COUNTY *
REV. A. PH. KREMER
THERE can be no doubt of the fact that a closer union of the
country population will not only make life in the country more
attractive, but will also stimulate mental development and pro-
mote Christian charity.
From the standpoint of mental and moral advancement, the
country church is the most prominent factor in uniting people
whose homes arc often miles apart. By reuniting them, it brings
them into closer contact with one another, thereby creating social
life of a high standard and fostering the social intercourse so
necessary to the average man.
Let me say now that I consider it a great misfortune that
the members of a parish should be brought together only for the
purpose of raising money for church purposes. There should be
gatherings whose object is not replenishing the church treasury.
i Adapted from Third Annual TCeport of the Wisconsin Country Life
Conference, pp. 46-7, Univ. of Wis., Madison, Jan., 1913.
436 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The parish has five distinct means of bringing people together.
The first of these is the parish school. Children living in various
school districts meet daily in the school-room and thereby natu-
rally extend the horizon of their friendships along broader lines.
All school festivals bring in the parents of these children, thus
one common interest unites both parents and children.
After the school years are over the boys and girls join the
junior divisions of the young people's societies. Once a month
they hold regular meetings, listen to conferences adapted to their
conditions of life, arrange little social affairs, and, when old
enough, are admitted into the young men's or young women's
sodalities.
The church is tlie real social center for these young people.
They furnish the material for the choir and the dramatic club.
Once a month they meet for the purpose of mental and spiritual
culture ; the}^ have a circulating library of choice books. Every
Sunday after Mass the librarian is at hand to give out books,
and as the young people meet here they naturally speak of the
merits or shortcomings of the books they have read.
Cinch parties and spreads are arranged at times, when the
young people — practically all of them — meet and spend an aft-
ernoon or evening in the most pleasant manner, without any other
thought than that of giving and enjoying what they call a " jolly
good time. ' '
The married people meet once a month for moral improvement,
and, at odd times during the year, for social pleasure. I remem-
ber one occasion on which the married ladies were the guests, and
the married men the hosts. It would have done your hearts good
to have seen these sedate men, decked in the uniforms of waiters
and cooks, receive their guests, seat them, and wait on them in
the most solemn manner.
Once a year a picnic is held ; the whole congregation, neighbors
and friends meet in the forenoon and spend the whole day in any
way they choose. The men sit together, smoke, and talk politics
and farming ; the married women sit in groups with their babies
playing around them, exchanging views on every topic. The
young people play ball, tennis, bean bag, or any other game their
fancy suggests, till the declining day reminds them of the races.
Then old and young assemble to witness or to take part in the
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 437
various tests of strength, swiftness, and athletic ability. No
chances are sold, no money demanded. Every one spends what
he wishes and feels sure that he gets full value for the money
he pays.
One word must be said about the buildings. The school has
two adjoining rooms separated by a movable partition. The
larger room may readily be used as an auditorium, as a movable
stage can be erected in the smaller room, the partition removed,
the school desks taken to the basement of the school and chairs
put in their places. Thus the school is changed into an audi-
torium with a stage complete in all its appointments. After the
performance is over, the stage is taken down and stored away, and
the desks replaced, the whole not requiring more than two or
three hours of work.
The basement of the church has a furnace and fuel room, a
large kitchen furnished with everything needed in the line of
cooking utensils and desks, a large dining-room with large dining
tables and three hundred chairs. The dining-room and the
kitchen are never used for any other purpose, and are therefore
always in readiness.
RURAL WORK OF THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATION *
ALBERT E. ROBERTS AND HENRY ISRAEL
THE county work, or rural department of the Young Men's
Christian Association seeks to unite in a -town, village, rural com-
munity, or in the open country the vital forces of young man-
hood for self-improvement, physically, socially, mentally, and
spiritually, and to give expression to these resources in com-
munity life for the betterment of others.
It considers its legitimate field to include all communities that
are too small to maintain the city type of Young Men 's Christian
Association work, generally conceded to include towns of four
thousand and under. Experience has proved that its best work
is done, however, in communities in which the rural environment
i Adapted from Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, March, 1012, pp. 140-0.
438 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
dominates the community ideals. It therefore is a movement
which must be determined from the standpoint of qualitative
rather than quantitative values. There are 45,000 such com-
munities in the United States and Canada with a combined popu-
lation of over 12,000,000, thus including over 60 per cent, of the
boyhood and young manhood in this field. There are 2,000 coun-
ties considered organizable in the United States and 500 in
Canada on the present basis of organization and type of work.
The term "county work" is applied to this movement because
the county already affords a ready geographical unit for con-
structive work. Counties have distinctive traditions of their own
social elements and existing organizations of a county-wide char-
acter. As the result of repeated failures in individual communi-
ties apart from other communities, a county-wide organization
commanding the combined resources of men and money within
the county, made possible in community life that which could
not have been accomplished independently.
There are two factors that enter into this plan so essential to
success — volunteer effort and expert supervision. The volun-
tary organization, 4he county committee, consisting of from fif-
teen to twenty prominent business and professional men and suc-
cessful farmers, constitute the administrative unit and clearing
house for policies and programs for the country-wide activities as
well as for individual communities. These county committeemen
are selected with great care, primarily meeting one of two quali-
fications : to be able to command resources of their own to promote
this work for a period of years, or to possess such influence as to
command the resources of others, both in time and money. They
all must stand for the best things in community life, be vitally
related to the church, to the school and other agencies that make
for community progress. They constitute a voluntary body not
unlike the faculty of a university at one time, of the health board
of the county in another instance, as the clearing house for a
religious campaign at another time, as a voluntary body of com-
missioners to advance the specific interests of a county, and in
no uncertain degree to measure out their best judgement fre-
quently along the lines of advancing the agricultural or economic
interests. Therefore, the county committee assigns these various
aspects of its work to sub-committees, each of which renders its
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 439
report at the quarterly meeting of the county committee which
works in close contact with the employed secretary and trained
experts. The county committee is responsible for a budget vary-
ing from $2,000 to $6,000 annually secured by voluntary contri-
butions, which enables it to employ a secretary who is a trained
expert as their executive officer. Thus the work is correlated and
coordinated and a central clearing house is established through
which any community and every community may find help and
counsel in promoting its internal welfare. In many instances
the county committee has thus saved a community from expensive
and painful experiences that have been previously proven im-
practicable.
The County Secretary. He is usually the fittest type of the
college man, often not only a college graduate, but also with some
special training. He is a man who likes country life and be-
lieves in the country and has great faith in the immediate future
of the rural districts. He is usually a man of large capacity for
leadership, with a broad knowledge of human nature and a fine
friendliness as well as an earnest Christian purpose and a great
longing to help country boys and young men to well developed
Christian manhood. He is in a real sense a community builder.
As he is employed by a voluntary organization, his services and
his largest contribution to a county will be in reproducing his
expert knowledge and experience in volunteer service. There-
fore, his primary task is to discover, enlist, train, and utilize
leadership. He is also a servant. Pastors, Sunday School super-
intendents and teachers, public school superintendents and day
school teachers, fathers and mothers, granges, farmers' clubs and
institutes, women's clubs and many other organizations seek his
cooperation and advice. In the individual community having
discovered leaders and set them at work, he executes the plans
and policies adopted by the county committee through volunteer
leadership. His relationship is with the few men who are the
leaders rather than with the massses. In addition to the county
secretaries some of the older and larger counties are employing
assistant secretaries, physical directors, boys' work directors, etc.
There are now fifty such secretaries in forty-nine counties.
County work is not an attempt to build up a new organization
in country communities. It recognizes as the primary institu-
440 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
tions of the community, the home, the school, and the church.
Many other supplemental organizations are doing splendid work,
but the aforementioned are recognized as fundamental. It is also
a fact that though these are the primary institutions, they are
in many cases functioning inadequately, or have ceased to per-
form their function entirely. Again, in supplementary organiza-
tions which are found in country life many are overlapping and
even working at cross purposes. There seems to be no well de-
fined or unified policy. Furnishing a common platform upon
which the various interests of the people will find expression
and where these interests can come together in a democratic
spirit is the unifying task of the county work in organized coun-
ties. It stands for the elimination of waste, for the interpreta-
tion of the real needs after surveys have been made, for the as-
sumption of specific tasks by specific individuals and communi-
ties. It gives itself to the awakening of a social consciousness, a
getting together ; it seeks to supplement and not to supplant. If
it can persuade a leader to supervise the plan and athletics of a
school, or a farmer to give his boy a man 's chance, it has made a
contribution to the community life, and its leaders are as well
satisfied as they would be if a new organization were formed.
COUNTY WORK OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 1
JESSIE FIELD
JUST as country life is at the very foundation of our national
life in many ways, so the young womanhood of the country holds
a place of strategic importance, both in the country, and for
service to womankind everywhere. The National Board of the
Young Women 's Christian Association with its plan of service to
girls and young women everywhere, realizing this, and thinking
ot the many girls in country communities, began about eight
years ago to work definitely towards making all the resources of
the Association available to them.
This has been done through work in the development of leader-
- 1 From a statement prepared at request of editor.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 441
ship for country communities in student centers and through or-
ganized county Associations. Voluntary study courses in Coun-
try Life Leadership, with the text book "College Women and
Country Leadership" as a basis, have been taken by thousands of
college women, the majority of whom have gone back to lead
dubs of girls in their home communities during the summer.
Such classes as these have, also, been held in the summer confer-
ences. These classes have not only given more knowledge in
regard to country conditions but have definitely enlisted a great
many strong young women in active, sacrificial service.
Through the organized County Young Women's Christian
Associations, trained leadership is made available through the
county secretary and the volunteer leaders of the county with
whom she works, for the girls and young women of the county.
Local resources are made use of ; programs for social, educational,
physical and spiritual growth are planned ; recreational features
are made a constructive force ; while county Camps, Conferences,
and so forth, bring a chance for a wider community and more
friendships for the girls of the county. Through cooperation
with the homes, the schools and the churches, the best things are
made available for the girls.
There are now twenty-three such organized counties in the
United States and the number is rapidly growing. Seven field
secretaries are at work on this special part of the Association work
in different parts of the United States.
TEN YEARS' PROGRESS IN COUNTY Y. M. C. A.
WORK IN MICHIGAN1
C. L. ROWE
THE County Y. M. C. A. has evolved a policy that is applicable
to the field, town, village and rural community. It uses resident
forces, makes its appeal on the basis of service, cooperates with
existing agencies and develops the individual through group
service. A comparison of the growth in the last ten years is as
follows :
i Publication of Rural School Department of Western State Normal
School, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
442 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
1905 1916
Counties organized 1 16
Organized communities 8 159
Secretaries employed 1 18
Money expended annually $1,500 $36,000
Members 170 3,421
Summer camps 20 600
Attended Boys' Conferences 40 2,300
Agricultural contestants 625
In physical activities 140 6,452
THE CALL OF THE COUNTRY PARISH x
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD
THE country-side is calling, calling for men. Vexing problems
of labor and of life disturb our minds in country as in city. The
workers of the land are striving to make a better use of their
resources of soil and climate, and are seeking both larger wealth
and a higher welfare. The striving and the seeking raise new
questions of great public concern. Social institutions have de-
veloped to meet these new issues. But the great need of the pres-
ent is leadership. Only men can vitalize institutions. We need
leaders among the farmers themselves, we need leaders in edu-
cation, leaders in organization and cooperation. So the country
church is calling for men of God to go forth to war against all
the powers of evil that prey upon the hearts of the men who live
upon the land, as well as upon the people in palace and tenement.
The country church wants men of vision, who see through
the incidental, the small, the transient, to the fundamental, the
large, the abiding issues that the countryman must face and
conquer.
She wants practical men, who seek the mountain top by the
obscure and steep paths of daily toil and real living, men who
can bring things to pass, secure tangible results.
She wants original men, who can enter a human field poorly
tilled, much grown to brush, some of it of diminished fertility,
and by new methods can again secure a harvest that will gladden
the heart of the great Husbandman.
i "The Country Church and the Rural Problem," pp. 131-133. University
of Chicago Press, 1912.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 443
She wants aggressive men, who do not hesitate to break with
tradition, who fear God more than prejudice, who regard insti-
tutions as but a means to an end, who grow frequent crops of new
ideas and dare to winnow them with the flails of practical trial.
She wants trained men, who come to their work with knowledge
and with power, who have thought long and deeply upon the
problems of rural life, who have hammered out a plan for an
active campaign for the rural church.
She wants men with enthusiasms, whose energy can withstand
the frosts of sloth, of habit, of pettiness, of envy, of back-biting,
and whose spirit is not quenched by the waters of adversity, of
unrealized hopes, of tottering schemes.
She wants persistent men, who will stand by their task amid
the mysterious calls from undiscovered lands, the siren voices
of ambition and ease, the withering storms of winters of dis-
content.
She wants constructive men, who can transmute visions into
wood and stone, dreams into live institutions, hopes into fruitage.
She wants heroic men, men who possess a "tart, cathartic
virtue," men who love adventure and difficulty, men who can
work alone with God and suffer no sense of loneliness.
SECTARIANISM *
THE growth of sectarianism is shown by the number of de-
nominations found in rural communities. The following is taken
from a study made under the direction of Dr. Warren H. Wilson,
showing the number of churches in six counties in Ohio.
Denominations No. of Churches
Apostolic Holiness 7
Baptist —
Missionary Baptist 47
Free Will 14
Union 5
Colored 4
Regular 3
Primitive Baptist 1
Separate Baptist 1
i From Dept. Church and Country Life, Bd. Home Missions, Presbyterian
Church, N. Y.
444 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Brethren 2
Brothers Society of America 1
Catholic ( Roman ) 10
Christian 19
Christian Order 1
Christian Union 15
Church of Christ in Christian Union 2
Church of God ( Saints ) 4
Come Outers 1
Congregational 11
Disciples, Non-Progressive 7
Emanuel Mission 1
Episcopal 1
Evangelical Association 3
Evangelical Protestant 3
Friends 3
Latter Day Saints , 4
Lutheran 7
Mennonite 2
Methodist-
Methodist Episcopal 175
Methodist Protestant 33
Free Methodist 6
Wesleyan Methodist 2
German M. E 1
African M. E 1
Nazarenes 1
Presbyterians —
Presbyterian U. S. A 36
United Presbyterian 5
United Brethren —
United Brethren, Liberal 51
United Brethren, Radical 6
Universalist . 4
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON COUNTRY CHURCH
FUNCTION, POLICY AND PROGRAM
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD, Chairman. Miss JESSIE 'FIELD.
CHARLES O. GILL. ALBERT E. ROBERTS.
HENRY WALLACE.
YOUR Committee began its study on the assumption that there
were three aspects of the work of the country church that needed
stating :
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 445
1. A definition of the function of the country church, in order
to gain if possible a clear notion of what the fundamental work
of the church is, particularly in relation to the work of other
social institutions.
2. An outline of a general policy for the country church as a
whole, in trying to carry out its function.
3. A suggestive program, embodying many concrete plans and
suggestions for the work of the local church, appropriate to the
carrying out of the general policy.
THE FUNCTION OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH
God's great purpose for men is the highest possible develop-
ment of each personality and of the human race as a whole. It
is essential to this growth that men shall hold adequate ideals of
character and life. The Christian believes that these ideals must
spring from a clear appreciation of God's purpose, and from a
consuming desire to reproduce the spirit and life of Jesus.
Therefore, the function of the country church is to create, to
maintain, and to enlarge both individual and community ideals,
under the inspiration and guidance of the Christian motive and
teaching, and to help rural people to incarnate these ideals in
personal and family life, in industrial effort, in political develop-
ment, and in all social relationships.
The church must bring men to God, must lead in the task of
building God's Kingdom on Earth.
The mission of the Christian church is that of its Founder:
To teach the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man as
the ideal of life for the individual, the family, the community,
and the nation, and to point out the best way to make the ideal
the actual.
THE WORK OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH
The Committee has divided the work of the country church into
the following heads :
1. Knowledge.
2. Preaching and worship.
3. Religious education.
4. The Church ministering to all the people.
5. The Church, the servant of the community.
446 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
6. Cooperation among the churches.
7. Division of labor.
8. Administration and finance.
9. The preacher and his helpers.
10. The preacher, a community builder.
11. The country church circuit.
Under each one of these heads there is :
1. A statement of general policy :
Intended to apply to the church as a whole, or to any church.
This policy is expected to be broad enough on the one hand to
make the church "function," and on the other hand practical
enough to serve as a guide for local church work.
2. A program for the local church :
This is by no means complete, but is a list of specific things
that might be done by the local church. Probably no one church
will do all of them, but every church can do some of them. Each
church should adapt its program to its own needs and conditions,
but should always test the program in the light of a broad policy.
3. Suggestions and examples :
Under this head there is given a list of practical helps, either
indicating literature or mentioning actual instances that show
the practicability of many of the items in the suggested program.
I. KNOWLEDGE
Policy
a. Country church leaders, both preachers and laymen, should
have a clear view of the fundamental aspects of the rural problem,
and should broadly define the relationship of the church to that
problem.
b. The country church should make a survey of its field, to
discover neglected individuals and families, to ascertain the con-
ditions which determine its work, and to learn what movements
are entitled to its guidance, interest, and support. Two or more
churches serving the same community should cooperate in such
a survey. The main results should be made public, but the rights
of privacy should be duly guarded.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 447
Program for the Local Church
a-L Books, bulletins, and magazines on country life should be
put into public libraries and church libraries.
(See lists furnished by Rural Department of Y. M. C. A.)
2. Import lecturers on country life from the agricultural col-
leges, church societies, Y. M. C. A., etc.
3. Have speakers on the subject of the rural problem, at church
coventions, conventions of young people's societies, etc .
4. Hold county or district conferences of rural preachers to
study the rural problem.
b-1. Promote the community survey. Use some good standard
survey such as that furnished by the Federal Council, by the
Presbyterian board (Dr. Wilson), by agricultural colleges.
2. Encourage self -study by the community.
3. Chart results in graphic form so that material can be pre-
served, and also made available for actual use.
II. PREACHING AND WORSHIP
Policy
The country church should foster private and public worship
of God. Through its preaching, it should bring a ringing spir-
itual message to the community, and interpret the Gospel for the
uplift of motive and the transformation and development of
character.
Program
1. Preaching every Sunday in every field.
2. Emphasis on congregational singing.
3. Topics and texts with rural setting.
4. Religious use of special days, like Harvest Home, Rural
Life Sundays, Thanksgiving, Farm Mother's Day, Easter, — with
reference to rural environment.
III. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Policy
The country church should develop definite means of religious
education, both of adults and of children, interpreting personal
448 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and social duty in terms of rural life, and applying what is
learned in actual social service. To this end, the pulpit, the home,
and the Sunday School should definitely cooperate.
Program
1. Graded Bible instruction for children ; adapted to the aver-
age country Sunday School.
2. Instruction of adults through consecutive studies in sermonic
material.
3. Mid-week and monthly conferences.
4. Rural Bible Study.
IV. THE CHURCH MINISTERING TO ALL THE PEOPLE
Policy
While the country church should minister to the efficient and
successful, to the end that it may hold the community through
competent leadership, it should minister with special zeal to the
ineffective, the poor and the degenerate, since they also belong
to Christ. The rapidly increasing instability of the rural popula-
tion lays upon the church the special duty of religious and social
helpfulness to the tenant farmer and the hired man.
Program
1. Organize clubs within the church for community service
projects ; bring in outside speakers at club dinners, etc., to discuss
community work.
2. Utilize existing women's organizations for larger and more
effective service.
3. Encourage use of the church buildings by organizations and
societies.
4. Give public advocacy to various forms of social service,
such as clean-up days, community picnics, play festivals, town
improvement, Arbor day, beautifying cemetery or common, etc.
5. Preach contentment with rural life and adequacy of coun-
try as a life investment.
6. Make church sociables community affairs, if possible, with
all welcome.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 449
V. THE CHURCH THE SERVANT OP THE COMMUNITY
Policy
The country church should regard itself as the servant of the
entire community, and should be deeply concerned with all legit-
imate agencies in the community; it should give them support
and promotion as there may be opportunity or need. It should
suggest and inspire rather than instigate and supervise, but it
may undertake any new service for which there is not other pro-
vision.
Cooperation with Other Agencies. — The church should recog-
nize a division of functions in the community, and should co-
operate with other institutions and organizations. Such adjust-
ments are made individually for the most part, but by public ad-
vocacy and by its educational methods the church may exert its
collective influence for all ends that may help to upbuild the com-
munity.
Program
Community movements should be instigated or aided by active
cooperation, as the need may be, for such ends as the following :
1. Temperance, wherever the community is suffering from in-
temperance or lawlessness ; a campaign for no license or prohibi-
tion ; law enforcement ; Sabbath observance.
2. Public health and sanitation.
3. Good roads.
4. School education for rural life, and ordinarily consolidated
schools.
5. Intellectual development by means of libraries, lectures,
reading circles, clubs, and similar agencies.
6. Provisions for public recreation, and a Saturday half-holi-
day for agricultural laborers.
7. Promotion of demonstrations of recreation on church
grounds if no better place can be had.
8. Better farming and better farm homes, with special stress
upon extension work of agricultural colleges.
9. Beauty of village, roadsides and private grounds.
10. Celebration of religious and patriotic holidays, observance
of old home week, and production of historical pageants.
450 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
11. Education of the people by preaching on community plan-
ning.
12. Establishment of a supervised social center or community
house.
13. Local federation for ru-ral progress and other community
programs.
14. In general, promotion of cooperation among farmers in
their production, buying, and selling.
VI. COOPERATION AMONG THE CHURCHES
Policy
Groups of country churches, with natural and social affilia-
tions, should unite for the study of their special field and for the
more effective use of their resources in meeting its needs, thus
forming a church federation. Churches should consolidate where
only one church is needed in a community. In some communities
a federated church may be practicable, an arrangement by which
all churches in a community unite for worship and work but each
church society preserves its corporate identity.
Program
1. Union meetings for religious and patriotic purposes, song
service, etc.
2. Community projects for various forms of community wel-
fare, Christmas tree, etc.
3. Evangelistic campaign on the cooperative basis, preceded by
survey and followed by effective organized work.
4. Union campaigns on moral issues like temperance.
5. Cooperative surveys.
6. Cooperative Boys' and Girls' clubs.
7. Cooperative play festivals.
8. Cooperative community pageants.
9. Cooperation in athletic contests.
VII. DIVISION OF LABOR
Policy
Oftentimes the greatest efficiency of the church requires spe-
cialized agencies for special tasks. The rural Y. M. C. A. and
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 451
Y. W. C. A., the young people's societies, and other similar or-
ganized allies of the country church should therefore be utilized
and encouraged where needed, and supported in their work.
Program
1. Furnishing leaders for special community tasks.
2. Encouraging financial support.
3. Special work with boys and girls.
4. Special work with young people.
5. Athletic league and recreation features.
6. Use of church buildings for these "allies of the country
church. ' '
VIII. ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE
Policy
A sound business organization and an adequate financial policy
arc essential to the conduct of the country church. This involves
utilizing the available resources of a community, the relation of
the local church to the Home Missionary Aid, the matter of mini-
mum salaries for the resident ministers, and proper methods of
financial accounting.
Program
1. Official boards and organizations regularly and completely
organized with proper program of work.
2. Carefully kept records and regular reports of work in
finances.
3. Systematic, community-wide, and adequate financial plan
for local church support and benevolences.
IX. THE PREACHER AND HIS HELPERS
Policy
A resident ministry is essential to the highest efficiency of the
country church. It should be adequately trained to meet rural
needs. Permanency of tenure should be sought by every possible
means, including the payment of salaries commensurate with
present economic needs and proportionate to ability and service.
One of the greatest tasks of the pastor is to inspire, enlist, and
train all available leadership on behalf of the full measure of the
service of the church to its members and to the community.
452 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Program
The Training of Church Workers
1. Every effort should be made to train leadership in the local
church, such as Sunday School teachers, lay readers, elders, dea-
cons, leaders of young people's societies, officers of the various
organizations for old and young within the church.
2. Training in young people's meetings.
3. Training in Bible School.
4. Normal class leader and lectures.
5. Conferences and institutes.
6. Reading and correspondence courses.
7. Personal interviews.
8. Practice work for novices, including apprenticeship system.
9. Inter-church visitation.
X. THE PREACHER A COMMUNITY BUILDER
Policy
The immediate work of the pastor is with the local church to
which he is responsible, but his efforts should by no means be
confined to the church. The church should, as it were, lend its
pastor to the community for such helpfulness to individuals,
agencies, and causes as will definitely contribute to the building
up of the community as a whole.
Program
The pastor may help in many or all of the tasks of rural com-
munity building that have been suggested heretofore in this out-
line on behalf of "better farming, better business, and better
living. ' '
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE COUNTRY CHURCH
Ashenhurst, J. 0. The Day of the Country Church. Funk, N. Y.,
1910.
Beard, A. F. Life of John Frederick Oberlin. Pilgrim, Boston, 1909.
Bemis, C. 0. The Church in the Country Town. American Baptist
Assn., Boston, 1912.
Branson, E. C. The Church as a Country Life Defense. Bui. State
Normal School, Athens, Ga., 1911.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 453
Bricker, G. A. Solving the Country Church Problem. Eaton, N. Y.,
1913.
Butterfield, K. L. The Country Church and the Rural Problem.
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1011.
Carver, T. N. Rural Economy as a Factor in the Success of the
Church. Bui. No. 8, Social Service Series, American Unitarian
Assoc., Boston.
Dubois, Leo L. The Catholic Church and Social Service. The South
Mobilizing for Social Service. (Addresses Southern Sociological
Congress, 1913), pp. 584-596, Nashville, Tenn.
Earp, E. A. The Rural Church Movement. Methodist Book Con-
cern, N. Y., 1914.
Feeman, Harlan L. The Kingdom and the Farm. Revell, Chicago,
1914.
Galpin, C. J. The Country Church an Economic and Social Force.
Bui. 278, Agric. Exper. Sta. of Univ. of Wis., Madison, 1917.
Gill, C. 0., and Pinchot, Gifford. The Country Church. Macmillan,
N. Y., 1913.
Six Thousand Country Churches. Macmillan, 1920.
Groves, E. R. The Church and the Small Community. Rural Man-
hood, Vol. G, May, June, Oct., 1915, and Jan., 1916.
Hammond, F. J. The Country Parson. Morehouse, Milwaukee, Wis.,
1913.
Hart, J. K. The Religious Life of the Community. In his Educa-
tional Resources of Village and Rural Communities, pp. 176-197,
Macmillan, N. Y., 1913.
Hayes, E. C. The Church and the Rural Community. Amer. Journ.
of Soc., 16 : 693-695, March, 1911.
Israel, Henry. The Country Church and Community Cooperation.
Asscc. Press, N. Y., 1913.
Macfarland, Charles S. The Protestant Church and Social Service.
The South Mobilizing for Social Service. (Addresses Southern
Sociological Congress, 1913), pp., 596-612.
Masters, V. I. Country Church in the South. Publicity Board of
Southern Baptist Convention, Atlanta, ,1916.
Miller, G. A. Problems of the Town Church. Revell, Chicago, 1902.
Mills, Harlow S. The Making of a Country Parish. Missionary
Education Movement of the U. S. and Canada, N. Y., 1914.
Practicing Church Unity in Vermont. Conf. of Denominational Super-
intendents and Secretaries, Rev. C. C. Merrill, Sec., St. Johnsbury,
Vt., April, 1919.
Roads, Charles. Rural Christendom. Amer. Sunday School Union,
Philadelphia, 1909.
Rural Church and Community Betterment. Association Press, N. Y.,
1911.
Staratt, F. A. The Demands of the Rural Church upon the Theologi-
cal Curriculum. Amer. Journal of Theology, 22 : 479-96, October,
1918.
Symposium "The Church and the Rural Community." Amer. Jour, of
Sociology 16:668-702, March, 1911.
Vogt, Paul L. The Church and Country Life. Miss. Educ. Movement,
N. Y., 1916.
454 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Wallace, Henry. Remarks on Presentation of Report of Commission
Upon the Rural Church — Men and Religion Movement. Men and
Religion Messages — Rural Church, VI : 119-137, Association Press,
N. Y., 1912.
Wells, George Frederick. The Country Church. In Bailey's Encyclo-
pedia of Amer. Agric., IV : 297.
The Rural Church. Annals 40: 131-139, March, 1912.
Wells, H. S. The Making of a Country Parish. Miss. Educ. Move-
ment, N. Y., 1914.
Wilson, W. H. The Church of the Open Country. Miss. Educ. Move-
ment, N. Y., 1911.
The Church at the Center. Miss. Educ. Movement, N. Y., 1914.
Surveys of Rural Churches, Department of Church and Country
Life, Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, 156 Fifth Ave., N. Y.
CHAPTER XVI
THE VILLAGE
THE HISTORY OF VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES1
WARREN H. MANNING
THE precursor of the American village improvement was the
early New England village Common, — the people's forum, the
center of their social and industrial life, a place of recreation,
and on it, at Lexington, was t*he opening act of that great drama
that led to the American independence. Early, especially Eng-
lish, colonists set apart liberal portions of land to be used by
householders in common for public landings, pasturage, and from
which to secure timber, sedges, and the like, — all under restric-
tions imposed by the citizens in town meeting. This Common
was at first an irregular plot or a very wide street, around or
along which the village grew. Many are still retained, sometimes
little, sometimes much, diminished by unauthorized encroach-
ments of adjacent property owners or by the town's permitting
public or semi-public buildings to be placed upon them. Public
landings have suffered even more from private appropriation,
and most of the "common lands" lying away from the villages
became * ' proprietary land, ' ' at an early date, by such acts as the
following: Maiden, Massachusetts, in 1694, voted: "Yt ye
Common be divided; bottom and top yt is land and wood," and
it ordered that commissioners making the division "employ an
artist to lay out ye lots." While such acts were legitimate, they
were not always wise, for often the same land has been re-pur-
chased for public use at large expense.
The extent of the illegitimate encroachment of private indi-
viduals upon lands reserved for the common good was not realized
in Massachusetts until Mr. J. B. Harrison investigated for The
i Adapted from the Art World and Craftsman, V: 423-432, Feb., 1904.
455
456 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Trustees of Public Reservations the status of such lands in the
sea-shore towns. A typical example of his findings will suffice :
"Marshfield formerly had a Common. In earliest times it was
the training field. The town gave a religious society a perpetual
lease of a part of it as a site for its chapel, and then ran a public
road curving diagonally through what remained. During
recent years various persons have obtained permission to build
sheds on the remnants of the Common, and there is not much of it
left for future appropriation. ' '
That street trees were appreciated in the earliest days is evi-
denced by the action of a town meeting in Watertown, Massa-
chusetts, in 1637, which passed a vote "to mark the shade trees
by the roadside with a 'W and fineing any person who shall fell
one of the trees thus marked 18 shillings." That this interest
was continuous is made evident by the age of existing homestead
and roadside trees, very many of which are between one hundred
and two hundred years old. This appreciation did not, however,
extend far beyond the residential districts, for lumbermen and
farmers very generally appropriated to their own use all valuable
trees on the public ways unless close to their houses. Notwith-
standing this, there were always agreeable, if not always stately,
woodland drives, for it required from thirty to fifty years for a
crop to grow.
To the village common outlying roads rambled in by graceful
curves over lines of least resistance as established by Indians, by
cows, and by men of good sense. Later, that man of ''much
skill" and less sense, the turnpike engineer, by projecting his
roads on straight lines, regardless of hill, dale, or water, managed,
at great cost, to ruin much of beauty and convenience, just as the
road-builders of the West are following section lines with, how-
ever, the frequent additional disadvantage of the zig-zag course
along two sides of each section. Such engineers and the sur-
veyor who made his plans of streets and lots on paper from
plotted property-lines and angles without levels and with little
regard to existing surface conditions or existing streets, were then
and are now destroying great beauty at unnecessary cost. In the
early days these outlying roads were of liberal width, usually
four, often ten, and sometimes more, rods wide. Such roads
have also been encroached upon by adjacent property-owners.
THE VILLAGE 457
The first checks to the petty local land and timber thieves came
when permanent roads were established over which they dare not
reach and, more recently, from the growth of a public sentiment
against such encroachments which they dare not challenge.
That this early interest in village improvement was more pro-
nounced in the older Eastern States, especially in New England,
than elsewhere, was probably due to the more compact and direct
method of local government represented by the New England
town meeting, and by the antecedents of the first settlers. Many
causes have contributed to the growth of this movement that
sprang into being in the earliest days, and struggled for years in
the forests of new movements, and against the weeds of selfish
interest, until it is now a sturdy growth with many stout branches
and a promise of great fruitfulness. There has been a growing
recognition of the distinct utility and the continuous growth in
beauty of tree and shrub-planted streets and public reservations
and of rural roads following lines suggested by nature. -This
growth in beauty, exercising the refining influence that such
growth always does, brought about such a quickening of public
opinion that unlovely, untidy, and unsafe public and private
grounds and public ways, once passed unnoticed, became so pain-
fully obvious that action was demanded. At the same time the
value of beauty, convenience, and safety as an asset was made
obvious by the attractiveness of towns so favored to persons of
culture and means who were seeking permanent or summer homes.
A first evidence of organized effort to promote these objects ap-
peared in the Agricultural Societies that grew out of the earlier
1 1 Societies for Promoting the Arts. ' ' They were formed in South
Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts a few years before
the end of the eighteenth century. They gave considerable atten-
tion to the improvement of home grounds, to street -tree planting,
and to the preservation and reproduction of the forest. That of
Massachusetts, for example, in 1793, offered prizes to persons who
should cut and clear the most land in three years, and for the
most expeditious method of destroying brush without plowing;
but answers to questions sent out at this time showed so alarming
a decrease in the forest areas that the policy was reversed and
prizes were offered for forest plantations and the management of
wood-lots. This same society endowed one of the first botanic
458 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
gardens, and is still engaged in good works. The development in
such societies of the horticultural interest led, in the first half of
the nineteenth century, to the formation in several States of
horticultural societies that gave much more attention to these
objects and occasional attention to public reservations.
During and just after the same period, a number of horticul-
tural magazines came into being under the direction of such men
as A. J. Downing, Thomas Meehan, and C. M. Hovey, and some
literary magazines, especially Putnam's, gave space to the writers
on village improvement. Then came the group of writers repre-
sented by Bryant and Emerson, whose keen insight into and
close sympathy with nature was transmitted to so many of their
readers, and, above all, Thoreau, the Gilbert White of America,
with a broader point of view, whose writings did not, how-
ever, receive their full recognition until much later.
It is very significant that two well-marked phases of the "im-
provement of towns and cities" should have developed at almost
the same time. First, in a studied plan of public grounds, at
Washington in 1851, to be followed by the acquirement of a
public park and the appointment of a Park Commission in New
York in 1857, and second, by the organization of the first village
improvement society by Miss Mary G. Hopkins, at Stockbridge,
Mass., in 1853. Equally significant- as indicating the impetus
the movement is to attain, was the action of the national Gov-
ernment a quarter century later in acquiring great reservations,
first, like the Yellowstone Park, for their natural beauty, then,
later, as forest reservations for economic reasons, and such bat-
tlegrounds as that of Gettysburg, on account of their historical
associations.
The first powerful impetus to village improvement was given
by B. G. Northrup, Secretary of the Connecticut State Board of
Education, who, in his report of 1869, wrote upon "How to
Beautify and Build up Our Country Towns," an article which
he states was received with ridicule. He thereafter for years
wrote much, lectured often, and before 1880 had organized not
less than one hundred societies in the New England and Middle
States. His writings were published by the daily papers, and
the New York Tribune republished and offered for sale, in 1891,
at three dollars per hundred, his "Rural Improvement Associa-
THE VILLAGE 459
tions," which he first published in 1880. It is interesting to
note some of the objects especially touched upon in this pamphlet :
"To cultivate public spirit and foster town pride, quicken in-
tellectual life, promote good fellowship, public health, improve-
ment of roads, roadsides, and sidewalks, street lights, public
parks, improvement of home and home life, ornamental and
economic tree planting, improvement of railroad stations, rustic
roadside seats for pedestrians, betterment of factory surround-
ings." Other men active in the movement during this period
were B. L. Butcher, of West Virginia, and Horace Bushnell, in
California.
That this activity made its impress upon the literature of the
day will be evident to those who read " Village and Village Life,"
by Eggleston, "My Days at Idlewild," by N. P. Willis, and to
those who search the files of the New York Tribune and Post and
the Boston Transcript, The Horticulturist, Hovey's Magazine,
Putnam's Magazine, the Atlantic, Harper's, and others. Much
of this writing and the few books devoted to the subject, such
as Downing 's "Rural Essays," Scott's "Suburban Home
Grounds," and Copeland's "Country Life," had more to do
with the improvement of home ground; than with town planning.
It was reserved for Mr. Charles Mulford Robinson in his very
recent "Improvement of Towns and Cities" and "Modern Civic
Art" to give a permanent place in our literature to that phase
of the work of town and city improvement, although Bushnell,
Olmsted, and others contributed to the subjects in reports, maga-
zines and published addresses.
During this same period a broader and deeper interest in for-
estry and tree-planting was stimulated, especially in the Middle
West, by such men as John A. Warder, of Ohio, and Governor
J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, at whose suggestion Arbor Day
was first observed in his state, and there officially recognized in
1872. By the observance of this day a multitude of school chil-
dren and their parents have become interested in tree-planting
on home and school grounds. For this, Mr. Morton deserves the
'same recognition that belongs to Mr. Clapp and the Massa-
chusetts Horticultural Society for the beginning and promot-
ing of the equally important school-garden movement.
Little do we appreciate to what Dr. Warder's forestry move-
460 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ment has led in the West. It has, by its encouragement of home-
stead plantations, greatly modified the landscape of the vast
central prairie region of our continent, "What was an endless
and monotonous sea of grass is now a great procession of ever-
changing vistas between groups of trees. It has resulted in our
Government's establishing fifty-three reservations containing
sixty-two million acres of public forests managed by an efficient
department, in establishing state forest commissions and reser-
vations, in the formation of national, state and local forestry
associations, many of which give quite as much attention to the
forest as an element of beauty in landscape and to the preserva-
tion of roadside growth and encouragement of public and private
tree-planting for beauty alone, as they do to the economic prob-
lems. In Massachusetts such an association secured laws plac-
ing all town roadside growth in charge of a Tree Warden. The
importance of a centralized, instead of the individual property-
owner's control, of street trees is receiving general recognition.
Mr. Wm. F. Gale, the City Forester of Springfield, Mass., by his
enlistment of school children as street tree defenders, has shown
how centralized control may greatly stimulate individual
interests.
A little later in this period there began to flow from the pens
of such men as Hamilton Gibson, Bradford Torrey, John Bur-
roughs, John Muir, and Ernest Thompson Seton, a literature that
has drawn the people so close to nature that they are seeing and
feeling keenly the beauty of the common things right about
them, and drawing away from the meagerness, garishness, and
conventionality of the lawns and lawn planting of the period that
followed the decline of the rich, old-fashioned garden of our
grandmothers, and began with the vulgar "bedding-out" craze
that followed displays at the Philadelphia Centennial. Then
came the World's Fair at Chicago, where many men of many
arts worked earnestly in harmony, as they had never done be-
fore, to produce an harmonious result. This bringing together
of artists in the making of the Fair, gave a tremendous impetus
to civic and village improvement activities, in common with all
others.
The American Park and Outdoor Art Association, organized
in Louisville in 1897, and giving special attention to the public
THE VILLAGE 461
park interests, was the first national association representing
the interests under review. In 1900, the American League for
Civic Improvement was formed at Springfield to give special
attention to improvement associations, in the promotion of which
it has been most efficient. The League for Social Service, of
New York, is another most efficient association working along
similar lines, but giving more attention to sociological subjects.
This year the first state association of village improvement so-
cieties was organized in Massachusetts. The association, first re-
ferred to, invited representatives of all national associations hav-
ing similar objects in view to attend its Boston Meeting in 1902,
where the action taken resulted in the formation of the Civic
Alliance, to be general clearing-house for all activities and ideas
represented by these various associations. The leaders of the
first two associations, feeling that greater efficiency could be se-
cured by working together, have taken action toward a merger,
the following sections being suggested for the new association:
Arts and Crafts.
City Making and Town Improvement.
Civic Art.
Factory Betterment.
Libraries.
Parks and Public Reservations.
Propaganda.
Public Nuisances.
Public Recreation.
Railroad Improvement.
Rural Improvement.
School Extension.
Social Settlements.
Women's Club Work.
The National Federation of Women's Clubs, with its mem-
bership of over 230,000, has done much" to improve towns and
cities through its local clubs. How important this woman's
work is can be known only to -those who can appreciate with
what moral courage, enthusiasm, and self-denial women will
take up new interests, and how often one woman's persistency
462 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and persuasiveness is the impelling force behind important
movements for the public good.
One of the best evidences that beauty and good order pay,
is given by the action of railroad corporations throughout the
country, which have, by the improvement of their station grounds
and right-of-way, created everywhere a sentiment in favor of
village improvement.
The United States Government is issuing numerous bulletins
that relate to village improvement work, and it recognized the
importance of the school garden movement by sending a special
representative, Mr. Dick J. Crosby, to the School Garden Ses-
sion of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association at its
Boston meeting. The National Educational Association also de-
voted a session to the same subject at its last meeting. Among
universities, Cornell has done great good in establishing courses,
and in sending out pamphlets on the improvement of home and
school grounds, chiefly under the direction of Professor L. H.
Bailey. Through this same agency "Uncle John" Spencer has,
by letters to and from a multitude of children, brought them to
learn much about the objects in their every-day life, by drawing
out their powers of observation, reasoning, and expression.
Quite as important are the newspapers and magazines. They
are giving much space to the movement, and offering prizes for
good work. The Chicago Tribune not only offered prizes in 1891,
but gave a page or more to improvement work for several months
in succession. The Youth 's Companion has not only given space
to the work, but has sent out thousands of pamphlets on village
improvement of school grounds. Garden and Forest, during its
time, was a powerful agency of the highest order under the direc-
tion of Professor Charles S. Sargent, and with Mr. W. A. Stiles
as editor. Of the existing publications Country Life in Amer-
ica, Park and Cemetery, American Gardening, The House Beau-
tiful, House and Garden, Home and Flowers, The Chautauquan,
and others, give a large share of their space to improvement
work.
Since the appointment of a Park Commission in New York to
make and administer a park for the people, nearly every large
city and many towns have their Park Commission and public
parks. States also are acquiring land to preserve natural beauty,
THE VILLAGE 463
such as in the Wachusett and Graylock mountain reservations in
Massachusetts; for their historic value, as at Valley Forge in
Pennsylvania ; for the protection of the drainage basin to a city
water supply, as in New York and Massachusetts; for a game
and forest preserve, as in Minnesota. Two states have cooper-
ated in the acquirement of a reservation for beauty alone, as at
the Dalles of the St. Croix, lying partly in Minnesota and
partly in Wisconsin, and furthermore, commissions under two
governments have cooperated in accomplishing the same purpose
at the Niagara Falls Reservation.
As an outcome of all this, we may look for the establishment
of State Park Commissions, already suggested in Massachusetts,
and for which a bill was introduced into the Minnesota legisla-
ture, and ultimately a National Park Commission to tie together
the great national, state, county, city and town public holdings
that will include such dominating landscape features as moun-
tains, river-banks, steep slopes, and sea and lake shores: land
for the most part of little value for commercial, industrial, or
agricultural purposes, but of great value as elements of beauti-
ful landscapes. The selection of such lands will ultimately be
governed largely by natural and by economic conditions as es-
tablished by such bureaus as that of Soil Investigation of the
Government, which is engaged in investigating and mapping soil
conditions, as well as by the Forestry Bureau already referred to,
and others. At present, large areas of private property, many
lakes, rivers, and some sea-shore, now in private hands, are
opened to the public without restriction: but with an increase
in population and in land values, the public will be shut out
from all points of vantage that are not held for the common
good, as it is now excluded from many miles of sea-and-lake-
shore by private owners, where a few years ago there were no
restrictions.
The work of the village improvement societies should be di-
rected toward this movement to make our whole country a park.
They should stop the encroachment of individuals upon public
holdings, urge individuals to add to such holdings by gifts of
land, fine old trees, or groups of old trees, in prominent posi-
tions, in town or city landscapes. Every association should se-
cure and adopt a plan for the future development of the town
464 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
as a whole, showing street extensions and public reservations to
include such features in such a way that they may become a part
of a more extended system, if this should be brought about in
the future. These societies should not undertake the legitimate
work of town officials, such as street-lighting, street-tree plant-
ing, repair of roads and sidewalks. They should compel the au-
thorities to do such work properly, by gathering information and
securing illustrations to show how much better similar work is
being done in other places, very often at less cost. They should
inaugurate activities of which little is known in their community :
such as the improvement of school and home grounds, and the
establishment of school-gardens and playgrounds. If the policy
of such a society be not broad enough to admit the active coop-
eration of the ablest men and women of a town, it can accomplish
but little. If its methods are not so administered as to instruct
up to the highest ideals, its efforts are quite as likely to be as
harmful as beneficial.
SOCIAL PRIVILEGES OF VILLAGE OR SMALL
CITY 1
C. J. GALPIN
THE general law has recognized the village as a community.
The Visible unity of the village group of houses, stores, and shops
has been the main warrant for treating the village or small city
as a community all by itself. The people are closely related in
business and life and come to feel a real solidarity. The legal
provision for incorporation is a presentation of a set of new
powers, and new duties to this group of homes as a comprehen-
sive social unit. A village legislature, a village executive, the
thinkers and actors who individually have succeeded by fore-
cast, insight, integrity, and perseverance, are now banded for
the village interests. The president or mayor now begins to
have his vision widened from a community pedestal, and a new
social machine for progress with power is put to work for the
common good.
i Adapted from Rural Life, pp. 92-94, Century Co., 1918, and Bulletin 34,
"The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community," pp. 24-28. Agri-
cultural Experiment Station, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison.
THE VILLAGE 465
Organizations and institutions spring up instinctively for the
village population. It is assumed that there is to be a church or
churches. A village without this ancient public agency at once
loses caste. The children of villagers of course must have social
privilege of instruction in race idealism. Fraternal orders are
assumed. Lodges quickly spring up. Human fellowship must
have its ritual and mysticism for the villager. The library is
assumed. It may wait for a benefactor, but it is counted on.
As soon as there is sufficient taxable property the most important
and significant assumption is made — the village will have a high
school. It is taken for granted that the children of the village,
children whose roofs are near together, should have the privilege
of four years' training in idea organization and work acquaint-
ance. Amusement halls, parks, bands, orchestras, and baseball
grounds are soon provided. As the village, following its city
ideal, moves on into small city government, multiform organ-
ized agencies and institutions, voluntary, commercial, or munici-
pal in the plane of public health, education, business, informa-
tion, soon follow.
The institutional reinforcement of the village, along with the
growing consciousness of village unity, clothes the villager with
a secondary social personality. This is recognized, even though
disparaged by the farmer. Prestige is the outcome. Superior-
ity is inevitable; but here begin the troubles with a necessary
farm population, which the banker, storekeeper, and blacksmith
know as the goose that lays the golden egg. The problem is one
of pleasing the farmer and getting his trade, without building
him and his mind, capacities, and wishes, into the community
fabric. The farmer's money is good and necessary and must be
obtained and his good will retained; but how to accomplish
this object is a problem. Thorough-going incorporation of the
farmer into the stream of village activities is frustrated by the
fundamental conception of the self-sufficiency of the village.
The farmer is presented outright with a few donations, as
privileges in order to bind him. Toll, of course, is to be exacted
by villagers somewhere. Craft sometimes takes the place of
open dealing. The farmer does not share in the control and
responsibility of certain things which he occasionally enjoys at
the village as a spectator. The outlying farm population is
466 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
seldom massed. Its members come to town by team or automo-
bile or on foot or horseback, do their business without a resting
place of their own, stand on other people's streets, in other peo-
ple's shops, and over other people's counters. They go back
after some hours of absence to their own lands, occupations,
and homes. In the village they are aliens, but aliens with a
possible title to be conciliated. The embarrassment is on both
sides. The farmer pays in so much in trade he feels that he
ought to have consideration; he pays so little directly toward
the institutions that the village considers that his rights are not
compelling. Puzzle, perplexity, and embarrassment obscure the
whole relationship and situation; and the universal process of
legalized insulation of village and city away from the farm,
which has grown up undisputed, with scarcely a hint of abnor-
mality, is constantly shadowed by this overhanging cloud of
doubt.
The modern village differs from the modern city mainly in this
— the village industries are related directly to the needs of the
outlying population on the land in addition to the needs of the
village population. The city contains industries related to peo-
ple scattered over the territory of county, state, or nation. As
soon as a village obtains one knitting mill, or a latch factory, or
plow works, or iron smelter and the like, whose products go to
people who are not otherwise interested in the village, it begins
to possess the problems of a city. As this process continues, it
becomes less and less dependent upon the agricultural popula-
tion within its immediate farm trade zone, and more and more
upon scattered peoples of various sorts, who may never see the
city. As the small city grows, outstripping its adjoining vil-
lages, these villages become more or less consciously satellites
of the city. Wholesale needs are met in this city for village
merchants, and special retail customers come to buy clothing
and furniture from larger stocks. A trade clientele is formed
reaching out over a county, or two, or three, of these seasonal
or occasional village and farm buyers. This smaller city, then,
has a significance for several communities, and becomes an inter-
community center. Beyond this is the state center for trade—
the metropolis, with national importance.
So long as a small city is agricultural in its clientele, the land
THE VILLAGE 467
allied to it is a permanent social factor from generation to gen-
eration. It is a part of the equipment of the perennial ele-
mental industry of this city or village. Were there a knitting
mill on the edge of a small city, with five hundred employees
living about the mill, this whole industry — land, buildings, and
people — would be unquestionably part and parcel of the city.
In like manner surrounding the agricultural city is a huge con-
tinuous nature industry, not directly unified to be sure, but
real and actually united just the same.
Every inch of advance on the farm in intelligent skill, man-
agerial ability, moral control, governmental development, will be
reflected in the little city by an increased farm consumption of
goods, higher grades of farm desire, and better qualities of farm
citizenship ; whereas the same qualities of skill, intelligence, and
integrity in the city will be quickly transmitted to the farm and
to the advantage of the population on the land, if avenues of
social intercourse between "wheel and hub" are open wide.
Our study shows that the farm homes in the trade zone of a
small city share with the city homes the major commercial and
social interests requiring combined capital of many to carry on.
Circumstances hitherto have hindered the large-scale development
of some of these enterprises among the farm homes, but these
circumstances may not be — in fact need not be — permanent ; for
the same incentive which has led the city population to spend
some of its surplus profits upon equipment for religion, higher
education, government, information, art, leisure, and play, is
present in a latent form in the farm population, simply ready
to be induced to join hands in an alliance of fair play.
THE TOWN'S MORAL PLAN1
HARLAN PAUL DOUGLASS
IT is possible for the little town to have a moral plan, approxi-
mated through conscious standards of social control. As every-
where, human conduct is determined chiefly by the natural ac-
quiescence of the human spirit in the ways of the social order
i Adapted from "The Little Town," pp. 115-120, Macmillan, N. Y., 1919.
468 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
into which it is born. In the main these ways satisfy the indi-
vidual; even the rebel is too unoriginal to depart from them.
Moral sentiment and social convention do most of their work
without need of law or police.
The control of conduct through social tradition is, however,
not so simple as the formula sounds ; there are traditions rather
than a tradition. Not only is there still a dash of frontier wild-
ness surviving as lawlessness in the little towns of much of the
country, but the little towns as a group are peopled largely by
those who formerly lived in the country and who are still
largely dominated by the countryman's point of view. In brief,
they are incompletely socialized. Their people cling to country
ways in spite of new environment. Thus in matters of sanita-
tion, the maintenance of the barnyard manure pile is a sacred
private right worth dying for, as a symbol of our liberties ; or on
the other hand, as the little town grows there come to be those
who want to push on prematurely into city ways for the free-
dom of which they contend as martyrs to new light. In short
the struggle is always on between existing conditions and ad-
vancement. Now, any group of people which is distinctively
at outs with environment presents a serious moral problem. Just
as the spirit of youth is inevitably at war with the necessary
limitations of the city streets, so the rural mind is at war with
little-town conditions. Hence the necessity of vigorous moral
control in order to conform the individual to the requirements
of collective life.
The minor struggle between traditions, the give and take of
moral sentiments in search of equilibrium, the clash between
temperaments, ages and views of life will go on normally for-
ever. But no community can do anything in the direction of
its ideals till the fact and main tendencies of social control are
settled. The little town may as well face its battle and have it
over. The necessary ordinances of safety and decency are to be
obeyed. Pigs and poultry will be the most frequent issue.
Their economic value under town conditions must first be de-
termined. If it is best to keep them at all, the whole wearying
round of issues must be pursued — agitation, education, a contest
in local politics, a suit at law or two, a clash at wills and of per-
sonal sentiments all along the line.
THE VILLAGE 469
While all moral battles must be waged on every front at once,
it is possible to discern a sort of pedagogical order in which the
offensive should be undertaken. It would be foolish to make 1h<>
first issue that of closing cigar stands on Sunday, which at best
would only stir the conscience of a fraction of the community, or
that of enforcing liquor laws, which always involves a contest
with formidable interests from outside the community. Rather
the battle should be drawn on some community issue pure and
simple, in which the enforcing of the collective against the in-
dividualistic viewpoint involves some broadly fundamental but
localized field. When the battle is fought to a finish here other
victories will come more easily.
The most difficult yet necessary phases of the little town's
struggle for moral standards are those involving outside in-
terests not directly amenable to the community conscience. They
are often said to "interfere" with the community; if so they
must be made to interfere helpfully as well as harmfully. The
most frequent and insidious of these interests is the organized
liquor traffic, although often the interests of alien corporations
clash with those of the community and interfere in a similar
way. In these cases the essential nature of the problem is that
it is not local in character. Local tools are used, but the prin-
cipals to the conflict are too remote to feel local pressure. Under
such circumstances the only resource of the little town is to
combine with other communities using the resources of state-
wide publicity, organization and political action. The unro-
mantic, perpetual, straight-away pull of law-enforcement with
all its costs in time, money and personal discomfort, is the in-
evitable price of community morals in their wider setting.
Even more difficult than law enforcement, but affecting more
people in more ways and entering more subtly into community
life, are the problems of social control in the round of social
intercourse ; of amusements, particularly for youth ; the prob-
lems of standards of consumption registered by the expenditure
of money, and of the use of leisure. The concrete forms in
which these issues confront the little town are the party, the
dance, theater and amusement place ; dress, travel, Sunday ob-
servance and the like.
Probably the most rational method of precipitating a body of
470 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
agreements in these debatable fields is that of the voluntary ref-
erendum, which has been tried out in a number of communities.
It is proposed usually by the federation of women's organiza-
tions and consists simply in a systematic canvass of the most
influential and earnest members of all classes and tendencies in
the community, to see what they think the reasonable standards
for "our town" are. At what hour should the parties of high
school young people close? How many times a week should
growing boys and girls be away from home at night ? What is
a reasonable scale of entertainment at club functions? How
much should the cost of graduating dress and attending functions
be? What are the reasonable terms of social association be-
tween adolescents of the two sexes? When the results of such
questions are generalized and announced a considerable range
of choice is still open, but weak-kneed parents are strengthened
to enforce some kind of a standard. It is easier for the poorer
hostess not to spend more than she should. The ultra-puritanical
are restrained and the way to rational agreements is open.
Surely this is better than the eternal anxiety of the little town
as to what is right and proper in social matters, the harsh judg-
ments of the stricter upon the less strict, the internal difficulties
by which a man's foes are often they of his own household.
In some such ways as the above the steadying force of social
standards may be thus vitally evolved without hardening into
unyielding, clashing and non-progressive traditions.
So far the discussion has concerned the logical fundamentals
of little-town betterment. It is quite another thing to make a
constructive program of social advance. All merely formal di-
rections, and especially negative ones for the control of life,
will and ought to fail. The most vitalizing possibility of the lit-
tle town is that of having a positive program secured by the con-
tinuous activities of the institutions of education and service,
and by the direct pursuit of wholesome ideals by individuals.
One who sees life steadily and sees it whole will not attempt to
deal compulsorily with structural fundamentals without at the
same time creating an atmosphere in which wholesome com-
munity choices may take place. He will not dare to specialize
on law enforcement until he has created the playground and
appreciated the spiritual aspects of recreation. He will not at-
THE VILLAGE 471
tempt to make social standards for his fellows except as he can
present a vision of normal life compelling in its attractiveness.
But on the other hand, and equally, the most idealistic and spon-
taneous community movements will wander far without a well
planned physical basis of town life ; without a well ordered eco-
nomic program through which people can win a livelihood and
pay the cost of their collective enterprises ; without a firm basis
in human health through the facilities of public safety and sani-
tation; and without a substantial though flexible moral frame-
work within which individual destinies may be wrought out. On
these greatest civic commandments hang all the law and the
prophets of community welfare.
CIVIC IMPROVEMENT IN VILLAGE AND COUNTRY *
FRANK A. WAUGH
THE rural population of the United States has always been
noted for its public spirit and patriotism. At the same time, it
has been recognized that the farmers themselves have benefited
least from their own public spirit. They have generally been
unable to act in their own interests. For this reason, rural com-
munities should give special heed to the modern movement for
civic improvement.
Civic improvement may be accepted as a convenient term to
designate all efforts made toward the betterment of the physical
conditions of the community. It refers, therefore, especially, to
those matters in which the public is interested. Some of the
important items in the physical equipment for community life
are:
(1) Roads and streets, including bridges, street railways,
and street trees.
(2) Public grounds, such as parks, commons, lakes, water-
fronts, and cemeteries.
(3) Public and quasi-public buildings, such as school houses,
town halls, libraries and churches.
i Adapted from Extension Circular, No. 11, Mass. Agricultural College,
Amherst, March, 1917.
472 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
(4) Public recreation facilities, especially playgrounds.
(5) Public service equipment, such as telephone lines, elec-
tric light lines, railway stations and grounds.
(6) Private grounds — inasmuch as the improvement of
private grounds adds greatly to the attractiveness of
any community.
Civic improvement then is an enterprise applicable to cities,
villages, or country districts, in fact to every civilized commun-
ity. Inasmuch as the great cities possess an undue proportion
of the wealth and initiative of the nation, they may be expected
to take care of their own interests along these lines. Country
districts and rural villages, however, have equal need to im-
prove to the utmost their physical surroundings. The country
as well as the city needs good roads, suitable public grounds,
modern school buildings, libraries and churches, and all the im-
proved equipment of twentieth century civilization.
It is the purpose of civic improvement to achieve, as rapidly
as practicable, every possible advance in the community equip-
ment as already denned. These improvements can be secured
by:
(1) Informing the public as to present conditions, needed
improvements, and means of securing the same.
(2) Securing professional and technical advice on pending
improvements.
(3) Foreseeing and planning ahead for coming changes, thus
avoiding expensive mistakes and reconstructions.
(4) Adopting definite and coordinated plans for community
betterment.
(5) Forming improvement programs according to which
successive enterprises are taken up in an agreed and
logical order.
(6) Assigning particular enterprises to particular groups or
organizations, e.g. the Grange may assume responsibility
for the roads, the Woman's Club for the school houses
and playgrounds, one church for the public cemetery,
another for the town common, etc.
Civic improvement, therefore, is not a newfangled luxury,
not a new means of spending public money, but a means of
THE VILLAGE 473
economizing money. At the same time, it is expected to ac-
complish substantially better results for the community.
Civic improvement usually succeeds best under the direction
of some live, local organization. This may be a village improve-
ment society, or it may be some association which exists pri-
marily for another purpose but which undertakes also to assist
in the physical upbuilding of the community in which it lives.
The work in some towns has been definitely undertaken by the
Grange, though seldom with a sufficiently comprehensive plan.
In some communities, it has been successfully prosecuted by
women's clubs. Where no organization already exists, or where
no existing organization is ready to take up the work, the best
plan is often to form a central committee or federation com-
posed of delegates from existing organizations, such as lodges,
churches, women's clubs, men's clubs, etc. Under recent Massa-
chusetts legislation the formation of a town planning board has
come to be one of the best methods of securing permanent re-
sults. Whatever local organization may be in charge of the work,
outside advice and expert assistance should be frequently called
in. This is highly important.
As the bulk of civic improvement is applied to public works,
and as the whole of it is designed for the public good, the bills
should be paid chiefly from the public treasury. An indispen-
sable part of a civic betterment campaign is to see that public
money is wisely and honestly used. The immediate contingent
expenses of the village improvement society may be met by
private contributions, by fairs or entertainments, or by any
means most acceptable to the community.
Commonly the leading problems presented in a community
improvement program are as follows: (a) approaches, (b)
streets, including trees, (c) civic centers, (d) commons, (e)
public buildings, (f) playgrounds, (g) private grounds, (h)
maintenance. A full discussion of all these problems would re-
quire an entire volume, but the main issues may be pointed out
briefly herewith.
Every town and every rural district should have suitable means
of access. We hear a great deal nowadays of isolated communi-
ties, meaning those which are hard to reach. Easy access comes
by well-kept roads, by well-managed trolley lines, or by rail-
474 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
roads. The entrance to a village or country district should be
direct, inviting, and hospitable. The front door to a town should
have the same qualities as the front door of one's own home.
Good roads are a primary part of civic betterment, and the
campaign for good roads is perennial. Better methods of road
building are needed, and more permanent roads are especially
desirable. In many cases, roads and streets should be relocated
before permanent improvements are made. Such relocations
should secure more direct lines and easier grades. The work of
the Massachusetts Highway Commission has developed some
striking examples of improvement by relocation. Many similar
improvements can be secured by the towns themselves, if only
proper thought is given to the matter.
In Massachusetts, every town should have a tree warden, and
should make sure that he is a competent man and that he at-
tends to his work. In the face of the unusual pests which we
have to meet, the salvation of street trees can be secured only by
heroic efforts. It is depressing to think what our village streets
and country lanes would be like, should the street trees disap-
pear. The best modern, scientific care should be given to pre-
serve the trees now standing, and at the same time annual plant-
ings of young trees should be made to make good the unavoid-
able losses.
The villages are the natural centers of political, business and
social life in New England communities. They should be worthy
of such an important office. Moreover, at such centers should be
grouped the buildings which represent the public life of the
community, such as town hall, library, school-houses, post-office,
etc. Substantial advantages are gained by grouping these build-
ings instead of scattering them. In general, the best arrange-
ment is to have them front upon the town common, but never
should they be placed upon the Common itself.
The small central greens located in the hearts of many New
England villages are a public asset of the highest value. They
should be most jealously guarded. They should be well kept,
in every particular. It is especially important as a general prin-
ciple that no architectural or ornamental construction of any
kind should be permitted on the Common. Public buildings are
particularly damaging, but neither is the Common any place for
THE VILLAGE 475
any kind of fountain, statue, or bandstand. Such ornaments or
conveniences may often be located advantageously on the street
margin or extreme outer angle of the town common, but under
no circumstances should they be placed on the Common itself.
Mistake is very common in this matter.
Every effort should be made to secure public buildings of the
best character. Every town hall and every library ought to be
something which the community can be proud of. A public
building which is a public shame is a constant influence to de-
grade the spirit of the community. The effort for good, attrac-
tive, dignified, and even beautiful public buildings needs to be
directed especially to the school-houses. Every school-house
ought to set a good example daily to the school children. Un-
fortunately, many school-houses are cheap, shabby, and even
dirty.
Country villages and rural communities generally are notably
lacking in playgrounds. There is no space reserved where boys
may play ball without trespassing on private property. Even
the school-houses are insufficiently provided with play room out
of doors. There ought to be ample room and encouragement for
play in the country. In this way, one incentive which young
people find for going to the city would be materially weakened.
When private lawns are well kept, gardens made attractive,
and grounds generally beautified, the public enjoyment is greatly
increased. Nothing does more toward making a town attractive
than to have the private grounds improved. Such garden im-
provements may be promoted by the village improvement society
through offering prizes, the arrangement of special school instruc-
tion, and by many other means. This is an important line of
civic improvement work.
The most important things in housekeeping are cleanliness
and good order; likewise, the most important things in commun-
ity life are cleanliness and good order. The streets and public
places should be kept clean, — the grass mown, weeds cut out, and
everything kept in its place. The common should not be allowed
to accumulate Sunday papers, nor the cemetery be allowed to
grow up to brush. In fact, this regular routine of keeping clean
should reasonably occupy a large proportion of the time, efforts
and funds at the disposal of any improvement organization.
476 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Wilbert L. The Country Town. Baker, New York, 1906.
Baden-Powell, Baden H. Indian Village Communities. Longmans,
N. Y.
Origin and Growth of Village Communities in India. Scribner, N.
Y., 1899.
Bailey, Liberty H. The Place of the Village in the Country Life
Movement. In his York State Rural Problems, 2 : 148-157, Lyon,
Albany, 1913.
Bennet, Ernest N. Problems of Village Life. Holt, N. Y., 1914.
Bird, Chas. S. Jr. Town Planning for Small Communities. Apple-
ton, N. Y., 1917.
Blaekmar, F. W. Social Degeneration in Towns and Rural Districts.
Conf. Charities and Corrections, 1900, 315 Plymouth Court, Chi-
cago.
Bookwalter, J. H. Agricultural Town. In his Rural vs. Urban, N. Y.,
1910. (Privately printed by author.)
Brunner, Edmund de S. Cooperation in Coopersburg. Missionary
Edn. Movement, N. Y., 1916.
Douglass, Harlan Paul. The Little Town. Macmillan, 1919.
Dunn, Arthur W. An Analysis of the Social Structure of a Western
Town. University of Chicago, 1896.
Farrington, Frank. Community Development. Ronald, N. Y., 1915.
Farwell, Parris T. Village Improvement. Sturgis, N. Y., 1913.
Fitch, George H. Homeburg Memories. Little, Boston, 1915.
Fustel de Coulanges, Numa D. The Ancient City. Lee, Boston, 1901.
Galpin, Charles J. The Social Anatomy of a Rural Community.
Univ. of Wis. Research Bulletin, No. 34, Madison.
Rural Relations of the Village and Small City. Univ. of Wis. Bul-
letin, No. 411, Madison.
Gillin, S. Y. Community Development and the State University.
Town Development, Vol. 12 : 99.
Hart, Joseph K. Educational Resources of Village and Rural Com-
munities. Macmillan, New York, 1913.
Hartman, Edward T. Village Problems and Characteristics. Annals,
40:234-243, March, 1912.
Maine, Henry J. S. Village Communities in the East and West. Holt,
N. Y., n. d.
Masters, Edgar L. The Spoon River Anthology. Macmillan, New
York, 1915.
McVey, Frank L. The Making of a Town. McClurg, Chicago, 1913.
Nolan, John. Comprehensive Planning for Small Towns and Villages.
Bui. 16, American Unitarian Assn., Boston.
Origin, Organization and Influence of the Towns of New England.
Proceedings Mass. Hist. Society, Boston, Jan., 1866.
Robinson, Charles M. The Improvement of Towns and Villages. Put-
nam, N. Y., 1909.
Sims, Newell L. A Hoosier Village. Longmans, N. Y., 1912.
The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern. Chas. Scribner's Sons,
N. Y., 1920,
THE VILLAGE 477
Small, A. W., and Vincent, G. E. The Village, An Introduction to the
Study of Society. Pp. 127-143, American, N. Y., 1894.
Stubbs, C. W. Village Politics. Macmillan, N. Y., 1878.
Vogt, Paul L. Introduction to Rural Sociology. Appleton, N. Y.,
1917.
Village Growth and Decline in Ohio. American City, 13 : 481-5,
December, 1915.
Waugh, Frank A. Rural Improvement. Orange Judd, N. Y., 1914.
CHAPTEE XVII
THE SURVEY
THE SURVEY IDEA IN COUNTRY LIFE WORK *
L. H. BAILEY
THE scientific method is first to determine the exact facts, and
then to found the line of action on these facts. That is the way
in which all problems must be attacked if real and permanent
solutions are to be found. The scientific method in engineering
and mechanics and biology and the rest has been responsible for
the high development of civilization within the past century.
Similar methods must be applied to rural work. We must finally
found all our progress in rural life on a close study of the facts
and the real elements in the situation, in order that we may
know exactly what we are talking about. The prevailing politi-
cal methods have been the antithesis of this ; they have too often
been the methods of opportunism.
Surveys may be of many kinds and for many purposes. Some
of them may be for temporary uses only, in the nature of ex-
plorations or to set forth a particular line of ideas. The real
rural survey should be an agency of record; and it is this type
of effort that I am now discussing.
We must distinguish sharply between such a survey, made
slowly and studiously, and an inspection, a canvass, or a cam-
paign. These lighter efforts may be very necessary, but they
usually do not constitute an investigation, and they belong to
a different order of inquiry.
The general or gross reconnaisance, to bring together quickly
for comparison the outstanding features and conditions of many
communities, may have much value ; but it should be undertaken
only by persons of experience in detailed survey-work and of
i Adapted from "York State Rural Problems," Vol. 1:238-261. J. B.
Lyon & Co., Albany.
478
THE SURVEY 479
ripened judgment. It is one of the most difficult forms of
survey-work, if it is to have real value. It must be much more
than a car-window exercise. When properly undertaken, it is a
new and useful application of geography. There is a great dan-
ger that the overhead reconnaisance will be little more than prac-
tice in aviation.
If a survey of any region or phase is to be a record of fact,
then it must be strictly scientific in spirit, as I have already in-
dicated. It must discover and set down every fact of signifi-
cance, wholly apart from any prejudice or bias in the mind of
the observer: the fact is its own justification. The work can-
not be as precise as that in the mathematical and physical
sciences; but in its purpose it must be as scientific as any work
in any subject.
If the work is scientific, then it will not be undertaken for
the purpose of exploiting a movement, recruiting an associa-
tion, spreading a propaganda, advertising a region, sustaining a
political organization, or promoting the personal ambition of any
man. There is indication that survey work will soon become
popular ; there is danger that it will be taken up by institutions
that desire to keep themselves before the public and by locali-
ties and states that desire to display their advantages. It will
be easy to marshal statements and arrange figures, and par-
ticularly to omit facts, in such a way as to make a most attrac-
tive showing. Even some honest investigators will be likely to
arrange the material in such a way as to prove a point rather
than to state the facts, unless they are very much on their guard.
If country-life surveys have possibilities of great good, they have
equal possibilities of great danger. I am glad that the move-
ment is going slowly at first.
The intention of survey work in agriculture is to make a rec-
ord of the entire situation and to tell the whole truth. Frag-
mentary surveys and piece-work, however good they may be in
themselves, do not represent the best effort in surveys. Prac-
tically all our surveys have thus far been fragmentary or unre-
lated, but this is the work of a beginning epoch. We shall al-
most necessarily be obliged to do- still further fractional and
detached work ; but it is time that we begin to train the imagina-
tion on completer and sounder programs. The whole basis and
480 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
condition of the rural community must be known and recorded.
The community must know where it stands. It must understand
its assets and its liabilities.
Survey work is legitimate wholly aside from its application.
I have no patience with the doctrine of "pure science," — that
science is science only as it is uncontaminated by application in
the arts of life ; and I have no patience with the spirit that con-
siders a piece of work to be legitimate only as it has direct bear-
ing on the arts and affairs of men. We must discover all things
that are discoverable and make a record of it: the application
will take care of itself. The application of science lies not alone
in its employment in particularities here and there, but quite as
much in the type of mind and the philosophy of life that result
from it. If we knew our exact rural status — in materials, ac-
complishments and deficiencies — we should by that very fact have
a different outlook on the rural problem and a surer process of
attacking it. We should do little guessing. We should correct
many vagaries and many a foolish notion to which we now are
all, no doubt, very much given. We should not be obliged to
follow blind or self-wise leaders. A substantial body of accu-
mulated fact would set bounds to the promoter and the agitator
and the schemer.
The result of survey-work in agriculture should be to tie the
community together. Such work would provide a basis for real
judgment on the part of every intelligent resident of the neigh-
borhood. One interest would be tied up with another. Apple-
growing would not be distinct from wheat-growing, or church
work from school work, or soil types from the creamery business,
or politics from home life. The vicinage would be presented to
the citizen as a whole. Nothing, in my opinion, would do so
much to develop pride of neighborhood, local patriotism, and
community common sense as a full and complete knowledge of
what the community is in its resources, its history, its folks, its
industries, its institutions, and its tendencies.
When the survey idea is once understood and begun, every
locality will desire to be represented. Certain regions will de-
velop full surveys, and the reports will be standard ; the surveys
of intermediate localities may not need to be so elaborate or
minute.
THE SURVEY 481
When we fully understand our problem, we shall make our
best surveys in consecutive order. We may classify all phases
of survey-work freely under three groups — physical, economic,
social ; and the order of the surveys should preferably follow this
sequence. We should first know what the region is — geography,
physiography, climate, resources, soils; then what it does — the
farming, the industries, the markets, the business, the profit-and-
loss ; then how it lives — its people, its homes, its health, its insti-
tutions, its modes of expression, its outlook. I very much doubt
the lasting value of surveys of church or school or particular
crops or special products that are not founded on a good knowl-
edge of the physical and economic conditions of the region.
FIVE PRINCIPLES OF SURVEYS1
PAUL U. KELLOGG
FIRST of all, the survey takes its unit of work from the sur-
veyor. It has to do with a subject matter, to be sure, but
that subject matter is subordinated to the idea of a definite geo-
graphical area. It is quite possible to carry on a study of tuber-
culosis, for example, as a piece of physiological research, or as a
piece of sociological research, wholly apart from where it occurs.
But just as geological survey is not geology in general, but the
geology of a given mountain range or water shed, so, even when
a special subject matter is under study, the sociological survey
adds an element of locality, of neighborhood or city, state or
region, to what would otherwise pass under the general term of
an investigation.
And when the subject matter is not specialized, but concerns
the more intangible "needs" of a community, the survey becomes
necessarily different things in different localities. It cannot be
thought out at a far-away desk. It is responsive to local con-
ditions ; in a worn-out country district, suffering from what Pro-
fessor Ross calls "folk-depletion," its content has little in com-
mon with that of a survey in a textile center, tense with human
activity, and dominated by its terms of work.
i Adapted from "The Spread of the Survey Idea," Proceedings Acad. of
Political Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, July, 1912. Columbia Univ., N. Y.
482 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
In the second place, the survey takes from the physician his
art of applying to the problems at hand standards and expe-
rience worked out elsewhere. To illustrate, if your pure scien-
tist were studying the housing situation in a given town, he
would start out perhaps without any hypotheses, tabulate every
salient fact as to every house, cast up long columns of figures, and
make careful deductions, which might and might not be worth
the paper they were written on. Your housing reformer and
your surveyor ought to know at the start what good ventilation
is, and what cellar dwellings are. These things have been
studied elsewhere, just as the medical profession has been study-
ing hearts and lungs until they know the signals which tell
whether a man's organs are working right or not, and what to
look for in making a diagnosis.
In the third place, the survey takes from the engineer his
working conception of the structural relation of things. There
is a building element in surveys. When we look at a house, we
know that carpenters have had a good deal to do with it, and
it is possible to investigate just what the carpenters have done;
also the bricklayers, the steam-fitters and the rest of the building
trades. But your engineer, like your general contractor and
architect, has to do with the work of each of these crafts in its
relation to the work of every other. So it is with a survey,
whether it deals with the major elements entering into a given
community which has structural parts of a given master prob-
lem such as Dr. Palmer describes in his survey of the sanitary
conditions in Springfield. Only recently I received a letter from
a man engaged in making a general social survey of a manufac-
turing town — a so-called survey. He did not think that it was
truly a survey, nor did I, because out of the scope of that in-
vestigation had been left all of the labor conditions in the
mills. The local committee had been fearful of raising opposi-
tion in forceful quarters. Yet these labor conditions were basic
in the town's life; on them, for better or worse, hung much of
the community welfare; and by ignoring them, the committee
could deal with partial solutions only. It was as if a diagnosti-
cian in making his examination had left a patient 's stomach out
of consideration because the patient was a dyspeptic and irri-
table. They had violated the structural integrity of their survey.
THE SURVEY 483
In the fourth place, the survey takes from the charity-organ-
ization movement its case-work method of bringing problems
down to human terms. Death rates exemplify human units
in the barest essentials; but I have in mind a more developed
unit. Let me illustrate from the Pittsburgh Survey in the pains-
taking figures we gathered of the household cost of sickness —
lost wages, doctor's bills, medicines, ice, hospitals, funerals, the
aftermath of an epidemic in lowered vitality and lowered earn-
ings, household by household — not in sweeping generalizations
but in what Mr. Woods called "piled-up actualities." If I were
to set one touchstone, more than another, to differentiate the true
survey from social prospecting, it would be this case-work
method. In employing it the surveyor, because of lack of means
and time, must often deal with samples rather than with the
whole population coming within the scope of his study. These
samples may be groups of school children ; or the people who die
in a certain year ; or those who live in a certain ward. The
method is one, of course, which is scientifically justifiable only
so long as those who employ it can defend their choice of the
sample chosen, and show where it does and does not represent
the entire group.
Under this head it is to be noted that the survey is in a field
friendly to what we have come to call municipal research. The
latter is indebted for its methods of unit-costs and efficiency to
the accountants. These 'methods may be applied to city budgets
and city departments as an integral part of a social survey, the
distinction between the two movements in practice being perhaps
that the one is focused primarily on governmental operations ; the
other on phenomena imbedded in the common life of the people.
In the fifth place, the survey takes from the journalist the
idea of graphic portrayal, which begins with such familiar tools
of the surveyor as maps and charts and diagrams, and reaches
far through a scale in which photographs and enlargements,
drawings, casts and three-dimension exhibits exploit all that the
psychologists have to tell us of the advantages which the eye
holds over the ear as a means for communication. With these
the survey links a sturdy effort to make its findings have less
in common with the boredom of official reports than with the
more engaging qualities of newspaper "copy" — especially that
484 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
simplicity of structure, tangible framework, and readability
which American magazine men have developed as their technique
in writing for a democracy. This is not a counsel, bear in mind,
of flimsy sensationalism; although those who have matters to
conceal seek to confuse the two. A startling article patched up
from a few glints of fact is a very different proposition from a
crystal set in a matrix of tested information.
Underlying this factor of graphic portrayal is the factor of
truth; truth plus publicity. It is often possible to work out
large and definite reforms internally, by getting a group of
forceful men around a table and convincing them that so and
so is the right thing to do. This is, I take it, a legitimate
method of philanthropic work and of social reform. But it is
not the method of a survey. The survey's method is one of
publicity; it is another and separate implement for social ad-
vance, and its usefulness should not be negatived by a failure
to hold to its distinctive function. The philosophy of the sur-
vey is to set forth before the community all the facts that bear
on a problem, and to rely upon the common understanding, the
common forethought, the common purpose of all the people as
the first great resource to be drawn upon in working that prob-
lem out. Thus conceived, the survey becomes a distinctive and
powerful implement of democracy.
A METHOD OF MAKING A SOCIAL SURVEY OF A
RURAL COMMUNITY *
C. J. GALPIN
AN ANALYSIS OF A RURAL COMMUNITY
What Is a Rural Community? There are three fundamen-
tal types of association in well developed country life: homes,
neighborhoods, communities. A neighborhood is a collection of
homes having one or two important common interests such as a
district school, or a mill, or an open-country church. The
neighborhood may be a number of homes somewhat near together
1 Adapted from Circular 29, the UniversHy of Wisconsin Agricultural
Experiment Station, Madison.
THE SURVEY 485
all belonging to the same foreign race, such as a German settle-
ment. A specially genial hospitality in one prominent home
may kindle the spirit of neighbbrliness in homes nearby and
give name to the neighborhood, such as the Brown neighbor-
hood.
A community, on the other hand, is made up of all the homes
which try to meet, in connection with each other at a common
center, the fundamental common needs, such as food, clothing,
implements, money, high school education, religious instruction,
amusement, fraternal organization. The center of the commu-
nity is usually a village ranging in population from 300 to 3,000
people and it serves a community area ranging from 16 to 100
square miles.
The people living in the village, on the whole, are engaged in
business mainly to supply the needs of the outlying farm homes
of that community. The village center is the pantry, safe, shop,
medicine chest, play-house, altar, of the community at large.
The village homes in thus serving the scattered homes of the
rural population as social agents of trade, education, health,
amusement, etc., are distinctly a part of the country community
itself.
Important Social Agencies. In every rural community will
be found from ten to forty different organizations, such as
schools, churches, library, Sunday Schools, lodges, study clubs,
breeders' association, band, baseball teams, and the like. These
are the important social agencies of community life. A club or
society or other organization is a social machine which brings
the power of a number of people to bear all at once on an im-
portant common interest, and brings results to the people con-
cerned which no one of them could get by acting alone. A list
of the permanent organizations found in a community will show
what large interests are considered important there, and will
also show just how far this community has been successful in
applying the associative principle to its common life.
A Community Photograph. A social survey is an attempt
to photograph, so to speak, the community so as to show every
home in all its social connections with all other homes in the com-
munity. A glance at this socialized community photograph will
reveal the lines of strong, healthy socialization and at the same
486 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
time disclose the spots and lines of feeble association. An intel-
ligent social planning for the community can be based on the
social facts thus discovered.
HOW TO TAKE THE SOCIAL SURVEY
Determine the Community Boundary. The first step in mak-
ing the survey is to locate your rural community and draw the
boundary lines. Begin at the village center and go west into
the open country. The first farm home goes to this village for
trade, doctor, high school, church, etc. It therefore belongs to
this community. So the second home west, the third, fourth,
etc. Finally you come to a home that turns the other way to
another village for its principal needs. This home does not be-
long to your community. Connect with a line all the most dis-
tant homes in each direction, that you find turning to the activ-
ities in your village center. This line will be the boundary of
your community.
Take a Home Census. The next step is the taking of a cen-
sus of every farm home and village home within the boundary
line. Use the "Rural Home Census" blanks furnished by the
College of Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin. Every
home should be visited for this purpose by some careful person.
The information will be gladly given by some one in the home.
Every fact asked for is practically a matter of public knowledge
and a source of some pride. Include every child in the home
and every hired man and hired woman and any other person
permanently residing in the home. The value of the census will
depend upon getting every home, getting the facts accurately,
and putting these facts plainly and carefully in their right
places on the census sheet.
Take an Organization Census. The third step is a census
of every organization in the community. Use the census sheet
furnished by the College of Agriculture of the University of
Wisconsin, one sheet for each organization. Include every dis-
trict school, every other school, every church, Sunday school,
every society in the church which holds separate meetings, such
as Brotherhoods, Young People's Societies, Ladies' Aid Socie-
ties, Mission Societies; include every fraternal order, lodge,
club or association of any sort, such as a band, singing club,
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THE SURVEY 487
amusement club, base ball club. Omit no group of people that
have a name and regular meetings more or less frequent. Do
not fail to get the list of resident members. Value here will
depend upon accuracy. A courteous request to the secretary
of each organization will undoubtedly be responded to with all
the facts desired.
Make Community Maps. The information obtained by the
home census, while valuable in itself, can be made far more
useful by a system of communitj^ maps. Draw a map of your
community on white card board or cloth-backed paper about
forty inches by thirty-six. Put in all the roads and the village
center limits. Locate every farm home on this map by a round
black dot a quarter of an inch in diameter. Make a separate
map of the village, locating all homes by the black dot.
Total Socialization Map. Make a list of all organizations in
the community as found by the organization census. Give a dif-
ferent color to each organization. Then make little round seals
one quarter of an inch in diameter out of colored papers of these
same colors. Take one farm home census sheet at a time, and
see what organizations are represented in this home. Stick
one seal to the edge of the black dot locating the home, to rep-
resent connection with an organization which has one or more
members in this home — only one seal, however many the mem-
bers. Then to the outer edge of this seal stick one more seal
representing the next organization found in the home, and so
on, until you have a line of seals of different colors on the map,
which shows at a glance exactly what organizations have mem-
bership in this home. Treat each farm home in the same way,
and the result will be a community map showing the total so-
cial connections of all the farm homes. Proceed in the same
way with the village map, and the two maps side by side will
show the total social relations of all homes in the community.
A Tenant and Owner Map. On another map containing all
the farm homes, you can attach seals of one color for tenants
and seals of another color for owners occupying the farm. This
will show at a glance the situation of the tenant problem.
School Maps. An interesting map can be made showing all
the homes having some children of graded school age not in
school along with those homes where such children are all in
488 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
school. In the same manner a map can be made showing the
extent to which the homes make use of the high school.
A Sunday School Map. A map can be made showing homes
containing children going to school but not to Sunday school,
along with those containing children all going to Sunday school.
Possible Maps.
A Newspaper Map.
A Magazine Map.
Community Events Map.
Library Map.
Homes With and Without Children.
Foreign Born Map.
Hired Help Map.
Combination Maps. Perhaps the most valuable kind of map
is made by the combination of one set of facts about each home
with another set of facts. For example, a certain colored seal
may be given to residence of a home in the community for a
period of at least five years. Give a colored seal to church mem-
bership (whatever the particular denomination). Then com-
bine in one map these two seals. The result will show whether
churches have been making their normal appeal to the more
recent comers into the community. A score or more of such
important combination maps are possible.
Make an Organization Chart. An interesting and instruc-
tive comparative table can be made of all the different organiza-
tions in your community. Follow the divisions called for in
the organization census sheet, including value of equipment
and annual expenses, putting total number of members in place
of actual list of members.
Results to be Expected from a Social Survey. What is the
use of such a social survey? This is the first reflective ques-
tion every one will ask, and rightly so. In the first place, it is
plain that a social survey is nothing but an inventory of the
important social activities of the community, so displayed that
everybody can see just how far every home is participating in
the social life of the community.
The first thing disclosed will be the socially isolated homes
THE SURVEY 489
neglected, overlooked, or indifferent. This disclosure will be
useful to every organization and to every citizen seeking to in-
crease social acquaintance and interest in the community en-
terprises.
The next thing will be questions of all sorts on the part of
everybody, such as, "Why are so few tenants in our organiza-
tions?" "Why are there no women south of the river in the
Women 's Club ? " " Why is the library not used by the people in
the northeast corner of the community?" "Why are there so
few children of high school age actually in the high school?"
These questions are vital blows upon hard problems, and are
bound to crack open solutions.
Perhaps the most important value of the inventory will be
the necessity of looking over all the social connections of all
the homes from the point of view of the whole community.
These maps are community photographs, and no one can go
away from a study of the whole community in its many aspects
without having his views modified and enlarged.
There at once emerges this great question, "How does the so-
cial situation as revealed by the survey of all associated ac-
tivities affect the whole community; and what shall we do to
change this situation so as to get results in each association
better adapted to promote the interests of the entire commun-
ity?"
With the organization chart before us, a very pertinent ques-
tion to be asked each organization is this: "We see your pur-
pose, size, property, annual budget, now what are you doing, over
and above work for your special group of people, for this whole
community whose prosperity sustains and floats your enter-
prise?" A good answer to this question is due from each or-
ganization.
Further questions will surely arise: "How can all these im-
portant social machines in the community unite their forces
more closely in promoting the legitimate social interests and in
meeting the various social needs of the whole community?"
"Can a united social front be presented on .occasions ?"
It may become plain from the survey that some important in-
terest of the community has no "social machine" at work in
its behalf. Here then will be a chance to balance up the as-
490 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
sociated forces by introducing a new force in behalf of a more
symmetrical and wholesome country life.
It is sufficient justification for a community's taking a sur-
vey and inventory of its social forces and assets, if the survey is
calculated to prompt these quickening questions and lead to
a readjustment of its social structure so as to produce a bal-
anced social life that will fit the whole community and meet its
larger needs.
Who Shall Take the Survey? Any group of community-
minded persons in the community can undertake this interest-
ing problem. One person should be general head and director.
A staff of five or ten careful, tactful people to take the home
census and organization census will be sufficient.
THE SOCIAL ANATOMY OF AN AGRICULTURAL
COMMUNITY 1
C. J. GALPIN
A NEW rural and urban point of view has grown out of the
attempt to answer satisfactorily the following series of questions :
Is there such a thing as a rural community? If so, what are
its characteristics? Can the farm population as a class be
considered a community? Or can you cut out of the open
country any piece, large or small, square, triangular, or irreg-
ular in shape and treat the farm families in this section as a
community and plan institutions for them? Would the eighty-
five farm homes in a Norwegian settlement, bound together
by one church organization, form a community? Has each
farm a community of its own differing from that of every
other ? What is the social nature of the ordinary country school
district? What sort of a social unit is the agricultural town-
ship?
Is it possible that the farms are related to the village clus-
ters in such an intimate way that in any serious treatment of
i Adapted from Rural Life, pp. 70-87, Century Co., 1918, and Research
Bulletin No. 34, May, 1915, Agricultural Experiment Station of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, Madison.
THE SURVEY 491
the one the other must be taken into account? May there
not be an important social anatomy here, which needs care-
ful tracing as a factor in any rural social reform? Have we
assumed hitherto that the interrelations of farm and village
or small agricultural city are all on the surface and easily
read? Would it not be well, before imposing a redirected
civilization upon the country man, to examine more minutely
the larger movements of his ordinary life?
A recent investigation and study of the rural population in a
single county of the Middle West, — Walworth County, Wiscon-
sin,— a study covering a period of two years, was prompted by
the desire to answer satisfactorily the foregoing series of in-
sistent questions.
THE METHOD
Large Working Maps of the County. — A recent atlas of Wal-
worth County was taken to pieces, the township maps on a
scale of two inches to the mile were assembled in order, thumb-
tacked on a large board, and reproduced on tracing cloth. From
this, blue prints were made on cloth, freely used and cut into
field maps as required for surveys. The county is twenty-four
miles square.
Assistants Resident in Each Village. — A visit was made to
each of the twelve villages and cities of the county, and an
assistant selected to aid in taking the survey. Teachers, high-
school principals, clergymen, bankers, and librarians finally
composed the staff of helpers.
Getting a Land Basis Map.- — Each village or city was to be
the center of information and the problem in general was
how far out among the farm homes the village served any
social purpose. From the point of view of the village, the
problem was one of getting at the land area of village influence ;
from the point of view of the countryman, it was learning what
farms were connected with the same village.
A visit by the survey-maker to the leading dry goods mer-
chant with a print of the county map spread before him,
got an answer to this question: "Which are the farm homes,
north, south, east, and west, that come farthest to trade in
your village?" The result would be a tentative rough trade
492 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
line drawn about the village. Next the banker would indicate
the long-distance farmers coming to the village to bank. A
visit for confirmation would be made at the village milk factory,
grocery stores, and the like. Then a local map was cut out of
the county map one mile wider and longer than the trial limits
set. This became the working map for the area having the village
as center.
Gathering the Facts. — The first requirement was the name
of the farmer residing on each farm represented on the map.
In some cases this meant the gathering of 600 names. Usually
the banker, real estate man, livery man, and physician in the
village could give the bulk of the names. The telephone helped
with the remainder. The result was a card catalogue of all
farm homes on the map, typewritten on the schedule blanks,
one blank to each farm home. Each farm home was located
on the schedule by township, section, and number in the section,
to correspond with the spot on the map locating the home.
With this package of names and the map as a guide in case of
doubt as to the man, the survey-maker visited the leading dry
goods merchants and got an hour to go through the list, and ask
the question, "Does John Doe buy dry goods regularly in this
village ? " If he does, a cross is put to his account in the blank
opposite ' * dry goods. ' '
In like manner, a visit is made to each grocery, bank, milk
factory, village paper, village clergyman, high-school principal,
library; and from the records as matters of fact, and not of
opinion, it is indicated on the blanks which homes are con-
nected with the village institutions. In case of the high-school,
the question was, "Has any one in John Doe's family attended
the high-school during the last three years? " In case of the
paper, "Does John Doe take your paper?" In case of the
church, "Is any one in the family of John Doe connected with
your church?"
Making the Final Maps of the County. — The trade map was
made first by merging the dry goods and grocery maps which
nearly coincided. A large piece of corrugated paper board
was placed under a copy of the county base map. Each farm
home trading at Elkhorn, for example, was marked and then
a pin stuck in the spot. A thread was run around the outside
THE SURVEY 493
of these pins, following from pin to pin so as to include the
least amount of territory while enclosing every pin. This
thread line became the boundary of the trade zone. After the
trade zone of each of the twelve centers was marked out in
this way, the common territory where zones overlap, with
homes trading at more than one village was colored alike and
called neutral ground. Each community was given its own
color. Then round, white seals were used to designate the
homes that were found to use the same trade center. In like
manner each set of maps was made in water colors.
Trade Zones. — Surrounding each village or city center is an
area or zone of land including farm homes that trade regularly
at the center. This zone is irregular in shape, due to such fac-
tors as irregular roads, lakes, marshes, and varying distances
of the trade centers from one another. No village or city is
found in the county without its farm trade zone, and within this
zone the number of farm homes closely approximates the num-
ber of homes at the center. Accessibility seems to be the largest
factor in determining the regular trade center for any farm
home.
The trade areas of adjacent centers have a tendency to overlap
a little, producing a belt from one to two miles in width, of
neutral or common trading territory. Farmers living about
half-way between centers have a double, or in some cases, triple
trading opportunity.
These trade zone lines run, moreover, without regard to the
political lines of the township, county, and state.
The farm homes in the same trade zone use the four, five, or six
main roads leading to the village center more frequently than
any other extended network of highways.
These families, obviously, have at least a passing acquaint-
ance with one another. At the village they meet casually, at
least, with farm families from the whole zone. This trade zone
acquaintance at the village center is probably wider for each
farm home than any other area of its farm acquaintance.
The trade zones of a county are subject to extension and
shrinkage with the growth of village centers in number, size
and efficiency. A particularly aggressive business spirit in
any center, shown by advertising, efficient methods of buying
494 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
and selling, may enlarge the boundaries of the zone somewhat
or at least widen the neutral belt. The farm homes in neutral
territory, which are so situated that they may go to more than
one trade center, hold a position of decided advantage in de-
termining trade policies of merchants in two or more competing
small cities.
The village or city homes and the farm homes in the same
trade zone have a common interest in the same trade agents
to a certain degree, perhaps particularly the grocer, dry-
goods merchant, or clothing merchant. Even in cases where
these lines are specialized for farm trade or village trade, it
it found that the village homes will be patrons of the
" farmers' store," and the farm homes patrons of the "city
store."
Banking Zones. — As the trade zone, so a banking zone of
farm homes surrounds each village or city having a bank.
The size of the banking zone compares favorably with the
size of the trade zone, and ignores township, county, and
state lines; has a belt of neutral or common territory; and
reaches about half way to the adjacent banking centers. The
banks are used all but universally by the farmers, and appar-
ently the bank acts in the same capacity for the distant farmer
as for villager or city dweller living within the same banking
zone.
As in the trade zones, farm homes in the same banking
zone use frequently the same roads, are under the operation
of the same factors of efficiency and integrity in bank man-
agement ; village homes and farm homes in the village bank
zone have an identical interest in bank control and policy;
farmers in the neutral belt occupy positions of special
power.
Local Newspaper Zones. — Apparently a local newspaper is a
necessity in a complete civic center. The paper zone conforms
closely in shape to the trading and banking zones, and shows
that more than half the farm families are subscribers to this
agency of local acquaintance and information. Evidently the
village editor and his paper serve the same purpose on the land
as among the clustered roofs.
Village Milk Zones. — The milk industry is organized in the
THE SURVEY 495
county very generally upon the neighborhood scale, with small
creameries and skimming stations scattered through the open
country. However, at each of the twelve civic centers is a
creamery or condensery run on a scale exceeding that of the
open country factory. These milk zones, while following the
general lines of the trading zone, are naturally much smaller.
Only a little neutral territory exists, and this is due to seasonal
shifting.
A rapid concentration of the milk industry into these village
factories, condenseries, and shipping plants is at present a
marked tendency. A few years may bring into this county
the auto-truck milk gatherer for each of the large village fac-
tories— an agency already used in some parts of Wisconsin.
These milk institutions at the civic centers, in cases operated
and largely owned by outside companies, are industrial plants
of a character especially blending the interest of the villager
with that of the farmer. Not only the few main roads leading
into the center become of critical interest, but every road in the
possible milk zone takes on a new social value — an interest which
is likely to overshadow the local road district interest or even
the township road interest.
Village Church Zones. — In the open country are many small
churches of the neighborhood and race settlement type. Every
hamlet has at least one church. Nevertheless the village churches
are fairly democratic, and are attended by farm families going
distances of five and six miles. It seems to be the policy of
the Roman Catholic church in this county to locate its churches
in the villages and cities, a fact which makes several of the
village church zones of considerable size, almost equal to the
respective trading zones.
There are a few abandoned open country churches along the
roadsides; but the neighborhood country churches are usually
in more or less active operation. In some of the religious bodies
it is the prevailing practice for the village minister to serve
also one or two open-country charges, a custom which forms
one more link between village and country in the same general
trade zone.
At certain of the incomplete civic centers, with small pop-
ulation and only partial trading facilities, there is a single
496 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
church, usually of some one denomination, but generally con-
sidered as a "community church." A resident minister is in
charge, and a vigorous social life is in progress. The favoring
circumstance for this aggressive activity seems to be the
blend of farm and hamlet cooperation in a single church parish.
High-School Zones. — Practically every farm home in the
county is easily within daily reach of some high-school. Taking
the county as a whole, less than fifteen per cent, of the farm
homes are sending children to high-schools.
The high-school zones are not only much smaller than the
trade or banking zones, but the proportion of farm homes
within the zones using the high-school is much smaller than
that using the shop or bank. It will be noticed that the form
of this zone follows the general lines of the trade zone. Instead
of an over-lapping of zone lines giving a belt of neutral territory,
there appears surrounding every zone a belt of homes outside the
influence of any high-school.
With all the general deficiency apparent in the amount of
farm use of these nine high-schools, it is plain that a fair per-
centage of the farm families within two miles of each high-school
recognizes its value. The character of the high-school as an
agent in idea-forming and association-making, plays a won-
derful part at the adolescent period of life, in democratizing
the children of the farm who attend and the children of the
village. It would be difficult to overestimate its influence as
a force for constructive cooperation, were each high-school con-
sciously controlled in adaptation of subjects and management of
courses in the interest of those living upon the land as well
as of those living in the small city.
Village Library Zones. — Four fine examples of the institu-
tional library are in the county. The privilege of free use
is open to farm families, and a certain considerable number of
farm homes, in fact, thirty-one per cent, of all farm homes within
the library zones, avail themselves of this privilege. A wider
farm use of the high-school would doubtless lead to a wider use
of the library.
The School Districts. — A study of the country school districts
of the county shows the fact that the prevailing scale of organ-
ized farm life is that of the neighborhood. The school house,
THE SURVEY 497
an open country church, and a creamery may frequently be
found together, among fifteen to thirty families, in a territory
of from three to five square miles. A slight tendency to consol-
idate adjoining school districts exists, but it is only slight.
There seems to be a greater tendency to enlarge the village or
city districts by addition of farms.
The Actual but Unofficial Community. — Eight of the twelve
civic centers of Walworth County are incorporated; four as
cities and four as villages. Officially, that is legally, the in-
corporated centers are treated as communities, each by and
for itself. The foregoing analysis of the use of the leading
institutions of each center by the farm population discloses
the fact, however, that these institutions are agencies of social
service over a comparatively determinable and fixed area of
land surrounding each center; that this social service is pre-
cisely the same in character as is rendered to those people —
whether artisans, employees, or professional persons — who hap-
pen to live within the corporate limits of the city or village;
moreover the plain inference is that the inhabitants of the center
are more vitally concerned in reality with the development
and upkeep of their particular farm land basis than with any
other equal area of land in the state.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid the conclusion that
the trade zone about one of these rather complete agricultural
civic centers forms the boundary of an actual, if not legal,
community, within which the apparent entanglement of human
life is resolved into a fairly unitary system of interrelatedness.
The fundamental community is a composite of many expanding
and contracting feature communities possessing the character-
istic pulsating instability of all real life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SURVEYS
Aronovici, Carol. Knowing One's Own Community. Bulletin No. 20,
Social Service Series, Dept. of Social and Public Service, Ameri-
can Unitarian Association, Boston, n. d.
Bailey, L. H. The Survey Idea in Country Life Work. In his York
State Rural Problems, Vol. I, Lyon, Albany, 1913.
Bailey, Wm. B. Modern Social Conditions. Century, N. Y., 1906.
Boardman, John R. The Rural Social Survey, N. Y., 1914.
498 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Brinton, W. C. Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. The Engi-
neering Mag. Co., N. Y., 1914.
Brittain, H. L. Report of the Ohio State School Survey Commission.
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Carroll, C. E. The Community Survey in Relation to Church Effi-
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Eastman, E. Fred. The Minister's Use of the Survey. Men and Re-
ligion Messages, — Rural Church, VI : 166-177, Association Press,
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Elmer, Manuel C. Technique of Social Surveys. World Company,
Lawrence, Kansas, 1917.
Galpin, C. J. A Method of Making a Social Survey of a Rural Com-
munity. Agricultural Experiment Station, Univ. of Wisconsin,
Circular 29, Madison, 1912.
The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community, Research Bul-
letin, 34, Agricultural Experiment Station, Univ. of Wisconsin,
Madison, 1915.
Galpin, C. J., and Davies, G. W. Social Surveys of Rural School
Districts, What they are and how they are made. Agricultural
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Gill, Charles 0., and Pinchot, Gifford. The Country Church. Mac-
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Gillette, J. M. Rural Social Surveys. In Constructive Rural So-
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Haney, L. H., and Wehrwein, G. S. A Social and Economic Survey
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Hart, Joseph K. Educational Resources of Village and Rural Com-
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Johnson, 0. M., and T)adesma, A. J. An Agricultural Survey of
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Mayo-Smith, Richmond. Science of Statistics. 2 vols. Macmillan, N.
' Y., 1899.
McClenahan, Bessie. The Social Survey. Univ. of Iowa, Extension
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THE SURVEY 499
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CHAPTER XVIII
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS
A. RURAL ORGANIZATION
RURAL ORGANIZATION1
K. L. BUTTERFIELD
THE PROBLEMS OP RURAL IMPROVEMENT
1. In methods of controlling the necessary forces and ma-
terials of production.
2. In farm practice, or in the production of crops and animals.
3. In methods of farm management and farm business.
4. In methods of farm organization.
5. In farm life.
SOME NECESSARY ADJUSTMENTS
1. Among the farmers themselves.
2. Between the interests of farmers and others.
I. THE PROBLEM OF THE BETTER CONTROL OF THE NECESSARY)
FORCES AND MATERIALS FOR PRODUCTION
1. The Control of the Land Itself. — Land ownership gives the
most complete control. The retired farmer has less control
than the owner who works his own farm. The absentee landlord
has only a minimum of actual control. Land may be owned by
the state and leased to the men who work it. We must learn
very soon what on the whole Is the best method of land control
in order that both farmers and consumers may have the largest
possible benefits.
2. Land Acquirement. — Farmers in America formerly got
i Adapted from "The Farmer and the New Day," pp. 40-56, Macmillan,
N. Y., 1919.
500
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 501
their land from the government. This is no longer true -to any
large degree. It is coming to be difficult for the young farmer
to acquire a farm. Only two solutions are apparent. One is
for the government itself to purchase land and sell it to new
owners individually or in colonies with liberal credit and easy
payments; or for large groups to do the same thing, either as
private corporations for gain or cooperative land societies.
3. Land Rental. — Rental under right conditions may secure
very effective use of the land. Tenant farming does not tend
as a rule toward building up permanent farm community inter-
ests. Very short leases are disastrous both to farming and to
country life. Permanent tenure can be made satisfactory only
when the tenant is given a share in permanent improvements.
4. The Control of Capital. — Need for capital in farming is rap-
idly increasing because of increased cost of land, need of land im-
provements by drainage, etc., larger need for machinery and
other equipment, higher cost of labor. The farmer needs both
long term credit and short term credit, the one for land purchase
and permanent improvements, and the other in order to take
advantage of better terms in securing his supply of seeds, fer-
tilizer, feeds. Mercantile or store credit is very costly in in-
terest and should be abolished. One difficulty in securing credit
for farmers is that the American farmer is as a rule unwilling
to become a party to a plan whereby the farmers of a community
collectively become responsible for the debts of the individuals
of the community. Farmers have collectively enormous assets
which ought to be made available for each worthy member of the
partnership.
5. Control of the Labor Supply. — The farmer has to compete
now-a-days with industry for his labor, in the matter of wages,
housing, hours. One of the biggest problems of the future lies
in answering such questions as how to keep labor employed
throughout the year; how to educate the laborer so that he be-
comes a skilled farmer ; whether women in America will do more
farm work than formerly; how to use boy labor without sacri-
fice of education; the relations of farmers to farm labor organ-
izations; and how to encourage the farm laborer to become
eventually a farm owner.
6. The Control of Materials and Power. — Commercial inter-
502 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ests have served the farmer reasonably well in supplying seeds,
fertilizer, stock feeds, machinery, but only to a small extent in
supplying power. The government will probably have to inter-
vene in establishing a democratic use of water power for the
making of electricity. Farmers, however, will need to cooperate
much more freely than now in the purchase of power, as well as
of their other supplies.
II. THE PROBLEM OF IMPROVEMENT OF FARM PRACTICE, OR THE
PRODUCTION OF CROPS AND ANIMALS
1. Improvement of the Soil. — This means securing greater
depth of soil; more complete friability; more adequate control
of water in the soil ; proper adaptation of special crops to special
soils; prevention of plant food waste and erosion; and in gen-
eral, the question of permanent fertility.
2. The Improvement of Crops, by getting the greatest possible
yields; improving the quality and food or feed value; securing
disease and drouth resistant varieties.
3. The Improvement of Animals in size, quality, temperament,
healthiness, etc.
III. IMPROVEMENTS IN FARM MANAGEMENT AND FARM BUSINESS
1. The Purchase of Supplies. — It is only by collective or co-
operative purchase of supplies and equipment that farmers can
get the best prices and terms. So long as the individual farmer
buys his supplies at a disadvantage, he is economically handi-
capped.
2. Standardizing the Product. — The greatest single difficulty
which the individual farmer faces is due in part to the wide
variety of crops grown in a given locality and to a great vari-
ation in quality. The remedy in general lies in inducing farm
communities to produce fewer things, to produce those for
which the region is particularly adopted, and then through
cooperation, to secure proper grading, careful and honest pack-
ing, and wherever feasible, proper labeling.
3. In the Transportation of Products. — Good roads and the
motor truck will play a rapidly increasing part in initial trans-
portation. Rural trolleys will help to a growing extent. The
main dependence for standard crops is the railway system. One
of the most important reforms is the adjustment of freight rates
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 503
as between the long haul and the short haul in order that both
the distant producer and the nearby farmer may have sub-
stantial justice.
4. The Problem of Storage.— The purpose of storage is to keep
such part of the product as is not immediately necessary, until
it is needed by the consumer. The farmer believes, and probably
with reason, that those who control storage facilities exact unfair
toll from the farmer. The difficulty lies less in dishonesty than
in the fact that the whole system is purely a profit-making
affair. The storage system should be organized and controlled
as primarily a method of relating supply and demand.
5. The Selling of Crops. — In case of fruits, vegetables, and
poultry products, producer and consumer may be brought to-
gether face to face in public or community markets where they
may make their bargain. For most crops, the middleman is
indispensable. He should not be abolished but redirected.
We shall never have satisfactory methods of marketing farm
products until we have a thoroughly organized group of pro-
ducers, each group with its special product, dealing directly with
well organized groups of consumers, or with well organized
groups of middlemen whose activities are regulated by the gov-
ernment in the interests of both producers and consumers.
6. The Farmer's Interest in Manufacture and Care. — The con-
servation and processing of farm products has gone largely into
the hands of commercial concerns. The farmer, however, has
a moral obligation to eliminate all wastes on the farm itself.
Community enterprises looking toward the manufacture or
preservation of certain products, both for use in the community
itself and as a business venture, will probably increase. There
is a vast waste in double transportation; for example, wheat
is shipped one thousand miles for milling and the flour is brought
back to the farm region where the wheat was grown.
7. Protection and Insurance. — The farmer wages a constant
battle against insect pests, diseases, of plants and animals, un-
favorable natural conditions such as weeds, flood, drouth, frost,
wind, hail, fire. Widespread education, mutual insurance and
cooperative action seem to be the main solutions. One of the
biggest problems of protection is whether it is possible to insure
the farmers to some extent against loss due to inadequate knowl-
504 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
edge of market conditions, such as spoilage in food products,
forced sales of products due to lack of credit, and market
gluts.
8. The Reinvestment of Farm Profits is not as yet a burning
question but it is not unimportant. Why can not farmers utilize
their surplus, when they have it, for the building up of the com-
munity in which they live ?
IV. THE PROBLEM OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FARM
1. The Farm and its Equipment. — It would be very helpful
to have a standardization of farms on the basis of the most eco-
nomic type and size of farm and the amount of capital and equip-
ment in stock and machinery needed to operate the farm to best
advantage
2. The Permanent Improvement of the Farm. — How can the
farmer best secure a gradual improvement of his stock, complete
a system of under drainage, provide economic but adequate and
convenient buildings, and utilize labor-saving devices?
3. Bookkeeping and Accounting. — There is great need of
adequate records and accounts simplified so that the average
farmer can follow the plan. There are really two problems,
one that of accurate business accounts and the other that of
proper records which when interpreted will help the farmer to
adjust his methods of management to the securing of greater
economies of time and labor.
4. The Use of Labor. — How may labor be secured at any price
and how retained? One of the big questions is how to employ
during the winter months farm labor needed only during the
growing season, in order that labor may be satisfied and be avail-
able more continuously for the farmer.
V. THE IMPROVEMENT OF FARM LIFE
Means of Communication. It has been said that the problem
of the city is congestion and the problem of the country isolation.
In the city there are too many people to the square mile ; in
the country there are too few. Rural free mail delivery, the
rural telephone, the rural trolley, to a degree, and the auto-
mobile have quite changed the aspect of country life. The
problem is not yet solved, however, the greatest difficulty being
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 505
that of getting and maintaining at reasonable expense a complete
system of good highways, that reaches practically every farmer.
The success of the consolidated school and of the community
church, as well as economical transportation of farm products,
hinges on this issue.
Home-making. The farm home is intimately attached to farm
work. It must contribute to the profit of the farm, to the
physical efficiency of the members of the family, to the most com-
plete training of the children in character and citizenship, and
make itself felt in the upbuilding of a satisfying community.
The farmhouse should be convenient and beautiful within and
without. It is possible to develop a system of home manage-
ment that will reduce drudgery and encourage the life of the
mind and the spirit.
Means of Education. We must make sure that the rural
school gives the country boy and girl just as good an education
for life either in country or in city as is given to the city boy
and girl. Moreover, the country school should contribute more
completely to the education of the adults of the community.
Ideally, the people of the community will stay in school all
through life. We must maintain a system of agricultural educa-
tion, through schools and colleges and experiment stations and
extension service and farm bureaus, that will reach effectively
and practically the entire farm population. We should develop
the habit of reading and study with a better system of rural
public libraries. Continuation schools must be provided for
the boys and girls who are no longer all the time in school, but
who ought to keep up their schooling much longer than they do.
And in general, we must stimulate the masses of farmers to
closer study not only of their own problems, but of the problems
of the New Day.
Rural Government. How can we make local government more
efficient, more honest ? Probably we can do more for the people
of the community through the local machinery of government.
We already support schools and build roads. Can we not fur-
nish other facilities of community life ? Can we not make legis-
lation, both in state and nation, more in keeping with the needs
of rural improvement ?
Health and Sanitation. We need a large program of educa-
506 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
tion for farm people, especially those in less prosperous regions,
in the full meaning of personal hygiene, the very best care of
the body, the very best dietaries, and in public health, in order
to stamp out epidemics, secure care of sewage, restrict the spread
of contagious diseases. In many ways these things are much
more difficult to handle in the country than in the city.
Recreation. This is one of the great lacks of country life.
"We need a more adequate play life for the young and a thor-
oughly satisfying social life for the adults. We must bring
into the country some of those legitimate opportunities for plea-
sure that people of the city have. Better than this, we would
encourage the country people themselves in the making of their
own recreation.
Country Planning. The roads, the buildings, the village parks,
all of the material arrangements of the country, should be -care-
fully planned.
Social Welfare. There is need in the country as well as in
the city for helpfulness to those not well circumstanced; the
insane, the feeble-minded, the poor, the sick, the unfortunate.
We can organize better than we have thus far the spirit of help-
fulness. It is not enough that we have the neighborly interest ;
we must also have the skilled aid.
Morals and Religion. How can we maintain the highest and
finest ideals of personal character and of community life ? How
can we make religion real in the work of the farm and in the
living together of the people? How can we assist the country
church, the Y. M. C. A., the Sunday School, to be of the largest
possible service in the country?
SOME ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENTS
We have outlined the problem of rural improvement in a most
sketchy way but we have not yet quite told the whole story.
All that has gone before calls for a certain balancing of inter-
ests. There are adjustments to be made from time to time.
There are diverse interests that have to be reconciled. We
never can "solve" the farm problems as problems of arithmetic
can be solved. In our search for constant improvement, we find
the constant need of establishing new relationships by the people,
of developing new methods of doing business. What is right
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 507
and fair at one time may not be right and fair at another time
because of changing conditions. So let us consider for a moment
some of these adjustments that the farmers must recognize.
ADJUSTMENTS AMONG THE FARMERS THEMSELVES
We must secure a sort of balance between the interests of
the individual and the interests of the farmers as a whole. This,
of course, is a need everywhere in the world. It is not by any
means true that if each individual is left to follow his own
interests the interests of all will be gained. This is simply the
"law of the jungle"; the strong win, the interests of the weak
are over-ridden. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to agricultural
business cooperation in America is the fact that the most pros-
perous and efficient farmers in the community 'do not see the
need of pooling their interests; they are not willing to sacrifice
a little for the sake of those who would be greatly helped by
common action.
Balance 'between Sub-Industries. When a new opportunity
in agriculture shows itself, it may become so popular as to crowd
out other forms of production which are fully as essential.
Fruit growing in the irrigated districts of the "West not only
encroached upon fruit growing in the East, but hindered the
development of dairy and stock farming to which- the irrigated
areas are peculiarly adapted.
Balance between Sectional Interests. One of the most serious
of all rural questions is the competition of regions. The apple
growers of New England with those of the Pacific Northwest;
the vegetable growers of Florida with those of Massachusetts;
the sugar beet growers and the sugar cane growers ; the farmers
who grow cattle feed in the Middle West and the dairymen
of the East who have to buy these feeds. We find here constant
need of establishing fair relationships.
Regional Self-Support. It is a law of economics that the
greatest efficiency in production comes when each region pro-
duces that which it can best grow, not necessarily that which it
can grow better than some other region. Each acre of land
should be put to the best use for which it is fitted, considering
soil, climate, labor, and market. Therefore it is neither prac-
ticable nor desirable that each country, or each state, or each
508 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
county, or each community, should grow all that it consumes.
But we have gone so far in producing for the distant market
that we have not only neglected the nearby market which is
often poorly supplied, but we have incurred an enormous expense
for transporting and handling products which go back and forth.
We need to establish certain zones or regions that up to a certain
point can take care of themselves with reference to the growing
of their food.
The Rural Village. There are perhaps ten million people in
America living in villages that are set in a rural environment.
The people are not farmers but they live in the midst of farmers.
They are not city people. Their very existence depends upon
the success of the farming regions round about, and yet there
is often the sharpest antagonism between people of the village
and the people of the country. The farmers believe that the
village merchants exploit them at every opportunity. There is
an odd notion among the merchants that in some way the farmers
owe them a living. This antagonism shows itself in lack of
social intercourse, in sharp political fights. How can wre re-
store the balance between the village, which includes the small
"city" set in an agricultural region, and the farmers round
about? Surely there is a way toward cooperation, a real com-
munity interest. Each can help the other.
Permanent Agriculture without Caste. We have a shifting
agricultural population. There is scarcely any part of America
which has not suffered from over-frequent migration to the city
or to other parts of the country. Ownership changes frequently.
This impermanence is not true everywhere, but it is character-
istic of American agriculture. It cannot result in the best
farming. It has not contributed to the best community life.
Leadership is lost; yet we would not want everybody born in
the country to stay in the country. The idea of keeping all
the farm boys on the farm is the poorest policy we could follow.
We cannot afford to arrange our rural education so that the
boy is obliged to stay on the farm or go to the city handicapped
in his preparation for life. The door from country to city must
swing wide. There must be freedom of intercourse between city
and country. We must not have a peasantry — a rustic group.
In no parts of our country must there be a possibility of farmers
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 509
being looked down upon or being sharply distinguished from
other classes in any way that marks them off as a caste. How
then may we adjust our modes of living, our education, our
country life, our village life, so that we shall secure the advan-
tages of permanent occupation of the land without the disad-
vantages of a caste system?
Some Special Problems. There is no doubt but the racial
problems which have disturbed our country show themselves
in agriculture. Special groups, such as the negro farmer, the
mountaineer, able but isolated, the emigrant farmer, sturdy but
foreign, must in some fashion be taken into the common lot.
Only so can we have a real democracy. How are we to do it?
There is a question of grades or strata of farmers. In almost
any farm community we find a group of very prosperous and
successful farmers, men who we say can ''take care of them-
selves. ' ' Near the other end of the scale we find the ' ' submerged
tenth," men not very efficient. At the extreme end we find
the hundredth man — the abandoned farmer. Between these ex-
tremes, the great group of average farmers. So we have farmers
small and farmers large; farmers wise and farmers foolish;
farmers educated and farmers illiterate; and we find the need
of adjusting our ideas and our methods of living together so
that as far as possible these walls of separation may be broken
down. The problem becomes a very interesting and acute one
in any farm community when we note the prejudices in church
or in secret societies, and how certain groups are inevitably ex-
cluded. "We also find farmers with special difficulties; the man
with the tiny farm, the landless farmer, the laborless farmer,
the farmer without capital, the farmer in the depleted rural com-
munity who would like to see a better day but is not hopeful
that it can be brought about, and finally the farm laborer.
Sometimes these matters do not seem like "problems"; but are
rather taken for granted. They are important questions, never-
theless.
ADJUSTMENTS BETWEEN THE FARMER AND OTHER INTERESTS
The Balance between Producers and Consumers. We have
had a great outcry because in some prosperous- agricultural re-
gions, as well as in those less prosperous, the farm population has
510 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
actually declined. At the bottom this change of population was
simply an effort to adjust the number of producers to the num-
ber of consumers. Our land policy had developed too many
producers. The application of scientific principles to produc-
tion and the establishment of a nation-wide system of trans-
portation enabled relatively fewer men to grow the food of the
nation. But of course this may be carried too far. If we have
too many producers, we get cheap food and also cheap men on
the farm. If we have too few producers, the country is not
adequately supplied with food.
Adjustment in the Factors of Production. The problem is
essentially this: How may the farmer compete with manufac-
turing and business interests for land, labor and capital? It
is a question of proper relationships. The farmer must have
his share of these or he cannot do his best work. He has to com-
pete constantly with these other industries. How can we make
sure that he has a fair field?
Yield per Acre and Yield per Man. The strength of Euro-
pean agriculture lies in its large yield per acre of land. The
strength of American agriculture lies in its large yield per man
who works the soil. It is in the interests of consumers to have
the maximum yield of food per acre f it is in the interests of
producers to have the maximum return due each individual
worker. But clearly, both of these things cannot happen at
the same time. Somewhere we must find the fair balance. We
must adjust the interests of both. How can we do it ?
The Conservation of Soil Resources. Less than formerly do
the farmers want to use their land even if they use it all up.
It is a truism that the American farmer has skimmed the cream
off the soil and then gone on AVest. Society, that is all of us
together, which really owns the land, is interested to have
it become more productive, whereas it has become less produc-
tive in many regions. Of course the good farmer has the same
interest in keeping up production, but many farmers do not
see it. They want immediate results. Clearly we need an
adjustment that results both in that use of the land which
gives a fair return to the farmer, and that use which pre-
serves its fertility undiminished for future generations.
Sharing the Savings. Both farmers and consumers would
THE ORGANIZATION OF'RURAL INTERESTS 511
like to abolish the middleman's profits. The farmer rather ex-
pects to get most of the profits which the middleman has made,
and the consumer, oddly enough, has the same ambition. Both
cannot succeed. This tendency shows itself in a public market
where householders buy of farmers. Each wants to get the
best bargain possible. What eventually happens is probably
a pretty fair trade, both getting some advantage in this matter.
This principle holds in the whole field of soil distribution. If
economies of distribution are effected, who is to get the benefit
— consumer or producer? Both! It is a matter of adjust-
ment. The answer lies in establishing fair trade.
Agriculture and Other Business. Agriculture is our great-
est business and yet it is often left out of account in plans
for possible development. But its relation to manufactur-
ing, to transportation, to commerce and even to finance is very
close and even vital. Imagine if" you can the farm lands of
America lying unproductive for a single year. Moreover, it
is clear that if these relationships of agriculture to other in-
dustries are so close, competing interests will show themselves.
Inasmuch as these industries are well organized and agriculture
is poorly organized, the farmers are apt to be the losers. How
can we adjust these big interests of these big industries so that
all shall have the square deal ?
Agrarian Legislation. The farmer has an interest in taxa-
tion, in the tariff, in currency legislation. It is believed that
legislators have a tendency to ignore this interest, but it can-
not safely be ignored. If it results in too great injustice, then
we have a radical movement which smashes its way through,
perhaps to undesirable ends for all concerned. What we need,
then, is an attempt to adjust, in all legislative matters, the fair
interests of farmers to the fair interests of other people.
The Farmer in Politics. How can the farmers make them-
selves felt in our political life? As a party, shall they have rep-
resentation in legislative business, somewhat equivalent to their
numerical strength? Neither of these things seems very prac-
ticable, perhaps not even desirable. On the other hand, are the
farmers to be left out of account and have nothing to say?
Are they to have no unified opinion or desire that finds ex-
pression through the political party or the government? How
512 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
can we find the balance between political neglect of the farmers
and political revolution among the farmers?
The Farmers and Organized Labor. Have these groups in-
terests in common or are they absolutely antagonistic? If in
common, where do these interests lie ? If antagonistic, how may
antagonism be allayed ?
Rural and Urban Aspects of Civilization. There are people
who think that the city stands for civilization, that leadership,
wealth, organization, power, will reside in the city and take
the helm of society's progress. But have the farmers nothing
to contribute? Are not the methods of living and of thinking
worth something to the common country? One of the most im-
portant adjustments is to make it possible for organized farmers
in every country in the world to make their fullest contribution
in work, in thought, in ideals, to the common welfare of man-
kind.
B. INTEBNATIONAL OBGANIZATION
THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE l
THE origin of the Institute is shown in the following letter
of H. M. the King of Italy to the Prime Minister H. E. Giov.
Giolitti.
Dear President :
Mr. David Lubin, a citizen of the United States, has made
a proposal to me, with all the ardor of sincere conviction, and
it seems to me both wise and useful, and I therefore recommend
it to the consideration of my Government.
Farmers, who generally form the most numerous class in a
country and have everywhere a great influence on the destinies
of nations, can not, if they remain isolated, make sufficient
provision for the improvement of the various crops and their
distribution in proportion to the needs of consumers, nor pro-
tect their own interests on the market, which, as far as the
i Adapted from Report of the International Institute of Agriculture, 1915.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 513
more important produce of the soil is concerned, is tending
to become more and more one market for the whole world.
Therefore, considerable advantage might be derived from an
International Institute, which, with no political object, would
undertake to study the conditions of agriculture in the various
countries of the world, periodically publishing reports on the
amount and character of the crops, so as to facilitate produc-
tion, render commerce less expensive and more rapid, and estab-
lish more suitable prices.
This Institute, coming to an understanding with the various
national offices already existing for the purpose, would also sup-
ply precise information on the conditions of agricultural labor
in various localities, so as to serve as a safe and useful guide
for emigrants; promote agreements for mutual defense against
diseases of plants and animals, where individual action is in-
sufficient ; and, finall3T, would exercise an action favorable to the
development of rural cooperation, agricultural insurance and
credit.
The benefits attained by means of such an Institute, a bond
of union between all farmers and consequently an important
influence for peace would certainly be manifold. Rome would
be a suitable place for its inauguration, at which the representa-
tives of the adhering States and the larger Associations con-
cerned might assemble, and harmonize the authority of Govern-
ments with the free energies of the farmers.
I am convinced that the nobility of the aim will suffice to over-
come the difficulties of the enterprise.
And in this faith I sign myself,
Your affectionate cousin,
VICTOR EMMANNUEL.
Rome, January 24th, 1905.
In consequence of this letter the International Institute of
Agriculture was founded by act of the International Treaty of
June 7th, 1905. The treaty was ratified by forty governments,
and twelve others have since adhered to it, so that, at the
present time, almost the whole civilized world is included.
The seat of the Institute is at Rome. According to the treaty
it is a " government institution in which each adhering power is
514 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
represented by delegates of its choice." It is administered by a
General Assembly and by a Permanent Committee. The staff
now numbers ninety-seven.
The revenue of the Institute is derived from contributions
paid by each of the adhering nations according to the group in
which the nation is inscribed, as established by the treaty. (The
revenue amounts to approximately $250,000 annually. — Editor.)
The Institute performs the following work :
1. By means of its Bureau of General Statistics, it collects,
coordinates and publishes as promptly as possible, statistical
data on crops and livestock, the trade in agricultural products,
and their prices on different markets. This crop reporting in-
formation is set forth in fuller detail in the monthly Bulletin
of Agricultural Statistics which is published simultaneously in
five languages. The Institute also publishes an " International
Year Book of Agricultural Statistics," which contains summary
tables of crop areas and yields.
2. The Bureau of Agricultural Intelligence and Plant Dis-
eases collects, elaborates, publishes information of a technical
nature on agriculture, agricultural industries, stock-breeding,
etc. It publishes a bulletin each month on agricultural in-
telligence and diseases of plants.
3. The Bureau of Economic and Social Intelligence collects,
elaborates and publishes information concerning agricultural co-
operation, insurance and credit as well as other questions of
agricultural economy.
4. The library collects the books and documents required for
the work. It publishes a weekly Bibliographical Bulletin in
which are indicated the books received as well as the most im-
portant articles noted by the technical bureaus when examining
periodicals.
5. The General Secretary's Office publishes an "International
Year Book of Agricultural Legislation" containing the laws re-
lating to agriculture enacted in the countries adhering to the
institute.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 515
C. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION
WORK OF THE OFFICE OF MARKETS AND RURAL
ORGANIZATION 1
CHARLES J. BRAND
IT is believed that effective and economical methods for dis-
tributing and marketing farm products should go hand in hand
with scientific methods of production, as it profits little to im-
prove the quality and increase the quantity of our crops if we
can not learn when, where, and how they may be sold to ad-
vantage. To provide for a study of the problems involved,
Congress during the spring of 1913 appropriated funds for the
establishment and operation of the Office of Markets .of the
Department of Agriculture. The Office of Rural Organization
was established by Congress a year later, in order to determine
the possibilities and encourage the use of organized cooperative
effort in removing rural conditions. These two Offices were com-
bined on July 1, 1914, and the combined unit is known as the
Office of Markets and Rural Organization.
The authority conferred by Congress in appropriating funds
for the maintenance of this Office provides "for acquiring and
diffusing among the people of the United States useful infor-
mation on subjects connected with the marketing and distribut-
ing of farm and nonmanufactured food products and the pur-
chasing of farm supplies," and the study of cooperation among
farmers in the United States. So far as marketing work is con-
cerned, the activities of the Office, therefore, are limited to the
collection and distribution of information. For example, it has
no authority to prosecute cases of alleged dishonesty on the part
of producers, carriers, dealers, or buyers. It has nothing what-
ever to do with the problems of production.
Owing to the complexity and wide scope of the work, up to the
present time it has been impossible to undertake a comprehen-
sive study of more than a few of the most urgent and important
i Adapted from Doe. Markets 1, 1915, p. 1. U. S. Department of Agri-
culture, Office of Markets and Rural Organization.
516 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of the problems which demand investigation. As far as pos-
sible the marketing problems are being studied from the points
of view of producer, dealer, and consumer. A large part of
the rural organization investigations has consisted of studies
of the work of rural credit associations. As this work is now
well under way, more time will be devoted to other phases
of rural organization work without, however, discontinuing any
of the rural credit investigations.
Besides the phase of cooperation dealing with the marketing
of farm and food products, work has been instituted looking
toward that basic improvement of country life which must come
from the country itself, through the development of resident
leadership. This work recognizes that the true function of in-
creased prosperity in the farm home is the raising of the
standard of living and thinking upon the farm. While other
projects of the Office are designed to promote changes which
will make farming more profitable, the particular object of this
work is to make the country a more desirable place in which
to live.
The Office is investigating cooperative organizations that are
endeavoring to improve conditions of education, health, recrea-
tion, and household economy in rural life. The work done thus
far reveals many needs in all of these directions, and, when
practicable, the Office attempts to supply information and sug-
gestions to such associations.
Local demonstration work has been undertaken in Alabama
and in North Carolina in cooperation with State and local
agencies.
THE PLACE OF GOVERNMENT IN AGRICULTURAL
COOPERATION AND RURAL ORGANIZATION 1
GOVERNMENT, whether local, State, or national, can render a
great service to agriculture and country life. Government can
do a great deal more than many people suppose, and it ought
to do a great deal less than many people expect. The follow-
i Adapted from Report of the American Commission, Senate Document
Xo. 261, Part I, pp. 20-27.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 517
ing principles are set forth as suggestive of fundamental con-
ditions of Government service :
1. The Government, as representing all the people, should do
all such a Government can do on behalf of better farm practice,
better farm business, and better farm life — in so far as this
betterment is to the advantage of all the people.
2. In general, however, Government should do nothing that
can effectively be done by individual farmers, or by the farmers
collectively through voluntary effort. It is highly important to
develop self-help. The "cooperative spirit" is vital to the suc-
cess of coooperative effort, and this spirit is best engendered by
the work of voluntary agencies of social service.
3. The Government, however, may take the lead temporarily
in many movements, in order to stimulate interest and to show
how progress may best be secured.
4. Where there is practically unanimous agreement on the
part of the people that a certain type of effort is essential for
the good of the whole people, it is highly proper that the Gov-
ernment should be the agency to perform the service.
The types of work which Government may do for agricultural
cooperation, for example, under the principles just enunciated,
are as follows:
1. The Government may investigate facts and principles
underlying the development of agriculture and country life.
2. The Government may interpret those principles in the light
of the needs of the people.
3. The Government may inform the people of the results of
its investigations and interpretations.
4. The Government may advise individuals and groups how
best to take advantage of these facts and principles; that is,
how to apply them to farm improvement, marketing and ex-
change, and community life.
5. The Government may demonstrate the best methods of ac-
complishing this application of facts and principles to actual
needs and conditions.
The Government may not participate in the farmers' busi-
ness nor direct their community life. Only as legislation may
be necessary to restrain should Government interfere with the
initiative and development of the individual. It should not try
518 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
to run a man's farm for him, nor to manage the farmers' busi-
ness transactions.
There are money limitations to the work of Government.
The rural problem is so large that the work of Government even
within its field will have to be supplemented by voluntary aid
and financial support.
There are some fields in which the people are not sufficiently
agreed as to methods and machinery so that Government can
safely undertake to carry on the collective enterprises of the
people.
ORGANIZATION OF A COUNTY FOR EXTENSION
WORK— THE FARM-BUREAU PLAN1
L. R. SIMONS
PURPOSES OF THE FARM BUREAU
•A COUNTY farm bureau is an association of people interested
in rural affairs, which has for its object the development in a
county of the most profitable and permanent system of agri-
culture, the establishment of community ideals, and the further-
ance of the well-being, prosperity, and happiness of the rural
people, through cooperation with local, State, and National
agencies in the development and execution of a program of ex-
tension work in agriculture and home economics.
At the outset acknowledgment should be made of the excellent
work already accomplished by many farmers' organizations.
Thousands of cooperative agricultural associations, farmers ' clubs,
granges, equities, gleaners, and other secret and nonsecret organ-
izations are working together successfully for the betterment of
rural conditions. The county farm bureau aims to coordinate
and correlate the work of all these organizations, thereby unifying
and strengthening the work they are doing. It does not sup-
plant or compete with any existing organization, but establishes
a bureau through which all may increase their usefulness through
more direct contact with each other and with State and Na-
tional institutions without in any way surrendering their in-
i Adapted from U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Department Circular 30,
Washington, May, 1919, pp. 4-21.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 519
dividuality. It is a nonpolitical, nonsectarian, nonsecret organi-
zation representing the whole farming population, men, women,
and children, and as such it acts as a clearing house for every
association interested in work with rural people.
While the original conception of the farm bureau was to
develop county-agent work, it soon filled a broader field and it
is now rapidly coming to be recognized as the official rural or-
ganization for the promotion of all that pertains t6 a better
and more prosperous rural life. It cooperates directly with the
State and the Federal Government in the employment of county
agents, home-demonstration agents, boys' and girls' club leaders,
and other local extension workers. The services of the farm
bureau are available to all extension agencies desiring to work
within the county. It is quite as much interested in home-
economics demonstrations, boys' and girls' club work, farm-
management demonstrations, and the work of the various insti-
tutional specialists as it is in the demonstrations carried on
directly by the county agent. Thus while an outgrowth of
county-agent work it has become broader than county-agent
work, and is now the federating agency through which all groups
of rural people, whether organized or unorganized, are able to
secure a hearing.
The primary purposes of the farm bureau are :
1. To encourage self-help through developing and exercising
leadership in the rural affairs of each community.
2. To reveal to all the people of the county the agricultural
possibilities of the county and how they may be realized.
3. To furnish the means whereby the agricultural problems of
the county and the problems of the farm-home may be system-
atically studied and their solution attempted through a county
program of work to secure the well-being, prosperity, and happi-
ness of all rural people.
4. To coordinate the efforts of existing rural agricultural
forces, organized or unorganized, and to promote new lines of
effort.
5. To bring to the agents representing the organization, the
State agricultural college, and the Federal Department of Agri-
culture the counsel and advice of the best people in the county
as to what ought to be done and how to do it.
520 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
6. To furnish the necessary local machinery for easily and
quickly supplying every community in the county with informa-
tion of value to that community or to the county as a whole.
MEMBERSHIP
Membership in the farm bureau is open to all residents
of the county and nonresident landowners who are directly in-
terested in agriculture, men and women alike. The membership
should be well distributed over the county and should be large
enough to be thoroughly representative of the farmers of the
county. At least ten per cent, of the farmers should be members
before permanent organization is effected. At least eighty per
cent, of the membership should consist of bona fide farmers or
rural residents.
The membership fee is necessary not only to provide funds to
finance the work of the organization but also to secure the
active interest of each member. Membership fees are needed to
buy stationery, postage, office equipment and supplies, to publish
exchange bulletins or other bureau publications, to pay the
traveling expenses of the officers and committeemen to attend
county, State, or National conferences, etc. If a clear-cut pres-
entation of the facts regarding the nature of the organization,
the duties and privileges of the members, and the work already
accomplished and to be undertaken is made, no difficulty should
be experienced in keeping up the membership from year to year.
In some States yearly educational campaigns to acquaint the
people of the counties with the nature of the bureaus and the
work accomplished have produced a steady increase in the
number of counties organized and in the number of members.
Every member should give not only moral support to the
work but also personal attention to some activity of the bureau.
Each member should keep in close touch with the work in
progress, assist in planning for the coming year, and participate
in the election of the officers and executive committeemen.
FARM-BUREAU PROGRAM OF WORK
A farm-bureau program of work is a plan for the promotion
of certain definite lines of work that pertain to a better and
more prosperous agriculture and a more satisfactory rural and
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 521
home life. A farm-bureau project is a plan for developing
some part of the program. For example, a dairy project might
include plans for introducing pure-bred dairy cattle, increasing
the number of silos, demonstrating better and more economical
feeding, and improving the quality of butter made in the homes.
Men, women, and boys and girls may cooperate in carrying out
such a project. It is essential that each member, and more
especially each committeeman, should play an important part
in formulating the program and in promoting the projects or
activities. The mechanics of planning and promoting the
program and writing a project are outlined below.
Development of the County Program. 1. In organizing a
farm bureau at least one member of the temporary organiza-
tion committee, whose duty it is to direct the organization cam-
paign for the farm bureau, should be selected to look after the
details of formulating a tentative county program of work.
If a program including both agriculture and home economics
is contemplated, a program of work committee of at least two
members is desirable in order that problems more particularly
relating to each phase of the program may be carefully analyzed.
2. The program-of-work committee should send out a question-
naire to each member of the farm bureau requesting suggestions
as to the most important problems and how to solve them.
3. The program-of-work committee should tabulate the an-
swers to the questionnaires and secure additional information
from the organizer and the temporary committees, and by per-
sonal observation.
4. The chairman of the program-of-work committee or the
organizer should lead the discussion at the county organization
meeting and make a list of the problems on a blackboard. Such
general headings as Farm, Home, and Community have some-
times been used.
5. A tentative program of work should be planned at this
meeting and project leaders selected to serve as members of the
executive committee. The committee on nominations might well
meet with the program-of-work committee in selecting project
leaders.
G. From the suggestions made at the annual meeting the execu-
tive committee should work out a definite yearly program of
522 RURAL SOCIOLOGY •
work and refer projects to the project leaders to consider and
develop the details. County, home demonstration, and club
agents should be selected with reference to their ability to assist
in carrying out projects.
7. The projects leaders should work with the county and home
demonstration agents and club leaders in outlining the details of
the projects. They should consider not only what should be
undertaken, but who will do the work, how it will be done, when
it will be done, and where (in which communities), it will be
done. In considering what should be undertaken they should
study the problems relating to the project more carefully than
they have previously been studied, make a list of these problems,
and prepare a chart showing the relation of each project to the
entire farm-bureau program of work. This will tend to prevent
duplication of effort. In considering who will do the work they
should make a list of the teaching forces of the county and lo-
cate them on an outline map of the county by communities.
They should also list the amount of work the extension special-
ists from the State agricultural college can render. In consid-
ering how the work will be done they should outline methods for
starting the work, securing demonstrators and cooperators, and
following up the work until definite results are obtained. In
considering ivhere the work will be done they should indicate on
the map those communities in which the work needs to be under-
taken. In considering when the work will be done they should
prepare a project calendar placing the "months and weeks of
the year across the top of a sheet of paper and the various parts
of the project down the left-hand side of the sheet, and drawing
lines to the right of each part of the project to indicate just
how much time and at what periods the agents will need to
spend on each part and the entire project. In planning the
details of a project the recommendations of the college special-
ists should be carefully considered. Not only local problems, but
also State and National problems should be carefully studied.
8. The outline of each project, together with charts, maps, etc.,
will be presented by the project leader to the executive commit-
tee for consideration. The committee and the agents employed
will discuss the projects and find out from the project cal-
endars, charts, and maps whether too much or too little work
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 523
is being undertaken during the year. In other words, the execu-
tive committee will now consider the entire program of work,
just how it will be undertaken, by whom, where, and when.
9. The county agent, the home-demonstration agent, or the
county club leader will write the project. If the project in-
volves work relating to two or all three of the agents, each should
write the part directly relating to his or her work, or the pro-
ject should be considered in conference and one agent delegated
to write it.
10. Each project should then be submitted to the project
leader for signature, to the executive committee for approval
and the signature of the president and the agent or agents
concerned, and to the extension director at the State agricultural
college for his approval and for the consideration of any special-
ist or leader concerned.
Development of the Community Program. It is very essential
that each community have a definite program of work based
largely on the county prognam. The agents and one or more
executive committeemen should visit each community where
work is to be undertaken and discuss plans with a group of
community leaders, tentatively selected by the temporary com-
mittee chairman.
1. They should make a community map, locating on it the
roads, churches, schoolhouses, farmers' organizations, and the
houses of the farm-bureau members.
2. They should make a list of all the farm families in the com-
munity, all the teaching forces, etc.
3. They should make a survey of the community problems,
listing them under such headings as Farm, Home, and Com-
munity.
4. They should plan a community program of work, based on
the county program in so far as possible, but selecting additional
projects as needed, since the problems of the community may
differ from those in other communities.
5. The president of the organization shall appoint a project
leader for each project in the community to serve as a member of
the community committee. It is inadvisable to undertake a pro-
ject in a community unless a capable project leader can be found
who is willing to assume responsibility for the project.
524 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
6. The community program of work will be presented to the
people of the community by the community committee at the
winter community meeting of the farm bureau and cooperators
and demonstrators will be secured.
Annual Revision of Farm-Bureau Program. In order to keep
the farm-bureau members interested in planning and carrying
out a program of work it is desirable to send out questionnaires
to the members each year, requesting suggestions as to desirable
changes or additions in the program of work. It is also desir-
able to discuss the program at meetings of the members in each
community and at the annual meeting. The executive and com-
munity committees will need to carefully revise the county and
community programs each year, as projects or parts of projects
are completed, or as new problems arise. They will, of course,
use the suggestions of the members as a basis for any revision.
As indicated, each county project leader may, at any time, call
meetings of the project committee, composed of the various com-
munity leaders to secure suggestions or to explain plans.
Usually these committees will be called together before a revi-
sion of the yearly program of work is undertaken.
The following outline may serve to suggest each step in the
revision of the program:
(1) October. — Regular monthly meeting of executive committee — make
plans for meetings of county project committees and plans for
sending questionnaire to each farm-bureau member.
(2) October. — Meetings of each community committee — consider local
problems and suggestions of local members and make recommenda-
tions to project committees.
(3; October. — Meetings of project committees — discuss recommendations
of community committees and suggest revision of projects.
(4) November. — Regular monthly meeting of executive committee — pre-
pare tentative program of work to present at annual meeting for
consideration and discussion.
(5) November. — Annual meeting of farm bureau — consider yearly program
of work.
(6) November. — Revision of projects by project leaders and agents.
(7) December. — Regular monthly meeting of executive committee — adopt
program.
(8) December. — Revision of community programs by community com-
mittees.
The officers of a farm bureau consist of a president, a vice
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 525
president, a secretary, and a treasurer, all of whom should be
elected at the annual meeting for a period of one year. The
officers should be chosen because of special fitness to represent
important projects or activities of the organization, as well as
because of their fitness to perform the regular duties of the
respective offices. For the most part the officers should be farm
men and women.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
An executive committee of from 5 to about 11 members, in-
cluding the officers of the bureau as ex-officio members, should
be elected by the bureau at its annual meeting for a period of
one year. Each member may be called a county project leader.
It is advisable to have an efficient nominating committee ap-
pointed at the annual meeting, in order that the names of
members capable of effective service in planning and develop-
ing the projects or activities may be presented to the meeting.
This committee may contain members suggested to the nominat-
ing committee by the official county board of commissioners or
supervisors, the grange, the farmers' union, the equity, the
farmers' clubs, cooperative associations, county fair, schools,
etc.
The executive committee is usually selected so that practically
all sections of the county will be represented, but in targe
counties with inadequate transportation facilities committeemen
should be selected who can attend the regular (monthly) meet-
ings conveniently. In the selection of a committeeman one of
the chief objects should be to secure a man or woman whose
qualifications and personal interest fit him or her to plan and de-
velop some one important line of work or activity of the bureau,
such as farm-bureau organization, farm-bureau publications,
meetings, exhibitions, finance, food-conservation work, crop im-
provement, live-stock improvement, farm management, supply-
ing farm labor, cooperation between farmers' clubs, development
of better marketing facilities, etc. It is, therefore, evident that
the number of committeemen will depend on the number of pro-
jects or activities of the farm bureau. In order to prevent the
committee from becoming too large and unwieldy, a committee-
526 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
man may serve as the project leader for more than one project,
especially for projects of a similar character.
Duties. (1) Signs memoranda with State extension di-
rector.
(2) Makes up financial budgets.
(3) Secures necessary funds.
(4) Authorizes the expenditure of the bureau's money.
(5) Determines the policies of the bureau.
(6) Considers and approves programs and projects recom-
mended by the county project committees and by members of the
organization.
(7) Cooperates with the State agricultural .college and the
United States Department of Agriculture in the development of
a program of work, the details of projects, and the employment
of county agents, home-demonstration agents, boys' and girls'
club leaders, and other local extension workers nominated or ap-
proved by the State extension director.
COMMUNITY COMMITTEES
Local community leadership is essential to the success of the
farm-bureau movement. Each distinct community in the county
should have a community committee made up of at least one and
preferably three to five local representatives or local leaders of
the bureau. The number of committeemen will depend on the
number of community projects or activities.
Method of Choosing. Experience has indicated that until the
farm-bureau has become permanently established in the county
and the qualifications of a community committeeman are under-
stood by the majority of the members, it has been wise to have
the president of the bureau select the community committeemen,
each to direct some project or activity of the bureau in the com-
munity. The usual practice has been for the president, in con-
sultation with the cooperatively employed agents and local lead-
ers and subject to the approval of the executive committee, to ap-
point the temporary chairmen of the committees. If the grange
or other local club or organization is popular with the rural
people in the community and is active in promoting the im-
provement of agricultural and home conditions, the officers
of such organization may be consulted in regard to the appoint-
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 527
ment of a temporary chairman. The remainder of each com-
munity committee has usually been appointed by the president
on recommendation of the temporary chairman, executive com-
mitteeman, or the agents, after a careful survey of community
conditions to determine the chief problems needing immediate
attention. Each committeeman should be selected to direct
some important project or activity of the organization to be
undertaken in the particular community, such as farm-bureau
organization, home economics demonstrations, boys' and girls'
club work, food conservation, supplying farm labor and seeds,
live-stock improvement, etc. Each has been called a community
project leader.
Before community committeemen are appointed the temporary
community chairman should hold a meeting of prospective com-
mitteemen at his home at which the following steps are taken:
A community map should be prepared ; a more detailed survey
of community conditions made ; projects selected and approved ;
a promise secured from each prospective committeeman to as-
sume responsibility for a project or activity; and a permanent
chairman and possibly a secretary chosen. Then the president
should notify each committeeman in writing of appointments for
a period of one year. The appointment of each committeeman
should have the approval of the executive committee. At the
end of the year the president should appoint committeemen to
assume the leadership for the next year's projects. It is usually
desirable to retain some of the previous year's committeemen for
at least another year, in order that the personnel of the com-
mittee may not be entirely new.
The plan of having all farm-bureau members assemble at a
central point in the community for the purpose of studying com-
munity problems, planning a program of work, and selecting
project leaders to be appointed by the president as committee-
man, has been tried in a few counties. This plan has seemed
to necessitate the attendance at each meeting of the president
or an executive committeeman and one or more of the paid
agents of the organization, in order that the policies of the
organization may be clearly set forth. This plan has been more
successful in counties where the farm bureau has been organized
for some time and the work has become well established and
528 RURAL SOCIOLOGY;
understood by all the members. The farm bureau is primarily
a county and not a community organization ; therefore, from the
outset nothing should be done to give the wrong impression.
The plan of having farm-bureau members assemble by communi-
ties to elect or select community committeemen has not been pro-
ductive of the best results, and for the first year of the bureau 's
existence should not be encouraged.
Meetings. As many meetings of each community committee
should be held as are needed to plan and execute the program
of the community. The president of the bureau, accompanied
by one or more of the agents, and, if necessary, by one or more
of the county project leaders, should always attend the meet-
ing of the committee at which it organizes for the year. Such
officers, project leaders, and agents as are needed to assist in
promoting the work in hand in the community should attend
other meetings of the local committee. Meetings of the com-
munity committees should be encouraged whenever work is to
be discussed or undertaken even though the agents or county
project leaders can not be present. This will tend to pro-
mote the plan of having the local people take the initiative in
matters pertaining to the community. It is unwise, however, to
encourage chairmen to call a committee meeting unless there is
need of such meeting. If any of the county leaders or agents
have matters of unusual importance which they wish to present
quickly to the community committees, sectional meetings of sev-
eral committees may be held, especially if the problems of the
communities are similar.
At least once a year each community committee should hold
a business meeting to which the farm-bureau members residing in
the community are invited.
After a definite program of work has been formulated, and
each community committeeman has agreed to assume respon-
sibility for some part of the program, fewer meetings will suffice.
For instance, if the State or county leader of cooperative pur-
chasing and marketing work visits a community to promote the
interests of such work, he will need to consult only with the
community committeeman who heads some phase of this project
in the community, unless it involves a decided change in the
community program, in which case it may be desirable for them
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 529
to present the matter to the whole committee. The same would
be true of other special lines of work, such as food-conservation
work, farm-management demonstrations, live-stock work, etc.,
whenever the count}^ leaders on each line of work wish to pro-
mote the interests of particular projects in the community.
Duties. (1) To determine and discuss local problems, to
assist in the formation of a county program of work, and to
adapt this program locally, thereby formulating a community
program of work which eventually will solve the local problems.
(2) To secure for the community the desired community and
individual assistance in solving local problems by arranging for
at least one winter meeting and one summer demonstration meet-
ing and for a few definite field, barn, and home demonstra-
tions.
(3) To secure for the farm bureau the active support of the
community by informing the residents of its organization, pur-
poses, and work ; by arranging the details and advertising local
meetings, demonstrations, etc. ; and by soliciting and securing
memberships.
Privileges. Community committeemen are the recognized
leaders of the farm bureau 's work in the community. They are
brought into frequent contact with the county project leaders,
county agents, home-demonstration agents, boys' and girls' club
leaders, and other extension workers and specialists. By help-
ing others they help themselves in information, inspiration, and
general development.
COUNTY PROJECT COMMITTEES
As soon as a project is definitely adopted a county project
committee is automatically authorized for each project. Each
project or important activity will be represented by a county
committee composed of the project leader on the executive com-
mittee as chairman and the project leader on each of the com-
munity committees which has formally adopted the project or
activity.
Purpose, Duties, and Meetings. To be most effective the
executive committee should not contain as many members as
would be required to give representation to each rural com-
munity. In order that every organized community may have
530 RURAL SOCIOLOGY.
direct representation in planning the county program of work
and representing the policies of the organization, meetings of
the project committees should be called by their respective chair-
men. Such meetings are desirable if the unity of the county
organization is to be preserved. Usually at least one meeting of
each committee should be held each year to discuss the recom-
mendations made by the various community committees, and to
recommend to the executive committee a yearly county program
of work, or to suggest the making of such changes in the per-
manent program as may seem necessary. These recommenda-
tions will supplement those of the members made in the answers
to the questionnaires sent to each member requesting suggestions,
or those made by the members at the annual meeting. The
community project leaders should, of course, consider the sug-
gestions in their respective communities before making definite
recommendations. Additional meetings of project committees
are desirable if important matters 'arise requiring their attention.
Matters concerning only a few communities in the county fre-
quently arise, in which case only the project leaders represent-
ing those communities need to be called together. A luncheon is
suggested as a desirable feature of at least one of the meetings
of each project committee, or of -a general meeting of all com-
mitteemen in the county.
HOW TO ORGANIZE A COUNTY
The assistance of a trained organizer to act as leader of the
organization campaign may be secured from the State agri-
cultural college by writing the State director of agricultural
extension. Temporary headquarters should be provided for the
organizer at the most centrally located place in the county, so
that he may keep in close touch with the progress of the cam-
paign in every community.
The organizer will assist in the selection of a temporary
county organization committee of about five members represent-
ing all sections and all important agricultural and home in-
terests in the county. If considered advisable a meeting of a
few representative men and women from each community may
be called to discuss the advisability of proceeding with the or-
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 531
ganization campaign and to elect a temporary organization com-
mittee. Each committeeman should be elected because of special
ability to direct a definite part of the preliminary organization
program, such as publicity, finance, programs for local and
county organization meetings, program of work for the organi-
zation, constitution, and by-laws, etc.
Plenty of good publicity matter, in the form of a series of
several articles giving the advantages of organization in general,
the history of the farm-bureau movement, results of local exten-
sion work in neighboring counties, need of an organization to co-
operate with the Government and the State in the employment
of trained workers, plans for starting the work in this county,
and the progress of the campaign, should be given to the local
press at opportune times.
(1) The organizer should explain farm-bureau work carefully
and suggest the organization plan.
(2) He should secure the committee's approval of the plan
and its help in working out the details to meet local conditions.
(3) The committee should decide on a definite date for the
completion of the membership campaign and the necessary
number of members to be secured before that date.
(4) The location of the temporary community committeemen
may be indicated, as each is selected by the county committee
on an outline map of the county, showing the approximate com-
munity boundaries. In considering prospective candidates for
the community committees their qualifications for effective serv-
ice on the permanent community committees for the ensuing
year, as well as for temporary service, should be discussed. In
so far as possible the number of members to be secured in each
community should be decided and indicated on the map.
(5) The county committeemen should give the organizer per-
mission to use their names in sending letters to local committees,
in newspaper articles, etc.
(6) Definite arrangements should be made with each member
of the county committee to attend the meetings of the temporary
community committees where he can render the most service.
(7) As far as possible, each county committeeman should
understand his or her part of the preliminary organization
532 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
program, such as publicity, finances, programs for local and
county organization meetings, program of work for the organi-
zation, constitution and by-laws, etc.
ORGANIZATION OF TEMPORARY COMMUNITY COMMITTEES
(1) Arrangements should be made by telephone with the pros-
pective chairman of each community committee to hold a meet-
ing of the committee at his home. Ask him to communicate with
the other prospective committeemen, inviting them to attend the
meeting.
(2) These telephone calls should be supplemented by per-
sonal letters signed by one of the members of the county com-
mittee. It is best not to discuss the purpose of the meeting other
than to suggest that advice is needed in determining matters of
great interest to the farmers in the community.
(3) The organizer, accompanied by the county committeeman
who can be of most assistance in each community, should meet
with each committee in its own community, or, if time does not
permit, in a sectional meeting of the committees of several con-
tiguous communities.
(4) At this meeting the purpose of the organization and its
relation to extension work, including work with farm men and
women, and young people, and plans for organizing the county,
should be explained carefully by means of charts, maps, and
blackboard. Definite plans for the campaign in the community
should be made and a definite promise to serve as committee-
men during membership campaign secured from each prospective
committeeman.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION MEETINGS
Following the committee meetings, an organization meeting
should be held in each community at which the leader, and
county and community committeemen, should explain county
farm-bureau work and the importance of having a large per-
centage of the men and women of the farms to cooperate in its
work as members of the farm bureau. During a recess the local
committeemen, already provided with membership cards and
membership badges, should solicit members.
The local committeemen should then take the names of those
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 533
not present at the meeting and arrange to visit each one per-
sonally on the farm, and, if possible, secure his membership.
On the suggestion of the community committee the organiza-
tion meeting may be omitted and only the farm-to-farm member-
ship campaign be used.
Invitations signed by one or more members of the county com-
mittee should be sent to all members to attend the county-wide
organization meeting. Each should be urged to invite all in-
terested persons to accompany him. The letter should also con-
tain an addressed return postal card bearing the following
questions :
What do you want the farm bureau to do (1) for you or your
farm? (2) for you in your home? (3) for your community?
(4) for your county?
The answers to the questions should be tabulated by the
program-of-work committee and used at the county meeting as
a basis for discussing a county program of work.
COUNTY-WIDE ORGANIZATION MEETING
(1) Several committeemen should line up outside the en-
trance to the meeting place to secure additional members. They
should be well provided with badges* membership cards, receipts,
etc.
(2) A constitution and by-laws should be adopted.
(3) A permanent program of work should be planned.
(4) Officers and executive commit eemen should be elected for
a period of one year. (Each officer and committeeman should be
elected because of special fitness to head some important project
of the organization.)
(5) Good music and at least one interesting speaker should be
provided.
DEVELOPMENT OF PERMANENT COUNTY ORGANIZATION
Following the county organization meeting the permanent or-
ganization should be perfected according to the plan stated in
this circular and the officers and committeemen carefully trained
for effective service.
534 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETINGS
At succeeding meetings of the executive committee arrange-
ments should be made for suitable office quarters and equipment,
and cooperatively employed agents, such as a county agent, a
home-demonstration agent, a boys' a"nd girls' club leader, etc.,
representing the organization, the State agricultural college,
and the United States Department of Agriculture should be
engaged. Following the arrival of one or more of these agents
in the county, the committee should formulate a definite program
of work and arrangements should be perfected for the holding
of community committee meetings for the purpose of formulat-
ing community programs of work. As fast as suitable com-
munity project leaders can be found, they should be appointed
in writing by the president with the approval of the executive
committee.
ORGANIZATION AND MEETINGS OP PERMANENT COMMUNITY
COMMITTEES
At the first meeting of the prospective community committee
in each community a community map should be made on which
will be located the community center, schoolhouses, churches,
farmers' organizations, roads, farm-bureau committeemen, and
members. Community problems should be studied and a com-
munity program of work planned to solve these problems.
Definite plans for winter and summer meetings should be made
at this time or at a succeeding meeting of the committee. Charts
showing the relationship the organization sustains to the State
agricultural college and the United States Department of Agri-
culture and charts showing the organization of the farm-bureau
should be prepared. Reasons for membership in the organiza-
tion should be considered and plans made for increasing it.
(See Circular 3, Office of Extension Work North and West,
States Relations Service, for a more detailed explanation of
holding community committee meetings, making community
maps, etc.)
Chairmen of project committees should call meetings as needed
to discuss matters relating to their projects, to make plans, etc.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 535
HOW TO EXPAND A FARM-BUREAU HAVING ONLY AN AGRICULTURAL
PROGRAM TO INCLUDE HOME DEMONSTRATION AND BOYS' AND
GIRLS' CLUB WORK
A meeting of the executive committee of the farm bureau
should be called to consider the advisability of expanding the
organization, and to appoint temporary executive committee-
men to represent the home-demonstration work and boys' and
girls' club work. The home-economics representative should be
a prominent and influential countrywoman of the county who
seems well fitted to promote this phase of the work. The club
representative may be the county superintendent of schools or
other person interested in boys' and girls' club work. At the
suggestion of the home-economics representative and of other
interested people an influential countrywoman should be ap-
pointed in each community where home-economics work is to
be promoted, as a temporary member of the community com-
mittee. The same general plan should be followed in selecting
a club representative in each community. The temporary
executive committeeman for home-demonstration work will call
a meeting of the community representatives on home economics
to discuss the agricultural program and adapt as much of it
to their own work as possible. Additional projects may be
selected and recommendations made to the executive committee
for the appointment of additional project leaders to serve in
a temporary capacity on the executive committee until the next
annual meeting of the farm bureau. If deemed advisable, plans
may also be made to conduct a campaign to increase the member-
ship of women in the bureau. The plans should be submitted
to the executive committee for approval. The county campaign
should be in charge of the executive committee of the bureau
and the campaign in a community in charge of the community
committee. Naturally the work will be largely delegated to the
women members of the executive and community committees.
The county club representatives should call a meeting of the
community club representatives to discuss the agricultural and
home-economics program in order to determine what club work
should be undertaken in the county. If the project leaders
already at work are in sympathy with club work, no additional
536 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
project leaders other than the temporary project leader <need be
selected. The club representative will look after the organiza-
tion of clubs, calling on other project leaders for needed help.
Each community committee should meet to consider the ad-
visability of expanding the committee to include the other
phases of the work. Probably not all communities will care to
undertake the three lines of work the first year, but if addi-
tional projects are selected, names of additional community pro-
ject leaders should be submitted to the president for appoint-
ment as members of the community committees. The com-
munity committee should decide as to the advisability of pro-
moting a membership campaign in the community to increase
the membership of the women of the community.
At the next annual meeting of the farm bureau the con-
stitution should be changed so it will cover the new phases of
the work, one program of work adopted, and officers and com-
mitteemen selected, each to be responsible for some part of the
program.
D. VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION
FARMERS' SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS1
KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD
IN a word, then, a farmers' organization is a combination of
a considerable number of farmers, over a fairly wide area, for
some large general purposes of supposed value to farmers as a
class.
Value and Need of Farmers' Organization. (1) Organiza-
tion is a powerful educational force. If it accomplished no other
result it would be worth all it costs. Every cooperative effort
among farmers stimulates discussion, arouses interest in funda-
mental questions, makes abstract questions concrete and vivid,
trains individuals in self-expresssion.
(2) Other classes are organized. Business, the trade, the
professions are all organized to some degree for many purposes —
i Adapted from Bailey, L. H., Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, Vol.
IV: 289-297.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 537
cultural, political, sociable, industrial. It is reasonable to sup-
pose both that these organizations flourish because they serve a
human need, and that if valuable for others than farmers they
will be of aid to farmers. The element of self-defense inevitably
enters in also. An organization is sure to be utilized for the
particular advantage of the group or class represented by it.
If there comes a clash of class interests the unorganized class
must suffer from the concentrated power of the group co-
operation of its opponents. In the group competitions sure to
arise, the farmers need the strength that organization confers,
for securing legitimate group advantages, for defense against the
aggressions of other groups, and for utilizing the class strength
in the general public interest. It is hardly necessary to assert
that organization multiplies manifold the powers of any class of
people. It was perhaps true, when the great majority of our
people lived on the soil, that organization for farmers' interests
was unnecessary. Now, that the farming class is, relatively to
other classes, losing ground it becomes imperative that they shall
combine their individual strength.
(3) The general tendency of the age toward social self-direc-
tion ; which is another way of stating more formally and scien-
tifically, and which presses a little farther, the argument just
advanced that farmers must organize because other classes are
organized. This process is not to be out of mere imitation.
Society, as a whole, is more and more the helmsman of its own
fate. This is accomplished at present not by a unified campaign,
by society as a whole, for some distinct social goal, but by the
attempts of separate groups, often apparently antagonistic to
one another, to seek group or class interests or to endeavor
to fix upon society the special idea or ideal of the group. It
becomes then necessary for the self-interest of society as a
whole, as well as for the class itself, that our farmers shall
seek thi'ough organization to give wing to their best ambitions
for the benefit of society, as well as to determine the direction
which rural progress itself shall take.
(4) Organization, in the light of the social principle just
enunciated, becomes then a test of class efficiency. Has a class
initiative, self-control, capacity for leadership, ability to act
cooperatively and fraternally, social vision, true patriotism?
538 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
The activities of the class organization will answer the questions.
(5) Organizations tend in the same way to preserve as well
as to test the social efficiency of the farming class, and hence
become a vital factor in the rural problem, which is nothing more
or less than the preservation and strengthening of the status of
the rural people, industrially, politically, socially.
Possible Disadvantages of Farmers' Organizations. (1) They
may tend to emphasize undesirable class distinctions and foster
class antagonisms. It is to be remarked that, in the development
of society, these group competitions are inevitable. Tempo-
rarily they may be antagonistic and rival; ultimately they can
and must be supplemental, cooperative, seeking the general good.
But farmers are a class. They have special interests. They
simply cannot maintain their common rights unless they invoke
the power that springs from class organization. The danger
of undue class distinction can be obviated by the -full recog-
nition of the fact that each social group or class has duties as
well as rights. Farmers must be led to unite their class power
for the national welfare. This is one of the chief functions
of farmers' organizations.
(2) Organizations may be unwisely led, or advocate impossible
things. This is a real danger ; it is not a final argument against
organization. ' The child blunders day in and day out in its
education. A social group is sure to do the same. It is the
only road to wisdom, social as well as individual. Education,
experience and time will tend to adjust these difficulties and
minimize the dangers.
(3) There may be over-organization, and the individual may
lose his identity. This is also a real danger in our day among
all classes. It is less likely to be serious among farmers because
of their strong tendency to individual independence.
Difficulties in Organizing Farmers. (1) The ingrained
habits of individual initiative. For generations American
farmers have been trained to rely upon themselves. The farm
family was for many decades an industrial as well as a social
unit, and indeed it is so to a large degree even to-day. The
pioneer farmers developed some rude forms of cooperation in
the neighborhood life, but each man was responsible, almost as
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 539
much as is the hunter, for his own success. This experience
has become a habit of mind not easily bent to the needs of
cooperative effort. So strong is this trait that it has produced
in many cases a type of man actually unsocial, unwilling as well
as unaccustomed to work with and for his fellows. Neighbor-
hood jealousies and feuds in the rural communities are proverbial.
Farmers seem to be extremely suspicious of others' motives.
Not seldom will they refuse the primacy of leadership to one
of their own class. They have been known to repudiate the
bargains of a cooperative pact for the sake of individual tem-
porary gain ; such action was unsocial rather than immoral,
but it is disastrous to organized effort.
(2) Financial considerations. Economic pressure has created
a desire to secure financial relief or gain, and if cooperation
would accomplish that it would be welcomed. But too often
the large view of the educational and social features of rural
organizations has been lost sight of, and the farmer has refused
to contribute to a movement with such intangible aims and
distant results. lie wanted to see where even his slight invest-
ment of time and money was going to bring him its harvest.
Farmers have not appreciated what the economist calls ' c culture-
wants. "
(3) Economic and political delusions. The history of
farmers' organizations in the United States shows that the great
"farmers' movements" have gained much of their power be-
cause there existed an intense belief in certain economic and
political ideas which seemed to promise release from what the
farmers honestly felt to be industrial bondage. These ideas
strike at real evils, but in an extreme form at least proved
inefficacious, are considered by students to be intrinsically
unsound, and indeed have always been regarded by a large pro-
portion of leading farmers as unsound. These delusions were
mainly three: (a) that the middleman may be entirely abolished
and that farmers as well as producers may sell to customers
without the intervention of a third party, and as consumers
may also produce for themselves cooperatively, (b) That un-
satisfactory business conditions are almost wholly due to faulty
legislation, and that a farmers' party is not only feasible, but
540 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
is necessary in view of the way by which other interests have
secured special legislative privileges, (c) That a satisfactory
money can be made by government fiat.
This is not the place to discuss these questions. They are
set down as delusions because as practical propositions they have
not been made to work to advantage to the farmers. It must
not be supposed that all farmers' organizations have urged these
views, nor indeed that the majority of American farmers have
believed in them. But they have all been proposed as measures
of relief for real difficulties; they have never worked results
permanently helpful to farmers, and they have wrecked every
farmers' organization thus far that has pinned its faith to
them.
(4) Lack of leadership. Organization among any large group
of people means leadership. The farm has been prolific of
reformers, fruitful in developing organizers, but scanty in its
supply of administrators. It has had the leadership that could
agitate a reform, project a remedial scheme, but not much of
that leadership that could hold together diverse elements, ad-
minister large enterprises, steer to great ends petty ambitions.
The difficulties of such leadership are many and real. But it
is to be doubted if the business of small farming is a good
training ground for administrative leadership. At any rate
few great leaders have appeared who have survived a brief
record of influence.
(5) Lack of unity. A difficulty still more fundamental re-
mains to be mentioned. The farmers of America have never
been and are not to-day a unit in social ideals, economic needs
or political creeds. The crises that have brought great farmers '
organizations into being have shown the greatest diversity of
views as to remedies for existing ills, and in most cases there
has not been in any farmers ' platform sufficient unanimity about
even a few fundamental needs to tide the organization over to
the time when a campaign of education could have accomplished
the task of unifying diverse views.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 541
FARMERS' CLUBS1
A. D. WILSON
WHAT A FARMERS' CLUB is
A FARMERS' CLUB is an organization of the people in any com-
munity for the improvement of themselves, their homes, and their
community. It should include in its membership the whole fam-
ily, men, women, and children. Two or more families may
constitute a successful farmers' club, but it is best, where possible,
to include all of the people in the community. A rural school
district is a suitable territory to be covered by a farmers' club.
Meetings are held in the homes of the members, in town halls,
or schoolhouses. There are many advantages in having the
meetings at the homes of the members wherever it is practical to
do so. • The territory should be small enough so that all of its
members can conveniently get together.
A good, active farmers' club will do for a rural community
just what a good, active commercial club will do for a village
or city, namely, it will tend to secure the united influence of
the community to bring about any desired improvement, and
further, it will unite the community to oppose anything that
is not for its best interests. We can conceive of no way in which
a farmers' club can be detrimental to a community, while we
believe that there are at least three ways in which it may be
helpful, (1) socially, (2) educationally, and (3) financially.
Social Advantages
People are essentially social beings. They are not usually
happy when isolated, and do not develop properly except in
groups. Life on the farm tends to keep people too much to
themselves. A farmers' club that will bring the people together
monthly or semi-monthly furnishes a very desirable change from
i Adapted from Minnesota Farmers' Library, Vol. IV, No. 10, Extension
Div., Univ. of Minnesota, St. Paul, October, 1913.
542 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the ordinary routine of farm life. Every one is interested in
making the most of himself and his life. An important part of
one's pleasure and development comes from meeting people and
gaining the ability to mingle with them freely, without which
one cannot appear at his best or get the most out of life, either
socially or in a business way.
One needs to get away from his own work and home and get
an opportunity to see it from a different angle. As a rule, one
is better satisfied with his own conditions when he sees how
others live and do. A better acquaintance with people usually
results in more tolerance for their shortcomings. Many times
when left to ourselves we begin to think unkindly of our neigh-
bors, and really believe they are not what they should be.
Usually a closer acquaintance and a clearer knowledge of their
trials and struggles shows us that they are really better than
we had thought them to be. A community in which people
are interested in each other, know each other, and are boosting
for each other and for the community, is a much better place
in which to live than is a community in which there is mutual
distrust. As a rule, knowledge of one another increases con-
fidence. Play is an important part of one's life. One cannot
do his best if every minute is devoted to work. Relaxation and
pleasure are absolutely essential to good living. Clubs that will
bring some entertainment, social gatherings, or other means
of amusement into the community, are very important.
Educational Advantages
A good farmers' club may be of the greatest possible influence
in broadening the knowledge of its members. The community
has more information than any one of its farmers, and the club
meeting tends to give each member the benefit of the knowledge
and experience of every other member.
Another valuable feature of the club and club programs is
the fact that the members when called upon to speak are put
on record, and to maintain their dignity in the community
they must live up to that record. For example: if a farmer
is asked to tell how he has succeeded in raising the best calves
in the community, he will certainly state the very best method
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 543
he knows of raising calves. After going on record as standing
for the best methods known in calf -growing, he certainly cannot
consistently do less than put into practice on his own farm the
system he has advocated. He has established his own standard,
and must live up to it.
Club Work a Stimulant to Study. — Being called upon to
present various topics at club meetings stimulates study. No
one farm or community has in it all that is good along all lines,
and being forced to study and look into what is being done in
other places increases the general knowledge of the community
and of each individual therein.
Outside Talent in the Meeting. — A farmers' club may increase
the general knowledge of its members by bringing in outside
talent. Business and professional men from the nearby towns
or villages can be prevailed upon to address the club. Speakers
from the University or the College of Agriculture and other
public institutions may be secured occasionally to bring in out-
side ideas and inspiration.
Community Problems. — A discussion of the various problems
of interest to the community always tends to stimulate every
good, live citizen to desire better things, and to make a greater
effort to secure them. Any one who has confidence in people and
in his community believes that almost all good things are possible
if the necessary effort and determination are put forth to secure
them. If a club can succeed in arousing in its members a desire
and determination for improvement in the community, better
schools, better roads, better homes, better live stttck, better farms,
and better people are all possible.
Financial Advantages
Business is now done in this country on a large scale. Millions
of dollars and thousands of people are used in great enterprises,
A farmer usually deals with people representing business in-
terests larger than his own. As a rule, in business enterprises
he deals with men who have the advantage, simply because the
transaction means more to the farmer than to the other fellow
in his wider field. For example, a potato-buyer in a community
may buy ootatoes from 200 farmers. ' What is 100 per cent, of
544 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the farmer's business represents one-half of one per cent, of
the potato-buyer's business. Consequently, a deal that means
100 per cent, to the farmer means one-half of one per cent, to
the potato-buyer, and because the deal means very little to the
buyer and very much to the farmer, the farmer is at a disad-
vantage. Exactly the same condition prevails in purchasing sup-
plies. The farmer is handicapped because of the small amount
of business he is doing. A farmer who can use two dozen self-
binders can purchase them more cheaply than the man who
uses but one. The farmer who can sell many carloads of farm
products of one class can get a better price for his products
than can the one who has only a wagonload or less to market.
COOPERATION OR PEASANTRY
There seems to be but two solutions to the problem of putting
the farmer on an equal business basis with those with whom
he has business outside of the farm. One is to increase
the size of the average farm; the other is to unite the
interests of several farmers owning farms of ordinary size
for purposes of outside contact, in both buying and selling.
The latter plan is decidedly preferable, because it does not
involve the landlord and tenant or landlord and hired-help sys-
tem, and makes possible the maintenance of the family-sized farm,
which is probably one of our most important American insti-
tutions. Cooperation will help to make possible the maintenance
of the family-sized farm, operated by its owner, longer than it
can be maintained in any other way.
Economy in Cooperation
Cooperation in marketing and in buying is, we believe, essen-
tial to the economical distribution of products. Large quan-
tities of uniformly good products can be sold much more advan-
tageously than can smaller quantities of products, each sample .
of which may be good in itself but which when brought together
are not uniform. When every farm was manufacturing its
own butter, and each of the hundred or more farmers in the
community was trying to sell butter of a different quality, the
price of butter was comparatively low. Where butter is manu-
factured in one plant, the manager of the creamery has at his
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 545
disposal large quantities of a uniform product, and can sell at
the best possible price.
If the products of a community, such as grain, potatoes, and
live stock, can be made uniform by cooperation among the mem-
bers of the community in production, and then these larger quan-
tities of uniform products can be sold by one man, the same
advantages that come to the large farmer, or have come to the
dairy industry can be secured in other enterprises on the farm.
Club Promotes Cooperation
A farmers' club is the logical forerunner of cooperation. In
the first place, it gets the people of a community acquainted
and increases the confidence of each in the other. This is abso-
lutely essential to successful cooperation. In the second place,
it provides a logical means for studying carefully any enterprise
that it is proposed to undertake cooperatively, so that impractical
undertakings are likely to be avoided. We believe the farmers'
club is a vital factor in promoting cooperation for efficiency,
because it is not organized to defeat any particular class of
people but to study intelligently any problem that may come
up, and to take the action necessary to put any plan decided
upon into effective operation.
How to Organize a Club
The organization of a club is not complicated or difficult. A
good way to start the movement is for some one in a community
who is interested to invite two or more of his neighbors to meet
at his home or some other suitable place. If an interesting
program, including singing and speaking by the young people,
can be arranged, so much the better. A dinner or supper should
be provided, as eating together does more than any other one thing
to break down reserve, formality and distrust. It is much
easier to carry out a movement of this kind after a good meal
has been served. The proposition should be talked over, and it
is well if a considerable proportion of those present have dis-
cussed the matter beforehand, in private conversation. No one
need have any fear of joining the club, because there is no stock
sold and no possibility of loss. It is simply a mutual under-
standing that the people in the community will take up collect-
546 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ively questions of interest to the community, instead of struggling
with them individually.
MEETINGS
Meetings should be held once or twice a month during the
winter and as frequently as possible during the summer.
Meetings in the homes of the members have at least two ad-
vantages: (1) attendance is stimulated by the feeling of obli-
gation to the host or hostess, and (2) the knowledge that the
club is soon to meet on a given farm or in its home is a great
stimulus to housecleaning and decoration and corresponding
outdoor activities.
SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS
The following simple constitution is suggested as suitable, but
the form of constitution is not important:
Constitution
ARTICLE I. NAME AND OBJECT
Section 1. The name of this association shall be the Farmers'
Club of
Sec. 2. The object of this association shall be to improve its
members, their farms, and their community.
ARTICLE II. MEMBERSHIP
Sec. 1. Any one in good standing may become a member of
this club by paying the annual fee of $
Sec. 2. When the head of a family joins the club any member
of his family may become an active member without paying
additional fees.
Sec. 3. One-third of the active members shall constitute a
quorum for doing business at any regular meeting.
ARTICLE III. OFFICERS
Sec. 1. The officers of this association shall consist of a pres-
ident, a vice-president, a secretary, and a treasurer. They shall
be chosen because of their business ability rather than their pop-
ularity.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 547
Sec. 2. The officers of the club -become the executive board and
shall constitute the program committee.
Sec. 3. The executive board may call a special meeting at any
time by giving three days' written notice.
Sec. 4. The officers of this association shall be elected annually,
and by ballot, at the regular annual business meeting, and shall
hold office until their successors have been elected and qualified.
ARTICLE IV. MEETINGS
The club shall hold an annual meeting the
Regular meetings of this club shall be held on the
of each month at the home of some member or at such place as
shall be designated at a previous meeting, or by the executive
board.
ARTICLE V. AMENDMENTS
This constitution may be amended at any regular meeting by
a two-thirds vote of the active members.
By-Laws
Section 1. The duties of each officer named in the constitution
shall be such as usually pertain to his position.
Sec. 2. All other duties shall be performed by the executive
and program committees.
Sec. 3. The club shall aid and further business associations
among its members; particularly such associations as pertain
to the purchase of necessary supplies, and the purchase and
management of live stock and agricultural and garden products.
Sec. 4. From time to time the club shall give entertainments
and hold meetings. under direction of the program committee,
for the benefit of its members and of those whom they may invite
to attend.
Sec. 5. Any members, after due hearing, may be expelled from
the club by a majority vote of active members at any meeting,
without a refund of dues.
Sec. 6. These by-laws may be amended at any regular meeting
by a majority vote of active members upon one month's written
notice.
. .
548 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
FORM OF PROGRAM AND ORDER OF BUSINESS
1. Meeting called to order by presiding officer
2. Instrumental music or a song by the club
3% Roll call of members by the secretary
Responses should take some other form than the mere word
present." The program committee or the president should
previously designate the topic of response for roll call. The
responses should be entertaining and instructive, but not too
long. The following topics may be suggestive :
What I Have Done for the Club Since the Last Meeting
How I Have Added to the Value of my Farm This Season
What I Consider my Most Profitable Crop
4. Reading and approval of the minutes of the last meeting
5. Recitation by one of the younger members
6. Discussion of timely farm topics led by a club member or
some other speaker, followed by questions and a general dis-
cussion
7. Reading or music
8. Discussion of another farm or household topic illustrated
by a demonstration if possible
9. Question box. Timely -and practical questions should be
previously prepared by members and placed in the question
box. Each question should be read and answered separately,
the president calling upon some member or members to answer
them.
10. A "For Sale" and " Wanted" box may also be provided.
A member having something for sale or wishing to buy or hire
something should list the same on a slip of paper, sign his name,
and place it in the box. These slips should .all be read at some
time during the meeting. An exchange of these lists between
clubs will be mutually helpful.
11. Reading of program for next meeting
12. Report of executive committee
13. 'Unfinished business
14. New business
15. Closing exercises and adjournment
If desirable, the program may be divided into two parts by
an intermission. Readings and recitations may be of a humorous
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 549
nature to add life to the program. Variety is essential, and
whenever possible a discussion of woman's work should be made
a prominent feature of the program.
It may frequently be advisable to limit the time devoted to
the discussion of each topic, especially if speakers are likely to
waste a great deal of time. Matters pertaining to the welfare
of the club and the mutual benefit of the members should be
given constant thought. Debates may be held occasionally to
interest the young people. Where clubs include the entire fam-
ily in the membership, a basket lunch will add to the interest
in the meeting, but it should be simple so as not to be a burden
to the house-wives.
The main point to consider is that there should be a good,
live, snappy meeting. Short, pointed talks followed by general
discussions are very much better than long talks. Music, humor-
ous recitations or readings, and topics of general interest, as
well as the more serious business problems of the community,
should be given a place on the program. The monthly topics
furnished by the Agricultural Extension Division, University
Farm, St. Paul, will be found helpful in preparing the pro-
gram.
WORK TO DO
No organization can exist very long unless it is doing some-
thing. From the start the club must be made of value to the
community socially, educationally, or financially, and in any
event some one must do some work. As a rule, those who do
the most for the club get the most out of it. The regular meet-
ings, if made interesting, will be made valuable socially and
educationally. Every class of people in the neighborhood or
in the club membership should be considered on the program.
Wholesome entertainment is often as important as profitable
business.
Pacemakers
A few clubs have adopted a plan of appointing pacemakers
or specialists along the various lines of interest in the com-
munity. The following list is suggestive as to lines of work and
methods of procedure:
550 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Road-Builder. — When chosen, it shall be the duty of the road-
builder to spread the gospel of good roads in as many ways as
possible. He should be prepared to answer all road questions
that may come up at club meetings or at other times. He should
endeavor to set a good example by attention to all highways
adjacent to his farm.
It is suggested that he, in conjunction with the other club
members, designate two or three miles of adjacent highways
for demonstration purposes, and endeavor to make it as good as
possible.
Corn Crank. — The selection of the corn crank should be made
with a view to getting some one who is enthusiastic for corn,
and who has made a marked success in corn growing. He
should be authority on the varieties to be planted; the prepara-
tion of the seed and the land ; the planting ; and the subsequent
cultivation. He should have a corn-breeding plat, or at least
a seed-corn plat. His field of corn should be a model in every
way, and a tribute to the locality.
Flower Queen. — The selection of a flower queen should be
made with a view of having some one well informed in the
culture of flowers. She should be qualified to answer questions
concerning this work, and to make her home flower garden a
demonstration of the possibilities in flower culture. She should
be capable of giving advice as to varieties practical for farm
growing, and easy to grow. She should also be able to advise
regarding the purchase of seed, and might well arrange to get
up club orders for seeds.
Dairy Wizard. — The man selected for dairy wizard should
be a man who has a dairy herd and ample opportunity to dem-
onstrate methods and possibilities. He should be well informed
about dairy practices, and if possible should arrange to keep a
daily record of each cow in his herd.
Alfalfa Shark.— The alfalfa shark should grow a field of
alfalfa, should encourage its growth by others, and should make
himself an authority on its culture, curing, and use in his com-
munity. He should adopt the slogan, "An acre or more of
alfalfa on every farm, ' ' and should preach alfalfa in season and
out of season.
Potato King. — When elected, the potato king is expected to
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 551
set the pace as to varieties to plant, preparation of the land,
storing and preparation of the seed, time of planting, culti-
vating, harvesting, and marketing. In fact, he is to be the
club's source of potato information, and his field should be a
demonstration of what may be done with potatoes in the locality.
The Booster. — The booster should carry the responsibility of
arousing community spirit; of devising various ideas that will
arouse club members to community action ; and of fostering such
movements as tend to attract the public to the community and
to the club.
Poultry -Keeper. — The poultry-keeper should be some man or
woman who is an enthusiast on poultry. His duties should be
to maintain an up-to-date poultry plant, and to be informed
on the general care, management, and improvement of poultry.
Business-Getter. — The man chosen for business-getter should
be especially qualified along business lines. His duties should
be to look after the marketing problems of the club, and to see
what steps could be taken to enable the club members to get
their supplies most economically.
Home-Maker. — The position of home-maker should be filled by
some woman in the club who is a successful home-maker and
who can spend some time in promoting the idea of better homes
in the community.
It is proposed that each club arrange to select several pace-
makers, and that each pacemaker plan to carry on some demon-
stration along his line of work. The Agricultural Extension
Division will assist each pacemaker in planning his duties and
his demonstration work. It is suggested further that the club
arrange for a demonstration day, at which time the Extension
Division will furnish speakers, the pacemakers will present
reports, and a general inspection will be made of the demon-
strations and the club work.
It would be entirely practical to choose as many pacemakers
as there are members of the club, assigning to each one some par-
ticular phase of the community activity in which he is especially
qualified. Each of these pacemakers, by specializing on one
subject for a few months or for the year, would really become
very proficient in that line and be able to be of great help
to other members of the club. These pacemakers should be ready
552 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
at all times to take part in the program and present briefly some
development in their particular line of work. This plan has been
found to help very much in getting up good, live programs.
COOPERATIVE EFFORT FOSTERED
Some of the following undertakings may well be fostered by
the farmers' club. The producers in a community should decide
on one variety of potatoes or other market crop to produce, and
then find some way of marketing it jointly. One or two leading
breeds of each kind of live-stock should be adopted by the club.
Pure-bred sires may be purchased and used cooperatively, to the
advantage of every one. Feed, flour, cement, and other supplies
that can be handled in large lots, may be purchased cooperatively,
usually at a considerable saving.
The question of organizing a live-stock shipping association is
worth considering where live-stock is an important factor.
Home conveniences and a beef club for supplying fresh meat
should be considered. When dairying is important, the organ-
ization of a cow-testing association is valuable. In any neigh-
borhood, community effort along the line of road improvement
is worth very careful consideration. Such matters as organ-
izing a creamer}^ cheese factory, or farmers' elevator, the
purchase of a stallion, or the introduction of a general drainage
system for the community, should be considered by the club
and acted upon only after all the facts in the case are known.
One of the latest attempts of a farmers' club is to organize a
cooperative laundry in connection with a cooperative creamery.
In short, every enterprise connected with the farms, homes, or
schools may be profitably considered by the club.
DECLARATION OF PURPOSES OF THE PATRONS OF
HUSBANDRY *
PREAMBLE
PROFOUNDLY impressed with the truth that the National Orange
of the United States should definitely proclaim to the world its
i From a pamphlet issued by the Grange.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 553
general objects, we hereby unanimously make this Declaration
of Purposes of the Patrons of Husbandry :
GENERAL OBJECTS
1. United by the strong and faithful tie of Agriculture, we
mutually resolve to labor for the good of our Order, our country
and mankind.
2. We heartily endorse the motto "In essentials, unity; in
non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."
SPECIFIC OBJECTS
3. We shall endeavor to advance our cause by laboring to
accomplish the following objects :
To develop a better and higher manhood and womanhood
among ourselves; to enhance the comforts and attractions of
our homes, and strengthen our attachments to our pursuits ; to
foster mutual understanding and cooperation; to maintain in-
violate our laws, and to emulate each other in labor, to hasten
the good time coming; to reduce our expenses, both individual
and corporate ; to buy less and produce more, in order to make
our farms self-sustaining; to diversify our crops and crop no
more than we can cultivate; to condense the weight of our ex-
ports, selling less in the bushel and more on hoof and in fleece;
less in lint, and more in warp and woof; to systematize our work
and calculate intelligently on probabilities; to discountenance
the credit system, the mortgage system, the fashion system, and
every other system tending to prodigality and bankruptcy.
We propose meeting together, talking together, working to-
gether, buying together, selling together, and, in general, act-
ing together for our mutual protection and advancement, as oc-
casion may require. We shall avoid litigation as much as pos-
sible by arbitration in the Grange. We shall constantly strive
to secure entire harmony, good will, vital brotherhood among
ourselves, and to make our Order perpetual. We shall earnestly
endeavor to suppress personal, local, sectional and national prej-
udices, all unhealthy rivalry, all selfish ambition. Faithful
adherence to these principles will insure our mental, moral, so-
cial and material advancement
554 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
BUSINESS RELATIONS
4. For our business interests, we desire to bring producers
and consumers, farmers and manufacturers into the most direct
and friendly relations possible. Hence, we must dispense with
a surplus of middlemen, not that we are unfriendly to them,
but we do not need them. Their surplus and their exactions
diminish our profits.
We wage no aggressive warfare against any other interests
whatever. On the contrary, all our acts and all our efforts,
so far as business is concerned, are not only for the benefit of
the producer and consumer, but also for all other interests
that tend to bring these two parties into speedy and economical
contact. Hence, we hold that transportation companies of
every kind are necessary to our success, that their interests
are intimately connected with our interests, and harmonious
action is mutually advantageous, keeping in view the first sen-
tence in our declaration of principles of action, that ' ' individual
happiness depends upon general prosperity."
We shall, therefore, advocate for every state the increase in
every practicable way of all facilities for transporting cheaply
to the seaboard, or between home producers and consumers
all the productions of our country. We adopt it as our fixed
purpose to "open out the channels in nature's great arteries,
that the life-blood of commerce may flow freely."
We are not enemies of railroads, navigable and irrigating
canals, nor of any corporation that will advance our industrial
interests nor of any laboring classes.
In our noble Order there is no communism, no agrarianism.
We are opposed to such spirit and management of any corpo-
ration or enterprise as tends to oppress the people and rob them
of their just rights. We are not enemies to capital, but we
oppose the tyranny of monopolies. We long to see the antagon-
ism between capital and labor removed by common consent, and
by an enlightened statesmanship worthy of the nineteenth cen-
tury. We are opposed to excessive salaries, high rates of inter-
est, and exorbitant profits in trade. They greatly increase our
burdens, and do not bear a proper proportion to the profits
of producers. We desire only self-protection, and the protec-
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 555
tion of every true interest of our land, by legitimate transac-
tions, legitimate trade and legitimate profits.
EDUCATION
We shall advance the cause of education among ourselves,
and for our children, by all just means within our power. We
especially advocate for our agricultural and industrial colleges
that practical agriculture, domestic science and all the arts
which adorn the home, be taught in their courses of study.
THE GRANGE NOT PARTISAN
5. We emphatically and sincerely assert the oft-repeated
truth taught in our organic law, that the Grange — National,
State or Subordinate — is not a political or party organization.
No Grange, if true to its obligations, can discuss partisan or
sectarian questions, nor call political conventions, nor nominate
candidates, nor even discuss their merits in its meetings.
Yet the principles we teach underlie all true politics, all true
statesmanship, and, if properly carried out, will tend to purify
the whole political atmosphere of our country. For we seek
the greatest good to the greatest number.
We must always bear in mind that no one, by becoming a
Patron of Husbandry, gives up that inalienable right and duty
which belongs to every American citizen, to take a proper inter-
est in the politics of his country.
On the contrary, it is right for every member to do all in his
power legitimately to influence for good the action of any polit-
ical party to which he belongs. It is his duty to do all he can to
put down bribery, corruption and trickery; to see that none
but competent, faithful and honest men, who will unflinchingly
stand by our interests, are nominated for all positions of trust ;
and to have carried out the principle which should always
characterize every Patron that
THE OFFICE SHOULD SEEK THE MAN, AND NOT THE MAN THE OFFICE.
We acknowledge the broad principle that difference of opin-
ion is no crime,- and hold that "progress toward truth is made
by differences of opinion," while "the fault lies in bitterness
of controversy."
556 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
We desire a proper equality, equity and fairness; protection
for the weak; restraint upon the strong; in short, justly dis-
tributed burdens and justly distributed power. These are
American ideas, the very essence of American independence,
and to advocate the contrary is unworthy of the sons and
daughters of an American republic.
We cherish the belief that sectionalism is, and of right should
be, dead and buried with the past. Our work is for the
present and the future. In our agricultural brotherhood and
its purposes we shall recognize no North, no South, no East and
no West.
It is reserved by every Patron, as the right of a freeman, to
affiliate with any party that will best carry out his principles.
OUTSIDE COOPERATION
6. Ours being peculiarly a farmers' institution, we can not ad-
mit all to our ranks.
Many are excluded by the nature of our organization, not be-
cause they are professional men, or artisans, or laborers, but
because they have not a sufficiently direct interest in tilling the
soil, or may have some interest in conflict with our purposes.
But we appeal to all good citizens for their cordial cooperation
and assistance in our efforts toward reform, that we may event-
ually remove from our midst the last vestige of tyranny and
corruption.
We hail the general desire for fraternal harmony, equitable
compromises and earnest cooperation, as an omen of our future
success.
CONCLUSION
7. It shall be an abiding principle with us to relieve any of
our oppressed and suffering brotherhood by any means at our
command.
Last but not least, we proclaim it among our purposes to
inculcate a proper appreciation of the abilities and sphere of
woman as is indicated by admitting her to membership and
position in our Order.
Imploring the continued assistance of our Divine Master to
guide us in our work, we here pledge ourselves to faithful and
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 557
harmonious labor for all future time, to return by our united
efforts to the wisdom, justice, fraternity and political purity of
our forefathers.
E. POLITICAL OKGANIZATION
THE NATIONAL NONP ARTISAN LEAGUE *
(Beginning in North Dakota as a movement of farmers, an association
now calling itself the "National Nonpartisan League" is attracting wide
attention in the field of politics and economic legislation. We present
herewith an article explaining and supporting the movement, and a briefer
one from the standpoint of those who oppose it. Both articles are written
by editors of ability and much experience. Mr. John Thompson was for
eight years connected with the New York Times and for an equal period
the Managing Editor of Pearson's Magazine. He has recently gone to St.
Paul and become actively connected with the Nonpartisan League. Mr.
W. H. Hunter, who criticizes the League, is Managing Editor of the
Minneapolis Tribune. He has had wide newspaper experience, having
been Managing Editor of the Washington (D. C.) Post, and having held
similarly important positions in a number of the leading newspaper offices
of the western cities. Mr. Hunter is honest in opposing the Nonpartisan
League as dangerous and reckless in its socialistic program, while Mr.
Thompson is honestly supporting it as a beneficent movement. — THE
EDITOR. )
I. THE LEAGUE'S WORK IN THE NORTHWEST
JOHN THOMPSON
THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE was formed in North Dakota in the
spring of 1915. The grain buyers had instituted and controlled
a marketing system of great injustice to the farmers. The
politicians, controlling the State machinery, had refused to
permit the votes of the people to change the system. The league
was formed to overcome these things and to give to the farmers
of the States fair marketing facilities.
ABUSES IN GRADING AND DOCKAGE
The principal product of North Dakota is wheat. Wheat for
selling is classed into grades. The grading for North Dakota
and for the whole Northwest had been done by the grain
i Adapted from Review of Reviews, Vol. 57, 397-401, April, 1918.
558 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
exchanges — in short, by the buyers. It has been shown that
between September, 1910, and August, 1912, the terminal ele-
vators at Minneapolis received 15,571,575 bushels of No. 1
Northern Wheat, and that during that same period these same
elevators shipped out 19,978,777 bushels of the same grade. The
elevators had no wheat of this grade at the beginning of the
period, but they did have 114,454 bushels at the end.
During the same period these elevators received 20,413,584
bushels of No. 2 Northern and shipped out 22,242,410 bushels.
Thus the elevators shipped out more than 6,000,000 bushels
of the two higher grades, Nos. 1 and 2, for which they never paid
the price for those grades. What happened is this: The ele-
vators graded the farmers' wheat down to 3 and 4 when they
were buying it ; when they were selling it, more than 6,000,000
bushels that had been bought as 3 and 4 were sold as 1 and 2.
The lower grades brought prices from 2 to 12 cents per bushel
less than the higher grades. On examination, statistics show
similar results in other years.
Dockage in grain is another effective way in which the farmers
were robbed of their crops. There has been a dockage valuation
of $30 and $35 on every 1000 bushels of wheat. The farmer
pays the freight; and it has been shown before a Minnesota
Legislative Committee that for more than ten years a freightage
overcharge totaling about $5,000 a month has been collected as
switching charges. In short, grading and dockage had cost the
'farmers of North Dakota alone millions of dollars every year.
The farmers of North Dakota thought that the public owner-
ship of elevators would help them to get fair marketing facilities.
They tried for ten years through ordinary political channels
to get the State to build elevators. Twice the State legislature,
under the pressure of the farmers, instituted amendments to
the constitution permitting the State to build elevators.
Twice the people of the State, by an enormous majority each
time, confirmed the proposed amendment. Twice the machinery
of the State government refused to obey the people 's will. The
last refusal was during the legislative session of 1915. Hun-
dreds of farmers went to the State Capitol in an effort to
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 559
impress upon the lawmakers the sentiment of the people of the
State. They were told to "go home and slop the pigs." The
politicians said that they knew what was good for the farmer
— he didn't; let him do what he knew how to do — "slop the
pigs."
A LEAGUE WITHOUT " POLITICS"
Then A. C. Townley suggested that the farmers take control
of the state machinery — they being the majority of the people
of the State. He suggested that the farmers organize them-
selves into a league without political partisanship, for the pur-
pose of taking control of the state machinery. They organized
the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota. At the following
election the league cast 87,000 out of 110,000 votes. It elected
every state officer except one. It elected a majority of the
Legislature. The farmers of North Dakota are now in a fair
way to get proper marketing facilities.
The injustice in marketing farm products does not apply to
North Dakota only. It applies to every State in the Union. In
North Dakota, it is a matter of wheat ; in Texas, it is a matter
of cotton. In each of these States, and in every other State,
the price of the farmers' products is fixed by the buyers. In
no State is the farmers' cost considered. It is the buyer's busi-
ness to buy as cheaply as he can, and he does it. The problem
for the producer is always the same.
ORGANIZATION IN THIRTEEN STATES
The producers in neighboring States, observing what North
Dakota has done, decided to do the same thing. They asked
Mr. Townley and the men who had organized the Nonpartisan
League in North Dakota to organize in their States. So the
idea spread. The Nonpartisan League of North Dakota became
the National Nonpartisan League. It is organized, or is organ-
izing, in thirteen States — Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin,
South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Colorado, Nebraska,
Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas.
The method of organizing the league is to send men from
farmer to farmer, who explain to them the purpose of the
league. Before the farmer joins he understands its whole pur-
560 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
pose. When he understands the purpose he joins. He sees
where it benefits him. This comprehension by the farmer of just
what the organization means to do is the precise reason why
the political opponents of the league can have no influence upon
the farmer after he has joined. The farmer knows what he
has done, and he knows why he has done it. He is fortified
against the fallacious arguments of partisan politicians.
PUBLIC OWNERSHIP THE CORNERSTONE
The basis of the league idea is public ownership. Public
ownership of public necessities will mean fair marketing facil-
ities for the producer. It will mean fair purchasing facilities
for the consumer. The purpose of a man handling farm prod-
ucts on their way from the field to the table is to make money.
The products are handled by various men and each man makes
his profit. Some of these men are entirely unnecessary to proper
distribution.
The league's plan is for the public — the State — to build, own
and control the facilities for carrying products of the farm to
the city, at the cost of carrying it. The purpose of these State-
owned facilities will be to store and transform raw food into
eatable food, at the cost of transformation. Thus the great
spread between the price the producer gets and the price the
consumer pays wrill be reduced. Undoubtedly the producer of
the raw food will get more for his product. He should get
more. He must get more. He must get enough to make farming
profitable, or he must quit farming.
Transforming raw food into eatable food at cost, eliminating
all useless handling and useless profits, certainly means that
the eatable food reaches the consumer at a lower price than it
now reaches him. The same process, .when applied to the
products of the city worker, means that the farmer will buy
his supplies at lower prices than he now pays. Neither the
city worker nor the farm worker will have to pay the profit
upon profit that he now pays for so many useless handlings.
The thing is perfectly simple. It is so simple that the political
opponents of the league do not attack it.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 561
Politicians, of course, do attack the National Nonpartisan
League. They see that the league is about to take control of
States other than North Dakota. They do not like this. They
see that they cannot break down the league's principles. They
have to break the league down in some way, however, or they
will cease to control. So they attack its leaders. They call
them names. They say they are "crooks" and "Socialists."
They have even charged the league with being disloyal to the
United States Government.
The charge seems to have been founded on certain thoughts
expressed last spring by league men as to the conduct of the
war. These are the thoughts:
Profiteering should be eliminated.
When the price of wheat was fixed it was urged that the price
of all necessary commodities be fixed in proportion.
It was urged that a definite statement of war aims be made,
and what those aims should be was suggested.
It was urged that the principles of man conscription be applied
to wealth; that the war be financed, first, from the pockets of
the men best able to spare the money.
REALLY WITH PRESIDENT WILSON
Now observe:
The National Government is doing all that it can to eliminate
profiteering.
It is also urging upon Congress that prices be fixed on all
necessary commodities.
The President has stated our war aims, and his statement
does not differ materially from the aims suggested by the league.
Thus, three of the four thoughts for which league men have
been called disloyal are also the thoughts of the national Admin-
istration. The fourth, wealth conscription, has been urged by
many prominent men who have not been called disloyal. The
fact is that in the matter of the war the National Nonpartisan
League stands squarely with President Wilson.
562 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
THE NORTH DAKOTA PROGRAM
The accomplishments of the league in a political way have been
the capture and control of the State of North Dakota. The
main program of the league for North Dakota — State-built ele-
vators and flour mills — has not yet been accomplished, because
at the last election twenty-four State Senators were not up for
election. At the legislative session these twenty-four hold-over
Senators succeeded in preventing amendments to the State
constitution that would have permitted the State to build ele-
vators and flour mills at once. These twenty-four hold-over
Senators will be up for election in November. They will not
hold over. At the same election the necessary amendments to
the Constitution will be initiated by the people.
Much legislation, however, beneficial to the State was enacted.
Executive acts of the State officers have been of even more benefit.
Economic accomplishments have resulted entirely from political
accomplishments.
A grain-grading commission has been formed.
Rural schools have been standardized. Rural schools have
been given better teachers. They are having better attendance
and better health.
An inheritance tax was levied on large fortunes.
Votes were given to women.
Money was appropriated for experiments at the Agricultural
College, by which it has been proven that low-grade wheat at
70 cents per bushel was worth, for making flour, pound for
pound, as much as high grades selling at $1.70 per bushel.
New taxation classifications were adopted, which reduced the
rate for improvements upon farm lands and passed part of
the burden of taxation on to the corporations that had been
dodging taxation since the beginning of time.
A dairy commission was provided.
A license system for creameries was established.
Guarantee of bank deposits was provided for.
A welfare commission was created.
In all, thirty-two remedial steps were taken for the benefit
of the people of the State. Briefly, it is estimated that each
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 563
farmer has saved, under the- present State management, from
$800 to $1,000.
THE NATIONAL PROGRAM
The National Nonpartisan League, or some other organization
embodying the ideas that are its basis, will control the United
States. There is no way to stop it, for the simple reason that
people cannot be prevented from thinking. As people think
they see the justice of the thing and what it means to them-
selves. As they see that, they adopt it. The war is making
people think faster than ever. If public ownership and control
is good for a nation at war, it is good for a nation at peace. The
people see that public ownership of public necessities is an
absolute requirement of a life scheme that will give each man
a chance to live healthfully, properly to educate his children,
and to have some of the little enjoyments of life.
To that end the National Nonpartisan League will have can-
didates for State and national office in those States in which
organization has reached the point where the members want to
endorse candidates. Indications seem to point to the election
of from fifteen to twenty Congressmen this year.
The most significant indication observed at the office of the Non-
partisan League at this time is the great interest in the movement
shown by the people in States in which the League has made no
effort to organize. In the national headquarters hundreds of let-
ters are received every day asking for information. These letters
do not all come from farmers. The fact is that the greater
part of them are now coming from industrial centers. The in-
dustrial worker sees that the league's plan for providing proper
marketing facilities will benefit him just as much as it does those
who produce the food.
Experience has shown that little benefit for the common people
can be obtained except through control of political machinery.
This principle applies to the national government just as it does
to State government. The national Congress has taken more
steps for the protection and interests of business enterprises
than it has for the protection and interests of the majority of
the people. This is due largely to the fact that business enter-
564 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
prises have control of political power. The men who have been
elected have felt in some measure that they owed their election
to business enterprises. A man naturally will respect the in-
terests of the person to whom he owes, his position.
The National Nonpartisan League is now composed of farm
workers. Industrial workers are showing an intense interest in
it. These workers form the majority of the people of the United
States. The political coalition of these workers means political
power for them. They will send men to Washington who owe
their election to them. These office-holders will respond to the
interests of those who sent them to Washington. The result
will be legislation beneficial to the majority instead of to the
few. It cannot be otherwise. That is the broad purpose of the
National Nonpartisan League.
II. WHY THE LEAGUE IS OPPOSED
W. H. HUNTER
THE cardinal count in the indictment against the National
Nonpartisan League, on which its managers and promoters are
seeking a verdict of "not guilty" by a jury of the public, is dis-
loyal leadership.
Political leaders of the League, than whom the country has
produced no shrewder or more resourceful, are contending that
the farmer is down-trodden and oppressed, that every man's
hand is against him and that for his own salvation his hand
must be against every man. They have sought to embitter the
farmer against bankers, grain-dealers, elevator-operators and
millers and to ally the laboring men of the cities with the farmer
by the contention that this is a "rich man's war and a poor
man's fight," that while the farmers and laboring men are bear-
ing the brunt of the fighting, the manufacturers and business
men generally are piling up wealth, through munitions-making
and profiteering.
It is ostensibly to protect the farmers against this kind of
oppression that the National Nonpartisan League has organized
in a half-dozen States in which farmers are jn the majority, and
the fallacy of the contention is plain on the face of it. The
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 565
farmers are in a healthy majority in North Dakota, South
Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Montana, and in
every State in which the League is active. The history of these
States, from the days of the Ocala platform down to the last
election, shows that the farmers have never failed to have their
rights recognized and their wrongs redressed by legislative action.
They are and have always been in the majority in these States,
and the claims of the League leaders to-day assume the form of a
plea by the majority to be protected from the wiles and machina-
tions of a wicked minority.
The cuttlefish when attacked sheds ink to becloud the waters
and elude pursuit. The League leaders are playing the role
of political cuttlefish just now and trying to becloud the polit-
ical waters by claiming that the wicked interests are trying to
prevent the farmers from organizing. There is not and has not
been anywhere in Minnesota or the Dakotas the slightest oppo-
sition to farmers' organizations. The opposition to the Non-
partisan League, an opposition that in Minnesota is assuming
menacing form, is caused, not by the organization of farmers,
but by the secret or open disloyalty of leaders of the League.
The line is being closely drawn in Minnesota between the loy-
alists and the disloyalists, and no less a person than the Governor
of the State, J. A. A. Burnquist, elected by farmers' votes and
by the largest majority ever given a Governor of the State,
has openly placed the leaders of the National Nonpartisan League
in the disloyal class. The president of the League is under
indictment in two Minnesota counties for obstructing the draft.
The manager of the League has been convicted of a like offense,
and other organizers and representatives of the League have been
charged with obstructing the draft.
BUSINESS INTERESTS SCENT SOCIALISM
It is true that the business interests, both big and little, of
the Northwest are opposed to the Nonpartisan League and fear
it. This opposition and fear are based on the League's record
in North Dakota, where only the existence of a hold-over State
Senate, not elected by the League, prevented North Dakota
from going "whole hog" into the experiment of a Socialist State
government. The League attempted to adopt a new constitution
566 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
for North Dakota by act of the legislature, instead of by vote
of the people. It proposed to remove the limit of indebtedness
that might be incurred by the State or any political division
thereof. It proposed to exempt farm improvements from tax-
ation and to authorize the issue of currency by State banks.
It proposed State ownership of flour mills, terminal elevators,
railroads, packing houses and to allow the State to engage in
any and all forms of business and industry. It proposed that
''three bona fide farmers" should be elected to the Supreme
Court of the State. It proposed State Socialism on a scale
never before attempted in this country and never attempted any-
where except quite recently by Lenine and Trotzky in Russia.
Objection has been offered, also, by the business interests
against the plan of a chain of cooperative stores and banks,
proposed by the League leaders and for which more than
$1,000,000 have been subscribed by the farmers who have
no voice in the control of these enterprises, no share of dividends
and no control of funds, but who have the privilege of trading
at such stores "at cost, plus 10 per cent./' for cash. The
League is opposed also because its leaders are avowed Socialists
and in favor of applying the most radical Socialistic theories
to the government of the States in which they secure control.
SOME OF THE DEMANDS REASONABLE
But these questions can be fought out in peace times, just
as the fallacies of the Farmers' Alliance and the Populist party
were rejected and the meritorious measures adopted by the
legislatures of those days. No one contends that all of the
claims of the Nonpartisan League are unjustified. Some of
them are just and must be recognized by legislative action. The
difficulty with the farmer to-day is that, because of the abolition
of party lines through the nonpartisan primary laws, in force
throughout the Northwest, he feels the lack of leadership, the
need of organization through which to make his appeals and
demands for legislative action. With every politician for him-
self, no responsibility anywhere, the farmer, who is naturally
a conservative, is forced to turn to radical leaders who want to
lead him into the mire of Socialism.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 567
Keep this honest farmer in mind; see into what company he
is drawn when he rallies to the standard of the National Non-
partisan League. Hundreds of meetings called by that organ-
ization in Minnesota have been suppressed and the organiza-
tion has been barred from holding meetings in many counties
because the sheriffs and loyal citizens have become convinced
that such meetings, if permitted, would end in riot and blood-
shed. This is not at the dictation of "Big Business." These
meetings have been banned by the sheriffs and other peace officers
elected by the votes of farmers, by men who know their neigh-
bors and know where they stand on war questions. The meet-
ings have been banned because whenever one has been permitted,
it has served as a rallying center for professional pacifists, every
pro-German for miles around, for I. W. W. preachers of sabotage
and for Socialist spell-binders openly opposing the draft. These
same Socialists, who have been active in helping the League
leaders, have nominated for Governor of Minnesota a man who
has been convicted for obstructing the draft and a candidate
for State Senator who is under conviction for seditious utter-
ances, and they were nominated on a platform which demanded
the repeal of the draft act, endorsed the Russian Bolsheviki, ex-
pressed sympathy and support for the I. W. W. leaders under
indictment at Chicago, and demanded the immediate withdrawal
of our forces from France.
F. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
HOW TO ORGANIZE A COMMUNITY
E. L. MORGAN
IT is impossible to set up any one particular way of organizing
a community and expect it to work in every detail in all parts
of the state. The thing needed is for the town to get clearly
i Adapted from '-Mobilizing the Rural Community," The Massachusetts
Agricultural College, Extension Service, Extension Bulletin No. 23, Am-
Jierst, Sept., 1*18.
568 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
in mind the idea that the most efficient method must be used,
and, owing to varying local conditions, each community has
its own starting point at which the beginning must be made, that
it is only through cooperation and united action that agriculture
and community life are going to be developed and that the goal
to be attained is the community united and working together in
the carrying out of a definite, practical, long-term plan of de-
velopment along those lines of greater interest.
The most successful communities have found the following
principles to be indispensable in their development :
1. In any redirection of rural interests the community is the
natural unit of activity.
2. The progress of the rural community represents one prob-
lem and one only. This problem has a number of phases but
they are all parts of the whole and must be dealt with as such if
substantial progress is to be made.
3. Improvement plans must be based on actual farm and vil-
lage conditions. They must be based on facts — guessing must be
eliminated.
4. Those things by which the people live must be adequately
organized if substantial community progress is to be brought
about. These are usually expressed through local organizations,
unorganized group interests, or both. This does not mean that
something new must be organized. It means that the various
elements of the community must get into the best possible work-
ing relation to each other so they will become an harmonious
working unit — the team work idea.
There are three forms which have been used in this State, each
one applying to different conditions. The first two are thought
of as stepping stones toward the third.
1. The Local Leader. There are many towns in which there
is very little interest in matters of progress. In these cases
about the only possibility lies in the efforts of a few local leaders
to awaken general interest by bringing about some special events
which will be sufficiently interesting to create a desire for some-
thing of a more permanent nature. In some towns a teacher,
minister, farmer, or doctor has been the local leader and by
working through the school, church, grange, or farmers' club has
produced valuable results. Some of these results have been :
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 569
A farmers' institute.
A community day.
Pure-bred livestock improvement.
Community celebrations — Christmas, July 4th, Thanksgiving.
Plays and pageants.
A public forum.
A town agricultural fair and exhibit.
The keeping of farm accounts.
Home and public grounds improvement contest.
The Group Plan. 'In every town there are people whose in-
terests are the same and who can work together for particular
improvements with the community idea in mind before it is
possible to get the town as a whole together on a larger and more
thorough development plan. This is called the group plan of
work. It differs from the first in that it is not usually done
through existing organizations but often results in the form-
ing of a new organization for some specific purpose. Like the
first plan, it should be thought of as a step toward the larger
and more complete community development. Some things that
have been done under this plan are:
Formation of a farmers' cooperative exchange for buying and
selling. The third year business amounted to $21,000.
Organization of a home makers' club directed by the women's
section of the farm bureau.
Starting of a cow test association.
Organization of a cooperative creamery.
Formation of a local breeders' association.
3. The Community Council. As has been stated, the two
plans just mentioned should not be thought of as the end. They
are good, in and of themselves, and well worth doing, but let
us not lose sight of the fact that the work to be done requires
an all-around community development. It may be necessary to
do these specific pieces of work but let us think of them as a part
of the preparation for a complete organization of the community.
We believe the following to be the more complete plan. It is
the result of several years' trial in this state and has been an
evolution born of the experience of common folks. It will
570 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
always need to be adapted to local conditions but the principles
are the same. The steps usually taken are :
1. CONFERENCE OF A FEW. Some local leader should call to-
gether one representative from each local organization or group
and a few at large to consider: (a) The possibilities of and
benefits to be derived from a general get-together for definite
planning of the future of the community, (b) Whether the
town cares to put in the necessary time, money and brains to
produce results or whether it prefers to let ' * well enough ' ' alone
and let the future take care of itself. At. this time it is best to
have some one present from the Farm Bureau or Agricultural'1
College to tell of the success of other towns and make clear the
necessary steps.
2. ORGANIZATION REPRESENTATIVES. These representatives
should report to their respective organizations, each of which
should appoint one permanent representative to become a part
of the joint committee or council of organizations. There
should also be chosen three or more members at large. This
council is not another organization. It is merely the coordina-
tion of all local interests for united action.
3. THE FIRST WORK. There are three specific things which a
community council should do at first :
a. Bring about a thorough understanding among the various
local organizations as to just what each is doing, viz. :
Get a statement of the present purpose of each organization.
Exchange plans of work for the next six months.
Work out a calendar of gatherings of every sort for the
next six months. Arrange these chronologically so that
conflicts may be avoided.
b. Take up any specific items of community interest which
should receive immediate attention.
Consider special problems in agriculture or community life
that need to be met at once.
Develop plans for community celebrations such as: Christ-
mas, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, etc. Plans to
to be carried out by local organizations, not by the
council.
c. Call in representatives of county organizations and ascer-
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 571
tain what work they are prepared to cooperate in for
your town. These should include:
District Officer of the State Department of Health.
The Farm-Bureau or Improvement League.
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
County Young Men's Christian Association.
County Nursing Association.
The Boy Scouts and others.
4. THE FIRST COMMUNITY MEETING. Plenty of time should
be allowed to insure a perfect understanding among the local
organizations. Sometimes this takes a year, but it is time well
spent. After the items mentioned in (3) have been achieved the
council should begin to consider the larger planning for the
community. Call a community meeting to consider the ques-
tions mentioned under (1) and these only.
A chairman and secretary should be elected and all mention
of specific items of improvement avoided at this time, as it may
often reopen old issues and arouse antagonism just at the time
when the greatest harmony is needed. It will be found worth
while to have some one present from a town that has made a
success of community organization. The whole matter should
be thoroughly discussed from all possible angles and a vote taken
to determine whether the people really desire to go ahead.
5. COMMITTEES. If action is favorable, a few committees
should be appointed. It is better to have a few general com-
mittees with sub-committees. The following have been found
sufficient for all practical purposes: —
a. FARM PRODUCTION — soil, crops, animals.
b. FARM BUSINESS — farm supplies, sale of products, credit,
farm records and accounts, surveys.
In some communities it is advisable to combine the com-
mittees on farm production and farm business into one
committee on agriculture.
c. CONSERVATION — purchase and use of food, canning, drying
and storing, fuel supply, natural resources, points of
scenic and historical value.
d. BOYS' AND GIRLS' INTERESTS — schools, educational clubs,
social clubs, moral training, plays and games.
572 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
e. COMMUNITY LIFE — the home, education, health, transporta-
tation, recreation, civic improvement, public morality.
These committees should be asked to do three things: (a)
Study the town thoroughly along their respective lines, (b)
Call in whatever help can be secured from state and county
organizations, boards and institutions, (c) Work out two or
three practical projects for improvement which will be submitted
to the second mass meeting. These projects should be based on
actual needs.
6. THE SECOND COMMUNITY MEETING. This should be merely
an unofficial town meeting. The chairman of the first mass
meeting should preside. The committee chairman should report
their projects which should be taken up separately and put to
a vote just like an article in the town warrant. While there
will be nothing official or binding in this vote, still it will give
sufficient attention to each project to prevent worthless ones
being passed. Here again everybody should have his say, for it
is better for opposition to appear now than later. Do not forget
that a community will go no farther nor faster in its develop-
ment than the majority of the people both see and believe.
7. THE COMMUNITY PLAN OR PROGRAM. Such projects as are
adopted become the community's working program. It should
comprise some projects which can be carried out at once and
others which will require a period of years. The projects
adopted are turned over to the community council, which acts
as their custodian and directs their carrying out.
8. GETTING RESULTS. The local organizations carry out the
specific projects. As their representatives come together in the
council they either choose or by general consent are asked to
become responsible for definite things. They do this knowing
that they will have the sympathy and support of other organi-
zations and also that they will be expected to produce results.
If there are projects which no organization can carry on, such
as cooperative buying and selling, it may be necessary to organize
a new group to do this work.
9. COUNCIL MEETINGS. The council should meet regularly
every three months, with special meetings as necessity requires.
These meetings should be real conferences on the most important
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 573
community matters. Reports should be made of work done by
the various organizations, concerning the projects adopted and
carried out by them. The remaining projects should be gone
over to ascertain whether any of them can be begun during the
coming three months. Other matters than the specific projects
often come up at this time and receive consideration.
10. THE ANNUAL COMMUNITY MEETING. Instead of one of
the quarterly meetings of the council there should be a meeting
of the entire community. This should take the form of an
annual meeting. Three things should be done:
1. Reports should be made of work done by any organization
or group during the past year.
2. The council committees should report the working plans for
the coming year.
3. The chairman, secretary and committees for the ensuing
year should be chosen.
In addition to these matters of business there is usually a
speaker from the outside who discusses some question of special
interest to the community at that particular time. Special
community meetings should be called as often as there are vital
questions to be considered by the community.
MODEL AGREEMENT FOR A COMMUNITY COUNCIL
ARTICLE I
Name and Object
There is hereby created the Community Council to
serve as a medium through which the organizations of
(town) can cooperate more fully in their work for community progress.
ABTICLE II
Membership
Membership shall consist of one representative from each general organiza-
tion or group of the community and three (five to seven in large towns)
selected at large. Those selected by organizations or groups shall be
from their own membership and shall be chosen as soon as possible after
October 1st of each year.
ABTICLE III
Officers
The officers shall comprise chairman and secretary who shall be chosen at
the annual community meeting.
574 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ARTICLE IV
Meetings
The council shall meet every three months, viz. : The first Monday eve-
ning in March, June, September, and December. Meetings of special
groups of citizens may be called when necessary to carry out special lines
of work. Special meetings may be called by the chairman or by any five
members.
ARTICLE V
Annual Community Meeting
The council shall arrange for an annual community meeting to be held on
or near the first Monday of December, at which time reports shall be made
on the progress of the town. At this time projects for the ensuing year
shall be presented and voted upon. Such projects as are adopted shall
become a part of the working program.
ARTICLE VI
Amendments
This agreement may be altered or amended by a two-thirds vote of the
residents of the town of present at the annual
community meeting.
WHAT MAY BE GAINED THROUGH COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
1. It gives purpose to the energies of the community.
2. It secures the best available advice at all points.
3. Guessing is eliminated since projects for improvement are
based on facts.
4. The progress of the community is put on a practical, busi-
ness-like basis.
5. One-sided development is avoided.
6. It gives the best possible working plan for the develop-
ment of the community.
7. The development of community spirit, pride and purpose i^
fostered. Self-interest gives place to community interest.
8. When this community of interest is developed, it causes
many forms of local cooperation to follow naturally.
9. It gives the advantage of using a tried method that is work
ing successfully in many towns. It is no longer an experiment
10. The community is connected with the sources of continu
ous help — The Farm-Bureau, Agricultural College, State De
partment of Health, State Board of Agriculture, State Board oJ
Education, Massachusetts Civic League, Society for the Preven
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 575
tion of Cruelty to Children, County Y. M. C. A. and many
others.
11. It insures future welfare. Community organization
means to the community what scientific management means to
business. The community improves by methods similar to those
of a careful business manager: — long-term planning, constant
watchfulness, striving toward perfection in all departments and
a thorough coordination of them all.
SOME THINGS TO REMEMBER
1. Get the community planning idea, talk it, work it.
2. Take the long look ahead into all community affairs.
3. Get everybody out for the first mass meeting. You can't
convince people who are not present.
4. The community council is not a new organization but just a
form of get-together of local forces.
5. Don't get discouraged. It takes time to bring about
maximum efficiency.
6. Study your town. Make plans meet actual needs. Call in
outside help.
7. Plan some project in each line of improvement such as
agriculture, education, the home, health, etc.
8. If one organization becomes responsible for a project, back
it up and help to carry it out successfully.
9. Committees are not to do things but to work out projects
to be carried out by the organizations.
10. Your community has its own place to begin. Be careful
how you start. It is better to do one or two things well than to
undertake too much.
11. Get the best possible advice in working out projects.
Help can always be secured from your Farm-Bureau and your
Agricultural College.
12. Be sure of the success of the first project attempted. Do
not let it fail, for upon its success may depend the continued
interest of the community.
13. Community organization is not "just some new-fangled
notion." It is merely the most efficient way of doing things.
It has stood the test of time in this state. It has made
good.
576 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
14. The council should meet once in three months and plan
the carrying out of projects.
15. Don't get the "town boosting" idea. This is a clean-cut
'business proposition and it needs careful planning. This will
take time.
DEFINITION OF A RURAL COMMUNITY1
C. W. THOMPSON
A RURAL community may be defined as a localized group of
individuals having certain common interests, purposes and ac-
tivities, with the dominant economic interests in agriculture.
Before the people in a rural locality can be regarded as a com-
munity they must be conscious of some common interests. They
must also be led on by those interests to certain common pur-
poses, expressed in common action.
A rural community, like an individual, may be very mucli
alive or it may not be alive at all. The measure of the life
of a community may be found in the number of interactions
between the community as such, and its own members or the out-
side world.
A rural community may be static, with interests, purposes
and activities, which do not change. For such a community
the main problem is one of adaptation to fixed conditions. Or
the other hand, a rural community may be dynamic or progres
sive in its interests, purposes, and activities, enlarging its lift
in the light of new experience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS
Atkeson, T. C. Semi-Centennial History of the Patrons of Husbandry
Judd, New York, 1916.
Barrett, C. S. The Mission, History and Times of the Farmers
Union, Marshall and Bruce, Nashville, Tenn., 1909.
Boyle, James E. The Agrarian Movement in the Northwest. Air
Econ. Rev., 8:505-521, Sept., 1918.
i From an unpublished address given before the Graduate School o
Agriculture, Amherst, Mass., 1916.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 577
Buck, S. J. The Granger Movement. Hajvard, Cambridge, 1913.
Butterfield, K. L. The Grange. Forum, 31 : 231-242, April, 1901.
Carney, Mabel. The Grange and Other Farmers' Organizations.
Country Life and the Country School, pp. 72-84, Row, Chicago,
1912.
Commons, John R., and Andrews, John B. Documentary History of
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Coulter, J. L. Organization Among Farmers of the United States.
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Drew, F. M. Present Farmers' Movement. Political Science Quar-
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Everett; J. A. The Third Power. J. A. Everett, Pub., Indianapolis,
Ind., 1907.
Farmers' National Congress of U. S. Official Reports of Proceedings.
Gaston, Herbert. The Nonpartisan League. Harcourt, Brase and
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Gillette, J. M. Constructive Rural Sociology. Sturgis, New York,
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November, 1890.
Holman, Chas. W. First Aid to the Farming Business. Marketing
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Kelley, 0. H. The Patrons of Husbandry. Wagenseller, Philadel-
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Marsh, B. C. The State Grange a Social Force. Survey, 23:703-4,
February 12, 1910.
Martin, E. W. History of the Grange Movement. National Pub-
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McVey, F. L. The Populist Movement. American Economic Asso-
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Morgan, J. T. The Danger of the Farmers' Alliance. Forum, 12:
399-409, November, 1801.
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20, 1907.
National Agricultural Organization Society. Proceedings.
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Pickett, J. E. Prairie Fire. Country Gentleman, May 18 and 25,
June 8, 15 and 22, 1918.
Pierson, C. W. The Rise of the Granger Movement. Popular Science
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Russell, C. E. The Fanners' Non-Partisan League. American So-
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Tubbs, M. W. American Society of Equity, Its Past, Present and Fu-
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578 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
Burr, W. Community Welfare in Kansas. The Kansas State Agri-
cultural College Extension Bulletin No. 4, October, 1915.
Butterfield, K. L. Chapters in Rural Progress. Univ. of Chicago Press,
1909, Chap. IX.
Carver, T. N. The Organization of a Rural Community. U. S. De-
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Collier, John. Communitv Councils. Conf. of Social Work, 1919,
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Eldridge, S. Problems of Community Life. Crowell, New York, 1915.
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Hart, J. K. Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities.
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RURAL ORGANIZATION
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THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 579
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580 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
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CHAPTER XIX
LEADERSHIP
LEADERSHIP OR PERSONAL ASCENDENCY *
CHARLES R. COOLEY
IT is plain that the the6ry of ascendency involves the question
of the mind's relative valuation of the suggestions coming to it
from other minds; leadership depending upon the efficacy of a
personal impress on to awaken feeling, thought, action, and so to
become a cause of life. While there are some men who seem but
to add one to the population, there are others whom we cannot
help thinking about; they lend arguments to their neighbors'
creeds, so that the life of their contemporaries, and perhaps of
following generations, is notably different because they have
lived. The immediate reason for this difference is evidently that
in the one case there is something seminal or generative in the
relation between the personal impression a man makes and the
mind that receives it, which is lacking in the other case.
We are born with what may be roughly described as a vaguely
differentiated mass of mental tendency, vast and potent, but un-
formed and needing direction. This instinctive material is be-
lieved to be the outcome of age-long social development in the
race, and hence to be, in a general way, expressive of that devel-
opment and functional in its continuance. The process of evolu-
tion has established a probability that a man will find himself
at home in the world into which he comes, and prepared to share
in its activities.
Obscurely locked within him, inscrutable to himself as to
others, is the soul of the whole past, his portion of the energy, the
passion, the tendency, of human life. Its existence creates a
vague need to live, to feel, to act ; but he cannot fulfill this need,
i Adapted from "Human Nature and the Social Order," Chap. IX, pp.
283-286, 293-294, 297 and 310. Chas. Scribner's Sons, N. Y., 1902.
581
582 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
at least not in a normal way, without incitement from outside to
loosen and direct his instinctive aptitude. There is explosive ma-
terial stored up in him, but it cannot go off unless the right spark
reaches it, and that spark is usually some sort of a personal sug-
gestion, some living trait that sets life free and turns restlessness
into power.
It must be evident that we can look for no cut-and-dried theory
of this life-imparting force, no algebraic formula for leadership.
The prime condition of ascendency is the presence of undi-
rected energy in the person over whom it is to be exercised : it is
not so much forced upon us from without as demanded from
within. The mind, having energy, must work, and requires a
guide, a form of thought, to facilitate its working. All views of
life are fallacious which do not recognize the fact that the pri-
mary need is the need to do. Every healthy organism evolves
energy, and this must have an outlet.
If we ask what are the mental traits that distinguish a leader,
the only answer seems to be that he must, in one way or another,
be a great deal of a man, or at least appear to be. He must stand
for something to which men incline, and so take his place by right
as a focus of their thought.
To be a great deal of a man, and hence a leader, involves, on
the one hand, a significant individuality, and, on the other,
breadth of sympathy, the two being different phases of personal
caliber, rather than separate traits. It is because a man cannot
stand for anything except as he has a significant individuality,
that self-reliance is so essential a trait in leadership.
All leadership takes place through the communication of ideas
to the minds of others, and unless the ideas are so presented as
to be congenial to those other minds, they will evidently be re-
jected.
In faee-to-face relations, then, the natural leader is one who
always has the appearance of being master of the situation. He
includes other people and extends beyond them, and so is in a
position to point out what they must do next. Intellectually his
suggestion seems to embrace what is best in the views of others,
and to embody the inevitable conclusion ; it is the timely, the fit,
and so the prevalent. Emotionally his belief is the strongest
force present, and so draws other beliefs into it. Yet, while he
LEADERSHIP 583
imposes himself upon others, he feels the other selves as part of
the situation, and so adapts himself to them that no opposition
is awakened; or possibly he may take the violent method, and
browbeat and humiliate a weak mind ; there are various ways of
establishing superiority, but in one way or another the consum-
mate leader always accomplishes it.
The onward and aggressive portion of the world, the people
who do things, the young and all having surplus energy, need to
hope and strive for an imaginative object, and they will follow
no one who does not encourage this tendency. The first requisite
of a leader is, not to be right, but to lead, to show a way.
LEADERSHIP 1
E. C. HAYES
LEADERSHIP consists largely in putting the proper ideas into
the minds of the individuals who are in a position to give
them effect and still more in supptying courage. Most things
really worth doing have at first seemed impracticable to the
average person. But when there appears an individual having
not only sufficient imagination and enlightenment to see what
should be done, but also sufficient courage to believe that it can
be done, the probability of the achievement has begun. The
question of possibility or impossibility with reference to social
improvements is largely one of psychic attitude of the people.
The question with respect to most desirable social changes is
not, could people bring them about if they would, but will they
will to do so? Such changes are thought impossible, and for the
time being are so, because men do not believe their neighbors
will do their duty. The man who first says, "I, for one, will,
and we together can," who breaks down the hypnotism of the
present reality, who exhibits confidence to his fellows, who
makes individuals begin to think "my neighbors will do their
duty and therefore it is worth while for me to do mine, ' ' thereby
creates new social possibilities.
1 Adapted from Introduction to the Study of Sociology, pp. 57-58, Ap-
ploton, N. Y., 1919.
584 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
RURAL LEADERSHIP l
L. H. BAILEY
KURAL leadership lies in taking hold of the first and com-
monest problems that present themselves and working them
out. Every community has its problems. Some one can aid
to solve these problems. The size of the problem does not
matter, if only some one takes hold of it and shakes it out.
I like to say to my students that they should attack the first
problem that presents itself when they alight from the train
on their return from college. It may be a problem of roads ; of
a poor school; of tuberculosis in the herds; of ugly signs along
the highways, where no man has a moral right to advertise
private business; of a disease of apple trees; of poor seed; of
the drainage of a field; of an improved method of growing a
crop ; of the care of the forests. Any young man can concentrate
the sentiment of the community on a problem of the community.
One problem solved or alleviated, and another awaits. The next
school district needs help, the next town, the next county, the
next state. Every able countryman has much more power than
he uses.
The scale of effort in the open country is so uniform that
it ought to be easy to rise above it. I do not see how it is
possible for an educated young man to avoid developing leader-
ship in the open country, if only he attacks a plain homely prob-
lem, is not above it and sticks to it.
It does not follow that all leadership will be reached for. It
will come to a man.
THE SECRET OF INFLUENCE2
JAMES BRYCE
THERE are at least four elements, two or more of which will
be found to be always present in whoever leads, or is trusted
i Adapted from "The State and the Farmer,'' pp. 172-176, (Macmillan,
N. Y., 1908).
- Adapted from Chambers' Journal, 7th Series, Vol. I.
LEADERSHIP 585
by, or inspires those among whom his lot is cast. The first is
intellectual independence and the thing we call initiative, by
which I mean the power of thinking for one's self instead of
borrowing thoughts from others, and of deciding on a course
for one's self instead of following the advice of others.
The second is tenacity of purpose, the capacity to adhere
to a view once adopted or a decision once taken. Whoever,
wanting this, lets himself be blown about by every wind of
doctrine or every pressure of menace or persuasion may be a
very acute man or a very adroit man, but will never impress
himself on others as a person to be followed.
The third element is a sound judgment, fit to forcast the
results of action. Few people can look beyond the next move
on the chess-board, and the man who sees several moves ahead,
and whose forecast is verified by the events, soon grows to be
the man whose advice is sought and taken. His neighbors seek
it. Any assembly where he finds himself, from a town meeting
or a local school committee up to a legislature, gladly listens to
his counsels.
The last is sympathy — that is, having the capacity for enter-
ing into the thoughts of others and of evoking their feelings
by showing that he can share them. The power of sympathy
is so far an affair of the emotions that it may exist in persons
of no exceptional abilities. Yet it is a precious gift which often
palliates errors and wins affection in spite of faults and weak-
nessses. It is a key to unlock men's hearts, and the heart that
has given confidences attaches itself to the person who has re-
ceived them, and is prone to surrender itself to him if he is felt
to be strong:.
TRAINING FOR RURAL LEADERSHIP *
JOHN M. GILLETTE
WHEN the rural problem arose in its full significance, almost
the entire emphasis was placed on organization, so that organi-
zation became the shibboleth, and the economic factor received
i Adapted from "Training for Rural Leadership," Annals of the American
Academy, LXVII: 87-96, September, 1916.
586 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
almost exclusive consideration. But with the passage of time
the farmers have become wiser and, imbued with a larger degree
of humanistic sentiment, they are now discussing what sort of
institutions will turn out the best men and women. And it is
very significant that the perception has gradually arisen that
a rural leadership is an indispensable means to the attainment
of permanent improvement.
I consider the prime requisites of a productive rural leader-
ship the power of initiative, organizing ability, sympathy with
human aims, trained intelligence, and vision and outlook. Up
to the present time, for community purposes, the country has
depended on a transient leadership from the outside in the shape
of itinerant preac-hers and teachers, and for purposes of produc-
tion, on the occasional able farmer and the visiting expert. Due
reflection over the situation leads us to think that such sources
will never prove sufficient or efficient, and that what the country
wants most is men and women who by their training are at
one with farm life and whose influence is ever present because
they live in the country and have their interests there.
Several kinds of agencies may contribute toward supplying
a leadership of the right kind. Our institutions of higher learn-
ing must devote more attention to training men and women for,
country service. Those which train pastors, teachers and
Y. M. C. A. workers should establish courses of instruction, the
content, spirit and emphasis of which will serve to specialize
their students for constructive work in rural institutions. The
nature of the rural community must be emphasized, its particu-
lar problems studied, and the agencies capable of supplement-
ing and improving agricultural life receive much consideration.
When training schools renounce the absurd notion that general
training courses qualify equally well for rural and urban serv-
ice, a great step in advance will have been taken. Educating
individuals specifically for rural service has the double advan-
tage of qualifying them to carry on constructive undertakings
and of retaining them in that service because their qualifica-
tions tend to make them ineligible for urban positions.
Much is being accomplished by the county agent and the co-
operative demonstrator which the agricultural colleges have
educated for country service. The various states are,
LEADERSHIP 587
especially, placing many county agents in the field, and they
have proved themselves helpful in furthering not only produc-
tion but community undertakings of different kinds. Many
states have county and city high schools which are giving in-
struction in agriculture and farm subjects, and the occasional
state agricultural high school is a still more intensified ap-
proach to the desired goal. Summer chautauquas with their
lectures and instruction on farm life and with their visiting
groups of farm boys and girls; farmers' institutes; farmers'
clubs, and associations of farmers' clubs; and kindred organi-
zations are helpfully contributing to the establishment of a con-
structive point of view concerning farm life and its problems.
However, the institution which is needed to reach the masses
of country children and to do most to create an abiding interest
in rural affairs is one which is located in the rural neighbor-
hood, which touches and ministers to the lives of the residents
daily, and which, filled with an agrarian content and spirit, exer-
cises an abiding, molding influence on the young in the direc-
tion of rural undertakings and improvement. The consoli-
dated rural school, with communityized building and equipment,
a corps of efficient teachers, a teacherage, experimental plot,
graded and ruralized curriculum, and having high school facili-
ties as an organic part of the socialized course of instruction,
possesses the greatest power of -appeal because it is articulated
with actual farm life and because it is within reach of all.
THE SOURCES OF LEADERSHIP1
JOHN R. BOARDMAN
THERE are four distinct sources which may be expected to
yield valuable material for the various leadership positions in
the social organization. The first and most obvious is the group
of persons who are already leaders. Attention is called to this
source because it demands careful examination. Are these
leaders being used in their proper places and if so is their lead-
i Adapted from "Community Leadership," a course in social engineering
for village and country communities. Bureau for Leadership Training,
N. Y., 1914.
588 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
ership ability being used to its full power? Are these leaders
doing more than one thing? These are important questions
and demand careful answer. There are also other leaders who
are not conspicuous who need attention. They are leaders of
obscure groups, natural leaders of small, informal collections
of people. They are real leaders, vitally related to the groups
they serve. They should not be disturbed, under ordinary con-
ditions, and unless we discover their present leadership relation
we are apt to consider them for other positions with consequent
social loss. On the other hand these persons may not be prop-
erly placed. They may be able to render better service at other
points in the social organization but they should not be changed
unless the desirability of the transfer is very apparent.
The second source of leadership material is the vocations of
people, — the business in which, they are regularly engaged.
Many trades and professions are of definite social value in an
indirect way. Many business and professional men could make
their business relations a source of social benefit and leader-
ship service. Carpenters, machinists, engineers, physicians,
dentists, lawyers, teachers, bankers, veterinarians, florists,
gardeners, poultrymen, farmers and many others are doing
things as a business which are of genuine interest to other people
in the community from a purely cultural standpoint. Such
people are the very best ones to give practical talks and courses
of informal lectures on their special subjects. They can con-
duct effective study classes for several weeks at proper seasons of
the year and render a piece of social service that is of positive
value.
A third class of people who have great potential leadership
are the people who have vocations or hobbies. They are in-
terested in birds, insects, wild animals, pets, trees, flowers, in-
ventions, astronomy, minerals, chemistry, stamps, coins, antiques,
and many other things. These people are always glad of a
chance to talk with others about these hobbies of theirs and
there are always small groups of people who covet the privilege
of sitting at the feet of these hobbyists and learning something
about the things in which they are specialists. Many times
these hobbyists have splendid collections of things along their
line. These may be made the basis for evening after evening of
LEADERSHIP 589
the finest social intercourse, — that which has real educational
value. Such people are real leaders, as well as the finest kind
of teachers. The groups which gather about them are real social
organizations. The more of such groups there are in the com-
munity the better. It is of such groups that a vital social
structure is built. They make a valuable contribution to the
socialization of the community, especially with reference to the
younger people of the community.
A fourth source of leadership material is worthy of attention.
Leaders can be made to order, they can be grown from seed.
Social engineers frequently meet a demand for the organization
of certain groups for which there is no available leader. It
becomes necessary then to select some person who can fit himself
for the work by definite study and experience. It is possible
to take many boys and girls and by proper training prepare them
to become leaders in some special line.
These four sources should furnish all the leadership needed for
the largest possible development of the social organization of
any community.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL LEADERSHIP 1
G. WALTER FISKE
I HAVE never heard it suggested that there is any dearth of
latent leadership in country life. The topic assigned me seems to
assume that there is a lack of developed leadership, and I believe
that this is generally true. The question at once arises: Why
should leadership be lacking in the country if most city leaders
in business, politics, and religion were country-bred? Opinions
on this point vary, but it seems to be undoubted that city
people who were country-born furnish fully their share of
urban community leadership, the percentages suggested run-
ning from 50 to 90 per cent. In a casual reference just now to
" Who's Who in America," I notice that out of the first 100
names selected quite at random, sixty-eight were born in the
country. Leadership still comes in considerable measure from
1 Adapted from Publications of the American Sociological Society, Vol.
XI, 54-70, Dec., 1916.
590 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
the country. How long this will continue, with the growth
of cities accelerating, no one can say with assurance; but in
the nature of things there are some reasons for believing that
the more natural environment of the open country and the vil-
lage will long -continue to furnish the city with much of its best
leadership material. Certainly so, if what Professor Giddings
says is true : ' ' Genius is rarely born in the city. The city owes
the great discoveries and immortal creations to those who have
lived with nature and with simple folk. The country produces
the original ideas and forms the social mind." Professor M. T.
Scudder even ventures to offer a definite explanation for the
great influence of rural leaders in the city: "The fully de-
veloped rural mind, the product of its environment, is more
original, more versatile, more accurate, more philosophical, more
practical, more persevering, than the urban mind. It is a larger,
freer mind and dominates tremendously. It is because of this
t}rpe of farm-bred mind that our leaders have largely come from
rural life."
If all this is true — even making large allowance for over-
emphasis— why should we worry over leadership in rural life?
Have all rural leaders gone to the city? If leadership thrives
under the open sky, why not let it alone there ? Will not rural
life develop its own leaders anyway? This was the claim of a
keen and successful woman farmer, who told me that she was
very weary of rural uplifters and country-life specialists who
live in New York City. "If city folks would only let us alone,
there would be no rural problem," she testily remarked! Yet
the fact remains, as we are all aware, that country life is seri-
ously deficient in two social elements: cooperation and leader-
ship; and these two, though not identical, are inseparable, for
it takes the latter to develop the former.
Rural Individualism. It is certainly true that an unsocial
streak of failure in cooperation runs through all phases of
country life and weakens all sorts of rural institutions. Dr.
Butterfield rightly calls the American farmer a "rampant in-
dividualist." He is apt to reveal the fact in all relations of
life. With all the gains made by the modern centralized school,
rural education is still dispensed generally on the old school-
district plan, with niggardly supervisors of no educational vision
LEADERSHIP 591
and with each pupil buying his own textbooks. Roads are re-
paired likewise by township districts, by /ery local enterprise,
sometimes still with individuals working oat their taxes on the
roads. Churches are maintained on the retail plan, the minister
being hired by the year or even by the week, the churches them-
selves being altogether too numerous and too small for effective-
ness because of selfish insistence upon individual views, mutually
competitive, not cooperative. It is the same story in rural busi-
ness. Both in production and in distribution farmers are slowly
learning the lesson of working together and reaping the benefits
of cooperation, which economizes costs and makes for efficiency
and .community welfare. Cooperative agreements in business
have even been repudiated by farmers under the stress of tempta-
tion to personal gain, while rural distrust of banks and organized
business is still proverbial, and is not confined to remote sec-
tions.
Socialization and Urbanization. These generalizations do not,
of course, hold in the more progressive rural communities.
There we find two parallel processes developing rather notice-
ably, the socializing and the urbanizing of country life. They
are similar movements, but not identical. Socialization is a
civilizing process in which individuals, by merging their rights,
interests, and functions, develop community efficiency through
group action. Very naturally this process develops most rapidly
in the more favorable city environment ; but it is now making
progress also in the country against the conservatism and ultra-
individualism of rural life.
Meanwhile in all but the most remote rural sections (and even
there through the influence of the mail-order catalogues) you
may observe the rapid urbanization of country life. I mean
by this the spread of the social ideals and customs of the city.
To the extent that these customs and ideals are constructive and
adaptable to a wholesome country life, to that extent this urban-
ization makes for socialization and should be welcomed. Un-
questionably this process, hastened by increasing intercommuni-
cation, is rapidly making country life and city life more alike,
and is extending the limits of suburban life. It is to be hoped
that this urbanizing will not destroy the unique social conscious-
ness of rural civilization and make it simply imitative of the
592 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
city. On the other hand, it is to be hoped that the city may
more effectively teach the country the secrets of socialization,
so that the social efficiency of urban life may be reproduced in
the country. Rural people need to discover how city people
work together in compactly organized business corporations;
how they adjust, by many mutual concessions, their complicated
civic relations, how they coordinate sympathy and human needs,
and administer a network of social-service agencies, with greater
and greater efficiency through perfected organization.
Why This Lack of Socialization? I hasten to avoid the suspi-
cion of lack of sympathy with country life by saying that I
believe this lack of socialization and cooperation in the country
to be due less to selfishness than to lack of social opportunity
and practice. In fact, these unsocial tendencies are really the
result of overdeveloped rural strength of character. The pioneer
life of the American farmers has developed heroic virtues in
their personality which have made them as a class the most self-
reliant in history. This self-reliance has been overdeveloped.
It has led to self-aggrandizement, jealousy of personal rights,
slowness to accept advice, proneness to lawsuits over property,
thrifty frugality to a fault, indifference to public opinion, dis-
regard of the opinions of experts. Doing so much of their
thinking alone, they do not easily yield to argument. Working
with the soil and with things more than with persons, they do
not easily respond to leadership. They are likely to view
strangers with suspicion because they do not know them; and
for the opposite reason often they do not trust their neighbors
nor cooperate with them because they do know them. Self-re-
liance overstressed leads them to distrust any initiative but their
own. They refuse to recognize superiority in others of their
own class. Positively, the resulting failure in cooperation ex-
plains the jealousies and feuds all too common in rural neighbor-
hoods ; and, negatively, it accounts for the lack of social organi-
zation and effective leadership. Again let me remind you of my
caveat, that I am not speaking of the more progressive rural
communities, but of rural life in general. I believ.e that these
generalizations are less true in the West, but most true in the
South and the older sections of the North and East, outside of
urban tracts.
LEADERSHIP 593
The Difficulty of Developing Rural Leadership. I am now
ready to offer a suggestion in answer to the question: //
country life furnishes so much leadership for the city, why is
leadership a problem in the country? I am confident that there
is no dearth of latent leadership in the country. In general,
I do not believe it has been depleted by the exodus to the city,
though in some places this has been serious. In general, it is
mainly the question of developing the qualities of the leader-
ship which are latent in the finest types of young men and
women living in the country.
You will readily grant me that there is much latent leader-
ship in country boys. Some of these boys go to the city, and
there under urban stimulus and opportunity this latent initia-
tive develops strongly, and they become vigorously influential
personalities. Others of them, equally well endowed, remain
in the country, and though they may become successful along
individualistic lines and 'accumulate property, their latent leader-
ship fails to develop. It fails to develop because of certain ele-
ments in the rural environment : the lack of sufficient stimulus
and challenge, the lack of urgent opportunity for self-expres-
sion, possibly because of real social repression, an inhibition of
social effort due to the positive disapproval of inhospitable
minds. This is why, in so many rural villages, there is a per-
sistent and deep-seated conviction that it is impossible to develop
effective leadership for cooperation in community welfare until
there have been a few judiciously selected, providential funerals.
Hence an utterly stagnant community, socially speaking.
Again let me voice a gentle plea for consideration and charity.
Mentally I rate the average rural citizen high, but he is likely
to be socially awkward — mainly for lack of social stimulus and
practice. The term "social awkwardness" may seem a rather
strange one until we consider it in its relations. The country
boy is likely to be awkward physically because of the overde-
velopment of the large muscles and the underdevelopment of the
accessory muscles. Hence his very gait sometimes suggests that
he is still walking the furrows. He may be awkward also men-
tally. Though possessing strong mentality and accustomed to
do clear thinking, he has lacked variety of stimuli, and still lacks
sufficient opportunity for self-expression. He probably thinks
594 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
more profoundly than his city cousin, but less alertly and rapidly.
His social awkwardness is a correlative fact of which he is
deeply conscious, and which explains his proverbial bashfulness,
especially evident in the presence of city girls accustomed to
dancing-school escorts. This in turn acts as a powerful in-
hibitive and discourages any social prominence. He is socially
awkward because of the lack of social practice and adequate self-
expression.
What, then, are some of the elements in the rural environ-
ment which constitute this social repression to which I referred
a moment ago, which inhibits the development of the strong
latent leadership in rural personality? In summary I would
suggest: lack of the social stimulus which comes from city
crowds and city life ; lack of sufficient challenge to self-expression,
with personal growth under social pressure; lack of variety of
social opportunities to challenge variety of personal talent;
and lack of adequate training in leadership, acutely felt by
conscientious people who would gladly lead in community wel-
fare if they felt they could. Then there is strong positive in-
hibition by rural conservatism in general ; positive repression of
ambition by neighborly jealousy (a genial combination of
terms ! ) ; the deterrent effect of long mutual acquaintance with
its leveling influence, too apt to level down all latent leader-
ship by saying in effect, "Start something if you dare! Show
your head as a leader, if you want to lose it ! " Such rural social
democracy is all too common, and it keeps everybody plodding
along in the ruts instead of venturing forth in community lead-
ership. Hence the homespun leader is discounted and emerges
from the crowd with great diffidence.
The farmer is the natural leader in country life. Yet to a
remarkable degree he falls short of his opportunity in leader-
ship. He constitutes 30 per cent, of the adult male population
of the country engaged in gainful occupations, yet he has re-
markably small leadership, for instance, in politics. There are
about seventy times as many farmers as lawyers in the land, yet
what about their relative influence? Almost 60 per cent, of our
present Congress are lawyers. Barely 3 per cent, are farmers.
The 120,000 lawyers in America constitute less than one-half of
1 per cent, of the adult male workers. Their representation in
LEADERSHIP 595
Congress is over 120 times as large as it should be, whereas the
farmers' representation is but one-tenth of their proportionate
share; that is, the lawyer's chance for political leadership, on
the basis of our present Congress, is 1,200 times that of the
farmer.
This condition, however, is not likely to continue. The farmer
is beginning to discover and to wield for himself political leader-
ship. It may or may not seem significant to you that prac-
tically every great rural state voted last month for the President
who gave rural America the long-postponed rural-credit system,
and that this President was elected over the protest of nearly
every great urban state in the land. It is also worth noting that
the ''Farmers' Non-partisan Political League" which cam-
paigned North Dakota last fall with the slogan, "A farmers'
government for a farming state," swept the state clean last
month, losing but one candidate on the state ticket and electing
eighty-one out of 113 members of the legislature.
Before offering some specific suggestions in detail may I ven-
ture a few generalizations regarding the social function which
we call leadership? It is a term that is increasingly used in
these days. Its connotation seems simple, but it is seldom
clearly defined. Professor Cooley's brief definition of leader-
ship as "personal ascendency" is excellent as far as it goes.
John R. Mott's definition, "Expert service," is perhaps more
descriptive than definitive. To me leadership is personal initia-
tive, unusual efficiency, and executive ability by ivhich an out-
standing personality projects his ideals and purposes through
group and mass activity. It involves the development of un-
usual personal efficiency and social service of the highest poten-
tial. Leadership is a fascinating thing, not simply because it
is the exercise of power and appeals to selfish ambition, but far
more because it means superlative self-expression, the projec-
tion of one's best self into life, one's maximum service of his
generation. In the very nature of things leadership involves the
development of personality, growing under the pressure of re-
sponsibility, and its application in expert service of the com-
munity.
I do not think leadership is often an endowment. Rather
it is an attainment, a conquest through struggle. We talk about
596 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
"born leaders." We seldom meet them. Leadership is rarely a
flash of genius. It is a growth, a patient development. Like
most genius, it is the result of hard work, painstaking prepara-
tion, a process of adequate education and discipline, resulting
in the progressive outgrowing of one's self into the mental and
spiritual stature of efficient leadership. Neither do I conceive
of leadership as an abstract entity, or something you can isolate,
objectify, and gaze at, quite apart from human usefulness and
specific functioning. As I do not accept the old "formal-disci-
pline" theory of education, "mental discipline in general"
means little or nothing to me. And just as I cannot believe
in "general training of the judgment," for instance, I take little
stock in leadership in general as a personal asset or endowment.
Leadership is revealed only in specific functioning.
However, I think that there are five elemental factors which
are always found in some degree in leadership. They seem to
me essential in all kinds of worth-while leadership. They are
knowledge, power, skill, character, and vision — knowledge, the
result of study and instruction, the master}^ and' correlation of
facts; power, the result of personal development, the storing
of vital energy in personality ; skill, the result of training, power
guided by knowledge and made facile through practice; char-
acter, the moral element essential in all genuine leadership, the
resultant of moral living, "an organized set of good habits of
reaction"; and vision, the result of living the climbing life and
developing constructive imagination. It is the leader's vision
which steadies our confidence in him ; for we trust only the leader
who can see things whole and in their relations.
Rural Life Needs the Best. I make no apology for trying to
apply these high ideals of leadership to the social needs of
country life. Oberlin College was named eighty-three years ago
for a great Alsatian community leader and philanthropist, Jean
Frederic Oberlin, who had died seven years before that date
after a long career of usefulness. He was an educational
prophet anticipating Froebel by forty years in his own specialty.
He was perhaps the greatest country pastor in history. He was
a community builder, a civilization restorer, whose services won
the medal of the Legion of Honor from his king, Louis XVIII.
He represented the flower of eighteenth-century French culture,
LEADERSHIP 597
with the best education the University of Strassburg could af-
ford, and he developed capacity for leadership in marked de-
gree ; but he consecrated this leadership on the obscure altar of
country life.
I have little patience with the hoary heresy that the city needs
leadership but the country can get along with mediocrity. Yet
this has been the general practice of the past two generations
in America. It is still largely true in relation to all the pro-
fessions. Too often the country is merely the colt's pasture for
the young minister, teacher, doctor, lawyer, journalist, etc.
The goal is the city when apprenticeship is over. Unfortunately
this is not ideal for either city or country. For any sort of
city social service the best place to do clinical work is in the
city itself, or time is wasted. And the obverse is equally true.
The ideal rural leadership is a whole-life service, devoted per-
manently to country life. I realize that at present financial
considerations seriously hamper this ideal. The result is that,
with our underpaid rural leadership, our underpaid country
teachers, ministers, doctors, etc., we are threatened to-day with
a peasant leadership in the country, undertrained and inferior in
all respects to their comrades in the city. This is what country
life is rapidly coming to unless the urban dwellers realize soon
their need of adequately paid and fully trained community
leaders. No movement can rise above the level of its leader-
ship. It is trite to say that rural progress is lagging because
of inadequately trained community leadership. The broaden-
ing of country life and its rising standards put increasing de-
mands upon its leaders which they are often unable to meet.
Rural institutions can no longer serve their communities ef-
fectively under the leadership of men lacking in the very es-
sentials of leadership. Some country communities of genuine
rural culture are demanding now as high-grade personality and
training in their leaders as the cities demand, and they naturally
refuse to respond to crude or untrained leadership. Our col-
leges meanwhile are educating thousands of country-bred boys
and girls and then lavishly sending them to the cities, where
all professions are already foolishly overcrowded. And in say-
ing this I realize fully that the country communities must be
willing to furnish a life-chance and a living wage to these bright
598 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
young people before they deserve to get them to invest their
lives in rural service.
I believe, then, that the first step in developing rural leader-
ship is not the training of the individual, but the training of the
rural community. Rural villages must be given higher ideals
of leadership and of community spirit before they will appreciate
and support the leadership they need. In every state of my
acquaintance the agricultural college is rising magnificently to
its opportunity in this regard, and to such colleges I believe we
must look primarily for help. They are probably growing more
rapidly than any other institution in America. They are not
only struggling to keep pace with the demands made upon them
for technically trained rural leaders, but through their varied
extension service and their short courses in the winter they are
also making great gains in spreading the gospel of the better
country life with higher community ideals.
In very many places this leaven is unquestionably working,
lifting rural life to higher levels. Every rural home which
catches the new vision becomes a center of social influence mak-
ing for better days. Every farm conducted on modern lines of
scientific agriculture is a demonstration center of great value.
To raise the economic level of farm life in the neighborhood is
a real gain in itself; but the by-products of such a demonstra-
tion are also noteworthy, such as the discovery by the less pro-
gressive that there is really a scientific basis underlying farm-
ing; that the cost and effort of education are justified by the
results; that the expert really knows, and that trained leader-
ship is worth while; in short, that the modern standards of
efficiency apply to rural as well as urban life. All this is giving
a new dignity to rural life. Farmers are rightly becoming more
class-conscious, and farm boys are finding a new interest and
a real pride in progressive fanning, as they discover the infinite
opportunity for technical skill involved in it, making it not a
mere matter of blind drudgery and a gamble with the weather,
as they had supposed.
By the same method of demonstration (the only method which
really convinces country people) community social standards can
also be raised, as communities come to know what lias actually
been accomplished in other communities that are more progres-
LEADERSHIP 599
sive, in securing popular cooperation in community enterprises
and building up a real socialization.
Volunteer Community Leadership. It is difficult to secure or
to support professional leaders for rural organizations, and when
the right sorts are found, they are usually only temporary. It
is extremely necessary to develop a volunteer leadership for all
local enterprises. This gives latent talents a chance to develop
through self-expression in social service, and it secures continuity
of leadership and stability of policy. ... I do not believe that
our problem of rural socialization will ever be solved finally by
outsiders. Resident forces must ultimately accomplish it. The
farmer himself and his natural leaders must take the burden
upon them. The farm-bureau agents now serving over 1,200
counties in the United States have a conspicuous opportunity in
this relation if they can only fit themselves to meet it. They
are exactly the people who could make the most of such courses
as were offered in the Cornell School for Leadership in Country
Life. It is evident that no single agency or type of agency will
be able to handle this matter successfully. All agencies involved
in rural redirection and in specific service in any field of country
life must share the burden. The rural department of the Young
Men's Christian Association, within rather narrow geographical
limits, is doing a fundamental and valuable work. Genuine
centers of education for rural life, centralized schools with
modern teachers and equipment, are rapidly meeting the com-
munity need. The new country church, the community-serv-
ing church, when you can find it, is making itself useful and re-
spected. The pity of it is that the rural church is too frequently
an arrested development, sadly weakened by divisions, in-
adequately equipped and manned, and lacking any social vision
and community program. The right kind of a church, led by
the right sort of a minister, has the best possible chance to serve
the community and to develop the latent leadership of ambitious,
right-minded boys and girls. But to accomplish this, united
Christian forces are essential. Sectarianism, that curse of rural
Christianity, must be crucified in order to save rural religion.
When the day comes that rural Christians are ashamed to be
Methodists or Baptists or Disciples because it prevents their
being community Christians, then we shall see more Christian
600 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
rural communities. There is great hope of the spread of the
community-church movement. From Atlantic to Pacific you
may find such churches, not simply undenominational union
churches with no outside connection and missionary outlet, but
a local union of churches as one congregation, having diversity
in unity, loyally meeting their denominational duties abroad,
but being an absolute unit in worship and community service
at home. Given this united Christian force instead of a jangle
of quarrelsome, competitive sects, and the community can afford
a living salary for a whole man, a manly man, for a minister,
a man with modern training and with the social vision. And
in such a community there is a man's job; it is a real oppor-
tunity for community building as well as religious teaching, and
they go well together. And not the least of such a count ry
minister's opportunities for usefulness is the training of the
latent leadership which he discovers in his young people. I
believe that an intelligent effort should be made to enlist and
train rural-minded young people for a life-investment in the
country and for some sort of community leadership, if they have
the capacity for it, rather than to encourage them to go to the
city, where many of them will be social misfits and partial fail-
ures. A fair share of country boys and girls must stay in the
country or city and country alike will suffer; and it must not
be the survival of the unfit, but the selection of those best fitted
for rural success and community service.
There has been such remarkable rural progress in the past
generation, and even during the present decade, that we have
no reason for pessimism for the future. The rank and file is
unquestionably rising; the leadership will surely be forthcom-
ing. Rural social organization has been fortunately simple.
I share with Professor Mann, of Cornell, the belief that an era
of organization is probably the next stage of the country-life
movement. With keen vision he suggests :
The new organizations will largely be farmer made and controlled. It is
the stage of organized self-help. It will be marked by an apparently rapid
shift from individualism to a social consciousness and sense of copartner-
ship. The welding process is on. Group spirit is accumulating. Fanners
as individuals will become less independent; farmers as a class will be-
come more independent. Evidences of personal and group power, large
LEADERSHIP 601
grasp, and achievement will be outstanding. In reality the farmer will
be seen coming into his own. Leaders of this awakened rural manhood
must be clear-thinking, direct, and of superior intelligence; and their
foundations must be laid in a sure understanding of economic and social
laws and of folk psychology superimposed on reliable farm knowledge.
Expert service will win leadership ; our task is to develop rural
experts.
SEAMAN A. KNAPP *
ESSEX COUNTY, N. Y., gave to America one of the greatest men
that has lived in this or in any age. This man was Seaman A.
Knapp, born in December 16, 1833. It was no part of his great
work to lead armies, guide political parties, or write essays on
the theory of government and the rights of man. His achieve-
ments were greater. He sought freedom and independence in
the soil, and he found both, and gave them to the world.
A sketch of the first seventy years of his life is merely the
story of his preparation for a great career. Dr. Wallace
Buttrick summed it up by saying, ' ' Seventy years of preparation
for seven years of work" — a work that is referred to by Dr.
Walter H. Page, the Ambassador to England, as "the greatest
single piece of constructive educational work in this or any age. ' '
As a boy he took advantage of such schools as were available
in that early day in the country districts of New York. Later
he entered and graduated from Union College, Schenectady,
N. Y. He taught school for several years after graduating.
But at the age of thirty-two he moved to Vinton, Iowa, and
settled on a farm. There he regained his health and vigor.
During the sojourn in Iowa Dr. Knapp was called to manage
several lines of work, all of which were good training for the
greater work yet to be done. He established a farm paper.
There were few such papers in the country at that time. He,
with others, conducted an agricultural campaign. The first
course in Agriculture in the Iowa College was organized and the
graduation of the first class took place during his incumbency
as professor and president.
i Adapted from U. S. Bureau of Education Bui. No. 43, Washington, 1913,
pp. 26-29.
602 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Another crisis in Dr. Knapp 's life came about this time. His
health gave way under a severe attack of rheumatism. Phy-
sicians said he must give up college work. Turning his face to
the sunny South he organized a great development company,
bought a million acres of land in southwest Louisiana and sent
invitations all over the Northwest, "Come South, young men,
and grow up with the country." Several thousand came. For
many years he had believed that the South was destined for a
wonderful future. He said, "Here is a people of pure Anglo-
Saxon stock, energetic but conservative, without much admixture
of foreign blood. These people should be the conservators of
the best American traditions. Here is a productive soil, de-
lightful climate, and long growing seasons."
He at once began to conduct demonstrations in rice growing
and diversified farming for benefit of native farmers and immi-
grants. In 1898, however, he was authorized by the Secretary
of Agriculture to visit China, Japan, and the Philippines, to
make rice investigations. In 1901 he made a second trip to
the Orient; he went to Europe in 1901 to study agricultural
conditions, and later to Porto Rico to report on agricultural
resources and possibilities.
His training was complete 'after seventy years of study to begin
his great work. In 1903 the Mexican boll weevil began to make
such destruction in the Texas cotton fields that Dr. Knapp was
sent into Texas to fight its deadly ravages. He began by
organizing the farmers and instituting the Farmers' Cooperative
Work. Dr. Knapp visited one small farm near Terrell, Tex.,
about twice a month and directed operations there. Neigh-
boring farmers met him in field meetings. At the close of
the year he had proved that cotton could be grown in the face
of the boll weevil, and was urged to extend his teachings and
his methods throughout the whole country devastated by the
pest. The next year, with funds furnished by Congress and by
local business men, he appointed a few agents and began to or-
ganize different counties in Texas. The work soon attracted
the attention of the country. Congress enlarged its appropri-
ation, local aid was increased, and the work was extended to
Louisiana and Mississippi. About this time the General Edu-
cation Board of New York asked to be allowed to appropriate
LEADERSHIP 603
money for similar work in other cotton States. In a few short
years this great work had covered the entire South, had a force
of 1,000 agents, an enrollment of 100,000 farmers, 75,000 boys
in the corn clubs, and 25,000 girls in the canning clubs. Every
State in the South began to show an increase in the average corn
production per acre, as well as other crops, and southern corn
club boys attracted the attention of the world by producing
more than 200 bushels of corn to the acre at low cost. Girls,
too, demonstrated practical, scientific work in garden and home.
During the year of his death, Russia, Brazil, England, South
Africa, and Argentina sent representatives to this country to
study the demonstration work. Sir Horace Plunkett, the great
Irish reformer, came for the same purpose, arid at the request
of the King of Siam, Dr. Knapp sent one of his agents to take
charge of agricultural matters in that country.
Dr. Knapp died in Washington, D. C., April 1, 1911. But he
lived long enough after this important work was begun to see
something of the wonderful results. Although his work was
confined chiefly to the Southern States of America, every State
and nearly every nation has felt his influence.
HENRY WALLACE *
HERBERT QUICK
IOWA has given to the nation three great figures in agriculture,
who were also a trio of bosom friends. The names of these three
are Henry Wallace, James Wilson and Seaman A. Knapp.
James Wilson made the Department of Agriculture, and served
as its secretary for so long that he was dubbed "The Irre-
movable. ' '
Seaman A. Knapp went to Washington with his friend Wilson,
and became, in my opinion, the greatest educator this country
has produced. He took advantage of a law appropriating funds
for fighting the cotton-boll weevil, and began teaching the
i Adapted from the Country Gentleman, Vol. 81, p. 737, April 1, 1916.
604 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
farmers of the South the importance of diversified farming if
they were to escape ruin. He fought the weevil of the cotton
boll by starting the South on her change from cotton alone to
cotton, corn and live-stock. And incidentally out of his work
grew the gigantic, nation-wide farm-demonstration movement
through county agents.
When Wilson and Knapp went from Iowa to Washington,
Wallace stayed in Des Moines and devoted himself to his life-
long work as editor of Wallace's Farmer.
Two of the trio have passed over the river. Dr. Knapp
died in the harness two or three years ago, full of years, honors
and good deeds. Uncle Henry Wallace has just joined him in
the ranks of the great majority. He leaves vacant in American
life a position so unique that, though he was not at the time of
his death, nor was ever, so far as I am aware, the holder of a
public office, his loss will be felt more keenly than would that
of a thousand men who have been elevated to places of eminence
by the votes of the people or by appointment.
Henry Wallace will be remembered by the farmers and many
others when the great mass of governors, senators, congressmen,
justices of the Supreme Court, and cabinet officers of the day
are forgotten. For he worked with the people, not over them.
He was a Pennsylvanian who as a young man identified him-
self with the farming interests of the Middle West. The writer
was born in Iowa, and is no longer young, but he does not
remember the time when Henry Wallace was not a strong, quiet,
uplifting force in that state His strength was exerted like that
of a growing tree, which heaves the ground under its roots by
the power which it drinks in through its branches out-spread
in the sky. Nothing can resist such a force, because it is patient,
unceasing, tireless, and always bears upward against the gross
things with which it contends. Like the tree, too, Uncle Henry
was strong because his roots were in the soil.
He was a good writer, but he never tried to shine as a fine
writer. He chose the field of Iowa journalism at a time when
its prospects for usefulness were far brighter than its chances
of business success — mainly, I suspect, because he was a preacher.
He had been a minister of the Gospel, and wanted to preach
to the farmers of the country along different lines from those
LEADERSHIP 605
usually followed in the pulpit. He believed the truth should
be emphasized that good farming is a good way of serving God,
and that passing down to future generations a well-kept farm,
unimpaired in fertility and adapted to the nourishment of a
happy, wholesome life, is in itself an act of worship and the
best possible sort of partnership in the purposes of the Almighty,
who the Scriptures assure us gave the earth to the children of
men.
He believed, and for much more than a generation he taught
every week to many thousands of his followers, that the earth
God gave to the children of men was given not to this generation
only, to be mined, robbed, exploited and ruined by greed, but to
all future generations of the children of men as well; and that
to rob mankind a thousand years hence is just as bad as to rob
our neighbors to-day.
Who is thy neighbor? Those on earth to-day only? No, said
Uncle Henry, thy neighbor is the human being who comes after
thee just as truly as is the one who walks at thy side.
It was this philosophy which made him the president of the
National Conservation Congress, and constituted him a tower
of strength to the Conservation movement. It needs him to-day
more than ever before, and will suffer by his loss. He wanted
the coal, the lands, the minerals, the gas, the oils, the forests
and the water power of the nation conserved for the use of the
children of men to whom they were given, and not for some
of the children of men. But mainly he spoke for the soil.
In a little book, "Letters to the Farm Folk," published not
long before his death, he said in a passage on the social life of
the country people:
But, you say, this would make us all stockmen. Well, that's what we
ought to be, and will have to be sooner or later, if we are to have any
satisfactory social life in the country. Growing grain for sale off the
land starved the soil. I am speaking now for the voiceless land. It will
not feed you unless it is fed; we will then become poorer and more dis-
couraged; and how can we have any satisfactory social life among poorly
fed and discouraged people?
Do you think Uncle Henry in this passage was speaking of
a danger of to-morrow only? Not so. He saw when he wrote
this passage all the centuries of the future. He was in the
(306 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Corn Belt, as I was, at a time when it was the common utter-
ance of many farmers that their soil did not need manure,
and that it was cheaper to move the sheds than to haul the
manure.
He lived to see the question of fertility a growing one. He
lived to see the need of commercial fertilizers cross the Mississippi,
in spots — and he spoke, as he did as president of the National
Conservation Congress, as he always did, "for the voiceless
soil."
There is a revelation as to the bent of our old friend's mind in
that expression, "the voiceless soil." To him the soil was not
dead at all, only dumb. It was the stuff of human life. Sow it
with dragon's teeth, and it will produce a crop of armed men
who will fall upon and destroy one another.
Ignorance, injustice, oppression — these are the dragon's teeth
with which our American soil must not be sown or they will
spring up armed men like those who are destroying each other
in the Old World to-day. In the preface of this little book,
which is his last word to the farm folks of America, Uncle Henry
said:
The conviction has been growing upon me of late years that the biggest
thing on the farm is not the land nor the live-stock, but the farm folk, the
people who live on the farm and out in the open country. These letters
therefore will not be agricultural, but human. Do you know that the big-
gest thing in life, whether in city or country, is just to be a fine human
being interested in all things that interest or should interest human beings?
SLOGAN CENTERED ABOUT HAPPINESS
His slogan for years was Good Farming, Clear Thinking, Clean
Living, but it centered about the welfare and happiness of
people. Good farming, that the life of the family might be a
well-nourished life economically, and that the soil be conserved;
clear thinking, that it might be intellectual, and not like that of
sheep and goats that nourish a blind life upon the soil; clean
living, because the life that is not based upon righteousness rots
and makes both good farming and clear thinking impossible.
On this all-embracing text did Uncle Henry Wallace preach
quietly, persistently, sanely and effectively for decades to one
of the greatest audiences in America. What greater pulpit
LEADERSHIP 607
could he have chosen ? Who can estimate the effect this preach-
ing has had in sweetening and uplifting our national life, and
shall have for generations to come? For thought does not die
with the thinker. What shall a man do to have eternal life?
Do as Uncle Henry Wallace did.
Even in this world, such a man 's thoughts live in other minds
to all ages. "Our echoes roll from soul to soul, and grow for-
ever and forever." They may be evil echoes or good ones.
Those of Uncle Henry will be good.
He knew the soil. He not only knew that the soil, instead of
being dead, is literally teeming with life — he also understood
its moods.
Did you ever read one of his articles on some phase of soil
management? Suppose, for instance, it was on the subject
of clods; he made it interesting and always useful. He knew
why the soil gets cloddy, and just how harmful clods are to
crops. He knew the beneficence of tilth; the secrets of the
warm, air-filled seed bed were open to his mind. In his mind
the soil had place as the universal friend of humanity, and
through him the voiceless soil found utterance for its claims.
Uncle Henry was a very, very wise man; for he added to
those of his own long life the experiences of others. He knew
his Corn Belt well, and all the better because he knew other
regions and other lands. In order that he might better know
Iowa, he studied England, Germany and Denmark.
He was one of those leaders of our agricultural thought who
almost tremble at the increase in tenant farming, caused by the
flocking of successful farmers and farm families to town. The
"retired farmer," rusting out a short life in town, was to him
a national problem; and the transient, year-to-year tenant was
an equally grave one. He once wrote:
At present the law allows the tenant to rob the land or, in other words,
to starve it. The law would put the tenant in jail if he starved his horses
or cattle, but we allow him to starve the land.
The law would put the landlord in jail if he confiscated the horses of the
tenant, but we allow him to confiscate the fertility which the first-class
tenant stores in the soil, and seem to think it is all right. The law would
put the tenant in jail if he sold the personal property of the landlord, but
we are likely to approve the robbery of the fertility which the retired
farmer had stored in the soil when the farm was his home.
608 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
•
The English Government has solved the problem in Scotland and England
by compelling the tenant to put back into the land the manurial equivalent
of the grains/ he sells off it; by preventing him from selling straw and
roots, which must be fed to live-stock on the farm; by compelling the land-
lord to pay the tenant for the manurial value of the food-stuffs he has
purchased and fed to the live-stock, or else let him stay until he has used
up this fertility; and also by forbidding the landlord to raise the rent be-
cause of improvements the tenant has made.
During his later years he seldom spoke without mentioning this
matter; but did Uncle Henry advocate the passage of such laws
in this country ? No ; but he did urge American farmers — ten-
ants and landlords — to think about these things, talk them over,
and study the problem. No law, he always urged, is worth any-
thing until it has public opinion behind it.
He hoped for the amendment of the landlord's lien laws so
as not to be so severe on the tenants; he hoped for the passage
of laws giving the tenant a claim, if his lease was not renewed,
for the fertility that he had placed in the soil.
Mostly he hoped for these as beginnings. They would tend
to stop this everlasting moving about, and make rural society
more stable, so as to make better schools, better churches, better
neighborhoods.
Uncle Henry is gone, but he leaves behind him something for
us all to consider — his thoughts, his doctrines, his methods, and,
most of all, the fine and noble lesson of his life.
There were no years of * ' retirement ' ' for him. He was splen-
didly active to the very end.
He was a successful man. I am glad to write that. He died
rather well off, I think; but that is of small consequence — he
was successful anyhow, for he lived a life of activity, doing
work which most writers would have called drudgery, but which
to him was interesting because he saw all there was in it.
Like Joe Wing, whose life his very much resembled, he made
a success of devoting himself to writing and speaking for the
farming interests, for farm living.
I wish the lives of Uncle Henry Wallace and Joseph E. Wing
could be read and studied by every farm boy in the United
States.
They were both soldiers of the common good, ennoblers of
the common life — and both of them proved that big men may
LEADERSHIP 609
build great careers out of the materials which surround every
fanner's son in the land.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LEADERSHIP
Boardman, John R. Community Leadership. Bureau for Leader-
ship Training, N. Y., 1914.
Butterfield, K. L. Training of Rural Leaders. Survey, 33 : 13-14,
Oct. 3, 1914.
Campbell, Walter J. Vital Problems in Rural Leadership. Interna-
tional Young- Men's Christian Association Press, Springfield, Mass.
Cooley, C. H. Human Nature and the Social Order, pp. 283-325,
Scribner, N. Y., 1902.
Crafts, Wilbur F. The Potential Resources of the South for Leader-
ship in Social Service. In the Call of the New South, pp. 311-
322, Proc. Southern Sociological Congress, Nashville, Tenn., 1912.
Gillette, John M. City Trend of Population and Leadership. The
Quarterly Journal of North Dakota, University, N. D., Oct., 1910.
Kirkpatrick, E. A. Fundamentals of Sociology, pp. 11-17. Hough-
ton, Boston, 1916.
Ross, E. A. Social Control, pp. 276-78, Macmillan, N. Y., 1901.
Social Psychology, pp. 32-5, Macmillan, N. Y., 1908.
Suzzallo, H. Inaugural Address of the President of the University
of Washington, School and Society, 3: 469-73, April 1, 1916.
Terman, L. M. A Preliminary Study of the Psychology and Pedagogy
of Leadership. Clark University Ped. Sem., 11 :" 413-451, Wor-
cester, 1904.
Wilson, Warren H. Leadership of the Community. In his The
Church of the Open Country, pp. 177-202, Missionary Education
Movement, N. Y., 1911.
CHAPTER XX
THE FIELD OF RUKAL SOCIOLOGY
THE SOCIOLOGY OF RURAL LIFE *
A. R. MANN
SOCIOLOGY is the study of human experience. It views the
problems of life from the standpoint of their effects on the
quality of the human beings who inhabit the earth. In its ap-
proach to the great industrial problems of the day, for example,
it subordinates the important questions of how may production
be increased most efficiently and economically to what it regards
as the ultimate question of the effect of the organization of indus-
try, of the hours, wages, and conditions of labor, on the persons
who perform that labor. We say that sociology concerns itself
with the human values rather than with the material values.
Not that the sociologist disregards the importance of the
material values, or the production of wealth. He knows how
indispensable these are, and how essential it is that the processes
of wealth production shall be perfected for the good of the race.
(He is concerned with every factor which promotes or retards
industrial efficiency. But his concern is not for increased output
and more wealth for the sake of the wealth, but for the sake of
the persons whose lives are bettered either in the production
or in the use of that wealth. When the sociologist contends
for an increase in wages, the end he has in mind is not that the
workman may have a larger pay check and more money in his
purse, but that he may be able to safeguard the health of his
family better, may educate his children, may gain some release
from the mere struggle for existence to devote to personal devel-
opment. Not the accumulation of wealth, but the enlargement
and refinement of personality is the end the sociologist seeks;
i Adapted from The Cornell Countryman, Vol, XIV, No. 6, pp. 459-461,
March, 1917.
610
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 611
and he judges everything by the criterion of its effect on human
personality.
One of the first obstacles which confronts the sociologist is
to clear the path so that the real end may be distinguished from
the means for the accomplishment of that end. The besetting
sin of a great deal of our present conduct of life is that we are
prone to regard as the ends of all our endeavors those things
which are merely means to higher ends. We hear it said that
the end for which we are working in agriculture is to make
farming more productive and more profitable. When we have
attained that end, however, we have reached only a way station ;
the terminal lies beyond, and more prosperous farming becomes
the means to enable the farmer to share more largely in the
higher enjoyments of civilization. We seek better farming
that we may have better farmers; we aspire to greater material
resources that we may add to the abundance of human resources.
What we have just said means that there is recognized a dis-
tinction between what are primarily economic considerations and
what are primarily sociological considerations.
We may carry the discussion a step further in the hope of
making our point a little clearer. Economics was early defined
as the science of wealth. Sociology was first defined as the sci-
ence of society. Economics takes for its field the consideration
of the effect of all the processes on the production, distribution,
and consumption of wealth. Sociology claims as its province
the effect of all the processes on the human beings themselves.
This is a rather broad distinction, and closer analysis will show
many points of contact. It is apparent that the sociologist and
the economist must both deal with the same sorts of things, but
from different points of view. Transportation interests the
economist because of its bearing on the economic activities of
farming. It interests the sociologist because it is a means of
communication, of social intercourse, of promoting the asso-
ciational activities of the people, and of increasing the satisfac-
tions of life. The economist may be interested in good roads
because of their effect on land values, on the costs of production
and distribution, or on the type of farming which may be prac-
ticed. The sociologist is interested in good roads because they
determine the amount of concourse of a neighborhood; the
612 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
friendly visiting, the exchange of ideas, the discussion of com-
munity affairs, the removal of isolation and the promotion of
fellowship, the attendance on school and church and social or-
ganizations, the accessibility of entertainments and recreational
facilities.
The sociologist thinks of people, not as separate individuals,
but in their group activities and relationships — how they act in
the presence of one another and how they react on one another ;
what brings them together or holds them apart ; how each is
molded by his group ; and how he helps to mold the group ;
what is the motive force in any given group activity ; how strong
that force is and how it may be directed.
The sociology of rural life is, roughly, then, the study of the
associated or group activities of the people who live in the coun-
try viewed from the standpoint of the effect of those activities
on the character of the farm people themselves. It recognizes
as the final term in the whole country -life enterprise the farmer
himself. It involves the consideration of the means, agencies,
and methods, by which the fanner can realize in himself the
best there is in human experience. Instead of subscribing to
the doctrine that we "raise more corn to feed more hogs to
buy more land to raise more corn" in endless succession, it con-
tends that we improve our farming that we may improve each
generation of farmers in endless succession. When we attain
the end of raising corn and pork and potatoes it is that these
may become the means for developing a more healthy, contented,
resourceful, intelligent, and upstanding farm people. Our ulti-
mate goal is a progressively finer rural manhood and womanhood,
not merely a greater or more paying output of farm products.
We cannot have a higher rural civilization except as we have
advancement in the material resources of life. We are under
necessity of improving agriculture by every device which art and
science can discover that we may promote human well-being.
Conditions in the open country have not grown any worse
since we began talking about them. It is when thought is given
to how conditions may be improved that their shortcomings come
to light. Rural sociology, if we may use that term for tem-
porary convenience, takes cognizance of all of these shortcomings
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 613
and seeks to discover means of correcting them so that country
folk may live most contentedly and wholesomely. All the social
handicaps and whatever contributes in any way to social poverty
comes up for examination to see why it exists, on what it rests,
and how it is to be adjusted. The social deficiencies come up
prominently for attention. But the student of rural social
conditions is as much concerned with promoting the prevailing,
or normal, standards into progressively higher ones as he is in
calling attention to the maladjustments in the situation.
The present widespread interest in rural conditions grew out
of the discovery that certain conditions were not as satisfactory
as they ought to be and that they were capable of being improved.
And so we find ourselves following the normal procedure in the
correction of social deficiencies, namely, by first calling attention
to them, stimulating discussion, creating public interest, and
crystallizing public sentiment into specific measures for ameliora-
tion. This was the great service which the Commission on Coun-
try Life, of which former Director Bailey was the chairman, ren-
dered to the country. It was the work of this Commission which
stimulated and energized the latent interest in the social welfare
of the American farm people.
Most of our agricultural teaching is an application of the
physical and natural sciences to the practical problems of the
farm. In this newer field of thought having to do with social
and economic conditions, we find the application of the no less
important social sciences to the affairs of the farmer. And it can
be said with truth that farmers themselves are as much concerned
with the general social, economic, and political questions of the
day as they are in the application of physical and biological
science to the business of tilling the soil.
It is only recently, however, that much attention has been
given to rural social science in our colleges of agriculture. But
the interest has arisen so rapidly since the Commission on
Country Life called attention to the importance of these ques-
tions that now sixty-four per cent, of the separate state uni-
versities teach the subject in some form and under one title or
another. This new attitude on the part of the agricultural col-
leges was well expressed by President Benjamin Ide Wheeler in
an address before the Association of American Agricultural
614 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Colleges and Experiment Stations at Berkeley last August, when
he said, * ' Our business is ultimately a sociological business. Con-
siderations of soil technology but scratch the surface. What we
are busied with here is trying to find out how to adjust this soil
to the use of families." Or, as President Butterfield puts it,
"The improved acre must yield not only corn but civilization,
not only potatoes but culture, not only wheat but effective man-
hood."
In barest outline this describes the field which the sociologist
regards as his province and indicates the general character of
the problems which the student of the sociology of rural life
finds so extremely absorbing; and it may serve to answer the
editor's question as to the meaning of the subject. The study
of this vast field has scarcely yet been entered upon and its
conquests lie ahead of us.
THE SCOPE OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY1
JOHN M. GILETTE
RURAL sociology, by reason of its very nature, is obliged to
regard agricultural phenomena in their collective bearing or
community aspect. All social phenomena are interesting objects
of study and their treatment may be necessary as causal foun-
dations. But those which relate to the determination of progress,
which manifest in what manner the estate of the mass of men
may be improved and how a more balanced functioning of society
at large may be secured, are regarded as the most worthy of
attention.
The first point of attack concerns rural responses to physical
conditions. Variations in temperature, soil, and precipitation
are, to a great extent, responsible for differentiating the United
States into distinct agricultural regions by reason of the differ-
ences in crop responses. Crop responses, in turn, largely decide
the forms of agriculture, stock-raising, dairying, large and small
farming, and the density of population. Climatic conditions,
i Adapted from American Sociological Society Publications, Vol. XI,
166-180, 1016.
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 615
the crop response, the forms of agriculture, and the density
of population are strong determinants of the forms and extent
of sociability and the amount of leisure. Climatic conditions
and crop responses are also influential in directing the flow
of immigration and the establishment of immigrant communities.
While not immediately responsible for what rural life becomes,
geographic factors have a large share in shaping them and are
the ultimate conditioning factors.
Perhaps the second center of consideration is that of popula-
tion. The amount of the national, as well as of the rural, pop-
ulation is determined by the land. The density of the popula-
tion rests on access to the land and involves attention to land
ownership. The problem of tenancy may be considered here or
under production. National and race elements in the population
are significant for unity, cooperation, and progress. Distribu-
tion and density give rise to problems of isolation and coopera-
tion. Gains and losses of population may denote a healthy or
a morbid state and have import for nation and locality. Atten-
tion to the amount and causes of losses is imperative. Rates
of natural increase of rural inhabitants are symptomatic of
physical and social conditions. Proportions of age and sex
hint at the productive efficiency and the marital state of rural
peoples.
A third center of interest is that of production, production in
the economic sense. Rural sociology is interested in certain
phases of production only as they condition the various funda-
mental activities of rural communities. It does not regard wealth
production as an end in itself, but as an essential foundation of a
larger existence. Hence, it must inquire in what way such fac-
tors as the following have a determining influence among rural
populations: per capita and per family production; extensive
and intensive farming; capitalistic or large farming versus
farming by small owners; farm ownership; farm tenancy; con-
ditions of labor •. marketing ; rural credit. Closely related topics
are taxation, the various forms of insurance, including accident
insurance, and savings-account systems. The possibility of
securing a better adjustment relative to many of these factors
is worthy of study.
A fourth point of attack is communication. Roads, systems
616 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
of road construction, local, state, and national systems of reg-
ulation, rural mail delivery, telephones, rural parcel post, inter-
urban lines, automobiles, every means by which social activities
are transacted and furthered, demand attention in the ratio
of their importance. The creation of means of communication
appears to lie near the heart of the evolution of society. Good
roads and quickened transit may introduce a new rural society.
But there is also a reverse side to the shield which must be re-
garded. With their power to quicken the community pulse,
these agencies likewise possess a tremendous thrusting power
toward urban life. It is conceivable that some sort of derural-
ization may be the outcome of improved communication.
A fifth center of interest is that of health. I do not stop to
argue that rural health conditions have social import. That is
conceded. These questions arise : How does health in the country
where the facts are not so well known compare with that in the
city where the facts are better known? To what unsanitary
conditions are rural diseases due ? What are effective and valid
remedial measures? What devices and agencies are best adapted
to reach the rural mind, respecting health and sanitation?
A sixth important consideration concerns neighborhood insti-
tutions and organizations. Perhaps the rural home and the
family demand more attention than we have accorded them. The
domestic institution in the country has its own peculiar prob-
lems. Some of the domestic concerns needing investigation
and discussion are : the family system of control, whether patri-
archal or modern ; the home atmosphere and facilities for home
satisfactions; woman's work, hours of labor, and the facilities
for carrying on the work ; her leisure and opportunities for
recreation, association, and culture; rural child labor, perhaps
the largest aspect of national child labor; the ethical basis of
the participation of women and children in the agricultural
process ; educational, recreational, and associational facilities and
privileges of country children.
The various neighborhood institutions and organizations of
the country, as the community framework and the agencies of
prosecuting the essential activities, deserve careful study. Those
organizations which deal with economic production exclusively
should be considered under production to the degree that they
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 617
are seen to influence activities generally. Their social phases
as such may find a place here at discretion. Relative to the
institutions of long standing, the church and the school, we must
inquire relative to each : Is it an efficient institution, when judged
in the light of the community function it should perform?
This supposes that we know what each of these agencies should
accomplish. We apprehend this to the degree that we have
arrived at a competent judgment as to the demands society at
large and the local community make upon them. Upon the basis
of this judgment, the investigator may proceed to formulate a
program for school and church, which, if executed, will trans-
form them into more serviceable agencies of community life.
Certain notable agencies and organizations have appeared in
the rural affairs of our nation during relatively recent years.
In the list may be mentioned granges, unions, societies of equity,
cooperative buying and marketing organizations, institutes,
farmers' clubs, non-partisan leagues, and recreation associations.
The function of the rural sociologist is to evaluate their useful-
ness for social progress, to denote their limitations, to suggest
needed modifications and how greater efficiency may be secured.
It is also his function to make an inventory of the social resources
of country communities and to reveal how the social capital may
be increased.
A seventh significant line of study is the pathological social
conditions of country life. The phrase is objectionable, but it
covers important facts, such as poverty, pauperism, insanity,
feeble-mindedness, and criminality. "While in some particulars
the country appears to better advantage than urban groups, in no
case is it within the limit of complete safety. Rural populations
are exceedingly behindhand in giving serious attention to the
scientific and preventive methods of handling these menacing
phenomena. As in many other fields of investigation and study
of rural conditions, there is a dearth of reliable information rel-
ative to the frequency of occurrence and the provocative factors
of these features. Real statesmanlike insight into devising appro-
priate and effective laws and instruments for exercising a safe
control and the gradual reduction or complete elimination of these
backward classes is sorely demanded. Extreme pauperism may
be infrequent, the social evil as a local institution may scarcely
618 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
exist, and all the insane may have been placed in hospitals ; but a
sane method of dealing with juvenile delinquency and of reaching
the multitudes of epileptics and feeble-minded scattered among
rural populations who are menacing the future by unrestricted
procreation are among the most pressing imperatives.
An eighth center of interest is the psychology of the rural
social mind. As a scientific curio the rural mind may be inter-
esting to the highest degree. But its scientific understanding is
more worthy because any approach to rural betterment and
progress must be founded upon it. The psychological interpre-
tation of that great urbanward movement, which sweeps from
300,000 to 400,000 persons a year from country to city, should
prove most significant and fruitful. It 'is desirable also that
the rural mind be studied to discover its avenues of appeal, for
all steps in rural progress are conditioned by an educational pro-
gram of presentation and discussion. In order that rural ad-
vance shall take place, it is likewise requisite that the social
mind of the country neighborhoods be inoculated with the germs
of aspiration and expectation of better things. The means and
methods of reaching the rural intelligence which are specifically
adapted to its characteristics must be discovered and developed.
The ninth group of considerations deal with semi-rural and
town-country communities and their problems. The situation in
towns and villages of less than 2,500 inhabitants, such groups
of population being usually included with rural groups, is de-
cidedly distinct from that prevailing in the open country. A
study of conditions peculiar to these groups, the deficits existing,
the effect of these on the developing youth, especially, and their
correctives would appear to be worthy of the highest consid-
eration. The town-country communities, the small town together
with its surrounding agricultural district, present some specially
interesting problems. There needs to be attention given to the
possibility and methods of developing a larger and more vital
cooperation between the two sides of such neighborhoods.
Tenth, some attention should be devoted to the relation of
country to city. Since the influence of country upon city appears
to be directly less than that of city upon country, it is appropriate
for the rural sociologist to draw this group of considerations
within his survey. The characteristic differences between the
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 619
two types of community, their advantages and disadvantages for
purposes of complete living, and their reactions upon each other
would constitute some of the germane and more important in-
quiries.
Eleventh, it will probably be agreed that instruction in rural
sociology should include matters pertinent to making investiga-
tions and surveys. If any advance is to take place among agri-
cultural peoples there must first occur an adequate inventory of
conditions obtaining among such populations. It is quite un-
reasonable to expect development along right lines without ad-
equate knowledge. The training and equipment of a leadership
which is able to rise to the importance of its task is a part of
the function to be exercised by departments and courses which
deal with the social situation. In the preparation of such a
leadership what could prove more provocative of ultimate ad-
vance in rural life than a development of the ability to inves-
tigate, to survey, and to interpret the results with a view to
securing the introduction of an improved social system?
THE TEACHING OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY:
PARTICULARLY IN THE LAND-
GRANT COLLEGES AND
UNIVERSITIES 1
DWIGHT SANDERSON
THE late professor C. R. Henderson seems to have been the
first to offer a course on rural social life in this country. In
the announcements of the Department of Sociology of the Uni-
versity of Chicago for 1894-95 there appeared :
"31. Social Conditions in American Rural Life. Some problems of
amelioration, presented by life on American farms and in villages will be
considered. M. First Term. Winter Q. Associate Professor Henderson."
The Quarterly Calendar (Vol. III. No. 4) shows that sixteen
students were registered in the first class. From that time
until two or three years before his death, Professor Henderson
i Adapted from American Sociological Society Publications, Vol. XI, 181-
208, 19 10.
620 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
gave the course almost every summer, though the name was
changed to " Rural Communities."
... In the fall of 1902 Kenyon L. Butterfield was made
instructor in rural sociology at the University of Michigan and
gave his first course in that subject. In 1903 Mr. Butterfield
called attention to the importance of the study of the social
sciences by agricultural students in an article entitled "An
Untilled Field in American Agricultural Education," in which
he defined rural social science and outlined its content. In 1904
as president of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and
Mechanic Arts he gave the first course in rural sociology given
in any of the land-grant colleges.
.... Among the replies received, 35 have stated definitely when
the course was first given at that institution. By years, they
may be summarized as follows: 1894-5, Univ. Chicago; 1902,
Univ. Michigan ; 1904-5, R. I. College, and Cornell Univ. ; 1906-7,
Univ. Missouri and Mass. Agr. College ; 1908-9, Univ. No. Dakota ;
1910-11, 2 institutions; 1911-12, 2; 1912-13, 4; 1913-14, 5;
1914-15, 8; 1915-16, 5; 1916-17, 2 (announced). It seems safe
to infer that probably not over a dozen institutions were teach-
ing rural sociology prior to 1910, and that fully half of those
now offering courses have established them within the last three
years.
Sixty-four per cent, of the 48 land-grant colleges; 45 per
cent, of the 20 state universities — separate from land-grant
colleges; 32 per cent, of the 91 normal schools and 9 per
cent, of 300 other colleges arid universities; or 21 per cent,
of the total 459 institutions examined are teaching rural
sociology. It is obvious that in sparsely settled states like
Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico, there should be but little
demand for this subject, but it seems odd that agricultural states
like Nebraska and South Carolina should not have a single insti-
tution teaching this subject. It is also interesting to note that
the subject finds but little appreciation in the curricula of eastern
institutions. Thus of the 148 institutions in the fifteen states
of the Atlantic seaboard but 20, or 13 per cent., gave in-
struction in rural sociology and seventeen of these were land-
grant colleges, for of the ninety-five private colleges and uni-
versities in these states only three, Harvard University (and
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 621
Radcliffe College), Syracuse University, and Adelphi College
give courses.
DEFINITIONS— RURAL SOCIOLOGY 1
"RURAL sociology is the study of the forces and conditions of
rural life as a basis for constructive action in developing and
maintaining a scientifically efficient civilization in the country."
—PAUL L. VOGT, Department of Church and Country Life, M. E.
Church.
"Rural sociology is a study of the social forces and factors
operating in rural life with a view to its more adequate organ-
ization."— JOHN PHELAN, Massachusetts Agricultural College.
"The study of the forces and activities — institutional and non-
institutional — which are concerned with the evolution, organ-
ization, and improvement of rural life." — L. L. BERNARD, Uni-
versity of Minnesota.
"Rural sociology is concerned with the evolution, present
status, and suggested betterment of rural social institutions." —
A. S. HARDING, South Dakota Agricultural College.
* ' Rural sociology is a study of men living together in the
country, and of the forces and factors which are acted upon
by men and which react upon them in their reaction with one
another." — GEORGE H. VONTUNGELN, Iowa State College.
"Rural sociology is a science of the reciprocal relations of
human beings living in rural communities. It also considers
the reciprocal relations of rural and urban communities." —
ERNEST BURNHAM, Western State Normal School, Kalamazoo,
Mich.
"A study of institutions and groups of community life in the
open country." — E. L. HOLTON, Kansas Agricultural College.
"A study of group actions and reactions of human nature
under country conditions." — E. C. BRANSON, University of North
Carolina.
"In general, it is applied sociology; specifically, a study of
i From Sanderson, "The Teaching of Rural Sociology : Particularly in
the land-grant colleges and universities," Publications of the American
Sociological Society, Vol. XI, 192-194.
622 RURAL SOCIOLOGY
rural conditions in the light of knowledge of society with a view
to discovering and suggesting ways of improving them." —
NEWELL SIMS, University of Florida.
"Exposition of the social problems of rural life with sug-
gestions for home and neighborhood amelioration." — G. CORAY,
University of Utah.
"Rural sociology is, therefore, concerned with the way in which
farm people live together in their neighborhoods and as a
class. It has to do with the reactions of human character under
rural environment. It includes a description of the associated
efforts that minister to the common desires, needs and purposes
of farm folk. It covers the problem of 'better living/ of
'country life' as a whole. It emphasizes the large needs and
methods of the common life of rural people. It involves the
question of the permanence of a satisfactory rural civilization
and of the social agencies or institutions, necessary to such a
civilization." — KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD, Massachusetts Agricul-
tural College.
"The sociology of rural life is, roughly, then, the study of
the associated or group activities of the people who live in the
country viewed from the standpoint of the effect cf those activ-
ities on. the character of the farm people themselves. It recog-
nizes as the final term in the whole country-life enterprise the
farmer himself. It involves the consideration of the means,
agencies and methods by which the farmer can realize in himself
the best there is in human experience." — A. R. MANN, Cornell
University.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bibliography of Rural Sociology. Department of Sociology, Durham,
N. H., New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic
Arts, 1914.
Country Life. Annals. Vol. 40, March, 1912.
Fleischer, H. W. Essential Factors of Rural Sociology. Purdue Agri-
culturist, 11 : 14-16, January, 1917.
Gillette, John M. Constructive Rural Sociology. Sturgis, N. Y., 1912.
The Scope and Methods of Instruction in Rural Sociology. Proceed-
ings of Amer. Sociological Society, 11 : 163-180, Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1917.
Groves, Ernest R. The Social Value of Rural Experience. In his
Rural Problems of To-day, Chap. 6, pp. 89-102, Assn. Press., N.
Y., 1918.
THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 623
Holt, Arthur E. Outline Study in Christianity and Rural Life Prob-
lems. Social Service Department, Congregational Church, Bos-
ton, Mass.
Phelan, John. Elements of Rural Sociology and Rural Economics.
(Revised edition.) Eau Claire Book Co., Eau Claire, Wis., 1913.
Sanderson, Dwight L. The Teaching of Rural Sociology: Partic-
ularly in the Land-Grant Colleges and Universities. Proceedings
of American Sociological Society, 11 : 181-208, 1916.
Smart, Thomas J. Training a Socialized Rural Leadership. Amer.
Journal Sociology, pp. 389-411, Jan., 1919.
Sociology of Rural Life. Publications of American Sociological So-
ciety. Volume XI. Chicago, 111., University of Chicago Press,
1916.
Vogt, Paul L. Introduction to Rural Sociology. Appleton, N. Y.,
1917.
Woods, A. F. Agricultural Education in Its Relation to Rural So-
ciology. American Journal Sociology, 17 : 657-68, March, 1912.
Woodsworth, J. S. Studies in Rural Life Citizenship. Secretary
Canadian Council of Agriculture, Winnipeg, Canada.
INDEX
Abandoned Farms, 19, 23, 300.
Adams Act, 386.
Agriculture: achievements necessary
to develop in America, 108-110;
after the war, 24 ; decline of in
New England, 16, 20; need of
a national policy toward, 95-
114; in rural school curriculum,
352-356.
Agriculture, correctional: Chap. XI,
283-303; bibliography, 311-312;
for epileptics, 290-295; for the
insane, 295-296; juvenile delin
quency, 297-303; prison farms,
283-290.
Aristocracy, agrarian, 145-146.
Art, rural, 248.
Arvold, Alfred G.
Drama for Rural Communities,
236-240.
Automobile, effect on farm life, 273-
274.
Bailey, L. H.
A Point of View on the Labor
Problem, 152-154.
Boys' and Girls' Contest Clubs, 391-
394.
Housing Conditions on Farms in
New York State, 331-333.
Rural Leadership, 584.
The Survey Idea in Country Life
Work, 478-^81.
Baker, George P.
What the Pageant Can Do for
the Town, 243-248.
Baker, Ray Stannard.
The Spirit of the Pioneer, 34-35.
The Great Southwest, 36-38.
Following the Color Line, 69-72.
Bashore, Harvey.
Overcrowding and Defective Hous-
ing, 329-331.
Bernard, L. L.
A Sociologist's Health Program
for a Rural Community, 185-
193.
Rehabilitating the Rural School,
340-345.
Betts, Geo. H. and Hall, Otis E.
The Rural High School, 348-350.
Bidwell, Percy Wells.
Intemperance in Colonial Days,
13-16.
Boardman, John R.
The Sources of Leadership, 587-
589.
Bolton, Ethel Stanwood.
Country Life in New England,
1-13.
Boult, Ella M.
The Miracle Play at Pomfret,
Conn., 241-243.
Boys .ind Girls Clubs, 382-383,
391-394; 535; Bibliography,
408.
Brand, Charles J.
Work of Office of Markets and
Rural Organization, 515-516.
Branson, E. C.
Our Carolina Highlanders, 58-65.
Bremer, Harry H.
Strawberry Pickers of Maryland,
157.
Bruce, Philip A.
. Social Conditions of the Old and
New South, 46-58.
Bryce, James.
Characteristics of the Farmer,
162-164.
The Passing of the Frontier, 35-
36.
The Secret of Influence, 584-585.
Burnham, Ernest.
The Status of the Rural School,
337-340.
625
626
INDEX
Butterfield, Kenyon L.
Agriculture in New England, 20-
25.
A Point of View in Comparisons
of City and Country Conditions,
111-114.
Farmers' Social Organizations,
536-540.
Need of Ideals in Rural Life, 181-
183.
Report of Committee on Country
Church Function, Policy and
Program, 444-452.
Rural Organization, 500-512.
The Call of the Country Parish,
442-443.
Cameron, Agnes Dean.
Canada's Royal Northwest Mount-
ed Police,' 310-311.
Cance, Alexander E.
Farmer's Cooperative Exchanges,
120-131.
Carolina Highlanders. 58-65.
Carver, T. N.
An Appreciation of Rural People,
165-168.
Life in the Corn Belt, 38-44.
Rural Economy a» a Factor in
the Success of the Church, 426-
430.
The Moral Basis of Cooperation,
119-120.
What Awaits Rural New England,
16-19.
Chautauqua, bibliography, 407-408.
Child labor, rural, 155-159.
Children: healthier in city than
country, 193-197; influence of
farm Jife upon, 164-165, 166-
167, 300; treatment of by farm?
ers, 301.
Church, country: Chap. XV, 411-
454; bibliography, 452-454; and
land tenure, 421-426; decadent,
268; report of committee on
function, policy and program
for, 444-452 ; rural economy a
factor in success of, 426-430;
sectarianism in, 443^-444; situ-
ation in Ohio, 431-435; ten
years work in, 411-421; type
of workers needed for, 442-443 ;
Wisconsin parish, 435-437.
City drift, mental causes behind,
* 172-175.
Claghorn, Kate Holladay.
Juvenile Delinquency in Rural
New York, 297-303.
Clopper, Dr. E. N.
Colorado Beet Workers, 156.
Coates, T. J.
An Epigram on the Rural School,
337.
Communication and transportation :
Chap. X, 255-281; bibliography,
281 ; agricultural press, auto-
mobile, 273-274; circulating li-
brary, 274, mail delivery, 274;
other aids, 266-274 ; roads, 255-
266; telephone, 280.
Community center : consolidated
school, 371-374; church as, 414-
420; church parish, 435-437;
undesirable, 301-303.
Community fair, 402-406.
Community, rural: defined, 576; or-
ganization of, 507-576.
Conveniences for farm home, 101.
Cook, John H.
The Consolidated School As a
Community Center, 371-374.
Cooley, Charles R.
Leadership or Personal Ascend-
ency, 581-583.
Cooley, Harris R.
The Outdoor Treatment of Crime,
283-288.
Cooperation: 129-137; bibliography,
160; farmers' cooperative ex-
changes, 120-131; fostered by
farmers' clubs, 544-545, 552;
in European countries, 122;
moral basis of, 119-120; social
effects of in Europe, 131-137.
Corn Belt, life in, 38-44.
Correctional agriculture: Chap. XI,
283-303; bibliography, 311-
312.
Coulter, John Lee.
Immigration as a Source of Farm
Laborers, 88-93.
Country life: in New England, Chap.
I, 1-26 ; in the south, Chap. Ill,
INDEX
627
46-74; in the west, Chap. II,
27-45.
Country school, see School.
Country store, as source of social
ideals, 302.
County agent, 380.
Crime, outdoor treatment of, 283-
295; and feeble-mindedness, 211.
Curriculum, for moonlight schools,
362; rural school, 341-345.
Curtis, Henry S.
Need of Play in Rural Life, 226-
228.
Danielson, Florence H. and Daven-
port, Chas. B.
The Hill Folk, 206-213.
Davenport, Eugene.
Wanted : A National Policy in
Agriculture, 95-114.
Delinquency, juvenile, 297-303.
Death rate, higher in urban dis-
tricts, 151.
Dewey, Evelyn.
Agriculture and the Curriculum,
352-356.
Domestic manufactures, in colonial
days, 8-9.
Douglass, Harlan Paul.
The Town's Moral Plan, 467-471.
Drama, rural, 236-248.
Dudgeon, M. S.
The Rural Book Hunger, 394-401.
Economic interests: Chap. VI, 119-
137; bibliography, 160-161;
adult labor, 147-155; child la-
bor, 155-159; cooperation, 119-
137; ownership and tenancy,
137-147.
Educational agencies: Chapter XIV,
377-410; bibliography, 407-
410; boys' and girls' clubs, 382-
384, 391-394; community fair,
402-406 ; farm demonstration,
377-382; home economics ex-
tension work, 389-391; travel-
ing libraries, 394-401 ; work un-
der Smith-Hughes Act, 407.
Elliot, Chas. W.
The Influence of Farm Life on
Childhood, 164-16.).
Emerick, E. J.
Feeble-mindedness Denned, 203-
204.
Epileptics, farm care of, 290-293.
Fairohild, H. P.
Why Immigrants go to Cities,
85-88.
Fairs, community, 402-406, bibli-
ography, 409.
Family, farm: in corn belt, 39-40;
size of, 332.
Farm bureau, 384, 518-536; bibli-
ography, 409.
Farmer: characteristics of, 162-
164, 165-168; mind of, 175-
181, 269.
Farm income, 102-103, 108.
Farm life, educational value of,
164-167, 170-172.
Farm village, 271-273.
Farmers' clubs: advantages of,
541-545; how to organize, 545-
552.
Farmers' cooperative exchanges,
120-131.
Farmers' organizations: clubs, 541-
552; Grange, 552-555; Non-
Partisan League, 557-567; so-
cial, 536-540.
Federal Board for Vocational Edu-
cation, 407.
Feeble-mindedness: and crime, 211;
denned, 203-204; extent of in
New Hampshire, 213-214; in
Pennsylvania, 214-217, in rural
England, 217; fundamental
facts regarding, 204-205; in-
vestigation of two family trees,
206-213; prevention of, 219-
223; segregation, 221.
Fernald, Walter E.
What is Practicable in the Way of
Prevention of Mental Defect,
219-223.
Ferris, Elmer E.
A Land of Law and Order, 306-
307.
Field, Jessie.
County Work of Y. W. C. A.,
440-441.
628
INDEX
Fiske, G. Walter.
The Development of Rural Lead-
ership, 589-601.
The Social Value of the Telephone,
280-281.
Foght, Harold W.
The Change from Amateur to
Professional Teaching, 347-348.
Forbes, Elmer S.
Rural Housing, 327-329.
Free delivery, rural mail, 273-274.
Frontier: passing of, 35-36; sig-
nificance of in American his-
tory, 29-34.
Galpin, C. J.
A Method of Making a Social Sur-
vey of a Rural Community,
484-490.
Social Privileges of a Village or
Small City, 464-467.
The Social Anatomy of an Agri-
cultural Community, 490-497.
Gill, Charles O.
Social Effects of Cooperation in
Europe, 131-137.
The Church Situation in Ohio,
431-435.
Gillette, John M.
Mitigating Rural Isolation, 266-
274.
Rural Child Labor, 155-156.
Tenant Farming, 137-142.
The Scope of Rural Sociology,
615-620.
Training for Rural Leadership,
585-587.
Grange, see Patrons of Husbandry.
Great men, from rural environment,
168-172.
Groves, Ernest R.
Suggestion and City-drift, 172-
175,
The Mind of the Farmer, 175-
181.
Hatch Act, 386.
Hayes, E. C.
Agrarian Aristocracy and Popu-
lation Pressure. 145-147.
Leadership, 583.
Health, physical: Chap. VIII, 185-
202; bibliography, 223-224; for
rural community, 185-193; for
rural schools, 195-196; inspec-
tion, 188; lack of information
and aids, 186-187; legislation,
188-189; on prison farms, 289-
290; teaching of, 191-192;
work in schools of U. S., 197.
Health, mental, 203-225; bibliogra-
phy, 225.
Hedrick, W. O.
Some Advantages of Tenancy, 142-
144.
Henderson, Charles R.
Rural Police, 303-306.
Hill, Laurence S.
Physical Education in Rural
Schools, 229-235.
Hine, Lewis H.
Children or Cotton, 158-159.
Home demonstration, 535.
Home economics, under Smith-
Lever Act, 389-391.
Home, rural: Chap. XII, 313-326;
bibliography, 334-335 ; chang-
ing, 316-317, 324-326; conveni-
ences in, 333.
Homer, Wm. J.
The Prison Farm, 289
Hospital, rural, 190-191.
Housing, rural: Chap XII, 327-333;
bibliography, 335-336; in New
York State, 331-333; over-
crowded and defective, 329-331.
Hunter, W. H.
Why League ( Non-Partisan) is
Opposed, 564-567.
Ideals, in rural life, 181-182.
Illiteracy: among mountain whites,
61 ; war against in Kentucky,
360-363.
Immigrants, in agriculture: Chap.
IV, 75-94; bibliography, 93-94;
as source of farm laborers, 88-
93; migration to cities, 86-88.
Insanity: farming as cure for, 295^
297; urban and rural, 218-219.
Intemperance: in colonial days, 13-
16; effect of cooperation upon,
133.
INDEX
629
Irrigation : influence on community
spirit, 36; on character of
farmer, 37.
Isolation : cause of delinquency,
108; conditions which account
for, 267 ; degree of, 267-269 ; ef-
fects of, 279-270; influence on
mind of farmer, 177-179; miti-
gating, 266-274; physical ef-
fects of, 192; solutions and
panaceas, 271-274.
Jenkins, W. H.
The Farm Playground, 236.
Kellogg, Paul U.
Five Principles of Surveys, 481-
484.
Key, Dr. Wilhelmine E.
Feeble-minded Citizens in Penn-
sylvania, 214-217.
Knapp, Bradford.
Education through Farm Demon-
stration, 377-382.
Kuapp, Seaman A , life work, 377-
385, 601-603; Ten Command-
ments of Agriculture, 380-381.
Kremer, Kev. A. Ph.
The Genoa Parish, Walworth
County, 435-437.
Labor, adult: 147-155; bibliogra-
phy, 161; decreasing amount of
151; effect of machinery upon,
149-150; in corn belt, 41;
shortage of on farm, 152-153.
Labor, child: 155-159; bibliog-
phy, 161 ; in Colorado beet
fields, 156; in the cotton fields,
158-159; in Maryland, 157.
Land Tenure, 106-108, 109; and
rural church, 421-426.
Land valuation, 145-147.
Lane, Winthrop D.
Healing Lap of Mother Earth,
290-295.
Leadership: Chap XIX, 591-610;
bibliography, 609-610; as per-
sonal ascendancy, 581-583:
characteristics of, 583 ; develop-
ment of, 589-601; elements of,
585; rural, 584; sources of,
587-589; training for, 585-587.
Libraries: rural, 394-401; bibliog-
raphy, 410; circulating, 274.
Literature, agricultural, 278-279.
Little country theater, 237-240.
McNutt, Matthew ,B.
Ten Years in a Country Church,
411-421.
Machinery, influence of, 147-150.
Mann, A. R.
The Sociology of Rural Life, 611-
615.
Manning, Warren H.
The History of Village Improve-
ment in the U. S., 455-464.
Marquis, J. Clyde.
Social Significance of the Agri-
cultural Press, 275-279.
Mead, Elwood.
Soldier Settlements in English-
speaking Countries, 114-116.
Mental and moral aspects of farm
life: Chap. VII, 162-184; bib-
liography, 183-184; character-
istics of farmer, 162-164; city-
drift, 172-175; farm life and
childhood, 164-165; mind of
the iarmer, 175-181 ; qualities
of rural people, 165-16S; rural
environment and great men,
168-171.
Merritt, Eugene.
Agricultural Element in Popula-
tion, 150-152.
Monahan, A. C.
The County as a Unit of Admin-
istration, 345-347.
Moonlight schools of Kentucky,
356-363.
Moran, J. Sterling.
The Community Fair, 402-406.
Morgan, E. L.
How to Organixe a Rural Com-
munity, 507-576.
Morrill Act, 386.
Murray, W. O.
Health on Prison Farms, 289-290.
National Education Association
Commission, Series Xo. 1 : a
National Program for Educa-
tion, 363-371.
630
INDEX
Negro, rural in south, 65-74-; bibli-
ography, 73-74.
Nelson Act, 386.
New England, country life in : Chap.
I, 1-2G; bibliography, 25-26; a
century ago, 1-13; agriculture
in, 20-25; future of, 16-15); in-
temperance in colonial days, 13-
16.
Non-Partisan League, 557-567.
Nurse, district, 189-190.
Olsen, John.
Immigration in Agriculture, 75-
86.
Organization of rural interests:
Chap. XVIII, 500-576; bibliog-
raphy, 575-580 ; community,
567-576; international, 512-
514; national, 515-536: polit-
ical, 557-568; rural, 500-512;
voluntary, 536-557.
Ownership and tenancy, 137-147;
bibliography, 160-161.
Pageant, rural, 243-248.
Patrons of Husbandry : in New Eng-
land, 23; purposes of, 552-557.
Physical Education, in rural
schools, 229-235.
Pioneer: character of, 29-34; spirit
of, 34-35.
Play, need of in rural life, 226-
*228.
Plunkett, Sir Horace.
Women in Rural Life, 323-324,
Police, rural: Chap. XI, 303-311;
bibliography, 312; Canadian
Royal Northwest Mounted, 306-
307, 310-311; Pennsylvania
State, 308-310.
Population : agricultural element in,
150-152 ; decreasing in rural
districts, 151.
Press, agricultural, 275-279.
Problems of country life: Chap. V,
95-117; bibliography 117-118;
farmer's relation to country,
116-117; need of national pol-
icy, 95-114; needs of farmer,
99-102; soldier settlement, 114-
116.
Quaintance, H. W.
Influence of Machinery on the
Economic and Social Conditions
of the Agricultural People, 147-
150.
Quick, Herbert.
Henry Wallace, 604-609.
Women on the Farms, 313-319.
Rankin, W. S.
Rural Sanitation: Definition,
Field, Principles, Methods and
Costs, 197-202.
Recreation, rural: Chap. IX, 226-
248; bibliography, 253-254;
drama, 236-240; farm play-
ground, 236; miracle play, 24l-
243 ; need of, 226-228 ; pageant,
243-248; physical education in
rural schools, 229-235; that
people like, 235-236.
Retired fanner, 38. 42-43.
Rich farmers, classes of, 103-104.
Roads, 255-266, 273; bibliography,
281-282.
Roberts A. E. and Israel, Henry.
Rural Work of the Y. M. C. A.,
437-440.
Roosevelt, Theodore.
The Farmer in Relation to the
Welfare of the Whole Country,
116-117.
Pennsylvania State Police, 308-
310.
Ross, Edward Alsworth.
The Middle West, 27-34.
Rowe, C. L.
Ten Years' Progress in County
Y. M. C. A., 441-442.
Rural Sociology: Chap. XX, 611-
624; bibliography, 623-624;
character of, 611-615; defini-
tions, 622-023: scope of, 615-
620; teaching of, 620-622.
Sanderson, Dwight.
Definitions of Rural Sociology,
623.
The Teaching of Rural Sociology,
620-622.
INDEX
631
Sanitation, rural: definition and
field of, 107-198; in farm
homes, 320; methods and costs,
198-202.
School, rural: Chap. XIII, 337-370;
bibliography, 374-376; adminis-
tration of, 345-347; consoli-
dated, 371-374; curriculum for,
IUl-345; high school, 348-350;
in contrast with town, 269;
Kentucky moonlight, .350-363;
manse, 351-352; national emer-
gency in, 363-371; professional
teaching for, 347-348; southern
mountain, 63; subsidization of,
108.
School gardening, 355-356.
Sex problem of country life, 180-
181.
Shelby, Mary Doane.
An Open Letter to Secretary
Houston, 319-323.
Simons, A. M.
Who Is the Farmer? 110-111.
Simons, L. R.
Organization of a County for Ex-
tension Work — Farm Bureau
Plan, 518-536.
Smith-Hughes Act, 407.
Smith-Lever Act, 386-389; home
economics work under, 389-391.
Social Center, see Community Cen-
ter.
Soldier settlement, 114-116.
South, the old and the new: Chap.
Ill, 46-73; bibliography, 72-
73; Carolina Highlanders, 58-
65: Negro in, 65-72; Social
conditions 46-58.
Southwest, 36-37; cooperation in,
36-37 ; effect of irrigation upon,
36.
Spillman, Wm. J.
The Rural Environment and Great
Men, 168-172.
Stevens, Edwin A.
The Future of Good Roads in
State and Nation, 255-266.
Stewart, Cora Wilson.
The Moonlight schools of Ken-
tucky, 356-363.
Suggestion, and city drift, 172-175.
Survey: Chap. XVII, 478-499; bib-
liography, 497-499; in country
life work, 478-481 ; method of
making, 484-490; principles of,
481-484; survey of a rural com-
munity, 490-497.
Taylor, W. E.
Farming as a Cure for the Insane,
295-296.
Telephone, social value of, 280-281.
Tenancy: advantages of, 142-144;
increase of, 107, 137; in Texas,
159; opposing views as to ef-
fects of 138-140; social effect
of, 140-142.
Truancy, 301
Theater, see Drama.
Thompson, C. W.
Definition of a Rural Community,
576.
Thompson, John.
The League's ( Non-Partisan )
Work in the Northwest, 557-
564.
Thrift, promoted by cooperation,
133.
Town, see Village.
Transportation, see Communication.
Tredgold, A. W.
Amentia in Rural England, 217.
Turner, Frederick Jackson.
The Significance of the Frontier
in American History, 29-34.
Tynan, Thomas J.
Outdoor Work for Prisoners, 288-
289.
Village: Chap. XIV, 455-477; bibli-
ography, 476-477; improve-
ment, 455-464, 471-475; moral
plan, 467—471; social privileges
of, 464-467.
Vincent, Geo. E.
The Spread of the School Manse
Idea, 351-352.
Wallace, Henry.
Land Tenure and the Rural
Church, 421-426.
Wallace, Henry, life work, 604-609.
632
INDEX
Washington, Booker T.
The Rural Negro and the South,
65-69.
Waugh, Frank A.
Civic Improvement in Village and
Country, 471-475.
Rural Art, 248-252.
West: Chap. II, 27-45; bibliogra-
phy, 44-43; corn belt, 38-44;
domestic service in, 42; family
life, 39-40; fiber of people, 27-
28; labor problem, 41; political
unrest in, 43, 557-567; prosper-
ity of agriculture, 44; retired
farmer, 42-43; social diversions
in, 40; spirit of, 35-37.
White, Georgia L.
The Problem of the Changing
Rural Home, 324-320.
Wilson, A. D.
Farmers' Clubs, 541-552.
Wilson, WTarren H.
The Number of Churches in Six
Counties in Ohio 443-444.
What the People Like, 235.
Wood, Thos. D.
City is Healthier for Children
than Country, 193-197.
Women, on the farm, 313-323.
Y. M. C. A., 437-440, 441-442.
Y. W. C. A., 440-441.
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