The state and the farmer

2O The State and the Farmer

of nature is a poor competitor amid the loud
acclaim of decimal and dogma. After I was
married, many of my relatives and friends

in L , observing my husband's methods,

came to him for counsel. He hammered one
relative into going every day (several miles)
to the Exter creamery, even with empty cans,
if need be, to induce others to join him.
He placed in the town the first pure -bred
bull, and now several others have followed.
He sold cows at reduced prices to get herds
started. He induced another relative, who
lives on the homestead and is making money,
to take his grades and rear them as an object
lesson. He went to the Exters and pointed
out the advantages of a milk -station in that
section. 'Get something started,' he would
say; 'it will gather strength as it goes.' Now
they have the skimming-station, and, for the first

time in years, L is looking men squarely

in the face. The 'conversation' is changed.
The Exters (splendid characters) have at last
demonstrated that a little separator in a cream-
ery is better than a big separator in a church.

The Country Folk . 21

"No greater error could be made, by men
of intelligence, than to cry abandoned farms

when abandoned brains is meant. L is

a beautiful, fertile valley. The neglected farms
are effect, not cause. The abandoned church
and the abandoned-school-houses are standing
directly in the way of rural progress and all
the efforts of agricultural teachers cannot
overcome the loud paternalism of these two
powerful obsolete institutions that stand like
feudal castles awaiting the dynamite of revel-
ation.

"But, after all is told— mark this! Out of
that 'God forsaken' town have come the best
men, the most sterling characters (independ-
ent of their financial troubles) that I have ever
known. The happiest years of my life were
spent there. My little girl's fine father was
born and reared there. The world has its com-
pensations. I know and love these people, and
the most impressive picture I will ever have of
the great Field Shepherd with his people hov-
ering about him, is outlined by a faded wall in
that farming town."

The State and
the Farmer

By

L. H. Bailey

OF THE

UNWERBlH

OF

^ALIFOP^

gorfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

rights reterved

GENERAL

Copyright, 1908
By The Macmillan Company

Published, July, 1908

.$Dount Pleasant

J. Horace McFarland Company
fJarrisburg, Pa.

.

Co
ISAAC PHILLIPS ROBERTS

— FARMER, TEACHER, PHILOSOPHER
AND FRIEND —

31 offer tfife fcoofe

UNIVERSITY

•

UNIVERSi'

EXPLANATION

THE immediate basis of this book is a
paper on "The State and the Farmer,"
originating as a presidential address before the
Association of American Agricultural Colleges
and Experiment Stations at Lansing, Michi-
gan, May 28, 1907. Five hundred copies of
this address were printed by order of the
Association. The demand continuing, I de-
cided to expand the principles there expressed,
and to apply them to a somewhat wider range;
in doing this I have, of course, much increased
the size of the original paper, but the general
motive is not different. That paper, in turn,
was the result of previous papers and ad-
dresses, some parts of which were incorpor-
ated in it; therefore, some of the arguments
and points of view in this book are likely not
to appear to be new to those readers who
have followed this class of discussions. It is
needless to say that the book is in no sense a
treatise, but only a budget of opinions ; and I

viii Explanation

am well aware how likely it is for opinions to
be colored by the particular set of conditions
under which one works.

L. H. BAILEY
ITHACA, N. Y.

MAY, 1908.

OUTLINE

PAGES

The Argument 1-4

Governmental interference 2

I. THE AGRICULTURAL SHIFT . . . 5~54

THE GEOGRAPHICAL SHIFT IN RURAL

OCCUPATIONS 5~n

The apparent reaction 8

THE SHIFT IN AGRICULTURAL METHOD . 11-15
THE SHIFT IN RURAL INSTITUTIONS . . 15-21

THE " ABANDONED FARM" AS AN ILLUS-
TRATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL

SHIFT 22-54

The illusion of old buildings 25

Old fields 29

The significance of the general situation 30

The situation with individual farms . . 35

Lack of adaptation 39

Point of view as to remedies 42

The outlook for the hills and remote lands 51
(ix)

x Outline

PAGES

II. SOCIETY AND THE FARMER . . 55~i77

THE PROBLEM 56-73

Saving our resources 56

The social questions 61

The countryman 66

Rural needs 69

THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL REME-
DIES 73-176

The importance of the personal and local

initiative 74

Agencies of heal communication .... 75

Reconstructive movements . . 78

The kinds of help 80

1 . THE DISCOVERY AND COLLATING OF

LOCAL FACT 8l~86

Agricultural surveys 83

The model farm idea 84

2. DEVELOPING PARTICULAR PERSONS

FOR COMMUNITY WORK 86-89

3. THE GOVERNMENTAL FUNCTION IN
AGRICULTURE 89-1 1 1

State departments of agriculture .... 90

Outline xi

PAGES

A new statesmanship 92

Attitude of state governments 93

The state government part and the fed-
eral part 95

States rights IO2

The coordinating agencies 104

Coordination of educational matters . 106

Coordination of agricultural matters . 109

4. THE REDIRECTING OF RURAL INSTI-
TUTIONS UI-I35

The necessity for working together . . 114

The economic organizations 116

What agricultural societies can do . . . 118

Possible extent of associative work ... 122

Rural government 125

Application of public money 126

Banks 128

Fairs 130

The rural church 132

5. THE DEVELOPING OF APPLICABLE

EDUCATION 135-172

Necessity of a new point of view ... 136

xii Outline

PAGES

Importance of the rural school .... 140

(1) The subject of federal aid . . . 143

(2) The consolidating of schools . . . 147

(3) Special agricultural schools . . 150
The redirecting of the rural school . . 157
The agricultural colleges and experiment

stations 164

The extension work of the colleges ... 169

6. APPEAL TO PERSONAL LEADER-
SHIP 172-176

THE STATE AND THE
FARMER

person who works his own land for
JL a living is usually a strong individualist.
He looks to the earth, rather than to persons,
for his livelihood. He does not cater. If, in
any country, he patronizes, it is because of his
social position, not because he is a farmer.

This individualism conduces to isolation of
ideas. The farmer's work is founded on per-
sonal experience; and when he is not able to
analyze his experience or to understand it, he
falls into the experience-routine of the season,
and his ideas become crystallized.

The first or original real occupation was the
management of land. It is the basic occupa-
tion. Out of it most other occupations and
trades have developed. The constructive and
imaginative spirits took to these newer trades,
and the conservative forces tended to remain
on the land.

(0

2 The State and the Farmer

As the demands of civilization have devel-
oped, and particularly as world-competition
has arisen, the isolation-ideals of the land-
worker have been more and more inadequate
to meet the conditions. A new type of mind
has been forced on him. As community-ideas
have evolved, fellow land-workers have assumed
new relations to each other. As the commun-
ity-sense has grown into nationalism, and as
loyalty to the person of a local leader or ruler
has developed into patriotism, the organization
of society — or the government — has felt the
necessity of interfering with the land-worker,
as with other workers, for the benefit of
society at large.

Governmental interference.

With the enlargement of the necessities of
mankind, and the organization of society,
therefore, the land-worker has been pressed
by two opposite and somewhat opposing
forces, — the necessity of improving his own
practice, and the necessity of being compelled
to adopt certain methods and points of view

Governmental Interference 3

in the interest of the community and the state.
There is self-help and governmental interfer-
ence. The inter-relationships of these personal
and external forces constitute one of the most
important and difficult questions concerned
with farming and politics. They are questions
of adjustment between the self-help and the
state-help forces as expressed in the complex
terms of present society. One force works
from the inside outward, the other from the
outside inward. Both are essential. I propose
to examine some phases of these questions
that are suggested by current movements and
discussions.

Governmental interference with persons is of
two kinds, — that which concerns the larger
relation of each man to society in general, and
that which applies directly to the particular
occupation, trade or profession. In the first
division are questions of taxation, tariffs, con-
duct and the fundamental laws. In the second
division, so far as the farmer is concerned, are
questions of agricultural education, regulation
of diseases of live-stock and crops, the estab-

4 The State and the Farmer

lishment of institutions or agencies — as state
stud farms — that provide him with direct facili-
ties for improving his methods, and special
applications of general laws. It is only some
phases of the second class of governmental
interference that I propose to discuss in this
volume, although I suspect that some of the
general laws need rather radical overhauling,
if the farmer is to be dealt with in perfect
justice. My present theme is this: What is it
wise and legitimate for governments to do in
aid of the farmer, and how, in general, may it
be accomplished ? In developing the discus-
sion, all I hope to do is to establish a point of
view. The instances and examples are cited
as illustrations of what I mean to teach, rather
than as specific problems that I would here
work out.

A^S.

OF THE ~ N

{ UNIVERSITY } '

OF

**£££2S££^

I

The Agricultural Shift

THE condition of agriculture and country
life in North America has been modified
by three great shifts, — the shift in geograph-
ical location, in methods of practice, and in
institutions. Some of the more obvious
features of these shifts we must briefly
examine.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL SHIFT IN RURAL
OCCUPATIONS

Both the necessity for governmental inter-
ference and the nature of the interference are
conditioned on the status of the rural indus-
tries at any particular time. We are all aware
that we live in a time of great shift. The
center of population is moving westward, and
there is movement from country to city.
Remote lands in the East tend to lose in
population, and remote lands in the West
tend to gain in population. There are still

(5)

6 The State and the Farmer

great areas of new development and conse-
quently of unstable conditions. The geog-
raphy of markets has undergone great change.
The great shift in the East has come about
very largely as a result of free trade with
the West.

The popular mind has pictured a great de-
cline in eastern agriculture and a correspond-
ing increase in efficiency of western agriculture.
This opinion is founded in part on statistics
and in part on the larger base on which
western agriculture is often conducted. This
is often more apparent than real. We may
follow some of the statistical comparisons
between New York and some of the corn-belt
states by way of illustration, and later we shall
endeavor to determine the significance of some
of the changes. Comparison by states is, of
course, always indecisive and often very falla-
cious, because the state unit is not uniform in
size, population or general condition ; but we
have no better way at present of making rapid
contrasts.

In 1850, 1860 and 1870 New York held first

Shift in New York 7

place in the value of farm property. In 1880
it lost first place to Ohio; in 1890 it took third
place, being exceeded by Illinois and Ohio; in
'1900 it took fourth place, being exceeded by
Illinois, Iowa and Ohio. In population there
has been a marked decline in rural commun-
ities. According to the figures of Rossiter, in
1850 five rural counties in New York showed
a decrease in population; in 1860, nine; in 1870,
nineteen; in 1880, eight; in 1890, twenty-three;
in 1900, twenty-two; in 1905 (state census),
twenty-one. It appears that forty-three coun-
ties have shown a decrease in population at
some period during the past century. Twenty-
eight counties, or one-half those outside the
metropolitan districts, have a smaller popula-
tion today than they have had rat some pre-
vious time, and these counties represent nearly
one-half the entire area of the state. There
has been a decline under the maximum of more
than eighty thousand persons in the rural
counties of the state. Rural communities in
some parts of New England have less popula-
tion today than they had one hundred years

8 The State and the Farmer

ago. This decline seems to be expressed (i)
in migration of population to cities and to
other regions; (2) in lower birth-rate.

Between the years 1880 and 1900 there was
an annual decrease in value of farm prop-
erty, if the census figures are comparable,
of seven and one-third millions of dollars.
For the same period there was an annual
decrease in the value of land and improve-
ments of nearly eight and one-half millions
of dollars. Similar apparent depreciation oc-
curred in other eastern states. In Ohio, for
example, the shrinkage of land values from
1880 to 1900 amounted to more than sixty
millions of dollars.

The apparent reaction.

It should be said, before passing this sub-
ject, that it may be a question whether the
census figures of the different years are in all
respects comparable. Conditions of money
and of values are not the same at any two
twenty-year periods. In 1880, we may not yet
have passed altogether the inflated values of

Gain in the East 9

the war period. These census figures are now
old and great changes have taken place in the
seven or eight years since the more recent
ones were made. Some of these changes seem
to be indicated in the most recent figures. A
current discussion of "changes in farm val-
ues " published by the United States Depart-
ment of Agriculture and covering the years
1900 to 1905, makes a very different showing
from those that we have been in the habit of
quoting. These figures of the Department of
Agriculture are estimates and computations,
and I do not know whether they or the cen-
sus figures more accurately represent the
exact status of agricultural conditions. Even
for the census year 1900, the differences in
values as reported by the census and as com-
puted by the Department of Agriculture
amounted for New York state to nearly
ninety-nine millions of dollars for the value of
land and improvements, including buildings.
The computations of the Department as be-
tween the years 1900 and 1905 show a gain in
similar values for the state of New York of

io The State and the Farmer

more than one hundred and eighty millions of
dollars. In more specific categories, the fol-
lowing figures from the same source show that
there is a decided increase in farm values and,
therefore, presumably in farm efficiency. The
values of "medium farms" per acre for the
years 1900 and 1905 in New York in the dif-
ferent classes of farming are as follows:

1900 1905

Hay and grain farms $40 29 $44 38

Live-stock 33 83 37 94

Dairying 46 81 58 86

Fruit 70 87 84 46

Vegetables 69 98 81 91

General farming . 38 98 44 oo

The percentage increase of real estate value
of such farms in the state for the years 1900 to
1905 are represented by the following figures:

1900-1905

Per cent

All medium farms 18.3

Hay and grain 10.2

Live-stock 12.1

Dairy farms 25.7

Fruit i9-2

Vegetables 17-0

General farming 12.9

Thes

Change in Methods 11

These various figures are given here merely
to illustrate the fact that the geographical base
of agriculture has changed and that it may be
expected still further to change ; and that a
reaction is likely to follow a great shift. Any
shift of considerable area is likely to affect
some localities disadvantageously.

THE SHIFT IN AGRICULTURAL METHOD

Farming exhibits the remarkable changes
that have taken place in the last fifty years
in the modes of doing work. The plow is
still called a plow and for the most part it
is yet drawn by horses (as it will continue to
be drawn); but even the plow is a very differ-
ent implement from its predecessor of a gener-
ation ago. Few implements are more perfect
than the present-day plow in the application of
mechanical principles and in workmanship.
The slight variations in the slope and shape of
the moldboard and in the construction of
other parts, produce marked results in the
effect on the physical condition of the plowed
land. The chilled steel construction has pro-

12 The State and the Farmer

duced an implement of new adaptabilities.
The plow has come to be a construction of
lightness, grace and beauty, and of great effec-
tiveness.

Most agricultural tools have shown a similar
evolution. Even the common fork has under-
gone marked change. Light hand tools are of
many new kinds and forms. But it is in the
range of machinery that the change appeals most
to the imagination. To be sure, the great devel-
opment of farm machinery has been mostly
for the easy conditions of level-area farming
and for the more wholesale operations, but the
development has been marvelous nevertheless.
The mere mention of the names of some of
the farm machines will recall how great the
change has been : from the sickle to the cradle,
to the reaper and self-binder; from the scythe
to the mowing-machine; the hay-rakes and
hay -loaders; all the hay forks and stackers;
the corn-harvester; the great separators or
threshers ; the sowers, planters and transplant-
ers; manure-spreaders; the grinders and feed-
mills ; power ditching-machines; the spraying

Shift Due to Machinery 13

machines ; the new kinds of vehicles ; all the
multitude of special milk-manipulating, butter-
working and cheese-making devices; the adap-
tation of steam, gasolene and even electric
power; and the marvelous range and beauty
of tilling implements and machines. Within
fifty years, the cost of producing a bushel of
corn has been reduced by two-thirds ; a ton of
hay by nearly as much ; and of other products
in similar proportion.

The change is probably even more remark-
able in the farmer's attitude toward the rea-
sons that underlie his work, although this
shift does not appeal so much to the popular
imagination. His attitude toward soil fertil-
ity has undergone a complete change ; so has
his attitude toward the feeding of animals
and the treatment of their ailments ; so has it
toward diseases of plants and toward the
insects. He speaks a new language. Even
when the old farm seems to show no visible
change in external matters, the farmer himself
cannot avoid attacking his problems in a new
way. Butter-fat is a reality. There are new

14 The State and the Farmer

crops on his land — alfalfa, cowpeas, crimson
clover, macaroni wheat. If he lives in the
northeastern market-milk section, he has seen
the red and brindle cow change to black and
white; he has developed the winter production
of milk and has made the silo a part of his
farm scheme. He has a new conception of
cleanliness, as a result of the studies in bac-
teria. He has a rational outlook on potato
blight and oat smut and codlin-moth. He has
respect for ideas in print, because the ideas
are worthy of respect. All this changes his
methods of work.

With all these great shifts in the methods of
farming, it is natural to expect unequal shifts in
effectiveness of the business, for some persons
react responsively to such changes and others
do not. The least adaptable persons find their
lot harder by competition with the others.
Profound changes have resulted in the whole
attitude of the man toward his business.

These shifts in mental attitude are largely
the direct result of the colleges and experi-
ment stations and bureaus devoted to agricul-

•

ture;

Changes in Country Institutions 15

ture; and herein is the one great aid that
society has rendered to the countryman.

THE SHIFT IN RURAL INSTITUTIONS

It requires no imagination to see that rural
life is, in some respects, in a state of arrested
development, as compared with the cities
and towns. The native institutions have been
copied in cities and greatly extended ; the
rural population now looks beyond its own
institutions to those of the city, — to the city
school, the city church, the city library, the
city stores, the city amusements. The great
constructive movements of the day have passed
the country by. The nativeness of rural in-
stitutions has been allowed to die out, and
the country has been left socially sterilized.
Centers of interest are elsewhere. In many
regions, the farmer will talk politics, war and
city questions and anything else rather than
farming. I would not have my reader feel,
however, that this is peculiar to these later
days. I well remember vehement discussions
whether the pen is mightier than the sword,

16 The State and the Farmer

but I never heard a debate on the plow, which
is really mightier than either.

Many great economic and social changes
have directed the attention of all the people
cityward. Canals, railroads, telegraphs, postal
routes have drained the country into the city.
Wealth has been piled up at the terminals,
which are the trading places, until society has
become ganglionic in its organization. Bank-
ing systems take the money from the hands
of those who earn it, and put it into the
hands of those who trade with it. The earn-
ings tend to leave the place of their origin to
build up remote or aggregated interests. The
organizations that control farmers by control-
ling their products are in the cities. The
tariff-for-protection system has fostered this
general aggregational movement. It has tended
to the concentration of wealth. If it has aided
the farmer, it is because it has aided some
one else first and more.

We have been living in an epoch of city
development, with no adequate means of re-
distributing or returning the energy to the

Epoch of the Small City 17

regions of its origin. It has been a process
of dump. We are now, however, at the begin-
ning of a new species of rural drainage, con-
sequent on the wide extension of highway
building, of trolly lines, of rural free deliver-
ies, of telephones and other local-centering
agencies. In other words, we are now enter-
ing the epoch of the small city; into these
cities the surrounding country now will drain.
This will develop new centers of influence,
with a consequent shift of the social equilib-
rium. This condition is being aided from the
city itself in the rapid growth of suburbanism.
These new conditions constitute one step to-
wards vitalizing the open country, but of
themselves they will not reach the open coun-
try effectively.

Among existing rural institutions, the church
and the school should have most influence ;
yet the rural church is largely inert or lost,
and the school is in a state of arrested devel-
opment. Following a discussion of abandoned
farms in one of the eastern states, a farmer's
wife, long a teacher and leader, wrote me the
B

i8 The State and the Farmer

following letter; this letter I publish because
it is an expression of the way in which some
of these questions appeal to an experienced
person on the spot; how widely it applies I
do not know.

"The neglected farms of L should

not be charged against either indolence or
agriculture, because the main business of the
township, extending over a period of twenty
years or more, has been a religious war. There
are three churches in the Town Center, repre-
senting as many denominations. Sometimes
one has flourished, sometimes another, but
sentiment respecting all of them is ever active.
I have known crops to be neglected, work
delayed, families divided, while the combatants
awaited the outcome of some petty squabble
over church affairs. One not familiar with
conditions can hardly imagine the littleness of
the superannuated gospel -splitters who are
often sent to such outlying parishes. The war
has been a continuous one for years. One pas-
tor after another departed, in dudgeon, to have
the combat renewed by the next one. This is

The Church and School 19

all matter of public record, if any one wishes
to inform himself. You may or may not have
knowledge of this, but it is not a local phase.
It is my firm belief that this is the situation in
other 'abandoned farm' districts if the truth
were known.

"Much the same thing can be said of the
schools. You will not agree with me, but

after spending some years in L , and

having been reared in a family of teachers,

I am convinced that the schools also are often

,

'abandoned.' School officers may be too busy
working their own farms and interests. They
often have not the first idea of broad policy
or even worthy public duty. I am not sure
but that the farm might produce men of bet-
ter caliber if we could ever get rid of the
theory that grammar is more important than
death or taxes. No close study of the town of
L— - is needed to note the marked mental
degeneracy of its younger members against
the earlier men.

"And Agriculture? Well, no one ever built
a church or school for agriculture. The silence

20 The State and the Farmer

of nature is a poor competitor amid the loud
acclaim of decimal and dogma. After I was
married, many of my relatives and friends

in L , observing my husband's methods,

came to him for counsel. He hammered one
relative into going every day (several miles)
to the Exter creamery, even with empty cans,
if need be, to induce others to join him.
He placed in the town the first pure -bred
bull, and now several others have followed.
He sold cows at reduced prices to get herds
started. He induced another relative, who
lives on the homestead and is making money,
to take his grades and rear them as an object
lesson. He went to the Exters and pointed
out the advantages of a milk -station in that
section. 'Get something started,' he would
say; 'it will gather strength as it goes.' Now
they have the skimming-station, and, for the first

time in years, L is looking men squarely

in the face. The 'conversation' is changed.
The Exters (splendid characters) have at last
demonstrated that a little separator in a cream-
ery is better than a big separator in a church.

The Country Folk

"No greater error could be made, by men
of intelligence, than to cry abandoned farms

when abandoned brains is meant. L is

a beautiful, fertile valley. The neglected farms
are effect, not cause. The abandoned church
and the abandoned-school-houses are standing
directly in the way of rural progress and all
the efforts of agricultural teachers cannot
overcome the loud paternalism of these two
powerful obsolete institutions that stand like
feudal castles awaiting the dynamite of revel-
ation.

"But, after all is told— mark this! Out of
that 'God forsaken' town have come the best
men, the most sterling characters (independ-
ent of their financial troubles) that I have ever
known. The happiest years of my life were
spent there. My little girl's fine father was
born and reared there. The world has its com-
pensations. I know and love these people, and
the most impressive picture I will ever have of
the great Field Shepherd with his people hov-
ering about him, is outlined by a faded wall in
that farming town."

22 The State and the Farmer

THE " ABANDONED FARM " AS AN ILLUSTRA-
TION OF THE AGRICULTURAL SHIFT

The process of the shift in occupancy of
land has resulted in the desertion of some
areas for customary agricultural uses. Home-
steads have become unoccupied and the build-
ings have fallen into ruin. To this condition
the name " abandoned farms " has been ap-
plied. The words are inexact, since the land
is really not abandoned, but belongs to some
one, and is still classed as property; but the
term has become so well fixed in the public
mind that it expresses phases of our contem-
porary agriculture better than any other phrase.
I therefore use the term for convenience, to
express the idea of the lessening present use
of certain lands, and also because it enables
me to arrive at my subject without tedious ex-
planation.

In the discussion of abandoned farms, we
have usually confused the economic and personal
results. Our regret for the abandonment of
these farms is, in fact, largely sentimental. We

The Abandoned Homestead 23

are thinking of the human lives that have been
lived in the stark old houses, where the wind
blows through the creaky roofs and into the
openings that once were windows and doors.
We are impressed by the ancient orchards,
with bleaching limbs and rotting trunks. Gen-
erations ago, perhaps, the good-man and his
wife hewed the farm from the wilderness,
erected the laborious buildings, and planted
the cider-apple trees between the rocks. A
little brood was reared. One by one the child-
ren went out over the hills and made homes
for themselves; but one of them remained on
the old farm, cherishing the old rocks and liv-
ing content under the old roof-tree. The old
place became more hallowed with the years.
Even the decay of the old house passed un-
noticed. What was the neglect and dilapida-
tion to the visitor from the city, was the object
of veneration and sacred memories to the
owner. But finally no youngster clung to the
homestead. One went to the city store, an-
other on the railroad, another took to sea, and
another went west. Age overtook the old

24 The State and the Farmer

folks. The bushes encroached on the back lot.
The stone walls fell to ruin. The kitchen
roof tilted and fell in. The old folks died.
The house was closed. The stripling forest
overran the orchard and the garden. The
tansy now haunts the old dooryard.

I have no desire to analyze at this time the
causes of the so-called abandonment of farms,
or to make any close study of the results ; I
wish only to call attention to some of the
grosser features of the movement, with the
purpose of establishing a point of view for
my reader on some of the coming relations
between the state and the farmer.

The "abandoned farm" question is supposed
to be an eastern question, and in a way it is
so : that is, relatively difficult lands were set-
tled in the East because other lands were not
available; the adjustment to changing condi-
tions comes first, of course, in the older
communities, and the older the community

£

the slower the adjustment is likely to be.
Similar questions are pressing agriculture
in all parts of the country, however, so that

The Deserted Buildings 25

the eastern question is only a phase of con-
tinental or even world-wide questions. The
farming in the great agricultural West has
been easy, and it has therefore risen with
phenomenal rapidity. The greatest skill in the
end develops under the greatest difficulty. The
West has set the East many good examples of
agricultural practice. It will not be surprising
if the East works out some of the difficult
social problems, and makes a close adjustment
of agricultural practice to local conditions.

The illusion of old buildings.

A common measure of the supposed decline
of farming is the fact that many farms can
now be purchased for less than the buildings
cost. This statement of itself does not appeal
to me as having any special significance. A
property is likely to sell for what it is worth,
and this worth depends on its effectiveness as
an economic unit or enterprise. Most of the
buildings on these farms were erected a gener-
ation or more ago, when the ideas of farming
were radically different from those of the pres-

26 The State and the Farmer

ent day. It is doubtful whether most of these
buildings were ever really effective even for
the old kind of agriculture. At all events, few
of them are adapted to the business that we
must now conduct on the land. Many a farm
would really be worth more with the buildings
off than with them on, for they would not then
stand in the way of actual betterment. Build-
ings are not permanent attachments to land
and should not be so regarded. A country-
man is always impressed, when he goes to the
great cities, with the fact that buildings still in
good state of preservation are torn down to
make place for new ones. These demolished
buildings may not even be very old, but they
are ineffective for present-day business and it
is unprofitable to keep them. The coming
business of farming will demand a wholly new
type of building in order to make the prop-
erty effective, and we must overcome our habit
of harking back to the time when the present
buildings were erected. Barns and other busi-
ness buildings that were erected fifty or sixty
years ago should owe the farm nothing by this

Deserted Farm Buildings 27

time. My reader must realize the fact that we
are beginning a new agriculture, not continuing
an old one.

We must be careful, also, not to be misled
merely by the appearance of farm property.
The mere abandonment of farm buildings may
or may not be a cause of apprehension and
regret. Buildings may be abandoned because
two or more properties have been combined
into one and not so many buildings are now
needed ; or because the farmer has moved
from an old building into a new and better
one. In many parts of the East, the buildings
are no doubt too many and the farm proper-
ties too small for the greatest effectiveness.
These properties were laid out or divided at
a time when the great West was unknown and
when these eastern lands grew the grain and
other tilled crops for the large markets. Some
of them were probably laid out in their pres-
ent form in war time, when conditions were
wholly abnormal. Many of the buildings were
erected when lumber and other materials were
cheap and when the comforts and facilities

28 The State and the Farmer

now placed in barns and residences were
unknown. Moreover, deserted farm buildings
are likely to stand until they fall down. In
cities, land and location are valuable, and old
buildings are torn down to make room for
the new structures. Therefore, the country
contrasts strongly with the city in respect to
its buildings. The staring and windowless
farmhouses appeal to the imagination of the
town visitor, and he accepts them at once as
evidences of failure and decline.

In order to determine the significance of
deserted farmhouses, an inquiry has been
made in one of the townships in a so-called
abandoned farm region. Every deserted farm-
house in the township was recorded. Con-
ditions there are as bad as anywhere in that
region ; yet by count, there are only forty-five
vacant farmhouses in the township, the area
of which is more than forty-five square miles.
One might draw the conclusion at once that
there are forty-five abandoned farms in the town-
ship. It is doubtful, however, whether there is
a single really abandoned farm in this area. It

Deserted Fields 29

true that there are many fields on the higher
farms that are not used except for hay and
pasture, and some of them are not even used
for these purposes. Practically all these so-
called abandoned farms are either owned or
rented by near-by farmers and have really
become a part of the adjacent farm. The
house is unoccupied for the simple reason that
the farmer needs but one house. A few vacant
houses have been deserted by families who have
lost their homes on mortgage, but apparently
not primarily from fault of the land. Many
others have been sold because of discontent on
the part of the owners, who wished to try their
fortunes elsewhere. In some cases the owner
has died and the house is unoccupied be-
cause the estate has not yet been settled. A
few more are vacant because tenants cannot
be secured, and the farm is rented to whom-
ever is willing to take it on shares.

Old fields.

Similar remarks may be made with respect
to many of the apparently abandoned fields.

30 The State and the Farmer

Because of inability to secure labor, the fence-
rows and fences are often not as clean as for-
merly, and the roadsides have a shabby appear-
ance. Fields are often grown to weeds ; yet
these fields may be only resting until the owner
finds time to put them into crop, or they may
be used for light pasture, or they may be in
the process of returning to forest. Of course,
they are relatively ineffective pieces of prop-
erty, but the conclusion must not be reached,
because they are unkempt and not in use at
the time, that they are abandoned or that the
owner considers that he is obliged to desert
them.

The significance of the general situation.

It is unquestionably true that there is lessen-
ing utility of some of our farming lands. In
the face of this fact, however, three other facts
stand out prominently: (i) Markets are as
good as ever, for there is no decline in the
purchasing power of the people (rather there
is a reverse tendency); (2) the land is still pro-
ductive, notwithstanding a popular impression

The Early Farming 31

to the contrary; (3) good farmers are better
off today than they ever were before.

We have heard so much about the abandon-
ment of farms that we are likely to think that
it measures a lessening efficiency of agriculture.
We must not be misled, however, by surface
indications. We are now in the midst of a
process of the survival of the fit. Two oppo-
site movements are very apparent in the agri-
culture of the time : certain farmers are increas-
ing in prosperity, and certain other farmers
are decreasing in prosperity. The former class
is gradually occupying the land and extending
its power and influence.

The older farming was practically a com-
pletely self-regulating business, comprising not
only the raising of food and of material for
clothing, but also the preparation and manu-
facture of these products. The farmer de-
pended on himself, having little necessity for
neighbors or for association with other crafts.
In the breaking up of the old stratification
under the development of manufacture and
transportation and the consequent recrystalliz-

32 The State and the Farmer

ing of society, the old line fence still remained;
persons clung to the farm as if it were a
divinely ordained and indivisible unit.

We are now approaching a time when the
traditional boundaries must often be disre-
garded. The old farms are largely social or
traditional rather than economic units. Because
a certain eighty acres is enclosed with one kind
of fence and assessed to one man does not sig-
nify that it has the proper combination of con-
ditions to make a good farm.

We must consider that the agriculture of
the eastern states is now changing rapidly. It
has passed through several epochs. The pos-
sibilities of agriculture in the East lie largely
in a new adaptation to conditions, and in its
diversification. This diversification is already
a feature of the East. It is significant to note
that while New York, for example, ranks
fourth in value of farm property, it ranks as
low as seventeenth in farm acreage, showing
that the yield per acre is far greater than in
many of the competing states. In the total
value of farm products, New York is exceeded

.

bv

Position of New York 33

y Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. In the value of
farm crops, in 1899, it held fifth place, being
exceeded by Illinois, Iowa, Texas and Ohio.
Considered with reference to the value of farm
products per acre, it leads the states in this
list, the figures being New York, $15.73 Per
acre; Ohio, $13.36; Illinois, $12.48; Texas,
$12.25; I°wa, $12.22; and New York is
exceeded by New Jersey and most of the New
England states. Considering the fact that
New York state is one of the largest states
east of the Mississippi, this condition also
indicates that New York is internally less
developed than some of its competing states.
Illinois ranks first in value of farm property
and first in available farm acreage; Iowa ranks
second in the value of farm property and sec-
ond in available acreage; Ohio ranks third in
value of farm property and third in available
acreage; New York ranks fourth in value of
farm property and seventeenth in available
acreage. The above statements suggest the
reverse of decadence in eastern agriculture,'*
whatever may be the statistics that express

34 The State and the Farmer

changing values or whatever may be the popu-
lar fancy to the contrary.

A further evidence of the great diversifica-
tion of agricultural enterprises in New York,
as a representative of eastern conditions, is
shown by the fact that in a list now before
me of twenty-two leading products of this
latitude, New York stands first in the pro-
duction of eleven of them, whereas no other
state ranks first in more than two or three of
them. While the agriculture of the state in
general shows a decline as measured by the
census figures, the main lines of special
development are in a condition of increased
vigor and effectiveness ; and this remark may
be extended to other eastern states. The
wonder is not that certain lands are returning
to forest, but that, in all this shift and the
rapid development of the West, the state
has been able to hold the position that it still
occupies.

This rapidly moving readjustment and diver-
sification will produce fundamental changes in
the mode of farming and in the economic,

The Problem of Each Farm 35

social and political outlook of the people. In
the mode of farming, it will force new busi-
ness organization ; and when new acres cannot
be had, the old acres will be doubled by using
them to greater depths. In very many ways,
the shift is now demanding a new kind of
study of agricultural questions. This redi-
rection of agriculture is bound to come in
every state ; and we should meet it hopefully.
Nor would I have my reader feel that this
readjustment is all in the future. It is pro-
ceeding at the present time, and with greater
momentum and effectiveness than many of us,
I suspect, are aware. After many years of
touch with the problem and with the men who
are capable of judging it, I am impressed that
the persons who are most alarmed are those
confined largely to offices and who are given
to the study of statistics.

The situation with individual farms.

A discussion of statistical generalities does
not exhibit the status of the individual farmer
nor give us specific reasons for the decline of

36 The State and the Farmer

profitableness in farming. Every farm is a
problem by itself and what may have been re-
sponsible for the defeat of one farmer may not
have been the cause of the embarrassment of
his neighbor. Some of the decline no doubt
lies directly with the man, quite independently
of the land: it is psychological and perhaps
even hereditary, and in its community aspects
it is social; but these phases I am not now
prepared to discuss.

The larger number of the farms of appar-
ently declining efficiency are in the hill regions.
In New York, many of them are on soils of
the volusia series, particularly on the volusia
silt loam. This soil is of low humus content,
usually with a high and compact subsoil, and
limited root area. Many of these farms are
unsuccessful in part because of their climate.
They are elevated. It is often impossible to
grow with profit the common varieties of corn
and even of other grain. Sometimes the diffi-
culty lies in their remoteness and the cost of
transportation, together with the poor schools
and social disadvantages that are a part of

Direct-Sales Farming 37

such isolation. Usually these hill lands are
expensive to work, and they do not lend
themselves well to open tillage. Very fre-
quently they suffer for lack of under-drainage.
If the elevation is too high to grow good
wheat it may also be too high for good clover,
since clover is usually seeded with the wheat.

These high and rough lands are not so fre-
quently plowed as lower and flat lands and,
therefore, they are not cleaned, do not receive
the benefit of rotation, and they are likely
gradually to deteriorate in physical condition.

There has also been great change in market
demands. Beef-raising has gone out of the
East. It was a simple thing to grow the beef
and to raise the milk in the old time, but it
requires skill to grow and market a modern
steer and to tend a modern dairy herd.
With relatively few cattle, there is insufficient
enrichment of land. The farmer on these
hills is likely to practice direct sales; that
is, he sells his timothy hay and other prod-
ucts direct, removing thereby a large amount
of fertilizing value and saving nothing of the

38 The State and the Farmer

crop except the roots and stubble to return
to the land. This primitive mode of gen-
eral farming allows a man to make a profit
only on a single sale. The manufacturer tries
to turn his property over more than once, each
time expecting to realize a profit. When the
farmer is able to market his forage largely in
the shape of animal produce, he will not only
save fertility but should make a profit on both
the crop and the animal. The selling of baled
hay rather than pork and beef and milk and
eggs, cannot be expected to yield much profit
or satisfaction to the average farmer or to
keep his land in living condition. Taking it
by and large, no agriculture is successful with-
out an animal husbandry.

The popular mind pictures these so-called
abandoned lands as exhausted in their plant-
food, but this is probably not often the case.
Very many of them are potentially as produc-
tive as ever, but they are run down; yet even
at their best they might not be able to satisfy
a man who lives in the twentieth century.
Human wants have increased. What would

Not Fitted to Environment 39

have made a good and comfortable living sev-
enty-five or one hundred years ago, would not
support a man in the way in which he ought to
live today, nor would it attract his boys to
remain on the land.

Lack of adaptation.

All these and other causes of the decline of
individual farms can be expressed as a lack of
adaptation to the natural surrounding condi-
tions. Good agriculture is the perfect adjust-
ment of the methods of the farmer to the
particular region and circumstances, thus
making all effort count and eliminating waste.
This is why some of the European farming
is so much better than our own. In the end,
therefore, good farming is not a question
of West or East. One often finds excellent
farming in what are generally considered to
be poor agricultural regions.

It is a biological fact that animals and
plants cannot thrive unless they are well
adapted to the conditions in which they live ;
and, if they are wholly unadapted, they perish.

40 The State and the Farmer

Now, farming in this country is not yet
adapted to the natural conditions of soil and
climate and market and other environmental
factors. In fact, we really do not yet know
what the soil factors are, if, indeed, we know
to any degree of accuracy what any local fac-
tors are. If some of our eastern farms have
changed from corn and wheat to hay, and if
they have not prospered under this change,
then it follows that they have not yet found
their proper adaptation. It is not at all strange
that this adaptation is lacking, since there has
been no means of putting the farmer into
touch with his own problem. Not one of the
older farmers was adapted to his environment
by the church or the school or by any other
educational or social agency. If he is now
adapted to the conditions in which he lives, it
is because of some accident of heredity or cir-
cumstance, or because of his native wit. We
can never adapt the business of the farm to its
conditions until we understand thoroughly
all the problems involved, and there has
been no serious effort to understand these

Competition with Adjacent Regions 41

particular problems until within very recent
time.

Much has been said about the disadvantage
of the eastern farms in competing with the
western farms. I am convinced that they often
suffer quite as much by competing with each
other or with regions close at hand. In a thirty-
mile drive, I traveled a flat country where
oats were a good crop and harvested by ma-
chinery and drawn from the fields in high-
piled racks ; I also traversed a country of high
and steep hills in which oats were a poor crop
and not harvested by machinery and were
hauled from the declivities in small loads. It
was evident that the latter region could not
compete in the raising of oats with the
former, although they were less than twenty
miles apart. The one region seemed to be
well adapted to oats and the other, at least on
the hillsides, was not a profitable oat country.
In other words, the farmers on the hills had
not adapted their farming to the hills. I sus^
pect that a bushel of oats cost them at least
50 per cent more than it cost the men at the

42 The State and the Farmer

other end of the county. Yet, I think that
there is a way of profitably farming such hills :
many men have proved it.

Point of view as to remedies.

While I am convinced that the general con-
dition of eastern agriculture is prosperous and
hopeful, we all know that there are very great
problems and that some regions are much
more disadvantaged than others. If we are to
discuss remedies we must first of all establish
a point of view.

We must first disabuse our minds of all
prejudgments and consider the conditions as
they actually exist and in their relations to the
general progress of the race. Our outlook
must be forward rather than backward. We
must overcome the influences of many phrases
and trite statements that have long been pub-
lic property. It is said that the farms are the
bulwark of the nation. Like all trite sayings,
this is both true and false. We need the con-
servative element of the farm, that has its feet
planted directly on the verities of the earth.

Large Holdings 43

But we must remember that poor lands usu-
ally raise poor people. I do not conceive it to
be necessary that all the lands in any common-
wealth should support farm families in the
sense in which we have understood it in the
past. It is much better for the commonwealth,
both from the economic and social points of
view, that many of the lands should be de-
voted to forests or even allowed to run wild
than that they produce people that are only
half alive. I should want to keep the conser-
vatism of the agricultural peoples, but I
should want this conservatism to be construc-
tive and progressive.

I am not ready to admit that the traditional
"independent" farm family on 80 or 100
acres is always necessarily essential, as we
have been taught, to the maintenance of demo-
cratic institutions or to the best development
of agriculture. The size of holdings and the
relation of the family to the land, are likely to
change radically in many regions, and we must
be prepared to accept the fact. The Ameri-
can has a traditional fear of large estates, but

44 The State and the Farmer

such estates are bound to come in some of
the remoter regions. We should now be suffi-
ciently established in democracy to have for-
gotten our early alarm at such estates. Very
likely we shall repeat to some extent the expe-
rience of Germany and other countries, where
leadership of large agricultural estates has
contributed to welfare.

In the discussion of abandoned farms, I fear
that we have been misled or even scared by a
phrase. We have accepted the term " aband-
oned farms " as itself a statement of fact and
have seemed to reason from it as if it pre-
sented a single condition of affairs. Our im-
agination has often outrun our reason. It is
not so much a question of abandonment as
of shifting occupancy and radically changed
conditions. If these conditions had been ex-
pressed with equal emphasis by some other
phrase, the discussion of the question might
have taken a wholly different direction. Sup-
pose, for example, that a part of the problem
had been expressed in the term " farms be-
coming forested:" the least imaginative of

Not an Isolated Question 45

my readers will at once see that a wholly
unlike line of thought might have evolved
from the discussion and wholly different con-
clusions might have been reached. There is
really no problem of abandoned farms as such.
The so-called abandonment of farms does not
represent one condition but many conditions ;
not one series of facts but many series of
facts ; not one forthcoming result but many
results. The condition of agriculture, even
though we admit it to be bad in many particu-
lars, is not a cause for alarm, but is rather a
reason for new and careful study. Nor does this
condition affect agriculture alone; it is rather
a problem of economic evolution, that con-
cerns the organization of society, and consid-
eration of it cannot be separated from the dis-
cussion of general welfare questions of the day.
Mere public propaganda cannot solve these
questions of land occupancy. Associations
and conventions cannot solve them. Importa-
tions of labor cannot solve them, much as it
may help the individual farmer here and there.
It is a debatable question whether we should

46 The State and the Farmer

try to restock many of the present farms
merely by putting a foreign family on them.
Perhaps the very reason why these farms are
in the process of decline is that they are neces-
sarily ineffective economic units and are not
capable of being directed into a farm manage-
ment that is adaptable to present conditions.
Merely to put families back on many of these
farms would be to continue the old order;
and it is this old order that we need to modify
or to outgrow.

Viewed as an economic question, the shifting
of farm occupation should not disturb us
more than other shifting of population. In
the present day, some of the lands that are
now " abandoned " would not have been set-
tled. They would remain in timber ; and now,
by the inexorable power of economic forces,
they are returning into woodland. Some of
these farms ought to be abandoned to other
uses. It is a misfortune for a man to be
obliged to inherit one of them, and be sen-
tenced for life to live on it. He would much
better try to escape.

Transition Epochs 47

fo mere treatment of symptoms can have
much permanent effect on agricultural condi-
tions. Many agricultural localities are mak-
ing great effort to secure summer boarders.
This may aid a certain class of persons;
but as the summer boarder advances into the
open country, agriculture is likely to recede.
The solution of the problem is a long-time
process. It is not merely adding fertilizer,
nor killing daisies and paint-brush ; it may not
be even a question of making the farm more
productive. The little -farm -well -tilled idea
will not solve the problem. It must be a pro-
cess of reorganization.

Let us bear in mind that the questions of
ineffective farming are not new. Just now the
emphasis seems to be placed on the so-called
abandonment of farms, and on certain kinds
of propaganda that promise to solve these dif-
ficulties. We have passed through many epochs
or eras of wide-spread propaganda, in each one
of which some one factor was supposed to
afford the means of relieving agricultural dis-
tress. I remember that at one time the empha-

48 The State and the Farmer

sis in agricultural discussion was placed largely
on the farm mortgage, but we have learned
that a mortgage on a farm is not inherently
different from a mortgage on any other prop-
erty. I recall very well when the era of com-
pounded fertilizers was at its height: all one
had to do was to have the soil and plant an-
alyzed to determine the deficiencies, and then
to prepare a medicine to cure the disorder. I
remember the advent of farm machinery, which
was supposed to be able to solve the farmer's
difficulties. I saw the beginning of spraying
for insects and plant diseases, and it was fig-
ured up for us what losses we suffer from bugs
that prey on our crops; it has cost us more to
fight bugs than to fight Indians, counting the
value of crops that they destroy; spraying
would provide a remedy, and yet bugs are still
with us. At one time the emphasis was placed
on under-drainage, and we need a recrudes-
cence of this teaching. In parts of the great
West, the emphasis is naturally placed on irri-
gation. We have looked to the rural free de-
liveries of mail as one of the great means of

Transition Remedies

alleviating agricultural isolation and failure.
The good-roads people have been sure that
the lack of traversable highways is the cause
of the so-called agricultural decline. Lately,
various kinds of extension work have been
strongly in the public mind. We are just now
in the era of soil surveys and other soil studies.
We are beginning to talk in a new way about
the old and yet unknown subject of farm man-
agement. We are talking freely of social ques-
tions, without knowing just what they are.

Every one of these epochs has placed us on
a higher plane, and yet we have never heard
more about agricultural decline than within the
past ten and twenty years, notwithstanding that
this is the very time when the agricultural col-
leges and experiment stations and govern-
mental departments have been expanding
knowledge and extending their influence. The
fact is, that all these agencies relieve first the
good farmers. They aid those who reach out
for new knowledge and for better things. The
man who is strongly disadvantaged by natural
location or other circumstances, is the last to

50 The State and the Farmer

avail himself of all these privileges. We have
learned that it is not sufficient merely to start
good movements, but that we must have some
active means of reaching the last man on the
last farm, so long as he lives there. This is by
no means a missionary work; it is rather a duty
that the state owes to its citizens, to provide
those persons in difficult positions with the
best possible means of making their property
thoroughly serviceable. It becomes in the end,
therefore, a personal question as to how infor-
mation and education can be taken to the farms
in such a way that the farming shall profitably
adapt itself to its environments. The failure
of a great many farmers may be less a fault
of their own than a disadvantage of the con-
ditions in which they find themselves.

It is fairly incumbent on the state organiza-
tion to provide effective means of increasing
the satisfaction and profit of farming in the
less-fortunate areas as well as in the favorable
ones, both as an agency of developing citizen-
ship and as a means of increasing the wealth
of the state. The state cannot delegate this

Establish Orchards

work, nor can it escape the responsibility of
it. It is primarily an internal question. The
questions must be attacked just where they
exist, and with the sole purpose of solving
them for the good of those who meet them.

The outlook for the hills and remote lands.

Wherever farming is not now profitable, a
special effort should be made to readjust the
handling of the lands to the conditions of
climate, soil topography, markets and the like.
Any one who has traveled much in the north-
ern states will have noticed the superior quality
of the tree growth and the grass cover in
that region. Of course, the unproductive
areas, whether on hills or plains, present very
many conditions and they may be adaptable to
many kinds of agriculture ; but in the particu-
lar type of hill land and remote land which is
now most in the public mind, I look ,for the
development of at least three strong forms of
farming :

(i) Fruit-growing for export. We have

developed great skill in the methods of car-

52 The State and the Farmer

ing for orchards on the relatively level lands
of the special fruit sections, but we have
given very little attention to the growing of
first quality apples in the more hilly regions.
In such regions we cannot practice the type
of clean tillage that we advise for other
lands. Some relatively simple and inexpen-
sive type of farm management must be
applied to them. There is every reason to
think that large areas in the East that are
now practically unknown to fruit may grow
a grade of apples that will be in great
demand in the foreign trade. The state can
well afford to undertake some large demon-
strations in the growing of such orchards.

(2) A revival of the animal industries and
the extension of dairying. With the con-
tinued development of great city markets,
the dairy industry must grow. Many of the
hill and outlying lands are no doubt admir-
ably adapted to pasturage and forage crops
for cattle and sheep and swine ; but the live-
stock interest, aside from dairying and
poultry-raising, is altogether too small in

theE

Community Forests 53

the East. The eastern states should now be
making inquiries into the condition of the
animal husbandries within their borders.

(3) The growing of forests. It is to the
forest crop that vast areas of the roughest,
highest and most unproductive lands of the
East are best adapted. As near as I can
determine about one -third of New York,
for example, is in woodland. In some coun-
ties, even outside the Adirondack reserva-
tion, two-fifths of the land is reported to be
in wood-lots. This is a greater area than is
devoted to any other crop, and it probably
yields less profit per acre ; yet in the census
year New York led all the states of the
union in the value of farm-forest products.

As a people, we must re-orient ourselves
to the subject of forests. The forest is, or
ought to be, considered as a crop. Natural
forests are not necessarily the best forests,
so far as the production of timber is con-
cerned. Nearly all natural forests abound
in unproductive areas, and in trees of very
slight commercial value, which are as much

54 The State and the Farmer

weeds in the forest as Canada thistles are
weeds in the corn-field. Man can produce
a better commercial forest than Nature usu-
ally does.

These forests may well belong to the
people. Schools and towns could be sup-
ported by the proceeds of good community
forests, at the same time that water-supplies
could be conserved, wild animals protected,
and the beauty and respectability of the
country enhanced. When this time begins to
come, the commonwealths that have rough
lands may consider themselves to be fortu-
nate. The town, county or state could well
afford to buy some of these lands and
devote them to forests. The United States
government is well begun on this process,
and this is right; but it is also necessary
that the states and communities themselves
acquire forests in order to maintain their
institutions and to develop local enterprise,
the importance of which I shall try to
develop in the second part of this book.

II

Society and the Farmer

I HAVE now tried to give my reader a
picture of some of the conditions con-
fronting the strictly rural society. Even this
brief sketch is sufficient, I think, to suggest
that the problems of this society are not agri-
cultural problems alone, nor even rural prob-
lems alone. All society must interest itself in
them. In particular, must the agents of society
—the various organisms or departments of
states and communities — extend their con-
structive work directly to the open country,
not only that the interests of the open country
may be advanced but that the welfare of society
itself may be safeguarded.

I propose now to bring briefly and rapidly
before the reader a few of the ways in
which society, or the state, may exercise it-
self in this direction to advantage* I have
in mind society in general, — that is, all men
(55)

56 The State and the Farmer

and women consciously or unconsciously work-
ing together for a result, — and not alone
the mere formal organization of government.
I mean to express some of the mutual obliga-
tions of the state and the farmer.

THE PROBLEM

We must never overlook the importance of
these farm producers to society, nor forget
that they deserve as much from society as any
other persons. These persons are not much in
evidence. This is important: they are not
working for honor or acclaim. They are re-
mote. This also is important: they are near
the sources.

Saving our resources.

The memorable Conference of the Gover-
nors has left us with a new appreciation of the
importance of our natural resources and the
necessity of saving them. Much was said about
the development of water-power, the prevent-
ing of land erosion, the importance of gov-
ernmental regulation of forests. A number of

Conservation of Resources 57

e governors declared that they would ap-
point forest commissions on their return: this
may be of value, but it is not likely to
accomplish much, as commissions go. The
man who stands at the sources, is the one on
whom we must in the end depend for the
work of preservation. The instincts of the
settled farmer are all for preservation and bet-
terment, not for exploitation or for sales of
stocks: he is the natural conservator of the
native resources of the earth.

There are many persons who are waiting to
know what forces the great Conference will set
in motion to reach and quicken the man at the
sources ; that is, how we are to get to the real
bottom of the question. It was most interest-
ing to follow the discussions on the means of
developing water-power: the Mississippi, Ni-
agara, and other great streams were mentioned.
This development, of course, is necessary. But
rivers are not born as rivers. They originate
from a little lake in the mountains, and a rill in
a forest, and a spring in the pasture lot. To
a great extent, they originate or are supplied

58 The State and the Farmer

from sources on some man's land. This man
has the first use of the water. Every farm
supplies something to the rivers. Many of
them supply living lakes and streams. There
are more than five millions of farms in the
United States. Every good farm will in time
have its own mechanical power. Much of it
will be water-power. When the farmer devel-
opes his water-power, he will also protect his
stream or spring. It is more important that
we develop small power on a million farms
than that we organize power companies or
harness Niagara.

Our natural resources are of three kinds:
Those of the mining order, the supply of which
we can prolong only by saving ; those growing
directly or indirectly out of the earth and sea,
as all forests and other crops and all animals,
the supply of which may not only be conserved
but may be greatly increased; the streams and
lakes, the control of which depends very
directly on the crop-cover of the earth.

In the last analysis, the utilization of the
powers of the earth depends on the man who

The Farmer's Responsibility 59

raises the crops, whether of forests or cotton
or wheat. The solution of the problem is to
reach this man. This man is coming to a new
sense of his responsibilities. We often say that
the farmer feeds all the people. He must do
more than this: he must leave his part of the
earth's surface in more productive condition
than when he received it. This he will accom-
plish by a better understanding of the powers
of the soil and the means of conserving them,
for every well-managed soil should grow richer
rather than poorer; and, speaking broadly,
the farm should have within itself the power
of perpetuating itself. The enrichment of land
by the mere purchase of mined fertilizers —
which is transportation, or the exploitation of
one place for the benefit of another, — will not
accomplish this. Every young man going on
the old farm should feel that he has practically
a new farm to begin on ; and every good farm
should pay for itself, buildings and all, in every
generation of men. A farm youth, as well as any
other youth, should be able to start anew, if he
wants to, even though he does not go west.

60 The State and the Farmer

It is not only important to farming, but
absolutely essential to the nation, that the
man at the sources be reached. The farther
removed the man, the nearer the sources he is
likely to be, and the greater may be the neces-
sity of reaching him. We have made only the
merest beginning toward reaching him. We
must not overlook any man.

Government can go into farming, — that is,
into forest-farming — on its own account, and
this it must do. But the one great thing that
government can do for the man on the land,
that it does not do for all men, is to increase
his sense of responsibility to the land and to
give him power to use the land. This is educa-
tion by means of agriculture, — using the word
agriculture broadly for man's occupational
contact with the surface of the earth. This is
the real solution of the problem of the saving
and increasing of our natural resources. This
lies beyond and behind all commissions and
conventions. Perhaps the commissions and
conventions will help to bring this about more
speedily.

City and Country Phases 61

The social questions.

Country affairs must be redirected. The
problem is chiefly social. Good farmers are
making the farms pay. The financial part of
the business is improving. The community
feeling, however, seems to be dormant, if, in
fact, not actually perishing in many places.

We need to give as much attention to the
social welfare of the rural country as to simi-
lar questions of urban regions. Our studies
of social questions have been confined very
largely to congested populations, but these
questions are just as many and just as import-
ant in communities of scattered homes as in
cities and towns. Even the question of con-
gestion of population is not a city problem
alone. Part of the city population comes from
the country and this movement may distress
the country from under- populating it at the
same time that it distresses the city from over-
populating it. But even if city congestion
were to come wholly from the city itself, it
nevertheless would still affect the country, not
only because some of the surplus might find

62 The State and the Farmer

its way into the country, but because all popu-
lations are inter -relating and inter- acting.
While it is customary to divide human beings
into city people and country people, all great
human problems are fundamentally the same,
differing chiefly in their phases and symptoms.
There is a city phase and a country phase of
every great question. The city phase has been
studied with much care, and, therefore, we
have come to think that social problems are
city problems. But whatever vitally affects the
city likewise in some degree affects the open
country. One of the great needs of the time
in social studies is that we discover the rural
country.

There is a city phase or application and a
rural application to all questions of education,
truancy, public health, pauperism, immigra-
tion, charities, corrections, civic relations,
labor, density of population, moral standards.
We have made the serious mistake in treating
some of these questions as separate problems
for the city and the rural districts, largely,
however, by disregarding the one. We are at

this

Country Must Stand for Itself 63

this moment making the mistake of con-
sidering agricultural education as a thing
apart, whereas it is only a phase of education
in general and cannot be isolated without
leading us into error.

If these statements are sound, it follows that
the country should not be exploited in the
interest of the city. The country must be
developed for itself and out of itself. There
must be a country social order, as there is a
city social order. One might think, from many
current discussions, that the country exists for
the convenience and benefit of the city, pro-
viding occupation for those who have failed to
attach themselves in cities and an asylum for
the undesirables. To some persons, the coun-
try question seems to be only a congeries of
isolated problems of needy families and of
vicious communities ; but these are not country
questions more than city questions. In either
case, they are but symptoms. Want must be
relieved and vice must be controlled, wherever
they are. No small part of the vice of the
country districts is that which is forced out

64 The State and the Farmer

from the cities. The open country has prob-
lems enough of its own without being obliged
to receive the over-plus from cities.

What I have in mind is far more than the
mere relief of symptoms here and there. I
want to see the development of a virile and
effective rural society ; and I know that such a
society can come only as the result of forces
arising directly out of the country, as a natural
expression of the country itself, not as a reflec-
tion or transplanting of city institutions. The
country must develop its own ideals and self-
respect. My city friends, for example, are
proposing ways whereby country people may
have entertainment, but they make the funda-
mental error of fashioning their schemes on
city ways. The real countryman does not
think of theaters and recitals and receptions
and functions in the way that the city man
does, and it is not at all necessary that he
should. On the contrary, it is very important
that he should not. The countryman needs
more social life; but his entertainment and
contentment must come largely out of his

What the Countryman Is 65

upation and his contact with nature, not
from mere extraneous attractions. Herein lies
the root of my concern in nature-study and
nature-sympathy: the countryman must be
able to interest himself spiritually in his native
environment as his chief resource of power and
happiness. Many a country family rusts and
dies for want of a local stimulus.

Holding that it is fundamentally important
to preserve and encourage originality in the
open agricultural country itself, it will then be
necessary to stimulate re-directive movements
to prevent the country from tumbling head-
long into the small city or town. The tendency
of farmers to move into town is to be depre-
cated. It is not necessary to pause here to
combat the prevalent but superficial notion
that farmers would better live in hamlets be-
cause European farmers live in them, but only
to say that the European custom is the result
of historical and social conditions that do not
obtain in this country, and to consider that
Europe itself would undoubtedly be better off
if it were possible for a different condition to
E

66 The State and the Farmer

obtain. We have no peasantry in the United
States, at least not among the whites, and
farmers are moving away from peasantry rather
than towards it. The great social movement of
the world is away from peasanthood. What it
may be necessary to do to arrest the drainage
to the small city, we shall presently consider.

The countryman.

The country problems must be approached
sympathetically, from the standpoint of the
countryman. The countryman is to live in the
country, and to make it or mar it. Those who
approach the subject with the idea that the
countryman is unresponsive or incompetent,
are really not in sight of the problem and
would better let it alone. One who judges
country life by city standards, — as many city
persons do — would also better let the problem
alone. Many of the criticisms of the personal
appearance and habits of the farmer and the
pictures of supposed unthrifty farm proper-
ties, only show that the author of them is look-
ing at the question from the outside and at

The Countryman

long range. It is quite as likely that it is the
city man who is in need of help. It is the
commonest thing for the onlooker to say that
farming must be more u scientific." Of course
this is true, but not in the way in which the
onlooker commonly conceives it. It is the
easiest thing to make the most stupid failures
by merely appropriating the scientific facts and
discoveries of the investigators ; it is quite
another thing to work these facts into a good
system, but this is a matter of slow and labori-
ous growth.

There are farmers and farmers. They are
of all kinds and nationalities, and of all ranges
of competency; but the good farmer is one of
the most industrious, capable and steadfast of
men, and he is likely to have a real sympathetic
relationship to nature that stands him in good
stead at all times. He does not need to have
help or charities dispensed to him. But society
needs to recognize him, and it is high time
that the state should undertake positive con-
structive efforts that will allow him and aid
him to express himself to the full. There is

68 The State and the Farmer

enough talent and ability in the rural country
to have set the agricultural status far ahead
of its present condition, if it only were called
out and allowed to express itself. It lacks
opportunity.

The best public opinion grows where men
are most independent, where they are least tied
commercially and personally to other men,
where they may have an opinion without fear-
ing to jeopardize their trade or their position.
Commercial men and salaried men are tempted
to be trimmers and compromisers. The method
of "practical politics" is compromise. This in-
dependence can grow much better on land that
one owns than in rented houses. It must pro-
ceed direct from cause to consequence, as a field
of corn grows direct from seed to ear. The pro-
cesses of the countryman are direct. They are
not over-organized. There is fixity and direct-
ness of attention in the country. The man is
not diverted by a thousand things. The city
boy may know much more than the country
boy, but a good deal of what he knows may
not be worth knowing. When the man on the

The Best Public Opinion 69

land is well educated in the terms of his envi-
ronment, we shall have the kind of public
opinion that stands. The roots of society are
away back in the soil.

If society is under obligation to consider the
farmer, it is equally true that the farmer bears
an obligation to society. This the farmer is
likely not to recognize. The means that will
bring about the one, however, will necessarily
bring about the other.

Rural needs.

Before we can intelligently discuss some of
the remedies for the social ills of the open
country, we must inventory the needs. These
needs seem to fall chiefly into five great groups,
which may be briefly stated:

(i) The need of greater technical knowledge
of agriculture. This knowledge of discovery
and teaching is being rapidly supplied by the
experiment stations and colleges of agriculture.
The knowledge that we already have is far in
advance of the practice of it; this is necessarily
true in any branch of human activity, but this

70 The State and the Farmer

does not argue against the necessity of still
more knowledge. As much as we have learned,
all the great fundamental problems of rational
agriculture, are yet unsolved, and many of them
are not even explored. Great as our lack is in
these directions, it is perhaps even greater in
the social and cooperative lines : the great
country problems are now human rather than
technically agricultural.

(2) Need of governmental protection, where-
by the disabilities that are not a part of his
business may be removed from the farmer.
Governmental protection and control are least
applicable and least effective in the farming
country, and the farmer has more burdens to
carry than those pertaining to the rearing of
crops and animals and to the contest with
climate and weather: some of these handicaps
will be removed or their effects minimized in
the future (page 81).

Corollary to this is the lack of any kind of
organized supervision over country living. For
example, there is no continuing oversight of
public health in the farming country, except a

Rural Needs 71

more or less effective effort when communi-
cable diseases break out; and the supervision
even then is usually more in the interest of the
city than of the country. We are much in need
of health supervision directly from the country
point of view. The lack of attention to health
regulations is little less than appalling in its
consequences. The physicians in the farming
country are general practitioners, commonly
out of close touch with specialists and experts.
It is pitiable that so many of the good country
population are lost from neglect, and anti-
quated treatment of disease. I have no means
of knowing whether the country suffers more
than the city in this particular regard ; but well
enforced sanitary regulations are powerful
educators, and the country does not have the
benefit of them to the same extent that the
city has.

(3) Need of the cooperative spirit in business.
The development of our rural country has pro-
ceeded mostly on the basis of isolated occu-
pancy of land, with the strong individualism
that goes with it. Definite cooperation has not

72 The State and the Farmer

been necessary; and what has once become an
established order soon becomes tradition.

In making these statements, I am not saying
that farmers do not cooperate. Great numbers
of them belong to organizations and societies
of one kind and another, and the number is
rapidly increasing. But the cooperation is
usually not as complete as it might be, and
very much of it does not originate from the
land. Granting everything that is now done,
there is still need of further effort.

(4) There is need of centers of interest in
the localities, for lack of such interest is inten-
sified by the rapid growth of cities and the
directing of attention townward.

(5) Need of real personal starting-power and
enthusiasm; of gumption; of enterprise that
gets things done. Lack of this arises from
little contact with fellows, from the arrested
development due to marked individualism,
and from the sterilization of rural institutions
consequent on the removal of centers of in-
terest to the towns. In the last analysis it is
conditioned on the low earning-power of the
average farm ; but the earning-power is in the

Remedies 73

hands of the farmer himself to a greater extent
than are the social needs.

THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL REMEDIES

As to remedies for the social shortcomings
of the open country, only the most general
suggestions can be given, but I think that it
is fairly possible to indicate some useful
points of view. Of course, the fundamental
corrective of it all is education, but we should
indicate what the nature of this education
ought to be. We much need to know how to
use our increasing technical knowledge, and
to systematize it into practical ideals of per-
sonal living.

It is essential, as I have suggested, that we
start with the proposition that farming people
be kept on the farm. The centers of interest
should be established or re-established in the
open country itself, not further concentrated
in the town or city. It is easy to see how
interest converges in the city or town (page
16). Markets are there; roads lead there;
trolleys and telephones lead there; the best

74 The State and the Farmer

churches, schools and entertainments are there.
Farming is a local business : it rests on a par-
ticular piece of land; if the farmer is to be
effective he must be content in his locality.
The development of living local interest is the
real root of the rural social question.

The importance of the personal and local initiative.

Every one of us, I am sure, feels that good
institutions will not save us. Society can be
saved and advanced only by increasing the
number of competent persons who stand on
their own feet. The farmer is proverbially the
man who has stood on his own feet. Other
persons have stood on other men's feet. The
purpose of every good country-life institution
is to develop persons who are able to walk
alone. We must be careful that we do not
develop a man who will go about his farming
leaning with one arm on the government and
with the other on the college or experiment
station, and at every turn asking for recipes
in franked packages. It is not the business of
government to test every farmer's seeds, but

Local Incentive 75

to teach every farmer how to test his own
seeds.

I think, therefore, that no agricultural work
public or private, no institution state or
national, no movement educational or philan-
thropic, has adequate justification unless its
one purpose or effect is to allow native indi-
vidual responsibility and initiative to develop
in the man who stands directly on the land;
and, if it is necessary to stimulate enterprise, the
effort should lie preferably with the institu-
tion or agency that is nearest to the man and
his problem.

Agencies of local communication.

The city has developed great effectiveness
through its means of communication. The
open country is just beginning to consider a
similar phase of development. Undoubtedly,
the engineer is to have a marked influence on
the institutions of country life. Comfortable
highways and electric lines are to open up the
country. They will thread it with a network
of avenues. Of themselves, these avenues will

76 The State and the Farmer

be concentrative or centripetal agencies, for
the most part, piling up wealth in small cities
and towns, as 1 have already indicated ; we need
to be thoughtful to develop at the same time
the distributive or centrifugal agencies to
counteract this tendency.

It is important that the lay of these avenues
be such as to develop the country as well as
the town. Good roads are a means of doing
business expeditiously and economically ; they
are also a means of overcoming isolation, and
they will have a great influence in organizing
social movements in the open country. As all
other avenues of commerce have been pri-
marily city-feeders, it is of the utmost im-
portance that country highways serve country
necessities.

The distributive agencies will be largely
social. The development of a country mail
service is the beginning of an effective dispers-
ive or disseminating institution. We must
have a parcels post, — an institution that is
opposed on the one side by express companies
and often on the other by merchants in the

Roads and Posts 77

smaller centers, who are afraid that persons
will buy goods through the mails. It is humil-
iating that great public service should be
obliged to wait on such opposition as this.

As nearly as I can estimate from such data
as I have been able to collect, not one farmer
in three reads an agricultural book, an agricul-
tural bulletin, or an agricultural newspaper. It
is all well enough that the farmer thinks in
terms of experience rather than in terms of
books; but a sound reading-habit is essential
to his progress and his success. Reading-clubs,
of one kind or another, are likely to become a
strong force. It is not improbable that the
agricultural press will find itself exercising a
new cooperative relation with the reader. I
look on the reading-center as one of the dis-
tributive agencies.

We should not forget that distributive agen-
cies should be developed coordinately with
the centralizing agencies, otherwise we make
no permanent progress. It is not by any means
sufficient that we have merely good roads and
autocar routes and many trolley lines and a

78 The State and the Farmer

web of telephone communication. All develop-
ments depend for their final success on com-
plementary movements.

^Reconstructive movements.

Reconstructive agencies are already well
under way. All the shift of which I have
spoken is not without its decided reaction.
The change of center has called for new kinds
of institutions to stand for the country-life
interests. These institutions are largely gov-
ernmental. They reflect the rapidly growing
tendency toward state or federal solidarity,
and the delegation of power from the locality
to the capitol. The rural population is now in
danger of looking beyond its own institutions
to government.

The greatest of all these new agricultural
institutions in this country is the United States
Department of Agriculture, working from
the center outward, and gradually touching
almost every isolated phase of country life.
The growth of this great institution should
be a source of pride to every American.

National Department of Agriculture 79

It now has the disbursement of some $10,-
000,000; and every patriot, I hope, wants
to see this sum greatly increased. Persons
frequently remind us that this is a vast sum,
forgetful or unmindful of the fact that it
represents vast and fundamental interests. I
prefer, rather, to think of it as a wholly inade-
quate sum, when I compare it with the $72,000,-
ooo spent for the support of the army and the
$102,000,000 expended by the naval service;
for we must look for a time when departments
that stand for peace by means of preparation
for war will cease to exist, and when their
regulatory and statecraft work will be dis-
tributed in those departments that rest on
economic and social development.

The agricultural colleges and experiment
stations present a decided recrystallization of
agricultural ideals, constituting centers of influ-
ence more or less remote from localities, and
representing a distinct centralization of power
and of leadership within the states. They are
rapidly becoming the centers of a new agricul-
tural system.

8o The State and the Farmer

The now common phrase " back to the
country," has a deeper significance than most
of us, I fancy, have caught. It means not only
that certain persons are going, or talking
about going, from the city to the country, but
that initiative is being reflected from centers
— largely governmental centers — back into the
country. There is developing a ganglionic in-
tellectual organization, as in years past there
has developed a similar economic organization.

It is easy to trace the over-influence of the
city in country affairs. The cities, for example,
because they provide the market, are begin-
ning to dictate the mode of producing milk,
sometimes with too little consideration for the
farming conditions. This work is properly a
state function rather than a city function. The
present agitation on bovine tuberculosis
exhibits a similar influence.

The kinds of help.

I think that I see at least six classes of help-
ful activities for the betterment of rural con-
ditions: (i) The discovery of local fact; (2)

thet

Special Kinds of Help 81

e training of particular persons for special
kinds of community work; (3) the organiz-
ing of the governmental function in agricul-
ture; (4) the redirecting of rural institutions;

(5) the developing of applicable education;

(6) the appeal to personal leadership. We
may now consider these classes sufficiently to
enable us to catch their significance.

Aside from these efforts, we must remove
all handicaps and disabilities that are not a
natural part of the business, as the inequalities
of transportation facilities, the effect of com-
binations in the interest of the few, discrimi-
nations in tariff and other legislation, the op-
pression of systems of marketing, the injustices
of modes of taxation (p. 70). These and their
kind constitute a very large subject, on the dis-
cussion of which it is not my purpose to enter.

I. THE DISCOVERY AND COLLATING OF
LOCAL FACT

A thorough-going study of the exact agri-
cultural status of every state should now be
made, and it should be made by the state
F

82 The State and the Farmer

itself, working through an agricultural college.
Such an inquiry made carefully and without
haste by men who are thoroughly well pre-
pared, and continuing over a series of years,
would give us the data for all future work with
local problems. We must have the geograph-
ical facts. We are now lacking them. We talk
largely at random. We must discover the fac-
tors that determine the production of crops
and animals in the localities, and the conditions
that underlie and control the farm life. Consid-
eration of these conditions involves study of
local climate ; knowledge of the kinds, classifica-
tion and distribution of the soils and the rela-
tion of place and altitude to production of
crops and live-stock ; determination of the best
drainage practices on various soil types ; con-
sideration of the cultural experience and ma-
nurial needs as adapted to the types; inquiry
into the practice with all leading crops and
products of the localities ; study of the possi-
bilities for farm water-power ; collation of com-
munity experience. Such a study of a state
should be broad and general enough to con-

Local Fact 83

sider the status of all the agricultural indus-
tries in the state, and it should also take full
cognizance of educational and social conditions.
This constitutes the greatest need of prac-
tical farming at the present day. The agricul-
tural institutions are working out the princi-
ples, but they may not be able to apply these
principles to individual farms because they do
not know the exact local conditions. The
farmer himself may not know the principles,
nor even the local facts. The result is a lack
of articulation between the teaching and the
practice. Farming is founded on the facts of
the locality: no business can hope for the best
success until it has exact knowledge of its
underlying conditions.

Agricultural surveys.

These kinds of inquiries are now well under
way in the form of " surveys " of many kinds,
proceeding from the colleges of agriculture and
the United States Department of Agriculture.
The studies of larger range, that purpose
to compare general agricultural conditions in

84 The State and the Farmer

the whole national domain and to standardize
our knowledge of them, may well be under-
taken directly by the national government;
but the commonwealth itself should give
itself the advantage of making inquiries into
its own agricultural conditions. The survey
work of the institutions will be greatly per-
fected in the next few years, and we may ex-
pect to see great public funds devoted to it.
The survey parties will comprise strong, all-
round men. No small part of the value of
such surveys will be the discovery of great
numbers of earnest, competent men and women
on the farms who may be made local leaders,
and the recognition that it will give to good
agricultural practice everywhere. Every thor-
ough survey should be the forerunner of new
ideals for the communities, and of new points
of crystallization of local effort. It should
make new paths.

The model farm idea.

Many plans have been devised to develop
this practical local experience. A notable sug-

Model Farms 85

gestion has recently been made by high author-
ity, advising the establishing of one model
farm in every agricultural county, to be pref-
erably under federal control. Passing the
assumption that a 3<>acre or 4Oacre farm is
the most desirable unit, and also the specific
plan of rotations and style of farming, sev-
eral underlying doubts may be expressed on
the project: (i) Such farms would only indi-
rectly utilize the natural and normal experience
of the community : they would be essentially
exotic or would at least be more or less arbi-
trary and imposed; (2) a "model" farm
usually has little influence, since it is main-
tained under conditions that farmers cannot
hope to secure; (3) the object-lesson method
of teaching is not the most fruitful; it is not
dynamic; it is proverbial that persons living
near the very best farms, or about experiment
station or college farms, may profit very little by
them; (4) one farm in a county is by no means
sufficient either to represent the dominating
agricultural conditions of the county or to
interest all the people in the county; (5) the

86 The State and the Farmer

farther removed the control of such a farm,
the less can it hope to develop local experi-
ence wherewith to appeal to the people. The
best model farms are actual farmers' farms.
The experience on real farms, whether good
or indifferent, should be assembled; this is a
kind of advisory supervision that the state
may very well undertake, working with the
units and the conditions that are already in
existence.

The model farm idea was dominant in the
early days of the colleges of agriculture, but it
has been found to be impracticable and one
now seldom hears it mentioned.

2. DEVELOPING PARTICULAR PERSONS FOR
COMMUNITY WORK

The failure of our fairest and most perfect
plans traces itself to lack of good local leaders.
In small towns and the open country there are
club-houses vacant or of no account because
there is no one person to organize and
energize.

In cities, great things are accomplished by

Community Workers 87

settlements of one kind and another. Some-
thing of the kind can be done in the country,
but it will need to be in the nature of better
examples of actual farming as a base, with the
farmer taking a new kind of enthusiastic inter-
est in all the public and organized affairs of
his community. The greatest aid will probably
come by means of individual effort rather than
by large settlement organization. The farming
people must be reached through individualism
rather than through institutionalism. Men and
women may establish themselves as actual
farmers, and while making a living from the
land conduct a kind of social effort that is
quite unknown in this country today. There is
great opportunity for young persons to fit
themselves for this kind of work, developing
leadership and serving their fellows without
the handicap of over-organization, which is
likely to be a serious drawback in the highly
specialized work of the cities. Nowhere will
the individuality of personal leadership count
for more than in the country.

It is important that the country work be

88 The State and the Farmer

founded on occupation (that is, 'on agricul-
ture), since all country interests rest on occu-
pation. That is to say, the good social worker
should be a farmer, rather than a missionary,
charity organizer, officer of correction, or phil-
anthropist. It is not a question of slumming.
The rural people are not lost: they need
opportunity and leadership. So far as pos-
sible, the work should be established in real
rural regions, outside the towns. The worker
should be resident the year round, not migra-
tory; and above all he should not be of the
summer boarder class. Inasmuch as personal
leadership in country work must rest on a
good foundation of agricultural knowledge, it
follows that the best training place for this
class of men is the agricultural school or col-
lege. Heretofore, these institutions have de-
voted their attention chiefly to technical agri-
cultural instruction, but they are now rapidly
taking up the social and the larger economic
phases of country life. From some of the col-
leges, the young men and women go back to
the country thoroughly alive to the necessity

Social Workers 89

of organizing the social forces there. The
time cannot be far distant when there will be
some kind of a voluntary association between
the students of all agricultural colleges, look-
ing to the elevation of agricultural communi-
ties as well as to their own progress as farm-
ers. Something like the student volunteer
movement will eventually come out of this
rising sentiment.

All public welfare societies should endeavor
to interest good countrymen in the work that
they are doing, bringing the countrymen into
the organization, making them in effect local
agents and representatives : this is very much
better than to attempt to reach the problem
by merely sending persons into the country.

3. THE GOVERNMENTAL FUNCTION IN
AGRICULTURE

One by one the dominant affairs of the peo-
ple are expressing themselves in administra-
tional departments of government. Insurance,
supervision of buildings, management of chari-
ties and corrections, engineering improvements,

90 The State and the Farmer

banking, railroads, and others, are represented
by departments or bureaus having executive
authority.

State departments of agriculture.

Every state in the Union, as well as the
provinces of Canada, has some kind of a state-
recognized organization, voluntary or other-
wise, devoted to agriculture. Some of these
organizations are societies ; others are boards ;
apparently less than half of the organizations
are really a department of the state govern-
ment, and with perhaps a half dozen excep-
tions, these departments do not exercise
extended governmental functions. For the
most part, these state organizations are con-
cerned chiefly with the exploitation of the
agricultural resources of the commonwealth
or with the holding of conventions and con-
ducting of fairs. Sometimes, as in Michigan,
Maryland and Colorado, the board of agricul-
ture acts as a board of trustees for the agri-
cultural college. In a number of the states,
the composition of these boards is founded

Governmental Function 91

on representation by agricultural societies. In
many of them, the executive officer is ap-
pointed by the governor. In a few cases, he
is elected at the polls. These various modes
and functions indicate that there is yet very
little clear conception in this country of the
governmental function of agriculture, as a
definite part of a state cabinet ; but this will
come in time, as clearly as it has come in the
administration of education, departments of
health, and the like. Such departments will be
frankly maintained by as large and free appro-
priations as those devoted to other parts of
the state government, and the executive officer
will be counted worthy as much salary as state
architects, engineers and attorneys general.
Such departments might have immense influ-
ence in dignifying country life affairs, in safe-
guarding them, and in stimulating the local
initiative of which we have been speaking.

This means, of course, the new kind of public
or governmental organization, one not con-
ceived along political patronage lines. Govern-
ment by influence must go, and government by

92 The State and the Farmer

merit must come. The conducting of such
work must lie with men of ideals. It is time
that specially trained men from the colleges of
agriculture be put in charge of work in these
state departments. If the agricultural college
and experiment station idea is worth anything,
it is high time that it be worked directly into
state government.

The governmental function in agriculture is
very much more than the making and execut-
ing of laws. The demand for fiats to extermi-
nate bovine tuberculosis is a case in point.
The real solution of this question is by means
of popular education, conducted through col-
leges, schools, institutes and otherwise, com-
bined with wise statutory regulation. In five
years or less, any state could create public
sentiment that would control the situation.

A new statesmanship.

Some of the largest questions now before
the people are really rural questions ; but
many of the great rural questions — particularly
those of a social kind — have not yet been rec-

A New Leadership 93

ognized by public men. The solution of these
questions will demand statesmanship of the
very highest order. Statesmanship has been
confined too much to so-called political ques-
tions. Many persons of first-class powers and
thoroughly familiar with rural questions have
had no opportunity to express themselves. I
am convinced that the greatest present need in
constructive statesmanship lies in the direction
of agricultural affairs.

Attitude of state governments.

The lack of understanding of the relation of
agricultural affairs to state government is well
illustrated by the current attitude of such gov-
ernments towards certain appropriations. Arti-
cles recently appearing in the press charge
that directors of agricultural colleges and ex-
periment stations are becoming politicians. If
this charge is true it may be the direct result
of methods of conducting state affairs. A state
government is largely a business organization.
It comprises departments that operate for the
good of the whole. If a business man wishes

94 The State and the Farmer

to make his business thrive, he endeavors to
determine what each department needs and
appropriates to it all that he can spare and in
proportion to its efficiency; and if any depart-
ment is unable to do good work because of
lack of facilities, he considers it good business
policy to put that department in the way of
accomplishing its best results. Now, the state
often puts itself on the defensive against itself,
as if under the necessity to repress its own de-
partments. The result is that the director of
an agricultural institution may feel obliged to
organize his friends and become what is inap-
propriately called a "politician" in order that
he may secure facilities to serve the state. It
has been necessary for persons who have seen
the need in advance, to do just this kind of
pioneer work, but it would be unfortunate to
oblige them to continue it. It would seem to be
not beyond reason for the state to have an
officer, commission or board, — as, in fact, some
states have, — to make a yearly study of all state
institutions thoroughly and to make recom-
mendations as to comparative necessities, allow-

State on the Defensive 95

ing the officers of such institutions to remain
at home and develop their special work.

A state college or school of agriculture or
experiment station is set by the state to ac-
complish certain work for the people; it is the
duty of the persons in charge of such institu-
tion to acquaint the state government with the
needs of the institution for the accomplishing
of those ends; if it is not possible or expedient
to supply such needs, the responsibility natur-
ally lies with the government.

The state government part and the federal part.

I have said (page 75) that every governmental
department or bureau devoted to agriculture
should make its one purpose the developing of
the personal initiative and the community feel-
ing of the persons in the country; and that other
things being the same, the department or group
nearest home should have the greatest useful-
ness in this direction. As a concrete illustration
of what I mean, I will cite certain types of work
at present lying between the United States
Department of Agriculture and the states.

96 The State and the Farmer

Congress established a system of agricul-
tural colleges in 1862. It established a system of
experiment stations in 1887. It elevated the
Department of Agriculture into an executive
department of government in 1889. The col-
leges and experiment stations are state institu-
tions, since the federal funds are given to the
states. They constitute, however, the federal
agricultural agents in the states. The federal
organization is the Department of Agriculture.
The concern of the colleges of agriculture has
been largely the increasing of the productive-
ness of farming by teaching this phase of the
subject and by inquiring for new truth. The
duty of the experiment stations is necessarily
to discover truth to the end that the land may
yield more abundantly. The prime function
of a national department of agriculture, as of
other centralized government bureaus, is reg-
ulatory or supervisory. It deals with distinctly
national questions, that is, with governmental
questions. The United States Department of
Agriculture, however, undertakes technical
investigational work in the states, which may

State and Nation 97

or may not be governmental, and for which
the colleges and stations are now organized.
There has been much demand for this kind
of work and also much need for it, and the
Department has tried, with great success, to
meet the demand. The agricultural colleges
and experiment stations once were weak be-
cause undeveloped. They are now beginning
to grow and to come to their own. They are
covering a broader field. Whatever it may have
been necessary for the Department once to do,
it may or may not be necessary for it now to
do. In making these statements, I desire only
to establish the fact that both opportunity and
obligation lie with states and localities, — to
urge not that the Department do less but that
the states do more. It seems to me that we
are under obligation to use our influence to
relieve the Department of the necessity of
doing some of the work that congressmen and
others are disposed to ask of it.

What will be the ultimate relationship be-
tween appropriations for agricultural work by
the Congress and by the states, I do not now
G

98 The State and the Farmer

propose to discuss. Federal appropriations
will, of course, increase ; and a way will be
found whereby an increasing proportion of
them may be so applied and disbursed as to
stimulate local enterprise; and herein lies the
possibility of the most fruitful species of fed-
eral and state cooperation. Congress might
appropriate funds to be spent directly by local
governments: the funds originate with the
people in the localities. For the present, let
us consider that there are regularly established
agencies in all the states for the investigation
of technical agricultural problems of those
states. It is important that these agencies in-
vestigate these problems, not primarily because
the agencies happen to be established, or be-
cause competent men happen to be connected
with them, but because responsibility should
lie at home with the people. No state can
delegate to Congress the obligation of meet-
ing its own problems; and every movement
that tends to weaken local responsibility and
initiative is a distinct menace to the people.
Whenever the people are taught to look beyond

Obligation of the Commonwealth 99

their own institutions to federal institutions
alone, they lose opportunity and power to help
themselves. The people and the states are at
fault in calling to Congress when they should
call first to their own legislatures.

I conceive of only two usual reasons why the
national Department of Agriculture should
now be called on by the states to undertake
technical agricultural work in the states: (i)
When the institutions in the states cannot or
will not undertake the work themselves ; (2)
when the problems seem to be regional
phases of questions that have governmental
bearings.

(i) In the first set of cases, it is equally
the obligation of the state to handle its
own special problems whether or not its
institutions are able or willing to do so; but
when the states are new or undeveloped, or
when the neglect of the problems is likely
to entail serious consequences on neighbor-
ing states or even on its own people, then
it may be necessary to call on the federal
government directly to aid or to interfere.

ioo The State and the Farmer

(2) Relatively few of the technical agri-
cultural problems have true governmental
or regulatory significance. The fact that
the problems are common to many or even
to all of the states does not place them in
this category. Some technical problems
have direct governmental significance be-
cause one state or even a group of states
does not afford sufficient base on which
they can be studied, and because they im-
pose or necessitate regulation or elucidation
by a central authority : the study of meteor-
ological conditions is a typical example.
Some problems are so expensive to inves-
tigate, that state governments may not be
able to handle them. There may be certain
other problems that need to be studied in
all parts of the country in order that general
and true conclusions may be drawn ; these
may be made the subjects of mutual and
genuine cooperative study by persons in the
localities organized to work consistently and
harmoniously for a sufficient length of time
to arrive at useful results.

State and Federal Spheres, 101

Whenever regional information is desired
by the government, on its part, there will be
no difficulty in arranging for the securing of
it through the regular federal agents in the
states, — that is, through the agricultural col-
leges and experiment stations, — either from
jfficers of the stations themselves or by federal
>fficers delegated for the time being to the
:olleges or stations to work in the states,
'he college and experiment station will be
;lad to put their laboratories and facilities at
ic disposal of any investigator who wishes to
une and make use of them. They would not
link it right, however, to have independent
iboratories or fields developed alongside,
'•en though requested by persons in their
>wn state or by the state department of agri-
ilture, — not because of jealousy (for jealousy
lould be unknown to scientific men) but
Because such action would tend to diminish
ie confidence of its own people in the local
istitution, depriving the institution of the
ipport it needs for the work for which it
is created, and encouraging in the people a

102 The State and the Farmer

desire or willingness to shift responsibility.
Much can be done and has been done wisely
to strengthen the local institutions by the
timely aid and suggestion of the national
Department ; but it is easy to see that such
a policy might arise as a gradual result of the
best-intentioned work as to prove in the end
to be destructive rather than constructive.

States rights.

We have passed the old formula of "states
rights." We have learned that certain things
would better be delegated to federal agencies.
Consolidation or centralization of power is a
necessity. Yet at the same time we are pressed
by the necessity of maintaining local initiative
and vitality. It is possible to centralize power
and at the same time to develop the locality-
be it state, county, or neighborhood — if only
we keep a clear distinction of functions. The
real states' rights principle underlies the devel-
opment of the individual and the community
rather than the maintenance of the pride and
prerogative of the commonwealth as an organ-

The Sphere of the State 103

ism; that is, it means community privilege,
duty and opportunity. It is properly a strong
internal constructive policy. Such policies are
more and more delegated to Congress, where
fewer persons partake in them, and the states
are not developing coordinately with the
nation. Government should be kept at home.
We have talked much about states rights,
but very little about state opportunity or
cooperation between the states. We have
tended to emphasize separateness rather than
unity. The American, with his strong ideas of
individualism, has really made less progress
toward practical democracy in some directions
than some of the monarchical peoples. The
obligation of helping its people rests primarily
on the state organization ; but if the state will
not render this aid, the federal government
must do it. Of all affairs, the agricultural are
the most native and local, and need to have
the most careful concern of the state or com-
munity organization. The reasons for the
recent growth of centralized federal power are
at least of two classes : The growing urgency

IO4 The State and the Farmer

of inter-state problems; the failure of the
states to meet all of their responsibilities.

The question, therefore, is broadly one of
the governmental sphere and the local respon-
sibility. We need to distinguish sharply be-
tween governmental function and investiga-
tional function, particularly when the people
have already provided agencies for the two.
I would not deny to any federal depart-
ment either the right or the need to exercise
the investigational function, but it seems to
me that it is the secondary function and to be
exercised on occasion. Any government de-
partment investigates primarily in order that it
may coordinate, regulate, control, supervise,
set in motion, and determine policies ; it also
needs to maintain research for the purpose of
keeping its work vital and sound; but the great
questions of organization and public policy
are its particular sphere.

The coordinating agencies.

We may now enquire what are the proper
agencies for the coordinating of the isolated

The Two Agencies . 105

and scattered forces of the open country, and
for the more or less separate functions of state
and federal governments. We first observe
that these forces are of very many kinds.
They constitute one public question only as
they affect persons following a series of land-
occupations; but the same forces may equally
affect other persons. These agencies are of
two great groups: Those that are educa-
tional; those that are regulatory or govern-
mental. It is not necessary for purposes of
administration that the assembling of all these
rural agencies be centered in one bureau. On
the other hand, there is distinct reason why
they should not be so centered, — in the fact
that agricultural forces are of right not iso-
lated forces. Since many of them are broadly
human, some of their significance is lost when
we attempt to segregate them.

As real cooperative work crystallizes, the fed-
eral departments will have less need of main-
taining independent relations with individual
farmers in the states. They will deal with
broader questions of policy and procedure as

io6 The State and the Farmer

such problems are accumulated, the accumu-
lation being very likely brought about under
their influence or suggestion by the groups
or agencies representing localities.

Coordination of educational matters.

Now, we can have no system and no sets of
rules or methods to impose on posterity. There
are too many schemes already. No man can de-
termine the details for the future. All he can
wisely do is to enunciate principles (if he has
the penetration to discover them) and estab-
lish a few points of view. Many of our fairest
schemes fail because of their very perfectness.
It requires no foresight to say, however, that
since what we are calling agricultural education
is fundamental and not class education, and
since there is a bureau of education of the
national government, the coordinating of agri-
cultural education should lie with that bureau.
Agricultural education is in need of measuring
and coordinating with education in general.
If this function should not lie with such bureau,
it will be because that bureau is incompetent

Agricultural Education 107

to handle it, or is unsympathetic toward it, or
is not given the necessary facilities.

In the states, the regular administrative de-
partments of public instruction should handle
the work of all fundamental elementary and
secondary education. They will need to call
on the agricultural colleges for help, especi-
ally in the training of teachers ; but they
should exercise the control. The trouble is,
however, that such departments have not risen
to this opportunity, and the agricultural col-
leges have been forced to take up the work,
and the leading ones of these institutions are
now doing all grades of educational service.
Departments of education are likely to be fol-
lowers of public opinion rather than makers of
it. It is at this moment a serious question
whether the regular administrative state de-
partments or the colleges of agriculture are
to carry the rural work ; but the opportunity
lies before the departments.

Education has now come to be a much
broader conception than the work of formal
schools. It covers a great range of activities

io8 The State and the Farmer

looking to the training and developing of
men. It is most unusual that in a country in
which education is said to amount to a reli-
gion, there should be so little centralization
of educational control and coordination at
Washington. There is continual agitation for
the establishment of new executive depart-
ments of government to represent special
public interests. This agitation will likely
increase. Much of the growth in governmen-
tal functions can be taken care of by enlarg-
ing the present departments, but there are
certain great classes of progress and work
that cannot be so accommodated ; there are
still great series of questions that lie outside
the ordinary political region, of which pub-
lic health is one. On the other hand, the
President's cabinet is in danger of becoming
too large. It occurs to me that there should
be just one more department represented in
the cabinet, and it should be of such nature
that it can contain within itself all questions
that will have to do with the general public
welfare outside the field of regular govern-

National Department of Education 109

mental function as we understand it today;
and this should be a Department of Education.

Coordination of agricultural matters.

The coordination of the real agricultural
questions of national scope should lie, of
course, with the United States Department of
Agriculture. With the rapid growth in scope
and influence of this Department and the vast
agricultural interests of the nation before it,
the place that this great executive organiza-
tion is to occupy is beyond all conception.
All our political and social future is condi-
tioned on the resources of the soil. It is
easy for the on-looker to see that the De-
partment is gradually reshaping itself. Its
work is becoming more educational, at the
same time that it has acquired tremendous and
permanent power in police work and in regu-
lation. It is most interesting that the organi-
zation of this Department, with its sister, the
Department of Commerce and Labor, should
have been delayed so long. They represent
finally the essential internal development of a

no The State and the Farmer

nation; for the effectiveness of a nation rests
on its farms, shops, mines, commerce, and the
plain daily welfare of the people.

We must now consider what are the state
agencies or instruments with which the United
States Department of Agriculture is to coop-
erate in its coming organization work. Of
course it should cooperate with all agencies ;
but there must be some, more than others,
with which it can work most intimately and
authoritatively. These agencies in the states
are the colleges and experiment stations
founded on federal grants ; these institutions
stand in much the same relation to the state,
so far as leadership is concerned, as the United
States Department stands to the nation. It
might seem, at first thought, that the state
departments of agriculture are the proper
official channels through which general educa-
tional and organizational work should be
accomplished. It is a fact, however, that these
departments, speaking broadly, have not risen
to leadership. Their proper field is closely
governmental, inspectional and regulatory.

State Agricultural Agencies in

They do not have sufficient administrative
freedom to undertake such extensional work
as I have now in mind. Their organization
and scope is quite unlike that of the national
Department. They do not have the staff of
trained scientific experts ; nor is it likely that
they will ever be provided with them, seeing
that the leading states are now committing
themselves unreservedly to the development of
their agricultural colleges along these very
lines. Moreover, with the necessary extension
of governmental interference with agricultural
affairs, these state departments will become
more and more a part of the government of
the states, and will have their attention occu-
pied with very extended legal and supervisory
functions; it will be a part of their sphere to
cooperate with the national Department in
these governmental functions.

4. THE RE-DIRECTING OF RURAL
INSTITUTIONS

The great rural movement of the future is
to be the evolving of a new social economy.

iia The State and the Farmer

This is to be the lasting work of all national!
and state agricultural institutions. It is a work]
that is yet scarcely begun in this country.,
What progress has been made in this develop-)
ment has been mostly accidental.

The work of the agricultural institutions has)
been directed chiefly to increase the product- 1
iveness of the land — to make the farm earni
more money. The agricultural colleges, for
example, have properly laid their emphasis on
this line of teaching; but in so doing they!
have themselves contributed to the mainte-
nance of agricultural isolation. To make the
farm more productive must continue to be the I
primary effort of these and similar institutions;
but the time has now come when the colleges
and all public agricultural agencies must join
in the effort to improve and extend the social(
welfare of the persons who live on the land.
The farmer is a member of the community.

In other words, while we need new knowl- j
edge, we need more than this to put the|
knowledge that we now possess into practi-j
cable and workable form ; we must make it a *

Change of Face 113

:ry part of the men who till the land, and
must work out a means of working together.
The greatest need is a radical revivifying and
redirecting of all rural institutions. This is
to take the form of a great constructive work,
lifting the individual by developing the asso-
ciative spirit in such a way that he may retain
his own self-help at the same time that he
secures the help of his fellow and the incentive
of community action.

We must bear in mind the necessity for a
change of face: we have maintained our posi-
tion by means of vast extents of virgin land
rather than by the excellence of our agricultural
methods. It is interesting to note that one of
the most matured European observers charac-
terizes our farm management, particularly in
the corn-belt, as "unparalleled in its wasteful-
ness," setting up "a false economic standard
in the industrial life of the agricultural classes,
and will prove to be a bad preparation for the
less bountiful times that must some day
come." Every student of the economic condi-
tion must feel that the present unstudied or
H

H4 The State and the Farmer

neglected type of individual farm management
must be reduced to orderliness and effective-
ness. The problem will arise here as it has
arisen in Denmark, Ireland and other coun-
tries, unless we profit by their example and
meet it in advance.

The necessity for working together.

A widespread system of cooperation must
come for the open country. When I write the
word cooperation, I use it in its true sense. I
do not mean on the one hand a mere factitious
business organization for buying and selling
alone, or, on the other hand, so-called "coop-
erative work" of an educational or investiga-
tional nature with individuals here and there.
Individuals pass; their influence mostly passes
with them. Two individuals acting in unison
or in coordination are more effective than the
same two persons acting separately. If these
two combine with another two, the effect
is more than twice increased. True cooperat-
ive work with the Department of Agriculture
or with an agricultural college operates with

What Cooperation Is 115

Toups or societies of men, rather than with
>olated men : the effect of the work is aug-
lented, energy is conserved, and, most im-
>ortant of all, an organization is left behind to
:ontinue the work, or at least to advise the
itilizing of the lessons that have been learned.
Any group-association that crystallizes about
a real economic problem has the spur of
necessity and therefore has vitality. All such
local units should be known to somebody, and
all of them should be organized into larger
units. All of them should be encouraged, for
they are the very germs of a new social order.
Some central agency should coordinate and
integrate them all so that, while every one
maintains its complete autonomy, altogether
they may progress toward definite social ends.
In- New York, for example, there are more
than two thousand creameries, skimming-sta-
tions and similar organizations, many of them
more or less cooperative : What an oppor-
tunity to reach and energize the dairy indus-
try! Some state agency should coordinate
them on an educational basis ; other states

n6 The State and the Farmer

should coordinate their associations; the fed-
eral government should coordinate them all.
To assemble, direct, strengthen, to make
effective the native cooperating expressions of
the people, is an office the results of which are
beyond all imagination. All agricultural expe-
rience, all experiments, all investigations made
here and there by institutions established for
the purpose, even all police work and the
ordinary functions of government, should be
assembled, solidified, and educationalized. It
will be necessary for governments to send out
regular agents or organizers for this class of
work in the communities. In backward com-
munities, it may be necessary for such agents
even to organize cooperative creameries and
other economic groups.

The economic organizations.

It is a poor country that does not support
organizations to further its economic or busi-
ness interests. We must have associations of
some kind to further the interests of milk-
producers, creamerymen, breeders, poultry-

Agricultural Societies 117

men, cotton -growers, florists, nurserymen,
seedsmen, evaporated - apple men, fruit-grow-
ers, melon- growers, bee-keepers, horsemen,
shippers, and the like. When such economic
groups do not exist, it is the business of some
one to see that they do exist; and, if they do
exist, it is the business of some one to see that
they are more effective. Society cannot escape
the responsibility of being concerned in such
group-associations. They register the effect-
iveness of the community.

Agricultural organizations have undergone
an interesting evolution in this country. Some
of the early groups were on the plan of a
"society for the promotion of agricultural
knowledge," apparently patterned after the
so-called learned societies. The proceedings
must have been ponderous. These appear to
have been followed by the democratic discus-
sion-society, still reigning in many forms. A
social basis developed with the grange. Coop-
erative groups have arisen, but as yet with
too little net results (p. 72); in some regards
we are behind our European neighbors. The

u8 The State and the Farmer

educationalized association is now developing,
centering about the colleges of agriculture
in the form of short-courses and " farmers'
weeks. " The continuing cooperating working
society is yet to come with us.

The associations reflect the spirit of the per-
sons who compose them. They ought to be
the mainspring of all good works in the com-
munity. Every agricultural community ought
to have something like a board of trade, hold-
ing regular meetings in a regular place. It is
unfortunate that boards of trade are practi-
cally affairs of cities and villages.

What agricultural societies can do.

One of the commonest causes of discourage-
ment in a farming business arises from the
failure to utilize local or neighborhood experi-
ence. In every community there has necessarily
developed a body of experience which should
be of great value to the whole community if
only it were collected and arranged so that con-
clusions could be drawn. Here is most useful
work for any local society. In every neighbor-

Farmers1 Questions 119

hood there is probably some person who has
the ability and temper to enable him to collect
and collate such experience. A great many of
the questions that come to the agricultural con-
ventions and to the agricultural colleges and
experiment stations could be better answered
at home if only the local experience were avail-
able for public use. In attending agricultural
conventions, I am always impressed with the
waste of effort in discussing questions of a
purely local character. In considerable editor-
ial experience, I have had the same feeling. It
is necessary to answer over and over again the
questions that have already been asked and
answered over and over again, until one almost
comes to feel that the work is not progressive.
I must not be understood as advising that
these questions be not asked or answered: I
only wish that we had the means of answering
them more definitely and in the place where
the answers would have significance. There
are different kinds of questions to be asked in
different kinds of conventions.

Every agricultural society needs to empha-

I2O The State and the Farmer

size the public-service phase of its work. This
phase of society work is not yet understood
in this country. Fifty years from now it will be
the dominant note in all rural societies. I am
quite sure that I have not the power to make
my meaning wholly clear or to convey a vivid
picture of what I have in prospect. We are so
unaccustomed to thinking of such subjects that
we have not yet developed a point of view or
a vocabulary.

Consider, in the first place, that practically
every man has stood alone in his farming, and
has been obliged to contend with all the
organized interests of the business world.
The result is that he is a negligible factor in
trade, in a great part. What is true in busi-
ness relations is more broadly true in social
relations. Our present greatest need is the
development of what may be called "the com-
munij^-sense" — the idea of the community, as
a whole, working together toward one result.
We must admit that there is now a deplorable
lack of any associative effort that commands
respect and puts things through. This com-

A Horticultural Society 121

munity sense must be accomplished, as I have
suggested, by the organizing of many local
societies or clubs, and the coordinating of
these into larger societies. If the individual
farmer, working alone, is a weak economic and
social unit, so the isolated society or club is
also weak.

It is not my purpose to present any plan of
developing the community sense, but only to
enforce its necessity to a better and more
fruitful country life. As a practical matter,
the developing of an effective community feel-
ing must rest with the leadership of some one
strong organization. I once suggested to a
noted horticultural society that it might well
determine for its members many of the vexed
questions concerned with the varieties of
fruits by establishing demonstration or volun-
teer orchards. Then I suggested that it had a
privilege and a duty touching useful horticul-
tural education of a collegiate grade. Later,
I suggested that such society should have a
continuous working existence throughout the
year, engaging in the organizing of subordi-

122 The State and the Farmer

nate or contributory groups. It is a question
whether, in these new days, a yearly conven-
tion is sufficiently effective. The time has
come when we ought to distinguish between
conventions and organizations. The reason
why the grange is so very strong in the states
in which it is well organized, is because it is in
operation continuously. Association is as-
suredly the keynote of the future; but the
association of which I speak is very different
from the labor-union kind.

The cooperative spirit is far broader than
that expressed in formal organizations. It is
also the basis of good government.

Possible extent ;•/ associative work.

Every kind of organization that now exists
in the open country, and which can be readily
extended to the open country, may be made
the means of carrying the gospel of coopera-
tion, companionship and better farm life to
the persons who live on the land. A new
meaning must be given to societies. No so-
ciety should be maintained merely for the

Native Organizations 123

purpose of entertainment, but it should have
vital relation to the real affairs of the com-
munity of which it is a part. The number of
rural organizations and associations is surpris-
ingly large, even not counting the technical
agricultural societies and groups (which are
really the most effective of all). It is not so
necessary to organize new groups as it is to
fertilize and redirect -the old ones. Rural
institutions ought to be effective because they
are, for the most part, natural expressions of
indigenous needs, the outcome of the com-
munity's work. Many of the city institutions
are creations of some person's philosophy
or the expression of some fad or fashion,
and they are likely to be imposed on the
community rather than to grow out of the
community.

Let me enumerate some of the group-asso-
ciations that might easily aid in the regenera-
tion of country life if they were not so closely
tied to their customs and traditions: The
school; the church; fraternal societies of all
kinds; Christian associations for men and

124 The State and the Farmer

women and for both; all singing schools and
musical clubs ; reading clubs and library asso-
ciations; women's clubs; historical societies;
athletic organizations, and all groups that
might develop the play spirit and revive the
native games; local political organizations,
that might give as much attention to develop-
ing or promoting the community as to putting
some one in office ; the good roads interest,
which is now easy of organization and direc-
tion ; banks, which might have relation to the
welfare of the community as well as to them-
selves, as is shown by various European expe-
rience ; chambers of commerce and business
men's organizations in the smaller cities, that
might extend their efforts beyond the corpor-
ation lines, associating the country merchants
and traders with them ; civic societies ; im-
provement and art societies. In the way of
economic group-associations, the cooperative
creamery may be cited as a representative ex-
ample. In a dairy country, such an institution
not only works an improvement in farm prac-
tice and develops a market, but it makes a

Government in Rural Communities 125

meeting-place and thereby should come to
be a useful center of local interest.

government.

When, from long association, we become
accustomed to an institution, we lose our habit
of challenging it. It is a question, for exam-
ple, whether we do not need a redirection in
rural government. The rural people are not
inert, as they are often said to be, nor are they
incompetent, but the systems whereby men
are organized and affairs are directed are likely
to be incomplete, ineffective, and to lack
vitality. I think we need more active and com-
pact rural government. I am afraid that some
of our systems of governing the open country
may be found to be antiquated and inadequate.

Community government should not devote
its chief attention to mere regulation and to
support of defectives and dependents. Its first
concern should be to set productive forces
in operation. One community should emulate
another. Even state legislatures are likely rela-
tively to disregard constructive enterprises.

ia6 The State and the Farmer

Application of public money.

Again, the agencies that will develop the
institutions of the open country will rest on
a type of mind of town folk quite as much
as on the activity of the country folk. The
town folk should consider it to their interest
that the drainage cityward does not go too
far. The town must recognize its obligation
to the agricultural country. In New York, for
example, 85 per cent of the taxes are paid by
Greater New York and Buffalo, notwithstand-
ing that there are probably a million farm
people in the state, and a farm property valu-
ation of much more than one billion of dollars.
But this great fact constitutes no reason of
itself why these cities should control the dis-
tribution of the tax money of the state, or
even of all the tax money that they themselves
contribute; for the wealth of the cities did not
originate in the cities. A good part of it has
come from farms in New York state and else-
where. The farmers have given the city traders
an opportunity to trade, and often to make
more money in the mere trading than the

Destiny of Tax Money 127

farmer made in the producing. If there have
been in-gathering agencies, so also should there
be distributing agencies back to the sources.

It is a wrong philosophy that would apply
the proceeds of taxation only to the localities
in which they originate. The state is an organ-
ism, and cities, like the country, are only parts
thereof. Whatever may be said for or against
strong centralization of government, it has the
tremendous advantage of being able to expend
the revenues collected of all the people in the
interest of all the people. All along, the cities
seem to have carried the idea that the country
is answerable chiefly to them; but the city, also,
is equally obligated to aid its contributory coun-
try— to do its share in the furnishing of public
revenues wherewith to build country highways,
country churches, country schools, and other
rural institutions, and at the same time to
allow the country the controlling voice in the
disposition of these funds.

Something of the same kind may come, as I
have already suggested (page 98), in the ap-
portioning of funds by Congress back to the

ia8 The State and the Farmer

people with whom they originated, giving to
the people in the localities the responsibility
of using them. The Land-Grant Act of 1862,
establishing the colleges of agriculture and
mechanic arts, is of this nature; so is the
Experiment Station Act of 1887, although the
state autonomy is less complete in this case.

"Banks.

We need carefully to consider the migration
of money. I have already indicated that money
tends always to pass out and away from the
place of its origin. It is multiplied as it goes ;
but a good part of it ought nevertheless to
describe an orbit and come back to its local-
ity. Better still, a good part of it ought to be
kept in the locality for local uses. Banking
institutions ought to be agencies for more
directly developing the region of which they
are, or ought to be, a part, by keeping suffi-
cient money moving in the region to supply
its needs freely. These institutions now exist,
in this country, for the stockholders, who are
usually not producers. I am always impressed

Cooperative Banks 129

with the palatial buildings that banks are able
to erect. In other countries there are cooper-
ative associations that find money for their
members to use in the making of the crops.
Because of the prosperity and consequent
independence of the American farmer, the lack
of loanable capital has not been a serious
handicap, except perhaps in the South, but he
could nevertheless use such capital to very
great advantage.

A fault with our banks, considered from the
standpoint of the development of the commun-
ity, is the fact that they loan only on property,
thereby eliminating the poor farmer just in the
proportion of his needs. Moreover, they loan
on too short time, as a rule, to cover the mak-
ing of a crop. The result is that the farmer is
driven to the merchant and the usurer. In the
South, where the lien system has been in oper-
ation, the merchant is likely to refuse to loan
to a man who desires to change his system of
farming, even to improve it, fearing that it may
be only an experiment ; the result is that the
lien system becomes a preventive of progress.
I

130 The State and the Farmer

Some of the European systems have demon-
strated that it is perfectly feasible and safe to
loan money on the industry and honesty of
members, thereby not only furnishing the nec-
essary funds but putting a premium on char-
acter and thrift, and keeping the money at
work where it is needed. The cooperative
systems find it advantageous to employ agents
to instruct their members in farming, becom-
ing thereby a social and educational force in
the locality. Our banking systems are devised
for the handlers of money, whereas some of
them, at least, should be devised for the work-
ers and common users. Banks, as well as gov-
ernment and schools, should be native.

Fairs.

The fairs are one of the anomalies of the
present time. If one is interested in the evo-
lution of institutions and the persistence of
customs, he can find here material for long
and rewarding study. In great part the fairs
are meaningless and are not agricultural insti-
tutions. They display the unusual and abnor-

The Fairs 131

mal, they exhibit the prodigies, they encour-
age a class of professional exhibitors, they
attract the gaudy and the doubtful ; they are,
in fact, largely exclamational. There is per-
manent discussion as to the allowing of racing
and betting and of mere performing; but
these things are really symptoms after all, and
the real solution is to redirect the whole
enterprise.

County and local fairs might well be part
of a thoroughly organized state system, and
be taken out of the influence of showmen and
race-track gamblers. The fair should be a
kind of school, and its work and influence
should exist continuously throughout the year.
The fair ground itself should not be idle fifty-
one weeks every year. Its facilities could be
used for many exhibits and schools at other
times ; and a good part of the grounds could
be utilized by school children or others to
grow plants that should stand in exhibition
and teach a lesson when the fair comes'round.
It is not too much to hope that fair grounds
may some day contain school-gardens. Such

132 The State and the Farmer

an associative organization should go with a
fair as will keep intending participants — I do
not like the word exhibitors — in a state of
preparation and attention for the whole year.
The fairs should reach all farm children. And
the significance of everything that is shown at
a fair should be explained by a good teacher
standing on the spot.

The rural church.

I have said (page 17) that the country
church is not accomplishing what it might
for the rural communities. This is not due to
lack of devoted service on the part of the
country pastor, but to a need of re-direction
in the institution. Concerned in too many
cases with technical religion, formal piety,
small and empty social duties, the country
church does not appeal strongly to men with
rich red blood in their veins. The hardness of
the dogma is the measure of the sterility. The
trouble is that the rural church has no organic
connection with the life of the community, in
this regard being worse off than the school.

Country Church 133

It needs spiritualizing. It should express and
encourage the natural inspiration that may be
made to flow from the common affairs and
ractices of any agricultural community. Are
t the plants growing and the animals thriv-
g? Are not the crops going in and the har-
vests gathering? Are not the winds blowing
and the rain falling ? Are not these real things,
that every person understands and that can be
made the means of reaching every man who has
them? Yet all these things are practically a
sealed book to the church. The rural church
buildings are essentially what they were fifty
years ago, — a preaching room and a vestibule.
Why not make a country church a social center,
letting it stand for good works in everything
that interests the community, and placing it
in some direct relation to vocation?

The church is the oldest and completest of
organizations. It is deepest in the affections
of the greatest number of persons. We can-
not afford the waste of effort that results from
the decadence of the rural units. There is
urgent need that we utilize this institution for

134 The State and the Farmer

the quickening of country life, making such
life worth the attention of educated young
men, and developing its natural and legitimate
social attractiveness.

There is no greater field for service than in
the country church. Young men should be
prepared consciously for this service. A good
part of the training should be in social ques-
tions in their rural phases. A course in a good
agricultural college might supplement the train-
ing in the theological seminary. Religion
should be native. It should be concrete and
applicable. Religion is the natural expression
of living, not a set of actions or of habits, or
a posture of mind added to the daily life. The
type of religion, therefore, is conditioned on
the kind of living; and the kind of living is
conditioned, in its turn, very largely on the
physical and economic effectiveness of life.
The religion of the open country should
run deep into the indigenous affairs of the
open country. Everything with which men
have to do needs to be spiritualized. This
is much more effective for our civilization

What Education Should Do 135

than merely to spiritualize things that we
hope for.

5. THE DEVELOPING OF APPLICABLE
EDUCATION

It is not enough that education facilities be
provided for all the people: the education
must have meaning. It is true, of course, that
the function of education is to develop and
train the mind ; but the mind may be trained
by means of many subjects, and some subjects
or processes are best for one group of persons
and other processes for other groups. As
farming is a local business, so is it specially
important that the affairs and objects of the
locality be made part of the means of training
the farmer.

Education is not confined to the institutions
known as schools. It is the result of all experi-
ence and all training. Many new agencies are
contributing directly to this training or are
modifying its application. Some day the
school will utilize and direct the experience
that the child gains in its home life^ as well as,

136 The State and the Farmer

in its school life, toward a distinct educational
end.

Special adaptation of the school to the needs
of farm laborers is now very much needed.
Neither the agricultural college nor the ordi-
nary type of rural school can reach this end.
Farms are not training farm artisans as the
shops are training shop artisans. The shops
are amongst our very best schools. The farm-
artisan school must be taken into the locality
where the artisans are. It is doubtful whether
it can be a night school. It may have to be a
local winter school taught in a new way as an
adult school, until the farms themselves are
good enough and well enough organized to be
schools to train their own men. The reading-
clubs now proceeding from a few colleges of
agriculture suggest the beginnings of a new
movement for community and home education
of this kind.

Necessity of new point of view.

Although we are properly proud of our
public schools, we should not cease to challenge

College Domination 137

them. We are now in the epoch of the
domination of the schools by the colleges.
Narrow literary college entrance require-
ments are wholly out of character with the
present necessities of living. As soon as the
public schools begin to connect with the
industries, all antiquated kinds of tests
must go; I look for secondary teaching in
agriculture to help in this, although at pre-
sent we have no schools to articulate with
the people on the one hand and the col-
leges of agriculture on the other. The high
school has been over-developed in its prevail-
ing form. It probably represents the end of a
line of social evolution, and we may need to
go back and take a new start.

The schools are dominated too much by
system and regularity. The control by state
departments is constantly becoming more
rigid. Our effort seems to be to make the
educational processes uniform for all pupils,
notwithstanding the fact that no two pupils
are or ought to be alike. There is now agita-
tion for more thorough supervision of the rural

138 The State and the Farmer

schools, and such supervision is undoubtedly
necessary; but if this supervision is to result
in complete domination by a central authority
at the capitol, we can well afford to wait.

There seems to be little personal life-motive
in our education. The process produces pas-
sive or static results. It does not seem to
develop the quality of leadership, as it should.
We over- emphasize the importance of mere
verbal accuracy and breed in our pupils a de-
pressing fear of making mistakes. The schools
do not send their graduates home to work in
village-improvement societies, civic clubs, farm-
ers' organizations, mosquito extermination, or
to give them a just point of view on the com-
mon affairs of the community. Part of this lack
is no doubt due to ineffective home training.
With the growth of leisure in cities and towns,
children are not trained to the responsibility of
work. They read novels and entertainment-
periodicals, and are afraid of soiling their
clothes. We are developing a kind of artistic
idleness. The pity is that it is considered to
be respectable.

The Sit-still Method 139

We must outgrow the sit-still and keep-still
method of school work. I want to see our
country school-houses without screwed-down
seats, and to see the children put to work with
tools and soils and plants and problems. A
child does not learn much when he is silent
and inactive. Out of this work will grow the
necessity of learning to read and figure and
draw.

This redirection of educational effort will,
of course, come slowly. A new spirit is arising
among school patrons here and there, and this
will aid to bring it about. The people must
feel that they, themselves, have something to
say about the schools, and that all power is
not centered in departments and boards. And
then society should see that useful ideas of
education are sown among its members.

If these redirective forces are to be set in
motion and made effective, much public money
will be required. This money will not be a
gift to an agricultural class, but an appropria-
tion to aid in developing the internal re-
sources of the country. The farmer is not a

140 The State and the Farmer

subject for chanty ; but it is due him that
handicaps be removed and that he be allowed
full opportunity for development. Special
legislation of many kinds, from tariffs to cor-
poration laws, have favored other and central-
ized interests, and have encouraged the growth
in many quarters of colossal selfishness. The
farmer has been the forgotten man. What we
appropriate to him for education and know-
ledge is a small offset to the special privileges
that have been given to other men ; it is his
peculiar recognition from government, and
education, in the end, should produce a more
wholesome result than any other aid that gov-
ernment can render to its citizens, and this
should inspire the best kind of voluntary
effort.

Importance of the rural school.

In our eagerness to serve the agricultural
interests, we are likely to place relatively too
much emphasis on the importance of establish-
ing of new institutions, whereas the greatest
effectiveness and even the quickest results may

Merits of the Rural School 141

very likely be attained by utilizing the agen-
cies already in existence. It is easy, for
example, to ridicule the country school and
then to plead for new isolated schools in which
to teach agriculture ; but in so doing we may
forget that isolated special schools cannot
serve all the people and that they also tend to
isolate the subject. The present rural schools,
with all their shortcomings, are good schools
because (i) they are already in existence, (2)
they are the schools of all the people, (3) they
are small and thereby likely to be native and
simple, (4) they are many and therefore close
to the actual conditions of the people. I would
utilize them to the fullest; and in the end
these schools, when redirected, will present
the solution of the problem of rural edu-
cation. In the remarks that follow, I mean
no criticism of teachers in the rural districts.
From long association with them, I have come
to regard them as a devoted class, and they
comprise some of the best teachers that I have
known. They deserve every recognition and
encouragement.

142 The State and the Farmer

A consideration of the school question will
enable me at once to illustrate what I mean by
the redirecting of rural institutions and also
allow me to suggest the relation of such redi-
rection to local pride and initiative. These
rural schools fail because they do not meet the
living needs of the people. They do not teach
the objects and affairs of their environment.
They are not vital. But in all this they differ
from all other schools only in the fact that
their progress is somewhat slower. Neither are
city schools often really vital. Neither, per-
haps, is the greater part of our college instruc-
tion. Until very recent years even the agricul-
tural colleges have not taught vitally. The
public schools do not yet teach the essentials.
The first object of any school should be to
teach persons how to live.

But with all their shortcomings, the rural
schools are really making progress ; and I am
sure that some of the speakers whom I have
recently heard do not know how considerable
this progress is. Unfortunately, it cannot be
recorded in statistics ; it is a new atmosphere,

Present Proposals 143

a progress in the spirit of the school and in a
somewhat changed outlook rather than in the
adding of subjects under new names.

Three movements looking in some measure
to the supplanting or reorganizing of rural
schools are now well set in, — (i) the granting
of aid by Congress for the schools of the
people, (2) the consolidating of existing
schools in order to increase the efficiency of
teaching, (3) the establishing of secondary
schools for agriculture. All these movements
will contribute to the solution of the rural
school problem, but it maybe well to examine
them somewhat carefully.

( i ) The subject of federal aid.

Bills are before Congress to grant federal
aid to secondary and normal schools in the
states. It is a new policy. Its consequences
should be carefully considered.

It is relatively easy to secure money from
Congress, because it is least accountable to
local public sentiment and because its funds
are not derived from direct taxation. The ten-

144 The State and the Farmer

dency is to go more and more to Congress for
funds, even for purposes that should be cared
for by the states and the localities. We must
be careful to teach that persons do not rely
on some one else or on government. Congress
may well undertake new work in the states
for the express purpose of showing the way
and stimulating local ambition when the work
is of such magnitude that states or localities
cannot undertake it. The establishing of a
system of agricultural colleges and experi-
ment stations is a case in point. It is quite
another matter, however, for work that orig-
inates in localities and belongs to them to
go past the commonwealth and to appeal to
Congress. If states and provinces should
exist at all, they should take care, as much as
possible, of their own internal development.

It js indisputable that the common schools
need more funds. Part of the funds should
come from the localities themselves. Part
should come from the state. Whether any
part should come from the federal govern-
ment, thereby expressing the national spirit in

Local Impotency 145

education, is perhaps largely an academic ques-
tion; but the methods of its disbursement and
control, if federal money should be given, is a
subject of the first importance to the main-
tenance of local institutions. The opportunity of
full initiative and independence should be pop-
ular rather than official; and every safeguard
should be taken to see that national schools
should not be forced into close uniformity.

The lack of pride and gumption in our rural
schools is probably already due in no small
part to the removal of motive-power from the
locality to the state capital. I have in mind a
rural school on the premises of which a neigh-
bor had placed personal property. For years
the teacher and members of the local board
and isolated friends had complained and
threatened. The material remained. Finally a
visitor reported the matter to the state author-
ities some two hundred miles away, and the
nuisance was forthwith removed. A school
locality that is impotent to remove a pile of
lumber is also impotent to make very much
progress in its schooling.

J

146 The State and the Farmer

The small effect of "arbor day" is also most
surprising. After all these years of planting,
and of song and recitation about it, the com-
munities have not yet risen to the point
of having well-planted school-premises. The
larger part of the grounds are yet bare of
good trees. This would not be so if there
were any genuine local interest in the subject
of improvement of school-grounds.

Whether the federal government may prop-
erly aid the common schools in the several
states is much more than a question of state
or community opportunity, however. It is
often a question of community ability. A
child ought not to be disadvantaged by the
locality in which he lives. All should have
equal educational opportunity. The ratio of
population to taxable property and to the
labor demand, differs widely in different com-
munities; and society must in some way see
that chances are evened up in the communities
that cannot support proper schools. How far
this shall be done by state and federal agen-
cies may perhaps be a matter of detail; but it

Movement for Consolidated Schools 147

should still be possible to develop enterprise
and responsibility at home.

(2) The consolidating of schools.

The arguments in favor of consolidation
of schools are many and important. By con-
solidation, stronger teaching units are secured ;
more money is available for the employing of
teachers and the providing of equipment ;
special subjects can be given adequate atten-
tion. The objections are many, and most of
those commonly urged are trivial and tem-
porary. The greatest difficulty in bringing
about the consolidation of schools is a deep-
seated prejudice against giving up the old
school. This prejudice is usually not expressed
in words. Often it is really unconscious to the
person himself. Yet I wonder whether right
here does not lie a fundamental and valid rea-
son against the uniform consolidation of rural
schools, — a feeling that when the school leaves
the locality something vital has gone out of
the neighborhood. Local pride has been
offended. Initiative has been removed one

148 The State and the Farmer

step farther away. The locality has lost some-
thing. It is a question, even, whether the
annual school meeting is to be lightly surren-
dered, whether it is not worth keeping as an
arena for the clearing of local differences, and
as a possible nucleus of a useful institution.

I would establish an institution in every
locality rather than banish one from it. I
should like to see on every important four
corners in the open country four institutions,
— an assembling place, as a town meeting hall
or grange hall ; a building that stands for the
products and history of the community, into
which could be gathered a local museum, his-
torical mementos, biographies of the inhabit-
ants, and in which there might be a useful
library; on another corner a redirected rural
school ; and on the other a redirected church
that should strike its roots deep into the
native affairs of the community.

I fear that much of the impulse for the consol-
idation of schools is a reflection of the central-
ized formal city graded school; but it is by no
means certain that these institutions are to be

Consolidation of Schools 149

the most important or dominating public
schools of the future. The small rural school,
with all its weaknesses, has the tremendous
advantage of directness and simplicity. It is a
great question whether it would be improved
by a rigid system of grading. It is a question,
in fact, whether the present graded schools
do not still carry~the onus of proving them-
selves.

Unquestionably, consolidation of rural
schools is often advantageous. It is to be ad-
vised whenever it seems to be necessary for ped-
agogical reasons. It is often urged, however,
for financial reasons ; but this in the long run,
is not reason enough. We maintain our canals
and government work at public expense. The
state must cooperate in the maintainance of
its detached schools, by direct appropriations,
if necessary, to their localities, always on the
condition, however, that all effective control
does not pass out of the community. Con-
solidation of schools is much more than an
educational question. It touches the very
quick of local pride and progress,

150 The State and the Farmer

(3) Special agricultural schools.

I speak now of the separating of educa-
tion in agriculture. My readers know that
many years ago^there was long-continued agita-
tion for agricultural and other industrial
education. Necessarily the discussion took
issue with the existing order of education.
The movement was essentially a revolt. This
long-fought revolution culminated in the
Land-Grant Act of 1862. The collegiate grade
or phase of agricultural education was estab-
lished forever. This new education was so
unlike the old education in spirit that new col-
leges were established independently of the
old. The new education was isolated. In
some instances, the new education was made a
department in old institutions, but in such
conditions it did not thrive. The separate col-
leges led the way. Being free, they could do
as they chose. They did not need to conform
to old customs and methods ; yet it is worthy
of comment that, although being free they
were nevertheless bound, for they carried the
new work as a recitation-subject and book-

Early Separation 151

subject and lecture-subject, following the tra-
ditional pedagogical systems. Long the new
education lay in a pupa stage. The mechanic
arts phase first got its wings. Now the agri-
cultural phase is bursting its shell. But we
find that the separate colleges no longer hold
the exclusive leadership. We have found that
education that makes use of agricultural sub-
jects is education, just as much as that which
uses mathematics or mental philosophy; and
this being the case, they all live together in
harmony. " Culture " and " mental discipline "
are not mere abstractions : they are the results
of good concrete work.

Not only do they live together in harmony,
but all of them gain much from the association.
This new education has even put a new atti-
tude into much of the literary teaching. More-
over, I am very sure that the new industrial
and personal education has saved the old col-
lege and university from extinction ; or, to
put it in another way, that if they had not
taken it in, the evolution of our present-day
collegiate education would have arisen on new

152 The State and the Farmer

foundations, and in time the old foundations
would have been left hopelessly stranded.
Perhaps some of the old-fashioned institutions
that are isolated in spirit are stranded now;
but they may not know it.

In the meantime, the separate agricultural
colleges have maintained themselves, but they
are no longer separate in spirit. They have
allied themselves so far as they are able, with
all public movements looking to the better-
ment of the "industrial classes," as the Land-
Grant Act states it "in the several pursuits
and professions in life." The separate colleges
have their work to do as heretofore, and they
will increase in efficiency, but they are special
institutions, standing apart. We now see that
these colleges, good as they are, do not satisfy
the needs for collegiate training in agriculture,
although contributing towards that end; for
all the people must be served, agricultural
education is, properly, not class education, and
all institutions, on their own account, need the
human and contemporaneous spirit. In all insti-
tutions of the people there should be oppor-

Separatist Movement 153

tunity for training in the affairs of life. The
agricultural department or college of an exist-
ing so-called "liberal culture" university or
college has been able, so far as it has been
efficient, to drive home the personal and vital
subjects and to cause them to be recognized as
a coordinate part of a broad education. The
rise of public sentiment, and the growth of
wisdom among educators, are welding the old
and the new : the agricultural teaching is be-
ing liberalized; the traditional teaching is
being practicalized.

Just now another movement for personal
education is well set in. It is the movement
for the teaching of agriculture in the common
schools. Significantly enough, it is mostly a
separatist movement. We are attempting to
isolate it by establishing separate agricultural
schools or by organizing separate classes in
existing schools. The establishing of separate
schools is repeating for the common schools
what has been the history of the development
of the colleges. It assumes that the existing
schools should not teach agriculture or that

154 The State and the Farmer

they cannot teach it effectively, and that such
teaching should be isolated and that it exists
for a class. Persons in the localities in which
the separate schools are established will bene-
fit by them. Persons who attend other schools
will be debarred the privilege of being taught
in terms of the country environment.

I hold that education in terms of the envir-
onment is the right of every citizen ; and in
the open country this kind of education is
agricultural education, whether so called or
not. But every citizen can secure this privilege
only when he can have access to it in any of
the public schools ; we know that all the public
schools together can barely reach all the
people. In New York state, for example, there
are some fifty-five agricultural counties. There
are some 227,000 farms. If each of these
counties had an agricultural high school gradu-
ating fifty pupils each year, to give only one
boy from each farm in the state an agricultural
course would require eighty-two years; and
new generations are coming on in the
meantime.

The Separate Schools 155

It is well to consider what the effect of this
system of isolation will be on educational
policy. The people will patronize these agri-
cultural schools because they will be useful and
significant schools. More than most other
schools, they will teach the essentials, — that is,
they will teach persons how to live. More of
these schools will be demanded. A duplicate
system of public education will arise. It is easy
to see the ultimate result: if the common
schools do not redirect themselves, they are
lost.

I mean to say that the common schools need
agriculture in order to save themselves. Of
course, I mean agricultural education in its
broadest and rightful sense, — the training of a
man by means of country life or rural subjects,
not merely the making of farmers. My old-
time school friend will laugh at me when I tell
him that his school is in danger, but I cannot
be mistaken, and for the very good reason
that his school is inadequate.

Gradually, however, we shall find the public
schools readjusting themselves, They will

156 The State and the Farmer

reach out and take in the essentials. Then
training by means of agriculture will take its
rightful place as a part of a normal and natural
school system, by which all the people every-
where— and not alone in some isolated school
— may benefit. Education by means of agricul-
ture is public education.

And the separate agricultural schools? Well,
we may prophesy from the experience of the
separate agricultural colleges. These separate
schools will be wonderfully effective, so far as
they are in the hands of men who are not tied
to old points of view. For some years they
will hold the leadership. They will develop
public sentiment. They should always remain
most effective agents for certain kinds of
teaching. But they will always be more or less
special schools. They will not satisfy all the
needs for school training by means of agricul-
ture. There will be some states and localities
that will not establish them, and these locali-
ties will be considered to be behind the times.
Moreover, such isolated schools are likely in
the long run to deaden initiative in the many

The Separate Schools 157

other localities that may most need them; and
they are one step further removed from the
people. So far as they tend to vitalize, by
their example, the whole native school system,
in so far will their effectiveness be beyond dis-
pute ; and this of itself will be worth all they
cost. They will be pioneers. The real and
lasting progress, however, is to be made
by those localities that first completely redi-
rect the existing schools in the interest of all
the people.

The redirecting of the rural school.

Having now considered some of the new
external influences that are likely to modify
the common schools, I may explain what I
mean by the redirection of the schools them-
selves. All effective education should (i)
develop out of experience ; (2) this experience
should have relation to vocation or to the
pupil's part in life; and (3) every school
should be the natural expression of its com-
munity. If these statements are accepted, then
it will be seen that the mere addition of a sub-

158 The State and the Farmer

ject here and there to the school curriculum
may not be sufficient to put the school into
real relationship with its environment.

I am in sympathy, as I have said, with the es-
tablishment of a few secondary special schools
for teaching agriculture whenever they can be
well organized and the subjects thoroughly
well taught. I am also in sympathy with
the introducing of agriculture as a special
subject in rural schools whenever it can be
effectively handled. These two agencies ought
to be effective in arousing and crystallizing
public sentiment to the need of a new kind of
education. However, these cannot meet the
problem of rural education. The final inef-
fectiveness of merely adding agriculture to
the curriculum lies in the fact that it does
not constitute of itself a real redirection of
the whole point of view of the school, al-
though it may be a most useful means of
starting a revolution that will bring about
that desirable end.

If we establish special schools for agricul-
ture, they should supplement the public

Laboratory Teaching 159

school system, affording opportunity for
somewhat advanced training to those pupils
that are particularly interested in the subject ;
they should never be the instruments of divert-
ing public attention from the necessity of
allowing every school and every pupil the
advantage of training by means of agriculture
and industrial subjects.

I am afraid that we are accepting, without
question, the present method of the high
school and college, particularly its laboratory
method. In the argument for separated rural
schools I am always struck with the plea that
good laboratories may be secured. A good
part of this argument comes from college men.
It does not at all follow that our four-wall lab-
oratory methods are as useful for the second-
ary schools as for colleges and high schools.
In fact, it is a question whether much of our
laboratory work is really worth the while, as
compared with good natural field-work under
the conditions that are everywhere at hand.
The agricultural schools and colleges, of all
others, should develop the highest kind of

160 The State and the Farmer

nature-teaching. Yet they are likely to follow
the tendency of the time and to produce a
class of teacher that is dominated by the for-
mal laboratory. I cannot help feeling that the
greatest professors of agriculture or agronomy
or horticulture or animal husbandry will be of
the field-naturalist type. Laboratory-teaching
may be pedagogically just as incorrect as
book-teaching.

It is not necessary to have an entirely new
curriculum in order to redirect the rural
school. If geography is taught, let it be
taught in the terms of the environment. Geog-
raphy deals with the surface of the earth. It
may well concern itself with the school -
grounds, the highways, the fields and what
grow in them, the forests, hills and streams,
the hamlet, the people and their affairs. We
are now interesting the child in the earth on
which he stands, and, as his mind grows, we
take him out to the larger view. A good part
of geography in a rural community is, or
should be, agriculture, whether so called or
not.

Redirected Arithmetic 161

Similar remarks may be made of arithmetic.
The principles of number are everywhere the
same ; but there is no reason why practice
problems should not have local application.
In my day, at least, a good part of the prac-
tice problems were mere numerical puzzles.
I fancy that even at the present time the old
people are interested in the problems that the
child takes home merely because the child is
in a fix and his predicament appeals to their
sympathies. When, however, the child takes
home a problem that has application to the
daily life, there is a different attitude on the
part of the parents, not only to the problem,
but to the school that gave the problem. A
good part of agricultural practice can be ex-
pressed in mathematical form. How to meas-
ure land, how to figure the cost of operation,
how to compound a ration or a spray mix-
ture, how much it costs to fight bugs in the
potato field, the mathematics of rainfall and
utilization of water by plants — these, and a
thousand other problems that are personal and
sensible, could be made the means of so redi-
K

162 The State and the Farmer

recting number work as to make it a mighty
force in putting the school into relation with
the community.

My reader can at once make applications of
this line of thought to the reading, to the
manual training, and to the other customary
work of the school. Manual training develops
chiefly skill: it does not articulate with life.
The study of history should result in better
local civic ideas. Text books err in merely
making applications of their subject here and
there : they need a complete change in point
of view and in method.

You have only to consider the school-houses
to see that the rural school is in a state of
arrested development. Go with me from
Maine to Minnesota and back again and you
will see in the open country practically one
kind of school-house, and this is the kind in
which our fathers went to school. There is
nothing about it to suggest the activities of
the community or to be attractive to children.
Standing in an agricultural country, it is scant
of land and bare of trees. I think that if a

New School-houses Needed 163

room or wing were added to every rural
school-house to which children could take
their collections or in which they could do
work with their hands, it would start a revo-
lution in the ideals of country-school teaching
even with our present school teachers. Such a
room would challenge every person in the
community. They would want to know what
relation hand-training and nature-study and
similar activities bear to teaching. Such a
room would ask a hundred questions every
day. The teacher could not refuse to try to
answer them.

The problem of the rural school is not so
much one of subjects as of methods of teach-
ing. The best part of any school is its spirit :
I can conceive of a school in which no agricul-
ture is taught as a separate, which will still pre-
sent the subject vitally from day to day by
means of the customary studies and exercises.
The agricultural colleges, for example, have
all along made the mistake of trying to make
farmers of their students by compelling them
to take certain "practical" courses, forgetting

164 The State and the Farmer

that the spirit and method of the institution
is what sends the youth back to the land.

Of course this new school method will de-
mand trained teachers, but it should be no
more difficult to train them into this point of
view than as mere specialists.* The whole
enterprise needs to be developed natively and
from a new point of view; for in an agricul-
tural country agriculture should be as much a
part of the school as oxygen is a part of the
air. I would not isolate agriculture from the
environment of life in order to teach it : I
would teach the entire environment.

The agricultural colleges and experiment stations.

Ten, or even five, years ago I might have
said that there were need of redirection in the
agricultural work of the colleges of agriculture
and mechanic arts, but happily these institutions
have now slipped their academic bonds. They
are getting hold of the real objects and the real

* My own view of the ways to secure teachers for these sub-
jects is expressed in Bulletin No. i, 1908, of the United States
Bureau of Education, "On the Training of Persons to Teach
Agriculture in the Public Schools."

Colleges of Agriculture 165

affairs of life ; but I fear, however, that in the
very prosperity of these redirected institutions
there lies danger of undertaking kinds of work
that partake overmuch of exploitation. Land
and animals and orchards and machines and
crops are no longer regarded as mere museums :
they are laboratories and laboratory materials
to be used for the same purpose and in the
same pedagogical spirit as the geologist uses
rocks or the chemist uses chemicals and chem-
ical problems. We now have class-rooms into
which cattle and sheep and other animals may
be taken for study. These animals are labora-
tory material. If it is worth while to study live
bacteria and live insects, it is equally worth
while to study live cows. We have studied the
fleas and other parasites that infest our domes-
tic animals before we have studied the animals
themselves, so successfully have we avoided the
large and significant things.

In other words, the spirit of the modern
agricultural college is to teach in terms of the
actual daily life, making nature and the farm a
real part of one's living and the foundation of

166 The State and the Farmer

one's philosophy of life. The lack of appre-
ciation of this laboratory significance has pre-
vented the proper growth of these agricultural
institutions. They tell us that these colleges
are now demanding enormous sums, but this
is because we have never known how much
money they have needed to make them effec-
tive. Never have they had money enough or
freedom enough to work out their problem
fundamentally. They are just beginning to
develop. Agricultural education and experi-
ment is the most expensive to maintain of all
education because its laboratories are so large,
so various, and so expensive in their up-keep.
Institutions centering about city ideas receive
no end of money and study. The open coun-
try is just coming to its own. Schools and
colleges are worth only what they cost. With
money and men working in state and national
institutions, the rural problems can be solved.
It is strange that private benevolence has
not discovered that the founding of schools of
agriculture is one of the very best means of
serving mankind. It is undoubtedly fortunate,

Colleges of Agriculture 167

however, that the people themselves have
endowed these colleges, for this ensures that
the institutions become and remain democratic,
teachable and close to common problems.
These colleges will place on the farms a class
of educated persons, as the colleges of
mechanic arts have placed such persons in the
shops and in business.

The colleges of agriculture are essential
because they are leading the way to a really
useful training for country life. Our agricul-
tural problem is one of constant readjustment
to conditions, and this readjustment can pro-
gress only through the diffusion of greater
intelligence. Knowledge and education lie at
the very foundation of the welfare of the open
country. Information and knowledge, how-
ever, and even education, do not of themselves
constitute reform or progress. We need legis-
lation and broad redirection of social and
economic forces ; but education lies behind
and at the bottom of all these movements and
without it no lasting progress is possible.

Interest in education by means of agricul*

168 The State and the Farmer

ture is no longer local. It is now more in the
public mind than any other phase of educa-
tion. It is interesting to note the zest with
which the public is discovering the truths that
the good prophets in the agricultural colleges
announced ten and twenty years ago. The
leadership in rural affairs is rapidly passing to
the interests that associate themselves with
the agricultural colleges and experiment sta-
tions. In twenty-five years there will be a new
political philosophy of the open country born
out of these institutions.

A mere enumeration of the departments
comprising a modern college of agriculture
indicates that while the main or central busi-
ness of such college is to teach the science
and the practice of farming, it really stands
for the human affairs of the whole open coun-
try, taking this field because it is indivisi-
ble and also because other institutions have
passed it by. There are institutions called
universities that have a lesser scope than these
leading colleges of agriculture, and in which
the business affairs are less than in a modern

Mission of the Colleges 169

dairy department of one of these colleges.
These institutions mean not one iota less than
the redirecting of the practices and ideals of
country life, and they are today making the
greatest single contribution to constructive
pedagogical policies and for the very good
reason that they deal with the commonplace
facts and necessities of life. There was a day
when universities tolerated instruction in agri-
culture. The time will soon be, if it is not
already here, when a university that is a uni-
versity must include agriculture.

The extension work of the colleges.

The extension effort is the most significant
recent development of these colleges. It is
an attempt to put the college in the way of
aiding every man to help himself on his own
farm. In this effort they have gone farther
than any other institutions and they are setting
an example for all institutions. Demonstration
work, reading-courses, surveys, and similar
enterprises, which are outgrowths of the col-
leges, are a part of this great extension move-

170 The State and the Farmer

ment. The extension work is the necessary
distributive phase that aims, even though
unconsciously, to overcome the effects of too
much centralization at a distance. In spite of
its crudity and formlessness, it is perhaps the
directest effort yet made toward inspiring local
initiative, and probably the best single contri-
bution to the new social order of which I have
been speaking.

The extension work of the agricultural col-
leges can hardly be said to need redirecting,
because it has yet scarcely found its direction.
Its purpose should be nothing less than to
reach every farm and every farmer within its
state or territory. Its purpose is not academic:
it is service. But this work will find its great-
est effectiveness and exercise economy of
effort by dealing more with small groups
of men than with isolated men, even if it
is necessary to organize the groups in the
first place. These groups will be represented
in larger organizations. We have the germ of
these larger groups in the "experiment un-
ions " and similar organizations that are now

Farmers' Institutes 171

arising in the agricultural colleges: in time
these will be the greatest of farmers' associa-
tions, for they represent the point of view of the
trained man. We may soon look for a larger fed-
eration of these state units, and the movement
will then be nationalized (pages 115, 116).

Farmers' institutes will be one important part
of this extension service. These institutes are
now doing a great work, but a greater awaits
them. They must be parts of organized edu-
cational centers. They must be fertilized by
new and continuing study. They must be in
the hands of specially trained men differing
from both the college professor type and the
so-called practical farmer type. We have not
yet consciously trained such men. These insti-
tutes will fail of their greatest usefulness
unless they cooperate fully with Iqpal organiza-
tions. In fact, it should be a part of their
work to establish local organizations wherever
they go, to continue and perfect the work. A
reading-club for the systematic study of books
and journals and bulletins should be the result
of every institute.

172 The State and the Farmer

These brief remarks on the colleges of agri-
culture and the experiment stations associated
with them, indicate that these are not mere
class institutions that are serving only techni-
cal farming needs. Yet there is constantly
recurring comment in the press on the fact
that not all the graduates return to farms and
not all the bulletins reach farmers. These in-
stitutions are maintained by all the people,
and for all the people who are interested in the
work for which they stand. Neither do all
graduates of colleges of law become lawyers,
nor of colleges of medicine become physi-
cians; nor is it desirable that they should.
We need an educated laity in law and medi-
cine, and equally in agriculture, for the big
questions are social and national. The solu-
tion of the questions will not come in a day;
but it is coming.

6. APPEAL TO PERSONAL LEADERSHIP

All these discussions mean that there needs
to be a redirection of the point of view of the
man. We have laid great emphasis on the

Personal Leadership 173

necessity of making the farm more remun-
erative. Given the present income, however,
whether in city or country, and it is possible
for a man to lead a wholly different type of
life. Much money is not essential with any of
us to cleanliness, personal pride, sweetness of
temper, honesty, and a few other very desir-
able but unpurchasable things. Most of all,
the countryman needs intellectual horizon.
He needs something else to think of. He
needs to have a real personal sympathy with
the natural objects in his environment. He
needs the nature-study outlook. Whether a
man wants much or little extraneous enter-
tainment, or whether the country satisfies his
ideals, depends on his attitude of mind.

With the great growth of urban sentiment
and affairs, we have overlooked the value and
significance of plain country living. Other
ends in life have come into prominence, and
persons have been attracted by the high points
and by objects and affairs remote from them.

Real leadership lies in taking hold of the
first and commonist problems that present

174 The State and the Farmer

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 col-
lege. 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 com-
munity. 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.

Throughout this writing, I intend the word
man to include also the farm woman : the Ian-

Leadership Waits for One 175

guage lacks a good word to imply them both.
Women may be leaders in the large social
work; and their influence should be para-
mount in redirecting the country home.

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
leadership in the open country, if only he at-
tacks a plain, homely problem, is not above
it, and sticks to it.

It does not follow that all leadership must
be reached for. It will come to a man. A
student recently asked my advice about his
buying a farm. Since a mere boy he had de-
sired to possess a certain farm in his neigh-
borhood. It is a good farm, paying its owner
a comfortable profit. The young man has no
money and is working for his education. But
now the owner of the farm is about to retire,
and he offers the farm to this young man at a
fair price. The young man can borrow the
money and mortgage the place. He calculates
that he can have it all paid for by the time he

176 The State and the Farmer

is forty-five, and the farm will turn a good liv-
ing in the meantime. I think that the young
man will make good. He knows farming. I
advised him to buy. Most men on salary or
in other business than farming do not have
their homes paid for and their business all
established at forty-five years of age. If the
young man has the farm debt free and fully
productive at that age, and if he loves his
neighbor as he loves his farm, he will not need
to patronize anybody: persons will come to
him. He cannot escape being a marked man.
He should exemplify Milton's noble line,

" They also serve who only stand and wait."

In this brief sketch, then, I have tried to
show that the rural country needs a new direc-
tion of effort, a new outlook, and a new
inspiration. Every rural institution should
have direct relation to the land on which it
stands. Education should take hold of every
factor that means much to the people. Some
man some day will see the opportunity and
will seize it. The result of his work will be

Leadership Waits for One 177

simply a new way of thinking; but it will
eventuate into a new political and social econ-
omy. When his statue is finally cast in bronze,
he will not be placed on a prancing steed nor
surrounded by any symbols of carnage or of
war. He will be a plain man in citizen's
clothes and he will stand on the ground ; but
his face will be toward the daylight.

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