Chapters in Rural Progress Part 2

In this brief a.n.a.lysis of the social problems of American farmers it has been possible merely to outline those aspects of the subject that seem to be fundamental. It is hoped that the importance of each problem has been duly emphasized, that the wisest methods of progress have been indicated, and that the relation of the various social agencies to the main question has been clearly brought out. Let us leave the subject by emphasizing once more the character of the ultimate farm problem. This problem may be stated more concretely, if not more accurately, than was done at the opening of the paper, by saying that the ideal of rural betterment is to preserve upon our farms the typical American farmer.

The American farmer has been essentially a middle-cla.s.s man. It is this type we must maintain. Agriculture must be made to yield returns in wealth, in opportunity, in contentment, in social position, sufficient to attract and to hold to it a cla.s.s of intelligent, educated American citizens. This is an end vital to the preservation of American democratic ideals. It is a result that will not achieve itself; social agencies must be invoked for its accomplishment. It demands the intelligent and earnest co-operation of all who love the soil and who seek America's permanent welfare.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The material for this chapter is taken from an address ent.i.tled "Social Problems of American Farmers," which was read before the Congress of Arts and Science, section of The Rural Community, at St.

Louis, September, 1904.

THE OUTLOOK

CHAPTER III

THE EXPANSION OF FARM LIFE

Narrowness is perhaps the charge most often brought against American farm life. To a certain extent this charge may be just, though the comparisons that usually lead up to the conclusion do not always discriminate. It must be remembered that there are degrees of desirability in farm life, and that at the least there are mult.i.tudes of rural communities where bright flowers still bloom, where the shade is refreshing, and the waters are sweet. But, granting for the time that in the main rural life is less pleasant, less rich, less expansive than city life, we shall urge that this era of restriction is rapidly drawing to a close. There are forces at work that are molding rural life by new standards, and the old regime is pa.s.sing. We shall soon be able to say of the country that "old things have pa.s.sed away; all things have become new."

This statement may seem too optimistic to some who can marshal an array of facts to prove that bigotry, narrowness, and the whole family of ills begotten by isolation still thrive in the country. It is true that our picture is not all of rose tints. But what of that? If it were not true there would be no farm problem; the country would have to convert the town. The fact remains that rural life is undergoing a rapid expansion.

Materially, socially, and intellectually, the farmer is broadening. Old prejudices are fading. The plowman is no longer content to keep his eye forever on the furrow. The revival has been in slow progress for some time and has not yet reached its zenith; indeed, the movement is but well under way. For while the new day came long ago to some rural communities and they are basking in a noonday sun, yet in far too many localities the faintest gray of dawn is all that rouses hope.

The fundamental change that is taking place is the gradual adoption of the new agriculture. "Book-farmin'" is still decried, and many "perfessers" have a rocky road to travel in their attempts to guide the ma.s.ses through the labyrinth of scientific knowledge that has been constructed during the last decade or two. This difficulty has not been wholly the farmer's fault--the scientist would often have been more persuasive had his wings been clipped. But there is a decided "getting together" nowadays--the farmer and the man of science have at last found common ground. And while the pendulum of agricultural prosperity shall always swing to and fro, there are, to change the figure, reasons for believing that an increasing number of farmers have rooted the tree of permanent success.

To enumerate some of these reasons: (1) Thousands of farmers are farming on a scientific basis. They use the results of soil and fertilizer a.n.a.lysis; they cultivate, not to kill weeds so much as to conserve moisture; horticulturists spray their trees according to formulas laid down by experimenters; dairymen use the "Babc.o.c.k test" for determining the fat content of milk; stock-feeders utilize the scientists' feeding rations. (2) The number of specialists among farmers is increasing. This is a sign of progress surely. More and more farmers are coming to push a single line of work. (3) New methods are being rapidly adopted. Fifteen years ago hardly a fruit-grower sprayed for insect and fungus pests; today it is rare to find one who does not. The co-operative creamery has not only revolutionized the character of the b.u.t.ter product made by the factory system, but it has set the pace for thousands of private dairymen who are now making first-cla.s.s dairy b.u.t.ter. (4) In general the whole idea of _intensive_ farming is gaining ground.

This specialization, or intensification, of agriculture makes a new demand, upon those who pursue it, in the way of mental and business training. This training is being furnished by a mult.i.tude of agencies, and the younger generation of farmers is taking proper advantage of the opportunities thus offered. What are some of these regular agencies? (1) An alert farm press, containing contributions from both successful farmers and scientific workers. (2) Farmers' inst.i.tutes, which are traveling schools of technical instruction for farmers. (3) The bulletins issued by the government experiment stations located in every state, and by the federal Department of Agriculture. (4) Special winter courses (of from two to twelve weeks), offered at nearly all the agricultural colleges of the country, for instruction in practical agriculture. (5) Regular college courses in agriculture at these same colleges. (6) Extension instruction by lectures and correspondence. (7) A growing book literature of technical agriculture. (8) More encouraging than all else is the spirit of inquiry that prevails among farmers the country over--the recognition that there is a basis of science in agriculture. No stronger pleas for the advancement of agricultural education can be found than those that have recently been formulated by farmers themselves.

If this regeneration of farm life were wholly material it would be worth noting; for it promises a prosperity built on foundations sufficiently strong to withstand ordinary storms. Yet this is but a chapter of the story. Not only are our American farmers making a study of their business, bringing to it the resources of advancing knowledge and good mental training, and hence deriving from it the strong, alert mental character that comes to all business men who pursue equally intelligent methods, but the farmers are by no means neglecting their duty to broaden along general intellectual lines. Farmers have always been interested in politics; there is no reason to think that their interest is declining. The Grange and other organizations keep their attention on current problems. Traveling libraries, school libraries, and Grange libraries are giving new opportunities for general reading, and the farmer's family is not slow to accept the chance. Low prices for magazines and family papers bring to these periodicals an increasing list from the rural offices. Rural free mail delivery promises, among many other results of vast importance, to enlarge the circulation of daily papers among farmers not less than tenfold.

The really great lesson that farmers are rapidly learning is to work together. They have been the last cla.s.s to organize, and jealousy, distrust, and isolation have made such organizations as they have had comparatively ineffective. But gradually they are learning to compromise, to work in harmony, to sink merely personal views, to trust their own leaders, to keep troth in financially co-operative projects.

There will be no Farmers' Party organized; but the higher politics is gaining among farmers, and more and more independent voting may be expected from the rural precincts. Farmers are learning to pool such of their interests as can be furthered by legislation.

It is also true that the whole aspect of social life in the country is undergoing a profound evolutionary movement. Farmers are meeting one another more frequently than they used to. They have more picnics and holidays. They travel more. They go sight-seeing. They take advantage of excursions. Their social life is more mobile than formerly. Farmers have more comforts and luxuries than ever before. They dress better than they did. More of them ride in carriages than formerly. They buy neater and better furniture. The newer houses are prettier and more comfortable than their predecessors. Bicycles and cameras are not uncommon in the rural home. Rural telephone exchanges are relatively a new thing, but the near future will see the telephone a part of the ordinary furniture of the rural household; while electric car lines promise to be the final link in the chain of advantages that is rapidly transforming rural life--robbing it of its isolation, giving it balance and poise, softening its hard outlines, and in general achieving its thorough regeneration.

This sketch is no fancy tale. The movement described is genuine and powerful. The busy city world may not note the signs of progress.

Well-minded philanthropists may feel that the rural districts are in special need of their services. Even to the watchers on the walls there is much of discouragement in the advancement that _isn't_ being made.

Yet it needs no prophet's eye to see that a vast change for the better in rural life and conditions is now in progress.

No student of these conditions expects or desires that the evolution shall be Acadian in its results. It is to be hoped indeed that country sweets shall not lose their delights; that the farmer himself may find in his surroundings spiritual and mental ambrosia. But what is wanted, and what is rapidly coming, is the breaking down of those barriers which have so long differentiated country from urban life; the extinction of that social ostracism which has been the farmer's fate; the obliteration of that line which for many a youth has marked the bounds of opportunity: in fact, the creation of a rural society whose advantages, rewards, prerogatives, chances for service, means of culture, and pleasures are representative of the best and sanest life that the acc.u.mulated wisdom of the ages can prescribe for mankind.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW FARMER

All farmers may be divided into three cla.s.ses. There is the "old"

farmer, there is the "new" farmer, and there is the "mossback." The old farmer represents the ancient regime. The new farmer is the modern business agriculturist. The mossback is a mediaeval survival. The old farmer was in his day a new farmer; he was "up with the times," as the times then were. The new farmer is merely the worthy son of a n.o.ble sire; he is the modern embodiment of the old farmer's progressiveness.

The mossback is the man who tries to use the old methods under the new conditions; he is not "up" with the present times, but "back" with the old times. Though he lives and moves in the present, he really has his being in the past.

The old farmer is the man who conquered the American continent. His axe struck the crown from the monarchs of the wood, and the fertile farms of Ohio are the kingdom he created. He broke the sod of the rich prairies, and the ta.s.seling cornfields of Iowa tell the story of his deeds. He hitched his plow to the sun, and his westward lengthening furrows fill the world's granary.

The new farmer has his largest conquests yet to make. But he has put his faith in the strong arm of science; he has at his hand the commercial mechanism of a world of business. He believes he will win because he is in league with the ongoing forces of our civilization.

The mossback cannot win, because he prefers a flintlock to a Mauser. He has his eyes upon the ground, and uses snails instead of stars for horses.

The old farmer was a pioneer, and he had all the courage, enterprise, and resourcefulness of the pioneer. He was virile, above all things else. He owned and controlled everything in sight. He was a state-builder. Half a century ago, in the Middle West, the strong men and the influential families were largely farmers. Even professional men owned and managed farms, frequently living upon them. The smell of the soil sweetened musty law books, deodorized the doctor's den, and floated as incense above the church altars.

The new farmer lives in a day when the nation is not purely an agricultural nation, but is also a manufacturing and a trading nation.

He belongs no longer to the dominant cla.s.s, so far as commercial and social and political influence are concerned. But none of these things move him. For he realizes that out of this seeming decline of agriculture grow his best opportunities. He discards pioneer methods because pioneering is not now an effective art.

The mossback sees perhaps clearly enough these changes, but he does not understand their meaning, nor does he know how to meet them. He is dazzled by the romantic halo of the good old times, dumfounded by the electric energy of the present, discouraged and distracted by the pressure of forces that crush his hopes and stifle his strength.

Economically, the old farmer was not a business man, but a barterer. The rule of barter still survives in the country grocery where b.u.t.ter and eggs are traded for sugar and salt. The old farmer was industrially self-sufficient. He did not farm on a commercial basis. He raised apples for eating and for cider, not for market--there was no apple market. He had very little ready money, he bought and sold few products. He traded.

Even his grain, which afterward became the farmer's great cash crop, was raised in small quant.i.ties and ground at the nearest mill--not for export, but for a return migration to the family flour-barrel.

The new farmer has always existed--because he is the old farmer growing.

He has kept pace with our industrial evolution. When the regime of barter pa.s.sed away, he ceased to barter. When the world's market became a fact, he raised wheat for the world's market. As agriculture became a business, he became a business man. As agricultural science began to contribute to the art of farming, he studied applied science. As industrial education developed, he founded and patronized inst.i.tutions for agricultural education. As alertness and enterprise began to be indispensable in commercial activity, he grew alert and enterprising.

The mossback is the man who has either misread the signs of the times, or who has not possessed the speed demanded in the two-minute cla.s.s. He is the old farmer gone to seed. He tries to fit the old methods to the new regime.

But it is not sufficient to picture the new farmer. You must explain him. What is it that makes the new farmer? Who is he? What are his tools? In the first place, you cannot explain the new farmer unless you know the old farmer. You cannot have the new farmer unless you also have the mossback. The new farmer is a comparative person, as it were.

You have to define him in terms of the mossback. The contrast is not between the old farmer and the new, for that is merely a question of relative conditions in different epochs of time. The contrast is between the new farmer and the mossback, for that is a question of men and of their relative efficiency as members of the industrial order. Then, of course, you must observe the individual traits that characterize the new farmer, such as keenness, business instinct, readiness to adopt new methods, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a man a success today in any calling. For the new farmer, in respect to his personal qualities, is not a sport, a phenomenon. He does not stand out as a distinct and peculiar specimen. He is a successful American citizen who grows corn instead of making steel rails.

But you have not yet explained the new farmer. These personal traits do not explain him. It may be possible to explain an individual and his success by calling attention to his characteristics, and yet you cannot completely a.n.a.lyze him and his career unless you understand the conditions under which he works--the industrial and social environment.

Much less can you explain a cla.s.s of people by describing their personal characteristics. You must reach out into the great current of life that is about them, and discern the direction and power of that current.

Now, the conditions that tend to make the new farmer possible may be grouped in an old-fashioned way under two heads. In the old scientific phrases the two forces that make the new farmer are the "struggle for life" and "environment," or, to use other words, compet.i.tion and opportunity.

Compet.i.tion has pressed severely upon the farmer, compet.i.tion at home and compet.i.tion from other countries. At one time the heart of the wheat-growing industry of this country was near Rochester, N. Y., in the Genesee Valley; but the ca.n.a.l and the railway soon made possible the occupation of the great granary of the west. A mult.i.tude of ambitious young men soon took possession of that granary, and the flour-mills were moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. This is an old story, but the same forces are still at work. There has been developed a world-market. The sheep of the Australian bush have become compet.i.tors of the flocks that feed upon the green Vermont mountains and the Ohio hills. The plains of Argentina grow wheat for London. Russia, Siberia, and India pour a constant stream of golden grain into the industrial centers of Western Europe, and the price of American wheat is fixed in London. These forces have produced still another kind of compet.i.tion; namely, specialization among farmers. Localities particularly adapted to special crops are becoming centers where skill and intelligence bring the industry to its height. The truck-farming of the South Atlantic region, the fruit growing of western Michigan, the b.u.t.ter factories of Wisconsin and Minnesota, have crowded almost to suffocation the small market-gardener of the northern town, the man with a dozen peach trees, and the farmer who keeps two cows and trades the surplus b.u.t.ter for calico. These things have absolutely forced progress upon the farmer. It is indeed a "struggle for life." Out of it comes the "survival of the fittest," and the fittest is the new farmer.

But along with compet.i.tion has come opportunity. Indeed, out of these very facts that have made compet.i.tion so strenuous spring the most marvelous opportunities for the progressive farmer. Specialization brings out the best that there is in the locality and the man. It gives a chance to apply science to farming. Our transportation system permits the peach growers of Grand Rapids to place their crops at a profit in the markets of Buffalo and Pittsburg; the rich orchards and vineyards of Southern California find their chief outlet in the cities of the manufacturing Northeast--three thousand miles away. During the forty years, from 1860, the exports of wheat from this country increased from four million bushels annually to one hundred and forty million bushels; of corn, from three and one-third million bushels to one hundred and seventy-five million bushels; of beef products, from twenty million pounds to three hundred and seventy million pounds; of pork products, from ninety-eight million pounds to seventeen hundred million pounds.

And not only do the grain and stock farmers find this outlet for their surplus products, but we are beginning to ship abroad high-grade fruit and first-cla.s.s dairy products in considerable quant.i.ties. Low rates of freight, modern methods of refrigeration, express freight trains, fast freight steamers--the whole machinery of the commercial and financial world are at the service of the new farmer. Science, also, has found a world of work in ministering to the needs of agriculture, and in a hundred different ways the new farmer finds helps that have sprung up from the broadcast sowing of the hand of science.

But perhaps even more remarkable opportunities come to the new farmer in those social agencies that tend to remove the isolation of the country; that a.s.sist in educating the farmer broadly; that give farmers as a cla.s.s more influence in legislature and congress, and that, in fine, make rural life more worth the living. The new farmer cannot be explained until one is somewhat familiar with the character of these rural social agencies. They have already been enumerated and cla.s.sified in a previous chapter; they will be more fully described in subsequent chapters.

It must not be supposed that every successful farmer is necessarily a supporter of all of these social agencies. He may be a prosperous farmer just because he is good at the art of farming, or because he is a keen business man. But more and more he is coming to see that these things are opportunities that he cannot afford to disregard. Indeed, some of these inst.i.tutions are largely the creation of the new farmer himself.

He is using them as tools to fashion a better rural social structure.

But they also fashion him. They serve to explain him, in great part.

Compet.i.tion inspires the farmer to his best efforts. The opportunity offered by these new and growing advantages gives him the implements wherewith to make his rightful niche in the social and industrial system.

It would be erroneous to suppose that the new farmer is a _rara avis_.