Chapters in Rural Progress Part 9

One of the most difficult and most important phases of agricultural education is that of a secondary grade. The great proportion of educated farmers will probably be trained for their business in secondary schools. This problem is being approached from many standpoints. The University of Minnesota established, some fourteen years ago, a school of agriculture, which now enrols several hundred pupils of both s.e.xes.

Wisconsin is trying the experiment of two county schools of agriculture.

Occasionally the public high school will be found offering a course in agriculture. Several states are experimenting in one or more of these lines, and during the next few years we shall see a large development of this phase of agricultural education.

One of the most interesting movements in agricultural education has been an attempt to introduce nature-study and even the elements of agriculture into the country schools. Cornell University has taken the lead in advocating "nature-study" purely, for the schools; and the University of Missouri has perhaps been the leader in advocating that the work be made even more definite and practical, and that the country pupils shall be taught, during their early years even, "the elements of agriculture." Both plans are being worked out with a fair degree of success, and many other states are carrying out the work in some form or other. Of course the idea is not a new one, but its present practical application is a timely one, and it will not be long before this branch of agricultural education will become a prominent factor in rural betterment.

A most suggestive phase of agricultural education is college extension work. University extension has had a rather meteoric career in this country, in so far as it has been connected with educational inst.i.tutions; although the extension idea is spreading rapidly and is being worked out through home study and correspondence courses of all sorts. But I think there is scarcely any field in which the real college extension idea is today being more successfully applied than in agriculture. The work started with farmers' inst.i.tutes, which were inst.i.tuted about twenty-five years ago and which have been adopted in practically all the states of the Union. It has broadened within ten years, until now it is carried on not only by farmers' inst.i.tutes, but through home-correspondence courses, the introduction of millions of pamphlets into farm homes, demonstrations in spraying, b.u.t.ter-making, soil testing, milk testing, and so on.

Ontario presents a good ill.u.s.tration of how a new agriculture can be created, in a dozen years, by co-operating methods of agricultural education. Her provincial department of agriculture, her experiment station, her agricultural college, her various forms of extension work, and her various societies of agriculturists have all worked together with an unusual degree of harmony for the deliberate purpose of inducing Canadian agriculturists to produce the things that will bring the most profit. The results have been most astonishing and most gratifying.

The recent progress in the organization of farmers has been less marked than has been the development of rural communication and agricultural education. Organization is a prime requisite for farmers. They feel this truth themselves. For the last forty years, many attempts--some large, some small, some successful, some great failures--have been made to this end. The problem is an extremely difficult one. Business co-operation among farmers is especially difficult and, while co-operation has developed quite largely--so much so that the Department of Agriculture was able to report, a year ago, a list of five thousand co-operative societies of various kinds among farmers--still it cannot be said that the farmers are co-operating industrially in a relatively large way.

They have, however, a mult.i.tude of a.s.sociations and societies. They have also the Grange, which is the most successful of all the general organizations of farmers in the country. Contrary to public belief, the Grange is not defunct, but has been growing at a very rapid pace during the last few years and has a large influence especially in the East and Middle West. It has practically no existence in the far West and in the South. It has a national organization, however, representing some twenty-six states. Its influence in Congress is said to be marked. The local Granges are doing a very large work, socially, educationally, and sometimes financially. The Grange seems to understand itself now. Its ideals have been worked out pretty carefully, and its future growth is quite certain.

We have suggested that the significant rural social movements of the past few years have been the improvement of rural communication, the wonderful development of agricultural education, and the fairly satisfactory development of organization among farmers. It seems also apparent that there is a fourth line of development that might be mentioned as being significant, and it may be expressed in a somewhat general statement that the interest in agricultural questions has increased in a very marked way. There is undoubtedly a new emphasis upon country life generally. The people of the cities have been going to the country more than ever before. A walk, the length of Beacon Street in Boston, at any time from the middle of June to late autumn, convinces one that the majority of the people are somewhere in the country. All over the North, city people are making country homes for at least a portion of the year. There is also a growing interest in the farm and farm problems among the general public. Just now the country schools are attracting special attention from the educators--so much so that the late President Harper stated, not long ago, that the rural-school question is the coming question in education. Even the country church is being made a subject of discussion in religious circles. It is conceded that agriculture presents "problems." And while the throbbing, busy, intense life of the city brings perplexing questions to our civilization, our people are coming to realize that the agricultural population and the agricultural industry are still tremendous factors in our national life and success, and that both social and industrial conditions in the country are such that there also are grave questions to be settled.

In view of the facts which have been given, I think if one were asked to give a direct answer to the question, Is the farmer keeping up? one could reply, Yes. In some sections of the country, the farmers have not responded to these forward movements. The countryman is naturally conservative. Not only that, but there are some serious questions that he has to meet in his business and in his life. He finds it extremely and increasingly difficult to get adequate labor. He has not been able to take sufficient advantage of the power of co-operation. The industrial and social development of the city has lured away his children. And yet one cannot help feeling that these really remarkable advances of the past decade are prophetic of a steady improvement in rural conditions, of a larger development of rural life, of a greater prosperity for agriculture.

With regard to the future, it seems to me that, on the social side, the progress of the next few years is to be along the lines, indicated above, which have characterized the past ten or a dozen years. Still further improved means of communication will tend to banish isolation and its drawbacks. Realization of the benefits of organization and ability to co-operate will vastly strengthen cla.s.s power. The means of agricultural education will be developed very rapidly, with the ideal in mind of being able to furnish some sort of agricultural training for every individual who lives upon the farm. The country question, as a whole, will attract increasing attention. Gradually it will be seen that the rural problem is one of the greatest interest to all our citizens.

The spirit of co-operation will grow until not only the farmers themselves unite for their own cla.s.s interests but the various social agencies--industrial, religious, educational--ministering to rural betterment will find themselves also co-operating. Thus, it seems to me, the outlook for the future is full of hope. A genuine forward movement for rural betterment has had its beginning, is now gathering volume, and will soon attain very large proportions.

FORWARD STEPS

CHAPTER XIV

THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE FARM QUESTION

There is a proverb in Grange circles which expresses also the fundamental aim of all agricultural education--"The farmer is of more consequence than the farm and should be first improved." The first term in all agricultural prosperity is the man behind the plow. Improved agriculture is a matter of fertile brain rather than of fertile field.

Mind culture must precede soil culture.

But if the improved man is the first term in improved agriculture, if he is the effective cause of rural progress, he is also the last term and the choice product of genuine agricultural advancement. We may paraphrase the sordid, "raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to raise more corn, etc.," into the divine, "train better farmers to make better farming to grow better farmers, etc." We want trained men that we may have an advancing agricultural art, that we may make every agricultural acre render its maximum. The improved acre, however, must yield not only corn but civilization, not only potatoes but culture, not only wheat but effective manhood.

But we may carry the point a step farther. The individual farmer is the starting-point and the end of agriculture, it is true. But the lone farmer is an anomaly, either as a cause or as a product, as the lone man is everywhere. As an effective cause we must have co-operating individuals, and as an end we desire an improved community and a higher-grade _cla.s.s_ of farmers.

The farm question then is a social question. Valuable as are the contributions of science to the problems of soil and plant and animal, the ultimate contribution comes from the development of improved men. So the real end is not merely to utilize each acre to its utmost, nor to provide cheap food for the people who do not farm, nor yet to render agriculture industrially strong. The gravest and most far-reaching consideration is the social and patriotic one of endeavoring to develop and maintain an agricultural cla.s.s which represents the very best type of American manhood and womanhood, to make the farm home the ideal home, to bring agriculture to such a state that the business will always attract the keen and the strong who at the same time care more for home and children and state and freedom than for millions. In other words, the maintenance of the typical American farmer--the man who is essentially middle cla.s.s, who is intelligent, who keeps a good standard of living, educates his children, serves his country, owns his medium-sized farm, and who at death leaves a modest estate--the maintenance of the typical American farmer is the real agricultural problem.

If this a.n.a.lysis is a correct one, it will vitally affect our plans for agricultural training. The student will be taught not only soil physics, but social psychology. He will learn not only the action of bacteria in milk fermentation, but the underlying causes of the social ferment among the farmers of the last thirty years. He will concern himself with the value of farmers' organizations as well as with the co-operating influences of high-bred corn and high-bred steers. The function and organization of the rural school will be as serious a problem to him as the building and management of the co-operative creamery. The country church and its career will interest him fully as much as does the latest successful device for tying milch cows in the stable. He will want to get at the kernel of the political questions that confront agriculture just as fully and thoroughly as he wishes to master the formulae for commercial fertilizers. No man will have acquired an adequate agricultural education who has not been trained in rural social science, and who does not recognize the bearing of this wide field of thought upon the business of farming as well as upon American destiny.

Research, too, will be touched with the social idea. The men who study conditions existing in rural communities which have to do with the real life of the people--the effects of their environment, the tendencies of their habits and customs--will need as thorough preparation for their work, and the result of their efforts will be as useful as that of the men who labor in field and laboratory.

But the most profound consequence of recognizing the social side of the farm question will be the new atmosphere created at the agricultural colleges. These inst.i.tutions are fast gaining leadership in all the technical questions of agriculture--leadership gladly granted by progressive farmers whenever the inst.i.tution is managed with intelligence and in the spirit of genuine sympathy with farming. But these colleges must minister to the _whole farmer_. They must help the farmer solve all his problems, whether these problems are scientific, or economic, or social, or political. And let it be said in all earnestness that in our rapidly shifting industrial order, the farmer's interest in the political, social, and economic problems of his calling is fully as great as it is in those purely scientific and technical. And rightly so.

A prime steer is a triumph. But it will not of itself keep the farmer free. The 50-bushels-of-wheat acre is a grand business proposition provided the general industrial conditions favor the grower as well as the consumer. When our agricultural colleges enter into the fullest sympathy with all the rural problems, when the farm home and the rural school and the country church and the farmer's civic rights and duties and all the relations of his business to other industries--when these questions are "in the air" of our agricultural colleges, then and then alone will these colleges fulfil their true mission of being _all things to all farmers_.

CHAPTER XV

THE NEEDS OF NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE

One might name a score of important activities that should be encouraged in order to better New England agriculture. But the two fundamental needs are (1) adaptation and (2) co-operation.

By adaptation is meant such development of agriculture as shall more fully utilize existing physical and commercial conditions. The West has for seventy-five years pressed hard upon New England farming. But along with this western compet.i.tion has come a new opportunity for the eastern farmer. New England farmers as a whole have not quickly enough responded to this new opportunity. Many of their troubles may be traced to the failure to adapt themselves to the new conditions. The men in New England who have met the new opportunity are succeeding.

What does this adaptation consist in? It means, first, the adaptation of the New England farmer to his markets. In most parts of the country the type of farming is perhaps more dependent upon physical conditions of soil and climate than upon the immediate market. In New England the reverse is now true, and the type of New England farming must be adapted, absolutely and completely, to the demands of its market. New England farmers have the most superb markets in the country. Of the six million people in New England, approximately 75 per cent. live in the cities and villages. There are, in New England, thirty cities having a population of twenty-five thousand or more. The great majority of these cities are manufacturing cities peopled by the best cla.s.s of consumers in the world--the American skilled artisan. They const.i.tute a nearby market that demands fresh products which cannot be transported across a continent. New England is also especially favored in its nearness to the European market. The New England farmer then must adapt his crops, his methods, and his style of farming to his peculiar market.

In the second place, this adaptation must be one of soil, just as anywhere else, only the problem here becomes more complicated because of the varied character of the farming lands. How to make the valleys and the hills, the rocky ridges and the sand plains of New England yield their largest possibilities in agriculture is a problem of the greatest scientific and industrial interest, and it is the problem that New England agriculture has to face. In this connection comes also the need of special varieties adapted not only to the market but to the soil and climate.

This principle of adaptation is the industrial key to future agricultural development in New England. But to achieve this adaptation, to make the key work, there is needed the force of social organization.

The farmer must be reached before the farm can be improved. The man who treads the furrow is a greater factor than nitrogen or potash. How is this man to be reached, inspired, instructed? Largely by some form of organization. The second and greater need therefore is co-operation.

Co-operation means faith in agriculture--a faith too seldom found in the Israel of New England's yeomanry. Co-operation means ideals--ideals of rural possibilities too seldom dreamed of in the philosophy of the Yankee farmer. Co-operation means power--power that cannot be acquired by the lone man, not even by the resolute individualism so dominant in New England character.

There are three forms of co-operation, all of which are desirable and even essential if the most rapid agricultural progress in New England is to be secured--co-operation among individuals, among organizations, among states.

The farmers of New England must work together. The Grange is stronger in New England than in any other portion of the country of similar area--yet not one farmer in ten belongs to the Grange. We need not dwell on this point, for it is a truth constantly preached through the Grange and through other means. Let me suggest two ideas relative to co-operation which have not received so much attention.

Each organization has its peculiar work. The school is to train the young, the agricultural college to prepare the youth, the farmers'

inst.i.tute to instruct and inspire the middle-aged and mature. The experiment station seeks to discover the means by which nature and man may better work together. The producers' unions endeavor to secure a fair price for their goods. The Grange enlarges the views of its members and brings the power which comes from working together, buying together, meeting together, talking together, acting together. Boards of agriculture control conditions of health and disease among animals and plants. The country fair educates and interests. The church crowns all in its ministrations of spiritual vision, moral uplift, and insistence upon character as the supreme end of life.

But no inst.i.tution can do the work of the others. They are members one of another. The hand cannot say to the foot, I have no need of thee. All these things make for rural progress. None can be spared. The Grange cannot take the place of the church. The inst.i.tute cannot supplant the Grange. The college course cannot reach the adult farmer. The experiment station cannot instruct the young. The church cannot secure reforms in taxation.

These agencies may however co-operate. Indeed the most rapid and most secure rural progress, the broadest and soundest agricultural growth, can not take place unless there be this form of co-operation. There will come added interest, increased efficiency, larger views, greater ambitions in our agricultural development, if, in each state, all of these forces work together.

We may therefore welcome most cordially the proposed plan of federating the various agricultural societies of each state into one grand committee organized for the purpose of forwarding all the agricultural interests of that state. Let there be, moreover, a "League for Rural Progress," in each state or, at least, an annual conference on rural progress, in each state, in which the representatives of the farmers'

societies, of the schools, of the churches, and indeed all other people who have the slightest interest in rural advancement may meet to discuss plans and methods which shall better agriculture and the farmer.

But this is not enough. There ought to be co-operation among these various social inst.i.tutions without respect to state lines. The farm problem in New England is one problem, although differing in details, it is true, in different states. Co-operation should not stop with the federating of the organizations of a state. There is no reason, for instance, why the agricultural colleges and experiment stations of New England should not co-operate. It is not practicable to prevent all duplication of work. I do suggest the desirability and the feasibility of genuine co-operation.

Why should not those in charge of the rural schools of all New England meet together and discuss the difficulties and achievements as they exist in different states? Why not have a "New England Society for Agricultural Education," in which all organizations and all individuals who are interested in any phase of this subject may meet for discussing New England problems? Could not boards of agriculture co-operate to some extent, especially in farmers' inst.i.tute work with general plans and ideas? Certainly conferences between these boards ought to yield most valuable results. Is the idea of a genuine New England fair a mere dream?

Cannot the Granges of New England profitably co-operate more fully? It is true that there is considerable intervisitation, and yet the rank and file of members in one state know comparatively little of the progress and methods of the Grange in an adjoining state; this knowledge is confined to a few leaders. Would it not be worth while to attempt an occasional New England a.s.semblage of Grange members, a representative gathering for discussing Grange work and for enthusing the Grange people of New England with the possibilities of still further Grange development?

The idea of New England as a unit of interest in church matters is already exemplified by the appointment of a New England secretary of the federation of churches. It is not too much to expect that, in the near future, all the means for church federation in New England shall work together, because it is evident that co-operation and unity are demanded by the nature of the field.

And finally, is it idle to think that there might be a New England League for Rural Progress or, at least, a New England Conference on Rural Progress, which shall bring from every corner of New England representatives of the agricultural colleges, of the Granges, of the country church, of the rural school, of the country press, and all other individuals who believe in the possibilities of New England agriculture, and in the efficiency of the fullest and freest co-operation?

There are several powerful reasons why an attempt to better New England agriculture will be greatly aided by co-operation that includes every inch of New England soil from Boston harbor to the Berkshires, and from Mt. Katahdin to Point Judith.

(1) The importance of New England agriculture. In the appended table is attempted a comparison between New England as a unit, the state of Michigan representing an average agricultural state, and the state of Iowa representing the foremost agricultural state. The figures, taken from the Census of 1900, are given in round numbers. Such a table is not conclusive as to agricultural conditions. But it is very suggestive as to the importance of New England agriculture both industrially and socially. It will be seen that, with an area only a little larger than Michigan, New England compares in every respect favorably with that average state and, in some respects, excels it, while it excels both Michigan and Iowa by 65 per cent. in gross value of product per acre of improved land.

(2) Agricultural conditions all over New England are quite similar.

Speaking broadly, the soil and climate of one state are the soil and climate of another. The people are of the same stock, the same views, the same habits, the same traditions. The demand of the market is fairly uniform for different sections. The New England city is the New Englander's special possession as a market. Farm labor conditions are much the same. In fact, there is hardly a portion of our country, of the same area, which in all these respects yields itself more completely to the idea of unity.