Society: Its Origin and Development Part 11

FISKE: _Civil Government in the United States_, pages 34-95.

HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 292-317.

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 92-105.

COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 402-410.

CHAPTER XXI

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

151. =Health and Beauty in the Community.=--Rural government formerly limited its range of activity to political and economic concerns. The individualism of Americans resented the interference of government in other matters. If property was made secure and taxed judiciously for the maintenance of public inst.i.tutions, the duty of government was accomplished. The individual man was prepared to a.s.sume all further responsibility for himself and family. Such matters as the health of a rural community and its aesthetic appearance were left to individual initiative and generally were neglected. On many occasions the housewife showed her sympathy and kindliness by nursing a sick neighbor, but the members of the community had little appreciation of the seriousness of contagion and infection, no knowledge of germs, and small thought of preventive measures. The appearance of their buildings and grounds was n.o.body's business but their own. They had no conception of the social obligation of each for all and of all for each. The result was an unnecessary amount of illness, especially of tuberculosis and typhoid fever, because of insanitary buildings and grounds, and a general air of shabbiness and neglect that pervaded many communities. It was not that the people lacked the aesthetic sense, but it had not been trained, and in the struggle for the subjugation of a new continent all such minor considerations must give way to the satisfaction of elemental wants.

Slowly it is becoming understood that health and beauty are matters that demand public attention and regulation. Good fortune and happiness are not purely economic and political concerns. Well-kept roads, clean and well-planned public buildings, sanitary farm structures, properly drained farm lands, and pure drinking water may not add to the number of bushels an acre, but they prolong life and add to its comfort and satisfaction.

When it seems no longer strange to bother about health conditions, it will be relatively easy to give attention to rural aesthetics. If a schoolhouse or a meeting-house is to be erected, it will give greater satisfaction to the community if the principles of good architecture are observed and the building is set in the midst of trees and shrubbery and well-kept lawn. With such an object-lesson, the people of the community will presently contrast their own property with that of the public, the imitative impulse will begin to work, and individuals will begin to make improvements as leisure permits. There are villages that are ugly scars on a landscape which nature intended should be beautiful. With misdirected energy, farmers have destroyed the wild beauty of the fence corners and roadsides, mowing down the weeds and clearing out the brush and vines in an effort to make practical improvements, while with curious oversight they have permitted the weeds to grow in the paths and the gra.s.s to lengthen in the yard. Many a farm in rural communities has untidy refuse heaps, tottering outbuildings, rusting machinery, and general litter that reveal the absence of all sense of beauty or even neatness, yet the farmer and his wife may be thrifty, hard-working people, and scrupulously particular indoors. Their minds have not been sensitized to outdoor beauty and hideousness. They forget that nature is aesthetic; they live in the midst of her beauty, but their eyes are dim and their ears are dull, and it is difficult to instruct them.

Happily, recent years have brought with them a new sense of the possibilities of rural beauty. Children are learning to appreciate it in the surroundings of the schoolhouse and the tasteful decorations of its interior; their elders are buying lawn-mowers and painting their fences, and America may yet rival in attractiveness the fair countryside of old England.

152. =Is the Town Healthier than the Country?=--It has been commonly believed that country people are healthier than townspeople. Their life in the open, with plenty of exercise and hard work, toughens fibre and strengthens the body to resist disease. It has also been supposed that the city, with its crowded quarters, vitiated air, and communicable diseases, has a much larger death-rate. It is true that city life is more dangerous to health than a country existence if no health precautions are taken, but city ordinances commonly regulate community health, while in the country there is greater license.

Exposure gives birth to colds and coughs in the country; these are treated with inadequate home remedies, because physicians are inconveniently distant or expensive, and chronic diseases fasten themselves upon the individual. Ignorance of hygienic principles, absence of bathrooms, poor ventilation, unscreened doors and windows, and impure water and milk are among the causes of disease.

There is as much need of pure air, pure water, and pure food in the country as in the city, and the danger from disease is no less menacing. The farmer loses vitality through long hours of labor, and is susceptible to disease scarcely less than is the working man in town. And he is more at fault if he suffers, for there is room to build the home in a healthful location, where drainage is easy and pure air and sunshine are abundant; there is water without price for cleansing purposes, and sanitation is possible without excessive cost.

In most cases it is lack of information that prevents a realization of perils that lurk, and every rural community should have instruction in hygiene from school-teacher, physician, or resident nurse.

153. =Rural Health Preservers.=--Three health preservers are needed in every rural community. These are the health official, the physician, and the nurse. There is need first of one whose business it shall be to inspect the sanitary conditions of public and private buildings, and to watch the health of the people, old and young. It matters little whether the official is under State or local authority, if he efficiently and fearlessly performs his duty. Constant vigilance alone can give security, and it is a small price to pay if the community is compelled to bear even the whole expense of such a health official.

Community health is often intrusted to the town fathers or a district board with little interest in the matter; on the other hand, the agent of a State board is not always a local resident, and is liable to overlook local conditions. It is desirable that the health official be an individual of good training, familiar with the locality, and with ample authority, for in this way only can safety be reasonably secure.

It is by no means impracticable to give a local physician the necessary official authority. He is equipped with information and skilled by experience to know bad conditions when he sees them and to appreciate their seriousness. Whether or not a physician is the official health protector of the community, a physician there should be who can be reached readily by those who need him, and who should be required to produce a certificate of thorough training in both medicine and surgery. If such a medical pract.i.tioner does not establish himself in the district voluntarily, the community might well afford to employ such a physician on a salary and make him responsible for the health of all. As civilization advances it will become increasingly the custom in the country as well as in the city to employ a physician to keep one's general health good, as now one employs a dentist to examine and preserve the teeth. Medical practice must continually become more preventive and less remedial. It may seem as if it were an unwarranted expansion of the social functions of a community that it should care for the health of individuals, but as the interdependence of individuals becomes increasingly understood, the community may be expected to extend its care for its own welfare.

154. =The Village Nurse.=--Alongside the physician belongs the village or rural nurse. Already there are many communities that are becoming accustomed to such a functionary, who visits the schools, examines the children, prescribes for their small ailments or recommends a visit to the physician, and who stands ready to perform the duties of a trained nurse at the bedside of any sufferer. The support of such a nurse is usually maintained by voluntary subscription, but there seems to be no good reason why she should not be appointed and paid by the organized community as a local official. She is as much needed as a road-surveyor, surely as valuable as hog-reeve or pound-keeper. It is a valid social principle, though rural observation does not always justify it, that human life is not only intrinsically more valuable to the individual or family than the life of an animal of the herd, but it is actually worth more to the community.

155. =The Village Improvement Society.=--To secure good health conditions, interested persons in the community may organize a health club. Its feasibility is well proved by the history of the village improvement society. There are two hundred such societies in Ma.s.sachusetts alone, and the whole movement is organized nationally in the American Civic Federation. Their object is the toning up of the community by various methods that have proved practicable. They owe their organization to a few public-spirited individuals, to a woman's club, or sometimes to a church. Their membership is entirely voluntary, but local government may properly co-operate to accomplish a desired end. Expenses are met by voluntary contribution or by means of public entertainments, and its efforts are limited, of course, by the fatness of its purse. Examples of the useful public service that they perform are the demolition of unsightly buildings and the cleaning up of unkempt premises, the beautification of public structures and the building of better roads, the erection of drinking troughs or fountains, and the improvement of cemeteries. Besides such outdoor interests village improvement societies create public spirit, educate the community by means of high-cla.s.s entertainments, art and nature exhibits, and public discussion of current questions of local interest. They stand back of community enterprises for recreation, fire protection, and other forms of social service, including such economic interests as co-operative buying and marketing and the extension of telephone or transportation service.

The initial impulse that sets in motion various forms of village improvement frequently comes from the summer visitor or from a teacher or minister who brings new ideas and a will to carry them into action. In certain sections of country, like the mountain region of northern New England, summer people are very numerous, through the weeks from June to October, and not a few of them revisit their favorite rural haunts for a briefer time in the winter. It is not to be expected that they are always a force for good. Sometimes they make country residents envious and dissatisfied. But it is not unusual that they give an intellectual stimulus to the young people and the women, compel the men to observe the proprieties of social intercourse, and encourage downcast leaders of church and neighborhood to renewed industry and hope. They demand multiplied comforts and conveniences, and expect attractive and healthful accommodations. Where they purchase and improve lands and buildings of their own they provide useful models to their less particular neighbors, and thus the leaven of a better type of living does its work in the neighborhood.

156. =Principles of Organization.=--The principles that lie at the basis of every organization for improvement are simple and practicable everywhere. They have been enumerated as a democratic spirit and organization, a wide interest in community affairs, and a perennial care for the well-being of all the people. Public spirit is the reason for its existence, and the same public spirit is the only force that can keep the organization alive. Every community in this democratic country has its fortunes in its own hands. If it is so permeated with individualism or inertia that it cannot awake to its duties and its privileges, it will perish in accordance with the law of the survival of the fittest; if, on the contrary, it adopts as its controlling principles those just mentioned, it will find increasing strength and profit for itself, because it keeps alive the spirit of co-operation and mutual help.

READING REFERENCES

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 66-82, 106-130.

GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 147-167.

HARRIS: _Health on the Farm._

FARWELL: _Village Improvement_, pages 47-53, Appendix.

WATERS: _Village Nursing in the United States._

CHAPTER XXII

MORALS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY

157. =Social Disease and Its Causes.=--Rural morals are a phase of the public health of the community. Immorality is a kind of social disease, for which the community needs to find a remedy. The amount of moral ill varies widely, but it can be increased by neglect or lessened by effort, as surely as can the amount of physical disease.

Moral ill is due to the individual and to the community. The judgment of the individual may be warped, his moral consciousness defective, or his will weak. He may have low standards and ill-adjusted relationships. Selfishness may have blunted his sympathy. All these conditions contribute to the common vices of community life. But the individual is sometimes less to blame than the community. Much moral ill is a consequence of the imperfect functioning of the community. A man steals because he is hungry or cold, and the motive to escape pain is stronger than the motive to deal lawfully with his neighbor; but if the community saw to it that adequate provision was made for all economic need, and if moral instruction was not lacking, it would be unlikely to happen. Similar reasons may be found for other evils. It is as much the business of the community to keep the social atmosphere wholesome as it is to keep the air and water of its farms pure. It should provide moral training and moral exercise.

158. =How Morals Develop.=--Without attempting a thoroughly scientific definition of morals, we may call good morals those habitual acts which are in harmony with the best individual and social interests of the people of the community, and bad morals the absence of such habits. Of course the acts are the consequence of motives, and in the last a.n.a.lysis the question of morals is rooted in the field of psychology or religion; but the inner motive is revealed in the outward act, and it is customary to speak of the act as moral or immoral. Moral standards are not unvarying. One race differs from another and one period of history differs from another. Primitive custom was the first standard, and was determined by what was good for the group, and the individual conformed to it from force of circ.u.mstances. If he was to remain a member of the group and enjoy its benefits he must be willing to sacrifice his selfish desires. His consciousness of the solidarity of the group deepens with experience, and his feelings of sympathy grow stronger, until impulsive altruism becomes a habit and eventually a fixed and purposeful patriotism. By and by religion throws about conduct its sanctions and interprets the meaning of morality. However imperfect may be the relations between good morals and pagan religions, Judaism and Christianity have combined religion with high moral ideals. The Hebrew prophets declared that G.o.d demanded justice, kindness, and mercy in human relations rather than acts of ceremony and sacrifice to himself, and Jesus made love to neighbor as fundamental to holiness as love to G.o.d. Such a religion becomes dynamic in producing moral deeds.

159. =The Social Stimulus to Morality.=--It is customary to think of the homely virtues of truthfulness, sobriety, thrift, and kindliness as individual obligations, but they are not wrought out in isolation.

Isolation is never complete, and virtue is a social product. The farmer makes occasional visits to the country store, where he experiences social contacts; there is habitual a.s.sociation with individual workers on the farm or traders with whom the farmer carries on a business transaction. His personal contacts may not be helpful, and his wife may lack them almost altogether outside of the home; the result is often a tendency toward vice or degeneration, sometimes to insanity or suicide, but it is seldom that there are not helpful influences and relations available if the individual will put himself in the way of enjoying them. Good morals are dependent on right a.s.sociations. Human beings need the stimulus of good society, otherwise the mind vegetates or broods upon real or fancied wrongs until the moral nature is in danger of atrophy or warping. Family feuds develop, as among the Scotch highlanders or the mountain people in certain parts of the South. Lack of social sympathy increases as the interests become self-centred; out of this characteristic grow directly such evils as petty lawlessness, rowdyism, and crime. The country districts need the help of high-grade schools and proper places of recreation, of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation or an a.s.sociation of like principles, and most of all of a virile church that will interpret moral obligation and furnish the power that is needed to move the will to right action.

160. =Rural Vices.=--The moral problems of the rural community do not differ greatly from those of the town. The most common rural vices are profanity, drunkenness, and s.e.xual immorality. Profanity is often a habit rather than a defect in moral character, and is due sometimes to a narrow vocabulary. It is a mark of ignorance and boorishness. In many localities it is less common than it used to be. The average community life is wholesome. Not more than twenty per cent of American rural communities have really bad conditions in any way, according to the investigations made by the United States Rural Life Commission in 1908. Considering the monotony and hardships of rural life, it is much to the credit of the people that most communities are temperate and law-abiding. Intemperance is one of the most common evils; there is a longing for the stimulant of liquor, which appears in some cases in moderate drinking and in other cases in the habit of an occasional spree in a near-by town, when reason abdicates to appet.i.te. Lumbermen and miners, whose work is especially hard and isolation from good society complete, have been notorious for their lapses into intemperance, but it is not a serious problem in three out of four communities the country over, and a wave of temperance sentiment has swept strongly over rural districts. Gambling is a diversion that appeals to those who have few mental and pecuniary resources as an offset to the daily monotony, but this habit is not typical of rural communities.

Investigations of the Rural Life Commission showed that s.e.xual immorality prevails in ten to fifteen per cent of the rural communities, and they trace much of it to late evening drives and dances and unchaperoned calls, but on the whole the perversion of the s.e.x instinct is less common than in the cities. The young are generally trained in moral principles, the religious sanctions are more strongly operative, and the conduct and character of every individual is constantly under the public eye. Young people in the country marry at an earlier age than in the city, and husband and wife are normally faithful. Crime in the country is peculiar to degenerate communities, elsewhere it is rare. Juvenile delinquency occurs, and there are not such helpful influences as the juvenile court of the city; on the other hand, most boys are in touch with home influences, feel the restraint of a law-abiding community, and know that lawbreaking is almost certain to be found out and punished.

161. =Community Obligation.=--Moral delinquency in the rural community lies in the failure to provide social stimulus to individual members.

The farmer has as good reason to be ambitious for success and to feel pride in it as has the city merchant, but he has small local encouragement to develop better agriculture on his own farm. He has as much right to the benefits of a.s.sociation in toil and co-operation in effecting economies and disposing of his products as the employer or working man in town. He is equally ent.i.tled to good government, to wholesome recreation, to a suitable and efficient education, and to the spiritual leadership of a progressive church. Without the spur of community fellowship his life narrows and his abilities are not developed. With the help of community stimulus the individual may develop capacity for individual achievement and social leadership of as fine a quality as any urban centre can supply. It is well known that the strong men of the cities in business and the professions have come in large proportion from the country. If such qualities developed in the comparative isolation and discomfort of the past, it is a moral obligation of rural communities of the future to do even more to produce the brawn and brain of city leaders in days to come.

READING REFERENCES

WILSON: _The Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 171-188.

ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 95-106.

DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 146-165.

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 166-175.

HOBHOUSE: _Morals in Evolution_, I, pages 364-375.

SPENCER: _Data of Ethics_, chapter 8.

_Report of Committee on Morals and Rural Conditions of the General a.s.sociation of Congregational Churches of Ma.s.sachusetts_, 1908.

CHAPTER XXIII