The Challenge of the Country Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rural Schools in Daviess County, Indiana.]

_Stages and Symptoms of Rural Decadence_

In his discussion of the country problem, Dr. Josiah Strong reminds us that rural decadence comes as an easy evolution pa.s.sing through rather distinct stages, when the rural community has really lost its best blood.

Roads deteriorate,--those all-important arteries of country life; then property soon depreciates; schools and churches are weakened; often foreign immigrants crowd out the native stock, sometimes infusing real strength, but often introducing the continental system of rural peasantry, with absentee landlords. Then isolation increases, with a strong tendency toward degeneracy and demoralization.

Where this process is going on we are not surprised to find such conditions as Rev. H. L. Hutchins described in 1906 in an address before the annual meeting of the Connecticut Bible Society at New Haven. From a very intimate experience of many years in the rural sections of Connecticut, he gave a most disheartening report, dwelling upon the increasing ignorance of the people, their growing vices, the open contempt for and disregard of marriage, the alarming growth of idiocy, partly the result of inbreeding and incest, some localities being cited where practically all the residents were brothers and sisters or cousins, often of the same name, so that surnames were wholly displaced by nicknames; the omnipresence of cheap whiskey with its terrible effects, the resulting frequency of crimes of violence; the feebleness and backwardness of the schools and the neglect and decay of the churches, resulting in inevitable lapse into virtual paganism and barbarism, in sections that two generations ago were inhabited by stalwart Christian men and women of the staunch old New England families.

Doubtless similar ill.u.s.trations of degradation could be cited from the neglected corners of all the older states of the country, where several generations of social evolution have ensued under bad circ.u.mstances. In all the central states, conditions of rural degeneracy now exist which a few years ago were supposed to be confined to New England; for the same causes have been repeating themselves in other surroundings.

An ill.u.s.tration of "discouraged remnants" is cited by Dr. Warren H.

Wilson. "I remember driving, in my early ministry, from a prosperous farming section into a weakened community, whose lands had a lowered value because they lay too far from the railroad. My path to a chapel service on Sunday afternoon lay past seven successive farmhouses in each of which lived one member of a family, clinging in solitary misery to a small acreage which had a few years earlier supported a household. In that same neighborhood was one group of descendants of two brothers, which had in two generations produced sixteen suicides. 'They could not stand trouble,'

the neighbors said. The lowered value of their land, with consequent burdens, humiliation and strain, had crushed them. The very ability and distinction of the family in the earlier period had the effect by contrast to sink them lower down."[5]

_The Nam's Hollow Case_

Ordinary rural degeneracy, however, is more apt to be a.s.sociated with feeble-mindedness. An alarming, but perhaps typical case is described in a recent issue of _The Survey_. A small rural community in New York state, which the author calls for convenience Nam's Hollow, contains 232 licentious women and 199 licentious men out of a total population of 669; the great proportion being mentally as well as morally defective. A great amount of consanguineous marriage has taken place,--mostly without the formalities prescribed by law. s.e.x relations past and present are hopelessly entangled. Fifty-four of the inhabitants of the Hollow have been in custody either in county houses or asylums, many are paupers, and forty have served terms in state's prison or jail. There are 192 persons who are besotted by the use of liquor "in extreme quant.i.ties."

Apparently most of this degeneracy can be traced back to a single family whose descendants have numbered 800. With all sorts of evil traits to begin with, this family by constant inbreeding have made persistent these evil characteristics in all the different households and have cursed the whole life of the Hollow, not to mention the unknown evil wrought elsewhere, whither some of them have gone. "The imbeciles and harlots and criminalistic are bred in the Hollow, but they do not all stay there." A case is cited of a family of only five which has cost the county up to date $6,300, and the expense likely to continue for many years yet. "Would you rouse yourself if you learned there were ten cases of bubonic plague at a point not 200 miles away?" asks the investigator of Nam's Hollow. "Is not a breeding spot of uncontrolled animalism as much of a menace to our civilization?"[6]

_A Note of Warning_

These sad stories of rural degeneracy must not make us pessimists. We need not lose our faith in the open country. It is only the exceptional community which has really become decadent and demoralized. These communities however warn us that even self-respecting rural villages are in danger of following the same sad process of decay unless they are kept on the high plane of wholesome Christian living and community efficiency.

What is to prevent thousands of other rural townships, which are now losing population, gradually sinking to the low level of personal shiftlessness and inst.i.tutional uselessness which are the marks of degeneracy? Nothing can prevent this but the right kind of intelligent, consecrated leadership. It is not so largely a quant.i.tative matter, however, as Dr. Josiah Strong suggested twenty years ago in his stirring treatment of the subject. After citing the fact that 932 townships in New England were losing population in 1890, and 641 in New York, 919 in Pennsylvania, 775 in Ohio, et cetera, he suggests: "If this migration continues, and no new preventive measures are devised, I see no reason why isolation, irreligion, ignorance, vice and degradation should not increase in the country until we have a rural American peasantry, illiterate and immoral, possessing the rights of citizenship, but utterly incapable of performing or comprehending its duties."

After twenty years we find the rural depletion still continuing. Though New England in 1910 reports 143 fewer losing towns than in 1890, the census of 1910 in general furnishes little hope that the migration from the country sections is diminishing.[7] Our hope for the country rests in the fact that the problem has at last been recognized as a national issue and that a Country Life Movement of immense significance is actually bringing in a new rural civilization. "We must expect the steady deterioration of our rural population, unless effective preventive measures are devised," was Dr. Strong's warning two decades ago. To-day the challenge of the country not only quotes the peril of rural depletion and threatened degeneracy, but also appeals to consecrated young manhood and womanhood with a living faith in the permanency of a reconstructed rural life.

Our rural communities must be saved from decadence, for the sake of the nation. Professor Giddings well says: "Genius is rarely born in the city.

The city owes the great discoveries and immortal creations to those who have lived with nature and with simple folk. The country produces the original ideas, the raw materials of social life, and the city combines ideas and forms the social mind." In the threatened decadence of depleted rural communities, and in the lack of adequate leadership in many places, to revive a dying church, to equip a modern school, to develop a new rural civilization, to build a cooperating community with a really satisfying and efficient life, we have a problem which challenges both our patriotism and our religious spirit, for the problem is fundamentally a religious one.

IV. The Urgency of the Problem.

A broad-minded leader of the religious life of college men has recently expressed his opinion that _the rural problem is more pressing just now than any other North American problem_. He is a city man and is giving his attention impartially to the needs of all sections. Two cla.s.ses of people will be surprised by his statement. Many of his city neighbors are so overwhelmed by the serious needs of the city, they near-sightedly cannot see any particular problem in the country,--except how to take the next train for New York! And doubtless many country people, contented with second-rate conditions, are even unaware that they and their environment are being studied as a problem at all. Some prosperous farmers really resent the "interference" of people interested in better rural conditions and say "the country would be all right if let alone." But neither sordid rural complacency nor urban obliviousness can satisfy thinking people. We know there is something the matter with country life. We discover that the vitality and stability of rural life is in very many places threatened. It is the business of Christian students and leaders to study the conditions and try to remove or remedy the causes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Abandoned Church, Daviess County, Indiana.]

_A Hunt for Fundamental Causes_

Depletion added to isolation, and later tending toward degeneracy, is what makes the rural problem acute. It is the growth of the city which has made the problem serious. If we would discover a constructive policy for handling this problem successfully by making country life worth while, and better able to compete with the city, then we must find out why the boys and girls go to the big towns and why their parents rent the farm and move into the village.

For two generations there has been a mighty life-current toward the cities, sweeping off the farm many of the brightest boys and most ambitious girls in all the country-side, whom the country could ill afford to spare. The city needed many of them doubtless; but not all, for it has not used all of them well. Everywhere the country has suffered from the loss of them. Why did they go? It is evident that a larger proportion of the brightest country boys and girls must be kept on the farms if the rural communities are to hold their own and the new rural civilization really have a chance to develop as it should.

_The Unfortunate Urbanizing of Rural Life_

As a rule the whole _educational_ trend is toward the city. The teachers of rural schools are mostly from the larger villages and towns where they have caught the city fever, and they infect the children. Even in the lower grades the stories of city life begin early to allure the country children, and with a subtle suggestion the echoes of the distant city's surging life come with all the power of the Arabian Nights tales. Early visits to the enchanted land of busy streets and wonderful stores and factories, the circus and the theater, deepen the impression, and the fascination grows.

In proportion to the nearness to the city, there has been a distinct urbanizing of rural life. To a degree this has been well. It has raised the standard of comfort in country homes and has had a distinct influence in favor of real culture and a higher plane of living. But the impression has come to prevail widely that the city is the source of all that is interesting, profitable and worth while, until many country folks have really come to think meanly of themselves and their surroundings, taking the superficial city estimate of rural values as the true one.

A real slavery to city fashions has been growing insidiously in the country. So far as this has affected the facial adornments of the farmer, it has made for progress; but as seen in the adoption of unhospitable vertical city architecture for country homes,--an insult to broad acres which suggest home-like horizontals,--and the wearing by the women of cheap imitations of the flaunting finery of returning "cityfied"

stenographers, it is surely an abomination pure and simple.

Bulky catalogs of mail-order houses, alluringly ill.u.s.trated, have added to the craze, and the new furnishings of many rural homes resemble the tinsel trappings of cheap city flats, while substantial heirlooms of real taste and dignity are relegated to the attic. Fine rural discrimination as to the appropriate and the artistic is fast crumbling before the all-convincing argument, "It is _the thing_ now in the city." To be sure there is much the country may well learn from the city, the finer phases of real culture, the cultivation of social graces in place of rustic bashfulness and boorish manners, and the saving element of industrial cooperation; but let these gains not be bought by surrendering rural self-respect or compromising rural sincerity, or losing the wholesome ruggedness of the country character. The new rural civilization must be indigenous to the soil, not a mere urbanizing veneer. Only so can it foster genuine community pride and loyalty to its own environment. But herein is the heart of our problem.

_Why Country Boys and Girls Leave the Farm_

The mere summary of reasons alleged by many individuals will be sufficient for our purpose, without enlarging upon them. Many of these were obtained by Director L. H. Bailey of Cornell, the master student of this problem.

Countless boys have fled from the farm because they found the work monotonous, laborious and uncongenial, the hours long, the work unorganized and apparently unrewarding, the father or employer hard, exacting and unfeeling. Many of them with experience only with old-fashioned methods, are sure that farming does not pay, that there is no money in the business compared with city employments, that the farmer cannot control prices, is forced to buy high and sell low, is handicapped by big mortgages, high taxes, and pressing creditors. It is both encouraging and suggestive that many country boys, with a real love for rural life, but feeling that farming requires a great deal of capital, are planning "to farm someday, after making enough money in some other business."

The phantom of farm drudgery haunts many boys. They feel that the work is too hard in old age, and that it cannot even be relieved sufficiently by machinery, that it is not intellectual enough and furthermore leaves a man too tired at night to enjoy reading or social opportunities. The work of farming seems to them quite unscientific and too dependent upon luck and chance and the fickle whims of the weather.

Farm life is shunned by many boys and girls because they say it is too narrow and confining, lacking in freedom, social advantages, activities and pleasures, which the city offers in infinite variety. They see their mother overworked and growing old before her time, getting along with few comforts or conveniences, a patient, uncomplaining drudge, living in social isolation, except for uncultivated neighbors who gossip incessantly.

Many ambitious young people see little future on the farm. They feel that the farmer never can be famous in the outside world and that people have a low regard for him. In their village high school they have caught visions of high ideals; but they fail to discover high ideals in farm life and feel that high and n.o.ble achievement is impossible there, that the farmer cannot serve humanity in any large way and can attain little political influence or personal power.

With an adolescent craving for excitement, "something doing all the time,"

they are famished in the quiet open country and are irresistibly drawn to the high-geared city life, bizarre, spectacular, noisy, full of variety in sights, sounds, experiences, pleasures, comradeships, like a living vaudeville; and offering freedom from restraint in a life of easy incognito, with more time for recreation and "doing as you please." But with all the attractiveness of city life for the boys and girls, as compared with the simplicity of the rural home, the main pull cityward is probably "the job." They follow what they think is the easiest road to making a living, fancying that great prizes await them in the business life of the town.

Superficial and unreasonable as most of these alleged reasons are to-day, we must study them as genuine symptoms of a serious problem. If country life is to develop a permanently satisfying opportunity for the farm boys and girls, these conditions must be met. Isolation and drudgery must be somehow conquered. The business of farming must be made more profitable, until clerking in the city cannot stand the compet.i.tion. The social and recreative side of rural life must be developed. The rural community must be socialized and the country school must really fit for rural life. The lot of the farm mothers and daughters must be made easier and happier.

Scientific farming must worthily appeal to the boys as a genuine profession, not a mere matter of luck with the weather, and the farm boy must no longer be treated as a slave but a partner in the firm.[8]

_The Folly of Exploiting the Country Boy_

An eminent Western lawyer addressing a rural life conference in Missouri a few weeks ago explained thus his leaving the farm: "When I was a boy on the farm we were compelled to rise about 4 o'clock every morning. From the time we got on our clothes until 7:30 we fed the live stock and milked the cows. Then breakfast. After breakfast, we worked in the field until 11:30, when, after spending at least a half hour caring for the teams we went to dinner. We went back to work at 1 o'clock and remained in the field until 7:30 o'clock. After quitting the fields we did ch.o.r.es until 8:30 or 9 o'clock, and then we were advised to go to bed right away so that we would be able to do a good day's work on the morrow."

No wonder the boy rebelled! This story harks back to the days when a father owned his son's labor until the boy was twenty-one, and could either use the boy on his own farm or have him "bound out" for a term of years for the father's personal profit. Such harsh tactlessness is seldom found today; but little of it will be found in the new rural civilization.[9] Country boys must not be exploited if we expect them to stay in the country as community builders. Many of them will gladly stay if given a real life chance.

_The City's Dependence upon the Country_

The country is the natural source of supply for the nation. The city has never yet been self-sustaining. It has always drawn its raw materials and its population from the open country. The country must continue to produce the food, the hardiest young men and women, and much of the idealism and best leadership of the nation. All of these have proven to be indigenous to country life. Our civilization is fundamentally rural, and the rural problem is a national problem, equally vital to the city and the whole country. The cities should remember that they have a vast deal at stake in the welfare of the rural districts.

The country for centuries got along fairly well without the city, and could continue to do so; but the city could not live a month without the country! The great railway strike last fall in England revealed the fact that Birmingham _had but a week's food supply_. A serious famine threatened, and this forced a speedy settlement. Meanwhile food could not be brought to the city except in small quant.i.ties, and the people of Birmingham learned in a striking way their utter dependence upon the country as their source of supply. The philosophy of one of the sages of China, uttered ages ago, is still profoundly true: "The well-being of a people is like a tree; agriculture is its root, manufactures and commerce are its branches and its life; but if the root be injured, the leaves fall, the branches break away and the tree dies."[10]

That far-seeing Irish leader, Sir Horace Plunkett, after a searching study of American conditions, is inclined to think that our great prosperous cities are blundering seriously in not concerning themselves more earnestly with the rural problem: "Has it been sufficiently considered how far the moral and physical health of the modern city depends upon the constant influx of fresh blood from the country, which has ever been the source from which the town draws its best citizenship? You cannot keep on indefinitely skimming the pan and have equally good milk left. Sooner or later, if the balance of trade in this human traffic be not adjusted, the raw material out of which urban society is made will be seriously deteriorated, and the symptoms of national degeneracy will be properly charged against those who neglected to foresee the evil and treat the cause.... The people of every state are largely bred in rural districts, and the physical and moral well-being of those districts must eventually influence the quality of the whole people."[11]

V. A Challenge to Faith.

The seriousness of our problem is sufficiently clear. Our consideration in this chapter has been confined mainly to the personal factors. Certain important social and inst.i.tutional factors will be further considered in Chapter V under Country Life Deficiencies. With all its serious difficulties and discouragements the rural problem is a splendid challenge to faith. There are many with the narrow city outlook who despair of the rural problem and consider that country life is doomed. There are still others who have faith in the country town and village but have lost their faith in the open country as an abiding place for rural homes. Before giving such people of little faith further hearing, we must voice the testimony of a host of country lovers who have a great and enduring faith in the country as the best place for breeding men, the most natural arena for developing character, the most favorable place for happy homes, and, for a splendid host of country boys and girls the most challenging opportunity for a life of service.