The Country-Life Movement in the United States Part 12

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS

In the preceding pages I have tried to develop the reader's point of view. To do this, I have gone over very briefly some of the questions that are now actively under discussion. There are other matters, of a more personal nature, that need to be discussed, or at least mentioned, in connection with even a sketchy consideration of the country-life movement; and some of these I now place together in a closing budget.

_The open country must solve its own problems._

It may first be said that the reconstruction of the open country must depend in the main on the efforts of the country people themselves. We are glad of all interchange of populations; the influx of country blood has thus far been invaluable to cities; the outgo of city people has set new aspirations into the country, and it is still necessary to call on the cities for labor in times of pressure: but stated in its large terms, the open country will rise no higher than the aspirations of the people who live there, and the problems must be solved in such way that they will meet the conditions as they exist on the spot.

_Profitable farming is not a sufficient object in life._

It may then be said that it is the first duty of every man to earn a decent living for himself and those dependent on him; and a countryman cannot expect to have much influence on his time and community until he makes his farm pay in dollars and cents.

But the final object in life is not to make money, but to use money in developing a higher type of endeavor and a better neighborhood. The richest farming regions do not necessarily have the best society or even the best living conditions. Social usefulness must become a fact in country districts. The habit of life in the usual farm family is to take everything to itself and to keep it. Standards of service must take the place of standards of property.

_New country professions._

The country-life movement does not imply that all young persons who hereafter shall remain in the country are to be actual farmers. The practice of customary professions and occupations will take on more importance in country districts. The country physician, veterinary, pastor, lawyer, and teacher are to extend greatly in influence and opportunity.

But aside from all this, entirely new occupations and professions are to arise, even the names of which are not yet known to us. Some of them are already under way. There will be established out in the open country plant doctors, plant-breeders, soil experts, health experts, pruning and spraying experts, forest experts, farm machinery experts, drainage and irrigation experts, recreation experts, market experts, and many others.

There will be housekeeping experts or supervisors. There will be need for overseers of affiliated organizations and stock companies. These will all be needed for the purpose of giving special advice and direction (page 78). We shall be making new applications of rural law, of business methods for agricultural regions, new types of organization.

The people will find that it will pay to support such professions or agents as these.

Country life will become more complex as rapidly as it becomes more efficient.

_The personal resources._

The att.i.tude toward one's world has much to do both with his effectiveness and with his satisfaction in living; and this is specially true with the farmer, because he is so much alone and has so few conventional sources of entertainment. It may be important to provide new entertainment for the farmer; but it is much more important to develop his personal resources.

The simple life, as Pastor Wagner so well explains, is a state of mind.

It is a simplification of desire, a certain directness of effort and of purpose that brings us quickly to a result, and such an att.i.tude that we derive our satisfactions from the humble and the near-at-hand. The countryman is the man who has the personal touch with his environment.

With the increasing differentiation of country life, it is of the first importance that the country people do not lose their simplicity of desires.

_The meaning of the environment._

It is too little appreciated that every natural object makes a twofold appeal to the human mind: its appeal in the terms of its physical or material uses, and its appeal to our sense of beauty and of personal satisfaction. As the people progresses in evolution, the public mind becomes constantly more sensitive to the conditions in which we live, and the appeal to the spiritual satisfaction of life constantly becomes stronger. Not only shall the physical needs of life be met, but the earth will constantly be made a more satisfactory place in which to live.

We must not only save our forests in order that they may yield timber and conserve our water supplies, but also that they may adorn and dominate the landscape and contribute to the meaning of scenery. It is important that our coal supplies be conserved not only for their use in manufacture and the arts, but also that smoke does not vitiate the atmosphere and render it unhealthful, and discolor the objects in the landscape. It is of the greatest importance that water supplies be conserved by storage reservoirs and other means, but this conservation should be accomplished in such a way as not to menace health or offend the eye or destroy the beauty of contiguous landscape. The impounding of waters without regard to preserving natural water-falls, streams, and other scenery, is a mark of a commercial and selfish age, and is a procedure that cannot be tolerated in a highly developed society. It is important that regulations be enacted regarding the operation of steam roads through woody districts, not only that the timber may be saved, but also that the natural beauty of the landscape may be protected from fire and other forms of destruction. The fertility of the soil must be saved, not only that products may be raised with which to feed and clothe the people, but also that the beauty of thrifty and productive farms may be saved to the landscape. The property-right in natural scenery is a tenure of the people, and the best conservation of natural resources is impossible until this fact is recognized.

On this point the Commission on Country Life makes the following statement: "In estimating our natural resources we must not forget the value of scenery. This is a distinct a.s.set, and it will be more recognized as time goes on. It will be impossible to develop a satisfactory country life without conserving all the beauty of landscape and developing the people to the point of appreciating it. In parts of the East, a regular system of parking the open country of the entire state is already begun, constructing the roads, preserving the natural features, and developing the latent beauty in such a way that the whole country becomes part of one continuing landscape treatment. This in no way interferes with the agricultural utilization of the land, but rather increases it. The scenery is, in fact, capitalized, so that it adds to the property values and contributes to local patriotism and to the thrift of the commonwealth."

_Historic monuments._

The general tendency of our time is to dump everything into the cities, particularly into the large cities. It is there that we a.s.semble our treasures of art, our libraries, our dramatic skill, our specimens of statuary and architecture; and it is there that the aspiring men also a.s.semble to work out their destinies. And yet there have been events in the open country. Great men have lived there. Things have come to pa.s.s.

We should be interested to record these events of the rural country, as well as the events that are a.s.sociated with the congested city. Persons of quickened intelligence will not live contentedly in the outer country if it provides nothing more than subsistence. Every new memorial in the farming country is one additional reason for people to live there.

The open country as well as the city has a history; but one would not discover the fact from monuments that he may see.

It may not be possible now to erect elaborate monuments far in the country to commemorate historical events, but records may be made, and it is at least possible to roll up a pile of stones.

_Improvement societies._

Of late years there has sprung up a line of societies in villages and small cities whose province it is to create public sentiment for the betterment of the place in general good looks, and which, for lack of a better name, are generally collectively known as "village improvement societies." These organizations have had much effect in making the villages attractive. Their influence extends far and wide, but the organization itself in any case ought to take in all the surrounding territory, with the purpose to secure a cooperative action between town and country (page 122). The entire region, not city or town alone, should be organized.

In many rural communities, there could well be an open-country improvement society; or an organization might be formed, from the church or otherwise, to care for a particular interest, as the school ground or the cemetery. The average country cemetery particularly needs attention.

The care of all the public or semi-public property of a township or a neighborhood is somebody's responsibility, and this responsibility should be recognized in organization. The pride of the community could be greatly stimulated if a group of people should a.s.sociate to look after roadsides, lake sh.o.r.es and river banks, waste places, deserted and dilapidated buildings, weeds, raw spots, paths, dangerous places, mosquito ponds, breeding places of insects, stray dogs, horse sheds, trees, birds, wild flowers, telegraph and telephone depredations, cemeteries, church grounds, school grounds, almshouse grounds, picnic grounds, historic places, patriotic events, bits of good scenery, and to give advice on lawns, back-yards and barn-yards, advertising signs.

_Entertainment._

All persons seem to be agreed that more entertainment and recreation should be provided for country residents; but it does not follow that vaudeville, and the usual line of moving pictures, and the traveling concert would add anything really worth while, although these are often recommended by town folk. The Board Walk kind of pageant may very well be left at the sea-sh.o.r.e.

But we certainly need entertainment that will help country people over the hard and dry places, and raise their lives out of monotony. The guiding principles are two: an entertainment that shall express the best that there is in country life; one that shall set the people themselves at work to produce it, rather than to bring it in bodily from the outside.

I would not eliminate good things merely because they come from the outside, and no one would deny the countryman the touch with any of the masterpieces; but I am speaking now of a form of effort that shall quicken an entire country district and leave a permanent impression on it. I would rather leave the situation as it is than to introduce the meaningless performances of the city thoroughfare and the resorts.

The movement to provide new and better sports, games, and general recreation is now well under way, and I do not need to explain it here; but two things ought to begin to receive attention: music and drama.

The _music spirit_ seems to be dying out in the country. I hear very little joyous song there, even though the people may be joyous. The habit of self-expression in song and music needs much to be encouraged in home and school and grange and church. I think the lack is in part due to the over-mastering influence of professional town music, and in part to the absence of study of simple country forms. Simplicity is not now the fashion in music. The single player with a simple theme and the single singer with a melodious and untrilled strain are not much heard at gatherings now. Some of the best singing I hear is now and then out among the folk,--a simple direct song as plain and sweet as a bird's note. I hope we shall not lose it.

A _drama_ of some kind is very much needed for country districts. It should be a new form, something in the way of representing the end of the planting, the harvest, the seasons, the leading crops, the dairy, the woods, the history and traditions of the neighborhood or the region.

Many of the pieces should be acted out of doors, and they should be produced chiefly by local talent. Such simple plays for the most part need yet to be written, but the themes are numerous. Why not have a festival or a generous spectacle of Indian corn, and then fill the whole occasion full of the feeling of the corn? As pure entertainment, this would be worth any number of customary theatricals, and as a means of bringing out the talent of the community it would have very positive social value. The traveling play usually leaves nothing behind it.

The themes for short, simple, and strong dramatic presentation are almost numberless,--such episodes and events, for example, as the plowing, the reaping, the husking, the horse-shoeing, the hay-stacking, the wood-chopping, the threshing, the sugaring, the raising of the barn, the digging of the well, the herding of the cattle, the felling of the tree, the building of the church, the making of the wagon, the bridging of the creek, the constructing of the boat, the selling of the farm, the Indians, the settlers, the burst of spring, the dead of winter, the season of bloom, the heyday of summer.

We do not sufficiently appreciate how widespread and native is the desire to dramatize. The ritual of fraternal orders is an ill.u.s.tration.

We see it in the charades of evening parties. The old school "exhibition" made a wonderful appeal. Every community likes to see its own people "take parts." At nearly every important grange meeting, and at other country meetings, some one must "recite," and the recitation usually has characters, situations, and "take-offs." It is too bad that we do not have better literature to put in the hands of these reciters; in the meantime, I hope that the custom will not die out.

One who has seen the consummate Pa.s.sion Play at Oberammergau must have had the thought impressed on him that there is much latent talent among the country folk, and also that it is much worth the while of a community to develop this talent. Aside from its transcendent theme, this stupendous play appeals to the world because of its simplicity and directness and because of its reality, for these are the very kind of folk that might have taken part in the mighty drama had the Great Master lived in Oberammergau.

The nativeness of the play impresses one. The very absence of so much that we a.s.sociate with the ordinary drama gives the play an appeal,--the absence of the studied stride and strut, of the exaggerated make-ups, and of the over-doing of the parts. The play is grounded in the lives of the people in the community.

We cannot expect another place to become an Oberammergau, but it is possible for something good to come out of any spot. This thought is vividly expressed by W. T. Stead in his account of the Pa.s.sion Play:

"As I write, it is now two days after the Pa.s.sion Play. The crowd has departed, the village is once more quiet and still. The swallows are twittering in the eaves, the blue and cloudless sky over-arches the amphitheater of hills. All is peace, and the whole dramatic troupe pursue with equanimity the even tenor of their ordinary life. Most of the best players are woodcarvers; the others are peasants or local tradesmen. Their royal robes or their rabbinical costumes laid aside, they go about their ordinary work in the ordinary way as ordinary mortals. But what a revelation it is of the mine of latent capacity, musical, dramatic, intellectual, in the human race, that a single mountain village can furnish, under a capable guidance, and with adequate inspiration, such a host competent to set forth such a play from its tinkers, tailors, plowmen, bakers, and the like! It is not native capacity that is lacking to mankind. It is the guiding brain, the patient love, the careful education, and the stimulus and inspiration of a great idea. But, given these, every village of country yokels from Dorset to Caithness might develop artists as n.o.ble and as devoted as those of Oberammergau."

_The business of farming._