The Country-Life Movement in the United States Part 2

City people must be on their guard against attractive land schemes. Now and then it is possible to pay for the land and make a living out of it at the same time, but these cases are so few that the intending purchaser would better not make his calculations on them. Farming is no longer a poor man's business. It requires capital to equip and run a farm as well as to buy it, the same as in other business. It is a common fault of land schemes to magnify the income, and to minimize both the risks and the amount of needed capital. Plans that read well may be wholly unsound or even impossible when translated into plain business practice. The exploiting of exceptional results in reporter's English and with charming pictures is having a very dangerous effect on the public mind; and even some of these results may not stand business a.n.a.lysis.

_What the city may do._

It is not inc.u.mbent on cities, corporations, colleges, or other inst.i.tutions to demonstrate, by going into general practical farming, that the farming business may be made to pay: thousands of farmers are demonstrating this every day.

If the city ever saves the open country, it will be by working out a real economic and social coordination between city and country, not by the city going into farming.

We need to correct the abnormal urban domination in political power, in control of the agencies of trade, in discriminatory practices, and in artificial stimulation, and at the same time to protect the evolution of a new rural welfare. The agrarian situation in the world is not to be met alone by increasing the technical efficiency of farming.

THE DECLINE IN RURAL POPULATION--ABANDONED FARMS

The decline in rural population grows out of economic conditions. Men move to the centers, where they can make the best living for themselves and families. It is difficult, however, for the farmer to "pull up stakes" and move. He is tied to his land. The result is that many men who really could do better in the town than on their farms are still remaining on the land. These persons will continue to remove to towns and cities as they are gradually forced off their lands; or if they are not forced off, their children will go, and the farm will eventually change hands.

Social reasons also have their influence in the movement of rural populations to towns. The social resources in the country in recent years have been very meager, because the social attractions of the towns have drawn away from the activities of the open country, and also more or less because the population itself is decreasing and does not allow, thereby, for so close social cohesion.

It is not to be expected that the counter-movement from the towns and cities to the open country will yet balance in numbers the movement of population from the country to the city.

It is important that conditions be so improved for the open country that those who are born on the farms and who are farm-minded shall feel that opportunities are at least as good for them there as in the city, and thereby prevent the exodus to the city or to other business of persons who really ought to remain in the rural regions.

_Significance of the decline._

It is commonly a.s.sumed that a decline in rural population in any region is itself evidence of a real decline in agriculture. This conclusion, however, does not at all follow. The shift in population as between town and country is an expression of very many causes. In some cases it may mean a lessening in economic efficiency in the region, and in some cases an actual increase in such efficiency.

It must be remembered that we have been pa.s.sing from the rural to the urban phase of civilization. The census of 1900 showed approximately one-third of our people on farms or closely connected with farms, as against something like nine-tenths a hundred years previous. It is doubtful whether we have yet struck bottom, although the rural exodus may have gone too far in some regions; and we may not permanently strike bottom for some time to come.

We think of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and other early patriots as countrymen, and we are likely to deplore the fact that countrymen no longer represent us in high places. The fact is that "the fathers"

represented all society, because society in their day was not clearly differentiated between city and country. They were at the same time countrymen and city men, but the city was the incidental or secondary interest. To-day, the conditions are reversed. The city has come to be the preponderating force, and the country is largely incidental and secondary so far as the shaping of policies is concerned; but this does not prove that a greater ratio of country population is needed. The number of persons now living in the open country is probably sufficient, if the persons were all properly effective. The real problem before the American people is how to make the country population most effective, not how to increase this population; the increase will be governed by the operation of economic law.

The sorting of our people has not yet reached its limit of approximate stability. Many persons who live on the land really are not farmers, but are the remainders of the rural phase of society.

A decline in rural population in any region may be expressive of the general adjustment as between country and city; it may mean the pa.s.sing out of active cultivation of large areas of land that ought to be in forest or in extensive systems of agriculture; it may mean the moving out of well-to-do farmers to cheaper lands, as an expression of the land-hunger of the American; it may be due in some cases to the retiring of well-to-do persons from the farms to the town; and other causes are at work in particular localities. The rural population of Iowa is decreasing, but the agricultural production and land valuation are increasing.

The lessened production of live-stock, of which we have recently heard so much, is probably not due to any great extent, if at all, to decreasing rural population. It is in part due to the shift in farming following the pa.s.sing of the western ranges, and in part to the lack of a free market, and in part to a changing adjustment in farming practices. This situation will take care of itself if the markets are not manipulated or controlled.

Many publicists are alarmed at the lessened production of farm products in comparison with imports, and fear that the balance of trade will be seriously turned against us, with a rise in the rate of exchange. It is not to be expected that we shall maintain our former rate of export of raw crops, nor is it desirable from the point of view of maintaining the fertility of our lands that we should do so; but the maintenance of production is now to depend on farming every acre better, in larger farms as well as in smaller farms, rather than on taking up new acres.

The ultimate importance of agriculture to civilization, in other words, lies not in the number of persons it supports, but in the fact that it must continue to provide supplies for the populations of the earth when mining and exploitation are done, when there are no new lands, and when we shall have taken away all the first flush of the earth's bounty. The character of the farm man, therefore, becomes of supreme importance, and all the inst.i.tutions of society must lend themselves to this personal problem.

We shall never again be a rural people. We want the cities to grow; and as they grow they should learn how to manage themselves. How they shall meet their questions of population is not my problem; and I have no suggestions to make on that subject.

_The abandoned farms._[1]

If persons move from any part of the country until there is a marked absolute falling off in population, it must follow that certain lands shall be left unused, or shall be combined with adjacent lands into larger business units. It is no anomaly that there are "abandoned farms"

(they are seldom really abandoned, but more or less unused), and it is natural that they should be in the remoter, hillier, and poorer regions.

So are shop buildings abandoned on back streets, and likewise factories on lonely streams.

[1] Another discussion of this subject may be found in "The State and the Farmer."

Some farms in the remote or difficult regions are still well utilized, because a skillful man has met the situation; others may be very nearly or quite disused; between the two extremes there is every shade of condition. Some farms are falling into disuse for one reason and some for another. In some cases, it is because the family is merely broken up and is moving off. In other cases, it is because the farm can no longer make a good living for a man and his family, giving him the things that a man of the twentieth century wants. A farm in the hill region that was large enough to support a man fifty or seventy-five years ago, may not support him at the present time with all his increase in desires (page 106).

It is no solution of any question merely to put other families back on disused farms. It is worse than no solution to place there a more ignorant family than was on the place originally; and yet there is a movement all over the country to place raw foreigners on such farms as owners or renters. Because these farms are cheap, they appeal to city people, and they become temptations to real estate dealers.

Bargain-counter farms are rarely good investments.

What is to be done with these farms is, at bottom, a plain economic question. If they will not pay in ordinary farming, no one should be forced to occupy them. They might be well utilized, in many cases, for community or county forestry purposes. Every county in the East that has many remote and difficult hill lands could probably profit by a system of public forestry, organized on a comprehensive state plan.

I have said that farms are abandoned for all kinds of reasons. It does not follow because a family has given up a certain farm that the place has ever been really tested on its merits; the man may not have been a farmer at all, but only a resident. Misfortune in the family, or the lack of children, may be the reason for the desertion. So it happens that some so-called abandoned farms are first-cla.s.s properties to purchase as ordinary farms.

The best lands will naturally be the first to be taken up by persons who know. And the value of land for farming will depend very much on its accessibility and nearness to market. Even though it is possible to raise two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes on a distant hilltop, it does not follow that it is profitable to raise them there. Many persons who are now living on difficult lands, would undoubtedly be much better off if they were in cities or towns; but as a rule, a man cannot safely enter a new business after forty years of age.

We must, of course, do the best we can to help the man who actually lives on one of these difficult farms, to enable him to make the very most of his opportunities. This is being done through many agencies. He has been taught in methods of soil handling, fertilizing, gra.s.s-growing, stock-raising, drainage, and many other particular features. But it is also important that we do not encourage others to enter the same condition.

So I have no fear of the abandoned farm, although I wish that we had a fundamental treatment of the whole situation,--like state programs,--so that lands in the process of returning to nature may be managed in a large and systematic way, that they might contribute the best results to the community and the country. We now know how to make these lands productive, but there is a larger question than this. Such lands--once farmed and now going fallow--may be found from California to Maine. In many cases they are not being abandoned rapidly enough, and this accounts for the human tragedy connected with some of the old homesteads. But they will all be used in good time, and we shall need them.

Little of the older country is worn out. Some of the best land values now lie in the old East and South. Movement to these lands from the Western lands is now beginning, and this is a sound tendency, as are most spontaneous movements inside the farming business itself; the railroads and real estate dealers may be expected to even up the situation.

_The new farming._

Although the ratio of farmers to the whole population may still decrease, the actual number of farmers will increase. The rural districts will fill up. More young men and women will remain on farms and more persons will go from towns to farms as rapidly as the business becomes as lucrative as other businesses requiring equal investment, risks, and intelligence. The open country will probably fill up mostly with the natural increase of the country population, and there will be some to spare for the cities. We shall face the question of congestion of farm districts.

The general growth of population will make additional demands on the farm, not only because there will be more persons to supply, but also because desires increase with the increase of wealth. It may require no more food to sustain a well-to-do person than a poor-to-do person, but as one increases his income he greatly extends the range of his food and improves its quality. Luxuries increase.

But beyond his actual food, one's desires increase directly with his income; and, aside from the minerals and metals, most of the material that is used in the arts and manufactures, in clothing, shelter, and adornment, is raised from the land. The human-food products do not comprise one-half the output of the land.

We have covered in a way the "easy" farming regions. But in the end, all the country will be needed for productive uses; and the best civilization will come only when we conquer the difficult places as well as utilize the easy ones. We shall develop greater skill in farming than we have yet dreamed of. The raw and ragged open country that we see everywhere from trolley-lines and railway-trains is not at all a necessary condition; it is only a phase of a transition period between the original conquest of the country and the growing utilization of our resources. The more completely we conquer and utilize it, the more resourceful and hopeful our people should be. Country life will become more differentiated and complex. Speaking broadly, we are now in the rough and crude stage of our agricultural development; but the situation will develop only as it pays and satisfies persons to live in the country.

To meet the economic, social, educational, religious, and other needs of these great open regions will require the very best efforts that our people can put forth; and our inst.i.tutions are not now sufficiently developed to meet the situation adequately.

RECLAMATION IN RELATION TO COUNTRY LIFE; AND THE RESERVE LANDS

All forms of reclamation, by which lands are made available for agricultural use, profoundly affect society and inst.i.tutions; and any person who is interested in rural civilization must necessarily, therefore, be interested in these means and their results. Because reclamation by irrigation has progressed farther than other means, and has become a national policy, I shall confine my remarks to it chiefly.

The best rural civilization will develop out of native rural conditions rather than be imposed from without. Irrigation makes a rural condition: it provides the possibility for a community to develop; and it must, therefore, color the entire life of the community.

Irrigation communities are compact. As all the people depend on a single utility, so must the community life tend to be solidified and tense.

Probably no other rural communities will be so unified and so intent on local social problems. We shall look, therefore, for a very distinct and definite welfare to arise in these communities; and they will make a peculiar contribution to rural civilization.

The life of the irrigation community will be expressed not only in inst.i.tutions of its own, but in a literature of its own. Much of the world's literature does not have significance to country-life conditions, and very little of it has significance to an irrigation civilization. I look for poetry to come directly out of the irrigation ditch and to express the outlook of the people who depend for their existence on the ca.n.a.l and the flood-gate.