The Country-Life Movement in the United States Part 5

_Special local schools for agriculture._[2]

I am committed to the idea that there should be strong local centers of interest in rural communities, for thereby we develop local pride and incentive. There are several ways, on the educational side, of developing local inst.i.tutions and interest.

[2] See "The State and the Farmer," p. 150; "The Training of Farmers," p. 167; "Cyclopedia of American Agriculture," IV, p. 474.

The first way is to make it possible and practicable for the existing public schools to introduce agriculture and domestic economy. I suggest that many or most localities would do better to develop the country-life work in the existing schools than to ask the legislature for a separate special school. We have only begun to understand what such redirected and expanded schools may accomplish.

Another means of securing local knowledge and developing local interest is by the establishing of demonstration farms and field-laboratories. It is doubtful whether a permanent demonstration farm in a community is desirable; in general, the demonstration may be temporary, depending on the presence in the community of some special difficulty. In some circ.u.mstances, the enterprise may amount to a local testing station.

Enterprises of this sort are bound to take on great importance in the redirection of country life.

Local societies and organizations may be encouraged to take up educational and experiment work.

Departments of agriculture will probably be added by colleges or other educational inst.i.tutions, and these will serve as local centers at the same time that they reach the larger field.

Again, a winter school or short-course of, say, a month's or two months'

duration may be held in different parts of the state. The localities should cooperate in the expenses, thereby becoming partakers in the enterprise.

Eventually there should be an agricultural agent resident in every county, and perhaps even for smaller regions, whose office should be to give advice, to keep track of animal and plant diseases and pests and secure the services of experts in their control, to organize conferences, winter-courses, and the like, and otherwise to be to the agricultural affairs what the pastor is to religious affairs and the teacher to educational affairs. (See "The Training of Farmers," p. 257.)

Finally, we may ask the state to place a special school of agriculture in the locality, but only after it is clear that other means cannot produce the desired results. An unattached school of agriculture is not an easy thing to administer successfully, even at the best; and the difficulty would be all the greater if its care were to be confined to local boards, which would probably have small understanding of the peculiar educational requirements. It is probable that a state may wisely establish a very few special schools, but an educational program needs first to be worked out, a competent system of control must be found, and the people should know in advance what is involved. It is not enough merely that a locality desires a school: the larger question is the state's interest. In all local enterprises of this kind in which state aid is asked for, it ought to be understood that the locality itself is to cooperate in the securing of equipment and funds.

_The lessons of experience._

The demand for agriculture-education is now widespread; the subject is becoming "popular." All kinds of plans are being tried or discussed.

Persons do not seem to realize that we have had about one hundred years of experience in the United States in agriculture-education, and that this experience ought to point the way to success, or at least to the avoiding of serious errors. The agricultural colleges have come up through a long and difficult route, and their present success is not accidental, nor is it easy to duplicate or imitate. First and last, about every conceivable plan has been tried by them, or by others in their time or preceding them; and this experience ought to be utilized by the other inst.i.tutions that are now being projected in all parts of the country.

Plans that certainly cannot succeed are now being projected. The projectors seem to proceed on the idea that it requires no background of experience to enable an inst.i.tution to teach agriculture, whereas agriculture-education is the most difficult and also the most expensive of all education yet undertaken.

To teach agriculture merely by giving a new direction or vocabulary to botany, chemistry, geology, physics, and the like is not to teach agriculture at all, although it may greatly improve these subjects themselves. To put a school of agriculture in the hands of some good science-teacher in a general college faculty with the idea that he can cover the agricultural work and at the same time keep up his own department, is wholly ineffective (except temporarily) and out of character with the demands of the twentieth century (but in high-schools a good science teacher may handle the work, or an agriculture teacher may carry the science). To suppose that "agriculture" is one subject for a college course, to be sufficiently represented by a "chair," is to miss the point of modern progress. To give only laboratory and recitation courses may be better than nothing, but land-teaching, either as a part of the inst.i.tution or on adjacent farms, must be incorporated with the customary school work if the best results are to be secured. To make a school farm pay for itself and for the school is impossible unless the school is a very poor or exceedingly small one; and yet this old fallacy is alive at the present day. To have a distant farm to visit and look at, in order to "apply" the "teachings" of chemistry, botany, and the like, falls far short of real agriculture instruction. To develop a "model farm" that shall be a pattern to the mult.i.tude in exact farming is an exploded notion: there are many farmers' farms that are better adapted to such purpose (the demonstration farm is the modern adaptation of the idea, and it is educationally sound).

To teach agriculture of college grade requires not only persons who know the subject, but an organization well informed on the educational administration that is required. There must be a body of experience in this line of work behind any teaching on a college plane that shall be really useful; when this body of experience does not exist, the work must necessarily grow slowly and be under the most expert direction. The presumption is still against successful agriculture work in the literary and liberal arts inst.i.tutions, because such teaching demands a point of view on education that the men in these inst.i.tutions are likely not to possess. Agriculture cannot be introduced in the same way that a department or chair of history or mathematics can be organized; it requires a different outlook on educational procedure, a different order of equipment and of activities, and its own type of administration.

I am much afraid that some of the newer unattached inst.i.tutions, in their eagerness to make departures and to be self-sufficient, will not profit by our long development, and that the secondary schools and others may make many of the mistakes that the regular colleges of agriculture long ago have made. The presumption is against any school that expects to develop merely a local enterprise, without reference to other schools or to experience.

I am sure we all want to encourage the introduction of agriculture into all educational inst.i.tutions, but we should not be misled merely by the word "agriculture"; and in the interest of good work we should be careful not to encourage any enterprise of this kind until convinced that it has been well studied and that it will be administered in the interest of rural progress.

WOMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT

On the women depend to a greater degree than we realize the nature and extent of the movement for a better country life, wholly aside from their personal influence as members of families. Farming is a co-partnership business. It is a partnership between a man and a woman.

There is no other great series of occupations in which such co-partnership is so essential to success. The home is on the farm, and a part of it. The number of middle-aged unmarried men living on farms is very small. It is quite impossible to live on a farm and to run it advantageously without family relation.

It follows, then, that if the farming business is to contribute to the redirection of country life, the woman has responsibilities as well as the man. As the strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link, so will the progress of rural civilization be determined by the weakness of the farm as an economic unit, or by the weakness of the home as a domestic and social unit.

Now, the farmer himself cannot have great influence in redirecting the affairs of his community until he is first master of his own problem,--that is, until he is a first-cla.s.s farmer. In the same way, a woman cannot expect to have much influence in furthering the affairs of her rural community until she also is master of her own problem, and her problem is primarily the home-making part of the farm. In the mastering of his or her own problem, the farmer or his wife may also contribute directly to the progress of the community. Every advance in the management of the household contributes to the general welfare: it sets new ideas under way.

If the farming business must in general be reorganized, so also must the householding part of it be reorganized. The solution of the farm-labor problem, for example, lies not alone merely in securing more farm "hands," but in so directing and shaping the business that less farm hands will be needed to secure a given economic result; so also the solution of the household-labor problem is not merely the securing of more household help, but the simplification of householding itself.

So far as possible, the labor that is necessary to do the work of the open country, whether in-doors or out-doors, should be resident labor.

The labor difficulty increases with reduction in the size of the family.

Families of moderate size develop responsibility, and cooperation is forced on all members of it, with marked effect on character. The single child is likely to develop selfishness rather than cooperation and sense of responsibility. To a large extent, the responsibility of the household should rest on the girls of the family; and all children, whether boys or girls, should be brought up in the home in habits of industry.

It is fairly possible by means of simplification of householding and by a cooperative industry amongst all members of the family, so to reduce the burden of the farm wife that she may have time and strength to give to the vital affairs of the community.

_The affairs of the household._

It is essential that we simplify our ideals in cooking, in ornament, in apparel, and in furnishing; that we construct more convenient and workable residences; that we employ labor-saving devices for the house as well as for the barns and the fields.

We are so accustomed to the ordinary modes of living that we scarcely realize what amount of time and strength might be saved by a simplified table and by more thoughtful methods of preparing food. In respect to houses, it should be remembered that the present farm dwellings are getting old. A good part of the farm houses must soon be either rebuilt or remodeled. The first consideration is so to build or remodel them that steps may be saved to the housewife. We have not thought, in the past, that a woman's steps cost time and energy. Within twenty years all first-cla.s.s farm houses will have running water, both into the house and out of the house.

It is rather strange that in our discussions of the farm-labor problem, we do not realize that a gasoline engine or a water engine may save the labor of a man. Farmers are putting power into their barns. They should also put power into the house. This may be accomplished by means of a small movable engine that can be used either in the house or barn, or else by installing an engine in a small building betwixt the house and the barn, so that it can be connected either way. This can be used to lighten much household labor, as pumping of water, meat-chopping, laundering, dish-washing, vacuum-cleaning, and the like.

Eventually, there must be some form of community cooperation in the country to save household labor. Already the care of milk has been taken from great numbers of farm homes by the neighborhood creamery, or at least by the building of a milk-house in which the men by the use of machinery perform labor that was once done by the housewife. Whenever there is a cooperative creamery, there may also be other cooperative attachments, as a laundry, or other appliances. It will be more difficult to bring about cooperation in these regards in country districts than in the city, but with the coming of good roads, telephones, and better vehicles, it will be constantly more easy to accomplish.

_The affairs of the community._

I have said that it is important that the country woman have strength and time to engage in the vital affairs of the community. I am thinking of the public sentiment that women can make on any question that they care to discuss thoroughly and collectively, whether this sentiment is for better orcharding, better fowls, better roads, extending of telephones, improving the schoolhouse or church or library. It is needful that women in the country come together to discuss woman's work, and also to form intelligent opinions on farming questions in general.

The tendency of all "sociables" in country and town is to bring persons together to eat, to gossip, and to be entertained. We need to redirect all these meetings, and to devote at least a part of every such meeting to some real and serious work which it is worth while for busy and intelligent persons to undertake.

Every organization of women should endeavor to extend its branches and its influence into the open country as well as into the cities and towns. Every public movement now has responsibility to country-life questions as well as to town questions.

I think it important that there be some means and reason for every farm woman going away from home at least once a week, and this wholly aside from going to town to trade. There should be some place where the women may come together on a different basis from that of the ordinary daily routine and the usual buying and selling. I do not know where this social center should develop, and in an atmosphere that is not conducive to gossip. In some neighborhoods it might focalize in the church parlor.

The center should be permanent, if possible. It should be a place to which any woman in a community has a right to go. An ideal place for such a center would be the rural library, and I hope that such libraries may arise in every country community, not only that they may supply books but that they may help provide a meeting-place on semi-social lines. I think that if I were a woman in charge of a rural library, I should never be satisfied with my work until I had got every woman in the community in the habit of coming to the library once every week.

_The woman's outlook._

The woman needs very much to have the opportunity to broaden her horizon. The farmer has lived on his farm; he is now acquiring a world outlook. The woman has lived in her house; she also is acquiring a world outlook. As the house has been smaller and more confining than the farm, it has followed that woman's outlook has been smaller than man's.

I think it is necessary also that the woman of the farm, as well as the man, have a real anchor in her nature environment. It is as necessary to the woman as to the man that her mind be open to the facts, phenomena, and objects that are everywhere about her, as the winds and weather, the plants and birds, the fields and streams and woods. It is one of the best resources in life to be able to distinguish the songs and voices of the common fields, and it should be a part of the education of every person, and particularly of every country person, to have this respite.

The making of a garden is much more than the growing of the radishes and strawberries and petunias. It is the experience in the out-of-doors, the contact with realities, the personal joy of seeing things germinate and grow and reproduce their kind.

_The means of education._

If country women are to develop a conscious sense of responsibility in country-life betterment, education facilities must be afforded them. The schools must recognize home-making subjects equally with other subjects. What becomes a part of the school eventually becomes a part of the life of the people of the region.

The leadership in such subjects is now being taken by the colleges of agriculture. This is not because domestic subjects belong in a college of agriculture more than elsewhere, but only that these colleges see the problem, and most general colleges or universities have not seen it. The college of agriculture, if it is highly developed, represents a civilization rather than a series of subjects; and it cannot omit the home-making phase if it meets its obligation to the society that it represents (page 64).