The Evolution of the Country Community Part 5

These farmers are organized in the interest of agriculture. The resultant social life const.i.tutes a most intense organization in which voluntary and conscious combination matures in instinctive union embodied in blood relationship, neighborliness and economic union. These populations show the correspondence between economic and religious austerity. Thrift takes the form of dogmatic repression and finally their organization and their relationship express themselves in organized efforts for the well-being of the community. They deliberately as well as instinctively co-operate.

It is the writer's belief that these exceptional communities exhibit the principles on which American life must be organized, if the farmer is to be a success, if his schools are to progress, his churches to be maintained, and if the country community is to be a good place to live in. None of these populations can be imitated. It would be impossible for a community to take over their modes any more than it could imbibe their motives. The study of them throws light upon the problem of country life in America. Above all things it ill.u.s.trates the especial union of the country church with the social economy of the farmer and his household. It shows that the life of country people is co-operative, that it is undermined by division and disunion and that in the open country where man is least seen his society is most evident. The dependence of each man upon his neighbor is increased in modern times by the thinning out of the rural population and the increased economic burden laid upon the farmer.

Finally, the exceptional populations present an exceptional victory over economic and natural forces. They abolish poverty within their own bounds. Every one of the communities just described turns the power of its common organization upon the problem of maintaining the lower margin of the community. They who are in danger of falling behind are sustained and carried on. None in these communities is permitted to fall into pauperism. The workingman without capital, whether he be in their meetings or only employed on their farms, is kept from want. The widow with her little house and one cow is insured against the loss of any feature of her small property. This seems to me to be the greatest triumph of these communities. It is the test, I am convinced, of their organizations and of their success. In this they demonstrate one of the greatest possibilities of country life. They show that in the open country it is possible for men to live without the suffering and degradation of poverty.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: History of American Presbyterianism, by R. E. Thompson.]

[Footnote 18: An exception to this statement must be noted, in the Scotch settlements in Canada and Nova Scotia.]

[Footnote 19: Professor John L. Gillin, in American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911.]

[Footnote 20: Quaker Hill, by Warren H. Wilson.]

VI

GETTING A LIVING

The core of a community must be economic. The main business of life is to get a living.[21] The reason for existence of any community is found in the living which it supplies its residents. Men are attracted to a community by the increases in their living furnished by that community.

The first element in the getting of a living is the securing of daily bread, shelter, clothing and the satisfaction of physical needs. It is a mistake to think of the community as beginning in religious inst.i.tutions--narrowly understood--or in social gatherings or in educational service. The initial human experience is the finding of food.

But the getting of a living is a long process. A living is more than bread, and a roof and a coat. In quest of a living men go from the country to the town and from the town to the city. They migrate from the small city to the large. In each of these moves they secure a further element in their living. Each of these communities is characterized by the increase which it contributes to the living of its citizens, but in every community the initial experience is the securing of daily bread, shelter, clothing and material economic gains. Whatever is done, therefore, for the community in a service to all the people must have initial concern with the purely economic welfare of the people.

Sir Horace Plunkett's book, "The Rural Life Problem of the United States," develops this principle very clearly. He shows that in the Country Life Movement in Ireland it was necessary to go into the very heart of the people's aspirations, and organize their economic needs.

It is necessary to understand the word "economic" if one would read these pages aright. Economic matters are not those of mere money. The word has a greater meaning than has the word finance. It connotes poverty as truly as wealth, and is greater than both. The economic motive animates men in the quest of those vital satisfactions which the individual craves, and the social group requires. Professor John Bates Clark has somewhere described this motive as the desire to preserve the present status, with slight improvement, for oneself and one's children after him; the desire to live on the same economic standard in one's own generation; and to be reasonably a.s.sured of the same security for one's children. This is not the desire to get rich, though in individual cases it is changed into a desire for wealth. But it is a far more general, indeed a universal aspiration, which inspires most of the work of the world. Industry is based on it. Civilization is propelled by it. It is the desire to get a living and the quest of a living.

I believe that this economic motive is religious. It is the quest of what a man has not, but feels to be his. It engages his utmost efforts.

It is labor for his wife and children and for all his group fellows, and therefore is involved in his holiest, most self-forgetting feelings. It takes him back to his parents and reminds him constantly of his ancestors. He forms his ideas of justice in his economic experiences.

His ultimate conviction as to the goodness or the badness of the world are the outgrowth of his experience in getting a living. Therefore his economic life is his wrestle with nature and with society. It generates in him all the religion he has.

I suppose it was for this reason that Jesus said "I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly." Probably his meaning was economic, in part, in the saying, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d."

The quest of a living is a satisfaction of successive economic wants, of which bread is but the first. Every truth that mankind knows involves men in an economic want. Education is one of the most general wants. It comes in the series somewhat later than bread. The love of music is an economic want, which comes generally later than education. But both are a part of a living. I believe that the quest of education and the love of music are religious, just as much as the desire for daily bread. One might enumerate the whole series of economic wants, to satisfy which is to live, but religion is the total of the reflections, and the complex of customs which result from the lifelong quest for a living among common folk. At its highest it is expressed by St. Augustine, "O G.o.d, thou hast made us for thyself, and our souls are not at rest until we find ourselves in thee." Bread is the first economic want, and G.o.d is the greatest and the last.

Economic wants among common folk are usually the source of religious feeling. Few people desire to be rich; a lesser number strive to get wealth; and very few attain a fortune. The most of men seek and get a living. The best of men, and the most religious, are those whose economic experience brings them a series of satisfactions, beginning with bread, clothing, shelter, education in the essentials, music and a little aesthetic culture, and gradually extending into higher forms of human enjoyment. The simplest religious craving is for economic a.s.surance of supply. "The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall not want," is on the most thumbed page of the Bible. The play of these economic aspirations among poor people results in all the simpler and most general religious feelings. With the rise of the aspirations of the individual, and the ideals of the group, toward higher satisfactions, the religious experiences should become n.o.bler, more refined. The penniless college student who prays for an education should be a n.o.bler worshipper than the fisherman who asks his mud-divinity for a good catch. The group of Oberammergau players who present the Pa.s.sion Play, a highly complex satisfaction of wants, should be n.o.bler believers and worshippers than herdsmen who out on the hills pray for the increase of their flocks and for a better price for wool.

Communities differ from one another according to the living which they supply, or the wants which they satisfy. Modern men will not live in a community that does not satisfy a pretty long series of wants. For instance, a graduate of the American common schools will desire bread, clothing, shelter--all of comfortable quality--and education for his children better than his own, musical enjoyment, aesthetic culture, the possession of some books, access to many magazines and the reading of a daily paper; and varied opportunities for the exercise of the play spirit. The country community satisfies, in most of the United States, only the first of these. It is a place for securing food, clothing and shelter of a comfortable sort. Country people have in the past ten years secured also a better supply of reading matter. Almost all the rest of the series is lacking. The reason for the rural exodus is in the most of cases the quest of education and of music, the craving for aesthetic culture, and the desire for recreation. Country towns and small cities therefore have come to be centers of education, of amus.e.m.e.nt and of "culture." They are the first step upward on the series of economic satisfaction. Men who have made some money on the farm "move into town,"

for the satisfaction of the later wants in the series.

None of these wants is itself sinful, for all of them make up life. They are the steps on the way from bread to G.o.d. The business of the teacher and preacher of religion is to know the wants of his people: study those which are satisfied in his community, and so to build the community that for most of its people and for the most desirable people, all the vital necessities of life shall be satisfied, in the community in which the desire for bread is satisfied. The problem of amus.e.m.e.nt exhibits these principles clearly. Farming is austere, and few farming communities have recreation adequate to the demand of the young people and the working people who live on the farms. Agriculture is becoming more systematic and more exacting in its demands: and systematic work creates a demand for organized play. As this demand is not satisfied in the country--indeed it is less generally satisfied now than in former times--the youth and workingman from farming communities go to the towns and larger villages for amus.e.m.e.nt. These centers of population have a disproportionate burden therefore of cheap vaudeville shows, saloons, professional baseball games, and moving-pictures.

These amus.e.m.e.nts are, to a degree, abnormal in character because those who enjoy them are away from their home community, and are suffering a reaction from pent-up desires. Just as the lumberman or cowboy or sailor when he comes to town "tears loose and paints the town red," so, in a milder degree, the farmer's son or hired man, because he has at home no recreations supplied by his church or school, patronizes in the town or small city a cheaper and nastier theatre than one would expect to find either in that town, or in his home community. The remedy is to make the country community adequate to the wants of those who live there. The church should promote recreation. The public school should supply entertainment of a high standard, both to satisfy the play instinct and to elevate the youth's ideals of amus.e.m.e.nt. The community which works should be dependent on no other community for play.

Common-school education is a function which country communities have surrendered to the centers of population. The one-room country school has long been inadequate; but the farmer has not improved it, preferring to rely upon the town schools to which he will remove his family after he has made enough money on the farm. I am told that about Crete, Nebraska, a recent census revealed that half the normal child population is missing from the country districts; and double the normal child population is found in Crete. The quest of adequate schooling explains the condition, which speaks ill for the country community of Nebraska.

In all these cases religious service consists in completing the community. The supply of wants, which are widely and keenly felt, is a religious act. This has been the reason for the success of the Du Page Presbyterian Church in Illinois.[22] The minister, Mr. Mc.n.u.tt, in a religious spirit so well supplied the recreative life needed in the community, that the community has been made whole. Just as Jesus made sick or maimed men whole, as a religious act, so the community builder who supplies to working farmers something besides labor on the land, is making the community whole.

The perfecting of the common school system in McNabb, by Mr. John Swaney and other Friends, and in Rock Creek by Mr. R. E. Bone and other Presbyterians, was a religious act for their communities in Illinois.

The farmers who have money can move to the town, but to complete the country community is to satisfy the economic wants of the poor. The wants of the poor are always of religious value.

Moreover, the satisfaction of all wants in the community itself is a moral gain. If individuals live this life in the bounds to which their group and family a.s.sociations are confined, the steadying influence of society is at its greatest. Jacob Riis[23] noted among immigrants the working of a lower sense of obligation due to absence from accustomed home a.s.sociations. Communities are compacted of the strongest moral bonds. If churches would make men righteous they cannot do better than to complete the community, especially in the country, as a place to live in: making it a place for education as well as profit: of play as well as work, of worship as well as of material comfort.

Unfortunately churches in the country are too often recruiting stations for the cities and colleges. The ministers are respectable pullers-in for the city show. Nothing rejoices them so much as to help their young men and women find a position in the city; unless it be to have a bright lad or girl go off to college. When a country minister was reminded that all these departures weakened the country community, and that very few of them benefitted the lad or girl who goes to the city, he replied "you cannot blame them; there is nothing here to keep them."

"The rural exodus" has had its Moses in the rural college student, its Aaron in the country minister, and its Miriam in the country school teacher. These three have led a generation out of the country to perish in the wilderness. For only a pitiful few of those who leave the country come to prominence in the city. The most gain but a poor living there, and very many go to ruin. The church should be the savior of the community, as her Master is of the soul.

It seems to me that this is done in a church in Ottumwa, Iowa, of which Dr. W. H. Hormell is minister. It is in a stock-yards district, and the daily occupation of many of the members is unclean, of some revolting.

But the church is a dynamo of spiritual forces. It supplies the experiences most opposite to those of the slaughter-house. A half-dozen chapels in surrounding neighborhoods, most of them in the country, are outposts of the church, for each of which a superintendent is responsible: and thus a man who is an underling at the slaughter-house is a leader in the quest of eternal life. The whole company of workers with the pastor, const.i.tute a spiritual cabinet of the district. It is not surprising that this church fascinates men. The minister cannot be persuaded away, and a like devotion pervades his group of workers. The intensity of the industrial labor is matched by the intensity of Bible study, prayer and evangelism. The degradation and repulsion of the leading industry of the place are equalled by the unworldly n.o.bility and optimism of the leading church. This church does not attempt to mend the community--which might be found impossible--but only to serve the community by supplying the satisfaction for spiritual wants.

According to the law of diminishing returns, the first satisfactions of any want have infinite value. What does this mean but that they have religious value? The first drink of water to a famished man calls forth a fervent "Thank, G.o.d." The first book printed is a Bible. The first landing on American soil was a solemn religious occasion--and still is for the immigrant. So the first gains of money are of religious value to the poor. The first hundred dollars to a mechanic's family is invested in a dozen benefits. The first thousand dollars which a working farmer saves go into a home, a piano or books, or an education for a child. It is all moral and spiritual good. Later thousands have diminishing moral and spiritual values. Most of the churches and homes in America were paid for out of the t.i.thes of men and women who owned at the time a margin of less than a thousand dollars.

This is the reason for the religious character of economic life. The most of people spend their lives with less than a thousand dollars. They are poor, and money does them good, not harm. They need to know how to use it. But the getting of their living is a process prolific in religious feeling, because economic matters have to them the infinite value of first satisfactions of all the simplest wants of life.

The salvation of the community will be accomplished in satisfying the higher wants of those whose lower wants are satisfied. For those who "have made money" supply schools; for those who work supply recreation; for the sick hospitals; for the invalid build sanitariums; and for all men supply social life, the greatest need of human life on earth. For those who are thus united to the community, and to one another in the intricate network of a.s.sociations, the opportunity of worship together, and of sharing common spiritual interests becomes the highest economic want.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: "I come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."--Jesus, in John 10:10.]

[Footnote 22: "Modern Methods in the Country Church," by Matthew Brown Mc.n.u.tt.]

[Footnote 23: "The Making of an American," by Jacob Riis.]

VII

THE COMMUNITY

The country community is defined by the team haul. People in the country think of the community as that territory, with its people, which lies within the team haul of a given center. Very often at this center is a church, a school and a store, though not always, but always the country community has a character of its own.[24] Social customs do not proceed farther than the team haul. Imitation, which is an accepted mode of social organization, does not go any farther in the country than the customary drive with a horse and wagon. The influence of leading rural personalities does not extend indefinitely in the country, but disappears at the boundary of the next community. Intimate knowledge of personalities is confined to the community and does not pa.s.s beyond the team haul radius. Within this radius all the affairs or any individual are known in minute detail; n.o.body hopes to live a life apart from the knowledge of his neighbors; but beyond the community, so defined, this knowledge quickly disappears.

Men's lives are housed and their reputations are encircled by the boundary of the team haul.

The reason for this is economic and social. The life of the countryman is lived within the round of barter and of marketing his products. The team haul which defines the community is the radius within which men buy and sell. It is also the radius within which a young man becomes acquainted with the woman he is to marry. It is the radius of social intercourse. Within this radius of the team haul families are accustomed to visit with ten times the frequency with which they pa.s.s outside this radius. Indeed, for most of them, one might say that social intercourse is a hundred times as frequent within the team haul as without it.

The average man would define the community as "the place where we live."

This definition contains every essential element, locality, personal and social relations, and vital experiences. The community is that complex of economic and social processes in which individuals find the satisfactions not supplied in their homes. The community is the larger social whole outside the household; a population complete in itself for the needs of its residents from birth to death. It is a man's home town.

This conception of the community as a vital common possession explains the relation of religious, educational, ethical, economic inst.i.tutions to one another. The community is the clearing-house of all these influences. It is the medium by which they exchange with one another, in the interest of human life. The perfection of this exchange and the abundance of communal influences makes the community good and desirable, or poor and undesirable.

Sometimes one says that the community is "a good place to live in." When it is ample for the needs of individual lives men move into it, and the average man finds there a contented and satisfied life. The decay of the community is indicated by the departure of individuals and of families in quest of a better centre for the supply of vital human needs. Some go to make more money elsewhere, some depart for educational advantages and some move away because social life is lacking or religious privileges are not suitable. But these four vital essentials, economic, ethical, educational and religious, make up the elements in the community's service to the individual.