The Holy Earth Part 2

A constructive and careful handling of the resources of the earth is impossible except on a basis of large co-operation and of a.s.sociation for mutual welfare. The great inventions and discoveries of recent time have extensive social significance.

Yet we have other relations than with the physical and static materials.

We are parts in a living sensitive creation. The theme of evolution has overturned our att.i.tude toward this creation. The living creation is not exclusively man-centred: it is bio-centric. We perceive the essential continuity in nature, arising from within rather than from without, the forms of life proceeding upwardly and onwardly in something very like a mighty plan of sequence, man being one part in the process. We have genetic relation with all living things, and our aristocracy is the aristocracy of nature. We can claim no gross superiority and no isolated self-importance. The creation, and not man, is the norm. Even now do we begin to guide our practises and our speech by our studies of what we still call the lower creation. We gain a good perspective on ourselves.

If we are parts in the evolution, and if the universe, or even the earth, is not made merely as a footstool, or as a theatre for man, so do we lose our cosmic selfishness and we find our place in the plan of things. We are emanc.i.p.ated from ignorance and superst.i.tion and small philosophies. The present wide-spread growth of the feeling of brotherhood would have been impossible in a self-centred creation: the way has been prepared by the discussion of evolution, which is the major biological contribution to human welfare and progress. This is the philosophy of the oneness in nature and the unity in living things.

_The farmer's relation_

The surface of the earth is particularly within the care of the farmer.

He keeps it for his own sustenance and gain, but his gain is also the gain of all the rest of us. At the best, he acc.u.mulates little to himself. The successful farmer is the one who produces more than he needs for his support; and the overplus he does not keep; and, moreover, his own needs are easily satisfied. It is of the utmost consequence that the man next the earth shall lead a fair and simple life; for in riotous living he might halt many good supplies that now go to his fellows.

It is a public duty so to train the farmer that he shall appreciate his guardianship. He is engaged in a quasi-public business. He really does not even own his land. He does not take his land with him, but only the personal development that he gains from it. He cannot annihilate his land, as another might destroy all his belongings. He is the agent or the representative of society to guard and to subdue the surface of the earth; and he is the agent of the divinity that made it. He must exercise his dominion with due regard to all these obligations. He is a trustee. The productiveness of the earth must increase from generation to generation: this also is his obligation. He must handle all his materials, remembering man and remembering G.o.d. A man cannot be a good farmer unless he is a religious man.

If the farmer is engaged in a quasi-public business, shall we undertake to regulate him? This relationship carries a vast significance to the social order, and it must color our att.i.tude toward the man on the land.

We are now in that epoch of social development when we desire to regulate by law everything that is regulatable and the other things besides. It is recently proposed that the Congress shall pa.s.s a law regulating the cropping scheme of the farmer for the protection of soil fertility. This follows the precedent of the regulation, by enactment, of trusts and public utilities. It is fortunate that such a law cannot be pa.s.sed, and could not be enforced if it were pa.s.sed; but this and related proposals are crude expressions of the growing feeling that the farmer owes an obligation to society, and that this obligation must be enforced and the tiller of the soil be held to account.

We shall produce a much better and safer man when we make him self-controlling by developing his sense of responsibility than when we regulate him by exterior enactments.

In the realm of control of the farming occupation we shall invoke other than legal means, and perhaps these means will be suggestive for other situations. These means may be somewhat indefinite in the law-book sense, but they may attain to a better human result. We shall reach the question by surer ways than the crudities of legislation. We shall reach the man, in this field, rather than his business. We have begun it by accepting it as one part of our duty to the race to provide liberally at public expense for the special education of the man on the land. This is the reason, even if we have not formulated it to ourselves, why society is willing to go farther in the education of the farming people than in the popular education of other ranges of the people. This, of course, is the fundamental way; and if there are any governments that attempt to safeguard this range directly by laws rather than by education, then they have not arrived at a long view of the situation.

We invoke regulatory law for the control of the corporate activities; but we must not forget the other kinds of activities contributing to the making of society, nor attempt to apply to them the same methods of correction.

Into this secular and more or less technical education we are now to introduce the element of moral obligation, that the man may understand his peculiar contribution and responsibility to society; but this result cannot be attained until the farmer and every one of us recognize the holiness of the earth.

The farmer and every one of us: every citizen should be put right toward the planet, should be quicked to his relationship to his natural background. The whole body of public sentiment should be sympathetic with the man who works and administers the land for us; and this requires understanding. We have heard much about the "marginal man," but the first concern of society should be for the bottom man.

If this philosophy should really be translated into action, the farmer would nowhere be a peasant, forming merely a caste, and that a low one, among his fellows. He would be an independent co-operating citizen partaking fully of the fruits of his labor, enjoying the social rewards of his essential position, being sustained and protected by a body of responsive public opinion. The farmer cannot keep the earth for us without an enlightened and very active support from every other person, and without adequate safeguards from exploitation and from unessential commercial pressure.

This social support requires a ready response on the part of the farmer; and he must also be developed into his position by a kind of training that will make him quickly and naturally responsive to it. The social fascination of the town will always be greater than that of the open country. The movements are more rapid, more picturesque, have more color and more vivacity. It is not to be expected that we can overcome this fascination and safeguard the country boy and girl merely by introducing more showy or active enterprises into the open country. We must develop a new background for the country youth, establish new standards, and arouse a new point of view. The farmer will not need all the things that the city man thinks the farmer needs. We must stimulate his moral response, his appreciation of the worthiness of the things in which he lives, and increase his knowledge of all the objects and affairs amongst which he moves. The backbone of the rural question is at the bottom a moral problem.

We do not yet know whether the race can permanently endure urban life, or whether it must be constantly renewed from the vitalities in the rear. We know that the farms and the back s.p.a.ces have been the mother of the race. We know that the exigencies and frugalities of life in these backgrounds beget men and women to be serious and steady and to know the value of every hour and of every coin that they earn; and whenever they are properly trained, these folk recognize the holiness of the earth.

For some years I have had the satisfaction to speak to rural folk in many places on the holy earth and to make some of the necessary applications. Everywhere I have met the heartiest a.s.sent from these people. Specially do they respond to the suggestion that if the earth is hallowed, so are the native products of the earth hallowed; and they like to have the mystery--which is the essential sentiment--of these things brought home to them with frequency. I will here let my reader have a letter that one of these persons wrote me, and I print it without change. On inquiry, the writer of it told me that he is a farmer, has never followed any other occupation, was brought up "in the woods," and has had practically no education. I did not ask him, but I judge from the narrative style that he has been a reader or a hearer of the Old Testament; and here is the letter:

As you say, too many people confound farming, with that sordid, selfish, money-getting game, called "business," whereas, the farmer's position is administrative, being in a way a dispenser of the "Mysteries of G.o.d," for they are mysteries. Every apple is a mystery, and every potato is a mystery, and every ear of corn is a mystery, and every pound of b.u.t.ter is a mystery, and when a "farmer"

is not able to understand these things he is out of place.

The farmer uses the soil and the rains and the snows and the frosts and the winds and the sun; these are also the implements of the Almighty, the only tools He uses, and while you were talking that day, it brought to mind the recollection of an account I once read of an occurrence which took place in the vicinity of Carlsruhe, in Germany, about thirty years ago, and I want to tell you about it. An old man and his two sons, who were laborers on a large farm there, went out one morning to mow peas, with scythes, as was the method in use at that time, and soon after they began work, they noticed a large active man coming along a pathway which bordered the field on one side, and when he came to where they were, he spoke to them, very pleasantly, and asked them some questions about their work and taking the scythe from the hands of the older man he mowed some with it and finally returned it and went his way. After a time when the owner of the farm came out to oversee the work they told him of the occurrence, and asked him if he could tell who the stranger might be, and he told them that he was Prince Bismarck, the Chancellor of the empire, who was staying at his country home at Carlsruhe, and was out for his morning walk, and they were astonished, and the old man was filled with a great pride, and he felt himself elevated above all his fellows, and he wouldn't have sold his scythe for half the money in Germany, and his descendants to this day boast of the fact that their father and Bismarck mowed with the same scythe. Now if it was sufficient to stimulate the pride of this old laborer, if it was sufficient to create for him a private aristocracy, if it was sufficient to convert that old rusty scythe into a priceless heirloom to be treasured up and transmitted from father to son, if it was sufficient for all these things that he had once held a momentarily unimportant a.s.sociation with the man of "blood and iron," how much more inconceivably and immeasurably high and exalted is the station of the farmer who is, in a measure, a fellow craftsman of the G.o.d of Nature, of the great First Cause of all things, and people don't know it. No wonder the boys leave the farm!

_The underlying training of a people_

This, then, is the landsman's obligation, and his joyful privilege. But it must not be supposed that he alone bears the responsibility to maintain the holiness of the divine earth. It is the obligation also of all of us, since every one is born to the earth and lives upon it, and since every one must react to it to the extent of his place and capabilities. This being so, then it is a primary need that we shall place at the use of the people a kind of education that shall quicken these attachments.

Certainly all means of education are useful, and every means should be developed to its best; and it is not to be expected that all the people shall pursue a single means: but to the nation and to the race a fundamental training must be provided.

We are now in the time of developing a technical education in agriculture, to the end that we may produce our land supplies. Already this education is a.s.suming broad aspects, and we begin to see that it has very important bearing on public policies. It is a new form of exercise in natural science,--the old education in this great realm having become so specialized and departmentalized as to lose much of its value as a means of popular training.

It is a happy augury that in North America so many public men and administrators have taken the large view of education by means of agriculture, desiring, while training farmers or those who would be farmers, to make it a means of bringing the understanding of the people back to the land. The Americans are making a very remarkable contribution here, in a spirit of real statesmanship. In the long run, this procedure will produce a spirit in the people that will have far-reaching importance in the development of national character, and in a relation to the backgrounds of which very few of us yet have vision.

It will be fortunate if we can escape the formalizing and professionalizing of this education, that has cast such a blight on most of the older means of training the young, and if we can keep it democratic and free in spirit.

We shall need to do the same in all the subjects that lie at the foundations,--in all the other crafts; all these crafts are of the earth. They support the physical man and the social fabric, and make the conditions out of which all the highest achievements may come.

Every person in a democracy has a right to be educated by these means; and a people living in a democracy must of necessity understand the significance of such education. This education should result or function politically. It is not sufficient to train technically in the trades and crafts and arts to the end of securing greater economic efficiency,--this may be accomplished in a despotism and result in no self-action on the part of the people. Every democracy must reach far beyond what is commonly known as economic efficiency, and do everything it can to enable those in the backgrounds to maintain their standing and their pride and to partake in the making of political affairs.

_The neighbor's access to the earth_

When one really feels the response to the native earth, one feels also the obligation and the impulse to share it with the neighbor.

The earth is not selfish. It is open and free to all. It invites everywhere. The naturist is not selfish,--he shares all his joys and discoveries, even to the extent of publishing them. The farmer is not selfish with his occupation,--he freely aids every one or any one to engage in his occupation, even if that one becomes his compet.i.tor. But occupations that are some degrees removed from the earth may display selfishness; trade and, to a large extent, manufacture are selfish, and they lock themselves in. Even the exploiting of the resources of the earth may be selfish, in the taking of the timber and the coal, the water-powers and the minerals, for all this is likely to develop to a species of plunder. The naturist desires to protect the plants and the animals and the situations for those less fortunate and for those who come after. There are lumbermen and miners with the finest sense of obligation. There are other men who would take the last nugget and destroy the last bole.

We are to recognize the essential integrity of the farming occupation, when developed constructively, as contrasted with the vast system of improbity and dishonor that arises from depredation and from the taking of booty.

The best kind of community interest attaches to the proper use and part.i.tioning of the earth, a communism that is dissociated from propaganda and programs. The freedom of the earth is not the freedom of license: there is always the thought of the others that are dependent on it. It is the freedom of utilization for needs and natural desires, without regard to one's place among one's fellows, or even to one's condition of degradation or state of sinfulness. All men are the same when they come back to the meadows, to the hills, and to the deep woods: He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

The lesson of the growing abounding earth is of liberality for all, and never exploitation or very exclusive opportunities for the few. Even if the weaker anywhere perish in the contest for food, they are nevertheless given the opportunity to contest on terms equal to their abilities; and at all events, we come, in the human sphere, to the domination of sweet reason rather than to compet.i.tion in sheer force.

When, by means of reasonable education, this simple relation is understood by mankind and begins to express itself spontaneously, we shall find our voluminous complex of laws to regulate selfishness gradually disappearing and pa.s.sing into the limbo.

It is now easy to understand the sinfulness of vast private estates that shut up expanses of the surface of the earth from the reach and enjoyment of others that are born similarly to the privileges of the planet. There is no warrant in nature for guarantee deeds to such estates. It is true, of course, that land-estates should not be equal, for capacities for use are not equal, and abilities and deserts are not equal. It is legitimate to reward those who otherwise render great service, and this reward may lie in unusual privileges. The present emoluments in the way of incomes bear little relation to service or even to merit.

We have not yet escaped the idea that vested rights--and particularly personal realty--are inviolable. Certainly these rights must be protected by law, otherwise there can be no stability and regularity in affairs; but there is no inalienable right in the ownership of the surface of the earth. Readjustments must come, and even now they are coming slowly, and here and there in the interest of the neighbor; and in the end there will be no private monopoly of public or natural resources.

The cure for these ills does not lie, however, in the ownership of all the land by "the government," at least not in our time and perhaps never. It is well for a person to have his own plot for his lifetime, with the right to use it as he will so long as he does not offend, or does not despoil it for those who follow: it steadies him, and it identifies him with a definite program in life.

We usually speak as if all good results in the distribution of the natural bounty will ensue if "the government" or "the state" owns the resources; but government ownership of resources and direction of industries may not mean freedom or escape for the people. It depends entirely on the kind of government,--not on its name or description, but on the extent to which the people have been trained to partake on their own initiative. The government may be an autocracy or only another form of monopoly.

The aristocracy of land has much to its credit. Great gains in human accomplishment have come out of it; but this does not justify it for the future. The aristocracy of land is a very dangerous power in human affairs. It is all the more dangerous when a.s.sociated with aristocracy of birth and of fact.i.tious social position, which usually accompany it.

A people may be ever so free in its advantages and in its theoretical political organization, and yet suffer overwhelming bondage if its land is tied up in an aristocratic system, and particularly if that system is connected into a social aristocracy. And whenever rigid aristocracy in land connects itself with the close control of politics, the subjection becomes final and complete.

What lies within a nation or a people may lie in enlarged form between the nations or the peoples. Neighborliness is international. Contest for land and sea is at the basis of wars. Recognizing the right of any people to its own life, we must equally recognize its right to a sufficient part of the surface of the earth. We must learn how to subdivide it on the basis of neighborliness, friendship, and conference; if we cannot learn this, then we cannot be neighbors but only enemies.

The proposal now before Congress to cede to Canada the Alaskan Panhandle, or a part of it, is an evidence of this growth of international morals, extended to the very basis on which nations have been the least ready to co-operate.

If we may fraternalize territory, so shall we fraternalize commerce. No people may rightly be denied the privilege to trade with all other peoples. All kinds of useful interchange are civilizers and peacemakers; and if we carry ourselves to others when we carry our produce and our wares, so do any of us need that others shall bring their produce and their wares to us. It would be a sorry people that purchased no supplies from without. Every people, small or large, has right of access to the sea, for the sea belongs to mankind. It follows that no people has a right to deprive any other people of the sh.o.r.e, if that people desires the contact.

We now begin to understand the awful sin of part.i.tioning the earth by force.