The Holy Earth Part 8

How to strike the balance between the needful individualism and social crystallization is probably the most difficult question before society.

Of the great underlying cla.s.ses of occupations, farming is the only one that presents the individualistic side very strongly. If individualism is to be preserved anywhere, it must be preserved here. The tendency of our present-day discussion is to organize the farmers as other groups or ma.s.ses are organized. We are in danger here. a.s.suredly, the farmer needs better resources in a.s.sociation, but it is a nice question how far we should go and how completely we should try to redirect him. Fortunately, the holding of t.i.tle to land and the separateness of farm habitations prevent solidification. If, on this individualism and without destroying it, we can develop a co-acting and co-operating activity, we shall undoubtedly be on the line of safety as well as on the line of promise.

It would be a pity to organize the farming people merely to secure them their "rights." We ought soon to pa.s.s this epoch in civilization. There are no "rights" exclusive to any cla.s.s. "Rights" are not possessions.

I do not know where the element of separateness in society is to be derived unless it comes out of the earth.

Given sufficient organization to enable the farmer to express himself fully in his occupation and to secure protection, then we may well let the matter rest until his place in society develops by the operation of natural forces. We cannot allow the fundamental supplies from the common earth to be controlled by arbitrary cla.s.s regulation. It would be a misfortune if the farmer were to isolate himself by making "demands" on society. I hope that the farmer's obligation may be so sensitively developed in him as to produce a better kind of ma.s.s-cohesion than we have yet known.

_The democratic basis in agriculture_

All these positions are capable of direct application in the incorporation of agriculture into a scheme of democracy. A brief treatment of this subject I had developed for the present book; and this treatment, with applications to particular situations now confronting us, I used recently in the vice-presidential address before the new Section M of the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science (published in _Science_, February 26, 1915, where the remainder of it may be found). Some of the general points of view, modified from that address, may be brought together here. The desirability of keeping a free and unattached att.i.tude in the people on the land may be expounded in many directions, but for my purpose I will confine the ill.u.s.trations to organization in the field of education.

The agricultural situation is now much in the public mind. It is widely discussed in the press, which shows that it has news value. Much of this value is merely of superficial and temporary interest. Much of it represents a desire to try new remedies for old ills. Many of these remedies will not work. We must be prepared for some loss of public interest in them as time goes on. We are now in a publicity stage of our rural development. It would seem that the news-gathering and some other agencies discover these movements after the work of many constructive spirits has set them going and has laid real foundations; and not these foundations, but only detached items of pa.s.sing interest, may be known of any large part of the public. I hope that we shall not be disturbed by this circ.u.mstance nor let it interfere with good work or with fundamental considerations, however much we may deplore the false expectations that may result.

We are at the parting of the ways. For years without number--for years that run into the centuries when men have slaughtered each other on many fields, thinking that they were on the fields of honor, when many awful despotisms have ground men into the dust, the despotisms thinking themselves divine--for all these years there have been men on the land wishing to see the light, trying to make mankind hear, hoping but never realizing. They have been the p.a.w.ns on the great battlefields, men taken out of the peasantries to be hurled against other men they did not know and for no rewards except further enslavement. They may even have been developed to a high degree of manual or technical skill that they might the better support governments to make conquests. They have been on the bottom, upholding the whole superstructure and pressed into the earth by the weight of it. When the final history is written, the lot of the man on the land will be the saddest chapter.

But in the nineteenth century, the man at the bottom began really to be recognized politically. This recognition is of two kinds,--the use that a government can make in its own interest of a highly efficient husbandry, and the desire to give the husbandman full opportunity and full justice. I hope that in these times the latter motive always prevails. It is the only course of safety.

Great public-service inst.i.tutions have now been founded in the rural movement. The United States Department of Agriculture has grown to be one of the notable governmental establishments of the world, extending itself to a mult.i.tude of interests and operating with remarkable effectiveness. The chain of colleges of agriculture and experiment stations, generously co-operative between nation and State, is unlike any other development anywhere, meaning more, I think, for the future welfare and peace of the people than any one of us yet foresees. There is the finest fraternalism, and yet without clannishness, between these great agencies, setting a good example in public service. And to these agencies we are to add the State departments of agriculture, the work of private endowments although yet in its infancy, the growing and very desirable contact with the rural field of many inst.i.tutions of learning.

All these agencies comprise a distinctly modern phase of public activity.

A new agency has been created in the agricultural extension act which was signed by President Wilson on the 8th of May in 1914. The farmer is to find help at his own door. A new instrumentality in the world has now received the sanction of a whole people and we are just beginning to organize it. The organization must be extensive, and it ought also to be liberal. No such national plan on such a scale has ever been attempted; and it almost staggers one when one even partly comprehends the tremendous consequences that in all likelihood will come of it. The significance of it is not yet grasped by the great body of the people.

Now, the problem is to relate all this public work to the development of a democracy. I am not thinking so much of the development of a form of government as of a real democratic expression on the part of the people.

Agriculture is our basic industry. As we organize its affairs, so to a great degree shall we secure the results in society in general. It is very important in our great experiment in democracy that we do not lose sight of the first principle in democracy, which is to let the control of policies and affairs rest directly back on the people.

We have developed the inst.i.tutions on public funds to train the farmer and to give him voice. These inst.i.tutions are of vast importance in the founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather than by cla.s.s legislation, or by favor of government, or by any att.i.tude of benevolence from without.

Whether there is any danger in the organization of our new nationalized extension work, and the other public rural agencies, I suppose not one of us knows. But for myself, I have apprehension of the tendency to make some of the agricultural work into "projects" at Washington and elsewhere. If we are not careful, we shall not only too much centralize the work, but we shall tie it up in perplexing red-tape, official obstacles, and bookkeeping. The merit of the projects themselves and the intentions of the officers concerned in them are not involved in what I say; I speak only of the tendency of all government to formality and to crystallization, to machine work and to armchair regulations; and even at the risk of a somewhat lower so-called "efficiency," I should prefer for such work as investigating and teaching in agriculture, a dispersion of the initiative and responsibility, letting the co-ordination and standardizing arise very much from conference and very little from arbitrary regulation.

The best project anywhere is a good man or woman working in a program, but unhampered.

If it is important that the administration of agricultural work be not overmuch centralized at Washington, it is equally true that it should not be too much centralized in the States. I hear that persons who object strongly to federal concentration may nevertheless decline to give the counties and the communities in their own States the benefit of any useful starting-power and autonomy. In fact, I am inclined to think that here at present lies one of our greatest dangers.

A strong centralization within the State may be the most hurtful kind of concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration, but the best results for the people. The farm-bureau work, for example, can never produce the background results of which it is capable if it is a strongly intrenched movement pushed out from one centre, as from the college of agriculture or other inst.i.tution. The college may be the guiding force, but it should not remove responsibility from the people of the localities, or offer them a kind of co-operation that is only the privilege of partaking in the college enterprises. I fear that some of our so-called co-operation in public work of many kinds is little more than to allow the co-operator to approve what the official administration has done.

In the course of our experience in democracy, we have developed many checks against too great centralization. I hope that we may develop the checks effectively in this new welfare work in agriculture, a desire that I am aware is also strong with many of those who are concerned in the planning of it.

Some enterprises may be much centralized, whether in a democracy or elsewhere; an example is the postal service: this is on the business side of government. Some enterprises should be decentralized; an example is a good part of the agricultural service: this is on the educational side of government. It is the tendency to reduce all public work to uniformity; yet there is no virtue in uniformity. Its only value is as a means to an end.

Thus far, the rural movement has been wholesomely democratic. It has been my privilege for one-third of a century to have known rather closely many of the men and women who have been instrumental in bringing the rural problem to its present stage of advancement. They have been public-minded, able, far-seeing men and women, and they have rendered an unmeasurable service. The rural movement has been brought to its present state without any demand for special privilege, without bolstering by fact.i.tious legislation, and to a remarkable degree without self-seeking.

It is based on a real regard for the welfare of all the people, rather than for rural people exclusively.

Thrice or more in this book I have spoken as if not convinced that the present insistence on "efficiency" in government is altogether sound.

That is exactly the impression I desire to convey. As the term is now commonly applied, it is not a measure of good government.

Certain phrases and certain sets of ideas gain dominance at certain times. Just now the idea of administrative efficiency is uppermost. It seems necessarily to be the controlling factor in the progress of any business or any people. Certainly, a people should be efficient; but an efficient government may not mean an efficient people,--it may mean quite otherwise or even the reverse. The primary purpose of government in these days, and particularly in this country, is to educate and to develop all the people and to lead them to express themselves freely and to the full, and to partake politically. And this is what governments may not do, and this is where they may fail even when their efficiency in administration is exact. A monarchic form may be executively more efficient than a democratic form; a despotic form may be more efficient than either. The justification of a democratic form of government lies in the fact that it is a means of education.

The final test of government is not executive efficiency. Every movement, every circ.u.mstance that takes starting-power and incentive away from the people, even though it makes for exacter administration, is to be challenged. It is specially to be deplored if this loss of starting-power affects the persons who deal first-hand with the surface of the planet and with the products that come directly out of it.

There is a broad political significance to all this. Sooner or later the people rebel against intrenched or bureaucratic groups. Many of you know how they resist even strongly centralized departments of public instruction, and how the effectiveness of such departments may be jeopardized and much lessened by the very perfectness of their organization; and if they were to engage in a custom of extraneous forms of news-giving in the public press, the resentment would be the greater.

In our rural work we are in danger of developing a piece of machinery founded on our fundamental industry; and if this ever comes about, we shall find the people organizing to resist it.

The reader will understand that in this discussion I a.s.sume the agricultural work to be systematically organized, both in nation and State; this is essential to good effort and to the accomplishing of results: but we must take care that the formal organization does not get in the way of the good workers, hindering and repressing them and wasting their time.

We want governments to be economical and efficient with funds and in the control of affairs; this also is a.s.sumed: but we must not overlook the larger issues. In all this new rural effort, we should maintain the spirit of team-work and of co-action, and not make the mistake of depending too much on the routine of centralized control.

In this country we are much criticised for the cost of government and for the supposed control of affairs by monopoly. The cost is undoubtedly too great, but it is the price we pay for the satisfaction of using democratic forms. As to the other disability, let us consider that society lies between two dangers,--the danger of monopoly and the danger of bureaucracy. On the one side is the control of the necessities of life by commercial organization. On the other side is the control of the necessities of life, and even of life itself, by intrenched groups that ostensibly represent the people and which it may be impossible to dislodge. Here are the Scylla and the Charybdis between which human society must pick its devious way.

Both are evil. Of the two, monopoly may be the lesser: it may be more easily brought under control; it tends to be more progressive; it extends less far; it may be the less hateful. They are only two expressions of one thing, one possibly worse than the other. Probably there are peoples who pride themselves on more or less complete escape from monopoly who are nevertheless suffering from the most deadening bureaucracy.

Agriculture is in the foundation of the political, economic, and social structure. If we cannot develop starting-power in the background people, we cannot maintain it elsewhere. The greatness of all this rural work is to lie in the results and not in the methods that absorb so much of our energy. If agriculture cannot be democratic, then there is no democracy.

_The background s.p.a.ces.--The forest_

"This is the forest primeval." These are the significant words of the poet in Evangeline. Perhaps more than any single utterance they have set the American youth against the background of the forest.

The backgrounds are important. The life of every one of us is relative.

We miss our destiny when we miss or forget our backgrounds. We lose ourselves. Men go off in vague heresies when they forget the conditions against which they live. Judgments become too refined and men tend to become merely disputatious and subtle.

The backgrounds are the great unoccupied s.p.a.ces. They are the large environments in which we live but which we do not make. The backgrounds are the sky with its limitless reaches; the silences of the sea; the tundra in pallid arctic nights; the deserts with their prismatic colors; the sh.o.r.es that gird the planet; the vast mountains that are beyond reach; the winds, which are the universal voice in nature; the sacredness of the night; the elemental simplicity of the open fields; and the solitude of the forest. These are the facts and situations that stand at our backs, to which we adjust our civilization, and by which we measure ourselves.

The great conquest of mankind is the conquest of his natural conditions.

We admire the man who overcomes: the sailor or navigator in hostile and unknown seas; the engineer who projects himself hard against the obstacles; the miner and the explorer; the builder; the farmer who ameliorates the earth to man's use.

But even though we conquer or modify the physical conditions against which we are set, nevertheless the backgrounds will remain. I hope that we may always say "The forest primeval." I hope that some reaches of the sea may never be sailed, that some swamps may never be drained, that some mountain peaks may never be scaled, that some forests may never be harvested. I hope that some knowledge may never be revealed.

Look at your map of the globe. Note how few are the areas of great congestion of population and of much human activity as compared with the vast and apparently empty s.p.a.ces. How small are the spots that represent the cities and what a little part of the earth are the political divisions that are most in the minds of men! We are likely to think that all these outlying and thinly peopled places are the wastes. I suspect that they contribute more to the race than we think. I am glad that there are still some places of mystery, some reaches of hope, some things far beyond us, some s.p.a.ces to conjure up dreams. I am glad that the earth is not all Iowa or Belgium or the Channel Islands. I am glad that some of it is the hard hills of New England, some the heathered heights of Scotland, some the cold distances of Quebec, some of it the islands far off in little-traversed seas, and some of it also the unexplored domains that lie within eyesight of our own homes. It is well to know that these s.p.a.ces exist, that there are places of escape. They add much to the ambition of the race; they make for strength, for courage, and for renewal.

In the cities I am always interested in the variety of the contents of the store windows. Variously fabricated and disguised, these materials come from the ends of the earth. They come from the sh.o.r.es of the seas, from the mines, from the land, from the forests, from the arctic, and from the tropic. They are from the backgrounds. The cities are great, but how much greater are the forests and the sea!

No people should be forbidden the influence of the forest. No child should grow up without a knowledge of the forest; and I mean a real forest and not a grove or village trees or a park. There are no forests in cities, however many trees there may be. As a city is much more than a collection of houses, so is a forest much more than a collection of trees. The forest has its own round of life, its characteristic attributes, its climate, and its inhabitants. When you enter a real forest you enter the solitudes, you are in the unexpressed distances.

You walk on the mould of years and perhaps of ages. There is no other wind like the wind of the forest; there is no odor like the odor of the forest; there is no solitude more complete; there is no song of a brook like the song of a forest brook; there is no call of a bird like that of a forest bird; there are no mysteries so deep and which seem yet to be within one's realization.

While a forest is more than trees, yet the trees are the essential part of the forest; and no one ever really knows or understands a forest until he first understands a tree. There is no thing in nature finer and stronger than the bark of a tree; it is a thing in place, adapted to its ends, perfect in its conformation, beautiful in its color and its form and the sweep of its contour; and every bark is peculiar to its species.

I think that one never really likes a tree until he is impelled to embrace it with his arms and to run his fingers through the grooves of its bark.

Man listens in the forest. He pauses in the forest. He finds himself. He loses himself in the town and even perhaps in the university. He may lose himself in business and in great affairs; but in the forest he is one with a tree, he stands by himself and yet has consolation, and he comes back to his own place in the scheme of things. We have almost forgotten to listen; so great and ceaseless is the racket that the little voices pa.s.s over our ears and we hear them not. I have asked person after person if he knew the song of the chipping-sparrow, and most of them are unaware that it has any song. We do not hear it in the blare of the city street, in railway travel, or when we are in a thunderous crowd. We hear it in the still places and when our ears are ready to catch the smaller sounds. There is no music like the music of the forest, and the better part of it is faint and far away or high in the tops of trees.

The forest may be an asylum. "The groves were G.o.d's first temples." We need all our altars and more, but we need also the sanctuary of the forest. It is a poor people that has no forests. I prize the farms because they have forests. It is a poor political philosophy that has no forests. It is a poor nation that has no forests and no workers in wood.