The Rural Life Problem of the United States Part 1

The Rural Life Problem of the United States.

by Horace Curzon Plunkett.

PREFATORY NOTE

The thoughts contained in the following pages relate to one side of the life of a country which has been to me, as to many Irishmen, a second home. They are offered in friendly recognition of kindness I cannot hope to repay, received largely as a student of American social and economic problems, from public-spirited Americans who, I know, will appreciate most highly any slight service to their country.

The substance of the book appeared in five articles contributed to the New York _Outlook_ under the t.i.tle "Conservation and Rural Life."

Several American friends, deeply interested in the Rural Life problem, asked me to republish the series. In doing so, I have felt that I ought to present a more comprehensive view of my subject than either the s.p.a.ce allowed or the more casual publication demanded.

I have to thank the editors of the _Outlook_ for the generous hospitality of their columns, and for full freedom to republish what belongs to them.

HORACE PLUNKETT.

THE PLUNKETT HOUSE, DUBLIN, April, 1910.

THE RURAL LIFE PROBLEM

CHAPTER I

THE SUBJECT AND THE POINT OF VIEW

I submit in the following pages a proposition and a proposal--a distinction which an old-country writer of English may, perhaps, be permitted to preserve. The proposition is that, in the United States, as in other English-speaking communities, the city has been developed to the neglect of the country. I shall not have to labour the argument, as n.o.body seriously disputes the contention; but I shall trace the main causes of the neglect, and indicate what, in my view, must be its inevitable consequences. If I make my case, it will appear that our civilisation has thus become dangerously one-sided, and that, in the interests of national well-being, it is high time for steps to be taken to counteract the townward tendency.

My definite proposal to those who accept these conclusions is that a Country Life movement, upon lines which will be laid down, should be initiated by existing a.s.sociations, whose efforts should be supplemented by a new organisation which I shall call a Country Life Inst.i.tute. There are in the United States a multiplicity of agencies, both public and voluntary, available for this work. But the army of workers in this field of social service needs two things: first, some definite plan for coordinating their several activities, and, next, some recognised source of information collected from the experience of the Old and the New World. It is the purpose of these pages to show that these needs are real and can be met.

Two obvious questions will here suggest themselves. Why should the United States--of all countries in the world--be chosen for such a theme instead of a country like Ireland, where the population depends mainly upon agriculture? What qualifications has an Irishman, be he never so competent to advise upon the social and economic problems of his own country, to talk to Americans about the life of their rural population?

I admit at once that, while I have made some study of American agriculture and rural economy, my actual work upon the problem of which I write has been restricted to Ireland. But I claim, with some pride, that, in thought upon rural economy, Ireland is ahead of any English-speaking country. She has troubles of her own, some inherent in the adverse physical conditions, and others due to well-known historical causes, that too often impede the action to which her best thoughts should lead. But the very fact that those who grapple with Irish problems have to work through failure to success will certainly not lessen the value to the social student of the experience gained. I recognise, however, that I must give the reader so much of personal narrative as is required to enable him to estimate the value of my facts, and of the conclusions which I base upon them.

To have enjoyed an Irish-American existence, to have been profoundly interested in, and more or less in touch with, public affairs in both countries, to have been an unwilling politician in Ireland and not a politician at all in America, is, to say the least, an unusual experience for an Irishman. But such has been my record during the last twenty years. Soon after graduating at Oxford, I was advised to live in mountain air for a while, and for the next decade I was a ranchman along the foothills of the Rockies. To those who knew that my heart was in Ireland, I used to explain that I might some day be in politics at home, and must take care of my lungs. In 1889 I returned to live and work in my own country, but I retained business interests, including some farming operations, in the Western States. Ever since then I have taken my annual holiday across the Atlantic, and have studied rural conditions over a wider area in the United States than my business interests demanded.

For eight years, commencing in 1892, I was a Member of Parliament. My legislative ambition was to get something done for Irish industry, and especially Irish agriculture. Having secured the a.s.sistance of an unprecedented combination of representative Irishmen, known as the Recess Committee (because it sat during the Parliamentary recess), we succeeded in getting the addition we wanted to the machinery of Irish Government. The functions of the new inst.i.tution are sufficiently indicated by its c.u.mbrous Parliamentary t.i.tle, "The Department of Agriculture and other Industries and for Technical Instruction for Ireland." I mention this official experience because it not only intensified my desire to study American conditions, but it also brought me frequently to Washington to study the working of those Federal inst.i.tutions which are concerned for the welfare of the rural population. There I enjoyed the unfailing courtesy of American public servants to the foreign inquirer.

On one of these visits, in the winter of 1905-1906, I called upon President Roosevelt to pay him my respects, and to express to him my obligations to some members of his Administration. I wished especially to acknowledge my indebtedness to that veteran statesman, Secretary Wilson, the value of whose long service to the American farmer it would be hard to exaggerate. Mr. Roosevelt questioned me as to the exact object of my inquiries, and asked me to come again and discuss with him more fully than was possible at the moment certain economic and social questions which had engaged much of his own thoughts. He was greatly interested to learn that in Ireland we have been approaching many of these questions from his own point of view. He made me tell him the story of Irish land legislation, and of recent Irish movements for the improvement of agricultural conditions. Ever since, his interest in these Irish questions--to _the_ Irish Question we gave a wide berth--has been maintained on account of their bearing upon his Rural Life policy, for I had shown him how the economic strengthening and social elevation of the Irish farmer had become a matter of urgent Irish concern. I recall many things he said on that occasion, which show that his two great policies of Conservation and Country Life reform were maturing in his mind. I need hardly say how deeply interesting these policies are to me, embracing as they do economic and social problems, the working out of which in my own country happens to be the task to which I have devoted the best years of my life.

I must now offer to the reader so much of the story of the Country Life movement in my own country as will enable him to understand its interest to Mr. Roosevelt and to many another worker upon the a.n.a.logous problems of the United States. Ireland is pa.s.sing through an agrarian revolution. There, as in many other European countries, the t.i.tle to most of the agricultural land rested upon conquest. The English attempt to colonise Ireland never completely succeeded nor completely failed; consequently the Irish never ceased to repudiate the t.i.tle of the alien landlord. In 1881 Mr. Gladstone introduced one of the greatest agrarian reforms in history--rent-fixing by judicial authority--which was certainly a bold attempt to put an end to a desolating conflict, centuries old.

The scheme failed,--whether, as some hold, from its inherent defects, or from the circ.u.mstances of the time, is an open question. It is but fair to its author to point out that a rapidly increasing foreign compet.i.tion, chiefly from the newly opened tracts of virgin soil in the New World, led to a fall in agricultural prices, which made the first rents fixed appear too high. Quicker and cheaper transit, together with processes for keeping produce fresh over the longest routes, soon showed that the new market conditions had come to stay. A bad land system on a rising market might succeed better than a good one on a falling. The land tenure reforms begun in 1881, having broken down under stress of foreign compet.i.tion, and Purchase Acts on a smaller scale having been tentatively tried in the interval, in 1903 Parliament finally decreed that sufficient money should be provided to buy out all the remaining agricultural land. In a not remote future, some two hundred million pounds sterling--a billion dollars--will have been advanced by the British Government to enable the tenants to purchase their holdings, the money to be repaid in easy instalments during periods averaging over sixty years.

Twenty years ago this general course of events was foreseen, and a few Irishmen conceived and set to work upon what has come to be Ireland's Rural Life policy. The position taken up was simple. What Parliament was about to do would pull down the whole structure of Ireland's agricultural economy, and would clear away the chief hindrance to economic and social progress. But upon the ground thus cleared the edifice of a new rural social economy would have to be built. This work, although it needs the fostering care of government, and liberal facilities for a system of education intimately related to the people's working lives, belongs mainly to the sphere of voluntary effort.

The new movement, which was started in 1889 to meet the circ.u.mstances I have indicated, was thus a movement for the up-building of country life.

It antic.i.p.ated the lines of the formula which Mr. Roosevelt adopted in his Message transmitting to Congress the Report of the Country Life Commission--better farming, better business, better living: we began with better business, which consisted in the introduction of agricultural cooperation into the farming industry, for several reasons which will appear later, and for one which I must mention here. We found that we could not develop in unorganised farmers a political influence strong enough to enable them to get the Government to do its part towards better farming. Owing to the new agricultural opinion which had been developed indirectly by organising the farmer, we were able to win from Parliament the department I have named above. This inst.i.tution was so framed and endowed that it is able to give to the Irish farmers all the a.s.sistance which can be legitimately given by public agencies and at public expense. The a.s.sistance consists chiefly of education. But education is interpreted in the widest sense. Practical instruction to old and young, in schools, upon the farms, and at meetings, lectures, experiments, and demonstrations, the circulation of useful information and advice, and all the usual methods known to progressive governments, are being introduced with the chief aim of enabling the farmer to apply to the practice of farming the teachings of modern science. Better living, which includes making country life more interesting and attractive, is sought by using voluntary a.s.sociations, some organised primarily for business purposes, and others, having no business aim, for social and intellectual ends. But Irish rural reformers are agreed that by far the most important step towards a higher and a better rural life would be a redirection of education in the country schools. To this I shall return in the proper place.

I can now proceed with my American experiences without leaving any doubt as to the point of view from which I approach the problem of rural life in the United States. Having engaged in actual work upon that problem in Ireland, where a combination of economic changes and political events has made its solution imperative, and having been long in personal touch with rural conditions in some Western States, my interest in certain policies which were maturing at Washington may be easily surmised. There I found that, with wholly different conditions to be dealt with, the thoughts of the President and of others in his confidence were, as regards the main issue, moving in the same direction as my own. They too had come to feel that the welfare of the rural population had been too long neglected, and that it was high time to consider how the neglect might be repaired. In his annual message to Congress in 1904, Mr. Roosevelt had made it clear that he was fully conscious of this necessity. "Nearly half of the people of this country," he wrote, "devote their energies to growing things from the soil. Until a recent date little has been done to prepare these millions for their life work." I did not realise at the time the full import of these sentences. Nor did I foresee that the problem of rural life was to be forced to the front by the awakening of public opinion, upon another issue differing from and yet closely related to the subject of these pages. Mr. Roosevelt was thinking out the Conservation idea, which I believe will some day be recognised as the greatest of his policies.

CHAPTER II

THE LAUNCHING OF TWO ROOSEVELT POLICIES

Although somebody has already said something like it, I would say there is a tide in the thoughts of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to action. We make the general claim for our Western civilisation, that, whatever the form of government, once public opinion is thoroughly stirred upon a great and vital issue, it is but a question of time for the will to find the way. But in the life of the United States, the pa.s.sage from thought to action is more rapid than in any country that I know. Nowhere do we find such a combination of emotionalism with sanity.

No better ill.u.s.tration of these national qualities could be desired than that afforded by the inception and early growth of the Conservation policy.

I have already shown how my inquiries at Washington gave me access to the most accessible of the world's statesmen. At the same time there came into my life another remarkable personality. To the United States Forester of that day I owe my earliest interest in the Conservation policy. In counsel with him I came to regard the Conservation and Rural Life policies as one organic whole. So I must say here a word about the man who, more than any other, has inspired whatever in these pages may be worth printing.

I first met Gifford Pinchot in his office in Washington in 1905. I was not especially interested in forestry, but the Forester was so interesting that I listened with increasing delight to the story of his work. I noticed that as an administrator he had a grasp of detail and a mastery of method which are not usually found in men who have had no training in large business affairs. I thought the secret of his success lay between love of work and sympathy with workers, which gained him the devotion and enthusiastic cooperation of his staff. It is, however, as a statesman rather than as an administrator that his achievement is and will be known.

When I first knew the Forester, I found that already the conservation of timber was but a small part of his material aims: every national resource must be husbanded. But over the whole scheme of Conservation a great moral issue reigned supreme. He clung affectionately to his task, but it was not to him mere forestry administration. In his far vision he seemed to see men as trees walking. The saving of one great a.s.set was broadening out into insistence upon a new test of national efficiency: the people of the United States were to be judged by the manner in which they applied their physical and mental energies to the conservation and development of their country's natural resources. The acceptance of this test would mean the success of a great policy for the initiation of which President Roosevelt gave almost the whole credit to Gifford Pinchot.

There is one other name which will be ever honorably a.s.sociated with the dawn of the Conservation idea which Mr. Roosevelt elevated to the status and dignity of a national policy. In September, 1906, Mr. James J. Hill delivered (under the t.i.tle of "The Future of the United States") what I think was an epoch-making address. It is significant that this great railway president opened his campaign for the economic salvation of the United States by addressing himself, not to politicians or professors, but to a representative body of Minnesota farmers. This address presented for the first time in popular form a remarkable collection of economic facts, which formed the basis of conclusions as startling as they were new. Let me attempt a brief summary of its contents.

The natural resources, to which the Conservation policy relates, may be divided into two cla.s.ses: the minerals, which when used cannot be replaced, and things that grow from the soil, which admit of indefinitely augmented reproduction. At the head of the former category stands the supply of coal and iron. This factor in the nation's industry and commerce was being exhausted at a rate which made it certain that, long before the end of the century, the most important manufactures would be handicapped by a higher cost of production. The supply of merchantable timber was disappearing even more rapidly. But far more serious than all other forms of wastage was the reckless destruction of the natural fertility of the soil. The final result, according to Mr.

Hill, must be that within a comparatively brief period--a period for which the present generation was bound to take thought--this veritable Land of Promise would be hard pressed to feed its own people, while the manufactured exports to pay for imported food would not be forthcoming.

It should be added that this sensational forecast was no purposeless jeremiad. Mr. Hill told his hearers that the danger which threatened the future of the Nation would be averted only by the intelligence and industry of those who cultivated the farm lands, and that they had it in their power to provide a perfectly practicable and adequate remedy. This was to be found--if such a condensation be permissible--in the application of the physical sciences to the practice, and of economic science to the business, of farming.

In spite of the immense burden of great undertakings which he carried, Mr. Hill repeated the substance of this address on many occasions. Lord Rosebery once said that speeches were the most ephemeral of all ephemeral things, and for some time it looked as if one of the most important speeches ever delivered by a public man on a great public issue was going to ill.u.s.trate the truth of this saying. It seems strange that his facts and arguments should have remained unchallenged, and yet unsupported, by other public men. Perhaps the best explanation is to be found in a recent dictum of Mr. James Bryce. Speaking at the University of California, the British Amba.s.sador said: "We can all think of the present, and are only too apt to think chiefly about the present.

The average man, be he educated or uneducated, seldom thinks of anything else." There are, however, special circ.u.mstances in the history of the United States which account for the extraordinary unconcern about what is going to happen to the race in a period which may seem long to those whose personal interest fixes a limit to their gaze, but which is indeed short in the life of a nation. After the religious, political, and military struggles through which the American nation was brought to birth, there followed a century of no less strenuous wrestling with the forces of nature. That century stands divided by the greatest civil conflict in the world's history; but this only served to strengthen in a united people those indomitable qualities to which the nation owes its leadership in the advancement of civilisation. The abundance (until now considered as virtual inexhaustibility) of natural resources, the call for capital and men for their development, the rich reward of conquest in the field of industry, may explain, but can hardly excuse, a National att.i.tude which seems to go against the strongest human instinct--one not altogether wanting in lower animal life--that of the preservation of the race. It is an att.i.tude which recalls the question said to have been asked by an Irishman: "What has posterity done for me?" But this was before Conservation was in the air.

I have now told what I came by chance to know about the origin of the Conservation idea. The story of its early growth was no less remarkable than the suddenness of its appearance. In the spring of 1908 matters had advanced so far that the governors of all the States and Territories met to discuss it. Before the Conference broke up they were moved to "declare the conviction that the great prosperity of our country rests upon the abundant resources of the land chosen by our forefathers for their homes," that these resources are "a heritage to be made use of in establishing and promoting the comfort, prosperity, and happiness of the American people, but not to be wasted, deteriorated, or needlessly destroyed; that this material basis is threatened with exhaustion"; that "conservation of our natural resources is a subject of transcendent importance which should engage unremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States, and the people in earnest cooperation"; and that "this cooperation should find expression in suitable action by the Congress and by the legislatures of the several States."

It is, of course, not with Conservation, but with Rural Life, that we are here directly concerned; but it should be borne in mind that the chief of all the nation's resources is the fertility of the soil. More than one competent authority declared at the Conference of Governors that this national a.s.set was the subject of the greatest actual waste, and was at the same time capable of the greatest development and conservation. This interdependence of the two Roosevelt policies--the fact that neither of them can come to fruition without the success of the other--makes those of us who work for rural progress rest our chief hopes upon the newly aroused public opinion in the American Republic.

To my knowledge this view is shared by President Roosevelt, who always regarded his Conservation and Rural Life policies as complementary to each other. The last time I saw him--it was on Christmas Eve, 1908--he dwelt on this aspect of his public work and aims. I remember how he expressed the hope that, when the more striking incidents of his Administration were forgotten, public opinion would look kindly upon his Conservation and Rural Life policies. I ventured upon the confident prediction that he would not be disappointed in this antic.i.p.ation.

Already the authors of the Conservation policy have been rewarded by a general acceptance of the principle for which they stand. The national conscience now demands that the present generation, while enjoying the material blessings with which not only nature but also the labour and sacrifices of their forefathers have so bounteously endowed them, shall have due regard for the welfare of those who are to come after them.

Americans, who are accustomed to rapid developments in public opinion, will hardly appreciate the impression made by the story I have just told upon the mind of an observer from old countries, where action does not tread upon the heels of thought. But surely an amazing thing has happened. In the life of one Administration a great idea seizes the mind of the American people. This leads to a stock-taking of natural resources and a searching of the national conscience. Then, suddenly, there emerges a quite new national policy. Conceived during the last Administration, when it brought Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bryan on to the same platform, Conservation at once rose above party, and will be the accepted policy of all future Administrations. It has already secured almost Pan-American endors.e.m.e.nt at its birthplace in Washington. The fathers of Conservation are now looking forward to a still larger sphere of influence for their offspring at an International Conference which it is hoped to a.s.semble at the Hague.

But it must be admitted that no such reception was accorded to Mr.

Roosevelt's other policy, to which our attention must now be turned. The reasons for the comparative lack of interest in the problem of Rural Life are many and complex, but two of them may be noted in pa.s.sing.

Conservation calls for legislative and administrative action, and this always sets up a ferment in the political mind. The Rural Life idea, on the other hand, though it will demand some governmental a.s.sistance, must rely mainly upon voluntary effort. The methods necessary for its development, and their probable results, are also less obvious, and thus less easily appreciated by the public. Whatever the reason, while Conservation has rushed into the forefront of public interest and has won the status and dignity of a policy, the sister idea is still struggling for a platform, and its advocates must be content to see their efforts towards a higher and a better country life regarded as a movement.

This estimate of the relative positions of these two ideas in the public mind will, I think, be borne out when we contrast the quiet initiation of the movement with the dramatic debut of the policy. For all the officialism with which it was launched, President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission might as well have been appointed by some wealthy philanthropist who would, at least, have paid its members' travelling expenses,[1] and private initiation might also have spared us the ridicule which greeted the alleged proposal to "uplift" a body of citizens who were told that they were already adorning the heights of American civilisation. The names of the men who volunteered for this unpaid service should have been a sufficient guarantee that theirs was no fool's errand.[2]

How real was the problem the commissioners were investigating was abundantly proved to those who were present when they got into touch with working farmers and their wives, and discussed freely and informally the conditions, human and material, to which the problem of Rural Life relates. I shall refer again to their report. But I may here say I am firmly convinced that a complete change in the whole att.i.tude of public opinion towards the old question of town and country must precede any large practical outcome to the labours of the Commission. It has to be brought home to those who lead public opinion that for many decades we, the English-speaking peoples, have been unconsciously guilty of having gravely neglected one side, and that perhaps the most important side, of Western civilisation.

To sustain this judgment I must now view the sequence of events which led to the subordination of rural to urban interests, and try to estimate its probable consequences. It will be seen that the neglect is comparatively recent, and of English origin. I believe that the New World offers just now a rare opportunity for launching a movement which will be directed to a reconstruction of rural life. It is this belief which has prompted an Irish advocate of rural reform to turn his thoughts away for a brief s.p.a.ce from the poorer peasantry of his own country and to take counsel with his fellow-workers in the United States and Canada on a problem which affects them all.

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