The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know Part 15

This ill.u.s.tration has been used to emphasize two points. First, there are many problems in every community that are in no way related to the material prosperity of the neighborhood. Second, there is, at present, no single force in the community with sufficient influence to cope properly with many of these problems.

A young college graduate who is now managing eight hundred acres of land recently wrote: "I firmly believe that one of the best opportunities to be of help to a rural community lies in the work that is to be done for the improvement of social conditions--to help make what little leisure there is clean and refreshing." Hence on return from college this young man has found time to play football and baseball with local teams and to help whenever opportunity offered at dances, musicales and similar entertainments. Games and other forms of recreation may be clean and wholesome, or they may be quite the reverse. It would be the duty of the community committee to see that dances occurred under proper environment--not next an open saloon--and that the young women were properly chaperoned.

In many communities the boys and girls are almost wholly dependent upon the neighboring towns for their amus.e.m.e.nt. This condition may or may not be desirable. If the town and country are virtually one community, there is every reason why the boys and girls from the farms should find recreation and social intercourse with the boys and girls of the village. It is a relationship that should be fostered wherever possible. When, however, the town and the country are separate communities, which prevent the ordinary social relationships, it is usually unfortunate when the young people of the one community are dependent upon the other community for their amus.e.m.e.nts.

A deeply earnest man recently said: "I was born and raised upon the farm. I never knew a dull day in my life. I went fishing. I went hunting and----"

"Stop right there," said the listener. "There is not the same opportunity today for a boy to go hunting that there was when you were a boy."

"That is true."

"Our ideas about such things have changed, also."

"Yes," he replied, humbly enough, for he was a man of fine fiber.

"I propose a subst.i.tute," said the listener. "There is much more pleasure and recreation to be obtained from photographing animals than from killing them. What is needed in every rural community is a camera club."

When a boy wishes to go hunting, he merely has to buckle on his ammunition pouch, shoulder his gun and he is ready. A camera club, however, requires a social organization and a social center. The community committee would thus be required to decide whether the facilities for developing and printing pictures may best be located at the church, the schoolhouse, the grange hall or elsewhere.

A little reflection will show how many possibilities such a club might have on its social, moral and educational side. The suggestion has been made here, however, only as an ill.u.s.tration of the problems which arise when a rural community is organized for social welfare. The organization of a book club, or a magazine club in a rural community presents precisely the same problems. Some method must be devised for exchanging the books or magazines. Whether they are exchanged at the church, the grange hall or through the school children will depend upon local conditions requiring a community committee to decide.

This community committee will do something more than reach immediate results. It may project its influence far into the future. Not all of life is comprised in a porcelain bathtub and nickel adornments.

Nevertheless modern methods of heating and plumbing are desirable in the country as well as in the city. In Indiana there is a one-room school building. In the bas.e.m.e.nt there has been placed a furnace and a gasoline engine. The engine is used not only to teach the boys how to run a gasoline engine, but it makes possible a modern system of plumbing.

It is well known that many of the states within the past decade have voted to abolish or very materially restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages. No great temperance orators have roused the people as was the case thirty years or more ago. Why, then, has such progress been made in recent years? In large part because twenty-five years ago, the teaching of physiology was introduced into the public schools, which taught the evil effects of alcohol to the human system. During the past decade young men who studied these physiologies have been voting.

What has the teaching of physiology to do with the one-room schoolhouse in Indiana with its modern system of plumbing? The girls between the ages of six and fourteen are now becoming accustomed to modern systems of plumbing. When they grow older and marry they will find some way to introduce similar conveniences into their homes without regard to the price of wheat. A wise community committee will find many ways to influence future generations. Such a committee would be a priceless heritage to any community.

The natural resources of the United States are necessary to the prosperity of the people. The preservation and economic use of these resources are of vast importance. The natural resources of the world were, however, as great five thousand years ago as they are today. The soil was no less fertile then than now. The difference between the prosperity of the human race at these two periods is caused by a difference in human motive and efficiency. It is the result of ideals and knowledge. Sit at the banquet table with men who are the real powers in shaping the affairs of the world. The chances are that the champagne remains untouched. These men are not in the habit of partaking of midnight suppers. They must keep themselves fit for the next day's work. They have the approval and loyalty of their wives because they deserve it. In other words, the men who do the world's work are not drunkards. They are not gluttons. They are not libertines.

They are efficient because they have healthy bodies and clean minds. It is this efficiency which the critic from Argentina saw when he said, "I do not look upon the people of the United States as a nation, but as a new civilization."