The country minister and schoolteacher must therefore become prophets of the intellect and of the spirit, in the new order. If they cannot minister to the new intelligence of the farmer and his children, their institutions will necessarily decay. The farmer who succeeds in the new social economy of the country will not endure old sermons which were appropriate in his father's time. The emphasis must not be placed on tradition, but upon inductive study. The preacher must not feed the people on special instances, but upon representative cases. The intelligence of the new type of farmer will not be satisfied with sensations and with the unusual; but he demands to be trained in standards of the new day, when science, system, organization and world economy are making their demands on him and his very soul is concerned in his response to those demands.

The task of dealing with newcomers in the country community is educational, financial and recreative. One should add that it is also evangelistic, but I have in mind the possibility that these newcomers may be Catholics with whom Protestant evangelism will not be successful. It is possible also that they will be of another Protestant sect from that of the reader of this chapter, so that to evangelize them would mean proselyting. The writer believes very heartily in rural evangelism. It is an essential process in building the country church. These chapters are devoted primarily to the building of the country community and in that process the securing of members for the country church is preliminary only. Leaving, therefore, the question of rural evangelism for treatment in another place, let us take up the educational treatment of the newcomer in the country community.

The proper machinery for this education is the common school and the Sunday school. As the common school is treated elsewhere, the use of the Sunday school in organizing the rural population belongs here. Few churches realize the power and value of Sunday-school training. I am insisting that the life of country people is religious. The use of the Sunday school is to train the young of the community in religion. All country people accept the Bible as a holy book. They all believe in the education of their children and in much greater numbers than they will respond for a church service their children will respond to the work of religious culture on Sunday at the church. The Sunday-school organization is interdenominational. Its lessons and its methods are a common heritage of the churches at the present time. The machinery is perfect, but the Sunday-school leaders lack vision and they lack the progressive spirit. If only the teachers and ministers realized the value of the Sunday school and its acceptance with the people, there would be needed no other machinery for building the country community.

The Sunday-school should be a close parallel to the day school. If the day school in the community has any progressive features, the Sunday school should use these and improve them. Between the two there should exist the closest sympathy, not formal or definitely organized, but actual and expressed in parallel lines of work. Where the day school is graded, the Sunday school should accept the same grading, strongly organizing all its classes. The pupils in the Sunday school should pass by successive promotions from teacher to teacher and from grade to grade.

If the day school in the country is unprogressive and is taught by a succession of indifferent persons, the Sunday school should practise under the guidance of religious leaders those principles of modern pedagogy which should be used in the common schools. Graded lessons, the organization of material and progressive development of religious truth from the simpler to the more complex, should find their place in every Sunday school. The opportunity for service to the whole community thus offered through the Sunday school is excelled by none in the country community.

The upper classes of the Sunday school should be organized. Young men and women especially, who are in danger of finding the Sunday school irksome because their intelligence has passed beyond its control, should be organized in classes which on week days have a club or society character. The Sunday school should use as an ally their tendency to organization and should satisfy their social needs by giving them regular and approved opportunities for meeting and for pleasure.

Another principle which the Sunday school can practise for the benefit of the community is the centralization of religious teaching. Even if the common schools are not centralized, the children for the Sunday school should be brought to the church from outlying regions in hired wagons every week. It is better that a large Sunday school be maintained under efficient leadership than that a number of small schools with indifferent teachers should be maintained in various school districts. The larger body can have better leadership. It is more closely under the supervision of the minister, who is generally the superior in education of the laymen, and the social value of the meetings of the Sunday school will be greater in the larger body. All the arguments which make for the centralization of the day school have force for the consolidation of Sunday schools in one large school.

The Sunday school offers a basis for church federation. In the community it is frequently possible for Sunday schools to be united and for the advantages of this common teaching to be made even greater because all the children of the various churches are in one body. The best leadership and the best teachers are thus secured and the community spirit is cultivated through the young people and more loosely attached members of the community.

The older classes of the Sunday school on a basis of study of the Bible should be organized for practical ends. The adult Bible class can be made to have all the influence of the grange in the country community. The fathers and mothers of the community may meet throughout the week socially. They may undertake together the study of the economic life of the community. Lecturers from the agricultural college, representatives of the Play Ground Movement, of the county work of the Y. M. C. A., of historical societies interested in the community's past and other representatives of national movements, may be welcomed and heard by this organized class, the basis of which is religious education.

What I am urging may be accomplished by any church in some measure, however divided the community may be. It is the business of the individual church which has a vision of the community as a whole to act as if it were a federation of churches. Frequently ministers are in favor of church federation, as if that process were an end in itself. The writer believes that the individual church can accomplish the ends of federation if the union of churches can do so. The best means for effecting federation of churches is to practise the program of federation until it shall come about.

The community made up in a degree of new families and the community in which the newcomers are young men and women, children of the residents, are bound to educate these invaders of the community, whether they come from without or whether they come by "birthright membership," in the spirit of benevolence. The giving of money to public uses is one of the cherished social forces of our time. The country community is just entering into the day of cash. The period of barter is over. The farmer therefore needs in his ethical and his religious training, to have definite culture as a philanthropist. The future of the farm-hand in America is still very hopeful. The tenant farmer expects to be an owner. The farmer's son believes himself to have a future. These hopes from earliest years should be disciplined by the practise of giving. For this end the church is a rarely well fitted means. The financial system of the church must be made democratic. The custom of renting pews belonged in the land-farmer period. The writer does not suggest that it be abolished because it can often serve a more democratic purpose in its mature forms under careful supervision than any substitute, but it is all important that the country church be a training-school in the consecration of money to the uses of the community and of the kingdom of God.

For the average countryman the kingdom of God should be embodied in the country community. This is not to say that his vision should be narrow. On the contrary his vision is often of the spread-eagle sort. He overlooks the opportunities for benevolence which are near at hand. He believes in foreign missions sometimes, and contributes impulsively to the support of men in China who are paid a better salary than the pastor in his own community. He applauds the gifts of millionaires and of city people generally to hospitals, but he ignores the ravages of disease in his own community. The divine imperative is that the country community be first organized, by those who live there, for local well-being. For this, contributions of money are necessary and they must be made by all in the community.

The question has been raised frequently whether an endowment is not necessary for the country church. The writer began his ministry in a country church which was generously endowed. He still believes in the value of endowment for some country communities. Ex-President Eliot of Harvard recently commended the principle of endowment to the New England Country Church Association, as a solution of the rural problem. President Butterfield of Massachusetts Agricultural College has emphasized the same principle. It is quite likely that in the Eastern States where the country community has been depleted by the departure of an extraordinary number of families and individuals, an endowment would be of value for the country church. One must not hold to a theoretic opposition to such a method. The important thing is to provide a trained pastor for the country community. In these Eastern communities a larger proportion of the former members of the community have prospered than in Western communities. Many of them are very rich. In these cases it is but natural that an endowed church in the country community express the ministry of the more prosperous citizen to his poorer brethren, but everybody knows that these depleted communities—I will not say these excessive fortunes—are among the most lamentable factors in American life.

The endowment of the church, however, is a very poor apology for a bad situation. It has but limited use, and the creation of a large fund to be used in the country community necessitates careful supervision by men of such business ability as are not usually found in a country community. To remedy such conditions as those with which President Eliot and President Butterfield are most familiar is a specific problem. It is not the general situation throughout the United States. The purpose of these chapters is to make plain the way by which the average American community may escape depletion, may retain the leadership of its best minds and may prosper in a democratic way. I am interested more in training the country population for the future than in mending the mistakes of the past. But I believe that for depleted country communities in New England, New York and Pennsylvania an endowment of the country church would in many instances be effective: and for them alone.

Let the country church undertake its financial problem in a business-like way. At the beginning of the year make a budget of all the monies needed for the year's work. Face the issues of the year frankly. Pay to the minister and to other employees of the church a sufficient amount to provide them with needful things throughout the year. A living wage is not enough. The minister especially needs a working salary. With little variation throughout the country as a whole the minister in the rural community should have in order to minister to his people, to educate his children and to look forward without fear to old age, twelve to fourteen hundred dollars a year and a house. Many country communities have a more expensive standard, and there are a few in which less is required. But in Southern States and in Western communities I have found the conditions, created by the prices which prevail throughout the country as a whole, at this standard.

When the budget of the year is prepared, including missionary and benevolent gifts, it should be distributed by the officers through consultation with all the members of the church, young and old, rich and poor, in such way as to secure a gift from every one and to meet the obligations of the church as a whole. For the moral values of the situation the small gift of the poor and of the child are even more important than the large gift of the well-to-do. For the securing of these gifts the envelope system, especially the so-called duplex envelope, is the best means which can be generally used by churches. It is a method flexible enough to reach every member and it represents in its duplex form the double motive of giving to the community itself and to those larger national and missionary enterprises to which the country should contribute.

The third method of developing the country community is recreative. I mention it here for completeness of statement. Another chapter is devoted to recreation in the country community. The amusements and recreations of the country community are immersed in moral issues. The ethical life of the community is the atmosphere in which social pleasure is taken. Therefore the recreations of the community are to be provided and supervised by those who would undertake to create a wholesome community life. A maximum of provision and a minimum of supervision are required. Country life is devoid of means for recreation. Some one must provide it. Usually it is either neglected altogether, and the result is dullness and monotony; or it is provided for a price, and the result is an organized center of immorality. Recreation requires but little supervision. The presence of older persons, and those of a humane friendly spirit, is usually necessary to the games. These are based on honor and with a few simple principles the young people and working people of the community will organize their own play and find therein a great benefit.

To summarize this chapter, the acute problem in many communities today is the merging of the life of newcomers in the community into the organized social life which is older and more settled. This task belongs above all to the country church. Many of the detailed applications are for the school to follow out, but the business of the church is to see and to inspire. If the church is not democratic, the community will be hopelessly divided. If the church welcomes the newcomer and finds him a place, the community will be inspired with a democratic spirit. The task of the church is indicated in the new prosperity of the country which tends from the first to remove from the community those who prosper. The church's business is to win to the community all who come into it and to release from its hold as few as possible.

In a discussion of country life in a Tennessee college town the question was asked of a professor of agriculture who was speaking about farm tenantry, "What should the church do for the tenant farmer?" "Borrow money for him and help him to buy land," said the professor.

Such a solution might be the church's task, but the example of England's policy for Ireland shows that the professor commended a governmental rather than a religious service. For it is found that the Irish farmer—a tenant on land whereon his ancestors have for centuries been tenants—when he secures the land in fee through the new policies of the British Government, frequently deserts the country community, selling his land to a neighbor. Some sections of Ireland are said to have a new kind of small tenantry and a new sort of small landlord. The task of the country community begins where the task of government leaves off. It is to inspire the resident in the country with a vision, and to lay upon him the imperative, of building up the country community out of the newcomers, who enter it by birth or by migration.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 31: "The Agrarian Changes in the Middle West," by J. B. Ross.]



X

CO-OPERATION

In contrast to other classes of the population country people have a marked preference for individual action and an aversion to co-operative effort. The causes of this are historical. In general these causes are of the past and they are not a matter of persuasion. The American farmer has not co-operated in the past because: first, the necessities of his life made him independent and impatient of the sacrifices necessary in co-operating with his fellows. We have still many influences of the pioneer in modern life. So long as agriculture is solitary work and its processes take a man away from his fellows, co-operation will be retarded. So long as the countryman has to practise a variety of trades, he will be emotional, and the social life of the country will be broken up by feuds, divisions, separations and continued misunderstandings. No mere education as to alleged right and wrong can plaster over the old economy with new ethical standards. Until the loneliness and the emotion are taken out of farming country people cannot co-operate.

A good part of the United States is still in the land farmer period. The characteristic of the land farmer is his cultivation of group life. The historical process by which this group life is broken up is exploitation. Farmers whose lands have not been exploited and whose group life has not suffered the undermining influence of exploitation will not normally co-operate. I am convinced that in most farming territories the loyalty of the countryman to his group is the second reason for his refusal to co-operate. Again, this refusal of his is not subject to persuasion. He is obeying an economic condition which shapes his life and controls his action. Striking instances are furnished in many regions of the amazing disloyalty of farmers to one another, and to their own pledged word. These are to be explained by the type to which the farmer in these sections conforms. We must not expect the land farmer to obey the ethical standards of the husbandman.

A good instance of this conformity to type was furnished in the case of meetings held in Louisiana and Western Mississippi among the farmers who raise cotton. The occasion of the meetings was the approach of the boll weevil to their districts. The attendance upon the meetings was large, indeed universal. The situation was clearly understood and the speakers secured from the farmers present a promise quite unanimous to refrain from cultivating cotton for a year. The purpose of this was to meet the boll weevil with a territory in which he would find no food. Thus his march eastward across the cotton field would be arrested.

The farmers having made their promise and agreed heartily in the proposal, adjourned. Weeks and months passed and the time approached for planting cotton. Farmer after farmer, who had attended these meetings and given his promise, privately decided that he would plant a cotton crop and secretly expected that he would secure a larger price that year because so many of his neighbors were to raise other crops. When the full season for planting cotton had come it was discovered that so many farmers had planted cotton that the plan of co-operation was a failure, and the whole district went back to cotton, with full prospect of assisting the boll weevil in his course toward the East. The reasons for this action lie in the type of farmer who thus found it impossible to co-operate. Each of these farmers regarded above all other things the success of his own farm and his own family group. In contrast to this interest no other claim, no exhortation and not even his word given in public had any lasting influence upon his action.

The third element in the inability of country people to co-operate is the ideal of level democratic equality which prevails in the country. Where universal land-ownership has been the rule every countryman thinks himself "as good as anybody else." So long as this ideal prevails, that subjection of himself to another, and the controlling of his action by the interests of the community, are impossible. The farmer cannot co-operate when he thinks of social life in terms of pure democracy. There must be a large sense of team work, a loyal and instinctive obedience to leaders, a devoted spirit which looks for honest leadership, before there can be co-operation. These things come not by persuasion, but by experience. Co-operation is the act of a mature people. Not until country people have passed through earlier stages and discarded earlier ideals can the preacher and the organizer and the teacher successfully inculcate a spirit of co-operation.

Country churches are highly representative in their present divided condition. This multiplication of churches in the country is lamentable chiefly because it registers the divided state of country life. It is true that divided churches are religiously inefficient, but it is vastly more important that divided churches are embodiments of what one country minister calls "the tuberculosis of the American farmer, individualism."

It was natural for the pioneer to desire a religion in terms of a message of personal salvation. Personality in his lonely life was the noblest, indeed the only form of humanity known to him, therefore the herald was his minister and emotion was his religion. It is very natural for the land farmer to organize religion in terms of group life. His churches were only handmaids of his household. They had but the beginnings of social organization. They taught the ethics of home life, of the separate farm and of a land-owning people. Obviously the church for the pioneer and for the land farmer could be a very weak and indifferent organization, but efficient for the religious needs of those independent, self-reliant types of countrymen.

For these reasons in all parts of the country the pitiful story is heard of divided communities. One need not recite it here. It usually is the account of three hundred or four hundred people with five or six country churches. At its worst there is a small community in which missionary agencies are supporting ministers who do not average one hundred possible families apiece in the community. The condition of Center Hall, Pennsylvania, has been described in another chapter, in which there are within a radius of four miles from a given point twenty-four country churches. This community represents a condition of transition from the land-farmer type to that of exploitation. Some of these churches are the old churches of the land-owning resident farmers, but the most of them are said to be the newer churches of tenants who have come into the community. Our present concern is to recognize the relation of the divided churches to the divided social life of the community. The criticism of the country community must be made on an understanding of the stage of development to which that community has attained. Whatever is planned for the upbuilding of the country community must be planned in harmony with the well-known facts of rural development.

Business life introduces into the community a new standard of values. Cash and credit take the place of barter. The exchange in kind on which originally the community depended comes to an end. Business life very shortly induces combination. The whole of modern business presents a spectacle of universal combination and co-operation. The farmer who is most conservative is surrounded on all sides by the aggressive forces of business. Combined in their own interest they compete with him on unequal terms. He stands alone and they stand combined.

Americans are looking with growing interest on the experience of Denmark where a multitude of co-operative associations represent the spirit of the people. This spirit has been deliberately cultivated in the land for forty years. It is the universal testimony of observers that the prosperity of Denmark is dependent on these co-operative agencies and upon this united spirit. The exodus from the country has been arrested, agriculture has been made a desirable occupation, profitable for the farmer and most probable for the state, and the people as a whole have taken front rank in social and economic welfare. Essential to this constructive period of Denmark's life is co-operation.[32]

In Sir Horace Plunkett's recent book, "The Rural Life Problem in The United States," he develops this principle clearly. He says that in the organization of country life in Ireland it was necessary to go into the very heart of the people's experience and organize their economic and social processes in forms of co-operation.

"When farmers combine, it is a combination not of money only, but of personal effort in relation to the entire business. In a co-operative creamery for example, the chief contribution of a shareholder is in milk; in a co-operative elevator, corn; in other cases it may be fruit or vegetables, or a variety of material things rather than cash. But it is, most of all, a combination of neighbors within an area small enough to allow of all the members meeting frequently at the business center. As the system develops, the local associations are federated for larger business transactions, but these are governed by delegates carefully chosen by the members of the constituent bodies. The object of such associations is primarily, not to declare a dividend, but rather to improve the conditions of the industry for the members.

"It is recognized that the poor man's co-operation is as important as the rich man's subscription. 'One man, one vote,' is the almost universal principle in co-operative bodies.

"The distinction between the capitalistic basis of joint stock organization and the more human character of the co-operative system is fundamentally important.

"In this matter I am here speaking from practical experience in Ireland. Twenty years ago the pioneers of our rural life movement found it necessary to concentrate their efforts upon the reorganization of the farmer's business.

"1. We began with the dairying industry, and already half the export of Irish butter comes from the co-operative societies we established.

"2. Organized bodies of farmers are learning to purchase their agricultural requirements intelligently and economically.

"3. They are also beginning to adopt the methods of the organized foreign farmer in controlling the sale of their butter, eggs and poultry in the British markets.

"4. And they not only combine in agricultural production and distribution, but are also making a promising beginning in grappling with the problem of agricultural finance. It is in the last portion of the Irish programme that by far the most interesting study of the co-operative system can be made, on account of its success in the poorest parts of the Island. Furthermore, the attempt to enable the most embarrassed section of the Irish peasantry to procure working capital illustrates some features of agricultural co-operation which will have suggestive value for American farmers.

"A body of very poor persons, individually—in the commercial sense of the term—insolvent, manage to create a new basis of security which has been somewhat grandiloquently and yet truthfully called 'the capitalization of their honesty and industry.' The way in which this is done is remarkably ingenious. The credit society is organized in the usual democratic way explained above, but its constitution is peculiar in one respect. The members have to become jointly and severally responsible for the debts of the association, which borrows on this unlimited liability from the ordinary commercial bank, or, in some cases, from Government sources. After the initial stage, when the institution becomes firmly established, it attracts local deposits, and thus the savings of the community, which are too often hoarded, are set free to fructify in the community. The procedure by which the money borrowed is lent to the members of the association is the essential feature of the scheme. The member requiring the loan must state what he is going to do with the money. He must satisfy the committee of the association, who know the man and his business, that the proposed investment is one which will enable him to repay both principal and interest. He must enter into a bond with two sureties for the repayment of the loan, and needless to say the characters of both the borrower and his sureties are very carefully considered. The period for which the loan is granted is arranged to meet the needs of the case, as determined by the committee after a full discussion with the borrower. Once the loan has been made, it becomes the concern of every member of the association to see that it is applied to the 'approved purpose'—as it is technically called. What is more important is that all the borrower's fellow-members become interested in his business and anxious for its success.

"The fact that nearly three hundred of these societies are at work in Ireland and that, although their transactions are on a very modest scale, the system is steadily growing both in the numbers of its adherents and in the turnover,—this fact is, I think, a remarkable testimony to the value of the co-operative system. The details I have given illustrate one important distinction between co-operation, which enables the farmer to do his business in a way that suits him, and the urban form of combination, which is unsuited to his needs."

The traditional economy that centered in the farm household was independent. The ethical standards of country life recognized but small obligations to those outside the household. Farmers still idealize an individual, or rather a group, success. They entertain the hope that their farm may raise some specialty for which a better price shall be gained and by which an exceptional advantage in the market shall be possessed. The conditions of the world economy are imposing upon the farmer the necessity of co-operation.

The prices of all the farmers' products are fixed by the marginal goods put upon the market. For instance, the standard milk for which the price is paid to dairy farmers, is the milk which can barely secure a purchaser. The poor quality, relative uncleanness, and the low grade of the marginal milk dominate the general market in every city, and the farmer who produces a better grade gets nothing for the difference. It is true that there is a special price paid by hospitals and a limited market may be established by special institutions, but we are dealing here with general conditions such as affect the average milk farmer and the great bulk of the farmers. It is on these average conditions alone that the country community can depend.

Co-operation is the essential measure by which the producer of marginal goods can be influenced. To raise the standard of his product it is necessary to have a combination of producers. So long as the better farmer is dependent by economic law upon those prices paid for marginal goods, the only way for the better farmer to secure a better gain is to engage in co-operation which shall include the poorer and the marginal farmer.

In the Kentucky counties which raise Burley tobacco, a few years ago the tenant farmer was an economic slave. He sold his crop at a price dictated by a combination of buyers. He lived throughout the year on credit. His wife and his children were obliged to work in the field in summer. He had nothing for contribution to community institutions. Indeed, he very frequently ended the year without paying his debts for food and clothing.

The organizations of these farmers which have been formed in recent years for self-protection have been blamed for some outrageous deeds. Persons in sympathy with these organizations have burned the barns of farmers unwilling to enter the combination. They have administered whippings and threats right and left in the interest of the farmers' organization. In their contest with the buyers to secure a better price they have reduced to ashes some of the warehouses of the monopoly to which they were obliged to sell their tobacco. These public outrages are worthy of condemnation. The writer believes that they were not essential to the process of co-operation by which the farmers fought their way to better success, though the effect of these acts is a part of the historical process.

But the combination of farmers has redeemed the poorer, the tenant farmer and the small farmer from economic slavery. His representatives now fix the price of the product. There is one buyer and one seller, competition being eliminated; and the price at which the tobacco is sold is the farmers' price, not the manufacturer's price. As a result the farmers are able to hire help. The wife and children no longer work in the field. The bills are paid as they are incurred, instead of credit slavery binding the farmer from year to year. Last of all this prosperity has taken form in better roads, better schools and better churches. It remains only to be said that among the farmers engaging in this co-operative union there were many preachers and pastors of the region. They took a large part in the combinations of farmers which affected this great gain. They recognized that the fight of the farmers for self-respect and for free existence was a religious struggle and that the church had a common interest in the well being of the population to which it ministered.

Another instance of co-operation is seen in Delaware and on the "Eastern Shore" where the soil had been exhausted. Methods of slavery days were unfavorable to the land and after the War it was long neglected. In recent years a new type of farmer has come into this territory. By intensive cultivation with scientific methods, he is raising small fruits, berries, vegetables and other products, for the nearby markets in the great cities. The success of these farmers has been dependent upon their produce exchanges. They have learned, contrary to the traditional belief of farmers, that there is a greater profit for the individual farmer in raising the same crop as his neighbor, than there is in an especial crop which competes in the market for itself. That is to say, in shipping a carload of strawberries the farmer gets a better price when the car is filled with one kind of berry than he would receive if the car was made up of a number of separate consignments under different names and of different varieties. Co-operation has been better for the individual than competition.

It at once becomes evident that co-operation is an ethical and a religious discipline. As soon as the farming population is saturated with the idea, which these farmers fully understand who have prospered by co-operation, the religious message in these territories will be a new message of brotherhood. The old gospel of an individual salvation apart from men and often at the expense of other men will be enlarged and renewed into a gospel of social salvation. No man will be saved to a Heaven apart or to a salvation which he attains by competition or by comparison, but men shall be saved through their fellows and with their fellows. The country church, of all our churches, will teach in the days to come the gospel of unity.

The writer's own experience as a country minister was a perfect illustration of this union of all members of a community. In the community Quakers, Irish Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists were represented in nearly equal numbers. With people widely diverse in their economic position, though dependent upon one another, it became evident to all that the only religious experience of the community must be an experience of unity. Under the leadership of an old Quaker who supplied the funds and of two others of gracious spirit and broad intellect, the whole community was united, on the condition that all should share in that which any did. One church was organized to receive all the adherents of Protestant faith and one service of worship united all, whether within or without the church. Even the Roman Catholics once or twice a year for twenty years have been brought together in meetings which express the unity of the countryside.

Other instances there are of co-operation among churches in the country, but their number is not great. There is a supplementary co-operation in the division of territory in some states. The church at Hanover, N. J., has a territory six miles by four, in which no other church has been established. This old Presbyterian congregation has peopled its countryside with its chapels and has assembled the chapel worshippers regularly at its services in the old church at the graveyard and the manse.

In Rock Creek, Illinois, the Presbyterian Church has a community to itself, and ministers in its territory with the same efficiency with which the Baptist church across the creek ministers to its territory, in which it also has a religious monopoly. These two congregations respect one another and have a sense of supplementing one another, which is a form of co-operation. The ideal expressed in these two instances is cherished by many. It is hoped that religious bodies may agree in time to divide the territory, to give up churches, to sell or transfer property rights and to shift their ministers from communities which have too many to those communities not served at all. But the way for this co-operation as an active principle has not yet opened. Its value is in those communities which have had it from the first as an inheritance. It has so far not proven a remedy to be applied for the cure of existing evils.

The writer believes that the path of co-operation is the efficient and slow one of economic and social organization rather than the delusive short-cut of religious union. People cannot be united in religion until they are united in their social economy. The business of the church is to organize co-operative enterprises, economic, social and educational, and to school the people in the joy, to educate them in the advantages, of life together. Co-operation must become a gospel. Union requires to be a religious doctrine. It will be well for a long time to come to say but little about organic union of churches and to say a great deal about the union in the life of the people themselves.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 32: "Rural Denmark and Its Lessons," by H. Rider Haggard. See also the Bulletins of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, Italy.]



XI

COMMON SCHOOLS

The weakness of the common schools in American rural communities shows itself in their failure to educate the marginal people of the community, in their failure to train average men and women for life in that community, in their robbing the community of leadership by training those on whom their influence is strongest, so that they go out from the community never to return; and in their general disloyalty to the local community with its needs and its problems.

It is the boast of the people of the country school district that their school has "sent out" so many people of distinction. On a rocky hillside in a New England town there stands, between a wooded slope and a swamp, an unpainted school building. Within and without it is more forbidding than the average stable in that farming region. But the resident of that neighborhood boasts of the number of distinguished persons who have gone forth from the community, under the influence of that school. This is characteristic of country places and country schools. The influence of the school, so far as it has any, is that of disloyalty to the neighborhood. It robs the neighborhood of leadership. It does nothing to cultivate a spirit of sympathy with the life that must be lived there. For every one whom it starts upon the exodus to other places it leaves two at home uninspired, indifferent and mentally degenerate.

Another fault of the one-room country school, which makes it a weak support of the country community, is its lack of professional support. Among four hundred teachers in such schools, throughout the country, not one in a hundred expects to remain as a country schoolteacher for a lifetime. There is no professional class devoted to the country school. Its service is incidental in the lives of men devoted to something else. It is a mere side issue.

Besides, its building is inadequate. Too many needs, impossible to satisfy, are assembled in a single room. Too many grades must be taught there for any one child to receive the intense impression necessary for his education.

The third great fault of the country school is its total lack of intelligent understanding of the country. Its teaching is suited to prepare men for trade, but not for agriculture. Instead of making farmers of the sons of farmers, the majority of whom should expect to follow the profession of their fathers, the country school prepares them for buying and selling, for calculation and for store keeping. It starts the stream of country boys in the direction of the village store, the end of which is the department store or clerical occupation in a great city.

The improvement of the one-room rural school is possible within narrow limits only. A recent book[33] gives most sympathetic attention to this problem of improvement, while asserting that reorganization alone will be adequate to the situation. But there are improvements which, within the limitations of the one-room school, are possible. The supervision of these schools may be made closer and more efficient. By bringing to bear upon them the oversight of experts in education the grade of teaching may be elevated. The important principle is to discover the proper unit of supervision. The town is too small and the county unit too large. It is probable that with some rearrangement the county can be made the proper unit of supervision, but the school should determine its problems on a principle independent of political divisions. The first need of the country school at the present time is to be adapted, by such supervision of the district as shall correlate the country school with the units of population resident in the country. In some places the district to be supervised by one superintendent should be not much larger than a township, in other places it might approach the bounds of a county, but in all instances the supervising officer should have the relation of an employed expert to the problems of the country. It is not enough that untrained farmers or tradesmen occasionally visit the school in an indifferent manner. Their indifference is the natural attitude of men untrained in the task assigned to them. The officer who supervises should be well adapted to his task and should visit with frequency, criticize with trained intelligence, and train his teachers in a constructive educational policy suitable to the district.

Another improvement in rural schools may be had in a better normal training of the teachers. At the present time the normal schools are inadequate to the task of supplying teachers and beyond the supplying of teachers for the city, they stop short. The training of teachers for country schools must become a part of the normal provision for the states.

The minimum salary for teachers is a most important consideration. A primary difficulty in the present situation is that the country school teacher is ill paid. It is therefore impossible to secure and to retain in the country persons of adequate mental and cultural value. In order to secure funds for better payment of teachers, a readjustment of the taxation in the various states is probably necessary, but this will be slow of accomplishment. Some results may be effected in another way by a minimum salary for teachers throughout the State. In this manner a better grade of teachers can be secured for all schools.

The most important improvement, however, in the country schools is almost impossible in the one-room school. It is the teaching of the gospel of the land. Out around the country school lies the open book of nature. First of books the pupils should learn to read the book of nature. The life of the birds and animals, so familiar to the children yet so little known; the growth of plants, their beauty and their use, and the nature, the tillage and the maintenance of the soil, are all lessons easy to impart to those who are themselves instructed, yet the present system of shifting teachers makes such instruction impossible. It is the opinion of expert educators that the study of agriculture is impossible in the one-room country school. With this opinion the writer agrees, yet so great is the necessity of this very improvement and so slow will be the changes which look to consolidation of schools, that effort should be made at once by those in charge of the country school to teach the children the lesson of the soil, of plant life, of animal and bird life and of the world about them. These lessons are necessary to their economic success. They are the very beginning of their happiness in the country and of love for the country. In teaching them the country school can best perform its duty to the present generation.

The centralizing of country schools is the adequate solution of the present situation. By this means the children from a wide area are brought to a modern school building suitably placed in the country. When necessary they are transported to and from the schools in wagons hired for that purpose, in charge of reliable drivers. In this consolidated school building, which has taken the place of three, five or even seven one-room district schools now abandoned, there shall be at least two and it may be five teachers. This group of teachers forms a permanent nucleus and a center for the life of the country. The children are assembled in a sufficient number to provide a large group, and their social life is enjoyable as well as mentally stimulating. The weaknesses of the one-room district school are in this institution corrected. There is permanence in the teaching force, professional service, cumulative influence, and the interests of the community find in the school a loyal center of discussion. The consolidated rural school is an institution for the first time adequate to the task of building up the whole population.

The first use to which the centralized rural school is adapted is to halt the exodus from the country. The country community has now no check upon the departure of its best people. The sifting of the country community is done, not by the community itself, but by outside forces, unfriendly and unintelligent as to the interests of the country. The centralized rural school will retain in the country those who should be interested in the country community. This will be accomplished by the study of agriculture, which can adequately be taught only in a graded school in the country. But much can be done even by the supply of an adequate system of education in the country community.

At Rock Creek, Illinois, the retirement of farmers to the cities and towns had gone so far in 1905 that the intelligent and devoted members of the community, who did not desire to leave the place where their grandfathers had first broken the prairie sod, took counsel as to the welfare of the community. The superficial fact of most consequence was the presence of tenant farmers in the community. These tenants, however desirable personally as neighbors, were of a short term of residence. From one to five years was their longest term on one farm. The social life of the community and its religious interests were beginning to suffer. The sons of the early settlers, therefore, laid their plans by which to control the selection of tenants.

Their first plan was to form a farmer's union or syndicate, which should undertake to run the farms of those who were retiring from the land. This plan seemed promising and the makers of it congratulated themselves upon controlling the future of the community. But reflection showed that this method would have the effect of retiring more farmers from the land and turning over the hiring of tenants to the few remaining loyal owners, who would come in a short time to constitute the local real estate agencies; while the majority of the owners would enjoy themselves in towns and villages round about.

The result was that the farmers undertook not to control the tenancy, but to build up the community itself. They deliberately undertook the reconstruction of the schools. Three school districts were merged in one. An adequate building in which a group of teachers is employed was erected. The children are transported in wagons hired for that purpose. The grounds about the school building are made pleasant; and the school, located near the manse and the church which had most influenced the change, forms now a strong community center for a wide region.

The result is all that could be desired. The retirement from the farms has been checked; the neighborhood has become specially desirable for residence. Farmers who had gone to the town find now that as good or better schools are to be had in the community where their property lies and where they pay their taxes. The rental price of land has increased and it is difficult for tenants to come into the community unless they are willing to pay an added rental in return for better school privileges. The whole countryside has received an impetus and the depression of country life has for this community departed. Mr. R. E. Bone, "the fourth red-headed Presbyterian elder Bone in the Rock Creek Church," takes great pride in the building up of the community which has been effected through the consolidated school.

A more mature example is the John Swaney Consolidated School in Illinois. Here the leadership and generosity of John Swaney, a member of the Society of Friends, have effected the consolidation of four school districts at a point two miles from the village of McNab. This purely rural consolidation was not effected without a contest. Indeed the McNab school has had to fight for the gains it has made from the very beginning. The school-house stands by the roadside, not even surrounded by a group of residences. The grounds are peculiarly beautiful, being shaded by great trees and extending in ample lawn about the building. In the rear are stables for the horses which transport the children daily from the outer bounds of the consolidated district.

The school building contains four class-rooms with physical and chemical laboratories. In one room are apparatus for cooking and sewing. In the basement is a well-lighted shop where benches for manual training are placed at the use of the boys. In the third story is an auditorium so ample as to accommodate a basket-ball game and about two hundred spectators. Frequent gatherings occur here in a simple spontaneous way. This common school has all the social and intellectual power of the old-fashioned country academy which once was so useful in the Eastern States. A principal and four women teachers form the faculty of the John Swaney school. The number of scholars in 1910 was one hundred and five, the number of boys slightly exceeding that of girls. Of these about half were in the primary and the grammar grades and about half in the high school. Of the latter some twenty-five were tuition pupils from outside of the district, so that the actual school group of the McNab consolidated school, the children of the tax-payers, was in that year eighty in number.

The difference between the social life of eighty young people and eight or eighteen young people, which one may find in a one-room school in the country anywhere, is very great. Needless to say that the John Swaney school has athletic teams, tennis tournament, baseball games, literary and debating contests and is a strong aggressive force lending life and vitality to the whole countryside. The older families of the neighborhood are Quakers. The newer half of the population is of Germanic stock. The influence of the school is upon all its pupils. The high school retains practically all the sons of the Quaker families and some of the newer population whose interest in education is less.

But the crowning distinction of the John Swaney school is in its study of agriculture, or broadly speaking in its industrial training. For with agriculture must be classed manual training and domestic science. By John Swaney's generosity twenty acres of land were presented to the State for an experiment farm. This land adjoins the school grounds and a regular part of the curriculum for the young men is the study of agriculture. The result of this interpretation of country life in forms of scholarship is that substantially all the graduates of the high school annually go to the State University for training in scientific agriculture, expecting to return to the farms and become rural residents of Illinois. At the present time no more profitable training could be given these young men and women. But aside from this economic consideration, the social and moral value to the community in the return of these young men and women to their own soil and the scenes of their childhood is beyond estimation. The Quaker Meeting in this community is not "laid down;" the church is not abandoned. Indeed all the activities of the community are built up and the best of the community perpetuated through the medium of this modern consolidated school.

To sum up this chapter, the improvement of the one-room common schools is possible, but for the satisfaction of the needs of the modern country community that improvement is inadequate. The one-room country school is an institution which in itself cannot be made to minister to modern community life. It is simple and modern life is complete. It is casual and irregular while the forces with which it has to deal are steady-going and cumulative in their power. It is inexpert and served by no specialized professional class, while modern life calls for the service of experts in every direction. It has no social value, while modern life is always social in its forms of action and requires social interpretation for its best effects.

A closing word should be said for a type of schools which has been perfected in Denmark. They are known as the "Folk High Schools." These are popular schools, adapted to the teaching of adults to get a living. Denmark has an adequate supply of technical schools, and these latter are not established to train scholars or scientists. Their use is to fit men and women to meet the issues of life, at home, hand in hand, with skill and enthusiasm. They use few text-books and have no examinations, and six months are sufficient for a course of study. The schools are religious and their foundation was the work of Rev. N. F. S. Grundtvig. In songs and in patriotic exercises, all their own, they idealize country life and the work of the mechanic.

The academies of earlier days in rural America were centers of a similar influence. But with the growth of the public-school system these have been generally abandoned. It is a question whether some of them would not serve a need which is felt today, if only they would train men for modern country life with the same success which they once had in training leaders for a former period.

Then all the people lived in the country. Now only a third of the people are concerned with the farm. So that the education of the modern country boy or girl would require to be carried on in a different manner, in order to retain the best of them in the country. The example of the "Folk Schools" offers an analogy to what might be done in American country life, if the academy could be transformed into an institution for the education of the young in the country.

All observers testify that the "Folk High Schools" have been the first influence in transforming Denmark in the past forty years, from a nation economically inferior to a nation rich and prosperous. This change has been wrought through the betterment of the farmers and other country people, by means of education in country life; and this education has been economic, patriotic, co-operative and religious. So perfect has it been that it is hard to analyze; but the acknowledged center of it has been a system of schools in which the problem of living is taught as a religion, an enthusiasm and a culture.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 33: "The American Rural School," H. W. Foght.]



XII

RURAL MORALITY

The moral standards of the pioneer type and of the land-farmer type prevail in the country. The world economy has precipitated on the farm an era of exploitation which has not yet reached its highest point. Meantime, according to the ethical ideals of the pioneer and of the farmer, country people are moral.

The investigations of the Country Life Commission brought general testimony to the high standards of personal life which prevail in the country. In such a representative state as Pennsylvania the standard of conduct between the sexes was found to be good. The testimony of physicians, among the best of rural observers, was nearly unanimous, in Pennsylvania, to the good moral conditions prevailing in the intercourse of men and women in the country. This indicates that the farmer economy had superseded the economy of the pioneer.

The moral problem of the pioneer period consisted of a struggle for honesty in business contracts, and purity in the relation of men and women. The story of every church in New England and Pennsylvania, until about 1835 at which Professor Ross dates the beginning of the farmer period, shows the bitter struggle between the standard accepted by the church and that of the individuals who failed to conform. The standard was inherited from the older communities of Europe. The conduct of individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living. Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in Duchess County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were more cases of adultery considered by Oblong Meeting in every average year of the eighteenth century than were known to the whole community in any ten years at the close of the nineteenth century. The farmer economy in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in which individual action and independent personal initiative were the prevailing mode.

The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet endowed with social standards. He knows that it is right to give full measure when he sells a commodity, but he does not yet see the evil of breaches of contract. Farmers of high standing in their communities for their personal character, who are truthful and "honest" in such contractual relations as come down from their fathers, have been known to use the school system of the town for their own private profit, or that of members of their families, and to ignore financial obligations which belong to the new period, in which money values have taken the place of barter values.

A good illustration is that of a deacon in a country church, whom I once knew. His word was proverbially truthful. As widely as he was known his reputation for piety and simple truthfulness, for honesty and purity of life were universal. I do not think that he was consciously insincere, but as a trustee in administering a fund devoted to public uses he seemed to have a clear eye for only those enterprises through which he or members of his family could indirectly secure incomes. Entrusted with a public service which involved the improvement of the school system, so far as he acted individually and without prompting by those who had been accustomed all their lives to modern methods, his action was that of loyalty to his own family and relationship. In so doing he regularly would betray the community and the public interest. Yet he seemed to do this ingenuously and without any conception of the moral standards of people used to the values of money.

I have known the same man, whose standing among farmers was that of a blameless religious man, to borrow money, and in the period of the loan so to conduct himself as to forfeit the respect of people used to handling money. To them he seemed to be a conscious and deliberate grafter. The explanation in my mind is that he suffered from the transition out of the pioneer and farmer economy into the economy of the exploiter.

The history of the sale of lands in the country, in the recent exploitation of farm-lands, contains many stories of the breach of contract of farmers, and the inability of the farmer to sell wisely and at the same time honestly. Contrasting the farmer in his knowledge of financial obligation with the broker in the Stock Exchange, the latter type stands out in strong contrast as an admirable example of financial honesty to contracts, even if they be verbal only. The farmer on the other hand has no conception of the relations on which the financial system must be built. He is not an exploiter to begin with, but a farmer.

The transition from the older economy to the new is illustrated in the dairy industry which surrounds every great city. The dairy farmer has ideas of right and wrong which are purely individualistic. He believes that he should not cheat the customer in the quantity of milk. He recognizes that it is wrong, therefore, to water the milk, but he has no conception of social morality concerning milk. He gives full measure: but he cares nothing about purity of milk. He is restless and feels himself oppressed under the demands of the inspector from the city, for ventilation of his barns and for protection of the milk from impurity. I have known few milk farmers who believed in giving pure milk and I never knew one whose conscience was at ease in watering milk. That is, they all believe in good measure and none believes in the principle of sanitation. They stand at the transition from the old economy to the new.

A story is told among agricultural teachers in New York State to the effect that an inspector following the trail of disease in a small city traced it to impure milk supplied by a certain farm. In the absence of the man he insisted on inspecting the dairy arrangements, being followed from room to room by the farmer's indignant wife. Finally he said, "Show me the strainer which you use in the milk," and she brought an old shirt, very much soiled. Looking at it in dismay the inspector said, "Could you not, at least, use a clean shirt?" At this the woman's patience gave way and she declared, "Well, you needn't expect me to use a clean shirt to strain dirty milk!"

The packing of apples for market illustrates the transition from the farmer economy in which the ethical standards are those of the household, or family group, to the world economy in which the moral standards are those of the world market. Apples are packed by all classes of farmers, regardless of varying religious profession, in an indifferent manner. The typical farmer hopes by competition with his neighbors to gain a possibly better price. Instances of such successes as come to certain family groups are endlessly discussed by farmers; and the highest ideal that one meets among farmers who sell apples throughout the Eastern States is expressed in the instance of some family who have improved their own farm and their own orchard, so as to win for the family or the farm a reputation in some particular market and thus to gain a higher price.

Contrast with this the marketing of apples by the Western fruit growers' Associations. Among them, as for instance in the Hood Valley, Oregon, apples are packed not by the farm owner with a view to competing with his neighbors, but by the committee representing the whole district. The individual farmer has no access to the market. He cannot hide his poor fruit in an envelope of his best fruit, so as to deceive the buyer. The committee has a reputation to maintain on behalf of the association, not of the individual. The apples are marketed on their merits in accordance with a certain standard. The impersonal demands of the world economy are kept in mind. The individual farmer and farm are forgotten. The result is that these far western growers, whose fruit is said in the East to be inferior in flavor to the apples of New York and New England, can sell their product in the eastern market at a higher price per box than the New York or New England farmer can secure per barrel.

The transition from farming to exploiting has brought out in full view the wastefulness of the farmer economy which is being succeeded by exploitation. The whole doctrine of conservation belongs in this transition. Economy means, literally, housekeeping. The same meaning appears in the word husbandry. It is a principle of saving. Its extraordinary value at the present time is due to our sudden sense of the wastefulness of farm life in recent years. Edward van Alstyne, an agricultural authority in New York, says, "We farmers think we are most economical, but we are the most wasteful of all men." The wastefulness of American farming begins in the tillage of too many acres. The farmer prefers wide fields even at the cost of poor crops.

The New York Central Railroad, which is carrying on a propaganda of husbandry, has appointed a man as expert farmer who increased the yield of potatoes on his land from sixty to three hundred bushels per acre. This brings out clearly that his neighbors are still producing sixty bushels per acre, wasting four-fifths of their land values. This waste is a wrong that should be denounced in the country church just as sternly as doctrinal sins, which have occupied the attention of country ministers in the past.

Expert farmers say that if corn-stalks for fodder are left out in the field until they are fed to the cattle they lose forty to fifty per cent of their food values. This waste is sinful, but the sin is visible only in the new economy of exploitation which counts all values in terms of cash. No sooner is the sinfulness of waste observed than its connections with moral delinquencies of country people becomes clear. In the improvement of rural morality due to the sifting of country people during the farmer period, it becomes evident that among a people so serious-minded some delinquencies still remain. The immoralities that still lurk and fester in the country are due very largely to waste. This waste of human things is parallel to the waste of economic values.

In a conference there was some difficulty in persuading a certain country minister to speak. When finally he arose he said, "I am not much interested in the scientific analysis of the country church. All I am interested in is sin." One wonders whether he was dealing with the sins of the country in their causes or in their effects, or was he simply concerned with the sins which consist in opposing the doctrines of his particular denomination, whatever it was. This wastefulness of the values in the soil enters into the social life of the country. Farmers care as little for the social values as for land values. Young men and women ignore the moral importance of little things. They are not taught that coarseness is wrong. They are not made to realize that cleanliness and courtesy and reverence for the human body are of vital importance in life.

Country people are prudish and they cover with a strict reserve all discussion of the moral relations of men and women. Yet in the same communities there is loose private conversation and coarse references are common. The strict standard of the household prevails within its limits. Books and magazines must not discuss, however seriously, the problems of life. But in the intercourse of the community there is not the same care. The moral life of country people requires cultivation of the leisure hours, the casual talk, the occasional meetings of men and women, and especially of young people.

The sale of votes in every election is a fixed quantity in the life of certain country towns. It is to be counted on each year. The number of votes for sale in each town is a known proportion of the whole, and through certain counties the selling of votes is the political factor everywhere present. These uniform facts point to a common cause. That cause is the degeneration of a proportion of the rural population into peasantry.

The growth of a peasant population in America is surely our greatest danger. A peasantry is a rural population whose moral and spiritual state are controlled by their material states. There may be rich peasants, though most peasants are poor. Peasants are a specialized class, incapable of self-government and controlled by some political masters who exercise for them essential rights of citizenship. The peasants in Europe are the last to receive the ballot. In America they are the first to surrender the ballot by selling their votes.

A young minister called to a country parish denounced the sale of votes, in his first year, and publicly fixed the whole blame on a prominent political leader of the town, who was there present in the church. His criticism was resented by the whole community. He was right, and so were they. It is well to denounce the purchase of votes, but the duty of the country church to Americanize the peasant class is the greater duty. The presence of such a class in a town infallibly leads to this iniquity. The sale of votes is as bad as the sale of woman's virtue, and both have an automatic tendency to degrade the population.

The danger sign of peasantry is a degraded standard of life. In this town there is one household in which nobody works but the mother. "How they live beats me," is the public comment of the neighbors. Through the winter into that house are crowded the father and mother, two sons and two daughters, the husband of one daughter and their two children, with three other small children, whose presence in the house is due to the loose good nature of the family. There is an indolent uncle of these children. None of the household follows any gainful occupation. The table is furnished with potatoes and pork. The attraction of the household is the easy, loose, good-nature of all its members. There is no one to complain of the indolence of the five grown men who lounge about through the winter days.

The presence of such a household in a town means degradation. Three of these men can be purchased for money to vote, though they cannot be hired for money to work. The daughters of the household are an equally dangerous factor in the countryside. The cause of this moral peril is the low grade of living to which the family has sunk. There is no known state of ill-health to account for their indolence. The first duty of the church in such a community is to regenerate such a household and to lift the standard of ambition of its members.

Slowly the country town is coming to realize that its reputation as well as its progress is determined by this grade of citizen. No exceptional success on the part of one or more families and no substantial goodness by a whole grade of the population can compensate for the lowering of the standard of the whole town by these people. The life and death, the reputation and the progress of the town are dependent upon the extinguishment of these peasant conditions.

This is illustrated by the fact that where votes are for sale in a town those purchased votes determine the election in the majority of cases. They constitute the movable margin between the two parties; and by shifting them one way or the other the political policy of the town is determined. This fact illustrates the whole moral situation of the town, for just by the same flexible margin is the moral life of the town determined. The duty of the church therefore is with the people upon the economic and social margin of the life of the rural community.

The farmer's moral standards are opposed to combination. He believes in personal righteousness and family morals. He does not believe in the moral control of the individual or the household by the economic group. It has been impossible, therefore, to combine the farmers in the East in any general way so as to control their markets by maintaining a high standard of product. The only control that is dreamed of by the leaders of the farmers is the control of the quantity of their products. They do not think of combination which will control themselves, and so maintain a higher quality of product in order that thus they may dominate the market in the great city.

The present state of ethical opinion among Eastern farmers is not in sympathy with the ethical demands of city populations. The Western fruit growers' associations have fixed the standard for the farmers who raise the fruit, first of all, and by means of this standard they have conquered the market in distant cities. The standard to which they compel their members to conform is the standard of the demand in the world market. If the milk farmers about New York City are to combine they must first impose a self-denying ordinance upon their own members and furnish the city with a quality of milk in harmony with the demands of modern sanitary experts. This is an ethical principle not of the pioneer or the farmer economy, but of the new husbandry to which very few farmers have conformed.

In the building of country communities, therefore, the ethical teaching must be of a new order. There is already a general teaching of morality in the country churches. The temperance reform is a moral propaganda born of the farmer economy. The expulsion of the saloon from country places has been in obedience to the farmer's conscience. The temperance reform exhibits the transformation from individual ethics which were advocated in 1880 to communal ethics which are represented in the local option aspects of this reform. In 1880 the individual was asked to sign the pledge of total abstinence. In those days it was as important that innocent children sign the pledge as that drunkards sign it. The lists of pledge signers were padded with the names of persons who had never tasted strong drink. In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League began its agitation, which has proceeded among country people with increasing influence. The individual is ignored and the pledge is signed now by the community, by the county or by the state. The attack is not upon the individual drunkard, but upon the community institution, the saloon. This is a great gain in the direction of social ethics. It illustrates the transformation from the pioneer whose impact was upon the individual to the standards of the exploiter period in which the impact is upon the commercial institution. The local option movement has had its growth in the period of exploitation dated by Prof. Ross from 1890. In this movement the country churches have been distributing centers, the places of discussion and nuclei of moral energy.

If the general moral standards of country people are to be transformed from the pioneer formulae to those of the modern world economy, the country churches must be led by men trained in economics and reinforced by a thorough knowledge of social processes. The temperance movement already begins to show the deficiencies of a propaganda purely negative. Its leaders have shown no conspicuous sympathy with the play-ground movement, which is an essential part of the same ethical process. If the saloon is expelled something must be put in its place, but the temperance reformers have not been wise enough for substitution: they have only been skilful in expulsion. Country life, in its representative communities, suffers today from monotony and emptiness.

The ministers, teachers and other rural leaders need the training which will equip them in positive and aggressive social construction. As the economy of the exploiter comes in to transform the country community it is necessary for the preacher and the teacher to train the population in the ethical standards of the new time. Naturally new contractual relations will prevail in business, and trusts will be committed to the leading men in the farming community, for which they need definite moral preparation. There is many a farmer in the United States who may be safely entrusted with the honor of a woman, but cannot be entrusted with a million dollars to spend in the interest of the community. In many a country community it is perfectly safe to leave the door unlocked, but it is not safe to purchase a quart of milk for a child. There is many a farmer from whom it is morally safe to purchase an acre of ground, but one cannot be sure in purchasing a cow from him that she will not be tuberculous. These are new standards not required by the old economy and not taught in the old meeting-house.

One defect of the country church at the present time is that it has for the countryman no message appropriate to the struggle in which he is actually attempting to do right. Many churches in the country teach only the standards of right and wrong to which the farmers already conform. For a short time a new minister is popular with them because his new voice and his fresh elocution contain a subtle flattery. He denounces the sins to which they are not inclined and praises the virtues which they have learned to practise from their fathers. But after about six months of such preaching the farmer wearies of a preacher with no new message. Indeed the countryman is puzzled and perplexed by modern situations about which the minister has no knowledge. The farmer is forced to be an economist, but the minister has never studied economics. The farmer is face to face with problems of exploitation. The values not merely of land but of money are in his thought. But the preacher has had no training in finance and he cannot speak wisely or surely upon the marginal problems with which the farmer is perplexed.

The household economy of the farm is no longer sufficient. The sins are not merely those of adultery and disobedience and disloyalty. They are the sins of the world market and the world economy. In these moral situations the minister is silent. He knows nothing about them. He is inclined merely to object if the farmer purchases an automobile. He does not see what the automobile is to do for the agriculturist. Sunday observance, total abstinence, family purity, honesty as to personal property, these are his stock in trade and these alone. It requires, therefore, a genius to preach in the country, because only the most brilliant preaching can render traditional moral standards interesting among country people.

It is proverbial among ministers that "the best preachers are needed in the country." The reason for this is that none of the preachers has any but an outworn standard to preach. They must reinforce it with extraordinary eloquence in order to keep it attractive. Very ordinary men, however, if they understand the modern spirit, can hold the attention of country people. The grange has ministered to the farmer's conscience. Yet its leaders have been commonplace men, unknown to the nation at large. The great movements which have influenced the farmer in the past twenty years have most of them been pushed to success by men unknown to any but farmers. What orator has come into national prominence out of the enterprises of agricultural life in the past two decades? The farmer does not need great eloquence, but he does need a thorough understanding of the moral and spiritual situations arising out of the exploiter process in which he is immersed. He needs moral teachers for the era of husbandry which is dawning in the country.

"There is an actual and most conspicuous dearth of leadership of a high order in rural life. This is evident when we consider the economic and social importance of the agriculturists. The agriculturists constitute about half of our population, they owned over 21 per cent of the total wealth in 1900, and in 1909 their products had a value of $8,760,000, or just about one-third that of the entire nation for that year. Yet this vast and fundamental element of our nation elects no farmer presidents, has scarcely any of its members in congress, but few in state legislatures as compared with other classes; it has no governors nor judges. In fact, this class is almost without leadership in the sphere of political life and must depend on representatives of other classes to secure justice. Economically it is relatively powerless likewise, possessing practically no control over markets and prices through organization in an age when organization dominates all economic lines, accepting interest rates and freight rates offered it without the ability to check or regulate them, and buying its goods at whatever prices the industrial producers set. Its leadership up to the present time has been of the sporadic and discontinuous sort. It has been individualistic, lacking social outlook and vision. Consequently for community purposes its significance has been slight."[34]

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 34: Prof. John M. Gillette, in American Journal of Sociology, March, 1910.]



XIII

RECREATION

The time has passed in which the amusements of the community can be neglected or dismissed with mere condemnation. In the husbandry of the country every factor must be counted. We are dealing no longer with a fatalistic country life, but with the economy of all resources. Therefore the neglecting of the play life and ignoring the leisure occupations of a country people are inconsistent with the new economy.

Moreover the ancient method of condemning all recreations passed away with the austere economy of earlier days. The churches in the country no longer discipline their members for "going to frolics." The country community no longer is of one mind as to the standard by which recreation shall be governed. Yet every event of this sort is closely inspected by the general attention.

The experience of the cities, in which social control has gone much farther than in the country under the deliberate harmonizing of life with economic principles, has much to contribute for the building up of rural society through various means, among which is recreation.

The need of recreative activities in the country is shown by recent surveys undertaken in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky by the Presbyterian Department of Church and Country Life. Generally, throughout the farming population, it was discovered that no common occasions and no common experiences fell to the lot of the country community. In the course of the round year there is, in thousands of farming communities in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, no single meeting that brings all the people together. The small town has its fireman's parade, to the small city comes once a year the circus and to the great city comes an anniversary or an exposition. Every year there is some common experience which welds the population, increases acquaintance and intensifies social unity. The tillage of the soil in those farming communities from which the blacksmith, the storekeeper, the peddler and the shoemaker have departed, is very lonely.

The telephone is the new system of nerves for the rural organism, but the telephone is a cold, steel wire instead of the warm and cordial personal meetings with which the countryside was once enlivened. In eighty country towns in Pennsylvania, of which fifty are purely agricultural, we found in our survey only three that had a common leadership and a common assembling. The life of the people in these communities is so solitary as to be almost repellent. Their social habits are those of aggressive loneliness. This isolation in the pioneer days made the country people cordial to the visitor: but in the coming of the new economy the farmer shrinks from strangers, because he has become accustomed to social divisions and classifications in which he feels himself inferior; so that the loneliness of country life has become not merely geographical, but sociological. The farmer is shut in not merely by distances in miles, but by distances of social aversion and suspicion. Difference has become a more hostile influence in the country than distance.

Organized industry necessitates organized recreation. The subjection of mind and body to machine labor requires a reaction in the form of play. All factory and industrial populations, without exception, provide themselves with play-grounds of some sort. In the city where no public provision is made the streets are used by the boys for their games, even at the risk of injury or death from the passing traffic. Jane Addams has shown, in a fine literary appeal in her "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," the necessity of some provision for the recreations of the young and of working people in a great city.

This necessity is not primarily due to congestion of the population. Its real sources are in the system and organization by which modern work is done. This necessity is as characteristic of the rural community as it is of the city, for on the farms as well as in the factory towns labor is performed by machinery. This means that through the working hours of the day, from eight to twelve in number, the attention of the worker must be concentrated upon one task, patiently and steadfastly pursued. The machine worker exerts himself in the control of great powers, horse power or steam power, committed to his charge. He has no opportunity for languor or rest. He has no choice. His job drives him. His movements are fixed and regulated by the nature of the machine with which he is working, and of the task to be accomplished. At the end of the day he has acted involuntarily and mechanically until his own powers of will and choice are accumulated. Being repressed through long hours of prescribed labor he is ready for a rebound. His nature demands self-expression. This self-expression takes the form of play.

The recreation which results is organized. The laborer in a factory or on a railroad is conscious of organization by the very nature of his work. He labors with a machine driven by powers unseen but of whose operation he is aware, in a great plant wherein his own labor is co-ordinated with that of other workers like unto himself. The hours of self-devotion and prescribed attention leave him free for sympathy with the other workers, whose action and whose toil are organized with his own, and on whose skill and devotion his life and limb and the continuance of his job are dependent. When he turns to recreation he naturally seeks to continue the silent communion with his fellow-workers. The repressed personal energies are already prepared for team work. He comes out of the factory bubbling over with good fellowship and seeking for comradeship in the self-expression which the long hours of the day have denied him.

The result is that in every factory town the open spaces are devoted to playground uses. Vacant lots, unoccupied fields, and the open street are used by men and boys for their games.

Exactly the same experience results from school and college organization of education work. The student in the common schools does not choose his course; it is prescribed for him by his family and by society. He does not go to school because he is mentally ambitious, but because the standards of universal education require it of him. Especially in the colleges which inherit a great name and attract young men and women for social advantage, the students are characterized by an involuntary subjection to the routine of modern pedagogy. Educational discipline is imposed upon them through the long hours of lectures and laboratory and recitations. The students in high school and college are accumulating a rebound of voluntary action. This organized self-expression takes the form of school and college athletics, which has long since been adopted as a part of the educational routine. No considerable number of educators are in favor of abolishing it, and only a few venture to believe in restricting college athletics. Its moral value is everywhere tacitly recognized, and pretty generally it is consciously accepted by college and school faculties.

Play of this sort has great moral value. We are hired to work, and we do it without choice or enthusiasm, but in play the natural forces and the personal choice are at their maximum. Every action is chosen and is saturated with the pleasure of self-expression. The result is that play has high ethical value.