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 reorganisation of the farmer's business. They saw that foreign competition was not, as was commonly supposed, a visitation of Providence upon the farmers of the British Islands, but a natural economic revolution of permanent effect. Our message to Irish farmers was that they must imitate the methods of their Continental competitors, who were defeating them in their own markets simply by superior organisation. After five years of individual propagandism, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was formed in 1894 to meet the demand for instruction as to the formation and the working of cooperative societies, a demand to which it was beyond the means of the few pioneers to respond.

Two decades of steady development have confirmed the soundness of the original scheme, and a brief account of agricultural cooperation in Ireland will be of interest to any reader who has persevered so far. The conditions were in some respects favourable. The farms are small and their owners belong to the class to which cooperation brings most immediate benefit. The Irish peasantry are highly intelligent. They lack the strong individualism of the English, but they have highly developed associative instincts. For this reason cooperation, an alternative to communism,—which they abhor,—comes naturally to them. On the other hand, the ease with which they can be organised makes them peculiarly amenable to political influence. In backward rural communities the trader is almost invariably the political boss. He is a leader of agrarian agitation, in which he can safely advocate principles he would not like to see applied to the relations between himself and his customers. He bitterly opposes cooperation, which throws inconvenient light upon those relations. We are able to persuade the more enlightened rural traders that economies effected in agricultural production will raise the standard of living of his customers and make them larger consumers of general commodities and more punctual in their payments. But in the majority of cases the agricultural organiser finds politics in sharp conflict with business, and has a hard row to hoe. So, while we have advantages in organising Irish farmers, we have also, largely owing to well-known historical causes, to overcome difficulties which have no counterpart in the United States or England.

Nevertheless, we managed to make progress. We began with the dairying industry, and already half the export of Irish butter comes from the cooperative societies we established. Organised bodies of farmers are learning to purchase their agricultural requirements intelligently and economically. They are also beginning to adopt the methods of the organised foreign farmer in controlling the sale of their butter, eggs and poultry in the British markets. 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 this last portion of the Irish programme that by far the most interesting study of the cooperative 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 cooperation which will have suggestive value for American farmers. I will therefore give a brief description of our agricultural cooperative credit associations.

The organisation was introduced in the middle of the last century by a German Burgomaster, the now famous Herr Raiffeisen. He set himself to provide the means of escape from the degrading indebtedness to storekeepers and usurers which is the almost invariable lot of poor peasantries. His scheme performs an apparent miracle. 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 capitalisation of their honesty and industry. The way in which this is done is remarkably ingenious. The credit society is organised 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 business transacted is, I think, a remarkable testimony to the value of the cooperative system. The details I have given illustrate the important distinction between cooperation, 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 ordinary banks lend money to agriculturists for a term (generally ninety days) which has been fixed to suit the needs of town business. Thus, a farmer borrowing money to sow a crop, or to purchase young cattle, is obliged to repay his loan, in the first instance, before the crop is harvested, and in the second, before the cattle mature and are marketable. Far more important, however, than these not inconsiderable economic advantages are the social benefits which are derived by bringing people together to achieve in a very definite and practical way the aim of all cooperative effort—self-help by mutual help.

Our cooperative movement, taken as a whole, is to-day represented by nearly one thousand farmers' organisations, with an aggregate membership of some one hundred thousand persons, mostly heads of families. Its business turnover last year was twelve and a half million dollars. In estimating the significance of these figures, American readers must not 'think in continents,' and must give more weight to the moral than to the material achievement. As I have explained, the cooperative system requires for its success the exercise of higher moral qualities than does the joint stock company. Once a cooperative society becomes a soulless corporation, its days are numbered. It requires also the diffusion of a good deal of economic thought among its members, and this, also, is no small matter in the conditions. The most striking fact about this work in Ireland is that while in its earlier years organisation consisted mainly in expounding and commending to farmers the cooperative principle, we now find that the principle is taken for granted and the only question upon which advice is needed is how to apply it. The progress of agricultural cooperation depends largely on the character of the community; its commercial value may be measured by the extent to which it develops in the community the mental and moral qualities essential to success.[6]

In agricultural cooperation, Ireland can claim to have shown the way to the United Kingdom. Ten years ago, after the Irish movement had been launched, the English rural reformers started a movement on exactly the same lines, even founding on the Irish model an English Agricultural Organisation Society. An Irishman, who had studied cooperation at home, was selected as its chief executive officer. Five years later, a Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society took the field. Both in England and in Scotland the chief difficulty to be overcome is the intense individualism of the farmers, and perhaps some lack of altruism. The large farmers did not feel the need of cooperation, and where the natural leader of the rural community will not lead, the small cultivator cannot follow. Whether the same difficulties have prevented any considerable adoption of agricultural cooperation in the United States, it is not necessary to inquire. It is certain that the underlying principles approved by every progressive rural, community in Europe have not so far exercised more than an occasional and fitful influence upon the rural economy of the American Republic.

If I have given in these pages a true explanation of the deplorable backwardness of American farmers in the matter of business combination when compared with all other American workers, those who take part in the movement which is to provide the remedy will have set themselves a task as hopeful as it is interesting. Americans as a people are addicted to associated action. I have seen the principle of cooperation developed to the highest point in the ranching industry in the days of the unfenced range. Our cattle used to roam at large, the only means of identifying them being certain registered marks made by the branding-iron and the knife. The individual owner would have had no more property in his herd than he would have had in so many fishes in the sea but for a very effective cooperative organisation. The Stock Association, with its 'round-ups' and its occasional resort to the Supreme Court of Judge Lynch, were an adequate substitute for the title deeds to the lands, and for fences horse-high, bull-strong and hog-tight. But then we were in the Arid Belt and the frontier-pioneer stage; we had no politics and no politicians. I must return, however, to the less exciting, but I suppose more important, life of the regular farmer, and consider his efforts at organisation.

Instances can be multiplied where the cooperative system has been adopted with immensely beneficial results; but in too many cases it has been abandoned. On the other hand, Granges, Institutes, Clubs, Leagues, Alliances and a multitude of miscellaneous farmers' associations have been organised for social, religious, political and economic objects. From my study of the work done by these bodies, the impression left is that almost everything that can be done better by working together than by working separately has been at some time the subject of organised effort. But these manifestations of activity have been fitful and sporadic. They were commonly marked by some or all of the same defects—mutual distrust, divided counsels, ignorance of what others were doing, want of continuity and impatience of results. Many organisations, after winning some advantages,—over the railroads for instance,—fell into abeyance or even out of existence; others lapsed under the enervating influence of a little temporary prosperity, such as a few years of better prices. The truth is, American farmers have had the will to organise, but they have missed the way.[7]

The political influence of the farming community has for this reason never been commensurate either with the numerical strength of its members or the magnitude of their share in the nation's work. It is true that the Federal Department of Agriculture, appropriations for Agricultural Colleges, some railway legislation and other boons to farmers, are to be attributed to the efforts of their organisations. Yet, as compared with the influence exercised upon National affairs by the farmers of, say, France and Denmark, the American farmer has but a small influence upon legislation and administration affecting his interests. What better proof of this could be given than the absence of a Parcels Post in the United States? The whole farming community are agreed as to the need for this boon to the dwellers of the open country, and yet they have not succeeded in winning it against the opposition of the Express Companies, because it is merely a farmers' and not a townsmen's grievance. And not only political impotence, but political inertia, result from the lack of organisation. The state of the country roads—one of the greatest disabilities under which country life in the United States still suffers—is as good an instance as I know. Congress has shown itself well disposed towards the farmer, but not always so the State governments, and the good intentions of Congress on the roads question are largely nullified owing to the failure of one-third of the States to establish highway commissions, or make other provision for expending such amounts as might be voted to them by Congress. Here, as in the cases of the transit and marketing problems, we see the need for a strong, central, permanent organisation, fitted alike to direct local or promote National action; an association capable of securing the legislative protection of the farmer's interests, and an organisation fitted to further the business side of his industry. In fact, this need is urgent, and a cooperative movement of National dimensions should be established to meet it. Had such a movement been started after the War, or even twenty years later, the American farmer would be in a far stronger position to-day, and much misdirected effort would have been saved.

I have now tried to explain the weak spot in American rural economy. It may be regarded from a more general point of view. If we were considering the life of some commercial or industrial community and trying to forecast its future development, one of the first things we should note would be its general business methods. No manufacturing concern with a defective office administration and incompetent travellers could survive, even if it had an Archimedes or an Edison in supreme control. I cannot see any reason why an agricultural community should expect to prosper while the industry by which its members live retains its present business organisation. I have urged that as things are, the farming interest is at a fatal disadvantage in the purchase of agricultural requirements, in the sale of agricultural produce, and in obtaining proper credit facilities. Whatever the cause—and I have set down those which I regard as the chief among them—American farmers have still to learn that they are subject to a law of modern business which governs all their country's industrial activities—the law that each body of workers engaged in supplying the modern market must combine, or be worsted at every turn in competition with those who do.

I do not much fear that this general principle, overlooked, perhaps, because it was too obvious to be worth enforcing, will be disputed. I hope I may gain acceptance for my further contention that the inability of American farmers to sustain an effective business organisation has been due simply to the fact that the not obvious distinction between the capitalistic and the cooperative basis of combination suitable to town and country respectively was missed. For it will then be clear why, in the working out of Mr. Roosevelt's formula, better business must precede and form the basis of better farming and better living. The conviction that in this general procedure lies the one hope of solving the problem under review accounts for the otherwise disproportionate space given to that aspect of rural life which is of the least interest to the general reader.

I shall now attempt to determine the principles which must be applied to the solution of our problem. Those who have followed the arguments up to this point will have a pretty clear idea of the general drift of my conclusions. The substitution in rural economy of the cooperative for the competitive principle, which I have so far advocated as a matter of business prudence, will be seen to have a wider import. This course will be shown to have an important bearing upon the application of the new knowledge to the oldest industry and also upon the building of a new rural civilisation we must provide for the dwellers of the open country a larger share of the intellectual and social pleasures for the want of which those most needed in the country are too often drawn to the town.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] I should expect the negroes in the Southern States to be very good subjects for agricultural organisation. I have discussed this question with the staff of the Hampton Institute in Virginia—a fine body of men, doing noble work. The Principal, the Rev. H. B. Frissell, D.D., whose judgment in this matter is probably the weightiest in the United States, and his leading assistants, both white and coloured, are of the same opinion.

[5] Where capital is, in rare instances, subscribed by persons other than farmers, it is usually invested less as a commercial speculation than as an act of friendship on the part of the investor, who in no case exercises more control than his one vote affords.

[6] Readers who are sufficiently interested in the rural life movement in Ireland will find a full description of it in my book, "Ireland in the New Century," John Murray, London, and E. P. Dutton, New York.

[7] Mr. John Lee Coulter contributed to the Yale Review for November, 1909, an article on Organization among the farmers of the United States which is a most valuable summary of the important facts.



CHAPTER VI

THE WAY TO BETTER FARMING AND BETTER LIVING

In no way is the contrast between rural and urban civilisation more marked than in the application of the teachings of modern science to their respective industries. Even the most important mechanical inventions were rather forced upon the farmer by the efficient selling organisation of the city manufacturers than demanded by him as a result of good instruction in farming. On the mammoth wheat farms, where, as the fable ran, the plough that started out one morning returned on the adjoining furrow the following day, mechanical science was indeed called in, but only to perpetrate the greatest soil robbery in agricultural history. Application of science to legitimate agriculture is comparatively new. In my ranching and farming days I well remember how general was the disbelief in its practical value throughout the Middle and Far West. In cowboy terminology, all scientists were classified as "bug-hunters," and farmers generally had no use for the theorist. The non-agricultural community had naturally no higher appreciation of the farmer's calling than he himself displayed. When some Universities first developed agricultural courses, the students who entered for them were nicknamed "aggies," and were not regarded as adding much to the dignity of a seat of higher learning. The Department of Agriculture was looked upon as a source of jobs, graft being the nearest approach to any known agricultural operation.

All this is changing fast. The Federal Department of Agriculture is now perhaps the most popular and respected of the world's great administrative institutions. In the Middle West, a newly awakened public opinion has set up an honourable rivalry between such States as Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota, in developing the agricultural sides of their Universities and Colleges. None the less, Mr. James J. Hill has recently given it as his opinion that not more than one per cent of the farmers of these regions are working in direct touch with any educational institution. It is probable that this estimate leaves out of account the indirect influence of the vast amount of extension work and itinerant instruction which is embraced in the activities of the Universities and Colleges. I fear it cannot be denied that in the application of the natural sciences to the practical, and of economic science to the business of farming, the country folk are decades behind their urban fellow-citizens. And again I say the disparity is to be attributed to the difference in their respective degrees of organisation for business purposes.

The relation between business organisation and economic progress ought, I submit, to be very seriously considered by the social workers who perceive that progress is mainly a question of education. Speaking from administrative experience at home, and from a good deal of interested observation in America, I am firmly convinced that the new rural education is badly handicapped by the lack of organised bodies of farmers to act as channels for the new knowledge now made available. In some instances, I am aware, great good has been done by the formation of farmers' institutes which have been established in order to interest rural communities in educational work and to make the local arrangements for instruction by lectures, demonstrations and otherwise. But all European experience proves the superiority for this purpose of the business association to the organisation ad hoc, and has a much better chance of permanence.

Again, the influence upon rural life of the agricultural teaching of the Colleges and Universities, as exercised by their pupils, may be too easily accepted as being of greater potential utility than any work which these institutions can do amongst adults. This is a mistake. The thousands of young men who are now being trained for advanced farming too often have to restrict the practical application of their theoretic knowledge to the home circle, which is not always responsive, for a man is not usually a prophet in his own family. It is here that the educational value of cooperative societies comes in; they act as agencies through which scientific teaching may become actual practice, not in the uncertain future, but in the living present. A cooperative association has a quality which should commend it to the social reformer—the power of evoking character; it brings to the front a new type of local leader, not the best talker, but the man whose knowledge enables him to make some solid contribution to the welfare of the community.

I come now to the last part of the threefold scheme—that which aims at a better life upon the farm. The cooperative association, in virtue of its non-capitalistic basis of constitution and procedure (which, as I have explained, distinguishes it from the Joint Stock Company), demands as a condition of its business success the exercise of certain social qualities of inestimable value to the community life. It is for this reason, no doubt, that where men and women have learned to work together under this system in the business of their lives, they are easily induced to use their organisation for social and intellectual purposes also.

The new organisation of the rural community for social as well as economic purposes, which should follow from the acceptance of the opinion I have advanced, would bring with it the first effective counter-attraction to the towns. Their material advantages the country cannot hope to rival; nor can any conceivable evolution of rural life furnish a real counterpart to the cheap and garish entertainments of the modern city. Take, for example, the extravagant use of electric light for purposes of advertisement, which affords a nightly display of fireworks in any active business street of an American city far superior to the occasional exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, which was the rare treat of my childhood days. These delights—if such they be—cannot be extended into remote villages in Kansas or Nebraska; but their enchantment must be reckoned with by those who would remould the life of the open country and make it morally and mentally satisfying to those who are born to it, or who, but for its social stagnation, would prefer a rural to an urban existence.

In one of his many public references to country life, President Roosevelt attributed the rural exodus to the desire of "the more active and restless young men and women" to escape from "loneliness and lack of mental companionship."[8] He is hopeful that the rural free delivery, the telephone, the bicycle and the trolley will do much towards "lessening the isolation of farm life and making it brighter and more attractive." Many to whom I have spoken on this subject fear that the linking of the country with the town by these applications of modern science may, to some extent, operate in a direction the opposite of that which Mr. Roosevelt anticipates and desires. According to this view, the more intimate knowledge of the modern city may increase the desire to be in personal touch with it; the telephone may fail to give through the ear the satisfaction which is demanded by the eye; among the "more active and restless young men and women" the rural free delivery may circulate the dime novel and the trolley make accessible the dime museum. In the total result the occasional visit may become more and more frequent, until the duties of country life are first neglected and then abandoned.

I do not feel competent to decide between these two views, but I offer one consideration with which I think many rural reformers will agree. The attempt to bring the advantages of the city within the reach of the dwellers in the country cannot, of itself, counteract the townward tendency in so far as it is due to the causes summarised above. However rapidly, in this respect, the country may be improved, the city is sure to advance more rapidly and the gap between them to be widened. The new rural civilisation should aim at trying to develop in the country the things of the country, the very existence of which seems to have been forgotten. But, after all, it is the world within us rather than the world without us that matters in the making of society, and I must give to the social influence of the cooperative idea what I believe to be its real importance.

In Ireland, from which so much of my experience is drawn, we have found a tendency growing among farmers whose combinations are successful, to gather into one strong local association all those varied objects and activities which I have described as advocated by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. These local associations are ceasing to have one special purpose or one object only. They absorb more and more of the business of the district. One large, well-organised institution is being substituted for the numerous petty transactions of farmers with middlemen and small country traders. Gradually the Society becomes the most important institution in the district, the most important in a social as well as in an economic sense. The members feel a pride in its material expansion. They accumulate large profits, which in time become a kind of communal fund. In some cases this is used for the erection of village halls where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held, lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the association assumes the character of a rural commune, where, instead of the old basis of the commune, the joint ownership of land, a new basis for union is found in the voluntary communism of effort.

A true social organism is thus being created with common human and economic interests, and the clan feeling, which was so powerful an influence in early and mediaeval civilisations, with all its power of generating passionate loyalties, is born anew in the modern world. Our ancient Irish records show little clans with a common ownership of land hardly larger than a parish, but with all the patriotic feeling of large nations held with an intensity rare in our modern states. The history of these clans and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states shows that the social feeling assumes its most binding and powerful character where the community is large enough to allow free play to the various interests of human life, but is not so large that it becomes an abstraction to the imagination. Most of us feel no greater thrill in being one of a State with fifty million inhabitants than we do in recognising we are citizens of the solar system. The rural commune and the very small States exhibit the feeling of human solidarity in its most intense manifestations, working on itself, regenerating itself and seeking its own perfection. Combinations of agriculturists, when the rural organisation is complete, re-create in a new way the conditions where these social instincts germinate best, and it is only by this complete organisation of rural life that we can hope to build up a rural civilisation, and create those counter-attractions to urban life which will stay the exodus from the land.

I do not wish to exaggerate the interest which the rural life of my own little island may have for those who are concerned for the vast and wealthy expanses of the American farm lands. But, even here there is a genuine desire for the really simple life, which in its commonest manifestation is a thing that rather simple people talk about. In a properly organised rural neighbourhood could be developed that higher kind of attraction which is suggested by the very word neighbourhood. Once get the farmers and their families all working together at something that concerns them all, and we have the beginning of a more stable and a more social community than is likely to exist amid the constant change and bustle of the large towns, where indeed some thinkers tell us that not only the family, but also the social life, is badly breaking down. When people are really interested in each other—and this interest comes of habitually working together—the smallest personal traits or events affecting one are of interest to all. The simplest piece of amateur acting or singing, done in the village hall by one of the villagers, will arouse more criticism and more enthusiasm among his friends and neighbours than can be excited by the most consummate performance of a professional in a great city theatre, where no one in the audience knows or cares for the performer.

But if this attraction—the attraction of common work and social intercourse with a circle of friends—is to prevail in the long run over the lure which the city offers to eye and ear and pocket, there must be a change in rural education. At present country children are educated as if for the purpose of driving them into the towns. To the pleasure which the cultured city man feels in the country—because he has been taught to feel it—the country child is insensible. The country offers continual interest to the mind which has been trained to be thoughtful and observant; the town offers continual distraction to the vacant eye and brain. Yet, the education given to country children has been invented for them in the town, and it not only bears no relation to the life they are to lead, but actually attracts them towards a town career. I am aware that I am here on ground where angels—even if specialised in pedagogy—may well fear to tread. Upon the principles of a sound agricultural education pedagogues are in a normally violent state of disagreement with each other. But whatever compromise between general education and technical instruction be adopted, the resulting reform that is needed has two sides. We want two changes in the rural mind—beginning with the rural teacher's mind. First, the interest which the physical environment of the farmer provides to followers of almost every branch of science must be communicated to the agricultural classes according to their capacities. Second, that intimacy with and affection for nature, to which Wordsworth has given the highest expression, must in some way be engendered in the rural mind. In this way alone will the countryman come to realize the beauty of the life around him, as through the teaching of science he will learn to realise its truth.

Upon this reformed education, as a basis, the rural economy must be built. It must, if my view be accepted, ensure, first and foremost, the combination of farmers for business purposes in such a manner as will enable them to control their own marketing and make use of the many advantages which a command of capital gives. In all European countries—with the exception of the British Isles—statesmen have recognised the national necessity for the good business organisation of the farmer. In some cases, for example France, even Government officials expound the cooperative principle. In Denmark, the most predominantly rural country in Europe, the education both in the common and in the high school has long been so admirably related to the working lives of the agricultural classes that the people adopt spontaneously the methods of organisation which the commercial instinct they have acquired through education tells them to be suitable to the conditions. The rural reformer knows that this is the better way; but our problem is not merely the education of a rising, but the development of a grown-up generation. We cannot wait for the slow process of education to produce its effect upon the mind of the rural youth, even if there were any way of ensuring their proper training for a progressive rural life without first giving to their parents such education as they can assimilate. Direct action is called for; we have to work with adult farmers and induce them to reorganise their business upon the lines which I have attempted to define. Moreover, this is essential to the future success of the work done in the schools, in order that the trained mind of youth may not afterwards find itself baulked by the ignorant apathy or lazy conservatism of its elders.

I hold, then, that the new economy will mean a more scientific mastery of the technical side of farming, for farmers will make a much larger use of the advice, instruction and help which the Nation and the States offer them through the Department of Agriculture and the Colleges. It is equally certain that there will arise a more human social life in the rural districts, based upon the greater share of the products of the farmer's industry, which the new business organisation will enable him to retain; stimulated by the closer business relations with his fellows which that organisation will bring about, and fostered by the closer neighbourhood which is implied in a more intensive cultivation.

The development of a more intensive cultivation must carry with it a much more careful consideration of the labour problem. The difficulty of getting and keeping labour on the farm is a commonplace. I think farmers have not faced the fact that this difficulty is due in the main to their own way of doing their business. Competent men will not stay at farm labour unless it offers them continuous employment as part of a well-ordered business concern; and this is not possible unless with a greatly improved husbandry.

To-day agriculture has to compete in the labour market against other, and to many men more attractive, industries, and a marked elevation in the whole standard of life in the rural world is the best insurance of a better supply of good farm labour. Only an intensive system of farming can afford any large amount of permanent employment at decent wages to the rural labourer, and only a good supply of competent labour can render intensive farming on any large scale practicable. But the intensive system of farming not only gives regular employment and good wages; it also fits the labourer of to-day—in a country where a man can strike out for himself—to be the successful farmer of to-morrow. Nor, in these days of impersonal industrial relations, should the fact be overlooked that under an intensive system of agriculture, we find still preserved the kindly personal relation between employer and employed which contributes both to the pleasantness of life and to economic progress and security.

Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding the countryside of the worst of its present pests. Those wandering dervishes of the industrial world, the hobo, the tramp—the entire family of Weary Willies and Tired Timothys—will no longer have even an imaginary excuse for their troubled and troublesome existence. But the farmer who was the prey of these pests must, if he would be permanently rid of them, learn to respect his hired farm hand. He must provide him with a comfortable cottage and a modest garden plot upon which his young family may employ themselves; otherwise, whatever the farmer may do to attract labour, he will never retain it. In short, the labourer, too, must get his full and fair share of the prosperity of the coming good time in the country.

There is one particular aspect of this improved social life which is so important that it ought properly to form the subject of a separate essay; I mean the position of women in rural life. In no country in the world is the general position of woman better, or her influence greater, than in the United States. But while woman has played a great part there in the social life and economic development of the town, I hold that the part she is destined to play in the future making of the country will be even greater.

In the more intelligent scheme of the new country life, the economic position of woman is likely to be one of high importance. She enters largely into all three parts of our programme,—better farming, better business, better living. In the development of higher farming, for instance, she is better fitted than the more muscular but less patient animal, man, to carry on with care that work of milk records, egg records, etc., which underlies the selection on scientific lines of the more productive strains of cattle and poultry. And this kind of work is wanted in the study not only of animal, but also of plant life.

Again, in the sphere of better business, the housekeeping faculty of woman is an important asset, since a good system of farm accounts is one of the most valuable aids to successful farming. But it is, of course, in the third part of the programme,—better living,—that woman's greatest opportunity lies. The woman makes the home life of the Nation. But she desires also social life, and where she has the chance she develops it. Here it is that the establishment of the cooperative society, or union, gives an opening and a range of conditions in which the social usefulness of woman makes itself quickly felt. I do not think that I am laying too much stress on this matter, because the pleasures, the interests and the duties of society, properly so called,—that is, the state of living on friendly terms with our neighbours,—are always more central and important in the life of a woman than of a man. The man needs them, too, for without them he becomes a mere machine for making money; but the woman, deprived of them, tends to become a mere drudge. The new rural social economy (which implies a denser population occupying smaller holdings) must therefore include a generous provision for all those forms of social intercourse which specially appeal to women. The Women's Sections of the Granges have done a great deal of useful work in this direction; we need a more general and complete application of the principles on which they act.

I have now stated the broad principles which must govern any effective scheme for correcting the present harmful subordination of rural life to a civilisation too exclusively urban. Before I bring forward my definite proposal for a remedy calculated to meet the needs of the situation, I must anticipate a line of criticism which may occur to the mind of any social worker who does not happen to be very familiar with the conditions of country life.

I can well imagine readers who have patiently followed my arguments wishing to interrogate me in some such terms as these: "Assuming," they may say, "that we accept all you tell us about the neglect of the rural population, and agree as to the grave consequences which must follow if it be continued, what on earth can we do? Of course the welfare of the rural population is a matter of paramount importance to the city and to the nation at large; but may we remind you that you said the evil and the consequences can be removed and averted only by those immediately concerned—the actual farmers—and that the remedy for the rural backwardness was to be sought for in the rural mind? 'Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?' Must not the patient 'minister' to himself?"

Fair questions these, and altogether to the point. I answer at once that the patient ought to minister to himself, but he won't. He has acquired the habit of sending for the physician of the town, whose physic but aggravates the disease. Dropping metaphor, the farmer does not think for himself. In rural communities, there is as great a lack of collective thought as of cooperative action. All progress is conditional on public opinion, and this, even in the country, is a very much town-made thing.

So I am, then, in this difficulty. My subject is rural, my audience urban. I have to commend to the statesmen and the philanthropists of the town the somewhat incongruous proposal that they should take the initiative in rural reform. Neither the thought nor the influence which can set in motion what in agricultural communities is no less than an economic revolution are to be found in the open country. To the townsmen I now address my appeal and submit a plan.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress (1903).



CHAPTER VII

THE TWO THINGS NEEDFUL

In my earlier chapters I traced to the Industrial Revolution in England the origin of that subordination, in the English-speaking countries, of rural to urban interests which finds its expression to-day in the problem of rural life. I have shown that the continuance of the tendency in America was natural if not inevitable, and have urged that, for economic, social and political reasons, its further progress should now be stayed. If my view as to the origin, present effects and probable consequences of the evil be accepted, any serious proposals for a remedy will be welcomed by all who realise that national well-being cannot endure if urban prosperity is accompanied by rural decay. In this belief I offer the scheme for a Country Life movement which has slowly matured in my own mind as the result of the experience described in the preceding pages.

The first aim of the movement should be to cooerdinate, and guide towards a common end, the efforts of a large number of agencies—educational, religious, social and philanthropic—which, in their several ways, are already engaged upon some part of the work to be done. For such a movement the United States offers advantages not to be found elsewhere in the area for which we are concerned. For here public-spirited individuals and associations of the kind required exist in larger numbers than can be known to any one who has not watched what is going on in this field of social service. If I had not already devoted too much space to personal experiences, I could of my own knowledge testify to the remarkable growth of organised effort in American rural communities. Sometimes this is the outcome of a growing spirit of neighbourliness, sometimes it emanates from young Universities and Colleges emulating the extension work with which nearly every big city is familiar. I have been much struck with the way in which, at gatherings of school teachers, pedagogic detail and questions affecting their status and emoluments have become less popular subjects for discussion than schemes of social progress.[9] Similarly, the agricultural Press is becoming less exclusively technical and commercial, and more human. Even the syndicated stuff is getting less townified. My correspondence, newspaper clippings sent to me, and many other indications, point in the same direction. They leave the impression upon my mind that there is a vast, efficient and enthusiastic army of social workers upon the farm lands of the United States badly in need of a Headquarters Staff.

If I am right in believing that, of the English-speaking countries, the United States affords the best opportunity for such a consummation, most assuredly the present time is peculiarly auspicious. If Mr. Roosevelt's Country Life policy has not been received with any marked enthusiasm, American public opinion has been thoroughly aroused upon his Conservation policy. The latter cannot possibly come to fruition—nor even go much further—until the Country Life problem is boldly faced. In the Conference of Governors it was pointed out over and over again that the farmer, now the chief waster, must become the chief conserver. As such he will himself become a supporter of the policy, and will bring to the aid of those advocates of Conservation whose chief concern is for future generations, an interested public opinion which will go far to outweigh the influence of those who profit by the exhaustion of natural resources. To the country life reformer I would say that, as the one idea has caught on while the other lags, he will, if he is wise, hitch his Country Life waggon to the Conservation star.

With every advantage of time and place, the promotion of the movement which is to counteract the townward tendency will have to reckon with the psychological difficulty inherent in the conditions. They must recognise the paradox of the situation already pointed out, the necessity of interesting the town in the problems of the country. The urban attitude of mind which caused the evil, and now makes it difficult to interest public opinion in the remedy, is not new; it pervades the literature of the Augustan age. I recall from my school days Virgil's great handbook on Italian agriculture, written with a mastery of technical detail unsurpassed by Kipling. But the farmers he had in mind when he indulged in his memorable rhapsody upon the happiness of their lot were out for pleasure rather than profit. While the suburban poet sang to the merchant princes, Rome was paying a bonus upon imported corn, and entering generally upon that fatal disregard for the interest of the rural population which is one of the accepted causes of the decline and fall.

How that Old World tragi-comedy comes back to me when I talk to New York friends on the subject of these pages! I am not, so they tell me, up to date in my information; there is a marked revulsion of feeling upon the town versus country question; the tide of the rural exodus has really turned, as I might have discerned without going far afield. At many a Long Island home I might see on Sundays, weather permitting, the horny-handed son of week-day toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls. These supply a select circle in New York with butter and eggs, at a price which leaves nothing to be desired—unless it be some information as to the cost of production. Full justice is done to the new country life when the Farmers' Club of New York fulfils its chief function, the annual dinner at Delmonico's. Then agriculture is extolled in fine Virgilian style, the Hudson villa and the Newport 'cottage' being permitted to divide the honours of the rural revival with the Long Island home. But to my bucolic intelligence, it would seem that against the 'back to the land' movement of Saturday afternoon the captious critic might set the rural exodus of Monday morning.

These reflections are introduced in no unfriendly spirit, and with serious intent. To me this new rural life is associated with memories of characteristically American hospitality; but my interest in it is more than personal. It is giving to those who cultivate it, among whom are the helpers most needed at the moment, a point of view which will enable them to grasp the real problem of the open country, as it exists, for example, in the great food-producing and cotton-growing tracts of the West and South. Both in the countries where the townward tendency of the industrial age was foreseen and prevented, and in those in which the evil is being cured, the impulse and inspiration which will be required to initiate and sustain our Country Life movement came mainly from leaders who were not themselves agriculturists.[10] Proficiency in the practice or even in the business of farming is not necessary. What is needed is a comprehensive knowledge of public affairs, political imagination, an understanding sympathy with and a philosophic insight into the entire life of communities. Men who combine with the necessary experience those gifts of heart and mind which go to make the higher citizenship in the many, and the statesmanship in the few, will more likely be found in the city than in the country. Yet they are, in the conditions, the natural leaders of the Country Life movement, which must now be defined.

The situation demands two things; on the one hand an association, popular, propagandist, organising; on the other, an Institute, scientific, philosophic, research-making. These two things are distinct in character, but they are complementary to each other. One will require popular enthusiasm and business organisation. To the service of the other must be brought the patient spirit of scientific and philosophic analysis and inquiry. These two bodies—the popular propagandist association and the scientific research-making Institute—must, therefore, be created; and, for a reason to be explained when we consider the work of the Institute, they should be independent of each other. This rough indication of the character of the work, which I will describe more in detail presently, will suffice for the moment. I feel that the work will be so intensely human in its interest that it will be well to say at once how the two central agencies can be established, and the movement made, not a writer's fancy, but a living and doing agency of human progress.

A body, in many respects ideally fitted to give the necessary impulse and direction to the work of organisation, is already in the field. The leaders of the Conservation idea, recognising that their policy, in common with other policies, will need an organised public opinion at its back, have founded a National Conservation Association. Mr. Gifford Pinchot has now been selected as its President. Before he was available, the task of organising and setting to work the new institution was unanimously entrusted to and accepted by President Eliot, of whose qualifications all I will say is that we foreign students of social problems vie with his own countrymen in our appreciation of his public work and aims. These two appointments are sufficient proof of the serious importance of the work, and bespeak public influence and support for the Association. I have no doubt that this body would be fully qualified to formulate and initiate the Country Life movement, and act as the central agency for the active promotion of its objects. Its members, who, I am sure, agree with Mr. Roosevelt in regarding the movement as a necessary complement to the Conservation policy, might even feel that for this very reason it was incumbent upon them to set their organisation to this work.

There is, however, one consideration which will make Mr. Pinchot and his associates hesitate to adopt this course. The doubt relates to the distinction I have drawn between the Conservation policy and the Country Life movement, the one seeking to promote legislative and administrative action, and the other, while it may give birth to a policy, being chiefly concerned with voluntary effort.[11] Although the National Conservation Association is founded for the purpose of educating public opinion upon the Conservation idea, it may decide to support the Conservation policy of one party rather than that of another. It would thus become too much involved in party controversy to act as a central agency of a movement which must embrace men of all parties. Should this view prevail, the difficulty can be easily surmounted by following the Irish precedent, where we had a very similar and indeed far more delicate situation to save from political trouble. An American Agricultural Organisation Society could be founded for the purpose in view, and as it is probable that leading advocates of the Conservation policy would take a prominent part in the Country Life movement, the interdependence of the two ideas would have practical recognition.

Apart from the possibility of political complications, there is one strong reason to recommend this course. The movement will accomplish its best and most permanent results as an advocate of self-reliance; it will seek to make self-help effective through organisation; it will concern itself much more for those things which the farmers can do for themselves by cooperation than with those things which the Government can do for them.[12] The selection, however, between the two alternative courses is a question which the foreign critic cannot decide. The work to which I now return will be the same, whatever agency is charged with its execution.

The central body (which for brevity I will call the Association) will have as its general aim the economic and social development of rural communities. The work will be mainly that of active organisation. For reasons explained in the earlier chapters, the organisation must be cooperative in character, and will be concentrated upon the business methods of the farmers. This will, it is believed, cure a radical defect in their system—a defect which, as I have argued, is responsible for a restricted production, and for a course of distribution injurious alike to producer and consumer, besides exercising a depressing influence upon the economic efficiency and social life of rural communities. It follows that the first step towards a general reconstruction of country life, which has the promise of giving to the country a social attraction strong enough to stem the tide of the townward migration, is agricultural cooperation.

Such being the general aim and the definite procedure, the first practical question that arises will be, how to apply this solvent—agricultural cooperation. It will not suffice to throw these two long words at the hardy rustic; shorter and more emphatic words might come back. Two equally necessary things must be done; the principle must be made clear, and the practical details of this rural equivalent of urban business combination must be explained in language understanded of the people. It is not difficult to draft a paper scheme for this purpose, but the fitting of the plan to local conditions is a very expert business. Hence the central agency should have at its disposal a corps of experts in cooperative organisation for agricultural purposes. After a short visit to a likely district by a competent exponent of the theory and practice, local volunteers would be found to carry on the work. Experience shows that once a well-organised cooperative association of farmers is permanently established, similar associations spring up spontaneously under the magic influence of proved success in known conditions. I should strongly recommend concentration at first on a few selected districts, with the aim of making standard models to which other communities could work. I need hardly say that all this work would be done in cooperation with whatever other agencies would lend their aid. The Country Life movement would be extremely useful to the great educational foundations centred in New York. I happen to know that the Trustees of the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Russell Sage endowments are keenly desirous to promote such a redirection of rural education as will bring it into a more helpful relation with the working lives of the rural population. Then there are such bodies as the Y. M. C. A., whose leaders, I am told, are alive to the value of the open air life, and are anxious to extend their country work in the rural districts. The great army of rural teachers, the Farmers' Union, and other farmers' organisations I have already named would gladly cooperate with schemes making for rural progress.

More important, I believe, than is generally realised, from an economic and social point of view, are the rural churches. In many European countries, where agricultural cooperation has played a great part in the people's lives, the clergy have ardently supported the system on account of its moral value. In Ireland, some of our very best volunteer organisers are clergymen. Some leaders of the rural church in the United States have told me that a feeling is growing that an increased economic usefulness in the clergy would strengthen their position in the society which they serve in a higher capacity. I know that the suggestion of clerical intervention in secular affairs is open to misunderstanding. But here is a body of educated citizens who would gladly take part in any real social service; and here is a situation where there is work of high moral and social value calling for volunteers. Nothing but good, it seems to me, could result if such men, who have more opportunity and inclination for general reading than the working farmer, would help in explaining the intricacies of cooperative organisation and procedure which must be understood and practised in order that the system may be fruitful.

In addition to its active propagandist work, the central Association could exercise a powerful and helpful influence in other ways. It should, of course, keep both the agricultural and the general press informed of its plans and progress. It should also keep in touch with the agricultural work of all important educational bodies, and more especially urge upon them the necessity of spreading the cooperative idea. The Department of Agriculture would welcome and support the movement; for I know many leading men in that service who thoroughly understand and recognise the immense importance, especially to backward rural communities, of the cooperative principle.

It is not necessary, at this stage, to go further into details. I feel confident that the work of assisting all suitable agencies, such as those I have named, and others which may be available, through organisers of agricultural cooperation and by the spreading of information, would soon enable the central body to render inestimable service to the cause of rural progress. Such, at any rate, is the outline of my first proposal for giving to my American fellow-workers upon the rural problem the assistance which I feel they most need at the present moment. I pass now to my second proposal.

I suggest that an institution—which, as I have said, will be scientific, philosophic, research-making—should be founded. It would be, in effect, a Bureau of research in rural social economy. Personally I know that, in my own experience as an administrator and organiser, I have been constantly brought face to face with problems where we could turn to no guide—no patient band of investigators who had been measuring, analysing, determining the data. Yet in some directions much excellent work is being done. Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems of the rural population have entered into the studies of economists and sociologists. At leading Universities I have sought in vain for light. At a recent anniversary in New York, which brought together the foremost economists of the Old and New World, there was an almost complete omission of the country side of things from a programme which I am sure was generally held to be almost exhaustive. The fact is, the subject must be treated as a new one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country Life movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to make good the deficiency of information which has resulted from the general lack of interest in the subject under review. An Institute is wanted to survey the field, to collect, classify and cooerdinate information and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to carry exact statistical method into his work so that he may no longer have to depend on general statements, but may have at his command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while its significance can be measured. I may mention a few typical questions on which useful light would be shed by the Institute's researches:—

1. The influence of cooperative methods (a) on the productive and distributive efficiency of rural communities, and (b) on the development of a social country life.

2. The systems of rural education, both general and technical, in different countries, and the administrative and financial basis of each system.

3. The relation between agricultural economy and the cost of food.

4. The changes (a) in the standard and cost of living, and (b) in the economy, solvency and stability of rural communities.

5. The economic interdependence of the agricultural producer and the urban consumer, and the extent and incidence of middle profits in the distribution of agricultural produce.

6. The action taken by different Governments to assist the development and secure the stability of the agricultural classes, and the possibilities and the dangers of such action, with special reference to the delimitation of the respective spheres of State aid and voluntary effort.

7. How far agricultural and rural employment can relieve the problems of city unemployment, and assist the work of social reclamation.

Some may think that I am assigning to two bodies work which could be as well done by one. While all proposals for multiplying organisations in the field of social service should be critically examined, there are strong reasons in this case for the course I suggest. The two bodies, while working to a common end, will differ essentially in their scope and method. The propagandist agency will be executive and administrative, and while its operations would have suggestive value to the country social worker everywhere, it would be concerned directly only with the United States. Furthermore, it need not necessarily have any lengthened existence as a national propagandist agency. It would be founded mainly to introduce that method into American agricultural economy which I have tried to show lies at the root of rural progress. As soon as the soundness of the general scheme had been demonstrated in any State, the central body would promote an organisation to take over the work within that State. The State organisation would, in its turn, soon be able to devolve its propagandist work upon a federation of the business associations which it had been the means of establishing. That is the contemplated evolution of my first proposal—the early delegation of the functions of the national to the State propagandist agency, which would further devolve the work upon bodies of farmers organised primarily for economic purposes, but with the ulterior aim of social advancement.

The Country Life Institute would be on a wholly different footing. Its researches, if only to subserve the Country Life movement in the United States, would have to range over the civilised world, and to be historical as well as contemporary. It should be regarded as a contribution to the welfare of the English-speaking peoples, one aspect of whose civilisation—if there be truth in what I have written—needs to be reconsidered in the light which the Institute is designed to afford. Its task will be of no ephemeral character. Its success will not, as in the case of the active propagandist body, lessen the need for its services, but will rather stimulate the demand for them.

These differences will have to be taken into account in considering the important question of ways and means. Both bodies will, I hope, appeal successfully to public-spirited philanthropists. The temporary body will need only temporary support; perhaps provision for a five-years' campaign would suffice. In the near future, local organisations would naturally defray the cost of the services rendered to them by the central body; but the Country Life Institute would need a permanent endowment. The man fitted for its chief control will not be found idle, but will have to be taken from other work. The scheme, as I have worked it out, will involve prolonged economic and social inquiry over a wide field. This would be conducted mostly by postgraduate students. From those who did this outside work with credit would be recruited the small staff which would be needed at the central office to get into the most accessible form the facts and opinions which are needed for the guidance of those who are doing practical work in the field of rural regeneration. My estimate of the amount required to do the work well is from forty to fifty thousand dollars a year, or say a capital sum of from a million to a million and a quarter dollars. Whether the project is worthy of such an expenditure, depends upon the question whether I have made good my case.

Let me summarise this case. I have tried to show that modern civilisation is one-sided to a dangerous degree—that it has concentrated itself in the towns and left the country derelict. This tendency is peculiar to the English-speaking communities, where the great industrial movement has had as its consequence the rural problem I have examined. If the townward tendency cannot be checked, it will ultimately bring about the decay of the towns themselves, and of our whole civilisation, for the towns draw their supply of population from the country. Moreover, the waste of natural resources, and possibly the alarming increase in the price of food, which have lately attracted so much attention in America, are largely due to the fact that those who cultivate the land do not intend to spend their lives upon it; and without a rehabilitation of country life there can be no success for the Conservation policy. Therefore, the Country Life movement deals with what is probably the most important problem before the English-speaking peoples at this time. Now the predominance of the towns which is depressing the country is based partly on a fuller application of modern physical science, partly on superior business organisation, partly on facilities for occupation and amusement; and if the balance is to be redressed, the country must be improved in all three ways. There must be better farming, better business, and better living. These three are equally necessary, but better business must come first. For farmers, the way to better living is cooperation, and what cooperation means is the chief thing the American farmer has to learn.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] In the capital of Virginia, to take one notable example, I have witnessed a perfect ferment of social activity at one of the gatherings. It brought together such an ideal combination of the best spirits in both rural and urban life that I anticipate some striking developments in rural civilization which will surely extend beyond the borders of the State.

[10] I may mention Raiffeisen, Luzzati, Rocquigny, Bishop Grundtwig, Henry W. Wolff, the Rev. T. A. Finlay, S.J., and most of the leaders in agricultural organization in Great Britain and Ireland.

[11] See above, page 31.

[12] It may seem a small matter even for a footnote, but an unambiguous terminology is so important to propagandist work that I must mention a somewhat unfortunate use of the word 'cooperation' which prevails in official and pedagogic circles. We hear of cooperative demonstration work, cooperative education, cooperative lectures, and so forth. Whenever a Government or State department, or an educational body works with any other agency, and sometimes when they are only doing their own work, they use the term, which is of course grammatically applicable whenever two people work together—from matrimony down. If the word in connection with agriculture could be retained for its technical sense, so long established and well understood in Europe, the proposed movement might be saved a good deal of confused thinking. Might not Government and educational authorities substitute the word 'cooerdinated' so as to preserve the distinction?

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Printed in the United States of America.

THE END