The Challenge of the Country Part 9

Hard, grinding, back-breaking labor, often with surprisingly meager returns, and in some seasons with total crop failure, has been in the past the bitter lot of the husbandman. Many a farm boy has thus had the courage crushed out of him in early teens and has ignominiously retreated to the city. Many a farmer's wife has grown prematurely old and has slaved herself to death, leaving her children and her home to a younger successor. These conditions of course still continue even in the new age.

Great numbers of farmers are still hopelessly poor, many of them needlessly so, through ignorance, slovenly management, laziness or willful unprogressiveness. But the rural moss-back is being laid upon the shelf with other fossils and soon will possess only historical interest.

Great organized effort is being made to redeem him by the gospel of scientific farming before he dies, and the effort is by no means vain.

III. Increased Popular Intelligence.

The new rural civilization, however, is by no means a mere matter of methods. The farmer himself has been growing more intelligent. County agricultural societies, first organized in 1810, set the farmers to thinking. Many farm journals have contributed widely to the farmers'

education. But in the past twenty years many agencies have united in what has been a great rural uplift. The government's department of agriculture, the experiment stations established in each state, the better-farming trains with their highly educative exhibits, the countless farmers'

inst.i.tutes for fruitful discussions, the extension work of state universities, the local and traveling libraries, and especially the agricultural colleges, through their short courses in the winter, their stimulating and instructive bulletins, their great variety of extension service through their territory, are among the many agencies for popular education in country districts which are becoming thoroughly appreciated and highly effective. In a great variety of ways a genuine rural culture is being developed, with its own special characteristics and enduring values. All this is helping to make country life vastly worth while.

[Ill.u.s.tration: This picture ill.u.s.trates school garden work at the Macdonald Consolidated School, Guelph, Canada, E. A. Howes, Princ.i.p.al. The time is June.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The same garden at harvest time, in September.]

This increased culture among country people is a great factor in the new rural civilization which must be given due consideration. It is this which is overcoming rural narrowness and provincialism. Herein is great hope for the future of the open country as a worthy home for people of the finest tastes and of genuine culture. This important topic will be considered in detail in Chapter VI, under Education for Country Life.

IV. The New Social Consciousness.

In these days when the gospel of cla.s.s consciousness is being preached by labor union leaders, as requisite to success, the farmers may well heed the lesson. Let them stop the luxury of self-pity and discover a genuine pride in their life calling. Thousands do not in the least need this exhortation. They rejoice in their privilege as scientific tillers of the soil. They are also discovering a real social spirit among themselves which speaks well for the future. As a cla.s.s they are claiming their rights with a new insistence and a new dignity which is commanding a respectful hearing.

Legislatures and the national Congress are taking notice; likewise the railroads; but the middleman remains unterrified, secure in his speculative castle. He may look well to his profits however, for the days of organized agriculture are not far distant. The farmers are getting together for business and are comparing notes with the consumers. The producer finds he is often getting less than half what the consumer pays and the cooperative spirit grows apace. The efficiency of farmers'

organizations for mutual profit has varied greatly in different sections, but they serve a genuine need and have a great future, as cla.s.s consciousness increases among farmers.

But the new social consciousness in the country is not merely a matter of group loyalty. It has to do with the interests of the whole community. The selfish days of the independent farmer are rapidly pa.s.sing. The social spirit of mutual interdependence is certainly growing. One of the tests of modern civilization is the capacity for cooperation. Tardily, very tardily, the country has been following the city in this ability to cooperate for common ends and the community welfare, but improvement is very evident.

The problem of community socialization will be treated in Chapter V. We shall find that the need of cooperation runs through every phase of rural life and explains the common weakness of every rural inst.i.tution. But leaders of country life, both East and West, have caught the social vision and are sharing it with their neighbors. "_Together_" is the watchword of the new day in the country, and the incentive of cooperative endeavor is the key to the new success in every rural interest and organization.

V. Effect of the New Order on Rural Inst.i.tutions.

For several decades we have been seriously troubled by the decay of rural inst.i.tutions. The strain upon them resulting from rural depletion has been very serious. First of all the country schools began to deteriorate and thousands of them doubtless have been closed. With the decay of the village, the village store, that social center and fountain of all wisdom, has lost prestige and most of its trade. The trolley and the mail order houses have made it unnecessary. With the coming of the rural delivery route, even the village post-office has lost all social importance. With the advent of farm machinery and fewer farm hands, many of the jolly social functions of the past, such as husking bees, barn raisings, spelling bees and lyceums, have ceased to be; while the rural churches in all depleted sections have suffered sadly and in hundreds of cases have succ.u.mbed.

In some scattered communities, away from the beaten paths, this social decay has resulted in de-socializing the neighborhood. Feuds, grudges, gross immoralities have followed and the people have relapsed into practical heathenism. But in many places _social readjustment has come_, with a new efficiency in rural inst.i.tutions. Centralized schools have brought a new largeness of vision in place of the little district knowledge shop. The great advantages of the rural free delivery have certainly outweighed the loss of the social prestige of the post-office, just as the trolley is more valuable than the village store. Many of the old time social functions were worth while, but new inst.i.tutions like the Grange and the farmers' clubs, inst.i.tutes and cooperative organizations are better fitted to the modern age and are contributing largely to the new rural civilization, while the village church and the church in the open country are discovering new opportunities for service, broader community usefulness and a great social mission.

The new rural civilization is bringing a new prosperity into the great business of farming. It is bringing new and permanent satisfactions and comforts into country homes. It has greatly diminished the vexed problem of rural isolation, with its many new ways of communication. It has to a remarkable degree eliminated drudgery, through the use of wonderful machinery. It has popularized education and developed a new social consciousness and new efficiency in rural inst.i.tutions, amounting often to a total redirection of the community life. But fundamentally the new civilization is naturally religious. It is revealing the strong religious sentiment in country folks, even when they are not a.s.sociated with churches. It is calling upon the church to gird itself for new tasks and under a new, virile type of leaders.h.i.+p undertake real community building with the modern church as the center of activity and source of inspiration and guidance. The church should be, and with adequate leaders.h.i.+p is, the local power house of the country life movement.

_Rural Progress and the Providence of G.o.d_

Every man of faith must see in this new rural civilization the purpose of G.o.d to redeem the country from the dangers of a rural peasantry and moral decadence. Progress is the will of G.o.d. Christ's vision of a Kingdom of Heaven involved a redeemed world. That Kingdom of Heaven is coming ultimately in the country as well as in the city. Every sign of rural progress indicates it and should be hailed with joy by men of faith. The triumph over isolation and the gradual emanc.i.p.ation from drudgery, the development of good roads, trolleys, telephones, rural mail service, automobiles, and the wonderful evolution of farm machinery are all way-marks in the providence of G.o.d indicating the ultimate coming of his Kingdom. The increased intelligence among farming people, the many new agencies for popular education, the new social consciousness and growing spirit of cooperation, the new efficiency of rural inst.i.tutions, a better school, a community-serving church, a character-building home, as well as a scientifically conducted farm, every one of these makes for better rural morals and better religion, and should delight the heart of every earnest man who "desires a _better country_, that is a heavenly."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of Macdonald Consolidated School grounds and gardens, Bowesville, Ontario, Canada.]

TEST QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III

1.--Why are the terms "countryman" and "farmer" ceasing to be used as terms of ridicule?

2.--What effect, in past years, has _isolation_ had upon people living in the country?

3.--What modern means of intercommunication have largely overcome the evils of rural isolation?

4.--What are the social possibilities of the telephone for people living in the open country?

5.--Why are good roads so essential, socially and industrially, in the country sections?

6.--When was the "Good Roads a.s.sociation" formed, and how much has your state expended for state roads the past twenty years? (Inquire of your County Surveyor.)

7.--What do the rural sections owe to the steam railroad system of the country?

8.--What have the trolleys accomplished which the steam roads could not do?

9.--What changes in rural life are due to the rural free delivery of mail?

10.--Describe what these changes have accomplished in your own home county.

11.--To what extent has machinery relieved farm labor of its drudgery?

12.--Describe the evolution of the plow and the harrow.

13.--What inventions in farm machinery have had the greatest influence on rural progress?

14.--What can you say about the increase of intelligence in the country sections you have known?

15.--What agencies are now at work in the country making popular education possible?

16.--Have you observed anywhere yet the new social consciousness or cla.s.s consciousness among farmers?

17.--To what extent do you think cooperation has gained acceptance in the country?

18.--In what rural inst.i.tutions is cooperation still greatly lacking?

19.--What changes have already come in rural inst.i.tutions?

20.--How is this new rural civilization revealing the will of G.o.d, and what relation has it to the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven?

CHAPTER IV

TRIUMPHS OF SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE