The Country-Life Movement in the United States Part 13

After all is said and done, the first question still remains,--the opportunity to make a good living on a farm, and the possibility of leading a life that will be personally satisfactory.

There has never been a time when farming as a whole has been so prosperous as now, notwithstanding the fact that there are hards.h.i.+ps in many regions. The whole occupation is undergoing a process of readjustment, and it is natural that the readjustment has become more complete and perfect in some places and in some kinds of farming than in others. We have but recently pa.s.sed through a time in which the farming business, except in special regions or special cases, could not be really profitable and attractive.

To make a good and satisfactory living on the farm is a matter both of temperament and of first-cla.s.s training. There are great series of city vocations in which any person with fair ability can succeed; but farming is a personal business and each man is his own manager. No one should ever go into farming impersonally.

Many persons are making a comfortable living on farms, a better living in fact than persons of similar ability and expending similar energy are making in town. Other persons are failing.

I am not advising anybody to establish himself in the open country; but I am saying that the time has now come when good talent need not avoid the open country.

This is a good time for the well-trained farm-minded young man or woman to go into agriculture; but one should be sure that he has the qualifications.

There is no need that farming provide only a narrow and deadening life.

One may express there all the resources of a good education.

The college man is now beginning to affect the sentiment and the practice in rural communities. Formerly a college man going back to the farm was likely to be the subject of distrust and even ridicule. This att.i.tude is pa.s.sing very rapidly in the good rural regions.

In his public relations, most of the ambition of the countryman has been to hold office. It is a form of small political entertainment, too often with no thought of any particular service to the community. We have a wholly distorted idea of the "honor" of holding office; there is no honor in an office unless it contributes something worth while to society. We cannot expect strong leaders.h.i.+p to develop in the open country until there are better things to look forward to than merely to hold the small political places. Many opportunities for rendering prominent public service will now arise in the farm country; perhaps this book will suggest a few of them. And it ought to be some satisfaction to a young man or woman to know that he or she is part of a world-movement, and to feel that it is no longer necessary to explain or to apologize for being a countryman or a farmer.

We have been living in a get-rich-quick age. Persons have wanted to make fortunes. Our business enterprises are organized with that end in view.

Persons are now asking how they may live a satisfactory life, rather than placing the whole emphasis on the financial turnover of a business.

There is greater need of more good farmers than of more millionaires.

My reader may wish to know what const.i.tutes a good farmer. I think that the requirements of a good farmer are at least four:

The ability to make a full and comfortable living from the land;

to rear a family carefully and well;

to be of good service to the community;

to leave the farm more productive than it was when he took it.