The Country-Life Movement in the United States Part 3

_The interests of society in the work._

The people have made it possible for irrigation-reclamation to be developed; for whether the work is performed by government directly or by private enterprise, it nevertheless rests mostly on national legislation; and this legislation expresses the consent and the interest of society in the work. All the people have not only a right to an interest in irrigation-reclamation, but they carry an obligation to be interested in it, since it reclaims and utilizes the fundamental heritage of all the people. I take it that society's interest in the work is of two kinds: to see that the land is properly utilized and protected; to see that persons desiring homes shall have an opportunity to secure them. Society is not interested in speculation in land or in mere exploitation.

I hope that the irrigation people realize their obligation to the society that makes it possible for them to develop their irrigation systems. Not every person in the nation agrees to the policy of national reclamation, but society has given it a trial. The people in the West are interested in developing their localities and their commonwealths, and in securing settlers to them; and with this feeling we all must sympathize. The people in the East have a remoter interest, but it is none the less real. I have no fear that the irrigation-settlement of the West will set up disastrous compet.i.tion in products with the East, as many Eastern people antic.i.p.ate; the areas involved in the new irrigation projects are too small and the development too slow for that. But there is danger that the producing-power of the land may not be safeguarded, and all the people, East as well as West, must have concern for use of Western land. The very fact that irrigation-farming is intensive increases the danger. From an agricultural point of view, the greatest weakness in this farming is the fact that the animal, or live-stock, does not occupy a large place in the system. Other systems of maintaining fertility must be developed.

Society has a right to ask that we be careful of our irrigated valleys.

They are abounding in riches. It is easy to harvest this wealth, by the simple magic of water. We will be tempted to waste these riches, and the time will come quickly when we will be conscious of their decline. This seems remote now, but the danger is real. Not even the fertility of the irrigation waters will maintain the land in the face of poor agricultural practice.

I am not contending that irrigation-farming is proceeding in a wasteful way, or that systems are not developing that will protect society; I am calling attention to the danger and to the interest of all the people in this danger; and I hope that we may profit by the errors of all new settlements thus far made in the history of the world.

It is the flat valleys of the great arid West that will be opened by irrigation. These valleys are small areas compared with the uplands, the hills, and the unirrigable regions. Society is interested also that we be careful of the uplands and hills, for in the arid regions they give small yield in forage and in timber; this forage and timber must be most thoughtfully protected. When the producing-power of the irrigated lands begins to decline, the West cannot fall back on its dry hills.

We are everywhere in need of better agriculture, not only that every agriculturist may do a better business, but also that agriculture may contribute its full share to the making of a better civilization. Here and there, as we learn how to adapt ourselves to the order of nature, we begin to see a really good agriculture in the process of making. A good agriculture is one that is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating, not only increasing its yields year after year from the same land, but leaving the land better and richer at each generation. This must come to pa.s.s from the land itself and from the animals and crops that one naturally brings to the land, and not merely by the addition of mined fertilizing materials brought from the ends of the earth. Thus far in history, it is only when the virgin fatness begins to be used up, speaking broadly, that we put our wits to work. Then the rebound comes.

The best agriculture thus far has developed only after we have struck bottom, and we begin a constructive effort rather than an exploitative effort; and this comes in a mature country. This is why so great part of the European agriculture is so much better than our own, and why in old New England such expert and hopeful farming is now beginning to appear. The East is in the epoch of rebound. The East is in the process of becoming more fertile; the West is in the process of becoming less fertile.

In Western North America, the business systems have been developed to great perfection, and the people are possessed of much activity, and are so far escaped from tradition that they are able to do things in new ways and to work together. I hope that this great region also will apply at the outset all the resources of business and of science to develop an agriculture that will propagate itself.

_A broad reclamation movement._

When all the lands are taken that can be developed or reclaimed by private resources, there remain vast areas that require the larger powers, and perhaps even the larger funds, of society (or the government) to bring into utilization. One cla.s.s of lands can be utilized by means of irrigation. This form of land-reclamation is much in the public mind, and great progress has been made in it.

There remain, however, other lands to be reclaimed by other means. There is much more land to be reclaimed by the removal of water than by the addition of water. There are many more acres to be adapted to productive uses by forest planting and conservation than by irrigation. There are vastly larger areas waiting reclamation by the so-called "dry-farming"

(that is, by moisture-saving farming completely adapted to dry regions).

And all the land in all the states must be reclaimed by better farming.

I am making these statements in no disparagement of irrigation, but in order to indicate the relation of irrigation to what should be a recognized national reclamation movement.

_Supplemental irrigation._

Let me say further that irrigation is properly not a practice of arid countries alone. Irrigation is for two purposes: to reclaim land and make it usable; to mitigate the drought in rainfall regions. As yet the popular imagination runs only to reclamation-irrigation. This form of irrigation is properly regulated by the federal government.

Now and then a forehanded farmer in the humid region, growing high-cla.s.s crops, installs an irrigation plant to carry him through the dry spells.

As our agriculture becomes more developed, we shall greatly extend this practice. We shall find that even in humid countries we cannot afford to lose the rainfall from hills and in floods, and we shall hold at least some of it against the time of drought as well as for cities and for power. We have not yet learned how to irrigate in humid regions, but we certainly shall apply water as well as manures to supplement the usual agricultural practices.

We must learn to reckon with drought as completely as we reckon with winter or with lessening productiveness. We probably lose far more from dry spells than from all the bugs and pests.

_We need reserves._

But even though we should recognize a national reclamation movement to include all these phases and others, it may not be necessary or advisable in the interest of all the people, that every last acre in the national domain be opened for exploitation or settlement in this decade or even in this century. The nation may well have untouched reserves. No one knows what our necessities will be a hundred years hence. Land that has never been despoiled will be immeasurably more valuable to society then than now; and society holds the larger interest.

When the pressure of population comes, we shall fall back on our reserves. The rain-belt states will fall back on their wet lands, their uplands, and their hills. These hills are much more usable than those of the arid and semi-arid West can ever be. The Eastern and old Southern states have immense reserves, even though the t.i.tles may be largely in private owners.h.i.+p. New York is still nearly half in woods and swamps and waste, but practically all of it is usable. New York is an undeveloped country, agriculturally. The same is true of New England and Pennsylvania and great regions southwards. Forests and sward grow profusely to the summits of the mountains and hills. Vast areas eastward are undeveloped and unexploited. Even the regions of the so-called "abandoned farms" are yet practically untouched of their potential wealth.

I have no regret that these countries are still unsettled. There is no need of haste. When the great arid West has brought every one of its available acres into irrigation, and when population increases, the Eastern quarter of the country will take up the slack. It is by no means inconceivable that at that time the Eastern lands, newly awakened from the sleep of a century, will be the fresh lands, and the older regions will again become the new.

We should be careful not to repeat, even on a small scale, the recklessness and haste with which we have disposed of our reserves before their time.

WHAT IS TO BE THE OUTCOME OF OUR INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION?

We know that the whole basis of civilization is changing. Industry of every kind is taking the place of the older order. Its most significant note is that it brings the people of the world together in consultation and in trade. We are escaping our localism, and we look on all problems in their relation to all mankind. Brotherhood has become a real power in the world.

But what does industry in itself, including all forms of land-culture, offer as an ultimate goal to civilized man? What are to be the man's ideals toward which he should lead his thoughts?

I am not one of those who consider a sordid and commercial end to be the necessary result of industrialism. We must develop the ideals in an industrial civilization, that they may lead us into the highest personal endeavor; and everywhere it should be possible for a man to make the most of himself. There must be something in every business beyond the financial gain if it is to make any final contribution to civilization. Finding this ultimate, industrial society will grow into perfect flower.

So far as agriculture is concerned, I see two points of high endeavor within the business, lying beyond the making of a good living, and toward which the coming countryman may set his imagination.

(1) _The making of a new society._

A new social order must be evolved in the open country, and every farmer of the new time must lend a strong hand to produce it. We have been training our youth merely to be better farmers; this, of course, is the first thing to do, but the man is only half trained when this is done.

What to do with the school, the church, the rural organizations, the combinations of trade, the highways, the architecture, the library, the beauty of the landscape, the country store, the rousing of a fine community helpfulness to take the place of the old selfish individualism, and a hundred other activities, is enough to fire the imagination and to strengthen the arm of any young man or woman.

The farmer is to contribute his share to the evolution of an industrial democracy.

(2) _The fighting edge._

Theodore Roosevelt, with his power to discern essentials, has given us a good rallying phrase in "the fighting edge." When man ceases to be a conqueror, he will lose his virility and begin to retrograde. As localism gives way to brotherhood, militarism will pa.s.s out; but this does not mean that mankind will cease to contend.

The best example I have seen of the development of determination and fine social brotherhood is in the making of the Panama Ca.n.a.l. The making of the Ca.n.a.l is in every sense a conquest. It is a new civilization that the 40,000 or 50,000 folk are constructing down there, and every man, whether he is employed in the commissariat, the sanitary department, in an office, on a steam shovel, or with a construction gang, will tell you that he is building the Ca.n.a.l. All these people are giving a good account of themselves because they are doing the work under the flag and because they are contending with vast difficulties.

We have scarcely begun even the physical conquest of the earth. It is not yet all explored. The earth is an island, and it is only two years ago that we got to one end of it. There are mountains to pierce, sea-sh.o.r.es to reclaim, vast stretches of submerged land to drain, millions of acres to irrigate and many more millions to utilize by dry-farming, rivers to ca.n.a.lize, the whole open country to organize and subdue by means of local engineering work, and a thousand other great pieces of construction to accomplish, all calling for the finest spirit of conquest and all contributing to the training of men and women. There is no necessity that the race become flabby.

Now, my point is that the prime high endeavor laid before every farmer is to conquer his farm, and this means contest with storm and flood and frost, with blight and bug and pest, and with all the other barriers that nature has put against the man that tills the land. We have made a tremendous mistake, in my estimation, in trying to portray farming merely as an easy business. The sulky-plow has been too much emphasized.

We are giving the young men more means and tools by which to wage the contest, but the contest can never stop. In the nature of things, farming cannot be an easy and simple business, and this is why it has produced a virile lot of men and women, and why it will continue to do so. It is a question whether, if our civilization is ever evened up, we shall not look again to the open country for strong working cla.s.ses, for the course of much of our city industrialism is to make dependent men and managed men, and we need to exercise every precaution that it does not make clock-watchers and irresponsible gang-servers (page 139).

Farming will attract folk with the feeling of mastery in them, even more in the future than in the past, because the hopelessness, blind resignation, and fatalism will be taken out of it. Those who are not masterful cannot conquer a farm. The man weighing one hundred and fifty pounds who is afraid of a San Jose bug would better go to the city, where he can find some one to help him fight his battles. The farmer will learn how to adapt his scheme to nature, and how to conquer the things that are conquerable; and this should make it worth his while to be a farmer.

THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION IN AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE

How to make country life what it is capable of becoming is the question before us; and while we know that the means is not single or simple, we ought to be able to pick out the first and most fundamental thing that needs now to be done.

It is perfectly apparent that the fundamental need is to place effectively educated men and women into the open country. All else depends on this. No formal means can be of any permanent avail until men and women of vision and with trained minds are at hand to work out the plans in an orderly way.

And yet it is frequently said that the first necessity is to provide more income for the farmer; but this is the result of a process, not the beginning of it. And again it is said that organization is the first necessity, even to make it possible to use the education. If organization is necessary to make the best use of education, then it a.s.sumes education as its basis. Educated men will make organization possible and effective, but economic organization will not insure education except remotely, as it becomes a means of consolidating an unorganic society.

But there is no longer any need to emphasize the value of education. It would now be difficult to find an American farmer who requires convincing on this point. Yet I have desired to say that there is no other agency, using education in its broad sense, that can by any possibility be placed ahead of it.