Chapters in Rural Progress

The mossback sees perhaps clearly enough these changes, but he does not understand their meaning, nor does he know how to meet them. He is dazzled by the romantic halo of the good old times, dumfounded by the electric energy of the present, discouraged and distracted by the pressure of forces that crush his hopes and stifle his strength.

Economically, the old farmer was not a business man, but a barterer. The rule of barter still survives in the country grocery where butter and eggs are traded for sugar and salt. The old farmer was industrially self-sufficient. He did not farm on a commercial basis. He raised apples for eating and for cider, not for market – there was no apple market. He had very little ready money, he bought and sold few products. He traded. Even his grain, which afterward became the farmer's great cash crop, was raised in small quantities and ground at the nearest mill – not for export, but for a return migration to the family flour-barrel.

The new farmer has always existed – because he is the old farmer growing. He has kept pace with our industrial evolution. When the régime of barter passed away, he ceased to barter. When the world's market became a fact, he raised wheat for the world's market. As agriculture became a business, he became a business man. As agricultural science began to contribute to the art of farming, he studied applied science. As industrial education developed, he founded and patronized institutions for agricultural education. As alertness and enterprise began to be indispensable in commercial activity, he grew alert and enterprising.

The mossback is the man who has either misread the signs of the times, or who has not possessed the speed demanded in the two-minute class. He is the old farmer gone to seed. He tries to fit the old methods to the new régime.

But it is not sufficient to picture the new farmer. You must explain him. What is it that makes the new farmer? Who is he? What are his tools? In the first place, you cannot explain the new farmer unless you know the old farmer. You cannot have the new farmer unless you also have the mossback. The new farmer is a comparative person, as it were. You have to define him in terms of the mossback. The contrast is not between the old farmer and the new, for that is merely a question of relative conditions in different epochs of time. The contrast is between the new farmer and the mossback, for that is a question of men and of their relative efficiency as members of the industrial order. Then, of course, you must observe the individual traits that characterize the new farmer, such as keenness, business instinct, readiness to adopt new methods, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a man a success today in any calling. For the new farmer, in respect to his personal qualities, is not a sport, a phenomenon. He does not stand out as a distinct and peculiar specimen. He is a successful American citizen who grows corn instead of making steel rails.

But you have not yet explained the new farmer. These personal traits do not explain him. It may be possible to explain an individual and his success by calling attention to his characteristics, and yet you cannot completely analyze him and his career unless you understand the conditions under which he works – the industrial and social environment. Much less can you explain a class of people by describing their personal characteristics. You must reach out into the great current of life that is about them, and discern the direction and power of that current.

Now, the conditions that tend to make the new farmer possible may be grouped in an old-fashioned way under two heads. In the old scientific phrases the two forces that make the new farmer are the "struggle for life" and "environment," or, to use other words, competition and opportunity.

Competition has pressed severely upon the farmer, competition at home and competition from other countries. At one time the heart of the wheat-growing industry of this country was near Rochester, N. Y., in the Genesee Valley; but the canal and the railway soon made possible the occupation of the great granary of the west. A multitude of ambitious young men soon took possession of that granary, and the flour-mills were moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. This is an old story, but the same forces are still at work. There has been developed a world-market. The sheep of the Australian bush have become competitors of the flocks that feed upon the green Vermont mountains and the Ohio hills. The plains of Argentina grow wheat for London. Russia, Siberia, and India pour a constant stream of golden grain into the industrial centers of Western Europe, and the price of American wheat is fixed in London. These forces have produced still another kind of competition; namely, specialization among farmers. Localities particularly adapted to special crops are becoming centers where skill and intelligence bring the industry to its height. The truck-farming of the South Atlantic region, the fruit growing of western Michigan, the butter factories of Wisconsin and Minnesota, have crowded almost to suffocation the small market-gardener of the northern town, the man with a dozen peach trees, and the farmer who keeps two cows and trades the surplus butter for calico. These things have absolutely forced progress upon the farmer. It is indeed a "struggle for life." Out of it comes the "survival of the fittest," and the fittest is the new farmer.

But along with competition has come opportunity. Indeed, out of these very facts that have made competition so strenuous spring the most marvelous opportunities for the progressive farmer. Specialization brings out the best that there is in the locality and the man. It gives a chance to apply science to farming. Our transportation system permits the peach growers of Grand Rapids to place their crops at a profit in the markets of Buffalo and Pittsburg; the rich orchards and vineyards of Southern California find their chief outlet in the cities of the manufacturing Northeast – three thousand miles away. During the forty years, from 1860, the exports of wheat from this country increased from four million bushels annually to one hundred and forty million bushels; of corn, from three and one-third million bushels to one hundred and seventy-five million bushels; of beef products, from twenty million pounds to three hundred and seventy million pounds; of pork products, from ninety-eight million pounds to seventeen hundred million pounds. And not only do the grain and stock farmers find this outlet for their surplus products, but we are beginning to ship abroad high-grade fruit and first-class dairy products in considerable quantities. Low rates of freight, modern methods of refrigeration, express freight trains, fast freight steamers – the whole machinery of the commercial and financial world are at the service of the new farmer. Science, also, has found a world of work in ministering to the needs of agriculture, and in a hundred different ways the new farmer finds helps that have sprung up from the broadcast sowing of the hand of science.

But perhaps even more remarkable opportunities come to the new farmer in those social agencies that tend to remove the isolation of the country; that assist in educating the farmer broadly; that give farmers as a class more influence in legislature and congress, and that, in fine, make rural life more worth the living. The new farmer cannot be explained until one is somewhat familiar with the character of these rural social agencies. They have already been enumerated and classified in a previous chapter; they will be more fully described in subsequent chapters.

It must not be supposed that every successful farmer is necessarily a supporter of all of these social agencies. He may be a prosperous farmer just because he is good at the art of farming, or because he is a keen business man. But more and more he is coming to see that these things are opportunities that he cannot afford to disregard. Indeed, some of these institutions are largely the creation of the new farmer himself. He is using them as tools to fashion a better rural social structure.

But they also fashion him. They serve to explain him, in great part. Competition inspires the farmer to his best efforts. The opportunity offered by these new and growing advantages gives him the implements wherewith to make his rightful niche in the social and industrial system.

It would be erroneous to suppose that the new farmer is a rara avis. He is not. The spirit pervading the ranks of farmers is rapidly changing. We have been in a state of transition in agriculture. But the farther shore has been reached and the bridge is possible. The army of rural advancement is being recruited with great rapidity. The advance guard is more than a body of scouts, it is an effective brigade.

I want also to make a plea for the mossback. He must not be condemned utterly. Remember that competition among farmers has been intense; that rural environment breeds conservatism. Remember also that the farmer cannot change his methods as rapidly as can some other business men. Remember, too, that there is comparatively small chance for speculation in agriculture; that large aggregates of capital cannot be collected for farming, and consequently, that the approved means for securing immense wealth, great industrial advancement, and huge enterprises are nearly absent in agriculture. Remember that the voices calling from the city deplete the country of many good farmers as well as of many poor ones. Moreover, there are many men on farms who perhaps don't care for farming, but who for some reason cannot get away. On the farm a man need not starve; he can make a livelihood. Doubtless this simple fact is responsible for a multitude of mossbacks. They can live without strenuous endeavor. Possibly a good many of us are strenuous because we are pushed into it. So I have a good deal of sympathy for the mossback, and a mild sort of scorn for some of his critics, who probably could not do any better than he is doing if they essayed the gentle art of agriculture. I also have sympathy for the mossback particularly because he is the man that needs attention. The new farmer takes the initiative. He patronizes these opportunities that we have been talking about. But the mossback, because he is discouraged, or because he is ignorant, or perhaps merely because he is conservative, takes little interest in these things. About one farmer in ten belongs to some sort of farmers' association. Thousands of farmers do not take an agricultural paper, and perhaps millions of them have not read an agricultural book. Right here comes in another fact. Every "new" farmer when full grown competes with every mossback. The educated farmer makes it still harder for the ignorant farmer to progress.

The future of the American farmer is one of the most pregnant social problems with which we have to deal. There is indeed an issue involved in the success of the new farmer that is still more fundamental than any yet mentioned. The old farmer had a social standing that made him essentially a middle-class man. He was a landholder, he was independent, he was successful. He was the typical American citizen. The old farmer was father to the best blood of America. His sons and his sons' sons have answered to the roll call of our country's warriors, statesmen, writers, captains of industry.

Can the new farmer maintain the same relative social status? And if he can, is he to be an aristocrat, a landlord, a captain of industry, and to bear rule over the mossback? And is the tribe of mossbacks destined to increase and become a caste of permanent tenants or peasants? Is the future American farmer to be the typical new farmer of the present, or are we traveling toward a social condition in which the tillers of the soil will be underlings? Is there coming a time when the "man with the hoe" will be the true picture of the American farmer, with a low standard of living, without ideals, without a chance for progress?

We must eliminate the mossback. It is to be done largely by education and by co-operation. There must be a campaign for rural progress. There must be a union of the country school teacher, of the agricultural college professor, of the rural pastor, of the country editor, with the farmers themselves, for the production of an increased crop of new farmers. Anything that makes farm life more worth living, anything that banishes rural isolation, anything that dignifies the business of farming and makes it more prosperous, anything that broadens the farmer's horizon, anything that gives him a greater grasp of the rural movement, anything that makes him a better citizen, a better business man, or a better man, means the passing of the mossback.

CHAPTER V

CULTURE FROM THE CORN LOT[2 - Addressed to students in an agricultural college.]

The question of questions that the college student asks himself is, What am I going to be? The surface query is, What am I going to do? But in his heart of hearts he ponders the deeper questions: What may I become in real intellectual and moral worth? How large a man, measured by the divine standards, will it be possible for me to grow into?

These are the great questions because growth is the great end of life. That is what we are here for, to grow. To develop all our talents, all our possibilities, to increase our native powers of body, mind, and soul – this is life. It is important that we have a vocation. We must do something, and do it well. But the real end is not in working at a profession but in developing our abilities. Our symmetrical growth is the measure of our success as human beings.

As the student looks out over the ocean of life and scans the horizon for signs of the wise course for him to take, he should decide whether the particular mode of life that now appeals to him will yield the greatest possible measure of growth. He must consult his tastes, his talents, his opportunities, his training. And the test question is, Will this line of work yield me the growth, the culture, I desire?

But what are the elements that yield culture to an individual? Using culture in a very broad sense as a synonym for growth, we may say that the things contributing most to the culture of the average person are his work, his leisure, and his service to others. We may now try to answer the question we started with, as it presents itself to many a student in the agricultural colleges of our country. Will agriculture as a business, will the farm life and environment, contribute to the growth which I desire for myself? Can I extract culture from the corn lot?

Let us first see if the work or vocation of farming gives culture. My answer would be that there is scarcely an occupation to be named that requires broader knowledge, more accurate observation, or the exercise of better judgment than does modern farming. The farmer deals with the application of many sciences. He must be an alert business man. He requires executive talent of no mean order. The study of his occupation in its wider phases leads him into direct contact with political economy, social movements, and problems of government. The questions confronting him as a farmer relate themselves to the leading realms of human knowledge and experience. I speak of course of the progressive farmer, who makes the best use of his opportunities. He can hardly hope to become immensely wealthy, but he can maintain that modest standard of living that usually is the lot of our most useful and cultured people and that ministers as a rule most fully to the ideal family life. The truly modern farmer cannot help growing.

There is much hard work on the farm. Yet on the whole there is fully as much leisure as in most other occupations. There is time to read, and books are today so easily accessible that living in the country is no bar to the bookshelf. Better than time to read is time to think. The farmer has always been a man who pondered things in his heart. He has had a chance to meditate. No culture is sound except it has been bought by much thinking; all else is veneer. Farm life gives in good measure this time to think. But it is in nature that the farmer finds or may find his most fertile field for culture. Here he is at home. Here he may revel if he will. Here he may find the sources of mind-liberation and of soul-emancipation. He may be the envy of everyone who dwells in the city because he lives so near to nature's heart. Bird and flower, sky and tree, rock and running brook speak to him a various language. He may read God's classics, listen to the music of divine harmonies, and roam the picture galleries of the Eternal. So too in his dealings with his kind, he lives close to men and women who are frank, virile, direct, clean, independent. The culture coming from such associations is above price. One learns to pierce all shams, to honor essential manhood, to keep pure the fountains of sympathy, ambition, and love. Thus on the farm one may find full opportunity for that second means of culture, leisure.

Another powerful agency for cultivating the human soul is service. Indeed, service is the dynamic of life. To be of use is the ambition that best stimulates real growth. Culture is the end of life, the spirit of service the motive power. So it is of this I would speak perhaps most fully, not only because it is a vital means of culture, but because it is also peculiarly the privilege and duty of the college man and the college woman. For let it be said that if any college student secures a diploma of any degree without having been seized upon by a high ambition to be of some use in the work of helping humanity forward, then have that person's years of study been in vain, and his teaching also vain. The college man comes not to be ministered unto but to minister. He has been poorly taught if he leaves college with no thought but for his material success. He must have had a vision of service, his lips touched with a coal from the altar of social usefulness, and his heart cultivated to respond to the call for any need he can supply, "Here am I, send me."

I think it may safely be said that there is no field which offers better chance for leadership to the average college man or woman than does the farm. Take, for instance, politics. The majority of our states are agricultural states. The majority of our counties are agricultural counties. The agricultural vote is the determining factor in a large proportion of our elections. It follows inevitably that honest, strong farmers with the talent for leadership and the ability to handle themselves in competition with other political leaders have a marvelously fine chance for useful service.

So is it in educational questions. Nowhere may the citizen come into closer contact with the educational problems of the day than through service on the rural school board. If he brings to this position trained intelligence, some acquaintance with educational questions, and a desire to keep in touch with the advancement of the times, he can do for his community a service that can hardly be imagined.

Take another field – that of organization for farmers, constituting a problem of great significance. As yet this class of people is relatively unorganized, but the movement is growing and the need of well-trained leadership is vital. I cannot speak too strongly of the chance here offered for active, intelligent, masterful men and women in being of use as leaders and officials in the Grange and other farmers' organizations.

So with the church question. One of the reasons for the slow progress of the country church is the conservatism in the pews as well as in the pulpit. The ardent member of the Young Men's Christian Association in college may feel that, in the country, there will be no outlet for his ambition to be of religious use to his fellow-men. This is a mistake. The work of the Young Men's Christian Association itself in the country districts is just beginning, and promises large growth. Wider service in the church, a community federation or union of different churches, the work of young people's societies and of the Sunday schools – all these afford abundant opportunity for the man or the woman qualified and willing.

There are other lines of usefulness. Although I have stated that on the farm the opportunities for personal culture are great, it must be confessed that these opportunities are not fully utilized by the average farmer's family. Here then is a very wide field, especially for the farmer's wife. For if she is a cultivated college woman, she can through the woman's club, the Grange, the school, the nature-study club, the traveling library, and in scores of ways exercise an influence for good on the community that may have far greater results than would come from her efforts if expended in the average city. The farm home too has latent capacities that are yet to be developed. It ought to be the ideal home and, in many cases, it is. But there are not enough of such ideal homes in the country. No college woman with a desire to do her full service in the world ought for an instant to despise the chance for service as it exists on the farm.

All of these opportunities so briefly suggested might be enlarged upon almost indefinitely, but the mere mention of them emphasizes the call for this service and this leadership. Nowhere are leaders more needed than in the country. The country has been robbed of many of its strongest and best. The city and perhaps the nation are gainers: but the country has suffered. From one point of view, the future of our farming communities depends upon the quality of leadership that we are to find there during the next generation.

So we come back to our question, Can the farm be made to yield to the man or woman, residing upon it and making a living from it, that measure of growth and all-round development that the ambitious person wishes to attain? And our answer is, Yes. In its work, its leisure, its field for service, it may minister to sound culture. If you love the life and work of the farm, do not hesitate to choose that occupation for fear of becoming narrow or stunted. You can live there the full, free life. You can grow to your full stature there. You can get culture from the corn lot.

THE AGENCIES OF PROGRESS

CHAPTER VI

EDUCATION FOR THE FARMER

The two generations living subsequent to the year 1875 are to be witnesses of an era in American history that will be known as the age of industrial education. These years are to be the boundaries of a period when the general principle that every individual shall be properly trained for his or her occupation in life is to receive its practical application. Future generations will doubtless extend marvelously the limits to which the principle can be pushed in its ministrations to human endeavor, but we are in the time when the principle is first to receive general acceptation and is to be regarded as a fundamentally necessary fact of human progress.

We are already "witnesses of the light." Even within the memory of young men has it come to pass that the old wine skins of the old educational institutions have been filled with the new wine of science and of knowledge and training applied to the industries and businesses of life.

Agriculture has perhaps been slow to feel the current of the new wine as it flows from the wine press of fast-growing industrial and social need. But the least hopeful of us can, I am sure, already see signs of a vast awakening. The farm, as well as the pulpit, the bar, the schoolroom, the shop, the counting-room, is breathing in the new idea that knowledge and training can be made of use to every man.

This awakening is due not merely to the desire of agriculturists to be in fashion, nor to the efforts of agricultural pedagogues, but to a real need. It is common knowledge that in America we have not farmed, but have mined the soil. We have "skimmed the cream" of fertility, and passed on to conquer new areas of virgin soil. This pioneer farming has required hard work, enterprise, courage, and all the noble traits of character that have made our American pioneers famous and that have within a century subdued a wilderness to civilization. But the farmer of today faces a new situation. The fertile lands are fairly well occupied. The old lands are depleted. These old lands must be handled skilfully if they are to produce profitably. They must be used because there is little else to use, and because they are near the best markets. Meantime, scientists have been studying the deep things of nature, and have been learning the laws that govern soil, plant, and animal. Thus we have the farmer's need met by the theorist's discoveries. The farmer, to avail himself of these discoveries must know their meaning and be able to apply the general principle to the specific case. This means agricultural education.

Then again, the consumption of high-class products increases at least as rapidly as does our wealth. The demand comes not alone from the rich, but from the middle classes of our cities. Skilled artisans are large consumers of choice meats, fruits, and vegetables. To grow these high-grade products means skill, and skill means training, and training in the large sense means education.

The need for agricultural education, is, then, a real and vital one. It is pressed upon us by economic and social conditions. It is in line with the movement of the age.

In discussing agricultural education, we must not forget that the farmer is also a citizen and a man. He should be an intelligent citizen, and should therefore study questions of government. As a man, he should be the equal of other men of his same social rank. He therefore needs a good general education. He is more than mere farmer. While as farmer he must connect his business with its environment and out of his surroundings gain sound culture; while he should know nature, not only as its master, but as its friend; he should also be in sympathy with all that makes modern civilization worth while. And even as mere farmer, he finds himself face to face with grave social problems. He must not only produce but he must sell, and his selling powers are governed by conditions of the market, by transportation facilities and practices, and are affected by the laws of the land. Hence he must be a student of these problems and must know the broad phases of agriculture and its relations to other industries.

No intelligent man doubts the need of agricultural education. Let us, then, say a word about the kind of education demanded. This question is settled very largely by the discussion we have just had about the need of this education. First of all, this education will give a fair mastery of the principles that govern proper soil management and plant and animal growth. This is fundamental. The farmer is dealing with natural laws, and he must know in them their applications. He cannot be blind to their dominance. They insist on recognition. They are jealous masters and good servants. Nature serves only the man who obeys her. To obey he must know. The truth shall make him free. How to secure larger crops of better products at less cost and still maintain soil fertility, is the first demand of modern agriculture, and its solution depends in large measure upon education.

But education does not stop here. The farmer is also a seller as well as a producer. He is a business man. He is manager of an industry. He is an investor of capital. So the question will arise, Can he get any help from education in the handling of the business phases of his farm? He certainly can. You cannot teach a man business in the sense of supplying him with good sense, business judgment, ability to handle men, and so on. But you can study the general conditions that govern the business of agriculture, and you can report the results of your researches to the practical farmer; and he, if he is willing, may learn much that will be helpful to him in deciding the many difficult questions that confront him as a business man. Farm administration in its largest sense will, then, be a most important phase of agricultural education.

It is quite possible for the individual farmer to succeed admirably if he is equipped with a sound training in the principles of production and in farm management. But there are still larger questions that farmers as a class must meet if agriculture is to have its full success and if the farmer himself is to occupy the social position he ought to have. Agriculture is an industry among industries. Farmers are a class among classes. As an industry, agriculture has relations to other industries. It is subject to economic laws. It involves something more than growing and selling. The nature of the market, railroad rates, effects of the tariff and of taxation, are questions vital to agriculture. So with the farmers socially considered. Their opportunities for social life, their school facilities, their church privileges, their associations and organizations – all these are important matters. So agricultural education will not fail to call attention to these larger questions.

The well-educated farmer will, then, be trained in three lines of thought – first, that which deals with the growth of products; second, that which deals with the selling of products; and third, that which deals with agriculture as an industry and farmers as a class of people.

We may next discuss as briefly as possible the methods by which agricultural education may be advanced. We may not consider all of them, but rather attend only to some of those agencies that seem of peculiar interest just at this time.

There is one underlying requisite of successful agricultural education that is all-important. It is faith in agriculture. Any man to succeed grandly must have absolute faith in his business. So the farmer must believe in agriculture. Agriculture cannot attain its highest rank unless the men engaged in it believe in it most profoundly. They must believe that a man can make money in farming. They must love the farm life and surroundings. They must believe that the best days of agriculture are ahead of us, not behind us. They must believe that men can find in agriculture a chance to use brains and to develop talents and to utilize education. Agricultural education rests on this faith. Give us a state filled with such farmers and we can guarantee a strong system of agricultural education. But the seeds of education cannot grow in a soil barren of the richness of sentiment for and confidence in the farm. Our agricultural colleges have been criticized because they have graduated so few farmers. But the fault is not all with the colleges. The farmers also are to blame. They have not had faith enough in the farm to advise young men to go to college to prepare for farming. They admit the value of education for the law, for building railroads, but not for farming. This must be changed, is being changed. The last ten years have seen a revolution in this respect, and the result is a mighty increase in agricultural educational interest.

One powerful means of agricultural education is the farmers' organization or association. All our dairy, horticultural, poultry, and live-stock associations are great educators. So of an organization like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They should encourage organization if for no other reason than for the splendid educational advantages that flow from it.