Chapters in Rural Progress

CHAPTER XIII

A SUMMARY OF RECENT PROGRESS

In some respects the most notable recent advance in rural matters consists in the improved means of communication in rural districts. The country is relatively isolated, and it is this isolation in its extreme forms that is the bane of country living. Undue conservatism, lack of conformity to progressive views, undue prominence of class feeling, and a tendency to be less alert are things that grow out of this isolation; but better means of communication decrease these difficulties, and the last few years have seen a remarkable advance in this respect. For instance, the rural free mail delivery system is only ten years old, and yet today there are more than twenty-five thousand routes of this character in the United States serving possibly twenty million people with daily mail, a great proportion of whom before had very irregular mail service. Results are patent and marked. Time is saved in going for mail; market reports come daily; farmers are more prompt in their business dealings; roads are kept in better shape; there is an increased circulation of papers and magazines. Thus the farmer is in closer touch with affairs and much more alert to business opportunities, to political activities, and to social movements. The circulation of daily papers in country districts has increased at a marvelous rate. The amount of letter-writing has increased. Rural delivery of mail arouses the spirit of "being in the world." Its results have been almost revolutionary.

So, too, the rural telephone. Recent investigation in the states of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana showed that out of 200,000 subscribers to the independent telephone companies of those states about one-sixth were in farm homes. A few years ago, hardly a telephone could be found in a farmer's family. This business is constantly increasing. The established telephone companies are pushing their work into the country districts, small local exchanges are being formed, and soon the farmers, in the North at least, will be almost as well served by the telephone as are people of the smaller cities.

Interurban electric railways are being built very rapidly and their advantage to the farmer is obvious. It is doubtful if their effect has been quite so far-reaching as some have suggested. At present they very largely parallel existing steam railways, and while they give better freight and passenger service and assist materially in diminishing rural isolation in the areas which they traverse, their influence does not extend very far from the line itself, and they reach relatively small areas of the country. However, their value to the farmer is very large, and, as they increase in number and in efficiency of service, they will become a powerful factor in rural progress.

The good-roads movement is beginning to take on large proportions. It is, however, a complicated question. To make first-class roads is a costly business, and while a few such roads are of great value in a general social way, they do not quite make general country conditions ideal. To accomplish this, every road in the country should be a good road the year through, and this is an ideal very difficult of realization. However, in general, the roads are improving and as rapidly as the wealth of the country will permit the road system of the United States will be developed. Of course, good roads are a prime requisite for rural betterment.

In general, it may be said that during the past decade the improvement of means of communication in rural districts has gone forward at a marvelously rapid pace. Nor is it exaggerating to say that the movements named are re-creating farm life.

During this same period, there has been an almost equally wonderful advance in the means of agricultural education. Just twenty years ago the experiment-station system of this country was established. It took ten years for the stations to organize their work and to gain the confidence of the farmers. At present however, they are looked upon with great favor by the farming class and are doing a magnificent work. Their function is that of research chiefly, although they attempt some control service, such as inspection of fertilizers, stock foods, etc. In research they aim both to study the more intricate scientific questions that relate to agriculture and to carry on experiments that are of more obvious and more immediate practical application to existing conditions in the various states. There is one of these stations in each state and territory, besides a number of stations supported by state funds. The Department of Agriculture at Washington has also developed during the last ten years until it is performing very large service for agriculture. Its annual expenditures aggregate eight or ten million dollars, and it has in its employment hundreds of experts carrying on laboratory and field research, scouring the world for plants and seeds that may be of economic value, and assisting to control plant and animal diseases. It is also distributing a vast amount of practical information, put in readable form and adapted to the average farmer. Its work of seeking to extend the markets of our agricultural products is one of its notable successes.

Agricultural schools have been talked about for a century, and during the early part of the last century several were started. The first permanent agricultural college was opened in 1857, in Michigan. The Morrill Act of 1862 gave rise to a system of such colleges and today there will be found one in every state and territory, besides several for the colored people of the South. Up to 1890, these colleges had been not wholly satisfactory and the farming class was not patronizing very fully their agricultural courses. The fault belonged both to the college and to the farmers. The farmers were skeptical of the value of agricultural education, and the colleges were often out of sympathy with the real needs of the farmers, and in fact found it difficult to break away from the pedagogical ideals of the old educational régime. Since 1890, however, there has been a complete change of sentiment in this respect, particularly in the Middle West. There the "land-grant" colleges, whether separate colleges or whether organized as colleges of state universities, are securing magnificent buildings for agriculture, are offering fully equipped courses, and are enrolling as students some of the best men in college, whom they are educating not only for agricultural teachers and experimenters but also for practical farmers. Of course, there are many grave problems connected with this subject, many farmers who do not yet respond to the call for educated agriculturists, and some colleges that do not yet appreciate their opportunity. But the change for the better has been so marked that all agricultural educators are extremely optimistic.

One of the most difficult and most important phases of agricultural education is that of a secondary grade. The great proportion of educated farmers will probably be trained for their business in secondary schools. This problem is being approached from many standpoints. The University of Minnesota established, some fourteen years ago, a school of agriculture, which now enrols several hundred pupils of both sexes. Wisconsin is trying the experiment of two county schools of agriculture. Occasionally the public high school will be found offering a course in agriculture. Several states are experimenting in one or more of these lines, and during the next few years we shall see a large development of this phase of agricultural education.

One of the most interesting movements in agricultural education has been an attempt to introduce nature-study and even the elements of agriculture into the country schools. Cornell University has taken the lead in advocating "nature-study" purely, for the schools; and the University of Missouri has perhaps been the leader in advocating that the work be made even more definite and practical, and that the country pupils shall be taught, during their early years even, "the elements of agriculture." Both plans are being worked out with a fair degree of success, and many other states are carrying out the work in some form or other. Of course the idea is not a new one, but its present practical application is a timely one, and it will not be long before this branch of agricultural education will become a prominent factor in rural betterment.

A most suggestive phase of agricultural education is college extension work. University extension has had a rather meteoric career in this country, in so far as it has been connected with educational institutions; although the extension idea is spreading rapidly and is being worked out through home study and correspondence courses of all sorts. But I think there is scarcely any field in which the real college extension idea is today being more successfully applied than in agriculture. The work started with farmers' institutes, which were instituted about twenty-five years ago and which have been adopted in practically all the states of the Union. It has broadened within ten years, until now it is carried on not only by farmers' institutes, but through home-correspondence courses, the introduction of millions of pamphlets into farm homes, demonstrations in spraying, butter-making, soil testing, milk testing, and so on.

Ontario presents a good illustration of how a new agriculture can be created, in a dozen years, by co-operating methods of agricultural education. Her provincial department of agriculture, her experiment station, her agricultural college, her various forms of extension work, and her various societies of agriculturists have all worked together with an unusual degree of harmony for the deliberate purpose of inducing Canadian agriculturists to produce the things that will bring the most profit. The results have been most astonishing and most gratifying.

The recent progress in the organization of farmers has been less marked than has been the development of rural communication and agricultural education. Organization is a prime requisite for farmers. They feel this truth themselves. For the last forty years, many attempts – some large, some small, some successful, some great failures – have been made to this end. The problem is an extremely difficult one. Business co-operation among farmers is especially difficult and, while co-operation has developed quite largely – so much so that the Department of Agriculture was able to report, a year ago, a list of five thousand co-operative societies of various kinds among farmers – still it cannot be said that the farmers are co-operating industrially in a relatively large way. They have, however, a multitude of associations and societies. They have also the Grange, which is the most successful of all the general organizations of farmers in the country. Contrary to public belief, the Grange is not defunct, but has been growing at a very rapid pace during the last few years and has a large influence especially in the East and Middle West. It has practically no existence in the far West and in the South. It has a national organization, however, representing some twenty-six states. Its influence in Congress is said to be marked. The local Granges are doing a very large work, socially, educationally, and sometimes financially. The Grange seems to understand itself now. Its ideals have been worked out pretty carefully, and its future growth is quite certain.

We have suggested that the significant rural social movements of the past few years have been the improvement of rural communication, the wonderful development of agricultural education, and the fairly satisfactory development of organization among farmers. It seems also apparent that there is a fourth line of development that might be mentioned as being significant, and it may be expressed in a somewhat general statement that the interest in agricultural questions has increased in a very marked way. There is undoubtedly a new emphasis upon country life generally. The people of the cities have been going to the country more than ever before. A walk, the length of Beacon Street in Boston, at any time from the middle of June to late autumn, convinces one that the majority of the people are somewhere in the country. All over the North, city people are making country homes for at least a portion of the year. There is also a growing interest in the farm and farm problems among the general public. Just now the country schools are attracting special attention from the educators – so much so that the late President Harper stated, not long ago, that the rural-school question is the coming question in education. Even the country church is being made a subject of discussion in religious circles. It is conceded that agriculture presents "problems." And while the throbbing, busy, intense life of the city brings perplexing questions to our civilization, our people are coming to realize that the agricultural population and the agricultural industry are still tremendous factors in our national life and success, and that both social and industrial conditions in the country are such that there also are grave questions to be settled.

In view of the facts which have been given, I think if one were asked to give a direct answer to the question, Is the farmer keeping up? one could reply, Yes. In some sections of the country, the farmers have not responded to these forward movements. The countryman is naturally conservative. Not only that, but there are some serious questions that he has to meet in his business and in his life. He finds it extremely and increasingly difficult to get adequate labor. He has not been able to take sufficient advantage of the power of co-operation. The industrial and social development of the city has lured away his children. And yet one cannot help feeling that these really remarkable advances of the past decade are prophetic of a steady improvement in rural conditions, of a larger development of rural life, of a greater prosperity for agriculture.

With regard to the future, it seems to me that, on the social side, the progress of the next few years is to be along the lines, indicated above, which have characterized the past ten or a dozen years. Still further improved means of communication will tend to banish isolation and its drawbacks. Realization of the benefits of organization and ability to co-operate will vastly strengthen class power. The means of agricultural education will be developed very rapidly, with the ideal in mind of being able to furnish some sort of agricultural training for every individual who lives upon the farm. The country question, as a whole, will attract increasing attention. Gradually it will be seen that the rural problem is one of the greatest interest to all our citizens. The spirit of co-operation will grow until not only the farmers themselves unite for their own class interests but the various social agencies – industrial, religious, educational – ministering to rural betterment will find themselves also co-operating. Thus, it seems to me, the outlook for the future is full of hope. A genuine forward movement for rural betterment has had its beginning, is now gathering volume, and will soon attain very large proportions.

FORWARD STEPS