COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEMS1

EX-SECRETARY GARFIELD, in an address at the Young Men's Christian Association dinner last week, dealt with the failing attractions of country life, especially life on the farm. As a member of the Country Life Commission, he referred to recent investigations and said that they pointed to increasing "stagnation and decline" in rural regions, upon which the cities still exercise their vast power of action. President Taft touched upon the same subject in one of his recent speeches in the South. Admitting the evils, he was, characteristically, more sanguine than Mr. Garfield. In the President's opinion, country life is in the way of being made so fascinating that it may soon reassert its old place in our civilization, and check the seemingly irresistible drift to the city. "The suburban electric railroads," said Mr. Taft, "the telephone, the rural postal delivery, inventions, and coöperative arrangements are reaching such a point that it will soon become, I trust, more comfortable to live in the country than in the city."

There is truth in this view, but there is also fallacy. Increasing conveniences do, indeed, make country life more tolerable to those who feel themselves condemned to it, but is there any evidence that these new and extending facilities operate to hold on the farm the young men who are burning to get away from it? The telephone in the remote countryside is unquestionably a great blessing. With a service made relatively cheap by the use of party-lines, it brings the distant farmhouse into instant touch with physician and shopkeeper and postmaster. It also makes possible a daily interchange

1 Copyright. Reprinted by permission. An editorial from The Nation for November 18, 1909.

of neighborhood gossip and a frequent meeting of friends which are, in many sections, giving a wholly new cast to the social side of life in the country. All this must be recognized thankfully, yet the doubt remains whether such civilizing inventions do or can keep down that persistent and growing distaste for life on the farm of which ex-Secretary Garfield spoke so regretfully. Because the boy in a New Hampshire farmhouse can telephone to the nearest village, is he the less likely to slip away to Boston to get a job as motorman? We know of no statistics on the point, yet the fact that farms continue to be abandoned, and that the city keeps on pulling to itself country-bred youth, would seem to argue that neither telephone nor trolley nor the daily newspaper left in the mailbox by the roadside will suddenly make thousands of men and women fall in love with the country which they now hate.

As a matter of fact, it may be plausibly argued that the very introduction in the country of a modicum of urban comforts and conveniences merely whets the longing for the city. Sir Horace Plunkett, who for twenty years has been a close student of agricultural conditions in Ireland and in the United States, is distinctly of the mind that the thing actually works in that way. The trolley car passing once an hour simply renders the appeal of subway and elevated and the two-minute headway all the stronger. The farm telephone is very good, but how if it puts into the youth's head a still more vivid conception of the charm of a great city knit together in the enjoyment of every modern facility? What possible chance has the newspaper which reaches the farm in the evening, or a day late, of competing in excitement with the city editions appearing clamorously all day long and far into the night? Sir Horace Plunkett soberly concludes that the trend to the cities has actually been heightened, not diminished, by giving the country a fuller taste of urban pleasures and conveniences. Having got a small part, the country folk desire the whole,

more than ever. Careful inquiry should be directed to ascertaining whether this is really the fact.

For so deep a social disturbance as the steady forsaking of country life by those who can escape it, remedies that go deep are obviously necessary. And they will have to be felt by the masses rather than presented by the rural "uplifters." Causes both economic and social must get powerfully in operation before we shall see the beginnings of the desired effect. The argument from material well-being seems already to be slowly making headway. Historically, the flight from the country to the city was at first a part of the industrial revolution of the last century. The great factories, the more numerous jobs, were in urban communities, and farm workers, with those whose house-industries had been destroyed by machinery and specialization, went to the towns to find work. It may be that a reaction will set in, also for economic reasons. The struggle for existence may drive people back to the land. With farming made easier and more scientific and profitable, the terrible pressure in cities may soon begin to extrude to country districts many who must seek a new environment and opportunity if they are to maintain themselves above want or beggary. Until some such solid advantages, or social necessities, can be made the rural set-off to the artificial charm of the city, it will be in vain to hope for a repopulation of deserted hillsides. To reinforce the economic argument by every appeal on the score of health and sentiment is, of course, an obvious duty. Nothing that can be done to improve country schools, or to promote human intercourse among scattered farmers, should be omitted. And it might well be hoped that a change of mental attitude could be brought about so that men and women would again associate their happiest experiences with country sights and sounds, and have such remembered thrills of pleasure as stirred De Quincey when he recalled his joy, as a child, at the blossoming of the crocuses in his father's garden.

CONDITIONS AND NEEDS OF COUNTRY LIFE 1

JOHN M. GILLETTE

THERE seems to be a consensus of opinion that there is something wrong with the country. Articles discussing the subject are myriad. Did the agricultural population view itself as urban writers appear to view it, it would doubtless consider itself as a fit subject for treatment at the old-time "mourner's bench." That certain portions of our rural inhabitants are interested in the “improvement of rural matters" is evident from the appearance of discussions of some of those matters at various kinds of farmers' meetings. But that the agriculturalists view the situation with alarm is by no means evident. In order to help clear up the situation, it may be well to attempt to determine just what is the rural problem. It may be well to show first what it is not.

I. Negative Aspects of the Problem

1. It would be a mistake to suppose that the problem consists in rural deterioration or arises because of rural degeneration. There has taken place in the United States no such thing as general rural deterioration. A slight acquaintance with the history of our country will afford ample evidence that there has been general advance almost all along the line in country life. As compared with pre-national times the farm population is better housed, better clothed, better fed, better educated and informed, is more productive, produces what it does produce more easily, has better implements and agencies with which to work, and the farm women have

1 Copyright. Reprinted by permission from The Annals of the American Academy, Vol. xl, March, 1912, pp. 3-11.

been emancipated from much of the arduous labor which fell to their lot in the period of household industry.

Indeed one does not have to recur to so remote a period as that to find striking contrasts. Many of our aged contemporaries who were reared on the farm well remember the backward conditions which obtained in matters of production, marketing, transportation, obtaining necessaries of life in the home, methods of living, and education. Respect for truth impels us to recognize a great advance in the general conditions of life of country populations. It is well to remember that the "rural problem" is the product of intelligence, directed towards a province which has hitherto been somewhat remote from comparison and criticism. We have evolved certain ideals of life with the growth of cities and civilization, have brought them to bear on country life with the result that the latter has been found backward in some respects as measured by those ideals. The few instances of rural arrested development or of deterioration are a minimum in total country life as compared with the extensive slums of the cities.

2. It is also a mistake to assume, as is so frequently done, that the problem lies in the direction of rural depopulation. It is commonly taken for granted that the vast growth of urban centers has taken place at the almost entire expense of rural districts. There is a movement to the cities of rural populations. It may have its serious aspects. But it is not the problem preëminently. An analysis of the census reports and those of the Commissioner General of Immigration gives these results. City growth ensues from four factors, namely, incorporation, natural increase, migration from the country, and immigration. The first is inconsequential. Natural increase accounts for about 20 per cent of city increase, immigration, for from 65 to 70 per cent, and rural migration for the remainder, say from 10 to 15 per cent.

Much of the seeming loss of population to the cities arises