Rural community organization

Front matter

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Contents

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I. The Need of a Rural Policy i

II. The Significance of a Changing Rural

Chapter I The Need Of A Rural Policy

In a discussion of rural organization and allied fields the lack of a central guiding policy becomes evident. The ideal of a common goal toward which all the various and numerous agencies in rural work are striving has not been formulated.

Excellent as has been most of our rural investigation and teaching, even to profound achievement in some fields, there has been without doubt a great loss in effectiveness, in duplication, in useless controversy, in the lack of correlation, and in an understanding of fundamental rural psychology and rural relations. Principles once discovered do not need to be discovered again and again; we find, however, that there has been great waste in human and financial resources in that way. Proof of this is seen in the numerous duplicate investigations and researches, accounts of which are published by the various state agricultural colleges and experiment stations and the United States Department of Agriculture, dealing with once proved, clear-cut, and definite principles. A further proof of the lack of a policy is seen in the numerous plans of our extension divisions in trying to reckon with the farmer on the land. They know they are trying to help him, but just how, and why, and for what, there is no general agreement.

A true policy must have a certain completeness about it. It can be rather definitely expressed and understood. It must be widely and generally accepted; it directs efforts and governs activities. Government, farmers' associations, and individuals will join in a common effort for one large end, intelligently, earnestly, co-operatively. This sort of policy we do not have in America today.1

A true policy will recognize the inseparable interrelations existing between the social and the economic activities of farm life and not divorce them. It will seek to correlate all agencies so that the development of these activities will advance in proper degree and in proper relation to one another. Any other ideal must surely result in dwarfed and retarded development. The economic and the social are inseparably bound up in the farmer's life; in his thoughts and plans and activities he never clearly separates the one from the other. This

1 Kenyon L. Butterfield, The Farmer and the New Day, p. 85. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919.)

THE NEED OF A RURAL POLICY 3

trait of rural psychology must be kept always in mind in the formulation and execution of any policy.

If we should attempt to designate a rural policy of the past we might say there has been more or less conscious effort in the nation at large to develop along the following lines:

1. To increase agricultural production, chiefly by opening for agricultural use as much land as possible and settling it as rapidly as possible; but also by education, exhortation, expert advice and government subsidies in special instances;

2. To encourage one-family farms owned by those who till them;

3. To increase as much as possible our exports of agricultural products, both new and manufactured.1

As we look back upon our history, we find in this policy many things calling for commendation, and many calling for regret. This sort of ideal helped us subdue a wild, raw country, develop and bring it to a foremost place among the nations. It helped us rear upon this land the most virile and aggressive people, in the main, the world has ever seen. It has implanted strongly in the heart and mind of the American farmer the ideal of landownership and all the strength of character and conservatism that go with it.

*Ibid.

On the other hand, this sort of policy has revealed glaring weaknesses in its scope and aims. It has given us no definite land policy with proper plans for land settlement according to differences in productiveness of soil and human abilities. It offered no plans or policy relating to soil conservation, credit facilities, for community development, marketing and distribution of farm products. There are no plans for the co-ordination of the institutions of the farmers' local unit with those of the larger unit, such as county, state, and nation. There are no plans for co-operation between town and country. Probably most fundamental of all, there is no policy relative to the development of local institutions of the farmer, no definition of their natural sphere, and no endeavor to assist him in and through their medium.

As a consequence of these latter failures there have been countless attempts to connect the farmers in educational, co-operative, religious, and political ways with general advancements in the world at large. We are now just beginning to locate our troubles. A policy framed upon an understanding of the farmer's psychology, upon a knowledge of his local

THE NEED OF A RURAL POLICY 5

community and of his institutions, would have prevented very many conflicting aims, much resultless effort, and much misunderstanding of the conservatism of the farmer.

A rural policy we should have which is broader than a mere statement of plans. It must be conceived in the light of the mistakes of the past, the developments of the present, and the needs of the future. A comprehensive rural policy will not consider agriculture and country life narrowly, as something to be fostered and aided for its own sake, but as a vital part of a great society, as one of the departments of American life the development and growth of which must, for the good of all, be co-ordinated and related to every other department.

In this policy, rural organization will play a very large part. The day of the individualist farmer has passed. Farmers must co-operate as never before; co-operation takes its highest form through organization. Effective organization must include persons of common interests, common aims, and defmiteness of purpose. Conscientious, searching, painstaking effort must be made to locate the areas of natural, comprehensive rural communities, and to apply the tenets of a policy upon such a basis, fitting all teaching, all plans and purposes to the particular local environment, both physical and human.

The ultimate need of the open country is the development of community effort and of social resources

There is a general lack of wholesome societies that are

organized on a social basis There is need of the

greatest diversity in country life affairs, but there is equal need of a social cohesion operating among all these affairs and tying them all together.1

There must be a definition of aims, a set of principles, a proper representation of the separate forces working in the rural field. A program should be arranged reaching clearly from the highest and most complex rural governmental and state institution to the farmer on the land. This program will set the goals for the different fields of endeavor; it will outline methods of procedure. Selected representatives from all the different fields of work should help in framing this program. In such a way it will be based upon actual needs and definite information. Proper machinery must be erected for vitalizing the program, for its administration and perpetuation.

1 Report of the Commission on Country Life, p. 107. (New York: Sturgis and Walton Company, 1911.)

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In the words of Professor E. L. Morgan, we find stated the following elements of a correct conception of a rural policy :

.... The goal in country life organizations is such an understanding and relationship of persons, forces and agencies in a given area, whether community, county, state or nation, as accomplishes for that unit the most systematic and progressive correlation of those forces and agencies that make for the sound development of a satisfying life for rural people, and for the adjustment of their highest welfare to the common good.1

Important contributions to the framing of a rural policy have been made by some of our leading rural thinkers of the day. Comprehensive state policies have been worked out in certain fields, which, within themselves, are near models for the framing of a broader and all-inclusive policy. As an illustration the writer would refer to the "Illinois System of Permanent Agriculture," conceived of and developed by the late Dr. Cyril G. Hopkins, of the University of Illinois. Here is a true policy with respect to the maintenance of soil fertility, a policy with a definite goal, e.g., a permanent, satisfying, remunerative agriculture;

1 Proceedings, First National Country Life Conference, Baltimore, p. 138. (Ithaca, N.Y.: National Country Life Association, 1919.)

a policy with a specific program, namely, the education of all the people connected with the land to the needs of soil conservation and the ways and means of securing the same. Here is a policy, at the base an economic conception, but which recognizes that a people cannot progress, cannot build worthy institutions, cannot even hold their own status with ever declining soil fertility. The program of this policy involves the taking of the most complete inventory of the stock of fertility in soils ever undertaken by any institution. In carrying out this inventory, the soils of every nook and corner of the state of Illinois are mapped and shown in colors according to types. An analysis of the store of fertility in areas as small as 10 acres in extent is made, and accompanies the map relating to the soils of any particular county. Thousands of samples of soil of every type and class in the state are carefully analyzed by trained chemists. Specific, definite recommendations for the building up and maintaining of the fertility of all soils are made, these being based upon the results of the analyses and the results of extensive and numerous field experiments gathered from local experiment stations scat-

THE NEED OF A RURAL POLICY 9

tered throughout the state upon every important soil type. In this policy a decided stand is taken against the recommendation of the ordinary mixed, complete fertilizers as a means of soil improvement, against wasteful soilmanagement practices, and against useless expensive methods of soil enrichment.

Definite machinery is set up for carrying out this policy. Advisory committees of actual, wide-awake farmers constitute the guiding forces in directing the policy. A force of trained soil surveyors, soil chemists, and experiment-station men constitute a scientific body for gathering and elaborating facts. Bulletins, lectures, colored county-soil maps, short courses, field demonstrations, and personal assistance, all form the means of disseminating the information.

This soil policy is given here at some length and detail in order to illustrate more completely what is meant by a policy, and that some hints might be dropped as to the fitness of a real rural policy which seeks to correlate all agencies and unite them in the attainment of definite rural life-ends.

President Kenyon L. Butterfield, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, has outio RURAL COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

lined for us the elements of a true policy. He groups his discussion under four main heads, as follows :

i. A body of principles. It is shown here that we must adopt certain principles as a nation relative to exporting or importing a part or a greater part of our food; whether we should work for family-sized farms or large holdings with tenants; whether each section of the country should be designated a zone for the production of certain fitting crops and animals; whether we wish to encourage the further extension of our system of distribution of food products or supplement it with government regulation or management, or ownership of the machinery of food distribution. We should establish principles relative to protection and insurance against drouth, hail, flood, tornado, insect pests, and diseases. We should take certain stands as to whether our educational system should be broad enough to reach every worker on the land and include economic and social problems, or whether it should be made wholly technical.

2. There should be a program based upon adequate knowledge, definite purposes, and effective methods.

THE NEED OF A RURAL POLICY n

3. There should be machinery involving proper institutions, a proper division of labor, and constructive co-operation.

4. General needs such as allowing for a proper adjustment between policies and programs, the utilization of the laws of progress, a proper discussion of the issues involved, and a discovery and training of leaders to carry out the policy; and, finally, President Butterfield emphasizes that due recognition must be given to the nation as a whole in any rural policy because of the fact that in a country like ours the success of any rural policy must depend upon the support of the whole people.1

In conclusion, we may say that no scheme of rural organization can work fully and completely without its proper articulation with each and every other force working in the rural field from the community outward to state and nation. The proper balancing and adjustment of forces and agencies will come through a clean-cut, definite policy. This chapter aims merely to point out in a general way the most outstanding reasons for a rural policy. For a proper treatment of the subject a treatise would be more appropriate ; such a treatment awaits the skill and training of one very specially qualified.

1 Kenyan L. Butterfield, op. cit., pp. 95-99,

Chapter II The Significance Of A Changing Rural Psychology

An investigation of the sort attempted here would not have its proper setting, and could not show the relationships of one form of organization to another and to the rural population as a whole, without first making a constructive analysis of the farmer's attitude of mind toward the old and the new in country life. That his psychology is undergoing a change there can be little doubt. That this change is reflecting itself in his mode of living, in his economic and social life, and in his institutions, is of much significance to the student of rural life.

The early type of farmer in America was an extreme individualist. This should be stated without reproach. Under the conditions of the times, and by force of circumstances beyond his control, he could not very well have been otherwise. It was this mental characteristic which gave him needed self-reliance, indomitable perseverance, and a satisfaction with his.

A CHANGING RURAL PSYCHOLOGY 13

lot, all of which were so necessary for the huge task of settling this country on the plans laid out by our American forefathers.

With farm homes located at distances varying from rods to miles, with poor roads or none at all, no telephones, few conveniences of life as we know of them today, the typical American farmer soon learned to think of and interpret things in terms of his own individuality. This sort of psychology developed a resultant set of individualistic institutions, namely, the church, the district school, and the country store, all of which have served their day and age well. The farm home was also an expression of this individualism. Set in the midst of the toil and labors of the farmer, it partook of every activity of his isolated life. The whole fabric of farm-home life was intensified, intimately woven into the business of the farmer, and highly individualized.

Dr. Warren H. Wilson, in his admirable book, The Evolution of the Country Community, brings out the foregoing points. He says :

.... The land farmer expected to live in his group. Secure in his own acres and believing himself "as good as anybody," he relied for his son and daughter not upon trained skill, but upon native abilities, sterling character, independence and industry. Of all these the household, not the school, is the source.1

Until recent years the farmer has not been brought into economic and social contact with the world in matters of the deepest concern to his success. He did not feel the need of co-operating with outsiders in establishing business relationships. His market was local and required little attention on his part; co-operative enterprises were of the simplest kind, legislation he left to the lawyers, most of his farm work he performed by himself with the aid of his family, the townsman meant little more to him than a necessary evil to be watched with the closest scrutiny. His daily and seasonal round of duties, civic, social, economic and religious, brought him very little into relationships to others where his conduct, his ability to please, and his agreeableness and personality meant success or failure to his enterprise. Until recent years the American farmer has been a free lance. Professor C. J. Galpin says of him:

.... Organizing the duties of his land management without supervision, in general accordance with tradition and custom, the farmer, we have observed, is his own boss.

1 Warren H. Wilson, The Evolution of the Country Community, p. 24. (Boston, Mass.: The Pilgrim Press, 191 2.)

A CHANGING RURAL PSYCHOLOGY 15

Not only is he in great measure a craftsman, but a craftsman exempt from superior authority and without the influence of competitors. This constant dependence upon his own judgment has wrought out the habit of self reliance. Moreover, his solitary mode of working in the fields, out in the environing spaces of silence, unbroken by the click of other human wills, where the tick, tick, tick of his own mental machinery is registering his own private judgments, has re-enforced the habit of self reliance. He works upon the soil; he works towards a product which is shaping up according to the will of God; he works under no man made specifications or man made patterns; he works under no pressure to please the human whim of the ultimate user of his product.1

This sketch of influences and of their effect upon the farmer will serve as a basis upon which to develop the importance of the significant changes creeping into the rural life of today, and to show the reasons for their slow but steady advance. In considering rural organization plans and, especially, the determination of the unit of population upon which to build plans, a knowledge of the psychology of farm folks is absolutely essential. Changes in attitudes are remarkably different in different parts of the country. Plans, therefore, must be made to fit conditions. Many of the schemes of the past have fallen to pieces because they

Charles J. Galpin, Rural Life, pp. 43-44. (New York: The Century Company, 1918.)

were cut to a pattern and not to measure. Much ill-adapted work of county agents, extension bureaus, state and national agencies is due to the projection of plans upon a basis not cognizant of the will of the farmer and his local group.

The increasing commercialization of agriculture, bringing the farmer into economic and social relations with men of various business groups, has been a dominant force in stimulating him to a more cosmopolitan attitude of mind. With the concentration of industries and the building up of cities, agriculture has passed from a self-sufficing occupation to one dependent upon the outside world. This has brought about a great development and extension of markets in food products and has thereby drawn the farmer into varied relationships. He finds it necessary now to look beyond his farm and neighborhood, to study the big question of supply and demand, to interpret economic changes, and to conduct his farming in accordance with the new demands. With the increased specialization in agriculture and the development of sale by grades, classes, and standards, the farmer is being thrown more and more into contact with strong competitive

A CHANGING RURAL PSYCHOLOGY 17

forces. By the operation of the law of the survival of the fittest, the farmer is forced out of his individualistic ways in such markets. As one illustration taken from among many, we find live-stock breeders nowadays very responsive to the increasing exactions of demand.

The telephone and rural mail delivery have done much to break down rural individualism; these are necessary adjuncts to the enlarging business relations of the farmer. The automobile and good roads have enlarged his neighborhood and community, brought him more into town, and, to a very great extent, have taken him out of his seclusion. The increasing use of machinery upon the farm has helped to free the farmer's mind for larger and broader questions than heretofore occupied it during his working hours. The deadening drudgery of hard work is being more and more replaced by complicated machines, which require greater skill and mental activity. The reflex of all this is more reserve power and alertness for associative activities.

President Kenyon L. Butterfield says:

All farmers may be divided into three classes. There is the "old" farmer, there is the "new" farmer, and there is the "moss-back." The old farmer represents the ancient regime. The new farmer is the modern business agriculturist. The moss-back is a medieval survival. The old farmer was in his day a new farmer; he was "up with the times" as the times then were. The new farmer is merely the worthy son of a noble sire; he is the modern embodiment of the old farmer's progressiveness The new

farmer has his largest conquests yet to make. But he has put his faith in the strong arm of science ; he has at his hand the commercial mechanism of a world of business. He believes he will win because he is in league with the ongoing forces of civilization.1

Scientific agriculture and its leaders of vision have taught a new concept of human relations to the farmer. A son or a daughter returning from an agricultural college has exercised untold influence in the role of a changing psychology. Co-operative enterprises in road-building, in the ownership of expensive machinery, in breeding associations have had unlimited value in teaching the farmer how to rub shoulders and get along with the other fellow. Consolidation of schools, federation of churches, building and maintaining community centers have cut wider and deeper into the old individualistic state. The cultivation of the farmer by the townsman through chambers of commerce, community festivals, fairs, boys' and girls'

1 Kenyon L. Butterfield, Chapters in Rural Progress, PP- 53-54- (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1907.)

A CHANGING RURAL PSYCHOLOGY 19

club prizes have all tended to break down suspicion and antagonism between townsman and farmer. At this point Professor Galpin1 opens up a fertile vein of thought in showing that much of the former aloofness between townsman and countryman has been due to widely different standards of living. The farmer, who has a low standard of living compared with the city man, will tend to look with suspicion upon the latter, and as a consequence there is no common getting together. It is only as standards of living approach equalization that we get the co-operation between the two that rings true. One of the solutions, therefore, of this phase of the rural problem is a rising standard of living for the farmer where his present standard is too low. Dr. Paul L. Vogt states :

The newspaper and the agricultural journal, together with the development of free public library systems, are tending toward a unity in mental content in the rural and the urban community. As rural reading matter becomes more abundant, the differences in types of thought between town and country will become less marked.2

1 Charles J. Galpin, The Village in Relation to the Surrounding Country. A paper read before a conference on the village and the town school of the National Education Association, Cleveland, Ohio, February 26, 1920.

2 Paul L. Vogt, Introduction to Rural Sociology, p. 194. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1917.)

In this connection it might be well to state that the spread of reading-matter among the farmers is of undoubted value and should become more universal. At the same time, however, we must not lose sight of the fact that many a city man is densely ignorant of the farmer and his true method of life, and that educative agencies are quite as necessary for him in order to bring about a proper adjustment between the two, resting upon a thorough understanding and appreciation of each for the other's business and mode of life.

The discussion of the factors playing a part in shaping a new psychology for the farmer does not lead to the conclusion that the farmer, under the full influence of the new system, will have a city man's psychology, quite the contrary. It simply means that we are taking cognizance of the changing psychology of the farmer as a correct basis upon which to construct organization plans. It shall be our endeavor to show the fitness or unfitness of different schemes of rural organization according to this new order.

Chapter III

As a unit of rural organization the rural trade area of villages, towns, and cities offers an interesting field of investigation. That every trading-center has a land basis has long been known, but the significance and importance of the relationship of this land basis to the center has not until recent years been made a subject of study and thoughtful planning. This trade area, together with its center, has been proposed by some writers as an ideal unit for rural organization. It is felt that here we find the most complete life of the farmer as well as of the townsman; that all the institutions of each are at hand. Before evaluating this plan and showing its limitations, it may be well first to analyze the structure of a trade area and study the reasons for its existence.

About every village, town, or city containing a variety of institutions, one might, by careful survey, outline and define areas of patronage extending into the country at varying distances; the distance and direction depending upon the proximity of other trading-centers, conditions of roads, presence or absence of natural barriers, the push, business ingenuity, and salesmanship of the trade center, and other like influences. One could in this manner discover banking zones, newspaper zones, dry-goods and grocery zones, high-school zones, library zones. One would find, in the main, the inner areas of these zones remaining quite stable and the outer areas fluctuating more or less. Along the outer areas there may also be found neutral areas where the farmers may go to one trade center for one line of goods and to another trade center for a different line. Such areas as these may be of considerable dimensions, depending upon the strategic location of the farmers as to trading-centers almost equally available. One can say that as a rule, however, around every trading-center of appreciable size can be found a compact definite group of farmers who do the great bulk of their trading at the center; who, because of these relations, feel toward that center a more or less common allegiance. The merchants and tradesmen of the center also recognize this land basis, court this trade (even though in all too many cases with an idea of exploitation), depend upon it, and seek to keep it satisfied.

In theory, this population, bound together in the first instance by ties and obligations of business relations, constitutes an ideal area as to population, cohesion, variety of interest, variety of institutions, and business contacts upon which to build the superstructure of rural organization. In theory, the mingling of townsman and farmer in trade relations furnishes the avenue for the opening up of more definite economic and social relations, for the development of a concrete community consciousness. In theory, the farmer will recognize his obligations to the center and seek to fulfil them by co-operative effort, good will, and loyalty, and the townsman will recognize his dependence upon the farmer, wipe out in his own mind the idea of town or city limits, and add in its place a conception of the community, of the oneness of aims of farmer and townsman. He will include the farmer in public undertakings and institutions as an equal partner with himself.

Now there is no question but that such a program as the foregoing will redound in much good to all. That it is an ideal toward which town and country should work should be taken for granted without argument. No good can come out of warfare between town and country, the one needs the other, the one helps to build the other, and they should work together in harmony and co-operation. But that the trade area is not a unit of general and inclusive organization covering every square mile of territory in an effective way becomes evident upon closer study and analysis. There are localities so far removed from a trade center that trading alone is the only function that can reasonably be performed at the center. Trading relations will draw the farmers at stated periods to the center, but their social and religious and educational attachments will not undergo such a strain from distance. Also, the trade area in many cases will be found to include too many of too diverse interests for them to become interested in one another; a certain diversity there should be. A group drawn together in the main because of trading at a center often does not hold in common enough vital interests touching deeply the lives of all alike to feel and act concertedly. The family to the north of town will only in rare cases come intimately to know the family to the south of town. The purely informal and casual meetings at the center are not enough to draw people together in the conduct of serious business.

A study of a rather comprehensive trade area has been made in the hope of throwing light upon this problem by means of concrete illustration.1 Sullivan, Sullivan County, Indiana, has been taken as a typical rural county-seat town. It lies in the geographical center of a good agricultural county in west-central southern Indiana. Sullivan County stands high among the counties of southern Indiana in the production of corn, hogs, poultry, cattle, wheat, hay, and oats. The trade area of Sullivan represents the county well in all these products.