The Challenge of the Country Part 12

11.--Why are representatives of our Agricultural Department searching the world for new species of plants?

12.--Locate the desert sections of America where the rainfall is insufficient to sustain agriculture.

13.--What do you think of the advantages and possibilities of irrigation?

14.--Explain the methods of dry farming, especially the principle involved in the "dust mulch."

15.--To what extent is it true that scientific agriculture has now become a profession?

16.--Explain the real patriotism in the modern policy of conservation of natural resources.

17.--To what extent do you think the government ought to own or control the great forests, the water power and the coal deposits? Why?

18.--How does this whole subject of progressive agriculture affect the religious life of the country?

19.--Upon what economic basis does the permanence of religious inst.i.tutions in the country quite largely depend?

20.--What do you think is the great religious objective in all rural progress?

CHAPTER V

RURAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER V

RURAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION

A. Country Life Deficiencies

I. _Social Diagnosis_

Rural individualism.

The weakness in rural inst.i.tutions.

The difficulty of organizing farmers.

II. _Failures in Rural Cooperation_

Lack of political effectiveness.

Lack of cooperation in business.

Lack of religious cooperation.

III. _Rural Morals and the Recreation Problem_

Lack of wholesome social life for young people.

Lack of recreation and organized play.

Morality and the play spirit.

B. The New Cooperation in Country Communities

I. _Social Cooperation_

The problem of community socialization.

Who shall take the initiative?

A community plan for socialization.

The gospel of organized play.

The school a social center.

The social influence of the Grange.

II. _Business Cooperation_

Modern rural cooperative movements.

Cooperation among fruit growers.

Some elements of success and failure.

Our debt to immigrants.

Cooperative success in Denmark.

[_Cooperation of religious forces will be treated in Chap. VII._]

CHAPTER V

RURAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION

A. COUNTRY LIFE DEFICIENCIES

I. Social Diagnosis: Rural Individualism.

The preceding chapters have emphasized the riches of country life sufficiently to save the author from the charge of pessimism. Let us hold fast to our rural optimism. We shall need it all. But let it not blind us to the unfortunate facts in rural life, for diagnosis is the first step toward recovery. We are to notice now some of the fundamental social deficiencies which are almost universal in our American rural society.

Dr. b.u.t.terfield calls the American farmer "a rampant individualist!"

Independence has been his national boast and his personal glory. Pioneer life developing heroic virtues in his personality has made him as a cla.s.s perhaps the most self-reliant in history. The owners.h.i.+p of land always gives a man the feeling of independence. Let the world spin,--his broad acres will support him and his family. If one crop fail, another will succeed, though the weather act its worst. American farms average perhaps the largest in the world, nearly one-fourth of a square mile. Hence the distance between farm homes, and the habit of social independence which is bred by isolation.

"Every man for himself; look out for number one" is the natural philosophy of life under such conditions. Self-protection and aggrandizement, jealousy of personal rights, slowness to accept advice, p.r.o.neness to law suits over property, thrifty frugality to a fault, indifference to public opinion, disregard of even the opinions of experts,--all are very characteristic of people of such independence of life. They seldom yield to argument. They do not easily respond to leaders.h.i.+p. They are likely to view strangers with suspicion. Self-reliance overdeveloped leads them to distrust any initiative but their own. Hence they do not readily work with other people. They refuse to recognize superiority in others of their own cla.s.s. All of which results in a most serious social weakness; _failure in cooperation_, a fatal failure in any society. Positively, this explains the jealousies and feuds so common in rural neighborhoods. Negatively, it accounts for the lack of effective social organization.

Where a progressive rural community has readjusted itself to the social ideals of the new century, these weaknesses are quietly disappearing.

Elsewhere you still find them.