The Challenge of the Country: A Study of Country Life Opportunity. Fiske George Walter

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СКАЧАТЬ of rural evolution, by fortunate selection and survival in the country of efficient manhood and womanhood best adapted to cope with their environment.

      Thousands who failed in the country have gone to the cities, where it is often easier for incompetence to eke out an existence by living on casual jobs. Thousands of others have found better success in the city because they were better adapted to urban life. Often the net result of the migration has been profit for the country community which has held its best, that is, the country born and bred best adapted to be happy and successful in the rural environment.

      Where you find the new rural civilization well developed, you find a self-respecting people, prosperous and happy, keeping abreast of the times in all important human interests, keenly alert to all new developments in agriculture and often proud of their country heritage. Because of this new prosperity and self-respect, ridicule of the “countryman” has ceased to be popular among intelligent people. The title “farmer” has taken on an utterly new meaning and is becoming a term of respect.

      All this marks a return to the former days, before the age of supercilious cities, when most of the wealth and culture and family pride was in the open country and the village. To be sure in some sections of America this frank pride in rural life has never ceased. The real aristocracy of the South has always been mainly rural. Many of the “first families of Virginia” still live on the old plantations and maintain a highly self-respecting life, free from the corrosive envy of city conditions, often pitying the man whose business requires him to live in the crowded town, and rejoicing in the freedom and the wholesome joys of country life. The hospitable country mansions of the South still remind us of the fame of Westover, Mount Vernon and Monticello as centers of social grace and leadership; and the most select social groups in Richmond welcome the country gentlemen and women of refinement from these country homes, not merely because of the honored family names they bear, but because they themselves are worthy scions of a continuously worthy rural civilization. They have never pitied themselves for living in the country. They do not want to live in the city. They are justly proud of their rural heritage and their country homes.

I. The Triumph over Isolation

      Conquering the Great Enemy of Rural Contentment

      The depressing effect of isolation has always been the most serious enemy of country life in America. Nowhere else in the world have farm homes been so scattered. Instead of living in hamlets, like the rest of the rural world, with outlying farms in the open country, American pioneers with characteristic independence have lived on their farms regardless of distance to neighbors. But social hungers, especially of the young people, could not safely be so disregarded, and in various ways the social instincts have had their revenge. Isolation has proved to be the curse of the country, as its opposite, congestion, has in the city. The wonder is that the rural population of the country as a whole has steadily gained, nearly doubling in a generation, in spite of this handicap. Obviously the social handicap of isolation must be in a measure overcome, if country life becomes permanently satisfying. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the new rural civilization has developed many means of intercommunication, bringing the remotest country districts into vital touch with the world.

      Among the factors that have revolutionized the life of country people and hastened the new rural civilization are the telephone, the daily mail service by rural free delivery, the rapid extension of good roads, the introduction of newspapers and magazines and farm journals, and traveling libraries as well, the extension of the trolley systems throughout the older states, and the rapid introduction of automobiles, especially through the West.

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      This loss however was in the early half of the decade, as the state census shows.

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      For the year ending March 31, 1910, 103,798 immigrants from the United States settled in western Canada, while only 59,790 came from Great Britain and Ireland. The wealth of the immigrants settling in western Canada during the five years previous to that date was estimated as follows. British, cash, $37,546,000; effects, $18,773,000. From United States, cash, $157,260,000; effects, $110,982,000. —The Toronto Globe, July 27, 1912.

      3

      “The Country Town,” p. 76.

      4

      Principles of Sociology, Giddings, p. 348.

      5

      “The Church in the Open Country,” p. 9.

      6<

1

This loss however was in the early half of the decade, as the state census shows.

2

For the year ending March 31, 1910, 103,798 immigrants from the United States settled in western Canada, while only 59,790 came from Great Britain and Ireland. The wealth of the immigrants settling in western Canada during the five years previous to that date was estimated as follows. British, cash, $37,546,000; effects, $18,773,000. From United States, cash, $157,260,000; effects, $110,982,000. —The Toronto Globe, July 27, 1912.

3

“The Country Town,” p. 76.

4

Principles of Sociology, Giddings, p. 348.

5

“The Church in the Open Country,” p. 9.

6

The Survey, March 2, 1912. “The Nams; the Feeble-minded as Country Dwellers.” Charles B. Davenport. Ph.D.

7

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The writer wishes to make it quite clear that he is thinking, in this discussion, merely of the boys and girls who ought to stay on the farm. Unquestionably many of them must and should go to the city. This book pleads merely for a fair share of the farm boys and girls to stay in the country, – those best fitted to maintain country life and rural institutions. Country life must be made so attractive and so worth-while that it will be to the advantage of more of the finest young people to invest their lives there. Every effort should be made to prevent a boy’s going from the farm to the city, provided he is likely to make only a meager success in the city or possibly a failure.

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Yet in a class of 115 college men at the Lake Geneva Student conference in June, 1912, a surprising number stated that they had suffered a similar experience as boys at home, though usually at times when the farm work was particularly pressing. One claimed that СКАЧАТЬ