Part 20

Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota were grouped and the interesting items were as varied as they might be in more widely separated regions.

There is no “hard luck” tale to tell of poverty and squalor in this region, although the conditions differ widely from very poor to very good. Everyone is already familiar with the stories of the poor wives who have not been away from the farm for five or ten years. There are too many such in the Northern plains; these pitiful tales are all too true, but they are not the whole truth. To get at that it is necessary to know not only the worst, but the best conditions. The best are especially worthy of mention because they indicate possibilities, and are an example and inspiration to those not already arrived at prosperity.

While there are still to be found one-room sod houses sheltering whole families, there are others with all the modern conveniences of steam heat, good plumbing, electricity for light and power, telephones, and the rural postal delivery bringing each day from the outside world papers, books and magazines. And these are the fruit of industry and frugality; and between these two extremes are many homes of moderate means where conveniences and luxuries are not yet possible, but where there is wholesome, normal living.

The great factor in improving rural conditions is education in scientific farming, and in these states there are excellent educational advantages offered to the young men and women who wish to make this a business. Each state has its agricultural college, which is usually a department of the state university, a school where agriculture and its kindred subjects rank with the technical or professional courses; the tendency is to dignify the business of farming, to make it attractive from both the pleasurable and the practical standpoint. There are traveling libraries equipped not only with books for entertainment, but books in various languages for instruction on subjects of rural interest, and these libraries go to the very remotest corners of the state.

The women who have answered the questions in the rural conditions inquiry are agreed that the farm presents great possibilities for happiness, if they could only have a little more help with the farm work, and more frequent chances for change and recreation. They rarely complain that their work is too hard, but only of its dreary monotony.

Fraternal societies afford the greatest opportunities for social intercourse for our country people. Clubs—as we know them—are infrequent. The varied nationalities represented in new states present no common ground on which people of widely differing habits of mind and modes of speech can meet, and this condition and the lack of help enhance the difficulties of social gatherings.

It is very evident that each section of this great country must present its own problems. In the part of the country included in “The Rockies” we find four types of rural life—the small town, the farm, the ranch, and the mining camp. Answers came from all of these. While the last is not, strictly speaking, a rural community, it must be so considered in any effort to brighten the lives of the women who are removed from the advantages of city life.

THE BUILDERS OF THE WEST.

These people, who are in large measure the builders of the West, have come from the more thickly settled states, to try their fortunes under greatly changed conditions; and one of the great hardships that face them is the fact that their means will not permit their first experiments at farming—either dry farming or irrigated farming—ranching, or mining to be a failure. And in the very nature of things, a failure is too often made the first year. If the family finances permit the partial loss of the first year’s work, and if the family adopts the methods proved to be successful, the after years are brighter and not shadowed by poverty. Poverty in the West is a removable cause.

Loneliness is a second problem which is being rapidly met in these states by the organization of women’s clubs and the foundation of local libraries in the towns, and traveling libraries for those outside. Colorado has done especially good work with her traveling library boxes.

For the most part the people are hopeful and happy. They came into this mountain region expecting difficulties and they have no complaints to make that their problems are not all solved. They had the grit to come into a new and unsettled country, and they desire to stay. Every letter from the “farm women” of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming was a happy letter. Such rural problems are hopeful.

The North Pacific shores offer a diversity of agricultural and commercial interests, and the farmer here differs somewhat from the Eastern farmer in that he is more of a specialist. He is either a wheat, cattle, fruit or dairy farmer. He specializes on one thing, and does his work with the most improved machinery, or under the latest and most modern methods; he seldom attempts to derive revenue from the hundred and one little things that, in many districts, are made by the farmer’s wife and hauled to the corner store to exchange for groceries. In other words, his farming is more of a business than the old idea of making it a semi-domestic arrangement. This relieves the wife of much of the drudgery of the farm and puts her on the same business footing in the home, as the professional man’s wife.

With rare exceptions, the farmers have rural mail delivery, farmers’ telephones, and very often electricity for light and other purposes. The roads, as a rule, are good, and the automobile is fast displacing the farm horse.

The schools of higher education are filled with the children from the rural districts, and many farmers move into town in the winter, that their children may have better educational advantages.

In the smaller towns many farmers’ wives join the women’s clubs. While this is commendable, it is not necessary to the life or happiness of the women, for in these states the grange is a great educational factor. It is perhaps the only secret organization in existence where men and women meet on an exact equality. In it some of the best legislation originates, and the probe sinks deep into every proposed measure that affects the farmer; here the conservation of every resource is discussed, and, knowing that they must enter into these deliberations, the farmers’ wives read and keep abreast of the times. The grange meetings are all-day sessions, with a goodly proportion of the day given over to social pleasures; the young people enjoy all sorts of healthful sports, while their elders discuss the prospect of parcel post delivery, the threatened increase of postage on magazines, or the postal savings bank and many other things that bring comfort or enlightenment to the rural home.

The suggestions that came in the letters from New England will be very helpful whenever needed, and have already come into some recent government policies.

The advantages and disadvantages of farm life, in the many letters from the Pennsylvania settlements, would give thought to the most logical mind. They have been culled, however, from a more than usually large number of replies, and due somewhat to the fact that 180 sessions of farmers’ institutes were held for women in one year throughout Pennsylvania.

I think I need not enter further into the details of all parts of the country, or even give recommendations, which a special committee might better bring to a future meeting; but there are certainly two policies which are closely allied—conservation and rural life. When public opinion is thoroughly aroused, it is but a question of time for the will to find a way. There must be a voluntary effort, and such volition must be aroused by education.

One of the most vital items to those who are specially interested in the educational progress of a country is the awakened public opinion in the Middle West shown by the development of the agricultural courses in all of our great universities and colleges.

Even public schools in some parts of this region are giving practical instruction to old and young. Meetings are being held upon the farms; lectures, experiments and demonstrations are being introduced.

The church has quickly realized that there must be a combination of emotion and sanity; the practical and ideal have come into closer relationship; clubs of young men and of women, sometimes of the two together, are taking up all subjects pertaining to the farm life; and wherever these subjects are alive, and the social element is not forgotten, we find distance makes no barrier. At once means of communication are increased. The telephone is in every home; the trolley line goes by the farm—even the automobile becomes a necessity, and good roads are at once established. Distance is therefore annihilated, and the lonely life is a matter of the past.

How short a time it is since insanity was a large concomitant of the farm life for women! Recently, at a session of the Charity Conference in Boston, there seemed to be very little reference to the need for prevention of insanity among isolated farm women. I found it to be largely a sorrow of the past; but I do not agree entirely with such statements, when I recall the letters, from the immense prairie farms. Woods Hutchinson, in speaking of the change that had come into the homes of all women—the removal of much of the old-time work from the home to the factory—says that it is a convincing proof of the stability of woman’s mental powers that generations of that semi-solitary confinement at hard labor known as “home life” have not made her a candidate for the insane asylum. “Man would have gone raving crazy long ago.”

IDEAL CLUBS.

A community club, as we would call a club, must be composed of men and women, for they must, under ordinary circumstances, go together to their meetings. The Farmers’ Institute is more in the line of this particular thought, but the community center or grange covers the ground fully. The institute comes but once or twice a year, while the club might be regularly intermittent.

This must mean a central meeting point with the very best and appropriate reading matter pertaining to equipment of both home and farm; the solution of the help question (shall we ever reach this millennium?), certainly demonstrates in cooking and pure food, discussions as to education of children, and the way to obtain better lighting and heating, and good roads should be a part of these meetings.

Where shall this center be—the school or the church?

The women’s clubs of the nearby towns have attempted in an entirely friendly spirit to maintain rest rooms for farmers’ wives when on shopping bent, with a possible creche for the babies and a caretaker and amusements for young children. This is excellent, but will never take the place of the community center.

A change in the attitude of public opinion towards the old question of town and country means some practical outcome to all this discussion. The interdependence of the two is real, each having its influence on the other, the main consideration being human rather than material. The town representative can talk out his grievances, political and economic; the farmer has a full stock of grievances, but rarely gives formal expression to them; and the farmer’s wife acknowledges that her social life is barren. The two need to bring their problems to each other; and a community spirit will surely lead to forms of organization for mutual economic and social advantage. There must be in the rural community such social life as shall withstand the attractions of the city, if we wish the farms to remain in the control of their owners, instead of in the hands of renters.

What can be done to give the farmer’s wife a little leisure in which to enjoy the advantages that might be hers?

The answer to this is the answer to the question which confronts every one who is striving to improve social conditions anywhere. It is the great problem of work and the “out of works,” which city and country are trying alike to solve, working from opposite horns of the dilemma. With thousands of hands begging for employment at one end, with thousands of jobs begging to be done at the other, it is not creditable to our initiative that we have not discovered some way to equalize the supply and demand of labor. We are already educating our country youth to stay on the farm; what we need further is a campaign of education to destroy the lure of the city, to teach men and women that there is plenty of work under wholesome conditions awaiting anyone who will take it, that those who cannot go the pace of the city can find pleasant, profitable living where there is time enough, and work enough for every one, if they will but go back to the soil.

The conclusions drawn from the investigations into rural conditions, which I have been able to make, have changed my opinion very materially. Life is not so sordid and hard, poverty is not so pinching as I had thought. That it is narrow and unnecessarily colorless is evident, and that much can be done to brighten it is certain, but just what form of help to offer is a grave question.

There is always needed a plan and the machinery to carry it through. I am not sure of name or method, but a central force there must be, whether of men or women—possibly it might be well to appeal to the woman, who makes the home life, to whom it is of so much importance.

From all our letters we note that the women love the country life, both for themselves and their children. They would doubtless be ready to take up any coöperative plan that might be suggested. Certain I am that no committee should be appointed to consider ways and means that did not have in its membership some thoughtful, progressive farm women. Towards this common end should be included also representatives from all the agencies making the community life educational and religious.

It is not difficult to draft a scheme, but it is essential that the elements most needed to carry it out should feel themselves vitally interested.

Horace Plunkett suggests “an institution which shall be scientific, philosophic, research-making.” His arguments are so entirely to the point that I quote some few sentences:

Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems of the rural population have entered into the study of sociologists. At leading universities I have sought in vain for light.... The fact is the subject must be treated as a new one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country Life Movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to make good the lack of information, which has resulted from the general lack of interest.... An institute is wanted to survey the field, to collect, classify and coördinate information and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to carry exact statistical methods into his work, so that he may not have to depend on general statements, but may have at his command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while its significance can be measured.

In agreeing with his desire for absolute data, let us not forget the human side, the personal evidence, which can never be obtained through an institute.

May we hope that the Conservation Congress, which has ever shown a human interest in the conservation of vital force, will be the leader in bringing to its own the vital center of the country!

President WALLACE—You will all agree with me, Ladies and Gentlemen, that we have had one choice treat tonight. There are two more coming. The Presbyterian Church of the United States has taken a very great deal of interest in the country church. Do you know that if the Presbyterians do not revive their country church there won’t be a Presbyterian church in the next generation, for this reason, that the town, while it can get all the lawyers it wants, can grow them, and all the doctors, can’t grow preachers enough to supply their own pulpits. (Applause) Now, we are to have before us here tonight Dr. Warren H. Wilson of New York City, the superintendent of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, and he will give us a new phase of conservation.

[Dr. Wilson’s paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President WALLACE—Here endeth the second lesson. (Applause) We have been told about society. We have heard about the practical everyday religion of feeding men. And now we are going to be told by Dr. Wiley how to keep healthy, so that we may enjoy our religion and feed more men. (Applause)

Dr. WILEY—Mr. President and Delegates of the third National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: My sermon is going to be short. I think a great many of these country churches were vacated by two and a quarter hour sermons. (Applause) I want to insist, however, that in this sermon I am going to preach I want to follow the steps of my illustrious predecessor. I have been preaching sermons for a number of years, and I think it is about time I was ordained. I believe in all the principles of conservation that you have taught this week and many previous weeks. I was an early and insistent and persistent conserver. I believe I have the honor of having delivered the first public address that ever took the term “conservation” as a text. In 1894 I delivered an address on the conservation of the fertility of the soil, and so, as well as my dear friends, the Presbyterians, I am a little bit conservative, too. (Applause) I am sorry that that condition has obtained which he described here, the empty country churches. But let me tell you they are no more empty than the country houses of this country. Everybody has been going to the town. They have taken the greater part of country boys who would have made good farmers and made pretty poor preachers out of them. On the whole the country boy thinks it is easier to preach once a week than it is to plow corn every day and feed the stock on Sunday. And naturally he chooses the line of least resistance to make a living. That is the reason that the country is becoming deserted, and just as long as it is easier to make a living in the city than it is in the country, the country is going to be empty, and all you preachers can’t fill it up, and the object of these meetings is to make it easier to make a living in the country than in the city, and then you will see the tide flow the other way, and not before. (Applause) One reason people ought to live in the country is because they can be healthier there. I would rather be a healthy boy in the country than a sick boy in town. If I have equal health, I think I would rather stay in town, for a boy has more fun in town. If you take fun away from the boy you deboyize the boy. Another thing, there is too much demanizing, and dehorning, in the country life. I know about this Pennsylvania Dutch people, why they are so prosperous, because their home life is in their life in the country. It follows the Pennsylvania Dutchman to the grave. It is a pleasure to go to a funeral in that community. (Applause) It has got to be a burden, every time I am invited to a funeral, I don’t want to go. When I was a boy I loved to go to a funeral. (Applause) They have a good custom up there among the Pennsylvania Dutch, too. They all go to the funeral, and nobody begins to cover up the grave until some neighbor goes up, takes off his hat and says a good word for the departed. Then they can fill up the grave. When old Jacob Shaffer died he was the meanest man in the community. He was buried on a cold, rainy day in November, when it was half rain and half sleet. They stood for ten or fifteen minutes, or half an hour, and nobody said a word. They had to stay there, and could not leave until the grave was filled up. Finally one neighbor, in despair, went up and took off his hat and said, “Well, I can say this about Jake: he wasn’t always so mean as he was sometimes.” (Applause) Now, I want to say this about the preacher. He is not always so inhuman as he is sometimes. When I heard this sermon tonight I almost concluded that a minister of the gospel was a real human being. (Applause) I want to tell you that he was not that to me when I was a boy. I did not look upon him as the friend that he ought to have been to me. And that is the reason one boy did not go to the country church oftener.

CONSERVATION AND UTILIZATION.