The Valley of Democracy

by Meredith Nicholson

IV

The easing of the farmer’s burdens, through the development of labor-saving machinery, and the convenience of telephones, trolley-lines, and the cheap automobile that have vastly improved his social prospects, has not overcome a growing prejudice against close kinship with the soil. We have still to deal with the loneliness and the social barrenness that have driven thousands of the children of farms to the cities. The son of a small farmer may make a brilliant record in an agricultural college, achieve the distinction of admission to the national honorary agricultural fraternity (the Alpha Zeta, the little brother of the Phi Beta Kappa), and still find the old home crippling and stifling to his awakened social sense.

There is general agreement among the authorities that one of the chief difficulties in the way of improvement is the lack of leadership in farm communities. The farmer is not easily aroused, and he is disposed to resent as an unwarranted infringement upon his constitutional rights the attempts of outsiders to meddle with his domestic affairs. He has found that it is profitable to attend institutes, consult county agents, and peruse the literature distributed from extension centres, but the invasion of his house is a very different matter. Is he not the lord of his acres, an independent, self-respecting citizen, asking no favors of society? Does he not ponder well his civic duty and plot the destruction of the accursed middleman, his arch-enemy? The benevolently inclined who seek him out to persuade him of the error of his ways in any particular are often received with scant courtesy. He must be “shown,” not merely “told.” The agencies now so diligently at work to improve the farmer’s social status understand this and the methods employed are wisely tempered in the light of abundant knowledge of just how much crowding the farmer will stand.

A feeding-plant at “Whitehall,” the farm of Edwin S. Kelly, near
Springfield, Ohio.

Nothing is so essential to his success as the health of his household; yet inquiries, more particularly in the older States of the Mississippi valley, lead to the conclusion that there is a dismaying amount of chronic invalidism on farms. A physician who is very familiar with farm life declares that “all farmers have stomach trouble,” and this obvious exaggeration is rather supported by Dr. John N. Hurty, secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health, who says that he finds in his visits to farmhouses that the cupboards are filled with nostrums warranted to relieve the agonies of poor digestion. Dr. Hurty, who has probably saved more lives and caused more indignation in his twenty years of public service than any other Hoosier, has made a sanitary survey of four widely separated Indiana counties. In Blackford County, where 1,374 properties were inspected, only 15 per cent of the farmhouses were found to be sanitary. Site, ventilation, water-supply, the condition of the house, and the health of its inmates entered into the scoring. In Ohio County, where 441 homes were visited, 86 per cent were found to be insanitary. The tuberculosis rate for this county was found to be 25 per cent higher than that of the State. In Scott County 97.6 per cent of the farms were pronounced insanitary, and here the tuberculosis rate is 48.3 per cent higher than that of the State. In Union County, where only 2.3 per cent of the farms were found to be sanitary, the average score did not rise above 45 per cent on site, ventilation, and health. Here the tuberculosis death-rate was 176.3 in 100,000, against the State rate of 157. In all these counties the school population showed a decrease.

It should be said that in the communities mentioned, old ones as history runs in this region, many homes stand practically unaltered after fifty or seventy-five years of continuous occupancy. Thousands of farmers who would think it a shameless extravagance to install a bathtub boast an automobile. A survey by Professor George H. von Tungeln, of Iowa College, of 227 farms in two townships of northern Iowa, disclosed 62 bathtubs, 98 pianos, and 124 automobiles. The number of bathtubs reported by the farmers of Ohio is so small that I shrink from stating it.

Here, again, we may be sure that the farmer is not allowed to dwell in slothful indifference to the perils of uncleanliness. On the heels of the sanitarian and the sociologist come the field agents of the home-economics departments of the meddlesome land-grant colleges, bent upon showing him a better way of life. I was pondering the plight of the bathless farmhouse when a document reached me showing how a farmhouse may enjoy running water, bathroom, gas, furnace, and two fireplaces for an expenditure of $723.97. One concrete story is better than many treatises, and I cheerfully cite, as my authority, “Modernizing an Old Farm House,” by Mrs. F. F. Showers, included among the publications of the Wisconsin College of Agriculture. The home-economics departments do not wait for the daughters of the farm to come to them, but seek them out with the glad tidings that greater ease and comfort are within their reach if only their fathers can be made to see the light. In many States the extension agents organize companies of countrywomen and carry them junketing to modern farmhouses.

Turning to Nebraska, whose rolling cornfields are among the noblest to be encountered anywhere, home-demonstration agents range the commonwealth organizing clubs, which are federated where possible to widen social contacts, better-babies conferences, and child-welfare exhibits. The Community Welfare Assembly, as conducted in Kansas, has the merit of offering a varied programme—lectures on agriculture and home economics, civics, health, and rural education by specialists, moving pictures, community music, and folk games and stories for the children. In Wisconsin the rural-club movement reaches every part of the State, and a State law grants the use of schoolhouses for community gatherings. Seymour, Indiana, boasts a Farmer’s Club, the gift of a citizen, with a comfortably appointed house, where farmers and their families may take their ease when in town.

The organization of boys’ and girls’ clubs among farm youth is a feature of the vocational-training service offered under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, and already the reports of its progress are highly interesting. These organizations make possible the immediate application of the instruction in agriculture and home economics received in the schools. In Indiana more than 25,000 boys and girls were enlisted last year in such club projects as the cultivation of corn, potatoes, and garden vegetables, canning, sewing, and home-craft, and the net profit from these sources was $105,100. In my prowlings nothing has delighted me more than the discovery of the Pig Club. This is one of Uncle Sam’s many schemes for developing the initiative and stimulating the ambition of farm children. It might occur to the city boy, whose acquaintance with pork is limited to his breakfast bacon, that the feeding of a pig is not a matter worthy of the consideration of youth of intelligence and aspiration. Uncle Sam, however, holds the contrary opinion. From a desk in the Department of Agriculture he has thrown a rosy glamour about the lowly pig. Country bankers, properly approached and satisfied of the good character and honorable intentions of applicants, will advance money to farm boys to launch them upon pig-feeding careers. My heart warms to Douglas Byrne, of Harrison County, Indiana, who, under the guidance of a club supervisor, fed 17 hogs with a profit of $99.30. Another young Hoosier, Elmer Pearce, of Vanderburgh County, fed 2 pigs that made a daily gain of 1.38 pounds for four months, and sold them at a profit of $12.36. We learn from the official report that this young man’s father warned him that the hogs he exercised his talents upon would make no such gains as were achieved. Instead of spanking the lad for his perverseness, as would have been the case in the olden golden days, this father made him the ruler over 30 swine. There are calf and pig clubs for girls, and a record has been set for Indiana by twelve-year-old Pauline Hadley, of Mooresville, who cared for a Poland China hog for 110 days, increasing its weight from 65 to 256 pounds, and sold it at a profit of $20.08.

The farmer of yesterday blundered through a year and at the end had a very imperfect idea of his profits and losses. He kept no accounts; if he paid his taxes and the interest on the omnipresent mortgage, and established credit for the winter with his grocer, he was satisfied. Uncle Sam, thoroughly aroused to the importance of increasing the farmer’s efficiency, now shows him how to keep simple accounts and returns at the end of the season to analyze the results. (Farm-management is the subject of many beguiling pamphlets; it seems incredible that any farmer should blindly go on wasting time and money when his every weakness is anticipated and prescribed for by the Department of Agriculture and its great army of investigators and counsellors!)

If there is little cheerful fiction dealing with farm life, its absence is compensated for by the abundance of “true stories” of the most stimulating character, to be found in the publications of the State agricultural extension bureaus. Professor Christie’s report of the Indiana Extension Service for last year recites the result of three years’ observation of a southern Indiana farm of 213 acres. In 1914 the owner cleared $427 above interest on his capital, in addition to his living. This, however, was better than the average for the community, which was a cash return of $153. This man had nearly twice as much land as his neighbors, carried more live-stock, and his crop yields were twice as great as the community average. His attention was called to the fact that he was investing $100 worth of feed and getting back only $82 in his live-stock account. He was expending 780 days in the care of his farm and stock, which the average corn-belt farmer could have managed with 605 days of labor. Acting on the advice of the Extension Department, he added to his live-stock, built a silo, changed his feeding ration, and increased his live-stock receipts to $154 per $100 of feed. The care of the additional live-stock through the winter resulted in a better reward for his labor and the amount accredited to labor income for the year was $1,505. The third year he increased his live-stock and poultry, further improved the feeding ration, and received $205 per $100 of feed. By adding to the conveniences of his barn, he was able to cut down his expenditure for hired labor; or, to give the exact figures, he reduced the amount expended in this way from $515 to $175. His labor income for the third year was $3,451. “Labor income,” as the phrase is employed in farm bookkeeping, is the net sum remaining after the farm-owner has paid all business expenses of the farm and deducted a fair interest on the amount invested in his plant.

I have mentioned the 80-acre farm as affording a living for a family; but there is no ignoring the testimony of farm-management surveys, covering a wide area, that this unit is too small to yield the owner the best results from his labor. In a Nebraska survey it is demonstrated that farms of from 200 to 250 acres show better average returns than those of larger or smaller groups, but rainfall, soil conditions, and the farmer’s personal qualifications are factors in all such studies that make generalizations difficult. A diversified farm of 160 acres requires approximately 3,000 hours’ labor a year. Forty-five acres of corn, shocked and husked, consume 270 days of labor; like acreages of oats and clover, 90 and 45 days respectively; care of live-stock and poultry, 195 days. In summer a farmer often works twelve or fourteen hours a day, while in winter, with only his stock to look after, his labor is reduced to three or four hours.

The Smith-Hughes Act (approved February, 1917) appropriates annually sums which will attain, in 1926, a maximum of $3,000,000 “for co-operation with the States in the promotion of education in agriculture and the trades and industries, and in the preparation of teachers of vocational subjects, the sums to be allotted to the States in the proportion which their rural population bears to the total rural population of the United States.” Washington is only the dynamic centre of inspiration and energy in the application of the laws that make so generous provision for the farmer’s welfare. The States must enter into a contract to defray their share of the expense and put the processes into operation.

There was something of prophecy in the message of President Roosevelt (February 9, 1909) transmitting to Congress the report of his Country Life Commission. He said: “Upon the development of country life rests ultimately our ability, by methods of farming requiring the highest intelligence, to continue to feed and clothe the hungry nations; to supply the city with fresh blood, clean bodies, and clear brains that can endure the terrific strain of modern life; we need the development of men in the open country, who will be in the future, as in the past, the stay and strength of the nation in time of war, and its guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace.” The far-reaching effect of the report, a remarkably thorough and searching study of farm conditions, is perceptible in agencies and movements that were either suggested by it or that were strengthened by its authoritative utterances.