NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCES TO PROMOTE RURAL PROGRESS
Conferences devoted to various aspects of rural community life were held in Boston during the first week in March. Perhaps the most important was that which drew together professors from the state colleges, representatives from the state boards of agriculture, directors of the experiment stations and men in charge of extension work, delegates of the state granges, and scores of farmers throughout New England interested in the promotion of agriculture.
This was the fifth annual New England Conference on Rural Progress. As an earnest of its purpose to do actual constructive work along some of the lines of rural betterment it has heretofore talked about, it changed its name to the New England Federation for Rural Progress. To further this purpose, the association enlarged its executive committee and created a working advisory council to include representatives from each of the New England states. The new constitution also provides for three classes of membership: first, state federations and state organizations; second, local, district and county organizations; third, individuals.
Some of the more important discussions were by H. W. Tinkham of the Rhode Island State Grange, urging the establishment of municipal markets; C. E. Embree, general manager of the Farmers’ Union of Maine, describing its plan to establish consumers’ stores in New York and other large cities; Leonard G. Robinson of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, telling of credit to the sum of $1,500,000 given by the society to over 2,500 farmers in twenty-eight states; and Kenyon L. Butterfield, president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, setting forth the program to which the organization should hold:
“To secure an adequate inventory of New England agricultural resources; to carry out educational campaigns for the best use of every acre of New England soil; to improve vastly our methods of marketing farm products; to gain a better system of rural schools and to inaugurate a comprehensive system of public agricultural education; to try to solve the problem of farm labor; and to maintain upon New England soil a class of people representing the best of American traditions—people who have sufficient means of wholesome recreation, who maintain strong churches, who develop a satisfying home life and who are content with the work and the life of the farm.”
This emphasis on the human side of the problem characterized the entire conference. For instance, Mr. Twitchell, after an exhaustive discussion of the financial aspects of marketing, proposed as the final word of his report:
“Success in agriculture must be measured not by the magnitude of the crops grown but by the quality of the men and women developed on the farm. The sucking power of the town has become a serious menace to our civilization, and only live organized effort can effect that readjustment of industrial conditions necessary for the stimulating of desire for mastery over rural conditions on the part of a steadily increasing number.... If you would make your cities safe, strong, secure and enduring, look well to the development of your only source of supply of fresh blood, the country boy and girl.”
The officers elected were: President, J. R. Hills, director Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station; vice-president, R. N. Bowen, treasurer Rhode Island Horticultural Society; secretary and treasurer, James A. McKebben, Secretary Boston Chamber of Commerce.
The part the church plays in country life, particularly in recreation, in public health, and in community advancement, was under consideration in another conference. Ministers and teachers told what individual churches and schools were doing, and the general discussion indicated a growing realization of the whole problem as well as notable efforts to grapple with it.
The various sections of the School Garden Club met in Horticultural Hall, while at the Twentieth Century Club, under the joint auspices of the Massachusetts Federation of Women’s Clubs and the New England Home Economics Association, a mass meeting for home makers was held. The economic and hygienic aspects of markets were discussed by Mrs. Julian Health of New York, president of the Housewives’ League; Sarah Louise Arnold, dean of Simmons College; George C. Burington, manager of the Charles River Co-operative Society, and others.