“THE COUNTY MAN”
JOHN R. HOWARD, Jr.
General Secretary Thomas Thompson Trust
The rural leader, whether his interest is primarily in the church, the school, good roads, health, wholesome recreation or the care of the neglected, must, if he would get anywhere, be interested, also, in better farming. For one reason, there is no better way to obtain the interest of the farmer. Then, too, a normal standard of health, intelligence or morals depends, in the country as in the city, upon a normal standard of living. Finally, the socialized church, the vocationalized school, good roads, sanitation, community play places, experienced advisers for family problems all cost money, and the majority of our rural townships are taxed already to the limit of endurance.
The “county man” is the man the United States Department of Agriculture is sending into the counties of the North, not only to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, but to help the farmer earn two dollars where he earned one before—quite a different proposition. This entails not only scientific choice and treatment of crops, but co-operative buying of fertilizers and feed and co-operative marketing of products. Further, this “county man,” who is helping the farmer to double his dollars, has a rare opportunity to work out with him the problem of spending them and will prove to be a vital factor in the promotion of any of the ends of community betterment.
That the government requires the formation of a county organization to direct the work and to finance it, beyond the $100 a month allowed by the government toward the agent’s salary, establishes at the outset a co-operative county agency through which other work may be taken up. It is the intention of the government to encourage all purposes looking to a better country life.
There are 127 of these men now in the field. They are serving in twenty-three different states. The unfulfilled applications number 276. In January the number was but sixteen although fifty-nine more had been promised. This shows how eager counties throughout the country have been to take advantage of this important new service. Rural leaders should urge the establishment of this service in their counties, encourage it when started, and, whether the initial organization be an agricultural association or an improvement league, be ready to make use of it for the social and educational as well as the agricultural needs of the county.
SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS[2]
PHILIP WELTNER
The second Southern Sociological Congress came to a close on the night of April 29. Its four days were given over to solid criticism and constructive suggestion. Eight hundred delegates gathered together from all over the Southland to learn from the ninety-six specialists the congress brought to Atlanta. Most of the ninety-six were men and women of the South.
One fact the Congress made plain enough, and that was that the South knew its problems and was busy about their solution. Those present seemed to realize that they were the empire builders of a new South. While the questions coming before the several conferences were the same as those that confront the North and West, they were treated from the standpoint of the peculiar needs of the South. But this was done without the slightest sectional consciousness. The South was taking counsel of itself that the entire nation might profit by its advance. Although the field of the congress was sectional, its outlook was national.
The plan of organization followed was much the same as that of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. There were seven special conferences gathered under the name of the Southern Sociological Congress. Each was separately organized and met with the other divisions only in the general night session. The seven divisions were: organized charities, courts and prisons, public health, child welfare, travelers’ aid, race problems and the church and social service.
The latter was an innovation with the Southern Sociological Congress. It served to emphasize the fact that “the church is the fellowship of those who love in the service of those who suffer.” The discussions in this conference all served to bring out in sharp relief the new spirit beginning to dominate the old church. It was agreed that the social worker who can satisfy only the bare material needs of life is poorly equipped for his task, that religion must lend its strength to every effort towards individual or social reconstruction, and that the call of the church is a call to service.
The individual conference that enjoyed the greatest popularity was the one on race problems. Throughout its four days of almost continuous session there were in attendance about 400 persons, half white and half colored. Some of the Negro delegates, fearing an unjust discrimination against those of their race in the conference sessions, had prepared, while on the way to Atlanta, resolutions of protest. These were never tendered. No reason was intruded for their presentation. One of the Negro delegates expressed the situation most aptly. He said:
“The old order of whites understood the old black man. But it has remained for this Congress to demonstrate the possibility of the young white men of the new order sympathizing in and appreciating the hopes and aspirations of the Negro of today.”
Too great a significance can not be attached to this simple statement of fact. Its optimism is the culture-soil out of which we may expect to see develop that happy adaptation of the two races, which after all is the solution of the race problem.
This incident, and what it goes to show, would alone justify the existence of a southern congress separate and distinct from the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The peculiar problems that faced the conference on courts and prisons make this separate treatment even more desirable. In the South there are not many of those great central, highly organized penal institutions known as penitentiaries. For the most part we have county chain-gang camps engaged in road work. A distinct contribution was made to southern penology by Hooper Alexander, of Georgia, when he showed the absolute identity of the convict lease in Georgia with the system once known as the institution of slavery.
The conference discussion made clear the fact that the county convict road camp, prosecuted without a scintilla of effort at training or character building, is not less immoral than the old lease system; that the wrong of public exploitation is as great as exploitation at the hands of a private lessee.
The congress made a tremendous impression on Atlanta and the whole state of Georgia. Its influence will spread over the entire South. It served to quicken the civic consciousness of our people and to make them better acquainted with their common problems. It took the mask off sociology and unfrocked it of scholastic appearance. In pointing out our needs, the congress unified our aims and at the same time broadened our vision.