Rural Problems of Today

by Ernest R. Groves

The consolidated school, modern in equipment and in spirit, adds greatly to the effectiveness of rural education as a socializing agency. In spite of limitations inherent in rural environment, the consolidated school is by instinct social, and its community service is therefore being enriched by its successful experience. It will increasingly relate its work to the needs of the community and to the demands of the home and will add to its socializing function by assuming new lines of service. Large as is its present contribution, in the near future it will be much greater. The consolidated school has enabled rural education to assume new undertakings and this is most fortunate, for the old type of rural school has about reached the limit of its social service.

It is safe to assume that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what they receive from their reading. Into the most remote places the paper goes and is received with avidity. The appeal is to human interest and is based upon the entire hierarchy of instincts. No agency more successfully socializes. It affords a mental connection with distant places that is a good antidote for the physical loneliness in the country, which many living there experience. It prevents the stagnation that comes from concentration upon the interests of the day and neighborhood, for it draws the attention of the reader out into the world of business and affairs. It keeps country people from a too great class character by charging the rural mind with the effects of modern civilization and of necessity brings rural and urban people into a more sympathetic relation. If it invites some to the city—as it certainly does—it also makes the country a more satisfying and safer environment for those who remain. Fortunately the papers are themselves sensitive to modern thought and therefore attempt propaganda of a constructive social character. If the appeal to human interests causes these educational efforts to err respecting scientific accuracy, it is nevertheless true that in spite of this fault the articles have a beneficent effect in protecting the country from the excessive conservatism that isolation tends to bring. The newspaper is the great gregarious meeting place of the minds of men and therefore it serves to develop mental association in a most intense manner. The weekly paper also serves a large constituency in the country and on the whole probably socializes in a more profound degree than the daily. The weekly permits the rural reader to associate with the leaders of popular thought and builds up that enthusiastic conviction which leadership always obtains. The leaders of the country districts in this manner come into fellowship with the thinking of urban men of influence. The farm paper is not to be overlooked in a survey of the influence of the press upon country life. Its little value as a professional journal because of its unscientific character is in many instances a great handicap upon the progress of agriculture, but even when these papers fail in having real worth for the industry of farming they do extend professional fellowship by encouraging harmony and enthusiasm. And as a whole the value of these papers, aside from their socializing influence, is increasing as they are more and more influenced by scientific investigation.

Secret societies and benevolent orders have a large following among rural and village people. They are popular because they perform a very valuable social service. No institution carries on its social function with greater success, and for this reason it is rather strange that rural sociology has not studied these organizations more seriously. Because they afford fellowship, recreation, and comradeship, their appeal is very great indeed to those who feel the hardships of physical isolation. These societies do not limit their usefulness to community welfare in a narrow sense, for they tie their following to similar organizations in other localities and make possible an exchange of interests that socializes in a marked degree. It is true that each serves a limited number of people in the community, but the cleavage is along natural lines and does not provoke feuds or neighborhood hostility.

The one great danger that they create in some small places is the fact that there are so many of them that they capture nearly every evening of the week and make it difficult for any community-wide enterprise to obtain a free evening to bring all the people together. It is also true that some of them fail to take a serious interest in the community welfare, being content merely to enjoy the fellowship that they make possible.

This latter criticism cannot be justly made respecting the rural society strongest in the eastern section of the country—the Patrons of Husbandry. This society, popularly known as the Grange, affords contact with outside organizations, but it also takes a very practical and sane interest in its own community. No movement has done more to conserve the best of country life; no organization has in the country maintained so sincere a democracy. Unlike most secret societies, it has made a family appeal and has interested husband, wife, and children. It has taken a constructive attitude toward legislation of importance to farmers, and rural life has certainly become greatly indebted to its efficient socializing efforts.

The enterprise most successfully socializing country life is the business of farming itself. The farmer, who once maintained so large a degree of economic independence, has of necessity become a man of commerce, as seriously concerned and nearly as consciously interested in business conditions as the city merchant. This situation is one of the burdens of farming. The farmer must both produce and sell his crop. Lack of skill in either undertaking may mean failure.

Economic pressure forces attention. The pain penalty, the product of bad adjustment to the demands of the occasion, commands respect. The farmer feels this pressure of economic conditions just as any other man of business. He is not free to isolate himself and enjoy the economic security of fifty years ago. Any indifference that he may assume toward the business world is likely to bring him economic punishment which will teach him his economic dependence as no argument could. It follows that the farmer's attention is driven from family and neighborhood affairs out into the modern world with all its complexities. He thinks in social terms, because from experience he has learned his social dependence in matters that concern the pocketbook. With painful evidences of his economic interrelations in mind, he tends to become tolerant regarding movements that attempt to socialize his community life. He realizes that the independence of his fathers has gone not to return and that his happiness as well as his prosperity depend upon his opportunity to become well established in social relations.

No experience in the business of farming is so impressive as that of membership in a cooperative enterprise. Whether the undertaking fails or succeeds, it certainly teaches the member the meaning of social interrelations. Often it fails because the mental and moral preparation for successful working together is lacking. This is not strange, for rural life in the past has done little to build up a social viewpoint and the strain placed upon individual purposes in any cooperative effort is necessarily great. Cooperation is never so easy as it sounds in theory, but economic conditions are making it necessary in many rural localities if farming is to continue a profitable industry. Under pressure the farmers will develop the ability to cooperate. In this they are like other people, for cooperation seldom comes until circumstances press hard upon people who hopelessly try to meet individually conditions that can be successfully coped with only by a cooperative attack. We therefore must not pass hasty judgment upon the failures in cooperative efforts among country people. All such experiences have some part in the better socializing of rural thinking.

Without opposition to those who are placing emphasis upon other lines of rural advance, as social workers, we must keep ever before rural leadership the enormous importance that social conditions have for the prosperity, wholesomeness, sanity, and happiness of rural life. Every agency that has social value for country life must realize to the fullest degree possible its socializing functions if it covets for itself fundamental social service.