Rural Problems of Today

by Ernest R. Groves

One fault with some country homes stands out on the surface. The wife is too much a drudge. Her life is too narrow and too hard. This type of home is passing, no doubt, but it has by no means passed. This kind of woman may be little influenced by new thought, and may think her situation as natural for her as it was for her mother. Whatever her personal attitude, however, from the very nature of things she is unable to make a significant moral contribution through her family duties. There will be striking exceptions, of course, but the general rule will stand—in modern life the woman drudge makes a poor mother. The fact that she is less likely to rebel against her hard condition than her urban sister, does not remove the dangers of her situation. And it is well for the lover of country welfare to remember that even when the wife accepts with no complaint the hardness of her lot, she often blames her husband's occupation, farming, for her misfortune, and becomes a rural pessimist, urging her children neither to farm nor to marry farmers. Her deep, instinctive protest appears through suggestion in the cravings of her children for urban life and urban occupation.

The housekeeping problem is for the woman on the farm seldom an easy one, but, nevertheless, conditions that make of the farmer's wife an overworked house slave are in these days of labor-saving devices without excuse. In any case, such a family situation in the country, whatever its cause, must be regarded as pathological.

Sex has too large a place in the construction of the rural family. One of the advantages of the country family of which we hear much is the general tendency toward earlier marriages than in the city. Without doubt marriages, as a rule, do occur earlier among country people. This fact is significant in more ways than most writers recognize. A very thoughtful student of the American family, Mrs. Parsons, has called attention to the social importance of the fact that after maturity mental and moral traits are more likely to influence the choice than merely physical traits. In other words, the earlier marriages are more likely to be influenced by sex interests—using the term in a narrow sense—than are the later marriages. This brings no social problem to the minds of those who see in marriage, for the most part, merely physical attraction and relations. The movement of human experience seems, however, on the whole, to be away from such a conception of marriage. Although the postponement of marriage requires for social welfare a greater moral self-control, we have every reason to suppose that we must gain social health by a higher moral idealism rather than by a return to the earlier marriage of former generations. In that case, to a considerable degree, the earlier marrying of the country people discloses that they have not as yet felt the full force of the modern causes that make for later marriages. Earlier marriages may be indeed happier, but they are often narrower.

A recent writer tells us that the vices of the country are the vices of isolation. Sex difficulties arise spontaneously and require no commercial exploitation when young people live a barren and narrow life without ideals. This emphasis of sex is expressed not merely in immorality and illegitimacy, but also in a precocious interest in sex and in a precocious courtship. Early marriage, therefore, often represents the reaction from an uninteresting and empty environment and, however fortunate in itself, certainly does not demonstrate a socially wholesome situation.

To contrast the divorce situation in the country with that in the city also fails to give the basis for social optimism that the facts are often used to prove. Public opinion has more to do with actions than law, and at present the general attitude toward the granting of divorce is more conservative in the country than in the city. The reason for this difference is, in large measure, the fact that once again the country shows itself less sensitive to the changes that are taking place with reference to the conditions of marriage. It certainly is not safe to assume that the unhappy marriages in the country are in proportion to the number of divorces. It is more likely that unless the urban attitude changes, in time the country will come to feel toward divorces much as city people do at present.

It is important to notice that, although legal divorce is frowned upon, there is often a considerable social indifference to the loose living together of men and women. Two clergymen at work in a rural community of about a thousand people recently stated that there were in the community at least forty unmarried people living together as husband and wife. Later, I was informed by another resident of the town that the clergymen had not exaggerated the situation. And yet I doubt not that the community had a rather low divorce record. It is very interesting how the moral code of a community may be strict at one point, while lenient at another. In some rural communities, at least, one may find an inconsistent public opinion that expresses very rigid hostility to divorce and little practical opposition to lax sex relations. The low attitude toward the sex element in marriage and the coarse viewpoint disclosed by conversation often surprise the country visitor who is not acquainted with the occasional inconsistency of rural ethics. Judging the standing of married life by infrequent divorces and rather early marriage, he is painfully disconcerted to discover that the marriage ideal is nevertheless mean and lacking in social inspiration.

A third criticism is deserved by the rural family, namely, its failure to make use of its social opportunity. It is easy to demonstrate the greater normality of the rural family as compared with the urban family, with respect to the family conditions that make possible an efficient home life. It is not always true, however, that these superior family opportunities are of social value. It is true that children are generally valued in the rural home. This is, at times, for the supposed economic help the children are expected to be to the parents, rather than because of an unselfish regard for the children, as a moral opportunity. It is true that the home generally counts for more in the life of the country child than in that of the city child. This by no means proves that the greater home influence is always a social asset. The home may penetrate the child's life deeply and yet affect it badly. If the home means more, the character of the home comes to have a larger meaning; what the significance of the home influence may be, is determined by the type of the home. A greater opportunity for family fellowship is naturally offered by the rural home, but this fellowship opportunity works both ways. The closer contact of all the members of the family often results in bringing all of them down to a low level of culture. The base attitude of one or of both parents toward life may poison each child's aspiration as he advances into maturity. The neighborhood relation, which brings several families into close contact, often permits a vicious child of one family to initiate many children from various homes into sex experiences in such an unwholesome way that purity of mind becomes very difficult later on, whether the illicit intercourse comes to an end or not.

Rural people are too likely to be content with their superior family conditions. There is real need for an emphasis upon the proper use of these opportunities. The conscientious urban parent is stimulated to his best by the rivalry of other attractions that attempt to exploit his child. The rural parent has no security in the greater natural advantages of the country home. Everything depends upon the way the rural home makes use of its opportunity. The rural church, especially, should take to heart this remarkably significant fact.

No institution in the country has the importance of the family. Good moral strategy requires, therefore, that effort be made to make the rural home happy and wholesome. The needs of rural people are indeed many, but there is no need greater than the fullest development of the opportunities for moral progress provided by the conditions of family life in the country. It would seem as if one principle should always be observed—no effort is wholly good that looks toward a substitution for family responsibility. It is also true that the family will not again have the moral monopoly of the child. Necessary as it may be, in certain cases, to allow the family to farm out its important functions to some other institution, this condition ought always to be recognized as unfortunate. The better way of making permanent progress is effort that encourages the family to make better use of its neglected opportunities.

First of all, the rural home needs to be spiritualized. Of course, there is equal need of spiritualizing the urban home, but that problem does not concern us now. Objections are sure to be raised against any rural program that bases itself upon an attempt to emphasize idealism and a spiritual interpretation of experiences. There is, however, no other way. Material progress will neither content nor elevate country life. Contact with nature is so close and constant that when spiritual insight is lacking there is bound to be a fatalistic and brutalizing tendency. Religion that does not enter intimately into everyday life and enrich the baffling experiences of daily labor with great spiritual interpretations, gives little of value to country people. The rural home awakens to its opportunities only when it is invigorated by vital spiritual inspiration. A materialistic philosophy of life will eat the heart out of the country and leave it in despair. Country people seldom have wide choice; they must either penetrate common experience with the eye of confident idealism, or they must dig the earth, bent down with the oppressing burden of dissatisfied toil. Whatever the philosophy of life, it will command the spirit of the home.