Village Improvements and Farm Villages

by George E. Waring

There is a certain amount of truth on both sides of every question; and the one which we are now considering is not to be answered by a decision in favor of the heart of a great city, or of the entire solitude of an outlying farm. As is so often the case, its solution lies between the two extremes. If one may be permitted to imagine the conditions best suited to the perfect physical, intellectual, and social development of the human being, one would naturally think of a small town or a large village where society is sufficient, where the facilities for instruction are good, where communication with the large centres is easy, where the conveniences and facilities for household economy are complete, and where the country with its beauty and quiet and freshness is close at hand,—where one feels on this side the influence of a complete social organization, and on that the sweet breath of mother earth.

Unfortunately, these imaginings can never be freed from the practical bearing of the bread-winning and money-making interests. Men must live, not where they prefer to live, but where their interests compel them to live. The town and the country have their mutual economic duties by which their life must be controlled. All that we can hope to do is, on one hand, to ameliorate the hardness and solitude of country living, and, on the other, to bring the citizen into nearer relation with the invigorating fields and woods and boundless air of the country.

Devising no modern Sybaris, where all possible good of life may follow from the unaided operation of a perfect social and industrial organization, I propose to confine myself to the simple question of the best practical development of village life for farmers. The village or its immediate vicinity seems to me to offer the urbanist the nearest approach to the country that is available for his purposes; and in like manner village life, so far as it can be made to fit his conditions, offers to the farmer as much of the benefit of town life as the needs of his work will allow him to obtain. If those who now seek the pleasures of retirement in costly and soul-wearying country-seats would congregate into spacious and well-kept villages, and if those who now live in the solitary retirement of the mud-bound farmhouse would congregate into villages, we should secure far more relief from the confinement of the town and a wider-reaching attractiveness in agricultural life; this latter leading to the improvement of our farming by a solution of that long-mooted problem, "How to keep the boys on the farm."

Nearly everywhere on the Continent of Europe those who are engaged in the cultivation of the land live in villages. An observation of the modes of life and industry of these villages has led me to consider whether some similar system might not tend to the improvement of the conditions of our own farmers, and to the amelioration of some hardships to which their families are subjected.

In Europe, as here, the methods of living have grown from natural causes. There it was a necessary condition of agricultural industry, that those who tilled the soil should be protected by the military power of their lord or chief; and their houses were clustered under the shadow of his castle wall. The castles have crumbled away, and the protecting arm of the old baron has been replaced by the protecting arm of the nation.

The community of living, which grew from necessity, having proved its fitness by long trial, is still maintained; but there seems to have been no general tendency toward the formation of such little communities here. Save in a few exceptional cases,—as in the old villages of the Connecticut Valley, where protection against Indians or safety from inundation compelled the original settlers to gather into communities,—the pioneer built his cabin in his new clearing, and, as his circumstances improved, changed his cabin for a house, and his small house for a larger one, and finally established his comfortable home in connection with his fertile fields. This method has been adopted throughout the whole country; and the peculiarly American system of isolated farm-life has become almost universal throughout the length and breadth of the land.

I am not so enthusiastic as to believe that a radical change from this universal system is to be hoped for at any early day; but I believe that it is worth while for farmers to consider how far they may, without permanent harm to the interests for which they are working, secure for themselves, and especially for their families, the benefits of village life.

To this end are adduced the following examples, both of which are of course purely imaginary. The first has reference to a new settlement of wild land, where, by the Government's system of division, the boundaries are rectangular, and where the political subdivisions are of uniform measurement. The second relates to the necessary change of conditions now existing in the longer-settled parts of the country.

For this latter, the illustration is taken from an actual accurate survey[1] of a purely agricultural district in Rhode Island, showing the roads, houses, and field boundaries as they now exist, followed by a suggestion as to the manner in which the same division of estates might be made to conform to the assembling of their owners into a village.

[1] A map of the United States Coast Survey.