The kindly purpose of well-meaning philanthropists to transplant among the farmers the dwellers in the city slums is resented by both! It would be a questionable kindness anyway, for the slum dweller would be an unhappy misfit in the country and escape to his crowded alley on the earliest opportunity, like a drunkard to his cups. Sometimes a hard-working city clerk or tradesman hears the call to the country and succeeds in wresting his living from the soil. The city man need not fail as a farmer. It depends upon his capacity to learn and his power of adaptation to a strange environment. The “back to the soil” movement is not to be discouraged; but let us not expect great things from it. The real “Country Life Movement” is something quite different.
Rural Redirection by the County Committee of the Lake County, Ohio, Associations.
One hundred and forty farmers in “five day school,” the Ohio Agricultural College cooperating. A girls’ exhibit in cut flower contest. A May pole dance at a township school picnic. One of the boys participating in corn growing contest. The winner of the strawberry growing contest.
Its Objective: A Campaign for Rural Progress
The back-to-the-soil trend is a city movement. The real country life movement is a campaign for rural progress conducted mainly by rural people, not a paternalistic plan on the part of city folks for rural redemption. It is defined by one of the great rural leaders as the working out of the desire to make rural civilization as effective and satisfying as other civilization; to make country life as satisfying as city life and country forces as effective as city forces. Incidentally he remarks, “We call it a new movement. In reality it is new only to those who have recently discovered it.”
Its Early History: Various Plans for Rural Welfare
The father of the country life movement seems to have been George Washington. He and Benjamin Franklin were among the founders of the first farmers’ organization in America, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, established in 1785. There were about a dozen such societies by 1800, patterned after similar organizations in England. President Washington had an extensive correspondence with prominent men in England on this subject and made it the subject of his last message to Congress. He called attention to the fundamental importance of agriculture, advocated agricultural fairs, a national agricultural society and government support for institutions making for rural progress.
Since these early days there have been many organized expressions of rural ambition, most of them only temporary but contributing more or less to the movement for the betterment of country life. There were over 900 agricultural societies in 1858 and these had increased to 1,350 by 1868 in spite of the setback of the civil war. Most of these were county organizations whose chief activity was an annual fair. Agricultural conventions were occasionally held, sometimes national in scope, which discussed frankly the great questions vital to farmers; and more permanent organizations soon developed which had a great influence in bringing the farmers of the country into cooperation with each other industrially and politically. Foremost among these were the Grange (1867), the Farmers’ Alliance (1875), the Farmers’ Union (1885), Farmers’ Mutual Benefit Organization (1883), and the Patrons of Industry (1887). The Farmers’ National Congress has met annually since 1880, and has exerted great influence upon legislation during this period, in the interest of the rural communities.