The writer firmly believes that the city has been claiming too large a proportion of college graduates in recent years and that the needs of country life are not receiving due consideration. A large majority of students in most colleges come from the country. Has not the country a right to claim its fair share of these young men and women after they have been trained for a useful life? If only 15% of the students at Princeton come from the country we cannot complain if practically all of them after graduation go to the city; but when nearly all the students at Marietta College (Ohio) come from the country and 65% of them go to the city, we wonder why. Likewise 70% of the students at Stanford University (Calif.) were country bred, but only 25% return to country life after college days. At Williams (Mass.), a city boys’ college, only 24% come from the country and about 15% return; but at Pacific University (Ore.) 95% come from the country (80% from very small communities) yet only 45% resist the city’s call. Bowdoin (Maine) gets but 47% of its students from the city, but returns 70%; The University of Kansas receives but 44% of its students from cities, yet contributes to cities three-fourths of its graduates; while Whitman (Wn.) receives but 40% from the city yet returns 80%. Hillsdale (Mich.), a country college with a fine spirit of service, does better; receiving 95% of its students from small towns and villages, it returns all but 26%. “Practically all” the students at Adelbert College (Ohio) enter city work on graduation, though 30% of them are country bred.
It is entirely natural in institutions like the University of Illinois, Ohio State University and Cornell, where there are strong agricultural colleges, that there should be the keenest interest in the welfare and needs of country life; but is it not time that other institutions faced more frankly the responsibility of training more of their students for country life leadership? Certainly, with the splendid signs of promise in country life to-day and the opportunities for a life mission there, no thoughtful man can refuse to consider it.
The Stake of the City in Rural Welfare
It was quite natural that the rapidly growing city should attract a large proportion of college men preparing for business and professional life and various kinds of religious and social service. Not only have larger opportunities for earning money usually been found there, but the city has certainly needed the men. The call of the city in its dire need of Christian idealism and consecrated leadership has been as urgent and definite a call to service as ever a crusader heard. Dr. Strong’s eloquent appeal to earnest young people in his “Challenge of the City” is by no means extravagant. His facts are facts and his logic is convincing. He is quite right in saying, “We must save the city in order to save the nation. We must Christianize the city or see our civilization paganized.” But even if “in a generation the city will dominate the nation,” where are the men who will then dominate the city? Most of them are now in the country towns and villages getting ready for their task, developing physical, mental and moral power in the pure atmosphere and sunlight of a normal life. To work on the city problem is a great life chance; but to train rural leadership is to help solve the city problem at its source.
Thus, the bigger and more urgent the city problem becomes, the more necessary it will be to solve the rural problem, for the city must continue to draw much of its best blood and its best leadership from the country. Professor M. T. Scudder explains in a sentence why this is a continuing fact: “The fully developed rural mind, the product of its environment, is more original, more versatile, more accurate, more philosophical, more practical, more persevering than the urban mind; it is a larger, freer mind and dominates tremendously. It is because of this type of farm-bred mind that our leaders have largely come from rural life.”[38] City leaders, of course, ought to be trained in the city, and they usually are, even though born and bred in the country.
Rural Progress Waiting for Trained Leadership
Leadership is the ultimate factor in every life problem. No movement can rise above the level of its leadership. In many fields to-day, progress is lagging because of inadequate leadership. This is acutely true in all phases of rural life. Rural progress is halting for the lack of trained leadership. The colleges must be held responsible for furnishing it.
The agricultural colleges are rising magnificently to their opportunity and are striving to keep pace with the demands made upon them for technically-trained rural leaders. But though some of them double their enrolment every three or four years they cannot supply graduates fast enough for the various agricultural professions, quite aside from other kinds of country life leaders.
All schools of higher education must share the task of training and furnishing rural leadership. The broadening of country life, and its rising standards, puts increasing demands upon its untrained leaders which they are unable to meet. Rural institutions can no longer serve their communities effectively under the leadership of men lacking in the very essentials of leadership. Many country communities are demanding now as high-grade personality and training in their leaders as the cities demand, and they refuse to respond to crude or untrained leadership. Well-trained doctors, ministers, teachers, et cetera, have a great chance to-day in the country, because their training finds unique appreciation for its very rarity and efficiency; while every profession is foolishly overcrowded in all cities.
As soon as adequate leadership, well trained and developed, is furnished our country communities, they will develop a rural efficiency which will make the rural problem largely a thing of the past. But until then, progress halts. Leadership is costly. Trained, efficient personality, ready for expert service is rare and beyond price. The colleges are lavishly sending it to the cities. The country deserves its share and patiently presents its claims.