“There is nothing in the universe that I fear but that I shall not know all my duty or shall fail to do it.”
“ORGANIZATION”
The other day a city man came to the farm after apples. He loaded up his car and, rendered good-natured by eating three mellow Baldwins, he proceeded to tell us where farmers were behind the times. It is a pleasure for many city men to do this and the average farmer good-naturedly listens, always glad to have his customers enjoy themselves. This man said he wondered why farmers have never organized properly so as to defend and control their business. It is quite easy for a man of large affairs to see what could be done if all the farmers could get together in a great business organization.
“The trouble with you folks is that you don’t know how to do team work,” said my city friend. “Suppose there are twelve million farmers in the country. Suppose they all joined and organized and pledged by all they hold sacred to each put up $5.00 every month as a working fund. Suppose they hired the greatest organizing brain in the country and instructed its owner and carrier to go to it. It would simply mean world control by the most patient and deserving class on earth. Why don’t you do it?”
That’s the way your city business man talks, and he cannot understand why our farmers do not promptly carry out the plan. Of course that word “suppose” takes the bottom out of most facts, but it is hard for the business man to realize why farmers have not been able to do full team work. This man said that large business enterprises in the city were controlled by boards of directors. There might be men on the board who personally hated each other with all the intensity of business hatred. Yet when it came to a matter of business policy for the company they all got together and put the proposition through. He said it was different with a farmer, who if he had trouble with his neighbor over a line fence would not under any circumstances vote for him even if he stood for a sound business proposition.
That is the way many of these city men feel. It is largely a matter of ignorance through not understanding country conditions. Those of us who spend our lives among the hills can readily understand why it is hard for a farmer to surrender a large share of his individuality and put it into the contribution box of society. Many of us, I fear, would dodge or cheat the contribution box in church unless we felt we were under the watchful eye of our wives. Possibly we shall contribute more freely to society now that our wives and daughters have the privilege of voting. When a man has lived his life among brick and stone with ancestors who have been constantly warned to “keep off the grass” he comes to be incapable of understanding what is probably the greatest problem of American society. That is the effort to keep our country people contented and feeling that they are getting a fair share of life, so that they will continue cheerfully to feed and clothe the world. You cannot convince a man unless you can understand his language or read his thought. One of the worst misfortunes of the present day is the fact that city and country have grown apart, so that they have no common language.
Those of us who live close to Nature realize that in order to know the truth we must find
“Tongues in trees, Books in running Brooks,