Rural Life and the Rural School

by Joseph Kennedy

But those days are passed. Increased population is reducing the acreage and cultivation, while it is eliminating the surplus fertility; competition and social and economic pressure are reducing the margin of profits. Thrift, good management, and brains are becoming increasingly important factors in successful farming.

Old Conceit and Prejudice.—Twenty years ago, when the agricultural colleges were taking shape and attempting to impress their usefulness upon the farmer, the latter was inclined to assume a derisive attitude, and to refer to their graduates as "silk-stocking farmers"—or, as one farmer put it, "theatrical" sort of fellows, meaning theoretical! In the farming of the future, however, the agricultural college and its influence are bound to play a large part. There is plenty of room on a good farm of one hundred and sixty acres for the best thinking and the most careful planning. Foresight and ingenuity of the rarest kinds are demanded there.

We wish to enumerate, and discuss in brief, some of the important points of vantage to be watched and carefully guarded, if farm life, which means rural life, is to be pleasant and profitable. If rural life is to retain its attractions and its people, it must be both of these. Let us, in this chapter, investigate some things which, although apart from the school and education in any technical sense, are truly educative, in the best sense.

Leveling Down.—One thing that sometimes impresses the close observer who is visiting in the country and in farm homes is that there exists in some rural localities a kind of "leveling down" process. People become accommodated to their rather quiet and unexciting surroundings. Their houses and barns, in the way of repairs and improvements, are allowed gradually to succumb to the tooth of time and the beating of the elements. This process is so slow and insidious that those who live in the midst of it scarcely notice the decay that is taking place. Hence it continues to grow worse until the farm premises assume an unattractive and dilapidated appearance. Weeds grow up around the buildings and along the roads, so slowly, that they remain unnoticed and hence uncut—when half an hour's work would suffice to destroy them all, to the benefit of the farm and the improvement of its appearance.

In the country it is very easy, as we have said, to "level down." People live in comparative isolation; imitation, comparison, and competition enter but little into their thoughts and occupations. In the city it is otherwise. People live in close proximity to each other, and one enterprising person can start a neighborhood movement for the improvement of lawns and houses. There is more conference, more criticism and comparison, more imitation. In the city there is a kind of compulsion to "level up."

When one moves from a large active center to a smaller one, the life tendency is to accommodate one's self to his environment; while if one moves from a small, quiet place to a larger and more active center, the life tendency is to level up. It is, of course, fortunate for us that we are able to accommodate ourselves to our environment and to derive a growing contentment from the process. The prisoner may become so content in his cell that he will shed tears when he is compelled to leave it for the outer world where he must readjust himself. The college man, over whom there came a feeling of desolation on settling down in a small country village with one store, comes eventually to find contentment, sitting on the counter or on a drygoods box, swapping stories with others like himself who have leveled down to a very circumscribed life and living. Leveling down may be accomplished without effort or thought, but eternal vigilance is the price of leveling up.

Premises Indicative.—A farmer is known by the premises he keeps, just as a person is known by the company he keeps. If a man is thrifty it will find expression in the orderliness of his place. If he is intelligent and inventive it will show in the appointments and adaptations everywhere apparent, inside and outside the buildings. If the man and his family have a fine sense of beauty and propriety, an artistic or æsthetic sense, there will be evidences of cleanliness and simple beauty everywhere—in the architecture, in the painting, in the pictures, and the carpets, in the kinds and positions of the trees and shrubbery, and in the general neatness and cleanliness of the premises. It is not so necessary that people possess much, but it is important that they make much of what they do possess. The exquisite touch on all things is analogous to the flavor of our food—it is as important for appetite and for nourishment as the food itself.

Conveniences by Labor-saving Devices.—If there are ingenuity and the power of ordinary invention in common things, system and devices for saving labor will be evident everywhere. The motor will be pressed into service in various ways. There will be a place for everything, and everything will be in its place. Head work and invention, rather than mere imitation, characterize the activities of the master.

Eggs in Several Baskets.—The day is past when success may be attained by raising wheat alone. This was, of course, in days gone by, the easiest and cheapest crop to produce. It was also the crop that brought the largest returns in the shortest time. Wheat raising was merely a summer's job, with a prospective winter's outing in some city center. It was and is still the lazy farmer's trick. It was an effort similar to that of attempting the invention of a perpetual motion machine; it was an attempt, if not to get something for nothing, at least to get something at the lowest cost, regardless of the future. But nature cannot be cheated, and the modern farmer has learned or is learning rapidly, that he must rotate and diversify his crops if he would succeed in the long run. Consequently he has begun rotation. He also replenishes his soil with nitrogen-producing legumes, along with corn planting and with summer fallowing. He engages in the raising of chickens, hogs, cattle, and horses. This diversification saves him from total loss in case of a bad year in one line. The farmer does not carry all his eggs in one basket. A bad year with one kind of crops may be a good year with some other. Diversification also makes farming an all-year occupation, every part of which is bringing a good return, instead of being a job with an income for the summer and an outlay for the winter. Live stock, sheep, hogs, and cattle grow nights, Sundays, and winters as well as at other times, and so the profits are accumulating all the year round.

The Best is the Cheapest.—The modern farmer also realizes that it takes no more, nor indeed as much, to feed and house the best kinds of animals than it does to keep the scrub varieties. In all of this there is a large field for study and investigation. But one must be interested in his animals and understand them. They should know his voice and he should know their needs and their habits. As in every other kind of work there must be a reasonable interest; otherwise it cannot be an occupation which will make life happy and successful.