Chapters in Rural Progress

by Kenyon L. Butterfield

In the teaching of students, the agricultural college will continue the important work of training men for agricultural research, agricultural teaching, and expert supervision of various agricultural enterprises. But the college should put renewed emphasis upon its ability to send well-trained men to the farms, there to live their lives, there to find their careers, and there to lead in the movements for rural progress. A decade ago it was not easy to find colleges which believed that this could be done, and some agricultural educators have even disavowed such a purpose as a proper object of the colleges. But the strongest agricultural colleges today have pride in just such a purpose. And why not? We not only need men thus trained as leaders in every rural community, but, if the farming business cannot be made to offer a career to a reasonable number of college-trained men, it is a sure sign that only by the most herculean efforts can the farmers maintain their status as a class. If agriculture must be turned over wholly to the untrained and to the half-trained, if it cannot satisfy the ambition of strong, well-educated men and women, its future, from the social point of view, is indeed gloomy.

The present-day course of study in the agricultural college does not, however, fully meet this demand for rural leadership. The farm problem has been regarded as a technical question, and a technical training has been offered the student. The agricultural college, therefore, needs "socializing." Agricultural economics and rural sociology should occupy a large place in the curriculum. The men who go from the college to the farm should appreciate the significance of the agricultural question, and should be trained to organize their forces for genuine rural progress. The college should, as far as possible, become the leader in the whole movement for solving the farm problem.

The farm home has not come in for its share of attention in existing schemes of agricultural education. The kitchen and the dining-room have as much to gain from science as have the dairy and the orchard. The inspiration of vocational knowledge must be the possession of her who is the entrepreneur of the family, the home-maker. The agricultural colleges through their departments of domestic science—better, of "home-making"—should inaugurate a comprehensive movement for carrying to the farm home a larger measure of the advantages which modern science is showering upon humanity.

The agricultural college must also lead in a more adequate development of extension teaching. Magnificent work has already been done through farmers' institutes, reading courses, co-operative experiments, demonstrations, and correspondence. But the field is so immense, the number of people involved so enormous, the difficulties of reaching them so many, that it offers a genuine problem, and one of peculiar significance, not only because of the generally recognized need of adult education, but also because of the isolation of the farmers.

It should be said that in no line of rural betterment has so much progress been made in America as in agricultural education. Merely to describe the work that is being done through nature-study and agriculture in the public schools, through agricultural schools, through our magnificent agricultural colleges, through farmers' institutes, and especially through the experiment stations and the federal Department of Agriculture in agricultural research and in the distribution of the best agricultural information—merely to inventory these movements properly would take the time available for this discussion. What has been said relative to agricultural education is less in way of criticism of existing methods than in way of suggestion as to fundamental needs.

THE ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS PROBLEM

Wide generalizations as to the exact moral situation in the rural community are impossible. Conditions have not been adequately studied. It is probably safe to say that the country environment is extremely favorable for pure family life, for temperance, and for bodily and mental health. To picture the country a paradise is, however, mere silliness. There are in the country, as elsewhere, evidences of vulgarity in language, of coarseness in thought, of social impurity, of dishonesty in business. There is room in the country for all the ethical teaching that can be given.

Nor is it easy to discuss the country church question. Conditions vary in different parts of the Union, and no careful study has been made of the problem. As a general proposition, it may be said that there are too many churches in the country, and that these are illy supported. Consequently, they have in many cases inferior ministers. Sectarianism is probably more divisive than in the city, not only because of the natural conservatism of the people and a natural disinclination to change their views, but because sectarian quarrels are perhaps more easily fomented and less easily harmonized than anywhere else. Moreover, in the city a person can usually find a denomination to his liking. In the country, even with the present overchurched condition, this is difficult.

The ideal solution of the country church problem is to have in each rural community one strong church adequately supported, properly equipped, ministered to by an able man—a church which leads in community service. The path to the realization of such an ideal is rough and thorny. Church federation, however, promises large results in this direction and should be especially encouraged.

Whatever outward form the solution of the country church question may take, there seem to be several general principles involved in a satisfactory attempt to meet the issue. In the first place, the country church offers a problem by itself, socially considered. Methods successful in the city may not succeed in the country. The country church question must then be studied thoroughly and on the ground.