FORWARD STEPS
CHAPTER XIV
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE FARM QUESTION
There is a proverb in Grange circles which expresses also the fundamental aim of all agricultural education—"The farmer is of more consequence than the farm and should be first improved." The first term in all agricultural prosperity is the man behind the plow. Improved agriculture is a matter of fertile brain rather than of fertile field. Mind culture must precede soil culture.
But if the improved man is the first term in improved agriculture, if he is the effective cause of rural progress, he is also the last term and the choice product of genuine agricultural advancement. We may paraphrase the sordid, "raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to raise more corn, etc.," into the divine, "train better farmers to make better farming to grow better farmers, etc." We want trained men that we may have an advancing agricultural art, that we may make every agricultural acre render its maximum. The improved acre, however, must yield not only corn but civilization, not only potatoes but culture, not only wheat but effective manhood.
But we may carry the point a step farther. The individual farmer is the starting-point and the end of agriculture, it is true. But the lone farmer is an anomaly, either as a cause or as a product, as the lone man is everywhere. As an effective cause we must have co-operating individuals, and as an end we desire an improved community and a higher-grade class of farmers.
The farm question then is a social question. Valuable as are the contributions of science to the problems of soil and plant and animal, the ultimate contribution comes from the development of improved men. So the real end is not merely to utilize each acre to its utmost, nor to provide cheap food for the people who do not farm, nor yet to render agriculture industrially strong. The gravest and most far-reaching consideration is the social and patriotic one of endeavoring to develop and maintain an agricultural class which represents the very best type of American manhood and womanhood, to make the farm home the ideal home, to bring agriculture to such a state that the business will always attract the keen and the strong who at the same time care more for home and children and state and freedom than for millions. In other words, the maintenance of the typical American farmer—the man who is essentially middle class, who is intelligent, who keeps a good standard of living, educates his children, serves his country, owns his medium-sized farm, and who at death leaves a modest estate—the maintenance of the typical American farmer is the real agricultural problem.