The first two remedies.
Of course there are no two or even a dozen means that can bring about this fundamental adjustment, but the two most important means are at hand and can be immediately put into better operation.
The first necessity is to place broadly trained persons in the open country, for all progress depends on the ability and the outlook of men and women.
The second necessity is that city folk and country folk work together on all great public questions. Look over the directories of big undertakings, the memberships of commissions and councils, the committees that lay plans for great enterprises affecting all the people, and note how few are the names that really represent the ideas and affairs of the open country. Note also how many are the names that represent financial interests, as if such interests should have the right of way and should exert the largest influence in determining public policies. In all enterprises and movements in which social benefit is involved, the agricultural country should be as much represented as the city. There are men and women enough out in the open country who are qualified to serve on such commissions and directories; but even if there were not, it would now be our duty to raise them up by giving rural people a chance. Rural talent has not had adequate opportunity to express itself or to make its contribution to the welfare of the world.
I know it is said, in reply to these remarks, that many of the city persons on such organizations are country-born, but this does not change the point of my contention. Many country-born townsmen are widely out of knowledge of present rural conditions, even though their sympathies are still countryward. It is also said that many of them live in country villages, small cities, and in suburbs; but even so, their real relations may be with town rather than country, and they may have little of the farm-country mind; and the suburban mind is really a town mind.
Every broad public movement should have country people on its board of control. Both urban and rural forces must shape our civilization.
Movement from city to country as a remedy.
Some persons seem to think that the movement of city men out to the country offers a solution of country problems. It usually offers only a solution of a city problem,—how a city man may find the most enjoyment for his leisure hours and his vacations. Much of the rising interest in country life on the part of certain people is only a demand for a new form of entertainment. These people strike the high places in the country, but they may contribute little or nothing to real country welfare. This form of entertainment will lose its novelty, as the sea-shore loses it for the mountains and the horse loses it for the motor-car or aëroplane. The farming of some city men is demoralizing to real country interests. I do not look for much permanent good to come to rural society from the moving out of some of the types of city men or from the farming in which they ordinarily engage.
I am glad of all movements to place persons on the land who ought to go there, and to direct country-minded immigrants away from the cities; but we must not expect too much from the process, and we must distinguish between the benefit that may accrue to these persons themselves and the need of reconstruction in the open country. It is one thing for a family to move to the land in order to raise its own supplies and to secure the benefits of country life; it is quite another thing to suppose that an exodus from city to country will relieve the economic situation or make any difference in the general cost of living, even assuming that the town folk would make good farmers. And we must be very careful not to confuse suburbanism and gardening with country life.
To have any continuing effect on the course of rural development, a person or an agency must become a real part and parcel of the country life.