The Country-Life Movement in the United States

by L. H. Bailey

Sending the surplus population to the country.

It is also proposed to send to the country the poor-to-do and the dissatisfied and the unemployed. This is very doubtful policy. In the first place, the presumption is that a person who does not do well or is much dissatisfied in the town would not do well in the country. In the second place, the country does not need him. We may need more farm labor, as we need more of all kinds of labor, but in the long run this labor should be produced mostly in the country and kept there by a profitable and attractive rural life. The city should not be expected permanently to supply it. The labor that the city can supply with profit to country districts is the very labor that is good enough for the city to keep.

The relief of cities, if relief is to be secured, must lie in the evolution of the entire situation, and not merely in sending the surplus population into the country.

In my opinion, the present back-to-the-farm cry is for the most part unscientific and unsound, as a corrective of social ills. It rests largely on the assumption that one solution of city congestion is to send people away from itself to the open country, and on another assumption that "a little farm well tilled" will abundantly support a family. There is bound to be a strong reaction against much of the present agitation. We are to consider the welfare of the open country as well as that of the city itself. The open country needs more good farmers, whether they are country-bred or city-bred; but it cannot utilize or assimilate to any great extent the typical urban-minded man; and the farm is not a refuge.

Back-to-the-village.

It seems to me that what is really needed is a back-to-the-village movement. This should be more than a mere suburban movement. The suburban development enlarges the boundaries of the city. It is perfectly feasible, however, to establish manufacturing and other concentrated enterprises in villages in many parts of the country. Persons connected with these enterprises could own small pieces of land, and by working these areas could add something to their means of support, and also satisfy their desire for a nature-connection. In many of the villages there are vacant houses and comparatively unoccupied land in sufficient number and amount to house and establish many enterprises; and there would be room for growth. If the rural village, freed from urban influences, could then become a real integrating part of the open country surrounding it, all parties ought to be better served than now, and the social condition of both cities and country ought to be improved. We have over-built our cities at the expense of the hamlets and the towns. I look for a great development of the village and small community in the next generation; but this involves a re-study of freight rates.

Can a city man make a living on a farm?

Yes, if he is industrious and knows how. Many city persons have made good on the land, but they are the exceptions, unless they began young.

There is the most curious confusion of ideas on this question. We say that farming requires the highest kind of knowledge and at the same time think that any man may go on a farm, no matter how unsuccessful he may have been elsewhere. Even if he has been successful as a middleman or manufacturer or merchant, it does not at all follow that he would be successful as a farmer. Farming cannot be done at long range or by proxy any more than banking, or storekeeping, or railroading, and especially not by one who does not know how; and he cannot learn it out of books and bulletins. If a man can run a large factory without first learning the business, or a theater or a department store, then he might be able also to run a farm, although the running of a farm of equal investment would probably be the more difficult undertaking.

I am glad to see earnest city men go into farming when they are qualified to do so, but I warn my friends that many good people who go out from cities to farms with golden hopes will be sadly disappointed. Farming is a good business and it is getting better, but it is a business for farmers; and on the farmers as a group must rest the immediate responsibility of improving rural conditions in general.