It is generally agreed that one of the greatest insufficiencies in country life is its lack of organization or cohesion, both in a social and economic way. Country people are separated both because of the distances between their properties, and also because they own their land and are largely confined to its sphere of activities. There is a general absence of such common feeling as would cause them to act together unitedly and quickly on questions that concern the whole community, or on matters of public moment.
This lack of united action cannot be overcome by any single or brief process, but as one result of a general redirection of rural effort and the stimulating of a new or different point of view toward life. It will come as a result of a quickened agricultural life rather than as an effect of any direct plan or propaganda. When the rural social sense is thoroughly established, we shall be in a new epoch of rural civilization.
It is now the habit to say that this desired rural life must be coöperative. A society that is fully coöperative in all ways is one from which the present basis of competition is eliminated. I think that no one intends, however, in the common discussion of coöperation to take sides on the theoretical question as to whether society in the end will be coöperative or competitive; these persons only mean that coöperative association is often the best means to secure a given result and that such association may exert great educational influence on the coöperators.
Theoretically, the coöperative organization of society may be the better. Practically, a capitalistic organization may be better: it quickly recognizes merit and leadership; but if it is better, it is so only when it is very carefully safeguarded.
It cannot be contended that a coöperative organization is correct because the majority rules. Majorities show only what the people want, not necessarily what is best. Minorities are much more likely to be right, because thinking men and fundamental students are relatively few; yet it may be the best practice, in common affairs, to let the majority have its way, for this provides the best means of education.
It will now be interesting to try to picture to ourselves some of the particular means by which social connection in the open country may be brought about. It is commonly, but I think erroneously, thought that community life necessarily means a living together in centers or villages. I conceive, on the contrary, that it is possible to develop a very effective community mind whilst the persons still remain on their farms. In this day of rapid communication, transportation, and spread of intelligence, the necessity of mere physical contiguity has partly passed away.
That is, "isolation," as the city man conceives of it, is not necessarily a bar to community feeling. The farmer does not think in terms of compact neighborhoods, trolley cars, and picture shows. The country is not "lonely" to him, as it is to a city man. He does not search for amusement at night.
Hamlet life.
It is said that the American farmer must live in hamlets, as does the European peasant. The hamlet system that exists in parts of Europe represents the result of an historical condition. It is the product of a long line of social evolution, during which time the persons who have worked the land have been peasants, and to a greater or less extent have not owned the land that they have worked.
Some persons fear that the American farmer is drifting toward peasantry. This notion has no doubt arisen from the fact that in certain places the man who works the land is driven to great extremity of poverty, and he remains uneducated and undeveloped; but ignorance and poverty do not constitute peasantry. The peasanthood of the Old World is a social caste or class, and is in part a remnant of feudal government, of religious subjugation, and of the old necessity of protection. The present day is characterized by the rise of the people on the land; this movement is a part of the general rise of the common people (or the proletariat). If popular education, popular rights, and the general extension of means of communication signify anything, it is that we necessarily are developing away from a condition of peasantry rather than toward it, however much degradation or unsuccess there may be in certain regions or how much inadjustment there may be in the process [(page 129)].