The Country-Life Movement in the United States

by L. H. Bailey

8. Local factories and industries of whatever kind tend to develop community pride and effectiveness. Creameries have had a marked effect in this way in many places, giving the community or locality a reason for existence and a pride in itself that it never had before, or at least that it had not enjoyed since the passing out of the small factories. There is much need of local industries in the open country, whether they are distinctly agricultural or otherwise, not only for the purpose of providing additional employment for country people but to direct the flow of capital and enterprise into the country and to stimulate local interest of all kinds. It is not by any means essential that all the new life in country neighborhoods should be primarily agricultural.

Much has been said of late about the necessity of introducing the handicrafts in the open country in winter with the idea of providing work for farm people during that season. I do not look for any great extension of this idea in real agricultural sections, and for the following reasons: (1) because as better agriculture develops, the farms will of themselves employ their help more continuously. Modern diversified and intensive farming brings about this result. The present-day dairying employs men continuously. The fruit-grower needs help in winter for pruning and spraying. Live-stock men need help in feeding and caring for the animals. Modern floriculture and vegetable-gardening are likely to run the year round. (2) The conditions of American country life are such that skilled handicraft has not arisen amongst the rural people, and we cannot expect that it will arise. Skilled artisanship of this kind is not the growth of a generation, nor is it a result of the utilization of merely a few weeks or months of time. (3) It is very doubtful whether such handicrafts as are often mentioned could compete in the markets with the goods produced by consolidated factories, or could find a sufficient patronage of people interested in this kind of handicraft products.

I am not arguing against the introduction of handicrafts, but wish only to call attention to what I think to be an error in some of the current discussions. I am convinced that local industries of one kind or another will find their way into the open country in the next generation, and greatly to the advantage of the country itself; but the most useful of them will be regular factories able to compete with other factories. Their largest results will come not in providing employment for persons who temporarily need it, but in developing a new community life in the places where they stand.

9. The country store ought to be a factor in rural betterment. How to make it so, I do not know. The country store is the nexus between the manufacturers or the city jobbers, with their "agreements," on the one hand, and the people, on the other hand, whose commercial independence the jobbers may desire to control. The country merchant takes up the cause of the large dealer, because his own welfare is involved, and he unconsciously becomes one of the agencies through which the open country is drained and restrained. The parcels post—which must come—will probably considerably modify this establishment, although I do not look for its abolition nor desire it. Certain interests make strong opposition to the parcels post on the ground that it will ruin the country merchant and, therefore, the country town. I doubt if it will do any such thing; but even if it should, the end to be gained is not that the country merchant shall not be disturbed, but that the people at large may be benefited. No one knows just what form of readjustment the parcels post will bring about; but trade will very soon readjust itself to this condition as it has reacted to the introduction of farm machinery, good roads, the telegraph and telephone, rural free delivery.

The trader in the small town in some parts of the country is likely to own the people. He is almost necessarily opposed to coöperation and to any new movements that do not tend to enlarge his trade.

I wish we might also do something with the country hotel.

10. The business men's organizations, or chambers of commerce, in villages and country cities will not confine their activities within the city boundaries in the future. A wholly new field for usefulness and for the making of personal reputation lies right here. The business organization of one village or city should extend out into the country until it meets a similar organization from the adjoining village, and the whole region should be commercially developed [(pages 122-123)]. A chamber of commerce could exert much influence toward making a better reputation for the pack of apples, or for other output of the region.

11. The influence of certain great corporations is likely to be felt on the rural readjustment. This is particularly true of the new interest that railroads are taking in Eastern agriculture. A coördination between railroads and farming interests will do very much for the property of both sides; and the railroads can exercise great power in tying country communities together. The Wall Street Journal comments as follows on the situation, after calling attention to the fact that the "Eastern trunk lines have already entered upon a campaign for the encouragement of agriculture":

"Thirty-six years ago the Pennsylvania state legislature made an effort to save the farmers of that state from the damaging competition of ruinously low rates on Western grain to Eastern mills and to the seaboard. The result was practically nil. Eastern farmers were left so completely out in the cold that thousands of them sold out and went West to raise more grain there, still further to handicap the Eastern producer. The widespread bankruptcy of the middle states farmers during the eighties was a consequence partly of cut-throat competition among railroads to haul Western grain to the East at less than cost, and partly the result of a general depression from which it took ten full years to recover.

"What is it that has brought the railroads to the farmers on terms of coöperation for the development of their common territory? It is the same thing which has served the railroads so admirably in the solution of their cost problems. It is science applied to reducing the expenses of transportation in the one case, and to the greater mastery of the resources of the soil in the other case. In this lies the possibility of increasing railway freight to and from rural sources. The coöperation of transportation and agriculture, in the East especially, is not wholly new, but it is highly significant.