But the final object in life is not to make money, but to use money in developing a higher type of endeavor and a better neighborhood. The richest farming regions do not necessarily have the best society or even the best living conditions. Social usefulness must become a fact in country districts. The habit of life in the usual farm family is to take everything to itself and to keep it. Standards of service must take the place of standards of property.
New country professions.
The country-life movement does not imply that all young persons who hereafter shall remain in the country are to be actual farmers. The practice of customary professions and occupations will take on more importance in country districts. The country physician, veterinary, pastor, lawyer, and teacher are to extend greatly in influence and opportunity.
But aside from all this, entirely new occupations and professions are to arise, even the names of which are not yet known to us. Some of them are already under way. There will be established out in the open country plant doctors, plant-breeders, soil experts, health experts, pruning and spraying experts, forest experts, farm machinery experts, drainage and irrigation experts, recreation experts, market experts, and many others. There will be housekeeping experts or supervisors. There will be need for overseers of affiliated organizations and stock companies. These will all be needed for the purpose of giving special advice and direction [(page 78)]. We shall be making new applications of rural law, of business methods for agricultural regions, new types of organization. The people will find that it will pay to support such professions or agents as these.
Country life will become more complex as rapidly as it becomes more efficient.
The personal resources.
The attitude toward one's world has much to do both with his effectiveness and with his satisfaction in living; and this is specially true with the farmer, because he is so much alone and has so few conventional sources of entertainment. It may be important to provide new entertainment for the farmer; but it is much more important to develop his personal resources.
The simple life, as Pastor Wagner so well explains, is a state of mind. It is a simplification of desire, a certain directness of effort and of purpose that brings us quickly to a result, and such an attitude that we derive our satisfactions from the humble and the near-at-hand. The countryman is the man who has the personal touch with his environment.
With the increasing differentiation of country life, it is of the first importance that the country people do not lose their simplicity of desires.