The Holy Earth

by L. H. Bailey

The democratic basis in agriculture

All these positions are capable of direct application in the incorporation of agriculture into a scheme of democracy. A brief treatment of this subject I had developed for the present book; and this treatment, with applications to particular situations now confronting us, I used recently in the vice-presidential address before the new Section M of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (published in Science, February 26, 1915, where the remainder of it may be found). Some of the general points of view, modified from that address, may be brought together here. The desirability of keeping a free and unattached attitude in the people on the land may be expounded in many directions, but for my purpose I will confine the illustrations to organization in the field of education.

The agricultural situation is now much in the public mind. It is widely discussed in the press, which shows that it has news value. Much of this value is merely of superficial and temporary interest. Much of it represents a desire to try new remedies for old ills. Many of these remedies will not work. We must be prepared for some loss of public interest in them as time goes on. We are now in a publicity stage of our rural development. It would seem that the news-gathering and some other agencies discover these movements after the work of many constructive spirits has set them going and has laid real foundations; and not these foundations, but only detached items of passing interest, may be known of any large part of the public. I hope that we shall not be disturbed by this circumstance nor let it interfere with good work or with fundamental considerations, however much we may deplore the false expectations that may result.

We are at the parting of the ways. For years without number—for years that run into the centuries when men have slaughtered each other on many fields, thinking that they were on the fields of honor, when many awful despotisms have ground men into the dust, the despotisms thinking themselves divine—for all these years there have been men on the land wishing to see the light, trying to make mankind hear, hoping but never realizing. They have been the pawns on the great battlefields, men taken out of the peasantries to be hurled against other men they did not know and for no rewards except further enslavement. They may even have been developed to a high degree of manual or technical skill that they might the better support governments to make conquests. They have been on the bottom, upholding the whole superstructure and pressed into the earth by the weight of it. When the final history is written, the lot of the man on the land will be the saddest chapter.

But in the nineteenth century, the man at the bottom began really to be recognized politically. This recognition is of two kinds,—the use that a government can make in its own interest of a highly efficient husbandry, and the desire to give the husbandman full opportunity and full justice. I hope that in these times the latter motive always prevails. It is the only course of safety.

Great public-service institutions have now been founded in the rural movement. The United States Department of Agriculture has grown to be one of the notable governmental establishments of the world, extending itself to a multitude of interests and operating with remarkable effectiveness. The chain of colleges of agriculture and experiment stations, generously co-operative between nation and State, is unlike any other development anywhere, meaning more, I think, for the future welfare and peace of the people than any one of us yet foresees. There is the finest fraternalism, and yet without clannishness, between these great agencies, setting a good example in public service. And to these agencies we are to add the State departments of agriculture, the work of private endowments although yet in its infancy, the growing and very desirable contact with the rural field of many institutions of learning. All these agencies comprise a distinctly modern phase of public activity.

A new agency has been created in the agricultural extension act which was signed by President Wilson on the 8th of May in 1914. The farmer is to find help at his own door. A new instrumentality in the world has now received the sanction of a whole people and we are just beginning to organize it. The organization must be extensive, and it ought also to be liberal. No such national plan on such a scale has ever been attempted; and it almost staggers one when one even partly comprehends the tremendous consequences that in all likelihood will come of it. The significance of it is not yet grasped by the great body of the people.

Now, the problem is to relate all this public work to the development of a democracy. I am not thinking so much of the development of a form of government as of a real democratic expression on the part of the people. Agriculture is our basic industry. As we organize its affairs, so to a great degree shall we secure the results in society in general. It is very important in our great experiment in democracy that we do not lose sight of the first principle in democracy, which is to let the control of policies and affairs rest directly back on the people.

We have developed the institutions on public funds to train the farmer and to give him voice. These institutions are of vast importance in the founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather than by class legislation, or by favor of government, or by any attitude of benevolence from without.