The Evolution of the Country Community / A Study in Religious Sociology

by Warren H. Wilson

The dependence of the scientific farmer or husbandman upon the world market and upon the scientists who are studying agriculture enlarges the circle of his life from the rural household to the rural community. In the rural community agriculture can be taught; in the household it cannot. The only teaching of the household is tradition; the teaching of the community is in terms of science. The country school and the country church take a greater place as community institutions just so soon as the farmer passes out of the period of exploitation into that of scientific husbandry.

The husbandman is the economist in agriculture. He is to the farm what the husband was to the household in old times. One is tempted to say also that the husbandman is he who marries the land. American farm land has suffered dishonor and degradation, but it has known all too little the affection which could be figuratively expressed in marriage. The Bible speaks of "marrying the land."—"Thy land shall be called Beulah for thy land shall be married." Side by side in this country we have the lands which have been dishonored, degraded, abandoned, dissolute, and the lands husbanded, fertilized, enriched and made beautiful.

The husbandman or rural economist cares more for qualities than for quantity. He works not merely for intensive cultivation of the soil, but also for the preservation of the soil and use of it in its own terms, at its highest values.

The principle at work is not the increase in the farmer's material gains or possessions. The husbandry of the soil is not a mere increase in market values. It is a deeper and more ethical welfare than that which can be put in the bank. "Agriculture is a religious occupation." When it sustains a permanent population and extends from generation to generation the same experiences, agriculture is productive in the highest degree of moral and religious values. In the words of Director L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, "The land is holy."

This is especially true at the present time, when the land is limited in amount. Already the whole nation is dependent upon the farmer in the degree intimated by the statement of Dean Bailey. "The census of 1900 showed approximately one-third of our people on farms or closely connected with farms, as against something like nine-tenths, a hundred years previous. It is doubtful whether we have struck bottom, although the rural exodus may have gone too far in some regions, and we may not permanently strike bottom for sometime to come."[13]

The service of the few to the many, therefore, is the present status of the husbandman. The very fact that one-third of the people must feed all the people imposes religious and ethical conditions upon the farmer. The dependence of the greater number for their welfare upon those who are to till the soil brings that obligation, which the farmer is well constituted to bear and to which his serious spirit gives response.

This means that with the growing consciousness of the need of scientific agriculture there will arise, indeed is now arising, a new ethical and religious feeling among country people. The church which is made up of scientific farmers is a new type of church.

A notable testimony to the influence of the church in developing husbandry is by Sir Horace Plunkett,[14] who testifies to the religious influence that led to the agrarian revolution in Denmark.

"My friends and I have been deeply impressed by the educational experience of Denmark, where the people, who are as much dependent on agriculture as are the Irish, have brought it by means of organization to a more genuine success than it has attained anywhere else in Europe. Yet an inquirer will at once discover that it is to the 'High School' founded by Bishop Grundtvig, and not to the agricultural schools, which are also excellent, that the extraordinary national progress is mainly due. A friend of mine who was studying the Danish system of state aid to agriculture, found this to be the opinion of the Danes of all classes, and was astounded at the achievements of the associations of farmers not only in the manufacture of butter, but in a far more difficult undertaking, the manufacture of bacon in large factories equipped with all the most modern machinery and appliances which science had devised for the production of the finished article. He at first concluded that this success in a highly technical industry by bodies of farmers indicated a very perfect system of technical education. But he soon found another cause. As one of the leading educators and agriculturists of the country put it to him: 'It's not technical instruction, it's the humanities.' I would like to add that it is also, if I may coin a term, the 'nationalities,' for nothing is more evident to the student of Danish education or, I might add, of the excellent system of the Christian Brothers in Ireland, than that one of the secrets of their success is to be found in their national basis and their foundation upon the history and literature of the country."

Every observer of these Danish Folk High Schools testifies to their religious enthusiasm, their patriotism and above all to the songs with which their lecture hours are begun and ended. A graduate of these schools living for years in America, the mother of children then entering college, said, "Those songs helped me over the hardest period of my life. I can always sing myself happy with them." The spirit which pervades the schools was influential in Danish agriculture, as expressed in the title of Grundtvig's best known hymn, "The Country Church Bells." Under such an influence as this has the agricultural life of Denmark taken the lead over its urban and manufacturing life.