Farm Boys and Girls

by William A. McKeever

A mistake in training

Too long we have been training young people in the school and in the home to struggle for the best of everything—a sort of rivalry that results in envy, jealousy, and strife, and a falling apart where there should be coöperation and sympathy and a spirit of mutual helpfulness. The craze for clothes, the glare of the electric lights, and the lure of the cheap theater have struck the country people and are drawing away much of the best young blood there. It seems that we have over-done this thing of pointing to the top and urging our young people to scramble for that, until as a result no one is looking for a place to serve, while all are looking for a place to shine. Now, there may be “plenty of room at the top” for selfish scrambling, but in some respects the top is woefully over-crowded. On the other hand, there is a vast amount of good room at the bottom, acres of it, and we might well commend it to every one who may be imbued with the idea of doing some effective work in the world. All over the broad, open country, in thousands of rural districts, the situation at the bottom is literally crying out for constructive workers who will come in there with their good courage, their scientific training, and in the name of the Most High get down among the people and the common things in the midst of which the people live and lay a substantial foundation for a new and beautiful structure—an edifice erected out of the plain materials to be found in any ordinary rural community, and that by means of transforming such things and making them contributive to the high and lofty spirit-purposes for which they are really designed.

Rural child-rearing

We are not half awake as yet to the meaning and possibilities of the rural community as a place for rearing children. The city environment ripens youths too fast and too early and works all the spontaneity and aggressiveness out of the boys and girls before their mature judgments are ready to function. As a result of this city hot-bed, we have as a type the blasé sort of young man, and a young woman who is overly smart in respect to the “proper things to do.” Either of them has little power of initiative and less power of persistence. One of the greatest virtues of the somewhat isolated rural home is that it matures human character more slowly and keeps the boys and girls fresh and “green” and spontaneous while there is being gradually worked into their characters the habit of industry and the power of doing constructive work.

If one should desire to obtain a sterling specimen of manhood, he would not take up with the “smart” city youth who at the age of sixteen has had all the experiences known to men. The latter is too ripe. He knows it all. From his own point of view, his knowledge of the world is nearly completed. No, one would prefer to go to the most remote country district and, if need be, lasso some green, gawky, sixteen-year-old who is afraid of the cars and the big girls and who has never had a suit of clothes that fits him. This scared, unbroken youth would go through a tremendous amount of rough-and-tumble, trial-and-error experiences during the course of his college training; and he would live intensively and rush into many unknown places and commit many blunders, between whiles catching countless inspiring visions of how he might be or become a man of great strength and ruggedness of character. Such a man might be relied upon to shoulder the heavy burdens of the world. Such a man could be called out to join in the forefront of battle when the moral and religious rights of the people were at issue. Such a man when fully matured could be sent into some kind of missionary field and be expected to labor there for a long time alone, courageous and persistent, finally winning a very small following; then a larger number of adherents; and then the entire population at his heels, applauding and backing him up in his every worthy effort.

The author has long had a vision of a man trained and developed through the seasoning experiences just sketched and who, under the inspiration and the guidance of the Most High, will go into these rural communities which are latent with material life, and there begin his labors in behalf of the higher things into which all the elements of this typical rural situation may be transformed. Just as fast as men hear this divine call and heed it and take up this work, so fast will our country life be reconstructed and the best that is in our society become gloriously transformed and everlastingly saved as a heritage of the oncoming generations. And it is evident that the rural minister, working through the rural church, is the person to whom this divine call may most naturally come.

The churches too narrow

Not a few of the country churches are too narrow in their limitations, tending to chill out those who do not happen to be adherents of the creed, and to foster dissensions and hatred among neighbors. And they are not touching in a vital way the lives of country boys and girls.

Plate IX.