TPRERTEENY terrae TELE Se eT ae PH RET UVERDUVAD ETF EEVPERSD PEATE EET "agsvennate Vaaeenyare pitebedti Aa Pepeereye cuevpirs VT ie Spee aga) wee eraberry photo nar: HT 421 .G35 1924 | Galpin, Charles Josiah, Bs 1864. , Rural social problems aj Vu ALA eel ire ree of .' holo ‘+ Mew y yp a) te ) ii Ui eco ae he me face RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS The Century Rural Life Books C. J. Gatrin, Editor RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS CHARLES JOSIAH GALPIN THE WOMAN ON THE FARM Mary Meex ATKESON LAND: ITS SOCIAL ECONOMY Cuarites Leste STEWART THE FARMER’S STANDARD OF | LIVING E. L. Kirxpatricx RURAL MUNICIPALITIES Tueopore B. Manny RURAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Cart C. Taytor THE FARMER’S TOWN J. H. Kors THE SUBURBAN TREND H. Pavut Dovetass THE FARMER’S CHURCH Warren H. Witson RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS BY é CHARLES JOSIAH GALPIN In Charge of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Life, United States Department of Agriculture; One Time Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics in the University of Wisconsin Author of *‘Rurat Lire’’ THE CENTURY CO. New York and London Copyright, 1924, by THE CENTURY Co. PRINTED IN VU. &. A. To My Friend DR. HENRY C. TAYLOR Who, Standing in the Midst of Farm Life, Took Up the Study of the Farmer’s Economie Problem Because He Felt That the American Farmer Is Entitled to an American Standard of Living This Book is Dedicated . ‘Poe He is 4 Tie, wee ry one My ‘pn ee) ry, 4 i Re PREFACE The human element in the problem of agriculture and country life is the theme of this book. Up to the present time rural humanism has been outgeneraled by the forces of rural finance, which keep promising that all the good things of life will come of their own accord to rural society, if only everybody will turn in and make agriculture a paying business. The hour is coming, however, when the humanizing forces inherent in agri- eulture and country life will break the leash and strike out to find the way to modernized living; for they are now pretty well aware that agriculture will never be prosperous enough out of its own coffers, however well filled they may be, to guide farm men, women, and children to goals of life which require ideals of living to comprehend. This volume is written in anticipation of that hour of a courageous rural humanism. It is intended as a fore- book to the Century Rural Life Books. Each chapter is viewed as an opening discussion of a topic, to be fol- lowed closely by a forthcoming book that will treat the subject of the chapter with scope. CHARLES JOSIAH GALPIN. January 1, 1924. ' ‘ { - AX A : | an he F is ; } ¢ xe 4 ss a i ALY i | " LaF hy ni eh f ir y that, a vie Memes, UPR! ey yh i , a4 ' ) / i iiat | ere : é 1 - . re a dee: ty ; whl) eF, ARLE ape ae ik ay a : \ A 24) >, wT Wik tets vi) ick we . ft. Mea Le tf FS eye ae aes ; vi ah afr’ tei eR CANA Sar pent Ca ety Sr ‘L DEEL A SIM er Lt i wi bh ; if ; as as 7 CHAPTER I II XIII XIV XVI XVII CONTENTS PAGE Tye Frontier IN Fagm Lire ..... 8 Way Farmers Tonk as THzEy Do. .. . 12 THe Farmer’s Stanparp of Living. . . . 33 Some Proptems THAT ConFrront Farm Women 51 WHERE THE Farm Faminy Trapes . . . .. 65 LANDLORDS AND Farm TENANTS . . . . . 176 AGRICULTURE AND High ScHoots . . . . . 93 AGRICULTURE AND Hosprraus . ... . . . Itt AGRICULTURE AND CHURCHES . ... . . 119 Can THE Farm Faminty Arrorp Moprern InstTI- REPT TON Pe ta eee ge diatitgh GRUUHER bw Pghty ek. Ue. AMR Ee REPLANNING THE City AS A PLACE Not TO Live In 150 WAR PEMDIN Gr ARMS LITHR fo) leisy Wn oc beeth Gel syhl eae OO MovEMENT OF POPULATION TO AND From Farms . 183 © Rurau Lire iw AMericAN ART. . . ... . 197 Tue Coming Rurau Municipatity. . . . . 209 SSVREMES OMT URAT,) LLOPEN yi (\ spel ei de nhivoh inal hy fazer Tue Skims: A SupmarginaL Lanp . . . . 261 he (1 col Ae eet gee A SAN C5 19 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS AR her He Le a : APC O hs 1M AA Payal Coe we |} re me e i: a eRe DOr i 7“ 4 1 “> > i ? i! oes ; iS ; Wit : era APS | “ig ‘ t ; ' ‘ y 4 f 7 ‘ ; er es ¥ " J } ‘ge ies Re Wie Bree iieaey Ct Sc) es 5: i Nig Se at A as gh a fad | | ; SS A Art Wigs : i om awed) y oN: Be i F TER LUE i , ey wee 1 i ' \ oh ese Teh et ny Cee ia rot ae : } ae 2r4 ¢ gi 1 ‘ | j t hes Ay Mg ey 7 a ‘ | yi Ad high A”! > LF } a yh Saree >» }* ’ Sl ge? . : | . . } “te , halts & ‘ x fi | ¢ ar | cag Mapi ad os aye ae y ays i's vu a, ara’. 4 Poteet a 4 ; we the he a / ; | ite | ea a ; a yt (ae | | ae / ‘ ae he r iF ‘ “+f al Cw Mick. Poke Par nue ls anes eu RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER I THE FRONTIER IN FARM LIFE : MERICAN agriculture and farm life are young, very young as races and nations reckon age. And this youthfulness, if overlooked, will prove a constant source of perplexity if not of error to him who, with something more than a passing glance, would understand farm life and its problems in America. Let us frankly recognize, therefore, at the very start that America’s three hundred years, England’s fifteen hun- dred years, China’s thousands of years, create differ- ences in their types of farm life which appear as con- spicuous as the dissimilarities between the child, the man, and the patriarch. THE Movine Line or FRONTIERS (1790-1880 a. D.) The childhood, so to speak, of America’s farming and farm life has been peculiarly like the childhood of chil- dren because it has been so eager, hopeful, spontaneous, and unrestrained. Commencing at the edge of the east- ern wilderness and continuing westward over new lands 3 4: RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS of wonderful fertility, lands virtually free to the in- dividual farmer who turned the first furrow, American farming has been carried forward by persons and classes of persons who lived and worked under the spell of a powerful emotion. This emotion was the sense or ex- perience of a new freedom, exemption from customary European restraint, the hitherto unknown feel of great spaces, altogether an almost boundless and unbelievable autonomy. To understand the inner character of the present American farm community, one must let his imagination take the journey across the American conti- nent, and follow step by step this three hundred years of rural life and labor. A volume of the United States Census on Population for 1880 contains maps which show the successive waves of advance of population across the American continent east to west, from 1790 to 1880. In these maps the line running from north to south marking the western edge of areas containing, on the average, county by county, as many as two persons to the square mile—a line very irregular, indeed, as may well be imagined—is proposed as the American frontier line. This frontier line crept westward day by day, a few feet a day; slow like a glacier, but like a glacier ever moving on. During the first two hundred years the frontier line moved from the Atlantic coast across the Appalachians; during the next fifty years, half-way across the Mississippi Valley; the last fifty years have witnessed the steady movement of the frontier line clean across the Mississippi Valley, over the Rockies, and to the Pacific coast, THE FRONTIER IN FARM LIFE 5 On this ever-moving frontier line were the forerunners of American civilization. Here the farm family faced the wilderness and the prairie and subdued them with ox and plow. Along with the farmer stood the hunter, trader and town builder, miner, lumberman, boatman, highway builder, overland carrier. As the frontier line moved on, a second line occupied the position left and began to establish and intrench more perfectly the in- stitutions of civilization. A third line followed the sec- ond, and so on until civilization itself may be said to have moved across the continent and taken up its fixed positions. The American historian has pointed out that democ- racy, all through its history on the American continent even up to the present time, has been characterized by the presence of this frontier line of adventurous souls en- gaged in subduing an ever new and changing type of land, landscape, and resources. He has stressed the fact that a back-flow of youthful spirit, virility, hope, imagination, confidence, power, has continually poured eastward from this ever new and spontaneous frontier, into the older States; and so he claims that American democracy has grown up under a process of inoculation with the serum of youth. America thus has kept re- juvenated and revitalized in contrast with Europear democracy. Well may the students of rural life thank the his- torian for this historical point of view; for now rural thinkers will note with more particularity what the fron- tier has meant in the growth of the farm community and rural institutions. 6 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS Tae RATES oF DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL AND UrsBan LAND In the three-hundred-year movement and development of American industry, government, and life from the wilderness through successive frontier stages to settled civilized conditions, it is interesting to observe, if one will refer to the U. S. Census maps mentioned above, that the moving frontier line did nbt advance at a uni- form rate throughout its whole length. In fact, some portions moved much more rapidly than others. What especially stands out on the maps is that civilization seemed to flow around certain frontier areas, leaving them behind like unconquered islands of wilderness. Then a circular frontier line formed independent of the main advancing line and began to creep up and over each island wilderness, until in due time its conquest was made. This peculiar fact, namely, that the frontier — line has sped on at certain points and left behind, unsub- dued, certain areas of land, leads us to look into it more carefully, and to review the original situation, to see what really has taken place. An unbiased look will show that agricultural land has, in virtually all cases, been ‘‘left behind’’ by the moving frontier in a retarded frontier condition; while urban land has kept up with the general movement of civiliza- tion. That agricultural land (carrying with it farm organization and community life) has moved and de- veloped far more slowly out of wilderness conditions than urban land (carrying with it industrial organiza- tion and city life) is our observation; and that in turn becomes a point of departure for understanding Ameri- THE FRONTIER IN FARM LIFE 7 ean farm life. It is not really surprising to find agricul- tural land and communities ‘‘left behind’’ in retarded frontier conditions, to work their way slowly out to modern conditions, when we reckon up carefully all the physical difficulties of converting the wilderness and bringing agricultural land—farms, highways, institu- tions—into adjustment to a moving civilization. Nor is it difficult to see how urban land, in the history of Amer- ica, has outstripped agricultural land in the process of adjustment to modern life. A bare look at the manner of development of each will suffice to convince one. The farm family has subdued its unit of agricultural land, with certain exceptions which need not detain us, single-handed. This family cut the forest, broke land, stumped it, organized it, built on it, made roadways. The unit of urban land included in village, town, or city is subdued in most cases, even in early times, by a labor force. Collective effort builds buildings, streets, and in- stitutions with relative rapidity. Where it takes dec- ades to subdue urban land and to adjust it adequately to the purposes of city industry and life, it takes gen- erations to subdue agricultural land and adjust it with similar adequacy to the purposes of agriculture and in- stitutional life. Lest the full force of this contrast may be unheeded, let us follow a little further the unfold- ing of the rural community. EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURAL GROUPS FROM F'RONTIER CONDITIONS A graphic picture of what occurred, humanly speak- ing, step by step, in the early agricultural life of ‘ 8 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS America would, if such a picture were possible, enable us to see what has led up to our present rural popula- tion groups. If we could reénact, as in a play, the slow occupancy of the agricultural land, family by family, we should see the justification of certain early groups of farm people, which have persisted in their original group form to our own day with small justifica- tion. We should see the local political group, such as the township, emerge from a chaos of widely separated farm families. Local governments these families must have. So the loose organization of local family units: over a wide spread of land naturally follows. Nothing like a compact village, town, or city was possible. A grist-mill on a flowing water-power, a sawmill per- chanee, established one group; a post-office established another; a school, a church, as occasion required, and convenience and immediacy dictated, determined others. A trading-post, a village, a town, drew farmers together for trade who may have belonged to several different school groups and two or more mill groups. The cir- cumstances that created the variety of various small groups of farm families continued for two or three gen- erations at first, until custom had made the groupings seem right, and the general acceptance of such group- ings became fixed in the rural and urban mind. As the years and generations rolled by in American history, farmers, having become accustomed to the frontier grouping and organization, began to ‘‘adjust themselves backward’’ to this social organization, awkward though it might be, without much thought of improvement, tak- THE FRONTIER IN FARM LIFE 9 ing the penalty of maladjustment into their own souls as a matter of course. The rural post-office groups had names and usually added to themselves a few other functions and services, as, for example, a store, a blacksmith shop, a tannery, a mill. Such post-office groups did not coincide with the school groups necessarily, as the school was adjusted to the walking capacity of the small child. The church group was determined on a principle of religious belief and conduct. This required usually a new set of ter- ritorial limits, coinciding very rarely with other groups. These groups might contain as few as half a dozen families or as many as a hundred. The general out- standing characteristic of this group situation is the partial overlapping of several distinct social groups of farm families with respect to institutions of service, school, religion, or trade. It is quite as we might expect that these various groups have been in fluctuation, subject to considerable change and even decay. Rural post-offices went out of fashion. The groups began to decay. Trading-posts came and went with transport facilities. Their groups changed likewise. The country grist-mill, tannery, distillery, sawmill, declined. Their groups shifted. Schools of higher order came. New school communities came in. With shift by immigration of farm ownership from American to Norwegian, for example, or to other foreign race elements, old churches ceased, new church groups arose. With all the flux and change, however, the main characteristics continued; viz., the separateness and ter- 10 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS ritorial confusion of groups, partially overlapping, sel- dom consolidating, scarcely ever achieving adequacy. Unless the agricultural community is to suffer inevit- able arrest and the continual necessity of ‘‘adjustment backward’’ with a consequent social penalty for being farmers, we must all be prepared in our minds for the final step in the metamorphosis of the agricultural com- munity from frontier organization to modern organiza- tion. This step may be as dramatic as the step from the worm to the butterfly. When the ‘‘horseless ear- riage’’ or the tractor took the place of the horse, there was no demand anywhere that the gas-driven horse should be made in the shape and form of an oat-and- hay-driven horse. When modern community organiza- tion displaces the farmers’ frontier type of groupings, we shall not be surprised to see an utter change in form of the organization. The modern rural store is not to be thought of as a better cross-roads store; the modern rural blacksmith shop is not to be a better cross-roads blacksmith shop; the modern farmers’ municipality is not likely to be a better township. They may all be on different models. We must look for forms of organiza- tion which are adjusted to the farmer’s economic and in- tellectual development, and to the needs of a modern American home. A STATEMENT OF THE RURAL PROBLEM The social problem of farm life as a whole may very well be conceived as the problem of mounting from the lower level of frontier organization up to the level of modern life and institutions. The problem in the large THE FRONTIER IN FARM LIFE 11 is one of escape, escape from the menace of an arrested social development and of a stunted breed of society. The stolid peasant is a dwarf product of arrested gerowth. America is living in hope that its agriculture may escape a peasant society. é¢ CHAPTER II WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO spects, no different from any people. They eat, marry, work, love children, grow old, and die like everybody else. Why, therefore, single them out and ask about their habits of thought? As if there were any one who did n’t know already how the farmer feels, thinks, and behaves in every-day life.’’ Yes, but does the ordinary man of the street, the wheat-eating man let us call him, know clear to the bot- tom of his soul what makes farmers feel as they do, think as they do, and act as they do? To know this, is to understand the farmer, and to understand the farmer is to place in the stream that flows between town and country the first stepping-stone to good relations with him. The wheat-eater, if he does not wish to be on a good footing with the wheat-raiser, must never attempt to fathom the wheat-raiser’s mind. For that way, be- yond a shadow of a doubt, lies friendliness to farm, farming, and farmer. Let us be bold enough to hope and take for granted that all wheat-eaters and cotton-wearers wish to travel this way of friendliness. We shall, therefore, take a modest look into the farmer’s mind. Three influences in life, we are safe in saying, strongly 12 P=: people,’’ it will be said, ‘‘are, in most re- WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 138 color the way people view things; viz., their own occupa- tion, that is, the sort of work they do for a livelihood; their own residence, that is, where and under what conditions they live while at home; their own institu- tions, that is, established orders and systems to which they are subject from youth up. Let us consider these three influences in the life of the farmer, and see whether they do not give the clue to why farmers think as they do. FARMING THE ONLY OCCUPATION OF ITs KIND The peculiar, even unique, character of farming— or of agriculture, if one prefers a term of noble mien— rows on the student as he goes further and further into its history. The unlikeness of the plow to the anvil, no less than that of the wheat-harvesting combine to the printing-press, tells the whole story of peculiar farm tools and machines. The dissimilar muscle-action of the farmer, moreover, in holding the plow from sun to sun, moving over many a mile in the open, as com- pared with that of the dentist, tools in hand, standing indoors all day by the upturned open mouth of his patient, has wrought upon the farmer’s frame a differ- ent type of body from the dentist’s. But the unique character of farming, much as the tools of farming differ from all other tools and much as the muscular actions of farmers differ from the muscular actions of workers in all other occupations— the uniqueness of farming, I say, stands out pre- eminently in the products of the farm. Let us look at 14 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS the products of industry and compare them with the products of the farm and try to estimate the peculiarity of the farmer’s occupation. Leather and shoes, steel and rails, paper and books, flour and bread, lumber and houses—can you see them in the making? Is one shoe planted and does a pair of shoes come forth? Is a house set into the ground and do three houses spring up? Are books sown broadcast and is a library harvested? That would be a miracle, indeed. You see rather patterns, models, specifications. You see steel red-hot, rolled and flattened, rolled and lengthened, shaped, and cut to measure. You see the builder measure, cut, fit, put together, nail fast, piece on piece, just as the working plan demands. The steel rail emerges as the will of the workers wished. The house arises as willed and desired. The shoes are stitched as designed. Books are planned and made to meet the plan. Industry uses lifeless, will-less, inert materials for its products; and so the worker, the will behind the tool and machine, is habituated to this ruth- less shaping of matter into product according to design. And the farmer and his product? Thirty kernels of wheat like this kernel; a hundred clover plants like this clover plant; six hogs like this hog. Yes, the farmer has his model, his pattern, his specifi- cations. But he puts his wheat model into the ground, and waits, biding the season of growth. Then he plucks his thirty kernels grown to be like the model. The thirty are kin to the one. The six hogs are kin to WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 15 the one hog. Live beings the farmer makes. Lifeless things the industrialist constructs. This means that farming is the only occupation of its kind; and the peculiarity is more pronounced in the product, if that were possible, than in the process or in the tools. Farm Home UNLIKE Any OTHER HoMEs The farm home in America has three decided pe- culiarities; it is in sight of or close to the field work and chores of the farmer; it is separated by considerable distances from the homes of other families; its neighbors, however near or far away they may be, are also farmers. A look at these three circumstances of farm life will discover to the thoughtful observer how farmers in America come to think as they do. The American frontier farmer had to live on his land in touch with his fields. He wanted to be close to his animals to protect them. He felt safer about his growing crops, if he could keep them in sight. Then, too, he was a time-saver, and did not care to be going long distances back and forth to work. But above every- thing else the American farmer knew of no better place to live on than the spot close to the land that was his, close to the animals he was used to, in sight of the erowing plants he was coaxing. This sweep of the eye over his domain after work is done, this deep draft of satisfaction in the midst of his pet treasures, his prop- erties, is unique. It is the landsman’s life. The American farmer never locks his office door and 16 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS goes home to his family to forget his work. His work things—his crops, his animals—why, they are alive. They are, as it were, a part of his family. Nearness to work is of the essence of farming. The real farmer never dismisses his lambs and calves and colts for the night, any more than he does his children when he puts them to bed and tucks them in. He is on eall. How different it is with the banker, merchant, doctor, car- penter, artisan! The trader on the frontier lived in his store. The doctor had his office in his house. Craftsmen of all sorts in early days economized by living with their craft. But those days for American industry are gone. Only remnants of such pioneering are seen here and there. Pity grips the heart when one discovers a family in village, town, or city, living darkly in the rear of a shop, over or under a store, in the midst of garments in the making to sell. No, city industry can be put under lock and key. The worker can go home, out of sight of work, out of hearing of machines, buzzers, and bells, and forget his tasks with satisfaction. The joy of dismissing city work at sunset, retreating to the family, resting apart and away, thrills banker and spinner alike. Is the reason the speed and strain of city work? Is it the inert product of industry? Is it the monotonous spe- cialization upon one thing? At any rate, city industry is not to be lived with. Fortunate the city worker who can put miles between his work -and his home! But happy the farmer who lives where his eye reaches every nook and corner of his farm! WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 17% The second peculiar feature of the farm home is its distance from neighbors. The very commonplaceness of this circumstance is perplexing to one who tries to see all the results that flow from it. Although a farm home may have two neighbor homes lying within the distance of one mile, the likelihood is that the greater number of neighbors live at least three miles away, out of sight and hearing. This situation approaches a condition of solitary living. At least we ean understand the situation better, if—granted that it is an extreme illustration—we try to analyze the effect upon a single person or a single family of having an abode so far from people as to be living in an atmosphere | of uninterrupted privacy. The key to understanding such a life is that the life is all one’s own. Whatever the advantages may be of having perfect freedom from other wills, that advantage comes to the solitary. On the other hand, whatever loss comes from having nothing added to life from the soul of another person, that loss must be accepted with the advantage. The family that lives alone lives its own life in its own way. It is strong in that it is a solid unit; it is weak in that it ig federated with no allies. The nearer the farm family comes to this solitary life, the more nearly it takes the loss and gain of absolute privacy. The silent, perhaps unconscious, restraint upon a person or a family having close neighbors, and many close neighbors indeed, is in tremendous contrast with the silent unconscious freedom of the recluse. The con- straint put upon every member of a family by the pres- 18 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS ence for a single day even of a stranger in the home is almost painful, so aware is everybody of the visitor. But the restraint of near neighbors in a town, although second nature and hardly recognized, is none the less actual and powerful. This type of restraining and con- straining influence for good or for evil is of a piece with society itself. The townsman lives not his own life in his own way, but he lives the life of others; while the American farm family, more or less, it must be con- fessed, lives its own kind of life. The third peculiar circumstance about the farm home is that farmers have only farmers for neighbors. It takes a little imagination to get the full force of this fact. In America farmers are, broadly speaking, in groups together. Farmers live together as pines grow together in pine forests, spared the presence of other kinds of trees. But bankers for neighbors have physicians, mer- chants, contractors, real-estate brokers, and the like. In terms of forests, city people live like a jungle of all kinds of trees and vines. One can only begin to real- ize how peculiar this fact is when he asks himself what would happen to American democracy if all the barbers in America lived in barber groups, all hardware mer- chants in hardware groups, plumbers in plumber groups, lawyers in attorney groups, clergy in ministe- rial groups, and so on to the end of the chapter? The bare statement of this question shows what an eccentric fact, especially in a great democracy like ours, is this fact of the segregation of farmers off by themselves in their every-day home life. WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 19 RurAu InNstTituTIons Cast IN A PEecuLiAR Mop The farmer’s private property is land in stretched-out acres. He has a few buildings and some goods, of course, but land is the type. The city man’s private property is buildings and goods. He has a few square feet of land, of course, but buildings and goods are the type. Farm tenancy, a relationship between the landowner and the landless man, is quite different from city ten- ancy, a relationship between a building owner and a building-less man. The farm family, so far as the law of the family relationship is concerned, is identical with the city family; but many colorful differences exist, growing out of the peculiarities in respect to occupation and residence. The family on the farm is a workaday part- nership between husband, wife, and children in the same business enterprise. In the city family, if other members than the husband are at work, they are usually in other businesses. The city wife, however, is seldom more than a home-maker. She may, if her surplus energy permits, crave an outlet in some career, or in some minor task, at least, which shall take her out of her home for a respite. But seldom does she find this con- genial task or career in business or in a work which gives financial returns. It comes rather, when it comes at all, in charity, in church relations, in social fune- tions, except of course in the marginal family where the wife is breadwinner and home-maker, too. Farm children are a financial asset to the family, 20 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS because there are forms of work in the farm enterprise suited to their years. The city child is a financial ha- bility. So the city home contains fewer children than the farm home. In giving children a productive value and in furnish. ing the wife a business interest, the farm furnishes a family motive without equal in city life. Rural local government is so unlike village, town, or city government that in comparison the farm com- munity seems to run along without government. The tax-receipts in the farmer’s drawer prove that there is a government; but the evidences are few that farm life is under a strict system of control, guidance, in- spection, protection by officers of law. The country school is as yet typically a one-room, one- teacher, ungraded school. The country church is a preaching-place, and so typically an auditorium. The farmer’s trading-post is still in many parts of the United States a single country store, or a small hamlet provided with a store or two and a repair-shop or two. It is unnecessary to call to mind further examples of farmers’ institutions in order to give evidence of their peculiar nature. If one would honestly understand the farmer and his children, he should go to the very bottom of these three influences—namely, farming, farm home, and farm in- stitutions—which appear to be peculiar to such an out- standing degree, and discover how they color the far- mer’s habits of thought and feeling. Let us briefly undertake to sketch some of the paths the farmer travels WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 21 in his thinking, paths which lead directly from these three circumstances in his life. PECULIAR TRAITS oF MInp THE RESULT oF FARM EXPERIENCE If it is true that ‘‘as a man thinketh’’ so is he, equally is it true that as a man is so thinketh he. That is, experience makes the stuff man is and out of which his thoughts flow; and a peculiar life and work experience builds up a peculiar man whose habits of thought have a peculiar color. We are prepared, at this point of our discussion, then, to find the American farmer to some degree a man unlike other men, with a cast of thought peculiarly his own. If possible, let us try to catch in phrase some of the traits of the farmer’s mind which are referable to his life and labors. If the American farmer’s occupation held undisputed sway over his life, he would be America’s greatest tra- ditionalist and conservatist. But, of course, other in- fluences than his business do operate upon him. Never- theless, he still is a great traditionalist and a great conservatist. The farmer’s first thought, however powerful his second. thought may be, is apt to run in this fashion: ‘‘TIs this thing the same as we are used to? If so, it is good so far. If not, it is bad so far.’’ Being ‘‘good so far’’ is not final approval from the farmer, any more than being ‘‘bad so far’’ is final dis- approval; but being like what the farmer is used to is an advantage so precious that the sagacious advertiser 22 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS to farmers of something new first of all tries to show that however different the thing looks, it is after all precisely the same as the farmer is used to. Why is the farmer’s first thought what it is? Sim- ply this. In his business life like begets like. The seed-corn begets corn. like the seed. The cow is like dam or sire. The farmer, in other words, produces things that are like other things. Similarity to the past is the basis of his success. He has built up a technic upon like producing like. He expects likeness, sameness, identity. The dissimilar breaks the thread of continu- ity. It is a bit of disharmony in his scheme. Differ- ence, unheard-of newness, must first of all prove to be in some sense the same as the old and well known; for in and of itself to be different is to be outlawed. Even if difference may stir his curiosity, it is at first a freak with him. It must be naturalized and brought into his system through the law of kind and kinship before he accepts it. Second thought, the effect of education and acquaint- ance with life in other fields, may reverse the first thought; but at this point will come the struggle be- tween what is native and what is acquired. In the struggle, first thought usually wins, unless second thought has some strong: allies. The farmer is, to consider another mental attitude of his, our original naive teleologist ; and the worker in iron is our original untutored materialist. The farmer in his trade saves a seed alive, adjusts it to certain forces, and then feeds the live thing and pro- tects it, watching, meanwhile, for it to develop by a law WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 23 and power hidden within itself. He somehow never can get over this phenomenon of automatic growth. The doing it all by itself—the coming true to purpose, whether he, the farmer, wills it or not—is blind proof to the farmer of an intelligent, purposeful design residing in nature. This mystery of life, of growth, of reproduction, is the great fact envisaging his occupation. He accepts it, and then proceeds to adapt the idea to all the circum- stances of his own life as a doctrine and law of conduct. He expects and waits for this mysterious force to enter and operate in all his enterprises. Saving a place for fate—or, to put it differently, setting a limit to what the farmer can do for himself on account of the great part played by nature—is a practical resignation, here or there, of responsibility and a passing of the role and turn to mystery. This frame of mind may account, along with other reasons to be sure, for the failure of the old farmer type to grap- ple with its problems more vigorously by the method of collective action. The worker in iron shapes his product all along its tortuous journey. He feeds it nothing. He never thinks of it as alive. It is dead, insensate matter. The iron-master, without ruth or pity, heats, hammers, cuts, drills, rolls, and shapes the iron to his own design. It is perhaps no wonder that the iron-master, unless checked by experience in other ways, saves no place for mystery, sets no limits to his own control, and views his own life as one wholly to be made on the model existing in his own will. 24 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS These two different habits of thought growing out of different experiences may serve to explain each other. The deliberateness and caution of the farmer are a proverb. Why is it so? Why is the farmer the out- standing example of waiting and of precaution? The answer is not far to seek, if it is true that experi- ence colors all life and thought. The farmer waits for his crops to grow, after he has done his part. This is a long wait. His unit—a year, frequently, as with cattle—runs into several years. It takes years, often, to get land into form for high production. Timeliness, waiting for the right time, rather than speediness, seems to pay him. You cannot marvel that the farmer pur- sues a Similar method in all his doings. He is used to deliberate action, has found its value, and is inclined to adopt it in his other enterprises. His caution—a certain interesting wariness in regard to persons, ideas, plans, indeed, or whatever the occa- sions that arise—is most natural. Just take a look here. Both heat and cold are his friends, also rain and dry- ness. But heat is also one of his enemies. Cold is just as much an enemy. Rain may drown his crops as well as gently water them. Drouth may shrivel, as well as dryness may ripen. The farmer is accustomed to gage his friendly allies up to the point of their double-cross- ing and turning enemies; and he is always prepared for the turn and break. This caution, this demi- suspicion of friend and foe, is second nature, as self-pres- ervation is first nature. The habit flows easily over into other relations of life. Just as the athlete takes his springy muscles with him into the amenities of the WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 25 drawing-room—in repose if you please, but prepared for any emergency—so the farmer takes his caution with him to town. Farmers, perhaps because of their habit of being resigned to the inevitableness of physical climate which meets them on every side, have always seemed to accept, with more or less protest to be sure, the minimums of life—the little end, the sacrificial side, the incomplete. The ‘‘inferiority complex,’’ so to speak, is a habitual attitude with the farmer; but complicated, just as truly, by a peculiar superiority complex. Just as the farmer has always saved the littles, be- cause in farming there comes a use some day for almost any odd or end, so he has taken the ‘‘half-loaf’’ and prized it, rather than risk all for the ‘‘whole loaf.’’ This characteristic seems tied up with the whole thrift habit of farm people. If crops have come quarter- crops, they have been accepted, garnered, utilized. So if life has sent minimum advantages, farmers have pocketed them, sung a pan, and utilized them. Saving everything for utilization is so wrapped up with farming that no one can long wonder at the far- mer’s money thrift when he once sees what the farmer’s thrift experience takes him through. Cattle eat what is left in the fields. Hogs follow the cattle. Poultry follow the hogs. Every scrap of waste is put on the land. The tree falls. It is converted into lumber, posts, rails, wood, ashes. Ashes go back on the land. Value is attached to every little thing. Thrift is the outcome of this feeling of value. And, though grum- bling will be heard over the land like thunder in the 26 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS mountains, the farmer folk will accept the minimums _ of life and be thankful. That the farmer is an individualist everybody has heard, but not everybody knows why. The farmer’s son at eighteen leaves the farm, goes to the city, enters trade, and loses his earmarks of individualism. The father remains on the farm, and keeps the earmarks. Why ? It is the farmer’s solitary business on the land, his solitary residence distant from masses of people, and his being set off with farmer neighbors in a class group —this is what accounts for it. He is left very much to himself and his own thoughts. When not with other people he is very lkely to be with his own family, whose policies he is accustomed to control. When with his own class, his farmer neighbors, the type of think- ing is similar to his own. The farmer thinks and makes up his own mind. This is because his mind does not clash with those of others. He has to make up his own mind by himself so much that he is not accustomed to the social process of quiet conference and modification. This tendency to a mind ‘‘made up,’’ closed without let or conference, is a trait of lonely people, and so of farm- ers, at least so far as they lead the lonely life. The pioneer farmer of America, as we have noted, accepted in the matter of institutions the crumbs that fell from the American table. The table was furnished with trading towns and cities: the farmer eagerly took up with a trade crumb, the country store. The table came to have graded schools and high schools: the erumb was a little one-teacher school. The city table WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 27 had libraries: the crumb some States have let fall in these later days is a box of books, the so-called ‘‘travel- ing library.’’ What has been the effect of frontier types of institu- tions upon the farmer’s thought? The answer is this: while the crumb was better than no bread, it served to keep alive and intrench the peculiar traits of thought induced by the peculiar occupation of farming and by the peculiar home surroundings. Solitariness and detachment from the broad stream of life characterize the farmer’s institutions just as they do the farmer’s home. And, furthermore, what is particularly distress- ing, the farmer’s tendency to accept the inferior social institution, and to be resigned to the minimum, was per- petuated by the inferior institutions themselves. When social institutions are weaker than the family and the home, little ean be hoped from the institution to com- pensate for deficiencies in the family and home. The farmer has never been able to accumulate a surplus in great social institutions which in turn would give him and his family multiplied power in thinking. He has been like the man who can never save the first thousand dollars which shall furnish the power of capital to speed on his livelihood-making. Such a man is in bonds, fettered to the narrow ability of his own two hands day by day; so the farmer, unable to rear out- side the home great social institutions, has been re- stricted in his experience and thinking to the forces lying close within his business and home. Are farmers in fault because they think as they do? Or, indeed, are they to be praised above all other 28 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS classes for their attitudes of mind? No, in either case. Their experience, day in and day out, year after year, will shape their thinking, just as experience does the thinking of other classes. Only by falling heir to new avenues of other experience than the routine of farm work and home life and the frontier rural institutions, can farmers undergo much change in their thinking. The social psychology of the farmer group, when compared with the social psychology of other occupa- tional groups, will derive such variations as it may have from the basic peculiarities of farming, the farm home, and farm institutions. It will make a book in itself to trace the farmer mind through the history of the farm- ers’ national political movements, through the history of the farmers’ social and economic organizations, through the farmers’ commodity codperatives, through the modern rural educational movement, and through the modern rural religious revival. The spasmodic attempts of the farmer to throw off his characteristic air of resignation to the minimums of so- cial life will, when rehearsed and examined from the point of view of this discussion, remarkably light up the struggles of the land-worker on his way to equality with other men. WHat WILL THE FARMER OF THE FUTURE THINK? In the previous discussions of this chapter, the farmer is spoken of as if all farmers were alike. The fact is that there are great differences in types of farmers. Not only are there differing types of farming, such as wheat farming, small-grain farming, dairy farming, live- WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 29 stock farming, fruit farming, cotton farming, vegetable farming ; but what is more conspicuous, there are, within each so-called type of farming, farmers of a scientific habit of farm practice as well as farmers of a traditional habit of farm practice. Within certain types of farming, moreover, consider- able control of the form and substance of the farm prod- uct has come to be a matter of fact, at least a much larger control than in traditional farming. When mod- ern science enters that type, as it frequently does enter, the control becomes still greater. The result is that the future farmer is plainly to be a man who, though still engaged in growing live seeds, plants, and animals, is so carefully processing his breeds, feeds, and care that he is shaping his products up to specification, somewhat like the worker in steel, brass, or leather. The future farmer, we may confidently expect, therefore, will be closer to the city worker in the type of his thought than the farmer has ever been heretofore. The surfaced roadway, especially when developed into community systems as well as into state trunk sys- tems, will so reduce the distance of the farmer from other people as largely to overcome the isolation of the farmer’s family in residence. Farmers living on a sur- faced highway five miles distant from their trading place are only ten minutes away from town. They are nearer the town bank, the town opera-house, the town church, or town school than the merchant living on the edge of his town was in the days when the automobile was very little in evidence. This new farmer is certain to be more like other people because his residence is only 30 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS ten minutes from everybody living within five miles on surfaced roads. ; The complete trading town is beginning to replace the country store and hamlet; the large-scale school is dis- placing slowly the little district school; the country high sehool and the village high school are giving a better ed- ucational chance to farm children; the rural community house is being added to farm community life; the com- modity cooperative unit is slowly entering the farm com- munity; country parks, athletic fields, picnic grounds, recreation swimming-pools, are an addition to country life. The new type of larger, better adjusted institution already to be found in every State is expanding the new farm community. These newer institutions are not merely the result of more prosperous days in agriculture. They are the out- come of social perception, ambition, comparison, on the part of certain more favorably circumstanced commu- nities. They have come from much preaching, much dis- cussion, fine leadership. A new type of farmer will grow up in the midst of these modern institutions. He will be more like other people because he will have more of the influences about him which have made other people. But the new farmer, in becoming more like other men, will, it is quite sure, in turn modify his family and community life so as to develop all the best there is in country life and eliminate a great deal that has been the curse of living in the country. The older farmer type thinks as he does because he cannot help it. The old farm and the old farm life made and makes the old farmer. The new farmer type, the WHY FARMERS THINK AS THEY DO 31 future farmer, will think as he will because he is the re- sult of the new farming and the new farm community. It is especially important for non-farmers to go through an analysis of farmer thought just to get the contrast between, the new and the old farmer attitudes. It will not improve industrial life or city business to look upon and regard the American farmer of the near future as of the old type. It will help the city, how- ever, in regard to all city thinking on any problem in which the farmer is concerned, to leave a place in the problem for the new farmer type. At least fifty per cent of farm boys and girls go to town and city in adolescence and permanently enter in- dustry and professional life. Going as they do in their late teens, they quickly absorb the city point of view and industrial thinking. The folk-ways in farm life, how- ever, lie embedded in their character; and the antago- nism between town and country, farm and city, will, it is to be expected, greatly diminish as the new farmer sup- plants the old farmer. THe WeraAK Spot IN Our PORTRAITURE We have spoken as if the hoe-farmer in America were gone forever, and as if the machine-farmer were here to stay forever. We have practically assumed in our dis- cussion up to now that farm psychology is making an upward change of a permanent character. But suppose that the reign of the farm machine has nearly reached its climax already and that conditions are about to set in which tend to eliminate the machine and restore the hoe? This is the grain of pessimism that inheres in 32 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS farming. Did not the large landholder in Rumania be- fore the war employ the high types of farm machines in an efficient agriculture? And after the war, on the break-up of the large holdings, did not the peasants junk the machines and go back to peasant farming? Who will guarantee that peasant farming shall never creep over America? Who will guarantee that landholding in America shall not pass into the small holdings of peasant owners and peasant tenants? Who can guarantee that America shall not be so thoroughly industrialized, that the clamor for cheap food will not break down our im- migration bars and let in a peasant population upon the land ? It is this uncertainty that keeps the agrarian states- man awake. The thinking of the American farmer will be gaged by the conditions under which he labors. If the peasant follows close upon the heels of a disappear- ing farm engineer, then peasant thinking will come to be the habit of the farm community. If the hoe returns and muscle again becomes the engine of farm power, then rural society will suffer a reverse and enter upon one more long era of rising, falling, and rising again. This possible dark spot in the portrait of the future farmer will keep alert all those who believe that condi- tions surrounding the thinker gear thinking up or down. The well balanced patriot takes the pessimism into full account, while he tries to work out his rosy portrait. CHAPTER III THE FARMER’S STANDARD OF LIVING i IVING conditions,’’ ‘‘standard of living,’’ ‘‘bet- ter housing,’’ ‘‘better home surroundings,’’ are phrases so current that the man of the street in our cities has a knowledge of them sufficient for intelligent conversation. City industry has studied the human factor in production. It has sized up the in- fluence and bearing of many personal characteristics of its labor force. Factories of the higher order now quote ‘‘the figures’’ on ‘‘better housing,’’ ‘‘better food,’’ some ‘‘leisure,’’ ‘‘night schools,’’ as these relate to annual production. In fact, the theory is quite general that industrial labor in America must have a good ‘‘standard of living’’ in order to produce American goods. The labor-unions and the American Federation of Labor have not been slow to seize upon this theory of American production as a weapon cf economic offense and defense to enforce wage demands. The basic theory of labor in every new wage demand or amelioration, of working conditions, whether of shorter hours or protec- tion from occupational accident and disability, is keep- ing a ‘‘decent standard of living.’’ This ‘‘fair stand- ard’’ or ‘‘high standard’’ or ‘‘decent standard”’ of liv- ing has come to have an equivalent, viz. ‘‘ American 33 34 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS standard of living.’’ However indefinite the concept, ‘‘American standard of living’’ means in most minds a condition of living with respect to food, housing, clothes, leisure, education, insurance, amusement, religion, which an American need not be ashamed of; a condition of living surrounding the American workman which re- sults in better work, at the same time that the worker is given a chance to improve his opportunities and as- eend the American ladder of progress. When we pass from the city industrial wage-worker over to agriculture and to discussions of agricultural problems, standard of living for the most part drops out of sight. The farmer is urging in his defense the high cost of production of the products he has to sell, the high price of what he has to buy for his family, and the low price at which he must sell his own prod- ucts, if indeed he can sell them at all. His emotions have evidently been so taken up with the demonstrable disparity between what he gets and what he pays that he has overlooked or discounted the argument of ““standard of living.’’ Farm labor in America, more- over, has yet no public voice, no union, no press organ, no economic theory or policy. It seems willing yet to rise with the rise of the farmer, and to depend upon the farmer’s argument, organization, legislative lobby, and agricultural press to restore himself when he drops with the farmer. The tenant farmer, even, has not succeeded in differentiating his cause from the farm owner- operator, at least enough to employ the standard of living weapon. There are, however, signs that the three agri- cultural classes will soon be taking stock of their living STANDARD OF LIVING 35 conditions and bringing standard of living to bear on economic discussions. The movement of negro farm workers from the fields of the South to the factories of the North is causing South- ern landowners to start a better housing program on their plantations. If the old cabins do not hold the col- ored man to the plantation, more modern houses may. Where good tenant farmers are at a premium, a sanitary comfortable house may be a local inducement of a deci- sive nature. Farm-owning operators having sons and daughters of the adolescent age agree to the installation of modern systems of water-supply, heating, and light- ing as a last resort in the endeavor to retain their chil- dren on the farm. Better standards are of course being adopted—in some things, moreover, under the force of modern pushing commercial agencies. But, as a stated problem, the subject on the whole has risen very little into publie consciousness. It is true that one leading farm economist has uttered the advice to farmers to begin a regular policy of investing surplus in better facilities for family living rather than of racing with one another for more land, and so boosting up the land values of the country-side to the danger point. There is one aspect, however, in the development of agriculture which should be noted at this point, for the reason. that it indicates how ready the farmer class is to consider broadly the question of standards of living. This is it. For two decades the farmer has discussed the living of his animals from every point of view, and he is perfectly acquainted with a high standard of living and a low standard for cows, hogs, horses, beef-cattle, 36 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS sheep, and poultry. This concept of standard of living goes from food to shelter, exercise, handling by men, health, and the like. The farmer of America now un- derstands in regard to his live stock the values of scien- tifie feeding, adequate housing, health protection, and gentle treatment. No argument is needed now in farmer gatherings to justify even specialized housing for different types of animals: dairy barns, hog houses, poultry houses. No argument is needed for the comfort of easy stanchions, sanitary barn-yards, humane handling of animals. It looks as if the way were paved from the farm right up to the farm-house and farm family for the scientific dis- cussion and consideration of the standard of living of the farm family. Faminy Livinea The basic factors in living, so far as they are more or less under control of the family and are subject to measurement and discussion, are generally agreed to be food, clothing, fuel, housing, operation, maintenance of health, advancement (including educa- tion, religion, travel, etc.), personal savings, govern- ment. Such broad headings are serviceable simply as a means of classifying all the items that make up the satisfaction of family wants. These items cost something. They must be provided either through pur- chase or effort. They constitute the aim of a farm fam- ily, and provide the motive-power for occupational work. To be aware of all the wants of a farm family, to sum up and classify these wants during a whole year, is to STANDARD OF LIVING 37 enter upon the consideration of family living. These wants and these goods are the stuff which every-day family life is made up of. They form severally in every farm home the bulk of the topics for conversation. Nothing is more interesting, nothing more commonplace. And yet in spite of this fact, how seldom a family at- tempts to become master of all the details of its annual living! How few families know how to compare one set of wants with another! How few families provide for a distribution of goods to meet their wants in pro- portion to the priorities required by a normal, healthy family life! The commonplace and familiar affords a field for mysteries, just because the family is so im- mersed in life piece by piece, day by day, that it can never manage to find time to look at its experience as a whole. Tue IDEA OF STANDARD OF LIVING Many items, we have seen, enter into the idea of living. The several major items, such as food, clothing, and hous- ing, for example, break up into a perfect multitude of items. Foods are many, far more in their differing varieties than the ordinary person suspects. Meat, milk, wheat, butter, fruit, ete.—each breaks into many vari- eties. And each variety presents many grades and con- ditions, according to age, handling, cooking, and the like. Clothing is a manifold factor. Housing with its fur- nishings and equipment is also multi-varied. In the presence of this multiplicity of varieties and grades and conditions of all the elements of entering into ‘‘living goods,’’ one must constantly ask the question, 38 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS ‘‘Which kind do you mean?’’ or ‘‘Which proportion do you mean?’’ The answer to and decision of these questions al! depend upon what is aimed at in a living over and above bare keeping alive; or, as is more often the case, upon what can be afforded. Food has more uses, apparently, than simple sustenance. Food is taken by a group of the family at a meal, and this meal is a social occasion. To linger over a meal, around the table, is more or less a custom. The pleasing form of food, the variety of possible pleasing forms, enter into the question of how far a family can afford to go in the matter of adjusting food to social uses. Clothes, likewise, are social as well as sheltering and protective. No single utility of living has been seized upon by the human race and made to express social and esthetic ideas more generally than clothes. In any considera- tion of the function of clothes from the point of view of how far to go in variety, textile materials, color, form, style, there must be considered this matter of social utilization as well as bodily protection. It is a very complicated process deliberately and rationally to adjust family living both to basic bodily wants and to social uses. Housing and house furnishings carry a mark of quality. Vehicles stamp the owners with class distinction. People have come to put their class and quality into these necessities of life, and so show to the world where they stand. Life is so short; conversation is so tedious; a quick method is needed of indicating where one belongs. Living utilities are discovered to be quickly discernible means of advertising these things. STANDARD OF LIVING 39 But social quality and basic necessity are only two as- pects of living facilities which call for decision according to some measure or standard of what is wanted. The nu- trition scientist has his point of view on foods; the clothing expert, on clothes; the home economist, on housing; the educator, on schooling. It is not bare keeping alive, not an insignia of taste, quality, and class, but a function, that these scientists plead for, adjusted to an ampler, fuller, more adequate keeping alive, which at the same time takes into account what can be af- forded, what is feasible, practicable. Out of the multiplicity of possible choices of family living and family living facilities, to choose rationally means setting up standards of choice; to choose irration- ally is to take what comes; to choose and follow custom, which is the usual way, is to shift responsibility to a natural long-time sifting-out process. But the very important thing to be seen at this point is that these standards of choice, whether rational or irrational, are usually very intangible, very indefinite, hard to state, and impossible of exact or statistical expression. Here is where the statistician enters the discussion arm in arm with the home economist, the farm economist, and the sociologist. The home economist says, ‘‘If I am to assist the farm family in a more orderly, economical, adequate expen- diture of the family income on living materials and facilities, I must be able to compare quickly and intel- ligibly the living of family with family wherever they may reside.”’ The farm economist says, ‘‘If I am expected to answer 40 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS the question of what kind of a living the farm family can afford, I must have some way of speaking of the living so that it shall be exactly the same as that con- sidered by the home economist.’’ The rural sociologist says, ‘‘If the living of farmers is to be related to a program of rural progress, present family living must be susceptible of definite description so that we may understand where the deficiencies lie, and prepare to better the conditions.’’ The statistician says: ‘‘My friends, you are in need of me, I plainly see. Everybody has been speaking vaguely of this matter of farm family living. No builder could build a house using his materials so vaguely. Every part of a house is measurable, de- seribable. It can therefore be specified, and the cost forecast. I will help you measure the living of farm families. JI will help you erect measures and standards. You will then be able to build up an annual budget of living for a family of any particular income. You will be able to say that such and such an income will not afford a basic living. But such and such another income will. This income will support a man and wife. This income, a family of three. This income, a family of seven.”’ Let us follow the steps of the learned quartet a Little further as they try to elucidate their problem and search for a statistical standard of the living of the farm family. The statistician points out: ‘‘There is one measure of living materials, goods, or facilities that is ready at STANDARD OF LIVING 41 hand, viz., the dollar measure, or measure of cost of these goods to the family. What a family uses, whether furnished by the farm or purchased, may be reckoned in quantities and then the costs determined.’’ So it would be possible for any farm family to find out the cost of its annual living. ‘‘In like manner, it could be found out,’’ the statistician continues, ‘‘what the living of the farm family of any region or State of the United States costs, supposing that a farm family of any size or make-up is considered a unit, and that the eosts of all families in the group desired were ascer- tained for a year.”’ If a study of the costs of living of the farm families of a region were made, then it would be found that there were certain well defined gradations of costs, correlated | broadly with the presence or absence of certain facil- ities in living. These particular costs would come to stand out undoubtedly as standards. And so there might come into vogue the thousand-dollar family, fif- teen-hundred-dollar family, two-thousand-dollar family, three-thousand-dollar family. The cost of living in dollars would tend to become a standard of living; and it would almost occur that the thousand-dollar living would come to be thought of as a low standard and the three-thousand-dollar living as a high standard. The assumption then would be that, as farm families run, the greater the cost, the better the living. It will be quickly pointed out by the home economist that food may be costly in a budget but not necessarily 42 RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS nourishing ; clothes may be high-priced, but not warmer, not more durable than some that are low-priced; houses may be inexpensive, but just as comfortable and protec- tive as expensive ones. And these statements would have truth. But in the absence of any other method of measuring living goods, the cost of living will be gladly put into service, temporarily at least, as a standard. It is not beyond expectation that the home economist, the economist, the rural sociologist, and the statistician will eventually discover other standards than the cost, for the farm family’s living. It would be scarcely short of a miracle, however, to discover any other single stand. ard; though it is possible that a better standard than the dollar may be found for food, for clothes, for hous- ing, and for each of the other factors. Perhaps the dollar could be employed to bring into a common measure each of these revised better measures. Certainly such a cost figure, if possible, would be far superior to the present cost standard and would be free from the charge that the dollar had no necessary relation to utility or basic value. PRESENT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE FARM F'AmMIty’s LIVING Do we know anything about the American farm fam- ily’s living even in a vague, general way? Yes, some- thing. Everybody knows, of course, that the farm itself furnishes, even in these days of production for the domes- tic and world market, a not inconsiderable amount of the family living. This fact presents an interesting dif- ference between farm families and city families. That STANDARD OF LIVING 43 the farm and the garden and the orchard can furnish house-rent, fuel, meat, milk, eggs, poultry, potatoes, apples, other fruits, small fruits, without interfering with or diminishing the marketing of the regular annual crop, is a salient advantage that must never be over- looked in a discussion of the farmer’s standard of living. This is the fact that makes agriculture so independent and self-sufficing. This fact has in all history set even the peasants apart in hard times as a fortunate class. Moreover, the kinds of food furnished, close to the source as they are, and excelling in freshness, are basic. They are such as all families crave to give body and balance to the family ration. The fact that farmers in some regions neglect the possibilities of furnishing their own tables with milk, eggs, vegetables, fruits, is one of the many incomprehensible things in human nature. A study of the family living of 483 familes in ten widely scattered States, so far as it was furnished by the farm, was made in the summer of 1913 by the United States Department of Agriculture. It was found that the farm furnished per family $261.35 worth of food; $34.72 worth of fuel; $125.10 worth of house-rent; a total of $421.17, which was $91.97 per capita. In terms of the present-day buying power of the dollar, this would be equivalent to about $634 per family and $140 per person. A study made in 1921 by the Department of Agri- culture of the living furnished and purchased by the farm in 402 farm families of New York State indicates the following: RURAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS 44 0 er e206 "e ORY 6 Er 6 gee ea bh we eo eee L at FI ace ae vee titeeeseeees payissepug c% 2% % bee betes ete ee ee eeeeeeeeees peuosseg LZE sig SIg 0s Mee Ue ees es Hasan £4 < «AN STOIUBADY col 9L 9L “as eee See See see TI BOq. JO-S7aedel ale 8él SIT ¥8 Pe ccccctctcccctt ts sasuedxe Surzes0edg ‘ree * pazimepy ,sesuedxe 1ay}0 [TY,, 860 ERE eCz] Ogb c Ves SS Se 1840], 66S 67S c1g PR eset Oreste Seas UD ke ate ules IE IFI OFT 06 gg otiitittrtttcrerssererseeessss pong 922 19% rene leg cocci ttre ssseeessesess quay £63 El1Z 69S $ cee eer eer eres ees eeeeresseee Suty}O0[O 6E8 811 6L1E 668 cee eer eee eresceereeeee er eee seers poor 8401]0G| $40710d suvyogq |\s4pjj0q | 84v210q $401)0Q 1010J, | paspyoung | paysiuimy | 7pj07, | pasnyoung | payswingy wazy (01) SAIUNWVA INVNGL (G6z) SAITINVA HHNMO STANDARD OF LIVING 45 It would, in all likelihood, be a fair statement of the ease that with the knowledge which home economics is bringing to the women of America, and especially to the rural women, the farm home at the end of the next decade will be able to make a showing from twenty per cent to thirty-five per cent better than now, in the mat- ter of what the farm furnishes to the average farm family’s living. Many similar studies will be necessary before we shall know about the farm family’s living. We need to know the living on the upper level, the lower level, and the mid-level. We need to know the owner’s living on these levels, and the tenant’s living, as well as the living of the family of the farm wage laborer. FARMERS’ STANDARD OF LIVING AND Its INFLUENCE It is a usual assumption that a good living tends to high production, whether in a family, class, region, or na- tion.