George E. Waring

“ Just as the citizen feels the attractions of the country, which are so novel to his town-bred taste, so the countryman finds a charm in the novelty of the town. As one is led toward the quiet and solitude of the fields and woods, so the other is drawn by the life and interest of the community.
As a rule, at least in America, where the facilities for pleasant country living are far less than in England, the countryman who goes to town is less likely to wish himself back on the farm than is the town-bred farmer to long for the comforts and conveniences of his former condition. ”

“ One might go on through the long range of incidental arguments—such as lighted streets, well-kept sidewalks, winter snow-ploughs, and good drainage, and a wholesome pride in a tidy, cosey village, until even the most close-fisted of all our class would confess that the extra cost would bring full value in return, and until he would recognize the fact that the attractions of such a home as the village would make possible would be likely to insure his being succeeded in his wholesome trade by the brightest and best of his sons,—a result that would surely be worth more than all it would cost. ”

“ Farming is in a certain sense the basis of all individual and national prosperity; but the case would be more fairly stated were we to say that farming happens to be the first step in an industrial process, many steps of which are alike essential to civilization. The farmer produces raw material, and without raw material the world must come to a stop; but the butcher, the baker, the spinner, the weaver, and every artisan, render as essential service in the development of this raw material into the forms demanded by modern life, as does the farmer in growing it. ”

“ Where we are to look for relief, is the most serious problem. Relief must be found, or the character of our farming class must assuredly degenerate. In one way or another we must change, in a radical degree, the conditions of the farmer's life. We can perfectly understand why it should be distasteful to any young person of ordinary ambition or intelligence; and we know, from the constant flocking of farmers' sons and daughters to even the least attractive employments of the town or village, that this distaste is everywhere a controlling one. ”

“ The farmer and the farmer's family may or may not be cultivated persons. Cultivation does not come by nature; and the incessant and increasing duties of farm life leave one, however well disposed, but little time and but scant strength for æsthetic study. The farmhouse is the centre of the home life and of the homely thought and feeling of its inmates. The farm on which one has been born and bred is the centre and standpoint from which he regards the world without. ”

“ But if we take the case of the average farmer with average human weaknesses, we cannot fail to see, that, however well he may have borne up against the more obvious requirements of his work, he has been warped and cramped, and often made in many ways unlovely, by the hard and anxious toil through which his halting success has been attained.
In nearly every other occupation than farming, the hardest worker finds a daily relief from his toil, and from the suggestion of toil, in a home that is entirely apart from his industry. ”

“ Better the broad back and stout limb of the peasant mother than the hollow chest and wasted energy of the American farmer's wife.
I by no means intend to say that our own farming class is not far superior to the peasantry of Europe; but I do believe that if a good system of village life for farmers could be adopted here under the modifying influences of the more refined and intelligent American character, we should have gained a most important step in advance. ”

“ If the first need of the rising generation—the men and women of the future—is education, then the village beats the farm by long odds. The country school-district, sparsely settled and chary of its taxes, is apt to obey the law in the scantiest way possible. Three months school in winter and three months more in summer, under the supervision—it can hardly be called the instruction—of a young miss who is by no means well educated herself, and who is entirely often without training as a teacher, gathers together all of the school-going children of a wide neighborhood. ”

“ Women and even young girls perform rude labor in the field and in the stable; and those aspirations which are born of a universal diffusion of periodical literature are almost unknown. At the same time, when the hard and long day's work is over, there comes to all the inexpressible relief and delight of the active social intercourse of the village, where the tillers of the country for a mile around have gathered together their homes and their herds, and where the most intimate social life prevails. ”

“ No public water supply available for an ordinary village would suffice to overcome the effects of a dry season over the whole of even a small homestead; but we may hope to secure enough to keep one or two small sprinklers flowing steadily through the hot months, and so keep a little grass measurably green, and preserve a semblance of life and beauty in flower-beds and delicate shrubbery. It is very rarely that it will be possible to supply water enough in a whole week to equal in its effect a half-hour's rain ”

“ The town and the country have their mutual economic duties by which their life must be controlled. All that we can hope to do is, on one hand, to ameliorate the hardness and solitude of country living, and, on the other, to bring the citizen into nearer relation with the invigorating fields and woods and boundless air of the country.
Devising no modern Sybaris, where all possible good of life may follow from the unaided operation of a perfect social and industrial organization, I propose to confine myself to the simple question of the best practical development of village life for farmers. ”

“ It may seem a strange doctrine to be advanced by a somewhat enthusiastic farmer, but it is a doctrine that has been slowly accepted after many years' observation, a conviction that has taken possession of an unwilling mind, that the young man who takes his young wife to an isolated farmhouse dooms her and himself and their children to an unwholesome, unsatisfactory, and vacant existence,—an existence marked by the absence of those more satisfying and more cultivating influences which the best development of character and intelligence demand. ”

“ Within a few years, beginning, I believe, in Massachusetts, the more thoughtful of those whose affections are centred in their village homes have united in organized efforts to make their villages more tidy, to interest all classes of society in attention to those little details the neglect of which is fatal, and to make the village, what it certainly should be, an expression of the interest of its people in their homes and in the surroundings of their daily life. ”

“ The American farmer is distinguished from the English farmer chiefly by having his capital invested in the land which he cultivates, rather than in the tools and live stock and working capital needed to carry on his business. As a general rule the farmer's whole fortune is invested in his land. Often his farm is mortgaged, and he has little loose money with which to improve his system of work. The necessity for making a living and paying interest, without sufficient capital for the best management, makes the life of the farmer too often a grinding one. ”

“ In the abstract, farming is a dignified occupation, and in proportion as it borrows aid from science it becomes more dignified. So far as the casual observer can see, it combines more of what is desirable than does any other pursuit. While it promises no brilliant reward, it insures a steady, reliable, and sufficient return for the capital and labor invested in it. It promises a sure provision for old age, and it secures the wholesome pride that comes of the ownership of visible property. ”

“ After removing one unimportant house, there remains no obstacle to the laying-out of one straight street two hundred feet wide, with either two or four rows of spreading elms. This street, two thousand feet long, mainly in well-kept grass, with only the necessary width of road and the requisite paths,—having perhaps a well-kept and home-like private place opposite each of its ends,—would stamp the village at once with an attraction which would have a constant civilizing effect on those living under its influence. ”

“ If money enough can be provided to do the work thoroughly well from its very foundation, then of course nothing more is needed than that its direction be placed in accomplished hands; but unless this is fully assured, if—as is nearly always the case,—economy is the first thing to be considered, then the rule of action is fully stated in two words, simplicity and thoroughness. ”

“ It would probably take a generation to convince the farmers of a community of its advantages; it would cost too much, even if not entirely impracticable, to move the house and stables to the central point; and it would involve such a change of habits of labor and of living as must necessarily be the work of time. However, if the principle commends itself to the leading men of the neighborhood, and especially to young men about to marry, the nucleus of a village may be established, and sooner or later the present or the coming generation will find a way to come into the fold. ”

“ Could they know the cost of the mere work of grading and subsoil cultivation, under-draining, manuring, laying the deep foundation for foot-paths, and securing that perfect growth of grass without which all park-like ornament is robbed of half its value, they would set their faces resolutely against all propositions on the part of public-spirited citizens to veneer their unprepared grounds with misplaced exterior adornment. ”

“ The wrought-iron grille, the architectural fountain, the bronze statue, the delicate trees and shrubbery, and the smoothly-finished walks and drives, depend for their success upon a vast amount of costly fundamental work, and a provision for constant skilful care, which have cost a deal of money, and which look to a large permanent outlay. The elaborate fence must stand on no unstable foundation; the fountain must be only the ornamental central point of artistic and well-kept lawns and approaches; the statue must stand amid appropriate surroundings ”

“ The life, too, would be more attractive for both boys and girls, and would be divested of that naked and dismal gloom and dryness which now drive so much of the best farmer blood of the whole country to work-benches and counters,—to any position, in fact, which promises relief from the stifling isolation of the country. ”

“ In a word, the only way that seems to offer to keep the boys on the farm is to move everybody off of the farm, bringing them together into snug little communities, where they may secure, without abandoning the manifest advantages of their occupation, the greater social interest and stimulus which they now hope to enjoy by going into other callings whose natural advantages are less. That such a course as this would restore the farmer to his former position as a leading element in Eastern civilization, cannot be questioned. ”

“ It is quite natural that an enriched manufacturer or merchant, proud of his native village, should be ambitious to perpetuate the memory of his benefaction by providing for some corresponding decoration of its public green, and that he should attempt to reproduce there, on the smaller scale proportionate to the circumstances, the sort of magnificence that he has seen in the city park. ”

“ In England, where the ownership of land carries with it a certain social dignity, and where the mere possession of money has a less marked influence in this direction, there is no doubt that the title-deeds to broad acres constitute a certain sort of patent of nobility. In this country, where land is plenty and cheap and where large fortunes are rare, a farmer gets consideration less for the amount of land that he himself owns, than for the sum-total of the mortgages which he holds upon his neighbors' land. ”

“ If we assume, which is not altogether true, that the main purpose of village improvement is to improve the appearance of the village, we must still understand that the direct object of the society should not be alone nor chiefly in the direction of appearance.
What it is especially desirable that a village should appear to be is: a wholesome, cleanly, tidy, simple, modest collection of country homes, with all of its parts and appliances adapted to the pleasantest and most satisfactory living of its people. ”

“ Sentimentally considered, it matters little whether the object of these emotions be on the farm, in the wilderness, in the village, or in the city. Fortunately, man is by no means a creature of emotion alone; and the satisfaction and good of living are less a matter of feeling than of activity, industry, and intelligence. The place in which one lives is more or less satisfactory in proportion as it facilitates and encourages the better and more useful living. ”