George Walter Fiske

“ Surely the church owes the community a prophetic service also, bringing God’s great messages to human lives, throbbing with divine sympathy for all human needs, courageously challenging the man to whom the vision comes, to live the better life, and offering practical and immediate help, the help of Christ, to live that life. The spiritual service of a vital church will include a vivid portrayal of the Christ, his person, his teachings, his radiant character, his saving power, the dynamic for life which flows from him into every life which accepts his comradeship. ”

“ Not only has the lure of the city drawn thousands of young people who were better off in their country homes, the real claims of the country village upon those young people have but timidly been uttered. Not only has the call of the city been magnified by artificial echoes, the call of the open country has scarcely been sounded at all. The opportunity of the city as a life arena has been advertised beyond all reason. It is time to talk of the life chance for stalwart young Americans to stay right in the country and realize their high privileges. ”

“ We can almost say the growth of the city made the country problem. It would be nearer the truth to say, it made the problem serious. The problem of rural progress would still exist, even if there were no cities; but had the city not been drafting its best blood from the villages for more than half a century, we should probably not be anxious about the rural problem to-day, for it is this loss of leadership which has made rural progress so slow and difficult.
It is well to remember that the growth of cities is not merely an American fact. It is universal in all the civilized world. ”

“ How can life on the farm be kept on the highest level, and where it is not already on that level, be so improved, dignified and brightened as to awaken and keep alive the pride and loyalty of the farmer’s boys and girls, of the farmer’s wife and of the farmer himself? ”

“ Even in the lower grades the stories of city life begin early to allure the country children, and with a subtle suggestion the echoes of the distant city’s surging life come with all the power of the Arabian Nights tales. Early visits to the enchanted land of busy streets and wonderful stores and factories, the circus and the theater, deepen the impression, and the fascination grows. ”

“ With the young minds filled with the tales of the wonderful city, which rival the Arabian Nights in allurement, the wonder is, not that so many are dazzled and follow the flame, but that so many remain on the farm. Insofar as the schools do stimulate the two great disintegrating tendencies of rural life, the townward trend of the boys and girls and the increase of absentee landlords, the country folks have a right to complain. Let the schools train for the soil rather than away from the soil. Let them exalt rural ideals and develop rural interests. ”

“ Even heaven has lost its attractiveness to our generation. Luxury has become a national habit if not a national vice.
Our food is not coarse enough to maintain good digestion. Our desk-ridden thousands are losing the vigor that comes only from out-of-door life. Exercise for most men has become a lost art; they smoke instead! What with electric cars for the poor man and motor cars for the near rich, walking is losing out fast with the city multitudes. Our base ball we take by proxy, sitting on the bleachers; our recreation is done for us by professional entertainers in theater, club and opera. ”

“ The increased intelligence among farming people, the many new agencies for popular education, the new social consciousness and growing spirit of cooperation, the new efficiency of rural institutions, a better school, a community-serving church, a character-building home, as well as a scientifically conducted farm, every one of these makes for better rural morals and better religion, and should delight the heart of every earnest man who “desires a better country, that is a heavenly.” ”

“ The hospitable country mansions of the South still remind us of the fame of Westover, Mount Vernon and Monticello as centers of social grace and leadership; and the most select social groups in Richmond welcome the country gentlemen and women of refinement from these country homes, not merely because of the honored family names they bear, but because they themselves are worthy scions of a continuously worthy rural civilization. They have never pitied themselves for living in the country. They do not want to live in the city. ”

“ There is too much belief among all our people that the prizes of life lie away from the farms. I am therefore anxious to bring before the people of the United States the question of securing better business and better living on the farm, whether by cooperation among the farmers for buying, selling and borrowing; by promoting social advantages and opportunities in the country, or by any other legitimate means that will help to make country life more gainful, more attractive, and fuller of opportunities, pleasures and rewards for the men, women and children of the farms. ”

“ Many of them with experience only with old-fashioned methods, are sure that farming does not pay, that there is no money in the business compared with city employments, that the farmer cannot control prices, is forced to buy high and sell low, is handicapped by big mortgages, high taxes, and pressing creditors. It is both encouraging and suggestive that many country boys, with a real love for rural life, but feeling that farming requires a great deal of capital, are planning “to farm someday, after making enough money in some other business.”
The phantom of farm drudgery haunts many boys. ”

“ It is a city luxury which may be justified perhaps where there is a wealth of people; but it is as out of place among the farms as sheet asphalt pavements or pink satin dancing pumps. Sectarianism is not religion. It is merely selfishness in religion. A sincere country Christian will be willing to sacrifice his sectarian preference, as a city luxury which the country cannot afford.
The great Puritan movement against conformity to an established church settled forever the great principle that any company of earnest Christians have a right to form a church when conditions justify it. ”

“ Nowhere else in the world have farm homes been so scattered. Instead of living in hamlets, like the rest of the rural world, with outlying farms in the open country, American pioneers with characteristic independence have lived on their farms regardless of distance to neighbors. But social hungers, especially of the young people, could not safely be so disregarded, and in various ways the social instincts have had their revenge. Isolation has proved to be the curse of the country, as its opposite, congestion, has in the city. ”

“ He is quite right in saying, “We must save the city in order to save the nation. We must Christianize the city or see our civilization paganized.” But even if “in a generation the city will dominate the nation,” where are the men who will then dominate the city? Most of them are now in the country towns and villages getting ready for their task, developing physical, mental and moral power in the pure atmosphere and sunlight of a normal life. To work on the city problem is a great life chance; but to train rural leadership is to help solve the city problem at its source. ”

“ The incoming of urban standards has helped to displace the old-fashioned rural recreations which were natural to country life, and the taste for vaudeville, the public dance, amusement parks and picture shows has developed instead. The husking-bees and the apple-cuttings and the sugaring-offs, the quilting bees and the singing schools and spelling matches, wholesome, home-made neighborhood pastimes, which meant enjoyment from within instead of mere amusement from without, have silently disappeared. ”

“ The selfish zeal for one’s sect is cheap. There is little of this now in the cities; but the country is scourged by petty sectarian teaching both in the pulpit and in the Sunday school; and the country is very tired of it. Ordinary mortals are simply bored by it and will no longer come to hear it.
People are still hungry for the real gospel. The great affirmations of religion: The priceless value of human life, the reality of God our loving Father, the immortality of the soul, the law of the harvest, the gospel of a Saviour, et cetera, still challenge the attention and win the hearts of men. ”

“ Such a man is very common among the hills, and wherever the soil is poor; but he is beginning to feel lonesome in really prosperous rural communities, for the new agriculture is fast winning its way. That is, the application of science to agriculture has proved its efficiency by actual tangible results. A farmer may be so superstitious as to begin nothing on a Friday, nor butcher during a waning moon for fear his meat will shrink, nor use an iron plow for fear it may poison the soil! But when his neighbor by modern methods adds 50% to his crop, he knows there must be something in it. ”

“ Country people in prosperous rural sections of Kansas, for instance, where no poor-house or jail can be found for many miles, insist that degeneracy is a city symptom! It is obvious that discrimination is necessary. The great majority of folks in both city and country are living a decent life; degeneracy is everywhere the exception. It would be fully as reasonable to condemn the city as a whole for the breeding places of vice, insanity and crime which we call the slums, as it is to characterize rural life in general as degenerate. ”

“ The call to the rural secretaryship is as genuine a call to a life of ministering love as is the call to the ministry. As a matter of fact, a few of the most successful rural secretaries are ordained ministers and find their theological training and pastoral experience of great value in their work. These secretaries are not using their present position as a stepping-stone to the city field. Few of them would accept any city opportunity, as experience has proved. They have devoted their lives to the work of rural redemption, especially saving the country boy. ”

“ If he is a man of vision and of power, the country school principal has greater local influence and social standing than he would have in the city. He has the finest chance to make his personality count in the great Country Life Movement, sharing his visions of a richer, redirected rural life not only with his pupils but every citizen and gradually leavening the whole community with a new ambition for progress. The responsibility for training the local leaders of the future devolves upon the teacher. ”

“ It has been estimated that the use of agricultural machinery saved in human labor in this country alone, in the year 1899, the vast sum of about seven hundred million dollars, with doubtless a great increase the past decade. No wonder American farmers are spending a hundred million dollars a year for their implements, and for this very reason have outstripped the farmers of the world, not only in the vast amount of production, but also in the increased comforts and satisfactions of farm life. ”

“ Among the country privileges not often mentioned is the chance one has to live with real folks. There is a genuineness about country people that is not often found in crowded towns where conventionalities of life veneer even the ways of friends, and where custom dictates and fashion rules and the very breadth of social opportunity makes superficial people, flitting from friend to friend, not pausing to find the depths in the eye or the gold in the character. ”

“ It is entirely natural in institutions like the University of Illinois, Ohio State University and Cornell, where there are strong agricultural colleges, that there should be the keenest interest in the welfare and needs of country life; but is it not time that other institutions faced more frankly the responsibility of training more of their students for country life leadership? Certainly, with the splendid signs of promise in country life to-day and the opportunities for a life mission there, no thoughtful man can refuse to consider it. ”

“ Self-sacrificing womanhood is the salvation of every civilization, urban or rural. It needs only to demonstrate the need; then consecrated womanhood will heed the call. The coming decade should see them by the hundred investing their lives in rural social service and community betterment, that the kingdom of heaven may sooner come.
Nothing could better voice, to the young men and women of America, the heroic appeal of country life leadership and service than Professor Carver’s manly challenge printed on the next page. ”

“ Here again, the problem is mainly one of personality. Given adequate leadership, the church can accomplish wonders as a genuine community builder. But a gun must be a hundred times heavier than the projectile it fires; else it will burst the gun. Small, petty personalities cannot hope for large results in real community leadership. The church needs masterful men, men of power and vision, ministers thoroughly trained for the work of their profession and men whose hearts are kept tender and humble by the spirit of the indwelling God. ”

“ The country ministry must be recognized as a specialized ministry, fully as honorable as the city ministry, demanding just as fine and strong a man,—possibly even more of a man, for many a minister has succeeded in the city after failing in the country. The country minister must somehow get a vision of his great task as a community builder, like Johann Friedrich Oberlin, that greatest of country pastors. He must find an all-absorbing life-mission claiming all his powers and demanding his consecration as thoroughly and enthusiastically as the call to the foreign mission field. ”