L. H. Bailey

“ The man who tills and manages the soil owes a real obligation to his fellow-men for the use that he makes of his land; and his fellow-men owe an equal obligation to him to see that his lot in society is such that he will not be obliged to rob the earth in order to maintain his life. The natural resources of the earth are the heritage and the property of every one and all of us. A man has no moral right to skin the earth, unless he is forced to do it in sheer self-defense and to enable him to live in some epoch of an unequally developed society ”

“ My plea, therefore, is that some one somewhere make one experiment with a county fair designed to bring all the people together on a wholly new idea. The present basis is wrong for this twentieth century. The old needs are passing; new needs are coming in. I should have the fair represent the real substantial progress of rural civilization, and I should also have it help to make that progress. It should be a power in its community, not a phenomenon that passes as a matter of course, like the phases of the moon. ”

“ Will the American farmer hold his own?
What future lies before the American farmer? Will he hold something like a position of independence and individualism, or will he become submerged in the social order, and form only an underlying stratum? What ultimate hope is there for a farmer as a member of society? ”

“ There are mountains to pierce, sea-shores to reclaim, vast stretches of submerged land to drain, millions of acres to irrigate and many more millions to utilize by dry-farming, rivers to canalize, the whole open country to organize and subdue by means of local engineering work, and a thousand other great pieces of construction to accomplish, all calling for the finest spirit of conquest and all contributing to the training of men and women. There is no necessity that the race become flabby. ”

“ Yet it is hard to believe that agriculture in any part of the Union would steadily decline in the face of an enormous appreciation of the cost to the consumer of all farm products, were there not some powerful disturbing factor operating to deny the farmer the benefits of that appreciation. If the Eastern farmer could have reaped a legitimate share of the increase in the price of farm produce which has taken place in the last twenty years, he would certainly be in position to command all the labor he needs and to develop resources now neglected because it does not pay to develop them. ”

“ All the people have not only a right to an interest in irrigation-reclamation, but they carry an obligation to be interested in it, since it reclaims and utilizes the fundamental heritage of all the people. I take it that society's interest in the work is of two kinds: to see that the land is properly utilized and protected; to see that persons desiring homes shall have an opportunity to secure them. Society is not interested in speculation in land or in mere exploitation. ”

“ I know of no better conservators than our best farmers. They feel their responsibility. Quite the ideal of conservation is illustrated by a farmer of my acquaintance who saves every product of his land and has developed a system of self-enriching live-stock husbandry, who has harnessed his small stream to light his premises and do much of his work, who turns his drainage waters into productive uses, and who is now troubled that he cannot make some use of the winds that are going to waste on his farm. ”

“ The farmer is much criticized for polluting streams; but when the farmer pollutes one stream occasionally, a city will pollute a whole system of streams continually. One of the greatest sins of society is the wholesale befoulment of streams, lakes, and water-courses. I do not see how we can expect to be called a civilized people until we have taken care of our refuse without using it to fill up ponds and lakes, and to corrupt the free water supplies of the earth. ”

“ The ultimate importance of agriculture to civilization, in other words, lies not in the number of persons it supports, but in the fact that it must continue to provide supplies for the populations of the earth when mining and exploitation are done, when there are no new lands, and when we shall have taken away all the first flush of the earth's bounty. The character of the farm man, therefore, becomes of supreme importance, and all the institutions of society must lend themselves to this personal problem. ”

“ Even after all minerals and metals and coal are depleted, the race may sustain itself in comfort and progress so long as the soil is productive, provided, of course, that water and air and sunshine are still left to us. The greatest of all resources that man can make or mar is the soil. Beyond all the mines of coal and all the precious ores, this is the heritage that must be most carefully saved; and this, in particular, is the country-life phase of the conservation movement. ”

“ I would not limit the entrance of women into any courses in a college of agriculture; on the contrary, I want all courses open to them freely and on equal terms with men; but the subjects that are arranged under the general head of home economics are her special field and sphere. On the other hand, I do not want to limit the attendance of men in courses of home economics; in fact, I think it will be found that an increasing number of men desire to take these subjects as the work develops, and this will be best for society in general. ”

“ Rural government is commonly ineffective. It needs awakening by men and women who have arrived at some degree of mastery over their conditions. We talk much of the need of improving municipal government, but very little about rural government; yet government in rural communities is inert and dead, as compared with what it might be, and there is probably as much machine politics in it, in proportion to the opportunities, as in city government. Very much of the lack of gumption in the open country is due to the want of a perfectly free and able administration of the public affairs. ”

“ We have been training our youth merely to be better farmers; this, of course, is the first thing to do, but the man is only half trained when this is done. What to do with the school, the church, the rural organizations, the combinations of trade, the highways, the architecture, the library, the beauty of the landscape, the country [Pg 57] store, the rousing of a fine community helpfulness to take the place of the old selfish individualism, and a hundred other activities, is enough to fire the imagination and to strengthen the arm of any young man or woman. ”

“ The best results to country life cannot possibly come by the government continuing to take everything to the farmer free of cost and without the asking. Disadvantaged or undeveloped regions must be aided freely, but as rapidly as any localities or industries get on their feet, they should meet the state part way, and should assume their natural share of the expense and responsibility. This form of coöperation is already well under way; and I suspect that in many localities that have been dead to all forms of coöperative effort, this idea will afford the starting-point for a new community life. ”

“ It is responsibility that develops them. The working-man owes responsibility to his employer and to society; and so long as the present organization of society continues he cannot be an effective member of society unless he has the interest of his employer constantly in mind.
The real country working-men must constitute a group quite by themselves. They cannot be organized on the basis on which some other folk are organized. There can be no rigid short-hour system on a farm. The farm laborer cannot drop his reins or leave his pitchfork in the air when the whistle blows. ”

“ We shall develop greater skill in farming than we have yet dreamed of. The raw and ragged open country that we see everywhere from trolley-lines and railway-trains is not at all a necessary condition; it is only a phase of a transition period between the original conquest of the country and the growing utilization of our resources. The more completely we conquer and utilize it, the more resourceful and hopeful our people should be. Country life will become more differentiated and complex. Speaking broadly, we are now in the rough and crude stage of our agricultural development ”

“ No man has a right to waste, both because the materials in the last analysis are not his own, and because some one else may need what he wastes. A high sense of saving ought to come out of the conservation movement. This will make directly for character-efficiency, since it will develop both responsibility and regard for others.
The irrigation and dry-farming developments have a significance far beyond their value in the raising of crops: they are making the people to be conservators of water, and to have a real care for posterity.
Civilization, thus far, is built on the process of waste. ”

“ Thinner than a skin of an apple is the covering of the earth that a man tills. The marvelously slight layer that the farmer knows as "the soil," supports all plants and all men, and makes it possible for the globe to sustain a highly developed life. ”

“ Even if he has been successful as a middleman or manufacturer or merchant, it does not at all follow that he would be successful as a farmer. Farming cannot be done at long range or by proxy any more than banking, or storekeeping, or railroading, and especially not by one who does not know how; and he cannot learn it out of books and bulletins. If a man can run a large factory without first learning the business, or a theater or a department store, then he might be able also to run a farm, although the running of a farm of equal investment would probably be the more difficult undertaking. ”

“ It is one thing for a family to move to the land in order to raise its own supplies and to secure the benefits of country life; it is quite another thing to suppose that an exodus from city to country will relieve the economic situation or make any difference in the general cost of living, even assuming that the town folk would make good farmers. And we must be very careful not to confuse suburbanism and gardening with country life.
To have any continuing effect on the course of rural development, a person or an agency must become a real part and parcel of the country life. ”

“ To put a school of agriculture in the hands of some good science-teacher in a general college faculty with the idea that he can cover the agricultural work and at the same time keep up his own department, is wholly ineffective (except temporarily) and out of character with the demands of the twentieth century (but in high-schools a good science teacher may handle the work, or an agriculture teacher may carry the science) . To suppose that "agriculture" is one subject for a college course, to be sufficiently represented by a "chair," is to miss the point of modern progress. ”

“ It is strange that the producer of the raw material has thus far in the history of the world taken a subordinate place to the trader in this material and to the fabricator of it. The trader and fabricator live in centers that we call cities. One type of mind assembles; the other type remains more or less scattered. So there have arisen in human society two divergent streams,—the collective and coöperative, and the isolated and individualistic.
The fundamental weakness in our civilization is the fact that the city and the country represent antagonistic forces. ”

“ It is as necessary to the woman as to the man that her mind be open to the facts, phenomena, and objects that are everywhere about her, as the winds and weather, the plants and birds, the fields and streams and woods. It is one of the best resources in life to be able to distinguish the songs and voices of the common fields, and it should be a part of the education of every person, and particularly of every country person, to have this respite. ”