Rural community

“ The new organisation of the rural community for social as well as economic purposes, which should follow from the acceptance of the opinion I have advanced, would bring with it the first effective counter-attraction to the towns. Their material advantages the country cannot hope to rival; nor can any conceivable evolution of rural life furnish a real counterpart to the cheap and garish [Pg 125] entertainments of the modern city. ”

“ It ought to be evident what a tremendous advantage it is to farmers in a district to have such organizations, what a lever they can pull and control. I have tried to indicate the difference between a rural population and a rural community, between a people loosely knit together by the vague ties of a common latitude and longitude, and people who are closely knit together in an association and who form a true social organism, a true rural community, where the general will can find expression and society is malleable to the general will. ”

“ The rural community is industrially homogeneous. There exists here no such a diversified mixture of industries as in the city. All are engaged in the same line of work. Agriculture is the sole occupation. ”

“ The farmers are being welded into a more compact society. They are being nurtured to greater alertness of mind, to [Pg 22] greater keenness of observation, and the foundations are being laid for vastly enlarged social activities. The problem now is to extend these advantages to every rural community—in itself a task of huge proportions. ”

“ We have been considering the economic relations of the farm and the village as affecting community life, for they are at present the chief factor in creating community interest, as well as the leading cause of group friction. The rural community of to-day is primarily an economic unit, but in the future it seems probable that business will occupy a relatively less important place than the social activities of the community center. ”

“ The new rural civilization is bringing a new prosperity into the great business of farming. It is bringing new and permanent satisfactions and comforts into country homes. It has greatly diminished the vexed problem of rural isolation, with its many new ways of communication. It has to a remarkable degree eliminated drudgery, through the use of wonderful machinery. It has popularized education and developed a new social consciousness and new efficiency in rural institutions, amounting often to a total redirection of the community life. ”

“ In recent years we have heard a great deal about the rural community and rural community organization. All sorts of organizations dealing with rural life discuss these topics at their meetings, the agricultural press and the popular magazines encourage community development, and a number of books have recently appeared dealing with various phases of rural community life. The community idea is fairly well established as an essential of rural social organization. ”

“ The laborers employed on the farm are received into the farmer's family under conditions of social equality. The man who is this year a laborer may in a decade be a farmer. The dignifying of personality with land ownership has been such a general social experience in the country that every individual is thought of in the farmer period as a potential landowner.
The institutions of the rural community of the land-farmer type are the country store, the rural school, and the church. ”

“ The time has now come when it is believed that rural population and agricultural tendencies are sufficiently well known to enable those interested in rural life development to determine what are the most suitable centers for community development. ”

“ Inasmuch as the home is its primary social institution, the rural community must give its first consideration to its relations to the home and how the home life may be strengthened, if the rural family is to withstand the influence of the disintegrating home life of the city. For the farm home is in a process of readjustment to modern conditions and the recognition of ideals and objectives of home-life by the community will be a powerful factor in their maintenance. ”

“ The core of the community idea, then—as applied to rural life—is that we must make the community, as a unit, an entity, a thing, the point of departure of all our thinking about the rural problem, and, in its local application, the direct aim of all organized efforts for improvement or redirection. The building of real, local farm communities is perhaps the main task in erecting an adequate rural civilization. ”

“ Irrigation makes a rural condition: it provides the possibility for a community to develop; and it must, therefore, color the entire life of the community.
Irrigation [Pg 45] communities are compact. As all the people depend on a single utility, so must the community life tend to be solidified and tense. Probably no other rural communities will be so unified and so intent on local social problems. We shall look, therefore, for a very distinct and definite welfare to arise in these communities; and they will make a peculiar contribution to rural civilization. ”

“ The literature of country life and of rural sociology has very rightly recognized the existing situation, but many writers seem to accept the division between village and farm as inevitable, and even question whether there can be a rural community of the type herein described, rather than to recognize that this is but a necessary stage in the beginning of community life, due to the mode of settlement and temporary conditions. ”

“ Social Education of Rural Opinion.—The primary need for the care of the dependent of the rural community is for a better understanding of their needs by its more intelligent and public-spirited people. ”

“ So in matters of health, of social life and recreation, of pleasant and beautiful surroundings, the rural home must depend very largely upon itself. The strength and happiness of the community, of our nation itself, depend largely upon the extent to which the homes perform their proper work in providing for the wants of their members. ”

“ We need above all things to produce such a rural condition as will satisfy the farmer to live permanently in the country rather than to move to town when the farm has given him a competence.
I am not to be understood as saying that farmers ought never to live in town. There will always be shifting both ways between town and country. In some cases, small-area farming develops around a village; or a village grows up because the farms are small and are intensively handled. In irrigation regions, the whole community may be practically a hamlet or village. ”

“ There are in every community concrete evidences of these forces. There is the rural church. There is the rural school. In many localities are to be found, also, buildings, for social and fraternal purposes, as grange halls, structures for holding fairs and picnics. These are tangible evidences that there are rural agencies at work in the community whose chief purpose is to increase the educational advantages, the social opportunities and the moral aspirations of the people. ”

“ Rather we must estimate the Grange value of the future by its quiet, steady, unfaltering efforts, continued year after year, in thousands of local communities—many of them far removed from the busy activities of men—to bring the rural people together, to teach them the fundamentals of coöperation, of efficiency, of teamwork, of practical educational progress, and of the value of a forward-looking rural program, into whose accomplishments all the people of a locality may conscientiously enter.... ”

“ They show an appreciation of a function of these agencies that has been neglected. The first item in rural social progress is that the country preacher, the rural teacher, the country doctor, the country editor, the agricultural editor, the agricultural college professor, and especially the farmer himself, shall see the social need of the farm community. But to assert, for instance, that the church shall be the social center of that community may lead to a partial and even to a fanatical view of things. ”

“ We have already indicated the processes whereby the economic situation, religious life, public education, the need of local government, and the desire for recreational facilities, are inevitably drawing the people of the countryside together at the natural centers into communities. The locality group is again recognized as essential for the best organization of rural life. But the new rural community is a voluntary group, it is not determined by common control of the land or by common subjection to a feudal lord as was the village community of the old world ”

“ A system of numbering farms has recently been invented which is based upon the relations of farms to their community centers and which therefore makes necessary the definite location of rural community areas and their boundaries. ”

“ Rural Organization.—Until recently there has been little or no organization of rural life. Communities have been chaotic, socially, economically, and educationally. Real leaders have been wanting—men and women of strong and winning personality. The rural teacher, if he were a man of power and initiative, often proved to be a real savior and redeemer of social life in his community. ”

“ The experience of the cities, in which social control has gone much farther than in the country under the deliberate harmonizing of life with economic principles, has much to contribute for the building up of rural society through various means, among which is recreation. ”

“ Country life is poor in amusements and social intercourse as compared with city life. Still, through organized efforts, the rural social life can be made much richer and even very attractive. It was common testimony given to [Pg 254] the writer by the local community leaders that they have succeeded in keeping their boys and girls at home, on the farms, by building a community hall, organizing singing, games, and theatricals. ”

“ With an increasing sense of social needs and responsibilities on the part of rural people, new organizations will be formed and various community activities must be undertaken, but if country people will remain true to their traditions and, with clear view of changing conditions, will seek to organize their community life as an association of farm and village families, they will create the most satisfying and enduring [Pg 19] type of society. ”

“ Because over half of our rural population live in communities of less than 2,500, because the village is the “natural center of rural life,” because conditions in the country must be understood if the drift to the cities is to be adequately controlled, and because “the relation of the small community to the growth and ideals of the urban community makes an understanding of rural life and ideals imperative to the one responsible for leadership in urban life,” Mr Vogt has written this book. ”

“ It is recognized that rural organization for definite objectives should take the place of previous uncoordinated, haphazard opportunism in rural progress, and the present sporadic and unrelated movements toward organization are but the result of a very rapid development which has not yet found time to make the desired adjustment desired by all concerned. ”

“ Foster the social and economic organization of the rural population with particular emphasis on the development of small-scale farmers', fishers', and foresters' cooperatives, community organizations and development associations, so that rural inhabitants may be actively involved in decision-making, monitoring and evaluation of rural development programmes ”

“ When to these are added the conveniences and the opportunities for community enjoyment that are now a part of rural life, its appeal is not difficult to understand.
Anyone who intends to live in the country has his individual problems to meet and to solve. ”

“ The small farm unit, usually from five to twenty-five acres, brings neighbors close together, abolishing loneliness and most of the social ills of farm life in the East. Beautiful irrigated villages are springing up which rival in comfort and privilege most places on earth, and combine both city and country privileges, where rural and urban meet. The spirit of cooperation is strong in irrigated communities, enforced by the common dependence upon the common enterprise and water supply. ”

“ Even now, with all our improvements, the social factors in rural life are comparatively small. Here is one of our greatest problems: How to increase the fullness of social life in rural communities so as to make country life and living everywhere more attractive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For we cannot properly judge the significance and the relation of the different industrial activities of our farmers, and especially the value of the various social agencies for rural betterment, except by the standard of class status. It is here that we seem to find the only satisfactory philosophy of rural progress. ”