Rural people

“ This inherent social strength of the rural community, the fact that the community is relatively permanent, and the appreciation that only through community effort may rural people realize their natural desire to enjoy some of the advantages of cities, force the conviction that the community must be the primary unit for the organization of rural progress. ”

“ In spite of the apparent paradox, there are rural cities and urban villages; small provincial cities where the people are largely rural-minded, and suburban villages of a few hundred people whose interests are all in the life of the city. But in general, the scope of the term “country life” as used in this book will be understood to include the life of the open country, the rural village and most country towns of 8,000 people or less, whose outlook is the sky and the soil rather than the brick walls and limited horizon of the city streets. ”

“ There was a wholesome respect for church and school, and as villages grew the settlers did not neglect the organization and housing of such institutions; store, mill, and smithy found their place as farther east, and later the lawyer and physician came, but the pioneer could do without them for a time. Inventiveness and individual initiative were characteristics of the rural people, made necessary by their remoteness and isolation. ”

“ The rural element, consisting of people who live in villages or solitary farmhouses, will remain comparatively backward, because little affected by the social forces which work swiftly and potently upon close-packed industrial communities, and it may find itself very different in tone, temper, and tendencies from its urban fellow-citizens. ”

“ All students of social affairs agree that the movement of our people to towns and cities should be checked and the tide turned the other way. So important is the matter considered that a concerted national movement has recently been undertaken to study the conditions of rural life with a view to making it more attractive and so stopping the drain to the city.
Middle-aged farmers move to the town or city for two principal reasons: to educate their children and to escape from the monotony of rural [Pg 14] life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country, has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In view of this apparent change in the attitude of people toward the farm problem, it may not be idle to suggest some possible errors that should be avoided when we are thinking of rural society. The student will doubtless approach his problem fortified against misconceptions—he probably has thoughtfully established his view-point. But the average person in the city is likely to call up the image of his ancestral home of a generation ago, if he were born in the country, or, if not, to draw upon his observations made on a summer vacation or on casual business trips into the interior. ”

“ REASONS FOR THE CITYWARD DRIFT.—A number of factors explain the tendency of rural people to move to the cities. The perfection and wider use of farm machinery have decreased the need for farm laborers, and the excess laborers have gone to the towns and cities. The fact that urban industries offer shorter hours, better pay, and cleaner work than does farming has attracted many young country people. The isolation of farm life and its frequent lack of comforts have impelled many country dwellers to move to the cities. ”

“ We wish to enumerate, and discuss in brief, some of the important points of vantage to be watched and carefully guarded, if farm life, which means rural life, is to be pleasant and profitable. If rural life is to retain its attractions and its people, it must be both of these. ”

“ But it should be remembered that an increasing population gathers in rural towns thickly strewn throughout the depleted tract, and that the cheer of their growth and thrift is as much a part of the rural situation as the perplexity incident to a diminishing body of people. ”

“ The landlord, wise in his generation, provided newspapers liberally as well as beer, and had his reward. The people who gathered there of an evening included two or three farmers, a couple of professional gentlemen—not the vicar; a man of property, the postman, the carrier, the butcher, the baker and other tradesmen, the farm and other labourers, and last, but not least, the village sweep. A curious democratic assembly to be met with in a rural village in a purely agricultural district, extremely conservative in politics. ”

“ It keeps country people from a too great class character by charging the rural mind with the effects of modern civilization and of necessity brings rural and urban people into a more sympathetic relation. ”

“ We may think that these utterances stress too much the city life and fail to visualize the wide stretches of rural communities and the small towns where a few people only make the atmosphere and administer the laws. ”

“ The various orders of society are therefore diffused over the whole surface of the kingdom, and the more retired neighborhoods afford specimens of the different ranks.
The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. They possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen relish for the pleasures and employments of the country. This passion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. ”

“ The nominally rural population is becoming more and more urban in character, and composed not solely of rustics,—who live in and by the soil and are altogether more natural in their habits,—but largely of town-dwellers who only sleep in country dormitories. ”

“ This is so radically different from the life of the past, we may justly call it a new rural civilization. It is distinctly a rural civilization, not merely because of its characteristics, but because it is a triumph of rural leadership and the product of rural evolution, by fortunate selection and survival in the country of efficient [Pg 64] manhood and womanhood best adapted to cope with their environment. ”

“ Even among patients drawn from urban districts, there are few to whom the operations of rural life present no features of interest; while to those drawn from rural districts the horses, the oxen, the sheep, and the crops are unfailing sources of attraction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we go up and down France we shall find the rural population decidedly dense. [77] One little village usually follows another closely and every collection of huts swarms with human bipeds. There are, indeed, vast forests and marshes which might with better management be put under the plow, but the extent of arable land is great. Heaven surely loves the peasants, it has made so many of them. ”

“ Rural Occupations.—An important part of the study of the rural community is its social functions. These do not differ greatly in name from the functions of the family, but they have wider scope. The domestic functions are confined almost entirely to the homes. The village usually includes a boarding-house or a country inn for the homeless few, and here and there an almshouse shelters the few derelicts whom the public must support. ”

“ But the rural population were in a very different case; those who worked on the land were indeed poor, fared coarsely, dressed meanly and wore no shoes, but they were sober and industrious and lived in decent homes, and their wives and children were properly fed and clothed ”

“ Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This was the key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. ”

“ Characteristics of Population.—Rural life feels in each region the reactions of nature. The narrow life of the hills, the open life of the plains, the peaceful life of the comfortable plantation with its lazy river and its delightful climate, each has its peculiar characteristics that are due in part at least to nature. But these features are complicated by social elements of population. The American rural community of to-day is composed of individuals who differ in age and fortune and kinship, and who vary in qualities and resemblances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rural communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger circles of business and professional life, in journalism and literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl, incarnating for them the noblest ideals and stimulating them to achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect to wield. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And this we cannot but regard as an indication of application and attachment to rural improvements highly honourable to our nobility and gentry, as superseding many of those pursuits that used to prevail to a great extent with gentlemen residing in the country, which had but little tendency to the improvement of their grounds or estates. ”

“ The fields which border this quiet bit of road are among the oldest in our neighborhood, belonging to one of the first farms cleared near the village; they are in fine order, and to look at them, one might readily believe these lands had been under cultivation for ages. But such is already very much the character of the whole valley; a stranger moving along the highway looks in vain for any striking signs of a new country; as he passes from farm to farm in unbroken succession, the aspect of the whole region is smiling and fruitful. ”

“ On some parts of my journey, as we receded from the coast, the drill husbandry, the garden-like culture, and the open country entirely under tillage, resembled portions of England, especially in those districts where the rural population is confined to villages very distant from each other, and concealed from the road. The French peasants are very early risers ”

“ 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. ”

“ The field chosen covers rural life in the United States, and “particularly those conditions to be found in the great agricultural sections of the Central valley,” because in this area are to be found both the system of diversified agriculture and the intensive culture resulting from the increase of population. Six of the twenty-eight chapters are on the village, two on the rural church, two on rural health, two on farmers’ organizations, and one on the county fair. Questions, references, and topics for research have been added at the close of each chapter. ”

“ 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. ”