Chapter XI: The World-War and Rural Life 169 (2)

4. Finally, do not the currents of modern thought and feeling appear to lead to a greater emphasis upon Christianity as a service rather than as a system of thought? Will not the rural church consider whether it must not put more emphasis upon itself as a function and less upon itself as an interpreter of doctrine? This is the big question. At present the Church wishes to increase its service, but it has only slight inclination to reduce the attention it gives to doctrine. The essential element in Christianity, service--largely as a result of the work of the churches--has now widespread acceptance, but many are not captivated by the doctrinal side of church activity. Such men must understand the meaning of faith to Paul by the meaning of religion to Jesus. They respond to the appeal of service; they do not take interest in matters of doctrine. To such the Church is a function, not an interpreter of dogma. What represents religious sanity in such a movement it is for time to reveal, but the current now flows toward service and away from a system of doctrine.

Service brings religious people together; doctrine separates them. It is therefore natural that with the present tendency toward making religion an activity, there should go a profound movement toward religious consolidation. The reaction from narrower and narrower division, smaller and smaller groups, within Protestantism is very determined. What a blessing this is proving for the rural people! The burden of sectarianism is hardest for them to endure. Someone has said that every argument for the consolidated school is equally strong for the consolidated church. If activity proves a working basis for the fellowship of Christian people, we may in time have the community church attempting to serve all the people in every possible way, and in association with other churches assuming the same function. At present this appears very distant and we are satisfied when we find churches federating, while still assuming the seriousness of doctrinal differences.

Our entire social life seems in a state of flux. It is commonplace thought that changes are taking place. We are too closely related to the movement to know just what is to be the outcome. A more stable condition must some time come. It now appears that rural life is entering upon the period of flux which heretofore has been more characteristic of the cities. It is folly to suppose that church life will not at all change during such a social experience as that upon which we have entered. The rural worker must in every way possible help the Church in the work it is now doing. He has no right, however, to be content with merely doing this. He also should seriously think over and over the problems of possible changes in church activity, that new social demands may not be ignored. Since he knows the work of many churches, he has a basis for wide-minded thought. This will prepare him to serve those churches that attempt new service. In other words, the best type of rural worker will not merely assist the Church that now is; he will also have sympathy and understanding for the Church that is coming to be. This second task is more difficult than the first. It will require critical thought, vision, patience, courage, and good judgment.

Perhaps a sufficient criticism of this program is contained in the question, "Why doesn't the author try to put his program in practice?" The force of this challenge has been felt, even by one who is imbedded in a different occupation and who has peculiar obligations that would seem to forbid entering a new field of service. This much is certain, were I a minister in any degree successful, I would be unlikely to feel the need of any radical change in the program of the rural church; were I a failure, I would have no courage to suggest the change. As an outsider I have come to think that some change of program is sure to come, but not quickly. Meanwhile it is wisdom for us all to remember that the mission of the Church is a larger matter than its methods.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] "Man or Superman," _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1917.

MENTAL HYGIENE IN RURAL DISTRICTS

V

MENTAL HYGIENE IN RURAL DISTRICTS

Nervous diseases, insanity, and feeble-mindedness are a grievous burden for modern society. Every form of social ill roots itself in these mind disorders. Since this great burden seems to be increasing as a result of the conditions of present-day living, it is not strange that those most familiar with the situation are seriously alarmed. This concern is expressing itself in movements that attempt to educate the public to the need of conserving the mind in every possible way. Interest is being aroused in mental hygiene and this fact promises great social relief. It is indeed fortunate that philanthropic effort has thus become welded with science and is eager to get at one of the most serious sources of poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, crime, and physical suffering. The student of any of these great social problems knows that the roots of the difficulty usually run down into human weaknesses such as the mental hygiene movement is attempting to correct and prevent.

The mental hygiene propaganda has been up to the present time largely confined to the urban centers, but it is very important that our rural districts receive the benefits that come from attention to the problems of mental health. Not that rural people have greater need of mental hygiene than have those who live in the cities. Many alienists, on the contrary, believe the city more in need of mind-conserving activities, and, although there is no satisfactory basis for comparison, it would seem as a result of the data gathered by the last census[3] that their conclusion is reasonable in light of the evidence we have at present regarding conditions in this country. The country needs emphasis because it can be more easily neglected than the city.

People in the country are less likely to realize the needs of mental hygiene. As a rule, rural conditions that should challenge the attention of the leaders of the communities are not spectacular and appear in isolation. In urban life, on the other hand, thoughtful social workers are bound to see many individual cases that belong to the defective group as a mass, and thereby to realize the seriousness of the problem. If the rural leaders could put together the cases of social maladjustment present in many different communities, there is no doubt that the great need of mental hygiene in the country would be easily recognized.

It is also true that mental hygiene propaganda is somewhat more difficult in the country, partly because of the temper of mind of rural leadership and partly because of the lack of means for the reaching of popular attention. People are not likely to be spontaneously interested in the mental hygiene movement. They require the instruction and inspiration that come through the personality of the alienist. Fortunately our daily and weekly papers realize the seriousness of the mental hygiene propaganda and they circulate both in the country and in the city. This fact is making many of the leading people in the country nearly as familiar with the problem of mental hygiene as are city leaders.

Even though we know less than we should like concerning the amount and the significance of mental deficiency in the country, we already have information that reveals the need of mental hygiene effort among rural folk. The report of the New Hampshire Children's Commission made in 1915 contains a significant conclusion in regard to the feeble-mindedness in the rural section of that state. "One of the most significant studies that can be made in the survey of these counties is the geographic distribution of the feeble-minded and the proportion of the entire state population that falls within this defective class. Since there has been a report from every town in the state, either by questionnaire or personal canvass, this proportion may be considered fairly correct, even though many cases have not been reported. One of the most significant revelations of this table is the range of feeble-mindedness gradually ascending from the smallest percentage, in the most populous county of the state, to the largest percentages, in the two most remote and thinly populated counties. It speaks volumes for the need of improving rural conditions, of bringing the people in the remote farm and hill districts into closer touch with the currents of healthy, active life in the great centers. It shows that a campaign should begin at once--this very month--for the improvement of rural living conditions, and especially for the improvement of the rural schools, so that the children now growing up may receive the education that is their birthright." We also have two recent government reports that disclose the need of mental hygiene among rural people.[4]

The first report, based upon a survey made in Newcastle County, Delaware, contains among the conclusions these that are of special interest to the student of rural life:

"Five-tenths of 1 per cent of 3,793 rural school children examined in New Castle County are definitely feeble-minded and in need of institutional treatment.

An additional 1.3 per cent of the total number were so retarded mentally as to be considered probable mental defectives and in need of institutional care.

A number of mentally defective children were encountered who exhibited symptoms similar to those which are observed in the adult insane.

It is believed, as a result of this survey, that epilepsy is a more prevalent disease than it has heretofore been thought to be."

The other report gives the following information:

"Of the 1,087 girls and 1,098 boys examined in the rural schools, 93 of the former and 100 of the latter were below the average mentally, or 8.7 per cent of the whole number.

Of the total school population, 0.9 per cent were mental defectives.

The undue number of one-room rural schools in the county which were of faulty construction, with poor equipment, and with imperfect teaching facilities, were largely responsible for the retardation found in the county.

The average loss of grade by 193 children, as recorded by teachers, was 1.28 years for girls and 1.5 years for boys, a total of 269 school years.

No special classes for the instruction of retarded children were found in any of the rural schools of the county.

In addition to the 214 children who were retarded and exceptionally retarded, three epileptics and two constitutionally inferior children were found among the school children of the county."

These interesting investigations do not, of course, disclose the full amount of mental defectiveness in the localities studied, because they are based on a survey of the children at school and because they especially take up the matter of retardation and feeble-mindedness. It is no uncommon thing in the small rural community to find the more troublesome feeble-minded child withdrawn from the school. The reports suggest that a wider investigation would increase the number of defective children, for the method chosen could hardly be expected to discern all the seriously neurotic children. The information gathered indicates that epilepsy and the neurotic predisposition to insanity need to be investigated as well as amentia,[5] and that the epileptics and neurotics, even among rural children, are more numerous than is usually supposed. Of course an investigation of the adults would still more increase the amount of mental abnormality.

The sociologist is familiar with the social menace of the degenerate family in the country. Most of the members of the families thus far studied have lived in the country or small village. It is reasonable to suppose that on the whole such families find it easier to survive in the country than in the city. The country offers occupation for the high grades during the busy season and yet does not require steady employment all through the year. The social penalties of mental inferiority are not likely to be so oppressive; certainly there is much less danger of coming into collision with the law. Our institutions find from experience that the feeble-minded take kindly to rough, out-door work and from this it is natural to assume that a large number of the feeble-minded, free to choose their environment, prefer the country to the city. They are probably more often handicapped by the competition of city life than by the conditions of life in the rural community.

It is probably true also that the feeble-minded family is more likely to renew its vitality by the mixing in of new, normal blood in the country than in the city. Illegitimacy holds in the problem of rural feeble-mindedness the same position that prostitution occupies in urban amentia. The attractive feeble-minded girl--and of course many of these girls are physically attractive to many men--does not find it difficult in the country to have sex relations with mentally normal men. Indeed it is often not realized that the girl is mentally abnormal, and all too frequently we have a marriage in the country between a woman of unsound mind and a man who is mentally sound. Illegitimacy is, however, the larger problem in rural amentia. The same type of girl that in the country becomes the mother of several children, often by different men, in the city, unless protected, enters prostitution. The city prostitute, because of the sterilizing effects of venereal diseases, is less likely to become the mother of children, but, on the other hand, she scatters about syphilis, which has so much to do with causing mental abnormalities. It may be a matter of opinion which of the two social evils, illegitimacy in the country or prostitution in the city, has the larger influence upon the spread of mental abnormalities, but there can be no doubt that the rural difficulty deserves the attention of all interested in mental hygiene.

It is unfortunate that rural people do not realize more often the serious meaning of feeble-mindedness. The close contact between neighbors and the familiarity of community life tend in the country to develop an indifference to the variations from normal standard that the high-grade ament expresses. People, as a rule, take the social failures of the feeble-minded for granted and do not specially regard them as evidences of mental inferiority. This condition makes the limited segregation possible in the country very difficult indeed. The thoughtful parent hardly knows how to keep his child from associating with the deficient child of his neighbor when they live near together and attend the same school.

At school also the feeble-minded child is likely to have advantages over his city brother, which keep him from exhibiting to the full his inherent mental weakness. A conversation with almost any rural teacher will impress upon one the fact that the teacher is loath to declare feeble-minded a child whose records give unmistakable evidence of amentia and that she generally regards the child as merely dull. Fortunately this is likely not to be so true in the future, as a result of the recent instruction that candidates for teaching are now receiving in our normal schools.

There is, however, the greatest need of clinic work being carried on in our rural schools. The problem cannot safely be left with local authority. The demand is for some state-wide method of mental examination of school children. This service, which in most states could be given over to the superintendent of public instruction, ought to be given wider scope than merely the mental measurement of school children. The problem requires the service of the alienist. Only by this more fundamental treatment of the problem can we expect to obtain the full social relief that the preventive side of mental hygiene promises. As a matter of fact, however, it is likely that the problem will be considered first from the viewpoint of retardation in our rural schools. It will be unwise to force the mental hygiene movement into our rural school administration more rapidly than the need of it can be made clear to our rural leadership.

It is an unhappy fact that we are at present doing so little. The state certainly must try in some way to provide, for the country children who need it, the special class instruction now given backward children in the cities. This will give relief by providing a basis for the separation of the curable and the incurable defective children. At present the defective child who requires treatment and improves in the special class suffers a great handicap by being in the country rather than in the city.

Without doubt epilepsy and psychopathic cases, as well as feeble-mindedness, receive relatively less attention in the country than in the city. This situation certainly hinders rural progress and adds to the social burdens of rural communities. Any one familiar with the life of a typical rural town will know of peculiarities of conduct and strange attitudes of non-social persons which indicate mental unsoundness. These abnormalities express themselves in various forms and I happen to know of some New England communities that have been hopelessly separated into two hostile parts as a result of the influence of persons whose subsequent careers have proven that the originators of the difficulties were socially irresponsible. One such case was a church quarrel that finally had to receive a state-wide recognition because of the serious situation that finally resulted. The later suicide of the individual, who first started the dispute, a suicide that had little objective explanation, seems to have demonstrated that the whole difficulty originated because of the influence of a psychopathic character. In this case had the community known a very little about mental aberration the history of the difficulty would have been very different. Even as it was, a very few of the more thoughtful people believed the man insane.

The chief reason, however, for mental hygiene propaganda in the country is the influence it will have in preventing human suffering. The problem of mind health is a humane one and this fact removes the distinction between rural and urban need. Urban fields offer more inducements at present for the worker, but the rural need is also great. The rural districts are less conscious of their distress and perhaps respond less readily to whatever instruction is given them, but they certainly must be given the benefits of the mental hygiene movement by a patient and persistent propaganda.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] "Insane and Feebleminded in Institutions," Washington, D. C., 1914, pp. 50 and 54.

[4] "Mental Status of Rural School Children," by E. H. Mullan, Public Health Reports, Nov. 17, 1916, and "The Mental Status of Rural School Children of Porter County, Indiana," by T. Clark and W. L. Treadway, Public Health Bulletin No. 77.

[5] Amentia is used as a technical term for feeble-mindedness.

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF RURAL EXPERIENCE

VI

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF RURAL EXPERIENCE

Our social ideas, the expression of what the psychologists define as the social mind, are influenced too much by the thinking of urban people, too little by that of people who live in the country and small villages. There are many reasons for this undesirable social situation. One is the outstanding fact that the city has the prestige that belongs to political and commercial leadership. The urban leaders have for the most part obtained their position by their possession of the means of control of industries and of the channels of communication, or because of their skill in winning public attention. They have become successful by exercising capabilities that naturally give them social influence. They are victors in contests that are decided largely upon the basis of superior ability in manipulating men. Their advance has meant an increasing opportunity to influence the thought of their fellows. In many cases they have deliberately studied the methods of influencing public opinion and have worked to obtain control of the modern equipment necessary to direct it. One of the great engines for moving the public mind is the newspaper and this is always in the hands of urban leadership and a share of its power can usually be had by those who have the necessary "pull" or cash.

Socially the successful farmer belongs to the opposite class. His success has been obtained for the most part by his skill in handling natural law. His struggle has been largely with the obstacles that arise when one attempts to furnish a share of the food supply required by a hungry world. The farmer's experience with the means of social influence is limited and in his business there is no need of his impressing himself upon his fellows. On the other hand it is natural that he should overvalue the thinking of those who, unlike himself, have developed the art of making social and political impression. This tendency to discount his own social contribution in practice--even though in theory he may often insist upon his paramount social function--makes the farmer a good follower and a poor leader.

And yet in the nature of things there is nothing to demonstrate that socially those who have the machinery that is required for the influencing of public opinion or who have learned the art of impressing themselves upon their fellows are the most fit to direct the social mind. The struggle with Nature teaches as much that is of lasting value for a philosophy of personal or national conduct as comes from competition between people. Even if the population stimulus of urban centers brings forth men of great ability who do large things, it by no means follows that these men are wise merely because they are powerful. And even if they were justified in claiming superiority at every point over the successful men of the country, it would not be for the social good that they be given a monopoly of social prestige.

Contact with men who occupy high places in city commerce will often convince any one of a neutral and discriminating mind that these men of social power have suffered loss at some points in their developing personality as a result of the struggle that has made possible their success. The present serious discord between capital and labor is fundamentally born of the belief of some that wealth is as socially right in all important matters as it is socially powerful and the faith of others that the social problems that vex men and women would pass with the destruction of wealth's artificial social advantages. Each group confines itself to the territory of experience where everything has to do with matters of human relationship, and each group insists that only one point in that territory can have value as a position for the observing and estimating of what happens there.

The extreme representatives of each group disclose that they have been forced to a narrow view of human motives and interests by their environmental experiences. They agree in their elevation of the power of money to the supreme place socially--one defending the power as belonging of right to wealth, the other regarding the social situation as due to the unjust privileges of the few who prey upon the many.

The typical farmer is both a capitalist and a laborer and has a saner attitude toward the difficulty than one can have who belongs exclusively to either group. He is likely to accumulate his capital by slow savings, which represent in some degree real sacrifice, and he cannot have sympathy with those who refuse to credit capital with legitimate social function. He also earns his bread by the sweat of his brow and has therefore a first-hand knowledge of the burden of human toil. This gives him an understanding of the discontent of exploited labor, but also a deep contempt for those who have no interest in the work they do. His thinking in regard to the differences between capital and labor is born of experiences that are elemental in the human struggle for life and comfort and therefore cannot be safely turned aside. His sympathies swing toward one or the other of the conflicting groups according to his most recent economic experiences. If he has been robbed by some commission merchant, he joins the protest against the unjust power of capital; if he has had a hired man who has worked indifferently and with no respect for his vocation, he understands what is meant by the unreasonable and impossible demands of labor.

The unchanging element in his thinking, however, comes from his personal concern with reference to both capital and labor. In other words, he lives closer to an earlier economic experience of man, when the present great gulf between those who furnish capital and those who furnish labor for industry had not been fixed. Neither the representatives of the capital nor of the labor group, when they undertake what seem to him extreme measures, can count upon his support.

The abiding fact that denies to urban thinking the right to enjoy a monopoly of social influence is this: men cannot safely build up their social thinking from experiences gathered merely from the field of human association. Nature also has lessons to teach and lessons that do not always agree with the inferences that are naturally made when one thinks only of the experiences of men in their associations. It is socially foolish and socially unsafe to disregard, or at least to forget, the value of thinking that functions, as the farmer's does, in the effort to control Nature for a livelihood that directly contributes to human welfare. If such thinking is often prosaic and rigid, it is also close to reality and insistent upon practicality. Narrow it may be at times, as a result of lack of opportunity to have wide contact, but it is substantial and born of knowledge of the necessary limitations that Nature places upon the wishes of men and women. The farmer by his vocation is taught to be suspicious of easy solutions. He stands aloof from men who claim to have found the panacea and regards men of such abounding enthusiasm as belonging to the same group of the pathetically deluded as the believers in the machine of perpetual motion. The farmer keeps the greatest distance from day dreaming and can never have charged against him as a characteristic fault that menace of self-supporting fancy which is so insidious in its attack upon the mental wholesomeness of a multitude of people.

It becomes, therefore, as a result of a constant and clear-minded attention to the actual working of forces of Nature that seem at times friendly and at times hostile to man's purposes, difficult for the farmer to regard money, even with all its recognized power, as able to do everything, or the one thing to be desired. This does not mean, of course, that the farmer is indifferent to money. No one who knows him at all would claim that he is unconcerned in regard to finances. He is always interested in money, and, like other men, works to make it. For want of money he is often troubled. He knows how much money will do in the sphere of human association. His everyday philosophy reveals this in ways that one cannot mistake. He also knows, however, that even money has its limits and that these are seen in man's relations with Nature.

How different it is in the experience of the city-dweller! He finds that money will do nearly anything. With money he can have the fruits gathered from the ends of the earth. Without money he is helpless. His protection from disease, from vice, from countless forms of discomfort, disrespect, and exploitation depends upon his ability to pay the necessary rent for safe and pleasant surroundings. How much of suffering, both physical and mental, the want of a "safe" income brings to the urban-dweller one may discover by merely walking along the crowded streets of any city. Without the necessary money he even fears loss of a respectable funeral and burial place in case of death.

The urban wealthy keep close to more and more wonderful forms of luxury by money. The urban poor keep out of the breadline by money. The middle-class know that with a little more money they may expect to join the first class and with a little less they may be forced into the second. Money seems the one thing of power. Newspapers, street discussions, and public opinion, for the most part, encourage the belief in the omnipotence of money. Only in rare instances, as for example when there is a death in the family, does the city person from his own experience discover that money, which has so much of power among men, cannot fully usurp Nature's control over the desires of men. Having so often seen great natural obstacles overcome by bridges, tunnels, and immense buildings, the urban person's final mental assumption is that, given enough money, anything can be done. It is hardly strange that the political philosophy which is distinctively urban should be built upon the supreme value of money and the problem of its distribution.

With the present movement of the population toward urban centers, and with the increasing ability of urban people through organization and modern forms of communication to impress their ideas upon men and women far and near, it is hardly strange that we should in our better moments recoil from a materialism which seems to be creeping everywhere into men's souls and producing interpretations of the purposes of life that are false, dangerous, and sordid.

The antidote is a larger contribution to national thought and policy from rural people. Talkers and men skilful in manipulating other men have been taken too seriously. The doer, especially he who has first-hand grapple with Nature in the contest she forever forces upon men, has a word that should be spoken, a word of sanity. City people are often too far distant from the realities of the primary struggle with natural law to be entrusted with all the thinking. A visit a few months ago to any city seed-store would have forced upon any critical observer how ignorant city people are of the effort required to produce even their most familiar foods.

Healthy national ideals require a contribution from both urban and rural experience. The first we have in quantity. It is the second we lack. It is the business of those who conserve social welfare to respect the conclusions of rural thinkers and to discover how rural experience may make its largest contribution to national policy and social opinion.

RURAL VS. URBAN ENVIRONMENT

VII

RURAL VS. URBAN ENVIRONMENT

We had just finished eating lunch at one of the more quiet hotels of our greatest city. We lingered after the meal for a chat, this being one of the privileges of the place, untroubled by the type of waiter, hungry for tips, who so often at the metropolitan hotels conveys unmistakably the idea that one's departure is expected to follow directly the presentation of his bill. The host was a man of business, famed for his success and his interest in public affairs, and especially generous in giving of his money and time to further movements that attempt the betterment of rural life. He had spent his youth in the open country and had never lost any of the vividness of his first joys. It was this mutual interest in rural problems that had brought host and guest together for a quiet talk.

"Will you give me your deepest impression of the city as you came into it from the country?" asked the man of business of the student.

"I hardly can claim one impression, there are so many."

"But one must be deeper or at least more consciously so than the others. It is that I want. I'll tell you in return my strongest impression when recently I visited, for the first time in several years, the farm where I was born."

"I suppose the line of thought that captured my mind when I first came into the city tonight is what you want."

"Yes."

"I began to think not of your noise or your hurry, your poverty or your crowds, but of your atmosphere of what I call popular materialism. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Perhaps not."

"I mean I sensed everywhere the emphasis upon the power of money. I suppose it is an experience forced upon the consciousness of everyone who comes into the life of this great city from a small community. It seems as if the city was a monument to the idea that money can do everything, that the getting of money is the only satisfactory purpose of life."

"You must not forget the miser of the small village or the considerable number of city people who do not make business and money-making the chief object of their lives."

"Of course in justice I must remember what you say, for it is true. But you wanted my vivid impression and I give it to you as the feeling that in the city money seems all-powerful. With it you are able to get everything, to do everything. You can command other men and they obey you. You can reach over the ocean and draw luxuries of every kind to you for your pleasure and your comfort. Wherever you go you are invited to spend money. At least it is suggested to you how much you could have to satisfy your wildest dreams, had you only the necessary bank account.

"On the other hand, without money you are like a lost soul in the midst of Paradise. With a little money your life must be spent in miserable tenements, in a dirty, noisy, unsanitary quarter of the city. Your children, perchance, must become familiar with the neighboring prostitute. Disease dogs your steps. Pleasures are few. More income means not merely renting a better tenement, but also changing to a safer and more pleasant neighborhood. And always facing you at every turn, from every show window, even from the posters on the bill boards, are suggestions of what money could do for you if only you had it."

"I see your point, but not for many years have I felt the truth of what you say. I imagine I felt strongly the power of money when I first came to the city. Of late I have taken the matter for granted and thought little of it. Yet you must admit that money is power."

"Of course, but not to the degree the city deludes one into thinking. Even in the city there is much money cannot do. In the smaller places, especially in the country, one is impressed with the limitations of money. In normal ways it is not possible to spend great sums of money in the country. You do not find methods of getting rid of your money attracting your attention at every turn. If great wealth is spent, a plan must be worked out and some new enterprise undertaken--for example, a magnificent residence or a fancy farm. In the city no forethought is required to spend great wealth. The opportunity is ever at one's elbow. The difficulty is not to accept the importunate invitations."

"I assume you blame the cities for the widespread materialism which is charged up against modern life?"

"Not altogether. In the country, as you have suggested, we have lovers of money and we have sordid poverty. But I do think that urban life tends to emphasize money-getting and to keep it before the mind in a way that is not natural in the small community. Because of this I regard the cities as the natural strongholds of materialism and I see a danger in the urbanizing movement of modern civilization. I think, therefore, that men like yourself should do everything possible to keep in the public consciousness the splendid idealism that is in the city. I mean such kindly sacrifice as the settlement house. However, I have talked enough. What is your vivid impression as a result of your visit to the place of your boyhood?"

"Well, before I give you that, let me remind you that men like myself get our power to help what you call idealism largely because of our money. I suppose you hold, therefore, that even in our disinterested service we advertise the power of money?"

"Yes, I must confess that your influence is never divorced from your standing as one who has made good in the ways of trade. But what of your country impression?"

"There is no place that still seems so beautiful to me as the place of my childhood. I was born beside a splendid river; and not far from the house, separated from it by stretches of meadowland, was a thick and extensive forest. It seemed as if I had everything ideal for the play of childhood.

"Upon my recent visit I felt as never before the value of what I like to call the freedom of the spirit. It seems as if country environment generously provides what the healthy-minded child most needs--an opportunity for the free play of the fancy. I call it a spiritual preparation for life, but I assume that the scientist would describe it as an experience of the imagination. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, as far as you have gone. I covet, however, a clearer understanding of what you mean."

"I mean what I used to find in Wordsworth's poetry and in the work of our own Whittier. I never read them now, but years ago I did a little. You were country-born yourself, as I remember. Don't you recall how your imagination made rich with meaning the simple pleasures and sports of your early life? I can well remember hours of fishing at a dark curve in the river where the water was black even at noon-day because of the overhanging trees. I think I never caught a fish there, but there was always something about the place that made me think that some day a wonderful catch would be made there. It was a place that enlivened the fancy and it illustrates what I mean. There were many other such breeding-spots for fancy scattered along the miles of river and woodland which I grew to know so well."

"Don't you consider your play of fancy mentally dangerous?"

"No, not when it comes into the mind with the incoming tide of experience. There was plenty of reality. We had our discomforts and our disappointments. We were forced to take into account the causal order of things. But the mind had a chance to add its part to the fact of existence. And so it always needs to be. I have been successful as a man of business in part because of my early use of the gift of imagination. It is bad to have life all imagination, to carry into adult experiences the make-believe of childhood, but it is a miserable and destitute existence for any adult to bring to his work no imagination."

"And you regard your earlier use of imagination as a preparation for your later use?"

"Indeed I do. I also regard it as the best basis for a reasonable spiritual interpretation of life. In addition it furnished pleasures, the memories of which are sweet and wholesome to this day."

"Do city children have no similar opportunity for creating fancy?"

"Perhaps they do, but their imagination is too quickly forced into the hard forms of adult experience. They feel all too soon the meaning of wealth, the punishments of poverty. They dream of more of this or less of that. They covet possession of the things they see from the store windows or in the yards of more fortunate children. The shadow of the money-magic of which you spoke falls too soon for their later good across their path. With the country boy and girl this is not likely to happen. Their experiences are more buoyant, more interpretive, more exploring. Fancy creates and reveals; it does not largely furnish the false pleasures of fictitious possession. This is to me the difference. The city may be the richest environment for the adult. That is a matter of opinion. But I cannot see how anyone can think of it as the best place for the child. I cannot believe that I would have gotten nearly so much of good from my early experiences if I had lived in the city. If I am right, this is another element to add to the great urban problem. If the experience of the city child suffers spiritual privations from the limitations of his environment, must this not show itself in social tendencies? In any case I had a motive in what I have said. You are interested in movements that attempt to enrich the experiences of country boys and girls. That is good, but you must not occupy all of the child's time or interest. Give him freedom to discover his own inner resources, the spiritual union between his cravings and the richness of nature. Don't exile him from nature's paradise by too much adult supervision, organization, or influence. In my day we had too little adult assistance in our games and recreation. I can imagine a condition where the country childhood would suffer from too much."

It was this suggestion that I carried away with me from our conversation.

THE MIND OF THE FARMER

VIII

THE MIND OF THE FARMER

In discussing the mind of the farmer, the difficulty is to find the typical farmer's mind that north, south, east, and west will be accepted as standard. In our science there is perhaps at present no place where generalization needs to move with greater caution than in the statement of the farmer's psychic characteristics. It is human to crave simplicity, and we are never free from the danger of forcing concrete facts into general statements that do violence to the opposing obstacles.

The mind of the farmer is as varied as the members of the agricultural class are significantly different. And how great are these differences! The wheat farmer of Washington state who receives for his year's crop $106,000 has little understanding of the life outlook of the New Englander who cultivates his small, rocky, hillside farm. The difference is not merely that one does on a small scale what the other does in an immense way. He who knows both men will hardly question that the difference in quantity leads also to differences in quality, and in no respect are the two men more certainly distinguishable than in their mental characteristics.

It appears useless, therefore, to attempt to procure for dissection a typical farmer's mind. In this country at present there is no mind that can be fairly said to represent a group so lacking in substantial unity as the farming class, and any attempt to construct such a mind is bound to fail. This is less true when the class is separated into sections, for the differences between farmers are in no small measure geographical. Indeed, is it not a happy fact that the American farmer is not merely a farmer? Although it complicates a rural problem such as ours, it is fortunate that the individual farmer shares the larger social mind to such a degree as to diminish the intellectual influences born of his occupation.

The method of procedure that gives largest promise of substantial fact is to attempt to uncover some of the fundamental influences that operate upon the psychic life of the farmers of America and to notice, in so far as opportunity permits, what social elements modify the complete working of these influences.

One influence that shows itself in the thinking of farmers as of fundamental character is, of course, the occupation of farming itself. In primitive life we not only see the importance of agricultural work for social life but we discover also some of the mental elements involved that make this form of industry socially significant. From the first it called for an investment of self-control, a patience, that Nature might be coaxed to yield from her resources a reasonable harvest. We find therefore in primitive agriculture a hazardous undertaking which, nevertheless, lacked any large amount of dramatic appeal.

It is by no means otherwise today. The farmer has to be efficient in a peculiar kind of self-control. He needs to invest labor and foresight in an enterprise that affords to the usual person little of the opportunity for quick returns, the sense of personal achievement, or the satisfaction of the desire for competitive face-to-face association with other men which is offered in the city. Men who cultivate on a very large scale and men who enjoy unusual social insight as to the significance of their occupation are exceptions to the general run of farmers. In these days of accessible transportation we have a rapid and highly successful selection which largely eliminates from the farming class the type that does not naturally possess the power to be satisfied with the slowly acquired property, impersonal success, and non-dramatic activities of farming. This process which eliminates the more restless and commercially ambitious from the country has, of course, been at work for generations. It has tended, therefore, to a uniformity of mental characteristics, but it has by no means succeeded in procuring a homogeneous rural mind. The movement has been somewhat modified by the return of people to the country from the city and by the influence on the country mind of the more restless and adventurous rural people who, for one reason or another, have not migrated. In the far West especially, attention has been given to the rural hostility to, or at least the misunderstanding of, city movements which attempt ambitious social advances. It is safe to assume that this attitude of rural people is widespread and is noticeable far west merely because of a greater frankness. The easterner hides his attitude because he has become conscious that it opens him to criticism. This attitude of rural hostility is rooted in the fundamental differences between the thinking of country and of city people, due largely to the process of social selection. This mental difference gives constant opportunity for social friction. If the individuals who live most happily in the city and in the country are contrasted, there is reason to suppose that the mental opposition expresses nervous differences. In one we have the more rapid, more changeable, and more consuming thinker, while the thought of the other is slower, more persistent, and less wasteful of nervous energy.

The work of the average farmer brings him into limited association with his fellows as compared with the city worker. This fact also operates upon him mentally. He has less sense of social variations and less realization of the need of group solidarity. This results in his having less social passion than his city brother, except when he is caught in a periodic outburst of economic discontent expressed in radical agitation, and also in his having a more feeble class-consciousness and a weaker basis for cooperation. This last limitation is one from which the farmer seriously suffers.

The farmer's lack of contact with antagonistic groups, because his work keeps him away from the centers where social discontent boils with passion and because it prevents his appreciating class differences, makes him a conservative element in our national life, but one always big with the danger of a blind servitude to traditions and archaic social judgments. The thinking of the farmer may be either substantial from his sense of personal sufficiency or backward from his lack of contact. The decision regarding his attitude is made by the influences that enter his life, in addition to those born of his occupation.

At this point, however, it would be serious to forget that some of the larger farming enterprises are carried on so differently that the manager and owner are more like the factory operator than the usual farmer. To them the problem is labor-saving machinery, efficient management, labor cost, marketing facilities, and competition. They are not especially influenced by the fact that they happen to handle land products rather than manufactured articles.

Much has been made of the farmer's hand-to-hand grapple with a capricious and at times frustrating Nature. This emphasis is deserved, for the farmer is out upon the frontier of human control of natural forces. Even modern science, great as is its service, cannot protect him from the unexpected and the disappointing. Insects and weather sport with his purposes and give his efforts the atmosphere of chance. It is not at all strange, therefore, that the farmer feels drawn to fatalistic interpretations of experience which he carries over to lines of thought other than those connected with his business.

A second important influence that has helped to make the mind of the farmer has been isolation. In times past, without doubt, this has been powerful in its effect upon the mind of the farmer. It is less so now because, as everyone knows, the farmer is protected from isolation by modern inventions. It is necessary to recall, however, that isolation is in relation to one's needs and that we too often neglect the fact that the very relief that has removed from country people the more apparent isolation of physical distance has often intensified the craving for closer and more frequent contact with persons than the country usually permits. Whether isolation as a psychic experience has decreased for many in the country is a matter of doubt. Certainly most minds need the stimulus of human association for both happiness and healthiness, and even yet the minds of farmers disclose the narrowness, suspiciousness, and discontent of place that isolation brings. It makes a difference in social attitude whether the telephone, automobile, and parcel post draw the people nearer together in a common community life or whether they bring the people under the magic of the city's quantitative life and in this way cause rural discontent.

The isolation from the great business centers which has kept farmers from having personally a wide experience with modern business explains in part the suspicious attitude rural people often take into their commercial relations. This has been expressed in a way one can hardly forget by Tolstoi in his "Resurrection," when his hero, from moral sympathy with land reform, undertakes to give his tenants land under conditions more to their advantage and, much to his surprise, finds them hostile to the plan. They had been too often tricked in the past and felt too little acquainted with business methods to have any confidence in the new plan which claimed benevolent motives. It is only fair to admit that the farmer differs from others of his social rank only in degree, and that his experiences in the past appear to him to justify his skeptical attitude. He has at times suffered exploitation; what he does not realize is that this has been made possible by his lack of knowledge of the ways of modern business and by his failure to organize. The farmer is beginning to appreciate the significance of marketing. Unfortunately, he too often carries his suspiciousness, which has resulted from business experiences, into many other lines of action and thinking, and thus robs himself of enthusiasm and social confidence.

A third important element in the making of the farmer's mind may be broadly designated as suggestion. The farmer is like other men in that his mental outlook is largely colored by the suggestions that enter his life.

It is this fact, perhaps, that explains why the farmer's mind does not express more clearly vocational character, for no other source of persistent suggestions has upon most men the influence of the newspaper, and each day, almost everywhere, the daily paper comes to the farmer with its appealing suggestions. Of course the paper represents the urban point of view rather than the rural, but in the deepest sense it may be said to look at life from the human outlook, the way the average man sees things. The newspaper, therefore, feeds the farmer's mind with suggestions and ideas that counteract the influences that specially emphasize the rural environment. It keeps him in contact with thinking and events that are world-wide, and unconsciously permeates his motives, at times giving him urban cravings that keep him from utilizing to the full his social resources in the country. Any attempt to understand rural life that minimizes the common human fellowship which the newspaper offers the farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate misinterpretation. Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his experiences, for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as he once was. This constant daily stimulation from the world of business, sports, and public affairs at times awakens his appetite for urban life and makes him restless, or encourages his removal to the city, or makes him demand as much as possible of the quantitative pleasures and recreations of city life. In a greater degree, however, the paper contents his mental need for contact with life in a more universal way than his particular community allows. The automobile and other modern inventions also serve the farmer, as does the newspaper, by providing mental suggestions from an extended environment.