Chapter IV: Part 4

The abuses must be checked and discriminations removed, whether in the middleman trade itself, rates of express companies and other carriers, or stock-market gambling. The middleman system has had a free field to play in, the wealth of the country to handle; it has exercised its license, and in too many cases it has become parasitic, either protected by law and custom or unreachable by law or custom. It is a shame that our economic machinery is not capable of handling the situation.

_Relation of the question to cost-of-living._

It is customary just now to attribute the high cost of living to lessened production due to a supposed decline of agriculture, and to advise, therefore, that more persons engage in farming for the purpose of increasing the product. This position is met by an editorial of the New York Tribune, which holds that intermediary trading combinations are responsible:

"It is true that the raising of cattle for the market has almost ceased in the East and that agriculture generally has not kept pace with the demand for food products. 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. Under normal conditions economic law would certainly drive labor and energy into a field of production in which there had been the greatest relative expansion in the selling price of products.

"Yet economic law has not operated to stimulate agriculture, because the returns from steadily mounting prices have not really reached the producer. Thirty years ago the fattening of steers for the local markets was common in the East. But when the vast Western ranges were opened, and the great packing houses were established, the cheapness of range beef, refrigerated and delivered in Eastern cities, was used as a weapon to kill off the cattle industry of the East. When the Eastern cattleman was driven out of business, the price of beef rose, but virtually all the increase has gone to the packing combinations, which fix their own price to the Western range man and their own price to the consumer and artificially control the supply so as to discourage increased production in the West and to prevent a revival of production in the East. The country is growing in population at the rate of twenty to twenty-five per cent each decade. But Secretary Wilson has shown that the supply of food animals is not being maintained in proportion to population. In the last decade cattle have remained about stationary in numbers, swine are actually decreasing, and, while more sheep are available, the supply has diminished relatively to population.

"It can hardly be contended that with steadily diminishing supplies and steadily increasing prices the law of supply and demand would not work out a new balance, stimulating production through easy profits, were there no artificial interception of the producer's normal share of the advance in price. Were there a free market for the Eastern raiser of stock, milk, and food products generally, with the middleman's commissions properly restricted, Eastern farming would probably be profitable enough to hold its own against manufacturing and to compete successfully with the manufacturer for labor."

_The farmer's part._

Of course, it is necessary to teach every farmer how to grow more crops, for this is his business, and it also enlarges his personal ambition and extends his power and responsibility; but merely to grow the crops will not avail,--this is only the beginning of the problem: the products must be distributed and marketed in such a way that the one who expends the effort to produce them shall receive enough of the return to identify him with the effort. Thereafter, social and moral results will follow.

_The middleman's part._

I recognize the service of the middleman to society. I know that the distributor and trader are producers of wealth as well as those who raise the raw materials; but this is no justification for abuses. I know that there are hosts of perfectly honest and dependable middlemen. We do not yet know whether the existing system of intermediary distributors and sellers is necessary to future society, but we do not see any other practicable way at present. In special cases, the farmer may reach his own customer; but this condition, as I have suggested, is so small in proportion to the whole number of farmers as not greatly to affect the general situation. We do not yet see any way whereby all farmers can be so organized as to enable them to control all their own marketing. Therefore, we must recognize middleman-practice as legitimate.

_A system of economic waste._

But even though we yet see no way of general escape from the system, we ought to provide some means of regulating its operation. The present method of placing agricultural produce in the hands of the consumer is for the most part indirect and wasteful. Probably in the majority of cases of dissatisfaction, the person whom we call the middleman does not receive any exorbitant profit, but the cost of the commodities is piled up by a long and circuitous system of intermediate tolls and commissions.

_Coöperation of farmers will not solve it._

It is commonly advised that farmers "unite" or "organize" to correct middleman and transportation abuses, but these troubles cannot be solved by any combination of farmers, because this is not an agricultural question. It is as much a problem for consumers as for producers. It is a part of the civilization of our day, completely woven into the fabric of our economic system. The farmer may feel its hardship first because he must bear it, while the consumer, to meet higher prices, demands more pay of his employer or takes another stitch out of somebody else. But it is essentially a problem for all society to solve, not for farmers alone, particularly when it operates on a continental basis. This also indicates the futility of the arbitrary control of prices of the great staples by combinations of farmers (page 126).

Of course, temporary or local relief may be secured by organizations of producers here and there, or of consumers here and there (probably consumers can attack the problem more effectively than producers), and by the establishment of public markets; but no organization can permanently handle the question unless the organization is all the people.

The present agitations against middleman practices and stock-market gambling ought to compel Congress to pass laws to correct the evils that are correctable by law, and the organizations then should keep such touch on the situation that the laws will be enforced.

It has been suggested that the superabundant middlemen go into farming; but no one can compel them to go to farming, and they might not be successful farmers if they should attack the business, and the farming country might not need them or profit by them,--for it is not demonstrated that we need more farmers, although it is apparent that we need better farmers.

_It is the business of government._

It is the business of any government to protect its people. Governments have protected their countries from invasion and war, but the greatest office of government in modern times is to develop its own people and the internal resources of its realm. We are beginning to protect the people from the over-lording of railroads, from unfair combinations in trade, and from the tyranny of organized politicians. It is just as much the business of government to protect its people from dishonest and tyrannous middlemen lying beyond the practical reach of individuals. The situation has arisen because of lack of control; there is no conspiracy against the farmer.

It is said that competition will in the end correct the middleman evil, but competition does not correct it; and competition alone, under the present structure of society, will not correct it in most cases because "agreements" between traders restrict or remove competition: the situation does not have within itself the remedies for its own ills.

When we finally eliminate combinations in restraint of trade, the middleman abuses may be in the process of passing out. It is to check dishonesty on the one hand and to allow real competition on the other that I am now making suggestions.

_Must be a continuing process of control._

I have no suggestion to make as to the nature of the laws themselves. There are many diverse situations to be met; and I intentionally do not make my remarks specific. Of course, any law that really attempts to reach the case must recognize the middleman as exercising a public or semi-public function, and that, as such, he is amenable to control, even beyond the point of mere personal honesty. The licensing of middlemen (a practice that might be carried much further, and which is a first step in reform) recognizes this status; and if it is competent for government to license a middleman, it is also competent for it to exercise some oversight over him. It is not necessary that government declare an agency a monopoly in order to regulate it. Commercial situations that unmistakably involve service to the public are proper for governmental control in greater or lesser degree. The supervision of weights and measures is a good beginning in the regulation of middleman trading.

But the enactment of laws, even of good laws, is only another step in the solution. A law does not operate itself, and the common man cannot resort to courts of law to secure justice in such cases as these. There must be a _continuing process_ of government with which to work out the reform and to adjust each case on its merits. Whatever the merits of the laws, their success lies in the continuing application of them to specific cases by persons whose business it is to discern the facts rather than to prove a case.

There are three steps in the control of the middleman: (1) an aroused public conscience on the question; (2) good fundamental laws for interstate phases and similar state laws for local phases; (3) good commissions or other agencies or bodies to which any producer or consumer or middleman may take his case, and which may exercise regulatory functions. The interstate commerce commission has jurisdiction over so much of the problem as relates to the service and rates of common carriers; no doubt, its powers could be extended to other interstate phases. Perhaps departments of agriculture, in states in which public service commissions have not been established, could be given sufficient scope to handle some of the questions.

Of course, some of the middlemen and associated traders will contend that all this interferes with business and with private rights, but no man has a private right to oppress or defraud another or to deprive him of his proper rewards; and we must correct a faulty economic system. There is little danger that the legitimate business of any honest middleman will be interfered with.

I know that commissions and similar bodies have not always been wholly successful. This is because we have not yet had experience enough, have not consciously trained our people for this kind of work, and have not been able to make water-tight laws. Neither do older systems now prove to be adequate. New economic conditions must bring new methods of regulation and control.

I have no desire that society (or government) engage in the middleman business or that it take over private enterprise; but no government can expect to throw back on the producer the responsibility of controlling the middleman. I look for the present agitation to awaken government to the necessity of doing what it is plainly its duty to do. In future, a government that will not protect its people in those cases in which the people, acting to the best of their individual and coöperating capacity, cannot protect themselves, will be known as either a bad government or an undeveloped government.

COUNTY AND LOCAL FAIRS

Much is said about the necessity of redirecting rural institutions. The fairs are mentioned among the rest. I shall now indicate an experiment that might be tried with existing county and local fairs, not only as a suggestion for the fairs themselves, but as an illustration of how completely it is possible to reconstruct an institution that is long established in conventional methods.

I do not think a fair that carries only one or two weeks' interest during the year is justifiable; but of this aspect of the question I am not now speaking.

_Nature of the fair._

The county fair has not changed its general basis of operation in recent years, and yet the basis of country life is changing rapidly. Many fairs are doing excellent work and are worth to the people all that they cost in effort and money; but the whole plan of the county fair is insufficient for the epoch that we are now entering. I should not discontinue the local fairs: I should make them over.

The fairs have been invaded by gambling, and numberless catch-penny and amusement and entertainment features, many of which are very questionable, until they often become great country medleys of acrobats and trained bears and high-divers and gew-gaws and balloon ascensions and side-shows and professional traveling exhibitors and advertising devices for all kinds of goods. The receipts are often measured by the number of cheap vaudeville and other "attractions" that the fair is able to secure. And as these things have increased, the local agricultural interest has tended to drop out. In some cases the state makes appropriations to local fairs; it is a question whether the state should be in the showman business.

I should like to see one experiment tried somewhere by some one, designed to project a bold enterprise on a new foundation. It would first be necessary to eliminate some of the present features, and then to add a constructive program.

_Features to be eliminated._

I should eliminate all gate receipts; all horse trots; all concessions and all shows; all display of ordinary store merchandise; all sales of articles and commodities; and all money premiums.

_Constructive program._

Having taken out the obstructions, unnecessaries, and excrescences, I should enter on a constructive program. I should then begin to make a fair. I assume that the fact of a person living in a community, places on him responsibilities for the welfare of that community. We should make the county fair one of the organized means of developing this welfare. Therefore, I should assume that every citizen in the county, by virtue of his citizenship, is a member of the county fair and owes to it an allegiance.

It would then devolve on the persons who are organizing and operating the work, representing the fair association, to develop in him his sense of allegiance and coöperation. I should not discourage any citizen of the county from coöperating in the enterprise, or allow him to escape his natural responsibilities, because he felt himself unable or unwilling to pay an admission fee, any more than I should eliminate any person because of religion, politics, color, or sex.

_The financial support._

Of course, it requires money to run a fair. I should like to see the money raised by voluntary contribution in a new way. I should have it said to every resident in the county that he and his family may come uninterruptedly to the fair without money and without price; but I should also say to him that money is needed, and that all those persons who wish to give a certain sum would be provided with a badge or receipt. I suspect that more money could be more easily raised in this way than by means of gate receipts.

I should have this money collected in advance by means of an organized effort through all the schools and societies in the county, setting every one of them at work on a definite plan.

Of course, the state or other agency could contribute its quota of funds as theretofore.

_An educational basis._

In other words, I should like to see, in this single experiment, a complete transfer from the commercial and "amusement" phase to the educational and recreation phase. I should like to see the county fair made the real meeting place for the country folk. I should make a special effort to get the children. The best part of the fair would be the folks, and not the machines or the cattle, although these also would be very important. I should make the fair one great picnic and gathering-place and field-day, and bring together the very best elements that are concerned in the development of country life.

I should work through every organized enterprise in the county, as commercial clubs, creameries, coöperative associations, religious bodies, fraternal organizations, insurance societies, schools, and whatever other organized units already may exist.

It is often said that our fairs have developed from the market-places of previous times, and are historically commercial. We know, of course, that fairs have been market-places, and that some of them are so to this day in other countries. I doubt very much, however, whether the history is correct that develops the American agricultural fair from the market-place fairs of other countries. From the time when Elkanah Watson exhibited his merino sheep in the public square of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1807, in order that he might induce other persons to grow sheep as good as his, and when the state of New York started its educational program in 1819, the essence of the American idea has been that a fair is an educational and not a trading enterprise. But whatever the history, the agricultural fair maintained by public money owes its obligation to the people and not to commercial interests.

_Ask every person to prove up._

I should have every person bring and exhibit what he considers to be his best contribution to the development of a good country life.

One man would exhibit his bushel of potatoes; another his Holstein bull; another his pumpkin or his plate of apples; another a picture and plans of his modern barn; another his driving team; another his flock of sheep or his herd of swine; another his pen of poultry; another his plan for a new house or a sanitary kitchen, or for the installation of water-supplies, or for the building of a farm bridge, or the improved hanging of a barn door, or for a better kind of fence, or for a new kink in a farm harness, or the exhibition of tools best fitted for clay land or sandy land, and so on and on.

The woman would also show what she is contributing to better conditions,--her best handiwork in fabrics, her best skill in cooking, her best plans in housekeeping, her best ideas for church work or for club work.

The children would show their pets, what they had grown in the garden, what they had made in the house or the barn, what they had done in the school, what they had found in the woods.

I should assume that every person living on the land in the country has some one thing that he is sure is a contribution to better farming, or to better welfare; and he should be encouraged to exhibit it and to explain it, whether it is a new way to hang a hoe, or a herd of pure-bred cattle, or a plan for farmers' institutes. I should challenge every man to show in what respect he has any right to claim recognition over his fellows, or to be a part of his community.

I should ask the newspapers and the agricultural press to show up their work; also the manufacturers of agricultural implements and of country-life articles of all kinds.

I should also ask the organizations to prove up. What is the creamery contributing to a better country life? What the school? The church? The grange? The coöperative exchange? The farmers' club? The reading club? The woman's society? The literary circle? The library? The commercial clubs? The hunting or sportsman's clubs?

_Sports, contests, and pageants._

I should give much attention to the organization of good games and sports, and I should have these coöperative between schools, or other organizations, such organizations having prepared for them consecutively during the preceding year. I should introduce good contests of all kinds. I should fill the fair with good fun and frolic.

I should want to see some good pageants and dramatic efforts founded on the industries, history, or traditions of the region or at least of the United States. It would not be impossible to find simple literature for such exercises even now, for a good deal has been written. By song, music, speaking, acting, and various other ways, it would not be difficult to get all the children in the schools of the county at work. In the old days of the school "exhibition," something of this spirit prevailed. It was manifest in the old "spelling bees" and also in the "lyceum." We have lost our rural cohesion because we have been attracted by the town and the city, and we have allowed the town and the city to do our work. I think it would not be difficult to organize a pageant, or something of the kind, at a county fair, that would make the ordinary vaudeville or sideshow or gim-crack look cheap and ridiculous and not worth one's while.

_Premiums._

If we organize our fair on a recreation and educational basis, then we can take out all commercial phases, as the paying of money premiums. An award of merit, if it is nothing more than a certificate or a memento, would then be worth more than a hundred dollars in money. So far as possible, I should substitute coöperation and emulation for competition, particularly for competition for money.

It is probable that the fair would have to assume the expense of certain of the exhibits.

_It is time to begin._

This kind of fair is not only perfectly possible, but it is feasible in many places, if only some one or two or three persons possessed of good common sense and of leadership would take hold of the thing energetically. One must cut himself loose from preconceived notions and probably from the regular fair associations. He must have imagination, and be prepared to meet discouragements. He need not take the attitude that present methods are necessarily all bad; he is merely concerned in developing a new thing.

Because I should not have horse races in my fair, I do not wish at all to be understood as saying that horse races are to be prohibited. Let the present race courses in the fair grounds be used for horse races, if the people want them. We have June races now, and they could be held at other times of the year when persons who are interested desire to have them. My point is that they are not an essential part of a county agricultural fair. They rest on a money basis, and do not represent the people. Neither do I say that all traveling shows and concessions are bad; but most of them are out of place in a county fair and contrary to its spirit.

If the horse races were organized for the purpose of developing the horses of the county, then I should admit them; but I should give them only their proportionate place along with other means of developing horse-stock,--as of work horses, farm horses, draft horses, driving horses.

_The fair ground._

An enterprise of the kind that I project need not necessarily be held on a fair-ground of the present type, although that might be the best place for it. If there is a good institution in the county that has grounds, and especially that has an agricultural equipment worthy of observation, I should think that the best results would be secured by holding the fair at that place. This kind of a fair would not need to be inclosed within a Chinese wall. Of course, there would have to be buildings and booths and stables in which exhibitions could be made.

In every fair there should nowadays be an assembly hall in which lectures, exhibitions, simple dramas, worth-while applicable moving pictures, and other entertainment features can be given.

_My plea._

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.

I do not expect all this to materialize in a day; but I want to set a new picture into my readers' minds.

THE COUNTRY-LIFE PHASE OF CONSERVATION

The conservation movement is the expression of the idea that the materials and agencies that are part of the furniture of the planet are to be utilized by each generation carefully, and with real regard to the welfare of those who are to follow us. The country-life movement is the expression of the idea that the policies, efforts, and material well-being of the open country must be highly sustained, as a fundamental essential of a good civilization; and it recognizes the fact that rural society has made relatively less progress in the past century than has urban society. Both movements are immediately economic, but in ultimate results they are social and moral. They rest on the assumption that the welfare of the individual man and woman is to be conserved and developed, and is the ultimate concern of governments; both, therefore, are phases in a process of social evolution.

These are the twin policies of the Roosevelt administration, an economic and social movement for which that administration will be first remembered after the incidents and personalities of the time have lost their significance.

Not only the welfare but the existence of the race depends on utilizing the products and forces of the planet wisely, and also on securing greater quantity and variety of new products. These are finally the most fundamental movements that government has yet attempted to attack; for when the products of the earth shall begin to disappear or the arm of the husbandman to lose its skill, there is an end to the office of government. At the bottom, therefore, the conservation and country-life movements rest on the same premise; but in their operation and in the problems that are before them they are so distinct that they should not be confounded or united. These complementary phases may best work themselves out by separate organization and machinery, although articulating at every point; and this would be true if for no other reason than that a different class of persons, and a different method of procedure, attach to each movement. The conservation movement finds it necessary, as a starting-point, to attack intrenched property interests, and it therefore discovers itself in politics, inasmuch as these interests have become intrenched through legislation. The country-life movement lacks these personal and political aspects, and proceeds rather on a broad policy of definite education and of redirection of imagination.

_These subjects have a history._

Neither conservation nor country life is new except in name and as the subject of an organized movement. The end of the original resources has been foreseen from time out of mind, and prophetic books have been written on the subject. The need of a quickened country life has been recognized from the time that cities began to dominate civilization; and the outlook of the high-minded countryman has been depicted from the days of the classical writings until now. On the side of mineral and similar resources, the geologists amongst us have made definite efforts for conservation; and on the side of soil fertility the agricultural chemists and the teachers of agriculture have for a hundred years maintained a perpetual campaign of conservation. So long and persistently have those persons in the agricultural and some other institutions heard these questions emphasized, that the startling assertions of the present day as to the failure of our resources and the coördinate importance of rural affairs with city affairs have not struck me with any force of novelty.

But there comes a time when the warnings begin to collect themselves, and to crystallize about definite points; and my purpose in suggesting this history is to emphasize the importance of the two formative movements now before us by showing that the roots run deep back into human experience. It is no ephemeral or transitory subject that we are now to discuss.

_They are not party-politics subjects._

I have said that these are economic and social problems and policies. I wish to enlarge this view. They are concerned with saving, utilizing, and augmenting, and only secondarily with administration. We must first ascertain the facts as to our resources, and from this groundwork impress the subject on the people. The subject must be approached by scientific methods. The "political" phase, although probably necessary, is only temporary, till we remove impedimenta and clear the way.

It would be unfortunate if such movement became the exclusive program of a political party, for then the question would become partisan and probably be removed from calm or judicial consideration, and the opposition would equally become the program of a party. Every last citizen should be naturally interested in the careful utilization of our native materials and wealth, and it is due him that the details of the question be left open for unbiased discussion rather than to be made the arbitrary program, either one way or another, of a political organization. Conservation is in the end a plain problem involving economic, educational, and social situations, rather than a political issue.

The country-life movement is equally a scientific problem, in the sense that it must be approached in the scientific spirit. It will be inexcusable in this day if we do not go at the subject with only the desire to discover the facts and to arrive at a rational solution, by non-political methods.

_The soil is the greatest of all resources._

The resources that sustain the race are of two kinds,--those that lie beyond the power of man to reproduce or increase, and those that may be augmented by propagation and by care. The former are the mines of minerals, metals, and coal, the water, the air, the sunshine; the latter are the living resources, in crop and live-stock.

Intermediate between the two classes stands the soil, on which all living resources depend. While the soil is part of the mineral and earthy resources of the planet, it nevertheless can be increased in its producing power. 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.

To my mind, the conservation movement has not sufficiently estimated or emphasized this problem. It has laid stress, I know, on the enormous loss by soil erosion and has said something of inadequate agricultural practice, but the main question is yet practically untouched by the movement,--the plain problem of handling the soil by all the millions who, by skill or blundering or theft, produce crops and animals out of the earth. Peoples have gone down before the lessening fertility of the land, and in all probability other peoples will yet go down. The course of empire has been toward the unplundered lands.

_The soil crust._

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. Beyond all calculation and all comprehension are the powers and the mysteries of this soft outer covering of the earth. For all we know, the stupendous mass of materials of which the planet is composed is wholly dead, and only on the surface does any nerve of life quicken it into a living sphere. And yet, from this attenuated layer have come numberless generations of giants of forests and of beasts, perhaps greater in their combined bulk than all the soil from which they have come; and back into this soil they go, until the great life principle catches up their disorganized units and builds them again into beings as complex as themselves.

The general evolution of this soil is toward greater powers; and yet, so nicely balanced are these powers that within his lifetime a man may ruin any part of it that society allows him to hold; and in despair he throws it back to nature to reinvigorate and to heal. We are accustomed to think of the power of man in gaining dominion over the forces of nature,--he bends to his use the expansive powers of steam, the energy of the electric current, and he ranges through space in the light that he concentrates in his telescope; but while he is doing all this, he sets at naught the powers in the soil beneath his feet, wastes them, and deprives himself of vast sources of energy. Man will never gain dominion until he learns from nature how to maintain the augmenting powers of the disintegrating crust of the earth.

We can do little to control or modify the atmosphere or the sunlight; but the epidermis of the earth is ours to do with it much as we will. It is the one great earth-resource over which we have dominion. The soil may be made better as well as worse, more as well as less; and to save the producing powers of it is far and away the most important consideration in the conservation of natural resources.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to devise a system of farm accounting that shall accurately represent the loss in producing power of the land (or depreciation in actual capital stock). The rising sentiment on the fertility question is just now reflected in the proposal to ask Congress and the states to make it a misdemeanor for a man to rob his land and to lay out for him a farm scheme. This is a chimerical notion; but the people are bound to express themselves unmistakably in some way on this subject.

Even if we should ultimately find that crops do not actually deplete land by the removal of stored plant-food in the way in which we have been taught, it is nevertheless true that poor management ruins its productivity; and whatever the phrase we use in our speaking and writing, we shall still need to hold the land-usurer to account.

_No man has a right to plunder the soil._

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; and if there are or have been such social epochs, then is society itself directly responsible for the waste of the common heritage. We have given every freeholder the privilege to destroy his farm.

The man who plunders the soil is in very truth a robber, for he takes that which is not his own, and he withholds bread from the mouths of generations yet to be born. No man really owns his acres: society allows him the use of them for his lifetime, but the fee comes back to society in the end. What, then, will society do with those persons who rob society? The pillaging land-worker must be brought to account and be controlled, even as we control other offenders.

I have no socialistic program to propose. The man who is to till the land must be educated: there is more need, on the side of the public welfare, to educate this man than any other man whatsoever (page 36). When he knows, and his obligations to society are quickened, he will be ready to become a real conservator; and he will act energetically as soon as the economic pressure for land-supplies begins to be acute. When society has done all it can to make every farmer a voluntary conservator of the fatness of the earth, it will probably be obliged to resort to other means to control the wholly incompetent and the recalcitrant; at least, it will compel the soil-robber to remove to other occupation, if economic stress does not itself compel it. We shall reach the time when we shall not allow a man to till the earth unless he is able to leave it at least as fertile as he found it.

I do not think that our natural soil resources have yet been greatly or permanently depleted, speaking broadly; and such depletion as has occurred has been the necessary result of the conquest of a continent. But a new situation will confront us, now that we see the end of our raw conquest; and the old methods cannot hold for the future. The conquest has produced great and strong folk, and we have been conserving men while we have been free with our resources. In the future, we shall produce strong folk by the process of thoroughness and care.

_Ownership_ vs. _conservation_.

This discussion leads me to make an application to the conservation movement in general. We are so accustomed to think of privileged interests and of corporation control of resources that we are likely to confuse conservation and company ownership. The essence of conservation is to utilize our resources with no waste, and with an honest care for the children of all the generations. But we state the problem to be the reservation of our resources for all the people, and often assume that if all the resources were in private ownership the problem would thereby be solved; but, in fact, the conservation question is one thing and the ownership of property quite another. A corporation may be the best as well as the worst conservator of resources; and likewise, private or individual ownership may be the very worst as well as the best conservator. The individual owner, represented by the "independent farmer," may be the prince of monopolists, even though his operations compass a very small scale. The very fact that he is independent and that he is intrenched behind the most formidable of all barriers--private property rights--insure his monopoly.

In the interest of pure conservation, it is just as necessary to control the single men as the organized men. In the end, conservation must deal with the separate or the individual man; that is, with a person. It matters not whether this person is a part of a trust, or lives alone a hundred miles beyond the frontier, or is the owner of a prosperous farm,--if he wastes the heritage of the race, he is an offender.

We are properly devising ways whereby the corporation holds its property or privileges in trust, returning to government (or to society) a fair rental; that is, we are making it responsible to the people. What shall we do with the unattached man, to make him also responsible? Shall we hold the corporate plunderer to strict account, and let the single separate plunderer go scot-free?

_The philosophy of saving._

The conservation of natural resources, therefore, resolves itself into the philosophy of saving, while at the same time making the most and best progress in our own day. We have not developed much consciousness of saving when we deal with things that come free to our hands, as the sunshine, the rain, the forests, the mines, the streams, the earth; and the American has found himself so much in the midst of plenty that saving has seemed to him to be parsimony, or at least beneath his attention. As a question of morals, however, conscientious saving represents a very high 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. Materials are brought from forest, and sea, and mine, certain small parts are used, and the remainder is destroyed (page 20); more labor is wasted than is usefully productive; but what is far worse, the substance of the land is taken in unimaginable measure, and dumped wholesale into endless sewer and drainage systems. It would seem as if the human race were bent on finding a process by which it can most quickly ravish the earth and make it incapable of maintaining its teeming millions. We are rapidly threading the country with vast conduits by which the fertility of the land can flow away unhindered into the unreachable reservoirs of the seas.

_The conservation of food._

The fundamental problem for the human race is to feed itself. It has been a relatively easy matter to provide food and clothing thus far, because the earth yet has a small population, and because there have always been new lands to be brought into requisition. We shall eliminate the plagues and the devastations of war, and the population of the earth will tremendously increase in the centuries to come. When the new lands have all been opened to cultivation, and when thousands of millions of human beings occupy the earth, the demand for food will constitute a problem which we scarcely apprehend to-day. We shall then be obliged to develop self-sustaining methods of maintaining the producing-power of land.

We think we have developed intensive and perfected systems of agriculture; but as a matter of fact, and speaking broadly, a permanent organized agriculture is yet unknown. In certain regions, as in Great Britain, the producing-power of the land has been increased over a long series of years, but this has been accomplished to a great extent by the transportation of fertilizing materials from the ends of the earth. The fertility of England has been drawn largely from the prairies and plains of America, from which it has secured its food supplies, from the guano deposits in islands of the seas, from the bones of men in Egypt and the battlefields of Europe.

We begin to understand how it is possible to maintain the producing-power of the surface of the earth, and there are certain regions in which our knowledge has been put effectively into operation, but we have developed no conscious plan or system in a large way for securing this result. It is the ultimate problem of the race to devise a permanent system of agriculture. It is the greatest question that can confront mankind; and the question is yet all unsolved.

_The best husbandry is not in the new regions._

The best agriculture, considered in reference to the permanency of its results, develops in old regions, where the skinning process has passed, where the hide has been sold, and where people come back to utilize what is left. The skinning process is proceeding at this minute in the bountiful new lands of the United States; and in parts of the older states, and even also in parts of the newer ones, not only the skin but the tallow has been sold.

We are always seeking growing-room, and we have found it. But now the Western civilization has met the Eastern, and the world is circumferenced. We shall develop the tropics and push far toward the poles; but we have now fairly discovered the island that we call the earth, and we must begin to make the most of it.

_Another philosophy of agriculture._

Practically all our agriculture has been developed on a rainfall basis. There is ancient irrigation experience, to be sure, but the great agriculture of the world has been growing away from these regions. Agriculture is still moving on, seeking new regions; and it is rapidly invading regions of small rainfall.

About six-tenths of the land surface of the globe must be farmed, if farmed at all, under some system of water-saving. Of this, about one-tenth is redeemable by irrigation, and the remainder by some system of utilization of deficient rainfall, or by what is inappropriately known as dry-farming. The complementary practices of irrigation and dry-farming will develop a wholly new scheme of agriculture and a new philosophy of country life (page 44).

Even in heavy rainfall countries there is often such waste of water from run-off that the lands suffer severely from droughts. No doubt the hilly lands of our best farming regions are greatly reduced in their crop-producing power because people do not prepare against drought as consciously as they provide against frost (page 52). It is often said that we shall water Eastern lands by irrigation, and I think that we shall; but our first obligation is to save the rainfall water by some system of farm-management or dry-farming.

Agriculture rests on the saving of water.

_The obligation of the farmer._

The farmer is rapidly beginning to realize his obligation to society. It is usual to say that the farmer feeds the world, but the larger fact is that he saves the world.

The economic system depends on him. Wall Street watches the crops.

As cities increase proportionately in population, the farmer assumes greater relative importance, and he becomes more and more a marked man.

Careful and scientific husbandry is rising in this new country. We have come to a realization of the fact that our resources are not unlimited. The mining of fertilizing materials for transportation to a few spots on the earth will some day cease. We must make the farming sustain itself, at the same time that it provides the supplies for mankind.

We all recognize the necessity of the other great occupations to a well-developed civilization; but in the nature of the case, the farmer is the final support. On him depends the existence of the race. No method of chemical synthesis can provide us with the materials of food and clothing and shelter, and with all the good luxuries that spring from the bosom of the earth.

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 obligation of the conservation movement._

What I have meant to impress is the fact that the farmer is the ultimate conservator of the resources of the earth. He is near the cradle of supplies, near the sources of streams, next the margin of the forests, on the hills and in the valleys and on the plains just where the resources lie. He is in contact with the original and raw materials. Any plan of conservation that overlooks this fact cannot meet the situation. The conservation movement must help the farmer to keep and save the race.

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS

In the preceding pages I have tried to develop the reader's point of view. To do this, I have gone over very briefly some of the questions that are now actively under discussion. There are other matters, of a more personal nature, that need to be discussed, or at least mentioned, in connection with even a sketchy consideration of the country-life movement; and some of these I now place together in a closing budget.

_The open country must solve its own problems._

It may first be said that the reconstruction of the open country must depend in the main on the efforts of the country people themselves. We are glad of all interchange of populations; the influx of country blood has thus far been invaluable to cities; the outgo of city people has set new aspirations into the country, and it is still necessary to call on the cities for labor in times of pressure: but stated in its large terms, the open country will rise no higher than the aspirations of the people who live there, and the problems must be solved in such way that they will meet the conditions as they exist on the spot.

_Profitable farming is not a sufficient object in life._

It may then be said that it is the first duty of every man to earn a decent living for himself and those dependent on him; and a countryman cannot expect to have much influence on his time and community until he makes his farm pay in dollars and cents.

But the final object in life is not to make money, but to use money in developing a higher type of endeavor and a better neighborhood. The richest farming regions do not necessarily have the best society or even the best living conditions. Social usefulness must become a fact in country districts. The habit of life in the usual farm family is to take everything to itself and to keep it. Standards of service must take the place of standards of property.

_New country professions._

The country-life movement does not imply that all young persons who hereafter shall remain in the country are to be actual farmers. The practice of customary professions and occupations will take on more importance in country districts. The country physician, veterinary, pastor, lawyer, and teacher are to extend greatly in influence and opportunity.

But aside from all this, entirely new occupations and professions are to arise, even the names of which are not yet known to us. Some of them are already under way. There will be established out in the open country plant doctors, plant-breeders, soil experts, health experts, pruning and spraying experts, forest experts, farm machinery experts, drainage and irrigation experts, recreation experts, market experts, and many others. There will be housekeeping experts or supervisors. There will be need for overseers of affiliated organizations and stock companies. These will all be needed for the purpose of giving special advice and direction (page 78). We shall be making new applications of rural law, of business methods for agricultural regions, new types of organization. The people will find that it will pay to support such professions or agents as these.

Country life will become more complex as rapidly as it becomes more efficient.

_The personal resources._

The attitude toward one's world has much to do both with his effectiveness and with his satisfaction in living; and this is specially true with the farmer, because he is so much alone and has so few conventional sources of entertainment. It may be important to provide new entertainment for the farmer; but it is much more important to develop his personal resources.

The simple life, as Pastor Wagner so well explains, is a state of mind. It is a simplification of desire, a certain directness of effort and of purpose that brings us quickly to a result, and such an attitude that we derive our satisfactions from the humble and the near-at-hand. The countryman is the man who has the personal touch with his environment.

With the increasing differentiation of country life, it is of the first importance that the country people do not lose their simplicity of desires.

_The meaning of the environment._