THE WORK OF RURAL ORGANIZATION 1

THOMAS NIXON CARVER

1

THE purpose of this paper is to point out the need that now exists for a better organization of rural interests and the difficulties that must be overcome before that need can be fully met.

One of those movements which thinking men of every generation have regretted is that which is known as the rural exodus. A little discrimination, however, will convince any one that such an exodus has its favorable as well as its unfavorable side. Agriculture is limited by space or superficial area. After an agricultural region has once become settled, with all the land in cultivation, and with enough labor employed on it to cultivate it somewhere beyond the point of diminishing returns, it must do one of three things: First, it may limit its birth-rate and keep the population stationary. France is an example. Secondly, it may increase the intensity of its cultivation, getting continually smaller products per man, though increasing the product per acre. Parts of Italy and Japan are examples. Thirdly, its surplus rural population may migrate either to new agricultural regions or to cities. Rural America is an example. Among these three possibilities, the last named probably has the fewest objections.

While a normal and healthy rural community will, in all probability, swarm, or send its surplus people elsewhere, it is always to be hoped that it will retain its fair share of ability and talent. Otherwise it must deteriorate as its stock deteriorates. It is the belief of many observers that our rural communities have not retained their fair share of talent, but have

1 Copyright. Reprinted from The Journal of Political Economy by permission of the University of Chicago Press.

sent an undue share to build up the cities. This is the one aspect of the problem which should give us concern. It should be studied in a sensible way, and treated constructively. It cannot be said that this has been done with many of the proposals which have recently been made.

If we were distressed to find that water was flowing from one lake into another, we should not think it a very wise plan to try to pump some of it back into the upper lake. That would only accelerate the flow downward again. We should try rather to prevent the flow downward. For a long time many people have been distressed to find that population is moving from the country districts to the cities and towns. It has occurred to some of them that the thing to do is to colonize city people in the country. This plan is just about as wise as that of pumping water back from the lower into the upper lake. It would only accelerate the movement cityward. It ought not to take a very wise man to see that it would be wiser to find out why the people are moving cityward and then, if possible, remove the cause.

One reason undoubtedly is that, for some years at least, the rewards of labor have been higher in the cities than in the country. That which we now call the rising cost of living is partly a movement toward an equilibrium; that is, toward a condition where the rewards of industry are approximately as great in the country as in the city. When the farmers are enabled to get a little higher price still for their products, we may expect that the equilibrium will be reached.

There is another reason, perhaps still more important, why country people move to the city. Some of the most prosperous of the country people do not find in the country the means of social, intellectual, and æsthetic satisfaction which their prosperity enables them to afford. They find them in somewhat greater measure in the towns and, since they can afford to do so, they retire from the farms to the towns. This movement of prosperous people from the farms to the towns will never

be stopped until the country offers as great attractions as the towns. Until this is done, the faster farmers become prosperous enough to afford to retire to the towns the faster they will retire.

Another reason why country people move to cities is that some of them have not been trained to see and appreciate the real satisfaction which country life affords. People who think that an electric sign is more beautiful than a sunset, that shop windows are more beautiful than grass and trees and flowers, that crowded streets are more beautiful than open fields, that one of our modern plays, most of which are written by men who mistake neurosis for mentality, is more beautiful than an outdoor pageant will probably continue to go to the cities. Well, the country will be well rid of them.

There are two things above all others which need to be done: the rewards of labor, abstinence, and enterprise in the country must be still further increased, and more of the adornments and embellishments of life must be made available for country people. In order to increase the farmers' income we must spread scientific information more effectively, we must have better methods of marketing, of purchasing farm supplies, and of financing the farmers' business enterprises. In order to increase the adornments and embellishments of life in the country, we must have better schools, better sanitation, better recreation, and more general beautification of the countryside. These are all essential parts of a constructive rural program. Every item in that program calls for organization.

First in order is the problem of increasing farm production. The glib urbanite who tries to cure the rural community by the method of absent treatment is always ready with his favorite prescription of intensive cultivation. During the closing years of the last century England was suffering from an agricultural depression. In 1897 a parliamentary commission was conducting inquiries into the state of agriculture and the reasons therefor. A great deal had been said about intensive agriculture

and the increase of crop yields as an offset to the low prices which products were bringing. The sublime intelligences which set forth this theory did not seem to be blest with even a sense of humor. Otherwise they would have seen the absurdity of trying to increase the supply of farm products as a remedy for low prices.

Sir John Lawes, probably the greatest promoter of agricultural science in modern times, was called before the commission and was able to prove conclusively that, as you increase your yield beyond a moderate amount, each bushel added to the yield costs you more and more and that the last bushel so added always costs you more than any of the others. He also showed that when prices are low the individual farmer must reduce rather than increase his yield, because under such intensive cultivation as will force a high yield the last bushels would then be produced at a loss. Nothing but high prices will justify the farmer in trying to force a high yield from each acre cultivated, since, as Sir John Lawes clearly showed, the extra bushels added to make the high yield are always produced

at an extra cost.

Not only does it take an increased cost to increase the yield per acre, but, normally, an increased acreage involves increased cost. Land differs in its productivity, and the cost of production per bushel is greater on one acre than on another. When prices are low it pays to cultivate only the better acres, or those on which the cost of production can be kept below the price at which the product will sell. But when prices rise, it then pays to cultivate inferior acres, and it pays under no other conditions whatsoever.

Here we have, therefore, one of the most important laws of agricultural economics. As prices fall, not only must the farmer reduce his yield per acre, but he must reduce his acreage, if he would avoid bankruptcy. He must reduce his yield per acre to the point where the last bushel forced from the soil costs no more than the price which he gets for it; and he must reduce

his acreage, keeping the better acres in cultivation and rejecting the poorer, to the point where the poorest acre cultivated can be made to yield some bushels at a cost no greater than the price which they will bring.

When farmers generally do this, and they who do not will speedily be eliminated through bankruptcy, the result is not only a reduction in the yield per acre throughout the country,. but also a reduction in the acreage in all old and well-settled communities. New communities, where there is virgin land to be had for the asking, may still attract settlers. In fact, the presence of vast areas of this virgin land, rapidly settled and reduced to cultivation, has been, during the last half of the nineteenth century, a cause of the low price of farm products. The settlers were not farming for profit, but farming to make a living. Their profit came through a rise in the value of the land which cost them nothing. This frontier condition, however, we must now. begin to regard as temporary and abnormal. We must henceforth base our calculations and our agricultural policy on the permanent and normal conditions of old settled communities.

Inquiries made by Secretary Houston show that, even within the humid belt, only a fraction of the tillable land is under cultivation, and of that which is under cultivation only a fraction is yielding satisfactory returns. This is easily explained by the fact of low prices for farm products in the past — low prices which were due in large part to the rapid settlement of virgin land, together with the economic law just explained. Prices have been so low that farmers did not find it profitable to try to force a high yield per acre, which, as shown above, involved high cost of production. Moreover, they have found it profitable only to cultivate the more productive acres or the acres where the cost of cultivation was lowest, leaving the less productive acres untilled.

Now that prices are rising we may expect these conditions to be cured automatically, provided hindrances be removed