I have classified problems calling for organization under the following outlines: I. For increasing the farmer's income: (a) the marketing of farm products, (d) the improving of means of communication and transporta- II. For better living conditions in the country: (a) education, (b) sanitation, (d) beautification. Every part of this program calls for organization and it must ultimately be the work of any government agency, such as the Office of Rural Organization, looking toward the effective organization of rural interests to promote it in every detail. In beginning this work the first thing for us to do was to study the field, in order to discover what is actually being done by the American farmers in the way of organization. Much of the time of our staff during the present year has been given to this general survey of organization conditions in the country, the theory being that it is better to develop what we have, or build upon the foundations already laid, than to try to invent or import new methods of organization. Again, it is quite as essential to study the failures as the successes in the way of organization in order that we may form some idea as to why those which failed have failed and why those which succeeded have succeeded. Even this is a very large task, as any one will find who tries it. It is not a thing which can be accomplished in a single year. Along with this general survey we are trying a few modest experiments to see whether our generalizations are correct or not, the theory being that it is better to go too slow than too fast, for a few bad mistakes or conspicuous failures in the be ginning of this movement will produce a reaction and set the whole movement back for another generation. We have found certain methods of purchasing farm supplies which seem thoroughly business-like and satisfactory, both to the manufacturer and to the farmer. These are being tried out, others are being encouraged, and the information is being given out in order that others may make use of the experience already gained by the successful communities. No experiments are being tried by the Office of Rural Organization in the field of rural credit, although a number of experiments actually going on are being carefully studied. Many would doubtless be surprised to know just how much is being done in the way of credit organizations among farmers. In a closely allied field, namely, insurance, the work of organization is long past the experimental stage, and the upper Mississippi Valley is dotted with mutual insurance companies. We are attempting a comprehensive organization of the rural interests in one selected county in the South to see what can be done there in order to gain experience. We shall carry the results of that experience to other counties whenever we feel sure of our ground. These are very modest beginnings, it is true, and may be disappointing to some people, but, as I said before, we are of the opinion that it is better to go too slow than too fast, and in the second place, it is better to study the experiments which other people are carrying on than to attempt to carry on many independent experiments of our own. THE SOCIAL CENTER AND THE RURAL COMMUNITY 1 HERBERT QUICK THE Conscious demand for organized social centers is a thing of recent growth. Like most conscious social demands, it springs from a need too long left unfilled. Those of us who feel the call to action in this new cause should, if possible, formulate in our own minds the need to be met. The movement has been most vigorous in certain cities. It has taken in some places the form of entertainment courses, closer to the community than the theater or the Y.M.C.A. or the ministrations of the lecture platform. It has thus been urged as a means of bringing literature and art into the neighborhood. But I think it would be a mistake to identify the social center movement with entertainment only. In other places and at other times it has assumed the phase of offering to neighborhoods dances and social functions of a more local character and a more unobjectionable sort than the similar affairs offered for profit by individual promoters. But I feel sure that the movement means more than social intercourse and amusement. On other occasions it has sought to bring the people together for the discussion and consideration of sociological and political questions, and for debates and literary exercises. This has been successful in stimulating the citizen to more active participation in public affairs. But the social center means much more than this, I feel sure. Entertainment, amusement, social 1 An address delivered before the National Education Association, July, 1912. functions, political and sociological discussion and debate these all belong in the picture; but there is an underlying psychological demand which appears in all these functions and dominates them all. That demand is, in my opinion, the feeling running all through society that the common, ordinary citizen must learn to coöperate with his fellows as a means of fostering the common good. And when we come to consider the social center as related to the rural community, if the treatment is not to take us outside the field of the social center as ordinarily conceived, we must keep in mind the basis of the movement, the need for coöperative action in neighborhoods. We are all familiar with the fact that as the nation grows older the people seem in some way to become less homogeneous. The neighborhood fellowship which seems to prevail in European neighborhoods is the outgrowth of the ages. The country community which Hardy limns in his Wessex parishes, or which Blackmore describes to us on Exmoor, or Scott in the lands north of the Tweed, seem to possess a neighborhood solidarity altogether lacking in most American communities. We have thought that this neighborship, needing centuries for its growth, might be expected in America as a flower which time will cause to bloom. But American life seems to tend otherwise. In New England, where the historic perspective is longest, neighborship seems to be weakening as the years pass. The social relations in rural communities in most parts of the Middle West are not as close as in the pioneer times, when anyone was a neighbor who lived within ten miles, and the necessity of each leaning on the other in the struggle with nature pressed upon everyone, and there was need felt for the making of new friends in the new environment. The telephone may bring people closer together, but the trolley, the motor car, the daily mail, and the increasing number of friends which the average farm family has in town, all, with many other factors, take the place of neighborship and tend to community individualism rather than neighborhood collectivism. Thus we are forced to the conclusion that as yet none of the influences which have built up neighborhood groups in older nations are at work here. We are justified in believing that inasmuch as American life is growing up with no feudal and mediæval background, such influences will never come into existence. And a close study of European rural life leads to the conclusion that the older rural groups are not of the sort which we should desire if we could have them, picturesque as they are in literature; and that the superiority which the European farmer exhibits as compared with the American farmer in the matter of rural organization is owing, not to historic factors, but to developments which have sprung from conditions of the last decades of the nineteenth century, and from the early years of the twentieth. The Danish peasant is doing better than the American farmer in this respect, not because he is old-fashioned, but because he is up to date. The splendid achievements of the Irish farmers in coöperation, and the enormous successes of the peasants of Italy, Germany, and France in coöperative banking, come from the new life and not from the old. Everywhere, the new wine is being poured into new bottles, instead of the ancient vessels. The new movements in rural life spell democracy, not privilege. Rural communities need to get together; but the American farmer is too much of a utilitarian to yield to the attraction of amusement for its own sake, or offered culture, or debates, or lectures. He is hard-headed and rather cynical about new things. Companionship with his fellows may be needed, but the need is not fully confessed or keenly felt. He is rather single-minded in his pursuit of profit in the material sense. Like all self-respecting people, he objects to the process of being "uplifted" by people who take a position above him. If social centers are to succeed in the rural community, their success must come through their ability to serve the farmer and the farmer's wife along the lines of thought and endeavor which appeal to him. |