The Country-Life Movement in the United StatesBailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde)
History
The Country-Life Movement in the United States
Bailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde)
Country life
Some persons seem to think that the movement of city men out to the
country offers a solution of country problems. It usually offers only a
solution of a city problem,--how a city man may find the most enjoyment
for his leisure hours and his vacations. Much of the rising interest in
country life on the part of certain people is only a demand for a new
form of entertainment. These people strike the high places in the
country, but they may contribute little or nothing to real country
welfare. This form of entertainment will lose its novelty, as the
sea-shore loses it for the mountains and the horse loses it for the
motor-car or aëroplane. The farming of some city men is demoralizing to
real country interests. I do not look for much permanent good to come to
rural society from the moving out of some of the types of city men or
from the farming in which they ordinarily engage.
I am glad of all movements to place persons on the land who ought to go
there, and to direct country-minded immigrants away from the cities; but
we must not expect too much from the process, and we must distinguish
between the benefit that may accrue to these persons themselves and the
need of reconstruction in the open country. It is one thing for a family
to move to the land in order to raise its own supplies and to secure the
benefits of country life; it is quite another thing to suppose that an
exodus from city to country will relieve the economic situation or make
any difference in the general cost of living, even assuming that the
town folk would make good farmers. And we must be very careful not to
confuse suburbanism and gardening with country life.
To have any continuing effect on the course of rural development, a
person or an agency must become a real part and parcel of the country
life.
_Sending the surplus population to the country._
It is also proposed to send to the country the poor-to-do and the
dissatisfied and the unemployed. This is very doubtful policy. In the
first place, the presumption is that a person who does not do well or is
much dissatisfied in the town would not do well in the country. In the
second place, the country does not need him. We may need more farm
labor, as we need more of all kinds of labor, but in the long run this
labor should be produced mostly in the country and kept there by a
profitable and attractive rural life. The city should not be expected
permanently to supply it. The labor that the city can supply with profit
to country districts is the very labor that is good enough for the city
to keep.
The relief of cities, if relief is to be secured, must lie in the
evolution of the entire situation, and not merely in sending the surplus
population into the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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