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
Specifically, the farm must provide more continuous employment if it is
to hold good labor. The farmer replies that he does not have employment
for the whole year; to which the answer is that the business should be
so reorganized as to make it a twelve months' enterprise. The
introduction of crafts and local manufactures will aid to some extent,
but it cannot take care of the situation (page 115). In some way the
farm laborer must be reached educationally, either by winter schools,
night schools, or other means. Every farm should itself be a school to
train more than one laborer. The larger part of the farm labor must be
country born. With the reorganization of country life and its increased
earning power, we ought to see an increase in the size of country
families.
_Public or social bearings._
It is doubtful if city industrialism is developing the best type of
working-men, considered from the point of view of society (page 59). I
am glad of all organizations of men and women, whether working-men or
not. But it seems to me that the emphasis in some of the organizations
has been wrongly placed. It has too often been placed on rights rather
than on duties. No person and no people ever developed by mere
insistence on their rights. It is responsibility that develops them. The
working-man owes responsibility to his employer and to society; and so
long as the present organization of society continues he cannot be an
effective member of society unless he has the interest of his employer
constantly in mind.
The real country working-men must constitute a group quite by
themselves. They cannot be organized on the basis on which some other
folk are organized. There can be no rigid short-hour system on a farm.
The farm laborer cannot drop his reins or leave his pitchfork in the air
when the whistle blows. He must remain until his piece of work is
completed; this is the natural responsibility of a farm laborer, and it
is in meeting this responsibility that he is able to rise to the upper
grade and to develop his usefulness as a citizen.
It is a large question whether we are to have a distinct working-class
in the country as distinguished from the land-owning farmer. The old
order is one of perfect democracy, in which the laboring-man is a part
of the farmer's family. It is not to be expected that this condition can
continue in its old form, but the probability is that there will always
be a different relation between working-man and employer in the country
from that which obtains in the city. The relation will be more direct
and personal. The employer will always feel his sense of obligation and
responsibility to the man whom he employs and to the man's family.
Persons do not starve to death in the open country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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