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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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