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
But the final object in life is not to make money, but to use money in
developing a higher type of endeavor and a better neighborhood. The
richest farming regions do not necessarily have the best society or even
the best living conditions. Social usefulness must become a fact in
country districts. The habit of life in the usual farm family is to take
everything to itself and to keep it. Standards of service must take the
place of standards of property.
_New country professions._
The country-life movement does not imply that all young persons who
hereafter shall remain in the country are to be actual farmers. The
practice of customary professions and occupations will take on more
importance in country districts. The country physician, veterinary,
pastor, lawyer, and teacher are to extend greatly in influence and
opportunity.
But aside from all this, entirely new occupations and professions are to
arise, even the names of which are not yet known to us. Some of them are
already under way. There will be established out in the open country
plant doctors, plant-breeders, soil experts, health experts, pruning and
spraying experts, forest experts, farm machinery experts, drainage and
irrigation experts, recreation experts, market experts, and many others.
There will be housekeeping experts or supervisors. There will be need
for overseers of affiliated organizations and stock companies. These
will all be needed for the purpose of giving special advice and
direction (page 78). We shall be making new applications of rural law,
of business methods for agricultural regions, new types of organization.
The people will find that it will pay to support such professions or
agents as these.
Country life will become more complex as rapidly as it becomes more
efficient.
_The personal resources._
The attitude toward one's world has much to do both with his
effectiveness and with his satisfaction in living; and this is specially
true with the farmer, because he is so much alone and has so few
conventional sources of entertainment. It may be important to provide
new entertainment for the farmer; but it is much more important to
develop his personal resources.
The simple life, as Pastor Wagner so well explains, is a state of mind.
It is a simplification of desire, a certain directness of effort and of
purpose that brings us quickly to a result, and such an attitude that we
derive our satisfactions from the humble and the near-at-hand. The
countryman is the man who has the personal touch with his environment.
With the increasing differentiation of country life, it is of the first
importance that the country people do not lose their simplicity of
desires.
_The meaning of the environment._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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