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
If we have very highly developed persons in the city, we have very
rugged persons in the country. If the sense of brotherhood is highly
evolved in the city, individualism is strongly expressed in the country.
If the world-movement appeals to men in the city, local attachments have
great power with men in the country. If commercial consolidation and
organization are characteristic of the city, the economic separateness
of the man or family is highly marked in the country. The more marked
progress of the city is due to its greater number of leaders and to its
consolidated interests; country people are personally as progressive as
city people of equal intellectual groups, but they have not been able to
attract as much attention or perhaps to make as much headway.
_Comparisons of town and country affairs._
Civilization oscillates between two poles. At the one extreme is the
so-called laboring class, and at the other are the syndicated and
corporate and monopolized interests. Both these elements or phases tend
to go to extremes. Many efforts are being made to weld them into some
sort of share-earning or commonness of interest, but without very great
results. Between these two poles is the great agricultural class, which
is the natural balance-force or the middle-wheel of society. These
people are steady, conservative, abiding by the law, and are to a
greater extent than we recognize a controlling element in our social
structure.
The man on the farm has the opportunity to found a dynasty. City
properties may come and go, rented houses may be removed, stocks and
bonds may rise and fall, but the land still remains; and a man can
remain on the land and subsist with it so long as he knows how to handle
it properly. It is largely, therefore, a question of education as to
how long any family can establish itself on a piece of land.
In the accelerating mobility of our civilization it is increasingly
important that we have many anchoring places; and these anchoring places
are the farms.
These two phases of society produce marked results in ways of doing
business. The great centers invite combinations, and, because society
has not kept pace with guiding and correcting measures, immense abuses
have arisen and the few have tended to fatten on the many. There are two
general modes of correcting, or at least of modifying, these abuses,--by
doing what we can to make men personally honest and responsible, and by
evening up society so that all men may have something like a natural
opportunity.
_The two minds._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account