THE WAY TO BETTER FARMING AND BETTER LIVING
The retarded application of science to agriculture and neglect of agricultural education--Present progress in agricultural education--Full benefit of education must await coöperative organisation--Connection between coöperation and social progress--Mr. Roosevelt on the cause and cure of rural discontent--Two views upon the principles of rural betterment--The part coöperation is playing in Irish rural society--General observations on town and country pleasures--The social necessity for a redirection of rural education--The rural labour problem--The position of women in farm life--The reason why the remedy for rural backwardness must come from without--The paradox of the problem 117
Summary of diagnosis and indication of treatment--Chief aim the coördination of agencies available for social work in the country--Numerical strength and fine social spirit abroad, but leadership needed--Mutual interest of advocates of Conservation and of rural reform--The psychological difficulty due to predominance of urban idea--Roman history repeating itself in New York--The natural leaders of the Country Life movement to be found in the cities--The objects of the movement defined--Two new institutions to be created; the one executive and organising, the other academic--The National Conservation Association qualified to initiate and direct the movement--Possibly an American Agricultural Organisation Society should be founded for the work--The chief practical work the introduction of agricultural coöperation--Necessity for joining forces with existing philanthropic agencies--Suggested enlistment of country clergy in coöperative propagandism--The Country Life Institute, its purpose and functions--Reason why one body cannot undertake work assigned to the two new institutions--The financial requirements of the Institute--Summary and conclusions 145
I submit in the following pages a proposition and a proposal--a distinction which an old-country writer of English may, perhaps, be permitted to preserve. The proposition is that, in the United States, as in other English-speaking communities, the city has been developed to the neglect of the country. I shall not have to labour the argument, as nobody seriously disputes the contention; but I shall trace the main causes of the neglect, and indicate what, in my view, must be its inevitable consequences. If I make my case, it will appear that our civilisation has thus become dangerously one-sided, and that, in the interests of national well-being, it is high time for steps to be taken to counteract the townward tendency.