the other day a city man came to the farm after apples. he loaded up his car and, rendered good-natured by eating three mellow baldwins, he proceeded to tell us where farmers were behind the times. it is a pleasure for many city men to do this and the average farmer good-naturedly listens, always glad to have his customers enjoy themselves. this man said he wondered why farmers have never organized properly so as to defend and control their business. it is quite easy for a man of large affairs to see what could be done if all the farmers could get together in a great business organization.
“the trouble with you folks is that you don’t know how to do team work,” said my city friend. “suppose there are twelve million farmers in the country. suppose they all joined and organized and pledged by all they hold sacred to each put up $5.00 every month as a working fund. suppose they hired the greatest organizing brain in the country and instructed its owner and carrier to go to it. it would simply mean world control by the most patient and deserving class on earth. why don’t you do it?”
that’s the way your city business man talks, and he cannot understand why our farmers do not promptly carry out the plan. of course that word “suppose” takes the bottom out of most facts, but it is hard for the business man to realize why farmers have not been able to do full team work. this man said that large business enterprises in the city were controlled by boards of directors. there might be men on the board who personally hated each other with all the intensity of business hatred. yet when it came to a matter of business policy for the company they all got together and put the proposition through. he said it was different with a farmer, who if he had trouble with his neighbor over a line fence would not under any circumstances vote for him even if he stood for a sound business proposition.
that is the way many of these city men feel. it is largely a matter of ignorance through not understanding country conditions. those of us who spend our lives among the hills can readily understand why it is hard for a farmer to surrender a large share of his individuality and put it into the contribution box of society. many of us, i fear, would dodge or cheat the contribution box in church unless we felt we were under the watchful eye of our wives. possibly we shall contribute more freely to society now that our wives and daughters have the privilege of voting. when a man has lived his life among brick and stone with ancestors who have been constantly warned to “keep off the grass” he comes to be incapable of understanding what is probably the greatest problem of american society. that is the effort to keep our country people contented and feeling that they are getting a fair share of life, so that they will continue cheerfully to feed and clothe the world. you cannot convince a man unless you can understand his language or read his thought. one of the worst misfortunes of the present day is the fact that city and country have grown apart, so that they have no common language.
those of us who live close to nature realize that in order to know the truth we must find
“tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
the trouble with the city man is that he has been denied the blessed privilege of studying that way. therefore, if you would make him know why in the past it has been so difficult for farmers to organize thoroughly you must go to the primary motives of life and not to the high school.
when our first brood of children were small, i thought it well to give them an early lesson in organization. there were four children, and as spring came upon us there was a great desire to start a garden. so we proceeded in the most orderly manner to organize the hope farm garden association. we had a constitution and full set of rules and by-laws. these stated the full duties of all the officers, but somehow we forgot to provide for the plain laborers. the largest boy was president and the smaller boy was vice-president. my little girl was secretary, and the other girl treasurer. it was an ideal arrangement, for each one held an important office, and all were directors. i had a piece of land plowed and harrowed. i bought seeds and tools and the association voted to start the garden at once. they started under directions of the president and i went up the hill to work in the orchard. it proved to be a case where the controlling director should have remained on the job. halfway up the hill i glanced back and saw the hope farm garden association headed for the rocks. the president and vice-president were fighting and the treasurer and secretary were crying. no one was working except the black hen, and she was industriously eating up the seeds.
i came back to save the association if possible and the secretary ran to meet me with the minutes of the meeting on her cheeks. her hands had been in the soil and she had succeeded in transferring a portion of it to her face. through this deposit the tears had forced their way in a track as crooked as the course of the delaware river, in its effort to carve the outline of a human face on the western coast of new jersey. the poor little secretary came up the lane with the old industrial cry which has come down to us out of the ages, tearing apart the efforts of men to combine and improve their condition.
“oh! father, don’t the president have to work?”
the minutes of the meeting clearly revealed the trouble. it seemed that the president of the association made the broad claim that his duty consisted simply in being president. there was nothing in the constitution about his working. of course, a dignified president could not perform manual labor. the secretary followed with the claim that her duty was to write in a book; how could she do that if she worked? then came the treasurer proving by the by-laws that her duty was to hold the money; if she tried to work at the same time she might lose the cash. so naturally she could not work. thus it happened that there was no laborer left except the vice-president. he had resigned and the president was trying to accept his resignation in italics.
these were the same children who had settled a debate on the previous sunday afternoon. the question was whether they would rather have the minister read his sermon or talk off-hand. the vote was 3 to 1 in favor of having him read it. the prevailing argument was that when the minister read his sermon he knew when he got through. the one negative vote was passed on the hope that when he talked off-hand he might be a little off-head, forget one or two pages and thus get through sooner. you may learn from that one reason why it has been so hard in the past for certain farmers to organize.
and one reason why there has grown up an industrial advantage in the town and city may perhaps be learned from another sermon in stones. some years ago we had two boys on the farm. largely in order to keep them busy their mother made a bargain with them to wash windows. they were to be paid so much for each window properly cleaned. of course their mother supposed that the work would be done in the good old-fashioned way of scrubbing the glass by hand with a wet cloth. the object was more to keep them busy than to have any skilled work performed. one boy was a patient plodding character who did not object seriously to hand labor. he took a cloth and a pail of hot water and slowly and carefully rubbed off the glass in the old-fashioned way. the other boy never did like to work and after some thought he went to the neighbor’s and borrowed a small hand-pump with a hose and fine nozzle. he filled this with hot water with the soap dissolved in it and sprayed his windows with the hot mixture. he got them just as clean as the other boy did, but he did three windows while his companion was doing one. then there arose an argument as to whether this boy with the pump should be paid the same price per window as the other boy who did the work by hand. these boys both went to the sunday school and the boy with the pump was able to refer to the parable of the man who hired the workmen at different hours during the day. when they came to settle up the men who had worked all day grumbled because they got no more than the men who had worked half a day. the answer of the boss applied to this window washing. “did i not agree with thee for a penny?”
now in a way the city man with his advantage in labor is not unlike the boy with the pump. the city workman has been able to take advantage of many industrial developments of much machinery which has not yet reached the country. some day there will be an adjustment and then the countryman will have his inning.
some years ago i spent the night with a farmer far back in a country neighborhood. after supper he described in great detail a plan he had evolved for organizing all american farmers in one great and powerful body. his plan was complete and he had worked out every detail except one which he did not seem to think essential. i looked out of the window through the dark night and saw a light far down the road. some neighbor was at home. i thought it a good time for action.
“there,” i said, “is a chance to start this big scheme of yours. down the road i see the light from your neighbor’s window. put on your hat, take the hired man and your boys and we will go right down there and organize the first chapter of this organization. no time like the present.”
the farmer’s face clouded. “why, i haven’t spoken, to that man for three years. he would not keep up the line fence and i had to go to law and make him do it.”
i looked out of the window once more and saw another light to the north of us dimly visible in the darkness. “well, then let us go to this other neighbor. i saw several men there as i came by.”
“that man! i wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents, and he would be sure to elect himself treasurer.”
“well, far across the pasture i see still another light. shall we go there?”
“no, that man doesn’t know enough to go in the house when it rains.”
the farmer’s wife looked up from her sewing as if to speak, but the man answered for her.
“oh, the women meet at the sewing circle and church, and while they talk about each other they keep together and do things for the neighborhood, but somehow the men folks don’t get on.”
yet here was a man who planned to bring all the farmers of the country together and yet could not organize his own neighborhood, because men were kept apart by little prejudices and fancied wrongs. the women combined because they knew enough to realize that these petty things were non-essential, while the great community things could only be remembered by forgetting the meanness of every-day life.
your city men will smile at this sermon in stones, and say that those farmers never can forget their differences and organize. yet city life is worse yet. many a man lives for years within a foot of his neighbor, yet never knows him. there may be only a brick wall between the two families, yet they might as well be 10 miles apart, so far as any community feeling is concerned. if dwellers on any block in the city could combine as a renting or buying association they would quickly settle the high cost of living burden, but while their interests are all in common they are unable to play the part of real neighbors. farmers are coming to it largely through their women and children and the great national farm organization is by no means impossible for the future.
