![The equipment of these institutions includes, with the essential
laboratories, farms under cultivation, horses, cattle, sheep, and
swine of all the representative breeds. Last fall I spent two days in
the agricultural school of a typical land-grant college of the corn belt
(Purdue University), and found the experience wholly edifying. The
value of this school to the State of Indiana is incalculable. Here the
co-ordinate extension service under Professor G. I. Christie is
thoroughly systematized, and reaches every acre of land in the
commonwealth. “Send for Christie” has become a watchword among
Indiana farmers in hours of doubt or peril. Christie can diagnose an
individual farmer’s troubles in the midst of a stubborn field, and fully
satisfy the landowner as to the merit of the prescribed remedy; or
he can interest a fashionable city audience in farm problems. He was
summoned to Washington a year ago to supervise farm-labor
activities, and is a member of the recently organized war policies
board.[C] The extension service in all the corn and wheat States is
excellent; it must be in capable hands, for the farmer at once
becomes suspicious if the State agent doesn’t show immediately that
he knows his business.
The students at Purdue struck me as more attentive and alert than
those I have observed from time to time in literature classes of
schools that stick to the humanities. In an entomology class, where I
noted the presence of one young woman, attention was riveted
upon a certain malevolent grasshopper, the foe of vegetation and in
these years of anxious conservation an enemy of civilization. That a
young woman should elect a full course in agronomy and allied
branches seemed to me highly interesting, and, to learn her habitat
in the most delicate manner possible, I asked for a census of the
class, to determine how many students were of farm origin. The
young lady so deeply absorbed in the grasshopper was, I found, a
city girl. Women, it should be noted, are often very successful
farmers and stock-breeders. They may be seen at all representative
cattle-shows inspecting the exhibits with sophistication and
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- 5. Promoting Your School Going Beyond PR Third Edition Carolyn Warner Digital Instant Download Author(s): Carolyn Warner ISBN(s): 9781412958127, 1412958121 Edition: Third Edition File Details: PDF, 7.04 MB Year: 2009 Language: english
- 8. This book is dedicated with equal measures of love, respect, and gratitude to my mother, Mary Tullis Rexroat Kunde, a teacher and one of the first women principals in both Oklahoma and California; to my father, Uriah Thomas Rexroat, Head Teacher of the first public school in Southwest Oklahoma Indian Territory and who later served in the Oklahoma legislature; to my uncle, Dr. David Sherman Tullis; and my aunt, Beulah Baker Tullis. Finally to Jerry Emmett, a great teacher and a remarkable human being. All are examples of great teachers, administrators, and human beings.
- 10. Copyright © 2009 by Corwin All rights reserved. When forms and sample documents are included, their use is authorized only by educators, local school sites, and/or noncommercial or nonprofit entities that have purchased the book. Except for that usage, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information: Corwin SAGE India Pvt. Ltd. A SAGE Company B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative 2455 Teller Road Industrial Area Thousand Oaks, California 91320 Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 (800) 233-9936 India Fax: (800) 417-2466 www.corwinpress.com SAGE Ltd. SAGE Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 33 Pekin Street #02-01 55 City Road Far East Square London EC1Y 1SP Singapore 048763 United Kingdom Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Warner, Carolyn. Promoting your school: going beyond PR/Carolyn Warner.—3rd ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-4129-5812-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4129-5813-4 (pbk.) 1. Schools—Public relations—United States. I. Title. LB2847.W36 2009 659.2′9371—dc22 2008049673 This book is printed on acid-free paper. 09 10 11 12 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Acquisitions Editor: Arnis Burvikovs Associate Editor: Desiree A. Bartlett Production Editor: Libby Larson Copy Editor: Teresa Herlinger Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader: Wendy Jo Dymond Cover Designer: Monique Hahn Graphic Designer: Lisa Riley
- 11. Contents List of Resources and Sample Documents viii Foreword x Jay Mathews Preface xii Acknowledgments xv About the Author xvi Part I. Establishing Communication 1 1. The Foundation of Success 3 The Communication Process 4 Dealing With Perceptions 5 Opinion Leaders 5 Getting the Word Out 6 2. Making Your Schools Stand Out 8 Improving Your Image 9 Strategic Planning: The Key to Organizational Success 9 Developing a Marketing Plan 10 Ideas to Help You Get Started 12 References and Suggested Readings 19 3. Internal Communication 37 Techniques for Improving Staff Communication 39 Techniques for Improving Student Communication 44 Suggested Readings 45 4. Publications/Electronic Communication 48 Newsletters 49 Technology Tools 55 Monthly Calendar/Menu 57 Parent/Student Handbooks 57 Brochures and Flyers 58 Language 59 Suggestions for Better Writing 59 References and Suggested Readings 61
- 12. 5. Media Relations 74 Building a Working Relationship With Reporters 75 Getting Your Story to the Media 78 Writing a News Release 79 Preparing a Media Tip Sheet 81 Writing a Public Service Announcement (PSA) 81 Dealing With Newspapers 82 Using Television Effectively 83 Working With Radio 85 Tips for Talking to the Media 85 Suggested Readings 88 Part II. Building and Strengthening Partnerships 95 6. Building Your Team 97 Who Makes Up the Team? 98 Successful Teams Communicate Well 99 The Leader as Facilitator 100 Defining the Task 100 Getting to Work 101 Suggested Readings 101 7. Involving Parents in School 105 Effective Educators Seek Parent Support 106 Ways to Involve Parents 107 Changing Demographics of the American Family 111 Hard-to-Reach Parents 112 Parents Needed for Political and Economic Support 113 References and Suggested Readings 114 8. Community Outreach 127 Getting the Community Involved 128 Suggested Readings 134 9. Rallying Support for Public Education 138 Career and Vocational-Technical Education 139 How State Coalition Campaigns Are Raising Support for Public Education 141 10. Strengthening and Showcasing Instruction 141 Cooperative Learning 144 Authentic Instruction 144 Problem-Based Learning 145 Interdisciplinary Units 146 Incorporating Technology 147 Multiple Intelligences 148 Assessment 148 Suggested Readings 149
- 13. Part III. Acknowledging Change 151 11. Crisis Management 153 Organizing a Crisis Planning Committee 155 Developing a Crisis Plan 157 School Crisis Team 158 Managing the Crisis 158 Communicating the Situation 159 After the Crisis 160 A Private Crisis 161 References and Suggested Readings 161 12. Data Gathering: Road Map for Accomplishments 176 Types of Data Gathering 178 Identifying Your Target Audience 180 Deciding What to Ask 180 Collecting Data From Other Sources 181 Evaluating and Reporting the Results 181 Suggested Readings 182 13. Communicating With Technology: Going Beyond Web Sites 232 How Has Technology Changed (or Improved) the Way We Communicate With Our Stakeholders? 233 Technology Terminology 233 Internet Behavior Tracking 236 Resource A 237
- 14. List of Resources and Sample Documents 1. The Foundation of Success 3 Commandments for Communicators 7 2. Making Your Schools Stand Out in a Crowd 8 Mount Vernon City Schools Strategic Plan 20 Mt. Edgecumbe High School Vision/Mission Statement 25 The Communication Audit—Your Blueprint to School Community Support 26 Prescott Unified School District Marketing Brochure 29 National Education Media Contacts 35 3. Internal Communication 37 Student of the Month (Certificate) 46 In Recognition of Outstanding Scholarship (Certificate) 46 In Recognition of Excellent Attendance (Certificate) 47 4. Publications/Electronic Communications 48 Fall Mountain Regional High School Newsletter 62 Washington Junior High School Newsletter 64 Plymouth Middle School Brochure 70 Paradise Valley High School Week in Review Form (Staff Bulletin) 72 Owen J. Roberts Weekly Calendar 72 Robbinsdale Area Schools Activities Calendar 73 5. Media Relations 74 News Release (Sample) 89 Chicago Public Schools News Release 90 Washington School District Media Contact Form 92 News Tip Form (Washington School District) 93 Public Service Announcement (Sample) 94 6. Building Your Team 97 Modified Deming Points for Continuous Improvement of Education 103 Implementation/Monitoring Plan 104 7. Involving Parents in School 105 East Irondequoit Central School District Parent Guide Brochure 115 Orange County Public Schools Parent Involvement Survey 117 viii
- 15. ix LIST OF RESOURCES AND SAMPLE DOCUMENTS Fall Mountain Regional High School—Wildcat Winners Club (Notice) 119 Fall Mountain Regional High School Principal’s Postcard 120 Fall Mountain Regional High School Principal’s Positive Phone Call (Report) 120 National Association of Elementary School Principals’ Report to Parents—Sample Pages 121 8. Community Outreach 127 Resolution: Education/Business Partnerships 135 Major Magic City Campus Teaching-Learning Programs 136 9. Rallying Support for Public Education 138 Arizona Public Schools—Making a Difference Every Day 143 10. Strengthening and Showcasing Instruction 144 iSAFE Recognizes Hawaii’s Commitment to e-Safety Education 150 11. Crisis Management 153 Making Sure the Message Gets Through—Creating an Effective Message 162 Guidelines for Handling Specific Varieties of Bad News 164 Threat Call Checklist (Sample) 165 Checklist: Emergency Management Kit 166 Cascade Middle School Memo—Lockdown Procedures 167 Lockdown (Flyer) 168 Task Check-Off List for Crisis Intervention 169 Emergency Calling Tree (Sample) 170 Crisis Procedures for Person in Charge 171 Guidelines for Emergency Notification 171 Suicide Postvention Plan 172 Sample Letter to Parents (On Occasion of Death/Accident) 173 Sample Letter to Students (On Occasion of Suicide of Friend or Classmate) 174 Child Abuse Reporting Procedures (Sample) 175 12. Data Gathering 176 Data-Gathering and Execution Plan 183 Superstars in Education 185 Desert Foothills Report Card 192 L’Anse Creuse Middle School North Parent Survey 194 Mountain View School Parent Survey 200 Magic City Campus Parent Needs Assessment Survey 205 The Middle School Concept (Evaluation) 207 Guidelines for Running a Focus Group 208 John Jacobs Site Council Needs Assessment (Notice) 209 Assessment Participation Letter to Parents 210 Angola High School Statistical Report 211 Marion County Public Schools Parent Survey 228
- 16. Foreword Educators will often tell you that schools get too much negative coverage in the press. That may be true from their perspective. Just one or two stories about bad cafeteria food or missing textbooks may be too much for some people. But I have been reading education stories in The Washington Post and other newspapers, as well as watching them on television, for 40 years, and most of those stories have been positive. We education reporters know that our readers are mostly parents, teachers, and students. They want to know what is happening in schools. They have invested so much time and hope in those places, they are much more pleased to read happy stories than nasty ones. Carolyn Warner, an extraordinarily experienced veteran of education news coverage in America, understands that. Notice how upbeat and optimistic her sugges- tions are for promoting one’s school. She knows that we journalists (well, most of us at least) are well-brought-up and friendly people, motivated not by a desire to make schools look bad but by a need to make enough money to eat and pay the rent. We know we will not be able to do that if we don’t write a lot of interesting stories and get them to our editors on time. Reflect for a moment on the kinds of newspapers that do most of the education report- ing in this country. They are the opposite of The Washington Post. They are small, not big. They are very local, not regional or national. They are often weeklies, not dailies. And what do the editors of those small papers want to see, first and foremost, in their school stories? Blood? Tragedy? Corruption? Nope. They want to see names—names of students, names of parents, names of teachers, as many names as possible. Why? Because people love to see their names in the paper and are more likely to buy it if the editors and reporters make a great effort to mention lots of local folks. Former Arizona state school superintendent Warner also appreciates a unique advan- tage that educators have when dealing with reporters. People become teachers because they want to help kids. They are, in my view, among the most humane people I know. I have covered business tycoons, and bureaucrats, and politicians. When I made mistakes in stories about people like that, they never took my phone calls again. But whenever I make a mistake in a story about a teacher—and I have done that many times—the teacher will take my call or answer my e-mail the next day, without hesitation. She will explain to me what I did wrong, and tell me how I can do better the next time. She treats me just like the student she gave a D+ to on an exam. To her, all people are educable, and she treats them that way. That is exactly the way we journalists should be dealt with, like slow-witted pupils who need more time and guidance to do our work correctly. Ms. Warner is too polite to say this in her book, but the best way to handle a conversation with any of us is to pretend we are about 12 years old. That way, you won’t yell at us, you won’t question our parentage, you won’t hang up the phone. You will simply tell us how to do better and encourage us in that direction. x
- 17. Sounds simple, right? It’s not. This book is 264 pages long, and Ms. Warner has not wasted a single word. Forging a strong and healthy bond between a community and its schools can be hard work. It takes thought and preparation and teamwork. Ms. Warner has seen how this is done from every possible perspective. I may quarrel with some of her advice, but not much of it. And I suspect that wherever we differ—given that she has much more experience with these issues than I do—she is right and I am wrong. So, enjoy the book. If I were you, I would use the table of contents to sample parts of the book that interest you most. But if you are an educator, or an active community member, for whom these issues are an important part of your life, I would read the whole thing. And remember, the next time you see reporters like me, annoying and intrusive and demanding more than you can give, just smile and say you are so impressed with our good questions, and will be happy to help us with our story. We mean well, usually, even if it doesn’t sound like it. You should not pat us on the head, but treat us like the occa- sionally impatient and clueless girls and boys we are, and all will work out fine. —Jay Mathews Washington Post Education Columnist, 2008 xi FOREWORD
- 18. xii Preface The first edition of Promoting Your School was published in 1994. Because of its success, Corwin asked me to update it with new material on the challenges facing education in the 21st century. The second edition, published in 2000, came out on the cusp of the explosion in technology that is still going on. Today, as we have prepared this third edition, even more rapid advances in technology continue to direct the ways we com- municate. So we have done even more research on the most effective applications of tech- nology. Educational leaders who participated in the first and second editions of the book were asked for additional input. From elementary and secondary state school “Principals of the Year” to “Superintendents of the Year” to school public relations experts from around the country—all were invited to contribute. As a result, this new edition contains updated examples of how these experts are taking full advantage of the latest technology in school and district communication efforts. Students and educators alike are increasingly sophisticated in their knowledge and use of computer technology and all its possibilities, so examples have been added throughout this edition showcasing some of the best prac- tices in use today in public education. There is no better way to increase the confidence level of parents who want their children to be prepared to succeed both academically and economically in this changing world than to show them firsthand how educational change, creatively employed by educational leaders, is benefiting their children. Promoting Your School is about communication. In this era of high-demand/high- performance expectations, schools struggle with their role in the community and with their ability to project an image that is both positive and honest. Academic requirements have increased at the same time that schools have taken on countless new responsibilities— responsibilities having nothing to do with the classic “three R’s” that traditionally have been fulfilled by extended families, community agencies, and religious institutions. Promoting Your School was written with these realities in mind, and to simplify at least some aspects of the life of all school leaders by helping them draw upon a wide array of school and community resources to build a support base of human, material, and financial capital. Parents who believe their children are getting a quality education in your school or school district will not “vote with their feet” by withdrawing their children from the public schools and enrolling them in a private school—and then lobbying for state fund- ing to pay their tuition! If you honestly and openly involve parents and the greater com- munity in your efforts to improve your school or your district, they will reward you not only with their time and support but also with the most precious asset they possess—their children. Moreover, America’s businesses have come to understand that a well-trained, well- educated, properly motivated workforce is the most powerful asset any company can have—especially if that company wants to be a player in the global economy of the 21st century. Employers are increasingly willing, even eager, to partner with schools to assist in developing such a workforce.
- 19. As it is with the private sector and with parents, it will also be with the community at large. Households that have no school-age children need tangible demonstrations of get- ting their money’s worth before they will even consider paying more in taxes to support somebody else’s children. It is up to you and your school teams to demonstrate the value of the education tax dollar. So, more than ever before, it is “Job #1” for schools and school leaders to build and strengthen the four-way partnership between schools, parents, community, and the pri- vate sector. Today’s high-demand/high-performance–era educational leaders must be able to successfully communicate the needs, problems, goals, successes, challenges, and educational priorities of their schools. Stakeholders who know the truth about public schools have demonstrated a remarkable willingness to be supportive not only with their time but with their resources as well. But you have to tell them! You have to communicate with them! The entire community has to be told. It is up to you to see that the message gets out, and to remember that some of your best communicators are your students, staff, parents, and community members. Throughout this book, the word marketing is used. You have to market (sell) your school and your district to the external constituencies of parents and community and employers, as well as to the internal constituencies of students, teachers, and staff. Every group must be given a reason for caring about what happens to your school. No single book can answer every question or foresee every eventuality, but the strate- gies contained in this book can provide you with a map to help you and your team get to where you want and need to go. Most of these techniques and strategies are drawn from the actual successful experiences of schools all across the United States. Still others are taken from real-world business and political situations in which collaborative, commu- nicative leadership has overcome bureaucratic tradition and inertia. There are 13 chapters in this book. Each chapter deals with a separate component of communicating/marketing challenges and offers strategies for how to meet them. Unlike a novel or a biography, this book isn’t necessarily designed to be read from beginning to end, or chapter by chapter. Communicating/marketing/selling your school or your school district is the only “plot,” and there is a certain amount of duplication from chap- ter to chapter, since some basic marketing techniques obviously apply to more than one strategy or project. Thus, each chapter is something of a stand-alone “cookbook” intended to provide hands-on strategies, tips, how-to’s, lists, and resources for reaching and enlisting your essential audiences. The emphasis is on the practical and the doable rather than the theoretical. Clearly, every tip and technique will not work for every school. Although some of this information may be old hat or didn’t work for you, it may be new to someone else and may work well in another school environment or community. Also, remember that just because an idea has been around a long time doesn’t mean it’s not a good one. This book is written to be used by all school and district administrators, new to the position or experienced, and at schools or districts, large or small; rural, suburban, or urban; elementary, intermediate, or secondary. It recognizes that principals and district administrators come to this task with varying levels of expertise in communications and marketing but that they are united by a common desire to help their schools be the best that they can be. The book is also intended to be used, or at least to be helpful, to leaders of PTA/PTO orga- nizations who want to be effective and supportive school advocates; to business leaders who realize that, without quality public schools, they have no economic future; to community xiii PREFACE
- 20. xiv PROMOTING YOUR SCHOOL members who understand that good schools make strong, healthy neighborhoods; and to elected and appointed public officials who understand the relationship between high- achieving public schools and an enhanced quality of life for their constituents. The resources and samples at the end of each chapter were drawn from a wide vari- ety of sources. A survey instrument was sent to “Principals of the Year” in all 50 states and to selected other school administrators—several hundred in all—soliciting items from their “arsenal of tricks.” Other techniques and concepts were gleaned from school public relations professionals and other communication experts. The goal throughout was to avoid reinventing the wheel and to seek out what works best from the practitioners who are in the arena, marketing their schools day in and day out. Selecting which material to include was a challenging task. The standards were to select those resources/samples that (a) seemed to best represent successful practices, (b) could be replicated outside their original setting, (c) covered as wide a spectrum of techniques and approaches as possible, and (d) could actually be implemented at the building level with building-level resources as well as at the district level, with a broader array of support. Every form, sample, example, or model is included in the book for one purpose only: to be used. Permission is granted to readers to copy, modify, or adapt any of this material for local school or district use. Like the first and second editions, this new, third edition of Promoting Your School: Going Beyond PR has been very much a collaborative effort. Throughout the research process, I have received enormous and willing assistance from many of the best, most cre- ative minds in education and from a number of outstanding national educational organi- zations and enterprises. I am grateful to the many educators who have shared so generously their ideas, advice, techniques, strategies, wisdom, and vision. Their contributions make up a large portion this book. With admiration and appreciation, those educators who con- tributed to both the original and second editions of Promoting Your School are acknowl- edged in Resource A at the end of the book.
- 21. Acknowledgments My special gratitude goes to Eleanor Andersen and Jeri Robertson for their research, contributions, and updates to this edition of Promoting Your School; to David Bolger for his contributions to all three; and to Bethany Holder and Renee Davis for their tireless assistance in bringing this third edition to completion. This book would not have been written without the inspiration, talents, and collabo- ration of all the people and organizations listed throughout the book. The credit goes to them. The errors of commission or omission remain mine alone. PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Corwin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following individuals: Bruce Deterding, Principal Wichita Heights High School Wichita, KS Anne Roede Giddings, Assistant Superintendent Ansonia Public Schools Ansonia, CT William A. Sommers, Program Manager Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) Austin, TX xv
- 22. About the Author Carolyn Warner has gained national stature as one of America’s most articulate educational and public policy leaders. A product of pio- neering Oklahoma stock, her father was an Oklahoma state senator, teacher, and newspaper publisher in whose honor the first public school in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory was named. Her mother, also a teacher, served as a school principal in both Oklahoma and California. With six children in the public schools, Carolyn Warner became an active parent volunteer and PTA member, and she began her public service career with election to the Phoenix Union High School District Board of Trustees. In 1974, public service became a full-time commitment when she was elected Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the first noneducator ever elected to this post. She was reelected to two additional 4-year terms. During her tenure, Warner became nationally known for her advocacy of educational accountability (both academic and fiscal); citizen participation in educational decision making; the integration of career and technical education and basic academic skills; and an unparalleled partner- ship with school administrators, teachers, and business leaders. Under her leadership, Arizona’s Basic Skills and Employability Skills initiatives became national models, and were among the first educational materials to be printed in the Navajo language. As a respected public policy leader, Warner maintains an active role in political and educational initiatives and organizations on both the state and national scene. Drawing on her vast experience in government, business, education, and communications, she heads her own firm, Corporate Education Consulting, Inc., which offers consulting, speaking, seminar, and training services focusing on education, workforce/workplace issues, leadership, and public–private partnerships. Carolyn Warner is nationally known as a speaker of uncommon skills, giving over 30 keynote and seminar presentations per year. Her public speaking expertise is reflected in her bestseller, The Last Word: A Treasury of Women’s Quotes. She is also the author of Everybody’s House—The Schoolhouse, published by Corwin in 1997. xvi
- 25. The Foundation of Success “If you’re the only one who knows something, it’s a secret.” In days past, schools did not always need solid communication and public relations programs. The school was there, the teachers were there, parents sent their children, the law said so—and that was it! Half a century ago, more than three-quarters of the families in both rural and urban communities across the United States had children in public schools. Today, fewer than one-quarter of families have children in public schools, leaving many community members with no direct line of communication with their local schools. Thus, the traditional modes of communication from the school to the public—report cards, parent-teacher conferences, calls home when a child misbehaved, open house, fly- ers announcing special events, a newsletter, sporadic media coverage of special activities— were deemed adequate for keeping the community informed. But today, these methods, although still important pieces of a comprehensive communication plan, are simply not sufficient to build the broad-based support schools need to be successful. The rightness of your “cause” (your position, your district’s mission) aside, people just aren’t going to take your word for it anymore. They want to see results, accountabil- ity, proof. Can you blame them for being skeptical in the face of the current, widespread public furor over the crisis in American education? However, it has been demonstrated that, over the long haul, communities will support a school system that exhibits a solid, measurable commitment to quality. As a professional educator or public education supporter, you know that in most schools throughout the country, most educators are doing a good job with most students. Yet the public’s knowledge of and confidence in public education does not always reflect 3 1
- 26. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 27. accessible to any one for a small fee, interested me particularly because the people were so well apparelled, so “good-looking,” and the atmosphere was so charged with the spirit of neighborliness. The favorite dances there were the waltz (old style), the fox-trot, and the schottische. I confess that this recrudescence of the schottische in Cleveland, a progressive city that satisfies so many of the cravings of the aspiring soul—the home of three-cent car-fares and a noble art museum—greatly astonished me. But for the fact that warning of each number was flashed on the wall I should not have trusted my judgment that what I beheld was, indeed, the schottische. Frankly I do not care for the schottische, and it may have been that my tone or manner betokened resentment at its revival; at any rate a policeman whom I interviewed outside the pavilion eyed me with suspicion when I expressed surprise that the schottische was so frequently announced. When I asked why the one-step was ignored utterly he replied contemptuously that no doubt I could find places around Cleveland where that kind of rough stuff was permitted, but “it don’t go here!” I did not undertake to defend the one-step to so stern a moralist, though it was in his eye that he wished me to do so that he might reproach me for my worldliness. I do not believe he meant to be unjust or harsh or even that he appraised me at once as a seeker of the rough stuff he abhorred; I had merely provided him with an excuse for proclaiming the moral standards of the city of Cleveland, which are high. I made note of the persistence of the Puritan influence in the Western Reserve and hastily withdrew in the direction of the trolley. Innumerable small lakes lie within the far-flung arms of the major lakes adding variety and charm to a broad landscape, and offering summer refuge to a host of vacationists. Northern Indiana is plentifully sprinkled with lakes and ponds; in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota there are thousands of them. I am moved to ask—is a river more companionable than a lake? I had always felt that a river had the best of the argument, as more neighborly and human, and I am still disposed to favor those streams of Maine that are played upon by the tides; but an acquaintance with a great number
- 28. of these inland saucerfuls of blue water has made me their advocate. Happy is the town that has a lake for its back yard! The lakes of Minneapolis (there are ten within the municipal limits) are the distinguishing feature of that city. They seem to have been planted just where they are for the sole purpose of adorning it, and they have been protected and utilized with rare prevision and judgment. To those who would chum with a river, St. Paul offers the Mississippi, where the battlements of the University Club project over a bluff from which the Father of Waters may be admired at leisure, and St. Paul will, if you insist, land you in one of the most delightful of country clubs on the shore of White Bear Lake. I must add that the country club has in the Twin Cities attained a rare state of perfection. That any one should wing far afield from either town in summer seems absurd, so blest are both in opportunities for outdoor enjoyment. Just how far the wide-spread passion for knitting has interfered with more vigorous sports among our young women I am unable to say, but the loss to links and courts in the Western provinces must have been enormous. The Minikahda Club of Minneapolis was illuminated one day by a girls’ luncheon. These radiant young beings entered the dining-room knitting—knitting as gravely as though they were weaving the destinies of nations—and maybe they were! The small confusions and perplexities of seating the party of thirty were increased by the dropping of balls of yarn—and stitches! The round table seemed to be looped with yarn, as though the war overseas were tightening its cords about those young women, whose brothers and cousins and sweethearts were destined to the battle-line.
- 29. On a craft plying the waters of Erie I found all of the conditions of a happy outing and types that it is always a joy to meet. Longfellow celebrated in song “The Four Lakes of Madison,” which he apostrophized as “lovely handmaids.” I treasure the memory of an approach round one of these lakes to Wisconsin’s capitol (one of the few American State-houses that doesn’t look like an
- 30. appropriation!) through a mist that imparted to the dome an inthralling illusion of detachment from the main body of the building. The first star twinkled above it; perhaps it was Wisconsin’s star that had wandered out of the galaxy to symbolize for an hour the State’s sovereignty! Whatever one may miss on piers and in amusement parks in the way of types may be sought with confidence on the excursion steamers that ply the lakes—veritable arks in which humanity in countless varieties may be observed. The voyager is satisfied that the banana and peanut and the innocuous “pop” are the ambrosia and nectar of our democracy. Before the boat leaves the dock the deck is littered; one’s note-book bristles with memoranda of the untidiness and disorder. On a craft plying the waters of Erie I found all the conditions of a happy outing and types that it is always a joy to meet. The village “cut-up,” dashingly perched on the rail; the girl who is never so happy as when organizing and playing games; the young man who yearns to join her group, but is prevented by unconquerable shyness; the child that, carefully planted in the most crowded and inaccessible part of the deck, develops a thirst that results in the constant agitation of half the ship as his needs are satisfied. There is, inevitably, a woman of superior breeding who has taken passage on the boat by mistake, believing it to be first-class, which it so undeniably is not; and if you wear a sympathetic countenance she will confide to you her indignation. The crunching of the peanut-shell, the poignant agony of the child that has loved the banana not wisely but too well, are an affront to this lady. She announces haughtily that she’s sure the boat is overcrowded, which it undoubtedly is, and that she means to report this trifling with human life to the authorities. That any one should covet the cloistral calm of a private yacht when the plain folks are so interesting and amusing is only another proof of the constant struggle of the aristocratic ideal to fasten itself upon our continent.
- 31. The Perry monument at Put-in Bay. A huge column of concrete erected in commemoration of Commodore Perry’s victory. Below there was a dining-saloon, but its seclusion was not to be preferred to an assault upon a counter presided over by one of the most remarkable young men I have ever seen. He was tall and of a slenderness, with a wonderful mane of fair hair brushed straight back from his pale brow. As he tossed sandwiches and slabs of pie
- 32. to the importunate he jerked his hair into place with a magnificent fling of the head. In moments when the appeals of starving supplicants became insistent, and he was confused by the pressure for attention, he would rake his hair with his fingers, and then, wholly composed, swing round and resume the filling of orders. The young man from the check-room went to his assistance, but I felt that he resented this as an impertinence, a reflection upon his prowess. He needed no assistance; before that clamorous company he was the pattern of urbanity. His locks were his strength and his consolation; not once was his aplomb shaken, not even when a stocky gentleman fiercely demanded a whole pie! While Perry’s monument, a noble seamark at Put-in-Bay, is a reminder that the lakes have played their part in American history, it is at Mackinac that one experiences a sense of antiquity. The white- walled fort is a link between the oldest and the newest, and the imagination quickens at the thought of the first adventurous white man who ever braved the uncharted waters; while the eye follows the interminable line of ore barges bound for the steel-mills on the southern curve of Michigan or on the shores of Erie. Commerce in these waters began with the fur-traders travelling in canoes; then came sailing vessels carrying supplies to the new camps and settlements and returning with lumber or produce; but to-day sails are rare and the long leviathans, fascinating in their apparent unwieldiness and undeniable ugliness, are the dominant medium of transportation. One night, a few years ago, on the breezy terrace of one of the handsomest villas in the lake region, I talked with the head of a great industry whose products are known round the world. His house, furnished with every comfort and luxury, was gay with music and the laughter of young folk. Through the straits crawled the ships, bearing lumber, grain, and ore, signalling their passing in raucous blasts to the lookout at St. Ignace. My host spoke with characteristic simplicity and deep feeling of the poverty of his youth (he came to America an immigrant) and of all that America had meant to him. He was near the end of his days and I have thought
- 33. often of that evening, of his seigniorial dignity and courtesy, of the portrait he so unconsciously drew of himself against a background adorned with the rich reward of his laborious years. And as he talked it seemed that the power of the West, the prodigious energies of its forests and fields and hills, its enormous potentialities of opportunity, became something concrete and tangible, that flowed in an irresistible tide through the heart of the nation.
- 34. CHAPTER III THE FARMER OF THE MIDDLE WEST That it may please Thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, so that in due time we may enjoy them.—The Litany. WHEN spring marches up the Mississippi valley and the snows of the broad plains find companionship with the snows of yesteryear, the traveller, journeying east or west, is aware that life has awakened in the fields. The winter wheat lies green upon countless acres; thousands of ploughshares turn the fertile earth; the farmer, after the enforced idleness of winter, is again a man of action. Last year (1917), that witnessed our entrance into the greatest of wars, the American farmer produced 3,159,000,000 bushels of corn, 660,000,000 bushels of wheat, 1,587,000,000 bushels of oats, 60,000,000 bushels of rye. From the day of our entrance into the world struggle against autocracy the American farm has been the subject of a new scrutiny. In all the chancelleries of the world crop reports and estimates are eagerly scanned and tabulated, for while the war lasts and far into the period of rehabilitation and reconstruction that will follow, America must bear the enormous responsibility, not merely of training and equipping armies, building ships, and manufacturing munitions, but of feeding the nations. The farmer himself is roused to a new consciousness of his importance; he is aware that thousands of hands are thrust toward him from over the sea, that every acre of his soil and every ear of corn and bushel of wheat in his bins or in process of cultivation has become a factor in the gigantic struggle to preserve and widen the dominion of democracy.
- 35. I “Better be a farmer, son; the corn grows while you sleep!” This remark, addressed to me in about my sixth year by my great- uncle, a farmer in central Indiana, lingered long in my memory. There was no disputing his philosophy; corn, intelligently planted and tended, undoubtedly grows at night as well as by day. But the choice of seed demands judgment, and the preparation of the soil and the subsequent care of the growing corn exact hard labor. My earliest impressions of farm life cannot be dissociated from the long, laborious days, the monotonous plodding behind the plough, the incidental “chores,” the constant apprehensions as to drought or flood. The country cousins I visited in Indiana and Illinois were all too busy to have much time for play. I used to sit on the fence or tramp beside the boys as they drove the plough, or watch the girls milk the cows or ply the churn, oppressed by an overmastering homesickness. And when the night shut down and the insect chorus floated into the quiet house the isolation was intensified. My father and his forebears were born and bred to the soil; they scratched the earth all the way from North Carolina into Kentucky and on into Indiana and Illinois. I had just returned, last fall, from a visit to the grave of my grandfather in a country churchyard in central Illinois, round which the corn stood in solemn phalanx, when I received a note from my fifteen-year-old boy, in whom I had hopefully looked for atavistic tendencies. From his school in Connecticut he penned these depressing tidings: “I have decided never to be a farmer. Yesterday the school was marched three miles to a farm where the boys picked beans all afternoon and then walked back. Much as I like beans and want to help Mr. Hoover conserve our resources, this was rubbing it in. I never want to see a bean again.” I have heard a score of successful business and professional men say that they intended to “make farmers” of their boys, and a
- 36. number of these acquaintances have succeeded in sending their sons through agricultural schools, but the great-grandchildren of the Middle Western pioneers are not easily persuaded that farming is an honorable calling. It isn’t necessary for gentlemen who watch the tape for crop forecasts to be able to differentiate wheat from oats to appreciate the importance to the prosperous course of general business of a big yield in the grain-fields; but to the average urban citizen farming is something remote and uninteresting, carried on by men he never meets in regions that he only observes hastily from a speeding automobile or the window of a limited train. Great numbers of Middle Western city men indulge in farming as a pastime—and in a majority of cases it is, from the testimony of these absentee proprietors, a pleasant recreation but an expensive one. However, all city men who gratify a weakness for farming are not faddists; many such land-owners manage their plantations with intelligence and make them earn dividends. Mr. George Ade’s Indiana farm, Hazelden, is one of the State’s show-places. The playwright and humorist says that its best feature is a good nine-hole golf-course and a swimming-pool, but from his “home plant” of 400 acres he cultivates 2,000 acres of fertile Hoosier soil. A few years ago a manufacturer of my acquaintance, whose family presents a clear urban line for a hundred years, purchased a farm on the edge of a river—more, I imagine, for the view it afforded of a pleasant valley than because of its fertility. An architect entered sympathetically into the business of making habitable a century-old log house, a transition effected without disturbing any of the timbers or the irregular lines of floors and ceilings. So much time was spent in these restorations and readjustments that the busy owner in despair fell upon a mail-order catalogue to complete his preparations for occupancy. A barn, tenant’s house, poultry-house, pump and windmill, fencing, and every vehicle and tool needed on the place, including a barometer and wind-gauge, he ordered by post. His joy in his acres was second only to his satisfaction in the ease with which he invoked all the apparatus necessary to his comfort. Every
- 37. item arrived exactly as the catalogue promised; with the hired man’s assistance he fitted the houses together and built a tower for the windmill out of concrete made in a machine provided by the same establishment. His only complaint was that the catalogue didn’t offer memorial tablets, as he thought it incumbent upon him to publish in brass the merits of the obscure pioneer who had laboriously fashioned his cabin before the convenient method of post-card ordering had been discovered. II Imaginative literature has done little to invest the farm with glamour. The sailor and the warrior, the fisherman and the hunter are celebrated in song and story, but the farmer has inspired no ringing saga or iliad, and the lyric muse has only added to the general joyless impression of the husbandman’s life. Hesiod and Virgil wrote with knowledge of farming; Virgil’s instructions to the ploughman only need to be hitched to a tractor to bring them up to date, and he was an authority on weather signs. But Horace was no farmer; the Sabine farm is a joke. The best Gray could do for the farmer was to send him homeward plodding his weary way. Burns, at the plough, apostrophized the daisy, but only by indirection did he celebrate the joys of farm life. Wordsworth’s “Solitary Reaper” sang a melancholy strain; “Snow-Bound” offers a genial picture, but it is of winter-clad fields. Carleton’s “Farm Ballads” sing of poverty and domestic infelicity. Riley made a philosopher and optimist of his Indiana farmer, but his characters are to be taken as individuals rather than as types. There is, I suppose, in every Middle Western county a quizzical, quaint countryman whose sayings are quoted among his neighbors, but the man with a hundred acres of land to till, wood to cut, and stock to feed is not greatly given to poetry or humor. English novels of rural life are numerous but they are usually in a low key. I have a lingering memory of Hardy’s “Woodlanders” as a book of charm, and his tragic “Tess” is probably fiction’s highest venture in this field. “Lorna Doone” I remember chiefly because it
- 38. established in me a distaste for mutton. George Eliot and George Meredith are other English novelists who have written of farm life, nor may I forget Mr. Eden Phillpotts. French fiction, of course, offers brilliant exceptions to the generalization that literature has neglected the farmer; but, in spite of the vast importance of the farm in American life, there is in our fiction no farm novel of distinction. Mr. Hamlin Garland, in “Main Traveled Roads” and in his autobiographical chronicle “A Son of the Middle Border,” has thrust his plough deep; but the truth as we know it to be disclosed in these instances is not heartening. The cowboy is the jolliest figure in our fiction, the farmer the dreariest. The shepherd and the herdsman have fared better in all literatures than the farmer, perhaps because their vocations are more leisurely and offer opportunities for contemplation denied the tiller of the soil. The Hebrew prophets and poets were mindful of the pictorial and illustrative values of herd and flock. It is written, “Our cattle also shall go with us,” and, journeying across the mountain States, where there is always a herd blurring the range, one thinks inevitably of man’s long migration in quest of the Promised Land. The French peasant has his place in art, but here again we are confronted by joylessness, though I confess that I am resting my case chiefly upon Millet. What Remington did for the American cattle-range no one has done for the farm. Fields of corn and wheat are painted truthfully and effectively, but the critics have withheld their highest praise from these performances. Perhaps a corn-field is not a proper subject for the painter; or it may be that the Maine rocks or a group of birches against a Vermont hillside “compose” better or are supported by a nobler tradition. The most alluring pictures I recall of farm life have been advertisements depicting vast fields of wheat through which the delighted husbandman drives a reaper with all the jauntiness of a king practising for a chariot-race. I have thus run skippingly through the catalogues of bucolic literature and art to confirm my impression as a layman that farming is not an affair of romance, poetry, or pictures, but a business, exacting and difficult, that may be followed with success only by industrious and enlightened practitioners. The first settlers of the
- 39. Mississippi valley stand out rather more attractively than their successors of what I shall call the intermediate period. There was no turning back for the pioneers who struck boldly into the unknown, knowing that if they failed to establish themselves and solve the problem of subsisting from the virgin earth they would perish. The battle was to the strong, the intelligent, the resourceful. The first years on a new farm in wilderness or prairie were a prolonged contest between man and nature, nature being as much a foe as an ally. That the social spark survived amid arduous labor and daily self- sacrifice is remarkable; that the earth was subdued to man’s will and made to yield him its kindly fruits is a tribute to the splendid courage and indomitable faith of the settlers. These Middle Western pioneers were in the fullest sense the sons of democracy. The Southern planter with the traditions of the English country gentleman behind him and, in slavery time, representing a survival of the feudal order, had no counterpart in the West, where the settler was limited in his holdings to the number of acres that he and his sons could cultivate by their own labor. I explored, last year, much of the Valley of Democracy, both in seed-time and in harvest. We had been drawn at last into the world war, and its demands and conjectures as to its outcome were upon the lips of men everywhere. It was impossible to avoid reflecting upon the part these plains have played in the history of America and the increasing part they are destined to play in the world history of the future. Every wheat shoot, every stalk of corn was a new testimony to the glory of America. Not an acre of land but had been won by intrepid pioneers who severed all ties but those that bound them to an ideal, whose only tangible expression was the log court-house where they recorded the deeds for their land or the military post that afforded them protection. At Decatur, Illinois, one of these first court-houses still stands, and we are told that within its walls Lincoln often pleaded causes. American democracy could have no finer monument than this; the imagination quickens at the thought of similar huts reared by the axes of the pioneers to establish safeguards of law and order on new soil almost before they had fashioned their
- 40. habitations. It seemed to me that if the Kaiser had known the spirit in which these august fields were tamed and peopled, or the aspirations, the aims and hopes that are represented in every farmhouse and ranch-house between the Alleghanies and the Rockies, he would not so contemptuously have courted our participation against him in his war for world domination. What I am calling, for convenience, the intermediate period in the history of the Mississippi valley, began when the rough pioneering was over, and the sons of the first settlers came into an inheritance of cleared land. In the Ohio valley the Civil War found the farmer at ease; to the west and northwest we must set the date further along. The conditions of this intermediate period may not be overlooked in any scrutiny of the farmer of these changed and changing times. When the cloud of the Civil War lifted and the West began asserting itself in the industrial world, the farmer, viewing the smoke-stacks that advertised the entrance of the nearest towns and cities into manufacturing, became a man with a grievance, who bitterly reflected that when rumors of “good times” reached him he saw no perceptible change in his own fortunes or prospects, and in “bad times” he felt himself the victim of hardship and injustice. The glory of pioneering had passed with his father and grandfather; they had departed, leaving him without their incentive of urgent necessity or the exultance of conquest. There may have been some weakening of the fibre, or perhaps it was only a lessening of the tension now that the Indians had been dispersed and the fear of wild beasts lifted from his household. There were always, of course, men who were pointed to as prosperous, who for one reason or another “got ahead” when others fell behind. They not only held their acres free of mortgage but added to their holdings. These men were very often spoken of as “close,” or tight-fisted; in Mr. Brand Whitlock’s phrase they were “not rich, but they had money.” And, having money and credit, they were sharply differentiated from their neighbors who were forever borrowing to cover a shortage. These men loomed prominently in their counties; they took pride in augmenting the farms inherited
- 41. from pioneer fathers; they might sit in the State legislature or even in the national Congress. But for many years the farmer was firmly established in the mind of the rest of the world as an object of commiseration. He occupied an anomalous position in the industrial economy. He was a landowner without enjoying the dignity of a capitalist; he performed the most arduous tasks without recognition by organized labor. He was shabby, dull, and uninteresting. He drove to town over a bad road with a load of corn, and, after selling or bartering it, negotiated for the renewal of his mortgage and stood on the street corner, an unheroic figure, until it was time to drive home. He symbolized hard work, hard luck, and discouragement. The saloon, the livery-stable, and the grocery where he did his trading were his only loafing-places. The hotel was inhospitable; he spent no money there and the proprietor didn’t want “rubes” or “jays” hanging about. The farmer and his wife ate their midday meal in the farm-wagon or at a restaurant on the “square” where the frugal patronage of farm folk was not despised. The type I am describing was often wasteful and improvident. The fact that a degree of mechanical skill was required for the care of farm-machinery added to his perplexities; and this apparatus he very likely left out-of-doors all winter for lack of initiative to build a shed to house it. I used to pass frequently a farm where a series of reapers in various stages of decrepitude decorated the barn-lot, with always a new one to heighten the contrast. The social life of the farmer centred chiefly in the church, where on the Sabbath day he met his neighbors and compared notes with them on the state of the crops. Sundays on the farm I recall as days of gloom that brought an intensification of week-day homesickness. The road was dusty; the church was hot; the hymns were dolorously sung to the accompaniment of a wheezy organ; the sermon was long, strongly flavored with brimstone, and did nothing to lighten “the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world.”
- 42. The horses outside stamped noisily in their efforts to shake off the flies. A venturous bee might invade the sanctuary and arouse hope in impious youngsters of an attack upon the parson—a hope never realized! The preacher’s appetite alone was a matter for humor; I once reported a Methodist conference at which the succulence of the yellow-legged chickens in a number of communities that contended for the next convocation was debated for an hour. The height of the country boy’s ambition was to break a colt and own a side-bar buggy in which to take a neighbor’s daughter for a drive on Sunday afternoon. Community gatherings were rare; men lived and died in the counties where they were born, “having seen nothing, still unblest.” County and State fairs offered annual diversion, and the more ambitious farmers displayed their hogs and cattle, or mammoth ears of corn, and reverently placed their prize ribbons in the family Bibles on the centre-tables of their sombre parlors. Cheap side-shows and monstrosities, horse-races and balloon ascensions were provided for their delectation, as marking the ultimate height of their intellectual interests. A characteristic “Riley story” was of a farmer with a boil on the back of his neck, who spent a day at the State fair waiting for the balloon ascension. He inquired repeatedly: “Has the balloon gone up yit?” Of course when the ascension took place he couldn’t lift his head to see the balloon, but, satisfied that it really had “gone up,” he contentedly left for home. (It may be noted here that the new status of the farmer is marked by an improvement in the character of amusements offered by State-fair managers. Most of the Western States have added creditable exhibitions of paintings to their attractions, and in Minnesota these were last year the subject of lectures that proved to be very popular.) The farmer, in the years before he found that he must become a scientist and a business man to achieve success, was the prey of a great variety of sharpers. Tumble-down barns bristled with lightning- rods that cost more than the structures were worth. A man who had sold cooking-ranges to farmers once told me of the delights of that occupation. A carload of ranges would be shipped to a county-seat
- 43. and transferred to wagons. It was the agent’s game to arrive at the home of a good “prospect” shortly before noon, take down the old, ramshackle cook-stove, set up the new and glittering range, and assist the womenfolk to prepare a meal. The farmer, coming in from the fields and finding his wife enchanted, would order a range and sign notes for payment. These obligations, after the county had been thoroughly exploited, would be discounted at the local bank. In this way the farmer’s wife got a convenient range she would never have thought of buying in town, and her husband paid an exorbitant price for it. The farmer’s wife was, in this period to which I am referring, a poor drudge who appeared at the back door of her town customers on Saturday mornings with eggs and butter. She was copartner with her husband, but, even though she might have “brought” him additional acres at marriage, her spending-money was limited to the income from butter, eggs, and poultry, and even this was dependent upon the generosity of the head of the house. Her kitchen was furnished with only the crudest housewifery apparatus; labor-saving devices reached her slowly. In busy seasons, when there were farm-hands to cook for, she might borrow a neighbor’s daughter to help her. Her only relief came when her own daughters grew old enough to assist in her labors. She was often broken down, a prey to disease, before she reached middle life. Her loneliness, the dreary monotony of her existence, the prevailing hopelessness of never “catching up” with her sewing and mending, often drove her insane. The farmhouse itself was a desolate place. There is a mustiness I associate with farmhouses—the damp stuffiness of places never reached by the sun. With all the fresh air in the world to draw from, thousands of farmhouses were ill-lighted and ill-ventilated, and farm sanitation was of the most primitive order.
- 44. A typical old homestead of the Middle West. The farm on which Tecumseh was born. I have dwelt upon the intermediate period merely to heighten the contrast with the new era—an era that finds the problem of farm regeneration put squarely up to the farmer. III The new era really began with the passage of the Morrill Act, approved July 2, 1862, though it is only within a decade that the effects of this law upon the efficiency and the character of the farmer have been markedly evident. The Morrill Act not only made the first provision for wide-spread education in agriculture but lighted the way for subsequent legislation that resulted in the elevation of the Department of Agriculture to a cabinet bureau, the system of agriculture experiment-stations, the co-operation of federal and State bureaus for the diffusion of scientific knowledge pertaining to farming and the breeding and care of live-stock, and the recent introduction of vocational training into country schools.
- 45. It was fitting that Abraham Lincoln, who had known the hardest farm labor, should have signed a measure of so great importance, that opened new possibilities to the American farmer. The agricultural colleges established under his Act are impressive monuments to Senator Morrill’s far-sightedness. When the first land- grant colleges were opened there was little upon which to build courses of instruction. Farming was not recognized as a science but was a form of hard labor based on tradition and varied only by reckless experiments that usually resulted in failure. The first students of the agricultural schools, drawn largely from the farm, were discouraged by the elementary character of the courses. Instruction in ploughing, to young men who had learned to turn a straight furrow as soon as they could tiptoe up to the plough- handles, was not calculated to inspire respect for “book farming” either in students or their doubting parents. The farmer and his household have found themselves in recent years the object of embarrassing attentions not only from Washington, the land-grant colleges, and the experiment-stations, but countless private agencies have “discovered” the farmer and addressed themselves determinedly to the amelioration of his hardships. The social surveyor, having analyzed the city slum to his satisfaction, springs from his automobile at the farmhouse door and asks questions of the bewildered occupants that rouse the direst apprehensions. Sanitarians invade the premises and recommend the most startling changes and improvements. Once it was possible for typhoid or diphtheria to ravage a household without any interference from the outside world; now a health officer is speedily on the premises to investigate the old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, that hangs in the well, and he very likely ties and seals the well- sweep and bids the farmer bore a new well, in a spot kindly chosen for him, where the barn-lot will not pollute his drinking-water. The questionnaire, dear to the academic investigator, is constantly in circulation. Women’s clubs and federations thereof ponder the plight of the farmer’s wife and are eager to hitch her wagon to a star. Home-mission societies, alarmed by reports of the decay of the
- 46. country church, have instituted surveys to determine the truth of this matter. The consolidation of schools, the introduction of comfortable omnibuses to carry children to and from home, the multiplication of country high schools, with a radical revision of the curriculum, the building of two-story schoolhouses in place of the old one-room affair in which all branches were taught at once, and the use of the schoolhouse as a community centre—these changes have dealt a blow to the long-established ideal of the red-mittened country child, wading breast-high through snow to acquaint himself with the three R’s and, thus fortified, enter into the full enjoyment of American democracy. Just how Jefferson would look upon these changes and this benignant paternalism I do not know, nor does it matter now that American farm products are reckoned in billions and we are told that the amount must be increased or the world will starve. The farmer’s mail, once restricted to an occasional letter, began to be augmented by other remembrances from Washington than the hollyhock-seed his congressman occasionally conferred upon the farmer’s wife. Pamphlets in great numbers poured in upon him, filled with warnings and friendly counsel. The soil he had sown and reaped for years, in the full confidence that he knew all its weaknesses and possibilities, he found to be something very different and called by strange names. His lifelong submission to destructive worms and hoppers was, he learned, unnecessary if not criminal; there were ways of eliminating these enemies, and he shyly discussed the subject with his neighbors. In speaking of the farmer’s shyness I have stumbled into the field of psychology, whose pitfalls are many. The psychologists have as yet played their search-light upon the farm guardedly or from the sociologist’s camp. I here condense a few impressions merely that the trained specialist may hasten to convict me of error. The farmer of the Middle West—the typical farmer with approximately a quarter- section of land—is notably sensitive, timid, only mildly curious, cautious, and enormously suspicious. (“The farmer,” a Kansas friend whispers, “doesn’t vote his opinions; he votes his suspicions!”) In spite of the stuffing of his rural-route box with instructive literature
- 47. designed to increase the productiveness of his acres and lighten his own toil, he met the first overtures of the “book-l’arnin’” specialist warily, and often with open hostility. The reluctant earth has communicated to the farmer, perhaps in all times and in all lands, something of its own stubbornness. He does not like to be driven; he is restive under criticism. The county agent of the extension bureau who seeks him out with the best intentions in the world, to counsel him in his perplexities, must approach him diplomatically. I find in the report of a State director of agricultural extension a discreet statement that “the forces of this department are organized, not for purposes of dictation in agricultural matters but for service and assistance in working out problems pertaining to the farm and the community.” The farmer, unaffected as he is by crowd psychology, is not easily disturbed by the great movements and tremendous crises that rouse the urban citizen. He reads his newspaper perhaps more thoroughly than the city man, at least in the winter season when the distractions of the city are greatest and farm duties are the least exacting. Surrounded by the peace of the fields, he is not swayed by mighty events, as men are who scan the day’s news on trains and trolleys and catch the hurried comments of their fellow citizens as they plunge through jostling throngs. Professor C. J. Galpin, of Wisconsin University, aptly observes that, while the farmer trades in a village, he shares the invisible government of a township, which “scatters and mystifies” his community sense. It was a matter of serious complaint that farmers responded very slowly in the first Liberty Loan campaigns. At the second call vigorous attempts were made through the corn belt to rouse the farmer, who had profited so enormously by the war’s augmentation of prices. In many cases country banks took the minimum allotment of their communities and then sent for the farmers to come in and subscribe. The Third Loan, however, was met in a much better spirit. The farmer is unused to the methods by which money-raising “drives” are conducted and he resents being told that he must do this, that, or the other thing. Townfolk are beset constantly by demands for money for innumerable causes; there is always a
- 48. church, a hospital, a social-service house, a Y. M. C. A. building, or some home or refuge for which a special appeal is being made. There is a distinct psychology of generosity based largely on the inspiration of thoroughly organized effort, where teams set forth with a definite quota to “raise” before a fixed hour, but the farmer was long immune from these influences. In marked contrast with the small farmer, who wrests a scant livelihood from the soil, is his neighbor who boasts a section or a thousand acres, who is able to utilize the newest machinery and to avail himself of the latest disclosures of the laboratories, to increase his profits. One visits these large farms with admiration for the fruitful land, the perfect equipment, the efficient method, and the alert, wide-awake owner. He lives in a comfortable house, often electric-lighted and “plumbed,” visits the cities, attends farm conferences, and is keenly alive to the trend of public affairs. If the frost nips his corn he is aware of every means by which “soft” corn may be handled to the best advantage. He knows how many cattle and hogs his own acres will feed, and is ready with cash to buy his neighbors’ corn and feed it to stock he buys at just the right turn of the market. It is possible for a man to support himself and a family on eighty acres; I have talked with men who have done this; but they “just about get by.” The owner of a big farm, whose modern house and rich demesne are admired by the traveller, is a valued customer of a town or city banker; the important men of his State cultivate his acquaintance, with resulting benefits in a broader outlook than his less-favored neighbors enjoy. Farmers of this class are themselves usually money-lenders or shareholders in country banks, and they watch the trend of affairs from the view-point of the urban business man. They live closer to the world’s currents and are more accessible and responsive to appeals of every sort than their less-favored brethren. But it is the small farmer, the man with the quarter-section or less, who is the special focus of the search-light of educator, scientist, and sociologist. During what I have called the intermediate period—the winter of the farmer’s discontent—the politicians did not wholly
- 49. ignore him. The demagogue went forth in every campaign with special appeals to the honest husbandman, with the unhappy effect of driving the farmer more closely into himself and strengthening his class sense. For the reason that the security of a democracy rests upon the effacement to the vanishing-point of class feeling, and the establishment of a solidarity of interests based upon a common aim and aspiration, the effort making to dignify farming as a calling and quicken the social instincts of the farmer’s household are matters of national importance. It may be said that in no other business is there a mechanism so thoroughly organized for guarding the investor from errors of omission or commission. I am aware of no “service” in any other field of endeavor so excellent as that of the agricultural colleges and their auxiliary experiment and extension branches, and it is a pleasure to testify to the ease with which information touching the farm in all its departments may be collected. Only the obtuse may fail these days to profit by the newest ideas in soil-conservation, plant-nutrition, animal-husbandry, and a thousand other subjects of vital importance to the farmer. To test the “service” I wrote to the Department of Agriculture for information touching a number of subjects in which my ignorance was profound. The return mail brought an astonishing array of documents covering all my inquiries and other literature which my naïve questions had suggested to the Department as likely to prove illuminative. As the extent of the government’s aid to the farmer and stockman is known only vaguely to most laymen, I shall set down the titles of some of these publications: “Management of Sandy Land Farms in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan.” “The Feeding of Grain Sorghums to Live Stock.” “Prevention of Losses of Live Stock from Plant Poisoning.”
- 50. “The Feeding of Dairy Cows.” “An Economic Study of the Farm Tractor in the Corn Belt.” “Waste Land and Wasted Land on Farms.” “How to Grow an Acre of Corn.” “How to Select a Sound Horse.” “The Chalcis Fly in Alfalfa Seed.” “Homemade Fireless Cookers and Their Use.” “A Method of Analyzing the Farm Business.” “The Striped Peach Worm.” “The Sheep-Killing Dog.” “Food Habits of the Swallows, a Family of Valuable Native Birds.” As most of these bulletins may be had free and for others only a nominal price of five or ten cents is charged, it is possible to accumulate an extensive library with a very small expenditure. Soil- fertilization alone is the subject of an enormous literature; the field investigator and the laboratory expert have subjected the earth in every part of America to intensive study and their reports are presented clearly and with a minimum use of technical terms. Many manufacturers of implements or materials used on farms publish and distribute books of real dignity in the advertisement of their wares. I have before me a handsome volume, elaborately illustrated, put forth by a Wisconsin concern, describing the proper method of constructing and equipping a dairy-barn. To peruse this work is to be convinced that the manger so alluringly offered really assures the greatest economy of feeding, and the kine are so effectively photographed, so clean, and so contented that one is impelled to an immediate investment in a herd merely for the joy of housing it in the attractive manner recommended by the sagacious advertiser.
- 51. Agricultural schools and State extension bureaus manifest the greatest eagerness to serve the earnest seeker for enlightenment. “The Service of YOUR College Brought as Near as Your Mail-Box,” is the slogan of the Kansas State Agricultural College. Once upon a time I sought the answer to a problem in Egyptian hieroglyphics and learned that the only American who could speak authoritatively on that particular point was somewhere on the Nile with an exploration party. In the field of agriculture there is no such paucity of scholarship. The very stupidity of a question seems to awaken pity in the intelligent, accommodating persons who are laboring in the farmer’s behalf. Augustine Birrell remarks that in the days of the tractarian movement pamphlets were served upon the innocent bystander like sheriffs’ processes. In like manner one who manifests only the tamest curiosity touching agriculture in any of its phases will find literature pouring in upon him; and he is distressed to find that it is all so charmingly presented that he is beguiled into reading it! The charge that the agricultural school is educating students away from the farm is not substantiated by reports from representative institutions of this character. The dean of the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois, Dr. Eugene Davenport, has prepared a statement illustrative of the sources from which the students of that institution are derived. Every county except two is represented in the agricultural department in a registration of 1,200 students, and, of 710 questioned, 242 are from farms; 40 from towns under 1,000; 87 from towns of 1,000 to 1,500; 262 from towns of 5,000 and up; and 79 from Chicago. Since 1900 nearly 1,000 students have completed the agricultural course in this institution, and of this number 69 per cent are actually living on farms and engaged in farming; 17 per cent are teaching agriculture, or are engaged in extension work; 10 per cent entered callings related to farming, such as veterinary surgery, landscape-gardening, creamery-management, etc.; less than 4 per cent are in occupations not allied with agriculture. It should be explained that the Illinois school had only a nominal existence until seventeen years ago. The number of students has
- 52. steadily increased from 7 registrations in 1890 to 1,201 in 1916-17. At the Ohio College of Agriculture half the freshman classes of the last three years came from the cities, though this includes students in landscape architecture and horticulture. In Iowa State College the reports of three years show that 54.5 per cent of the freshmen were sons of farmers, and of the graduates of a seven-year period (1907- 1914) 34.8 are now engaged in farming. The opportunities open to the graduates of these colleges have been greatly multiplied by the demand for teachers in vocational schools, and the employment of county agents who must be graduates of a school of agriculture or have had the equivalent in practical farm experience. The influence of the educated farmer upon his neighbors is very marked. They may view his methods with distrust, but when he rolls up a yield of corn that sets a new record for fields with which they are familiar they cannot ignore the fact that, after all, there may be something in the idea of school-taught farming. By the time a farm boy enters college he is sufficiently schooled in his father’s methods, and well enough acquainted with the home acres, to appreciate fully the value of the instruction the college offers him. The only difference between agricultural colleges and other technical schools is that to an unscientific observer the courses in agronomy and its co-ordinate branches deal with vital matters that are more interesting and appealing than those in, let us say, mechanical engineering. If there is something that stirs the imagination in the thought that two blades of grass may be made to grow where only one had grown before, how much more satisfying is the assurance that an acre of soil, properly fertilized and thoroughly tended, may double its yield of corn; that there is a choice well worth the knowing between breeds of beef or dairy cattle, and that there is a demonstrable difference in the energy of foods that may be converted into pork, particularly when there is a shortage and the government, to stimulate hog production, fixes a minimum price (November, 1917) of $15.50 per hundredweight in the Chicago market; and even so stabilized the price is close upon $20 in July, 1918.
- 53. Students of agriculture in the pageant that celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Ohio State University.
- 54. The equipment of these institutions includes, with the essential laboratories, farms under cultivation, horses, cattle, sheep, and swine of all the representative breeds. Last fall I spent two days in the agricultural school of a typical land-grant college of the corn belt (Purdue University), and found the experience wholly edifying. The value of this school to the State of Indiana is incalculable. Here the co-ordinate extension service under Professor G. I. Christie is thoroughly systematized, and reaches every acre of land in the commonwealth. “Send for Christie” has become a watchword among Indiana farmers in hours of doubt or peril. Christie can diagnose an individual farmer’s troubles in the midst of a stubborn field, and fully satisfy the landowner as to the merit of the prescribed remedy; or he can interest a fashionable city audience in farm problems. He was summoned to Washington a year ago to supervise farm-labor activities, and is a member of the recently organized war policies board.[C] The extension service in all the corn and wheat States is excellent; it must be in capable hands, for the farmer at once becomes suspicious if the State agent doesn’t show immediately that he knows his business. The students at Purdue struck me as more attentive and alert than those I have observed from time to time in literature classes of schools that stick to the humanities. In an entomology class, where I noted the presence of one young woman, attention was riveted upon a certain malevolent grasshopper, the foe of vegetation and in these years of anxious conservation an enemy of civilization. That a young woman should elect a full course in agronomy and allied branches seemed to me highly interesting, and, to learn her habitat in the most delicate manner possible, I asked for a census of the class, to determine how many students were of farm origin. The young lady so deeply absorbed in the grasshopper was, I found, a city girl. Women, it should be noted, are often very successful farmers and stock-breeders. They may be seen at all representative cattle-shows inspecting the exhibits with sophistication and pencilling notes in the catalogues.
- 55. To sit in the pavilion of one of these colleges and hear a lecture on the judging of cattle is to be persuaded that much philosophy goes into the production of a tender, juicy beefsteak or a sound, productive milch cow. In a class that I visited a Polled Angus steer and a shorthorn were on exhibition; the instructor might have been a sculptor, conducting a class in modelling, from the nice points of “line,” the distribution of muscle and fat, that he dilated upon. He invited questions, which led to a discussion in which the whole class participated. At the conclusion of this lecture a drove of swine was driven in that a number of young gentlemen might practise the fine art of “judging” this species against an approaching competitive meeting with a class from another school. In these days of multiplying farm-implements and tractors, the farmer is driven perforce to know something of mechanics. Time is precious and the breaking down of a harvester may be calamitous if the owner must send to town for some one to repair it. These matters are cared for in the farm-mechanics laboratories where instruction is offered in the care, adjustment, and repair of all kinds of farm-machinery. While in the summer of 1917 only 40,000 tractors were in use on American farms, it is estimated that by the end of the current year the number will have increased to 200,000, greatly minimizing the shortage in men and horses. The substitution of gasolene for horse-power is only one of the many changes in farm methods attributable to the imperative demand for increased production of foodstuffs. Whitman may have foreseen the coming of the tractor when he wrote: “Well-pleased America, thou beholdest, Over the fields of the West those crawling monsters; The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements”; for “crawling monster” happily describes the tractor. The anxiety to serve, to accommodate the instruction to special needs, is illustrated in the length of courses offered, which include a week’s intensive course in midwinter designed for farmers, two-year and four-year courses, and post-graduate work. Men well advanced in years attend the midwinter sessions, eager to improve their
- 56. methods in a business they have followed all their lives. They often bring their wives with them, to attend classes in dairying, poultry- raising, or home economics. It is significant of the new movement in farming that at the University of Wisconsin, an institution whose services to American agriculture are inestimable, there is a course in agricultural journalism, “intended,” the catalogue recites, “to be of special service to students who will engage in farming or who expect to be employed in station work or in some form of demonstration or extension service and who therefore may have occasion to write for publication and certainly will have farm produce and products to sell. To these ends the work is very largely confined to studies in agricultural writing.” IV The easing of the farmer’s burdens, through the development of labor-saving machinery, and the convenience of telephones, trolley- lines, and the cheap automobile that have vastly improved his social prospects, has not overcome a growing prejudice against close kinship with the soil. We have still to deal with the loneliness and the social barrenness that have driven thousands of the children of farms to the cities. The son of a small farmer may make a brilliant record in an agricultural college, achieve the distinction of admission to the national honorary agricultural fraternity (the Alpha Zeta, the little brother of the Phi Beta Kappa), and still find the old home crippling and stifling to his awakened social sense. There is general agreement among the authorities that one of the chief difficulties in the way of improvement is the lack of leadership in farm communities. The farmer is not easily aroused, and he is disposed to resent as an unwarranted infringement upon his constitutional rights the attempts of outsiders to meddle with his domestic affairs. He has found that it is profitable to attend institutes, consult county agents, and peruse the literature distributed from extension centres, but the invasion of his house is a very different matter. Is he not the lord of his acres, an independent,
- 57. self-respecting citizen, asking no favors of society? Does he not ponder well his civic duty and plot the destruction of the accursed middleman, his arch-enemy? The benevolently inclined who seek him out to persuade him of the error of his ways in any particular are often received with scant courtesy. He must be “shown,” not merely “told.” The agencies now so diligently at work to improve the farmer’s social status understand this and the methods employed are wisely tempered in the light of abundant knowledge of just how much crowding the farmer will stand.
- 58. A feeding-plant at “Whitehall,” the farm of Edwin S. Kelly, near Springfield, Ohio.
- 59. Nothing is so essential to his success as the health of his household; yet inquiries, more particularly in the older States of the Mississippi valley, lead to the conclusion that there is a dismaying amount of chronic invalidism on farms. A physician who is very familiar with farm life declares that “all farmers have stomach trouble,” and this obvious exaggeration is rather supported by Dr. John N. Hurty, secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health, who says that he finds in his visits to farmhouses that the cupboards are filled with nostrums warranted to relieve the agonies of poor digestion. Dr. Hurty, who has probably saved more lives and caused more indignation in his twenty years of public service than any other Hoosier, has made a sanitary survey of four widely separated Indiana counties. In Blackford County, where 1,374 properties were inspected, only 15 per cent of the farmhouses were found to be sanitary. Site, ventilation, water-supply, the condition of the house, and the health of its inmates entered into the scoring. In Ohio County, where 441 homes were visited, 86 per cent were found to be insanitary. The tuberculosis rate for this county was found to be 25 per cent higher than that of the State. In Scott County 97.6 per cent of the farms were pronounced insanitary, and here the tuberculosis rate is 48.3 per cent higher than that of the State. In Union County, where only 2.3 per cent of the farms were found to be sanitary, the average score did not rise above 45 per cent on site, ventilation, and health. Here the tuberculosis death-rate was 176.3 in 100,000, against the State rate of 157. In all these counties the school population showed a decrease. It should be said that in the communities mentioned, old ones as history runs in this region, many homes stand practically unaltered after fifty or seventy-five years of continuous occupancy. Thousands of farmers who would think it a shameless extravagance to install a bathtub boast an automobile. A survey by Professor George H. von Tungeln, of Iowa College, of 227 farms in two townships of northern Iowa, disclosed 62 bathtubs, 98 pianos, and 124 automobiles. The number of bathtubs reported by the farmers of Ohio is so small that I shrink from stating it.
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