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The Advantages of Farm Life
Title
The Advantages of Farm Life
A Study by Correspondence and Interviews with Eight Thousand Farm Women
Date
1924
Excerpt
The Country Life Commission appointed by President Roosevelt found many unfavorable conditions prevalent in the open country, and gave them wide publicity in its report. This report is not an indictment of country life, hut a candid statement of some of the handicaps to the development of the innate power of rural social institutions. The Commission felt that the country was not making progress as fast as the cities and towns and made some pointed recommendations looking toward improvement.
The findings of the Commission stimulated much further discussion and research in which, rather naturally, attention was centered on the evils to he removed and their sources. A rather gloomy picture was painted and put before the people and the impression it made persists in the minds of city people and writers on rural topics. As late as 1914 the Secretary of Agriculture, the Honorable D. F. Houston, received more than two thousand letters, in response to a questionnaire regarding the needs of farm people, which brought to light many undesirable phases of life on the farms. These letters were published as Reports of the Office of the Secretary Nos. I03, 104, 105, and 106. This gave direction to further work in agricultural and home economics extension, credit, roads, schools, and other measures and were therefore decidedly helpful. But with the movement for improvement of conditions well under way, protests against calamity stories began to appear and farm people now resent characterization and cartooning as ignorant objects of misguided pity.
The every day life of the bulk of the people of this country is not news. So there would be no point to any statement of country life at its best if there had not been previously so generally entertained a conception of country life that is woefully one-sided. T7ith the popular concpetion in mind and a conviction that it was misrepresentative, the author set out to visit farm women in their homes and to report in their own words their attitude toward farm. life. Others were reached by letters, some of which were written in refutation of a misrepresentation of farm life which appeared in the press.
The findings of the Commission stimulated much further discussion and research in which, rather naturally, attention was centered on the evils to he removed and their sources. A rather gloomy picture was painted and put before the people and the impression it made persists in the minds of city people and writers on rural topics. As late as 1914 the Secretary of Agriculture, the Honorable D. F. Houston, received more than two thousand letters, in response to a questionnaire regarding the needs of farm people, which brought to light many undesirable phases of life on the farms. These letters were published as Reports of the Office of the Secretary Nos. I03, 104, 105, and 106. This gave direction to further work in agricultural and home economics extension, credit, roads, schools, and other measures and were therefore decidedly helpful. But with the movement for improvement of conditions well under way, protests against calamity stories began to appear and farm people now resent characterization and cartooning as ignorant objects of misguided pity.
The every day life of the bulk of the people of this country is not news. So there would be no point to any statement of country life at its best if there had not been previously so generally entertained a conception of country life that is woefully one-sided. T7ith the popular concpetion in mind and a conviction that it was misrepresentative, the author set out to visit farm women in their homes and to report in their own words their attitude toward farm. life. Others were reached by letters, some of which were written in refutation of a misrepresentation of farm life which appeared in the press.
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