On Behalf of the Farmer
THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The...
...Certain it is that they are "We stand for-and base our whole scheme of less happy and virtuous in villages than they would work upon-a rural philosophy which has long been be insulated with their families on the grounds they preached and practised in Ireland...
...In the prominent in civic discussion, the Wisconsonians (if one second place, the farmer himself is the product of an may coin this term for them) profited by their contact environment which has nurtured the habit of isolation...
...Alfred Nock's Jefferson which facts which regulate the financial yield of acreage, the reads as follows: principles sponsored by the Horace Plunkett Founda"At the outset of his journey, near Sens, France, tion are gradually receiving merited recognition everyhe was puzzled to see that instead of living in scat- where...
...The Jefferson who wrote this fragment of roman- It demands that agriculture shall be regarded and tic agricultural doctrine was passionately absorbed in treated from three points of view-technical, ecothe business and science of farming...
...This obvious reform is the tian Europe paled under the onslaught of theories...
...If they decide affirmatively they will be bethe vagrant worker who dreams of rural peace and ginning to learn how to play the great game of life security, but also the hardened husbandman...
...This meant, for those who took a sincere from the outside with patent economic medicines which and serious interest in it, a workable plan for free and benefit the purveyor vastly more than they do the equal cooperation between man and fellow-man, be- patient...
...If only so living and binding a tie as daily resist the `lure of the city' which now too often draws Mass could be established anew 1 away all but-the unenterprising and dull...
...Long ago, President Roosevelt had studied tered farmhouses, after the Virginia fashion, _ the them and come to the conclusion : "I have been interpeople tended to cluster together in villages...
...Amongst city workers," dation does not expect that a magisterial legislator says a. -British workingman who contributes a letter will appear suddenly with a formula destined to flood to the current issue of Blackfriars, "there are many the country with happy farmers...
...and "If the stream of national life is...
...Paul Crowley, R. Dana Skinner, Mother Alphonsa Lathrop..James J. Walsh...
...The Because it weighs these human aspects of agriculrandom reader will find corroboration of this state- tural living as well as the bald economic and business ment in a passage from...
...powerfully as a priest to his vocation...
...he helped to ad- nomic, and social...
...the great difficulty in "getting anywhere" versities decide to throw their lot in with the coin an industry victimized by its own productivity...
...Volume IV New York, Wednesday, July 28, 1926 Number 12 CONTENTS On Behalf of the Farmer 295 Labor Colleges Today Carl Holliday 305 Week by Week 297 Tommy and I (verse) .. Raymond Kresensky 306 The League Under Scrutiny 300 Communications 306 Church and State in Austria The Play R. Dana Skinner 308 Monsignor Seipel 301 Books...
...Are ested for many years in farm life, but my interest they thus collected by that dogma of their religion did not reach the point of action until I began to which makes them believe that to keep the Creator in follow what was being accomplished through the good humor with His own works, they must mumble . farmers' cooperative movement in Ireland...
...Some of these changes have part Sir Horace has underscored the word "wrong"to do with the abstract principles of statecraft, but that governmental measures and palliatives will pick the most important is concerned with the favorite up and restore to health the agricultural industry, as Jeffersonian profession-agriculture...
...and most practical of human enterprises...
...mirable...
...As a continued "insulation...
...a Mass every day?' He seems not to have inquired It is not our purpose here to outline these princiinto the matter, but to have referred it arbitrarily to ples, but the following central statement is so good his general principle that the farther one keeps from that it ought to be read everywhere and kept in mind one's neighbors, the better...
...The machinery to viction that this business and science cannot survive a effect this is chiefly the concern of the state...
...But its success has been hampered by pecu- And yet it must be done, with the aid of whatever liarities incident to the task...
...The machinery required for this purpose velop something like a spiritual atmosphere, and the can only be organized by voluntary effort among the work of Catholic leaders like the Reverend Eugene farmers, and this is to be achieved by the substitution O'Hara, has been most successful when it has been of combined for isolated action, whenever and whermost outspokenly religious...
...The How fruitful and abiding was the memory of the American farmer's deep resentment of "commissions" doctrine summarized at Monticello may be learned and "departments" is the natural result of experience best, perhaps, from the progress of the "Wisconsin with theoretical persons who wander across his fields idea...
...We should like to two or three generations back-were farmers, and associate with it some very fine work done in the whose keenest desire is to get back to the soil and Central-European countries for the "social and inteltoil to which they feel themselves called almost as lectual improvement" of the farmer and his family...
...crux of the rural problem...
...As an industry, agriculture must vance both by inventions and carefully kept statistics...
...There is an 296 THE COMMONWEAL July 28, 1926 element of religion in all really communal living...
...Its distinctive feacultivate.' " ture is to be found in its approach to the problem...
...The purpose rather who suffer acutely from the pangs of land-hunger, is the eminently sane one of assembling those in the men and women who have the love of earth in their industry in a manner caclculated to improve steadily blood, whose ancestors-in many cases, not more than in the manifold returns of labor...
...In many ways, humanity's profound love for the soil It is clear from this serried statement that the Founis also still a powerful bond...
...The evils of bloated land as possible...
...the operators, or to oppose them, it becomes every year unsatisfactory character of the available educational more necessary for them to understand a movement facilities...
...The charities of Chris- ever combination pays...
...forces bring and hold men together...
...THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Alfaus...
...How many bureaus and stations have been tween the citizen and the community government...
...Whether the graduates of the unispeculation...
...And abandoned and suffered to fall into ruin, only the because the problems of rural living were constantly crows and a few dusty statisticians can tell...
...with Sir Horace Plunkett, the illustrious benefactor Even Wisconsin, where the cooperative movement got of agriculture in Ireland, and grew deeply interested a fair, if somewhat artificial start, is dotted pretty in the possibilities of the rural program which he thickly with neighborhood creameries and cheese-facsummed up as "better business, better farming, better tories which failed to draw trade from competing living...
...to be colored, it doubtless if some kind hand placed them there, dis- should be colored as near to the Fountain of .Youth appointment would ensue...
...Lastly, rural life must be they are being imposed once again by disastrous ex- socially and intellectually improved, so that it will perience...
...Remarkably enough, move- business, agriculture must also be made efficient and ments like the Grange display an odd tendency to de- economic...
...the absence of adequate social companion- pushing itself up so gigantically among other moveship-all these things chill and finally appal, not only ments...
...Their state listened to the slogan and even middlemen...
...It seems best, however, to conclude with this effective But this man and his ilk are not brought to little declaration by the Irish poet, George Russell: farms sweet with corn and honeysuckle bloom...
...one would pick up and nurse an injured collie...
...Yet the in the grand manner, for they will be taking part in instinctive human affection for the earth and growing the building up of a civilization, which is the noblest things is a force which will remain effective...
...great Virginian's doctrine which have been imposed In the first place, it is wrong to assume-and for his by the modern time...
...302 Henry B. Fuller, Thomas Walsh, City Night (verse) John Hanlon 304 Frederick H. Martens, George D. Meadows 309 The Chinese Princess Marie Gallagher 304 The Quiet Corner 313 ON BEHALF OF THE FARMER T HE Jefferson centenary must have drawn the at- These peculiarities need emphasis again, now that tention of many to several basic alterations in the the problem of rural relief has become so very acute...
...be leveled up to the efficiency of urban industries by and he would surely be amazed at our modern con- the application of modern science...
...It is a difficult thing to make a basically accomplished a great deal which must be called ad- individualized community social in character...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 12
