My Philosophy of Rural Life
O'Hara, Edwin V.
MY PHILOSPHY OF RURAL LIFE By EDWIN V. O'HARA MY PHILOSOPHY of rural life looks upon the farm (i) as making a definite contribution to the welfare of the nation; (2) as supplying exceptional...
...It will be chiefly on the family-sized farm that the family will be able to protect itself against the combined pressure of exaggerated capitalism, the machine age and sophisticated luxury...
...4) As already observed, the farm is not merely an industrial plant...
...That has been a good investment...
...Pope Leo XIII, in his famous Encyclical on the Condition of Labor, called attention to this consideration...
...In a word, my philosophy of rural life visualizes the farm as the seat of a united, wholesome, prolific and happy family, and as sharing with the institution of the family a central place in human affairs...
...He can devote more of his labor to producing for his table and other home advantages and less to producing for the market...
...Again the widest diffusion of self-employment in the United States is to be found in the six million farm families who contrast vividly with the millions of city laborers doing 662 THE COMMONWEAL October 29, 1930 their day's work under supervisors, foremen and bosses...
...As long as the love of children remains a human characteristic, farm life will continue to provide the most favorable condition for its normal satisfaction...
...Until the federation of the world is achieved, a sound national policy will dictate in general a balance between agriculture and industry so that the nation will not be too dependent on other nations for essential supply of food and clothing...
...The farm is the native habitat of the family...
...The foregoing view of rural life leads me to desire that the farm shall continue for the most part to be of such size and character as to minister to the needs of the single family...
...While this moral cancer will undoubtedly invade rural homes, it is improbable that it will do so to the same extent that it will attack urban households, for children in general are an economic asset on the farm while they are an economic liability in the city home...
...Urban labor must needs have an increased cash revenue to improve its table...
...b) Next to the importance of being the private owner of productive property may be rated the advantage of being self-employed...
...That also has been very good...
...The advantages of the farm for family life are numerous and obvious...
...Consequently, the maintenance of a sound rural stock is of national import...
...Economic forces there tend to bind the family together whereas in the city economic forces work in the opposite direction...
...3) as a field for the development of a type of economic organization charged with social and ethical potentialities—namely, the cooperative...
...We must set our faces especially against a general policy of latifundia (vast holdings) and its opposite, morcellization of family holdings, which have ruined rural populations in the past...
...Not so the farmer...
...The artificial limitation of offspring is a deadly attack on permanent domestic unity and consequently on the well-being of the children who are permitted to come into the home...
...There are those who would remedy the meagre income from the farm by diminishing the number of farmers and absorbing countless family farms into vast estates conducted as huge factories—reducing farming to a purely commercial enterprise...
...In the same period we have invented labor-saving machinery that has lifted the burden from the muscles of the farmer's back...
...Selfemployment is certainly more likely to develop initiative and resourcefulness than is the monotonous round of supervised factory labor...
...The farm almost alone among industries promotes the unity of the family...
...and (4) as an arena in which human interests can still maintain themselves as against mechanism and sophisticated pleasure...
...but the profits were chiefly due to land speculation and not to successful farming...
...Of at least equal value is its function of providing for family life...
...c) The farm ministers in an exceptional way to wholesome family life which after all provides greater satisfaction than does the possession of great wealth, power or learning...
...Moreover the farms will continue to supply a renewal of the fundamental vitality of the nation, constantly being depleted by the conditions of city living...
...Perhaps if farmers work together they will also learn to play together...
...It neglects, moreover, the very important fact that the farmer can improve his standards of life and comfort considerably without an increase in his financial income...
...Certainly if it furnishes a very modest living to a family rearing several children under conditions which permit the parents to exercise their function as Christian educators, it is more of a success than is a business which results in the accumulation of wealth and in the disintegration of the owner's household...
...That way lies destruction of every value of farm life except its use for the production of raw materials...
...2) There are three fundamental satisfactions to which the farm ministers in a special way...
...The farm may not be very successful from a commercial standpoint and yet be eminently worthwhile in its service to the health and character of its operators...
...This remedy for the surplus which lies in the farmers' hands is the very antithesis of the program of farm relief which looks for aid in a still further commercialization of the farm...
...It is obvious that our six million farms provide the widest diffusion of privately owned productive property in the United States, and their owners, regardless of temporary hardship, are the largest body of American citizens enjoying economic independence and capable of asserting social and political independence against organized wealth...
...In the United States during the past sixty years we have spent millions in teaching the farmer how to produce more efficiently...
...1) Regardless of the development of chemistry it may safely be accepted that the farm will continue to be the source of the nation's supply of food and clothing...
...This plan overlooks the human values of farming altogether and ignores the grievous ills which history reveals as always following the creation of latifundia...
...Unity is the keystone in the arch of domestic happiness...
...And in their cooperatives they will find a new intellectual interest in markets, finance and transportation which may induce competent young farmers to be more content with their lot...
...2) as supplying exceptional opportunities for certain fundamental satisfactions which very many people consider to be highly desirable...
...a) Economic independence, and the other independences which flow therefrom, arise from the private ownership of productive property...
...It is undoubtedly this, as a part of farm life, that induces many families to remain on the farm notwithstanding their inadequate financial return...
...In my philosophy the cooperative movement is not merely a method of securing larger financial return to the farmer...
...We have, however, unfortunately neglected to develop an understanding of the non-commercial advantages of farm life and have failed to devise methods of multiplying and intensifying these noncommercial advantages...
...They would not make much money, but farming never can be a means of acquiring great wealth...
...3) From the very difficulty of promoting industrial methods among farmers there promises to arise a cooperative organization to replace the communal organization of earlier centuries...
...To perpetuate one's personality worthily in one's children is at once the greatest natural ambition and the greatest natural satisfaction in life...
...If instead of attempting to mesh more completely into the commercial economy, farm families were to turn their attention more to the direct improvement of their standards of life and comfort, the surplus would be automatically reduced and twice the present number of farmers could live happily on the broad and fertile plains of America...
...That is the big task ahead which challenges the thought and resources of both civil and religious leaders...
...With the extension to rural areas of anything comparable to urban health facilities, this contribution will become more marked...
...And finally in this connection, the population of the nation will continue to be replenished by streams of rural blood flowing into the city...
...Many farmers indeed have made money by holding land for a rise in value...
...It must be the outgrowth of neighborliness and must develop social loyalties if it is to endure...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 26
