SCIENCE AND CULTURE SERIES JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S.J., PH.D., GENERAL EDITOR
RURAL ROADS TO SECURITY
J. Dobson
Ploven (The Plowman)
RURAL ROADS TO SECURITY
America s Third Struggle for Freedom
RT. REV. MSGR. LUIGI G. LIGUTTI, LL.D
/
and
REV. JOHN C. RAWE, S.J., LL.M.
LIBRARY
8146
The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee
Imprimi potest: P. A. BROOKS, S.J., Praepositus Provincialis, Prov. Missourianae, S.J.
Nihil obstat: H. B. RIES, Censor librorum
Imprimatur: *f« SAMUEL A. STRITCH, Archiepiscopus Milwaukiensis January u, 1940
1-7*7
Copyright, 1940
The Bruce Publishing Company Printed in the U. S. A.
Dedicated to the Cause of
BETTER FIELDS,
BETTER HOMES,
BETTER COMMUNITIES,
BETTER HEARTS,
BETTER LIVES.
AGRICULTURE1
The husbandman that laboreth must be first partaker of the fruits.
— St. Paul
No other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought as agriculture.
— Abraham Lincoln
With reference either to individual or national welfare agricul- ture is of primary importance.
— George Washington
1 These quotations, carefully chosen and verified, have been chiseled in the entablature of the main facade of the new Administration Building of the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D. C.
PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR
STRAIGHTFORWARD, dynamic, and thoroughly documented, RURAL ROADS TO SECURITY is a book of interest and value to all. Its message goes forth alike to city resident and county dweller. For both it would procure a truer liberty and greater independ- ence through a more effective, personal, and widely distributed ownership. That is the implication contained in its secondary title: "America's Third Struggle for Freedom."
In the first two struggles Washington and Lincoln stood out as the nation's leaders. But more difficult than these first contests, to make America the land of the free, is the third struggle, which must be fought without lethal weapons. It is the struggle most signally inaugurated, not for America alone but for all the world, by the Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII and no less gloriously re- affirmed in the Quadragesima Anno of Pius XI. With these two names must now be associated that of Pope Pius XII, the champion of social justice and charity toward all no less than of a Christian Peace for all the world.
We have long allowed ourselves to be fascinated by the glitter of industrialized power, forgetful of its inherent weaknesses. Too much urbanized, too much mechanized, men know little about the great productive power that lies hidden in the land and in its organisms; in the things that live and grow and reproduce their kind; in the seeds that sprout; in the fruits that ripen; in the flocks and herds that help to feed and clothe mankind. America's agriculture has become biologically unsound. As the authors of this book scientifically express themselves, "we are merely soil chemists, not soil biologists; soil miners, not real husbandmen." And great, we all know, is the cost that America's manhood and womanhood are paying as the price of this neglect.
What consequently we must rediscover and dramatize for men anew is the romance of an, at least partially, independent life on one's own land, the romance of life as it can be lived at the fountain source of organic power, life on the soil. But closely linked with that ideal is the dream of the city dweller, the dream
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viii Preface by the General Editor
of the disinherited, that some time they too may achieve a greater liberation from an industrialism that has given us anew the Proletarian. "The immense number of propertyless wage-earners on the one hand, and the superabundant riches of the fortunate few on the other, is an unanswerable argument that the earthly goods, so abundantly produced in this our age, which is termed 'the age of industrialism,' are far from rightly distributed and equitably shared among the various classes of men" (Quadra- gesimo Anno).
Naturally, what most of all inspired the authors of this book was the purpose to arouse an intelligent interest in the land on the part of all classes, rural and urban. People actually living on the farm must still be taught to understand more perfectly the economic benefit of home productivity as contrasted with the destructive policy of purely commercialized farming. People in the mines and factories must be shown the possibilities of part- time farming where circumstances render that feasible. Home- steaders must be encouraged and aided in their laudable under- takings. And not least of all must city dwellers be given the vision of that far-reaching organic good which comes to every nation through rural culture, cooperation in rural communities, intelli- gent land programs, home production, home arts and crafts. It is the home, both urban and rural, which is at stake, and which the writers of this book would above all else seek to restore to the sublime ideal given it by Christianity.
Rural families and rural communities are living cells and mem- bers of the body politic. On their preservation and development depends the well-being of the entire state. Clergy, scientists, edu- cators, publicists, and all citizens alike must give them intelligent support. For this it is necessary that all be themselves rightly in- formed, and hence the great need of this volume which represents the lifework of two men profoundly acquainted with this field and in practical touch with it. For the same reason it is important that this book be adopted as widely as possible, by way of text, in our schools, both urban and rural. Though definitely written for the general reader, it is nonetheless admirably adapted for classroom use and for study circles. We dare not raise up a gen- eration ignorant of the land and unappreciative of it.
Preface by the General Editor ix
No one has more strongly expressed our indebtedness to the land than Pope Leo XIII. "Nature," he eloquently says, "owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth." Though divided among private owners — and the Pope's wish is that every laborer own the soil he tills — it none- theless "ministers to the needs of all. For there is no one who does not live on what the land brings forth" (Rerum Novarum).
If we lose our grip on the soil; if we allow God's richly produc- tive gift to be industrialized, commercialized, depleted by human greed, and ruined by stupid selfishness — then we ourselves shall be doomed to a just exhaustion and extinction. It is not ours to waste but to use for ourselves and our kind.
With incomparable force has this thought been driven home in the equally fine and powerful lines of Harry Kemp, too little known by those whom they most concern. Through the pulsing rhythm of the poet's words there thrills the whole history of the human race.
Hearken to the "Song of the Plow":
It was I who built Chaldea and the Cities of the Plain; I was Greece and Rome and Carthage and the opulence
of Spain. When their courtiers walked in scarlet and their queens
wore chains of gold, And forgot 'twas I that made them, growing Godless
folk and bold, I went over them in judgment, and again my cornfields
stood Where empty courts bowed homage in obsequious
multitude. . . .
For the nation that forgets me, in that hour her doom
is sealed
By a judgment as from Heaven that can never be repealed!
JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S.J., PH.D. General Editor, Science and Culture Series St. Louis University, Epiphany, 1940
AUTHORS' PREFACE
OUR rural technique is not the technique which the husbandman practices. We are soil miners, soil mechanics, soil chemists. We are not soil biologists. We live by exploitation and extraction, not by husbandry. The roots of restraining grass and legumes and trees are loosened and removed in the mechanical production of cotton and wheat and corn. The rootless land drifts away by wind and water and the rootless people herd themselves by the millions in the industrial slums. Land drifts on the seasonal winds and with the floods. And the huge masses of directionless, rootless people drift in the ominous clouds of hate and false propaganda, insecur- ity and poverty. What could easily have endured as a nation of secure and free, landowning people, through an intelligent "agri- culture" on our two billion acres, has become a nation of servile dependents on a mechanistic plutocracy, inefficient and exploitive. This book is written for the purpose of presenting some of the steps that must be taken to rebuild our land, our homes, our democracy, our culture, and our religion. We offer it also as a textbook in the field of rural sociology — a field as yet meagerly supplied.
We should like to express our gratitude for the unstinted assist- ance given us by Mr. James L. McShane, S.J., of St. Mary's Col- lege, Kansas; Mr. Eugene H. Murray, S.}., of St. Peter's College, New Jersey; Rev. Joseph C. Husslein, S.J., of St. Louis University; Rev. Francis J. O'Boyle, S.J., of St. Mary's College, Kansas; Rev. John Gorman and Sister Mary Consilio, R.S.M., of Granger, Iowa. We gratefully acknowledge the constant help which came to us through the scholarship and leadership of the Most Reverend Edwin O'Hara, D.D., and the Most Reverend Aloisius Muench, DD.; Rev. James A. Byrnes, LL.D., editor of the Catholic Rural Life Bulletin; Very Rev. William T. Mulloy, former president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference; and the Rev. Edgar Schmiedeler, O.S.B., author of many works in rural sociology, and
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xii Authors Preface
national director of the Rural Life Bureau, National Catholic Wel- fare Conference, Washington, D. C.
Acknowledgments are gratefully made to publishers and editors for permission to use material published before and for permission to quote from their publications.
Many more acknowledgments should be made by the authors. We list the names of the following whose cooperation and contri- butions have been particularly helpful : Very Rev. Joseph Zuercher, S.J., president of The Creighton University; Rev. Gerald Fitz- Gibbon, S.J., and Rev. Thomas Bowdern, S.J., deans of The Creighton University; Dr. Stuart A. Mahuran, director of The Creighton University School of Journalism, and his class in editing; the members of the staff of the 'Queen's Work, especially Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., Rev. George A. Mc- Donald, S.J., and Miss Dorothy Willmann; the members of the Rural Life Department of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, especially Rev. Edward Weisenberg, S.J., Rev. William J. Weis, S.J., and many of the seminarians; Sister Mary Stephen, S.S.N.D., Sister Mary Terese, and Sister Mary Francita of St. Louis; Rev. Joseph R. Moylan, S.J., Mr. John J. Walsh, S.J., and Rev. John J. Higgins, S.J., of St. Louis; Mr. John J. White, S.J., Edgar A. Miller and Anthony R. Inserra of Omaha, Nebraska; the editors of Free America, especially, Herbert Agar and Ralph Borsodi; and finally our students and associates in Granger and Omaha and The Creighton University.
LUIGI G. LlGUTTI
JOHN C. RAWE
The Creighton University, Christmas Day, 1939
CONTENTS
Preface by the General Editor vii
Author's Preface xi
PART I: PROLETARIANISM : ABSENCE OF PRODUCTIVE FAMILY HOLDINGS
I The Third Struggle for Liberty 3
II Centralization 15
III Proletarianism 28
IV The Urban Family in Mass Production .... 50 V The Rural Family in Mass Production .... 73
PART II : MULTIPLICATION OF SMALL OWNERSHIPS IN LAND
VI The Home on the Land 99
VII Some Problems in Modern Homesteading . . . 115
VIII Self-Sufficiency: After that, Production for Exchange 129
IX Forward on the Land 138
X Part-Time Farming: Soil and Industry . . . 149
XI The Granger Homestead Project 171
PART III: LEADERSHIP IN BUILDING THE GOOD AMERICA
XII Intelligent Technology on the Land .... 189
XIII Agriculture and Biological Science 204
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xiv Contents
XIV Training for Leadership on the Land .... 22:
XV Ideals and Education for Rural Boys and Girls . . 23^
XVI Cooperative Grouping on the Land .... 25^
XVII Advantages and Technique of Cooperatives . .
XVIII Democracy Revived on Land and in City ...
APPENDICES:
1. America's First School of Living 31^
2. Milling at Home 31^
3. A New Design for Living 325
4. St. Teresa's Village 331
5. Factual Outline of the Granger Homesteads . . 33:
6. Nova Scotia "Rochdale" Cooperatives 33=
7. Farm Tenancy Report Made to the President . . 343
8. Extracts from Farm Tenancy Committee Report — Iowa 353
Selected Bibliography 36]
Index 375
RURAL ROADS TO SECURITY
PART I
PROLETARIANISM ABSENCE OF PRODUCTIVE FAMILY HOLDINGS
Chapter i
THE THIRD STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY
WHEN in 1775 British oppression threatened the human rights and happiness of Americans, the Minute Men united for the defense of liberty. That war gave us political independence. Ultimate independence, however, with liberty for all, Black and White, cost America another war. It then became a truly independent nation. Henceforth a future of freedom was to become the birthright of every American.
By a tragic paradox, at the very time when wars were being waged for polit- ical independence, there was injected into the veins of American industry a deadly virus which would tend more and more to paralyze the mind and spirit of American manhood. In a word, American life fell heir to the liberalistic system which Europe had fostered. When the renaissance individ- ualism cast ofT moral restraint through the influence of the Reformation, the road was paved for a materialistic
philosophy. Liberalism saw only good in the ambitions of men, demanded fullest liberty for the satisfaction of personal aggran- dizement without hindrance of law, or organization, or any effort to safeguard one man against the greed of another. As the Rev. Joseph C. Husslein, S.J., points out in The Christian Social Manifesto, this liberalistic dream was taken seriously for more than a century and a half and it has not yet been dissipated.
OLD NORTH CHURCH
4 Rural Roads to Security
The discoveries of science in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies coincided with this liberalistic stream of philosophy, ever deepening and expanding the glittering sea of modern Capital- ism. Heavy machinery, power, crowded factories, congested cities, large-scale production, greater and still greater profits and invest- ments complemented each other, and accelerated the evolution of liberalistic industrialism. And so, with every new stage of the swirling cycle, liberty retreated farther from the wage earner, as economic necessity left him ever more helplessly at the mercy of the capital which he served.
The factory system, which today signifies concentrated mass production, took root in our country during the War of 1812. Its early growth was comparatively slow, for as late as 1850, the bulk of American goods was still produced in the household, the shop, or the small factory.
While the open frontier still continued in competition with the factory, the demand for labor was never filled. Gradually women and children were themselves drawn into the factory. Although hours were long for all alike, and although children were grow- ing up illiterate and without the normal experiences of child- hood, yet deluded Americans flocked to the factory as though it were the gate to prosperity.
The entrance of women into the industrial field tended to re- duce the wages of men, since men were no longer the sole sup- port of a family the idea of a family wage for the head of the family was slipping to that of a mere individual wage in com- petition with women and children. Still labor was not at once shackled by this condition. There was still a possibility of escape, and when escape is possible, liberty is not dead.
Harold Faulkner gives the alternative when he writes:
As long as public land could be had at nominal cost, "wage slavery, in the sense that there was no escape, did not exist. If times were hard and wages low, the worker could always go West.1
After 1850, transportation underwent marked improvements. Steam railroads increased 300 per cent between 1850 and 1860.
1 Faulkner, Harold, American Economic History, 3rd Ed. (New York: Harper Bros., 1935). P- 553-
The Third Struggle for Liberty 5
With steam transportation established, the factory system began that forward leap which continued, with but brief lulls during the great panics, through the remainder of the century.
This twofold development, growth of factories and improve- ment in transportation, was directly instrumental in changing from bad to worse the conditions of labor. Wages tended to be- come standardized at a minimum, since goods from one city were brought into competition with the same type of goods from another city. Price plus quality capture the market. By established custom the necessary curtailment was taken from wages. Trans- portation and growth of factories also made profitable the sub- division of labor, thereby creating vast numbers of detail jobs, simple enough to be classed with unskilled labor and each paid the correspondingly lower wage.
City Concentrations and Their Social Problems
The specialized capitalist, alert to the possibilities of saving by division of production, concentrated industry in fewer and larger plants. Labor, long below the ability of housing itself in health and decency, huddled more densely in the industrial tenements. This urbanization of population paralleled the concentration of industry and was, in greater part, due directly to it.
Labor declined rapidly, losing not only ownership of tools, productive property, and control of conditions of labor, but also home ownership as well. Company tenements, company stores, company commodities were being provided, but in a very in- adequate manner, and under circumstances that left only a shadow of liberty or recognition of rights on the side of the working people.
Another factor that greatly stimulated urbanization of popula- tion was the rapid disappearance, since 1880, of desirable western land obtainable on easy terms. During the first half of the nine- teenth century public land of rare quality was limitless and given on terms that were meant to be an invitation and reward for settlement. Little or no capital was required to secure and work a claim. The disappearance of such public land closed a safety valve of escape from the city and dammed the floods of immi- grants in the already close confines of industrial cities.
6 Rural Roads to Security
Urbanization, so rapid and so concentrated, created a host of social and economic problems. Of these the most tragic to human freedom was the increasing depth of helpless surrender to which an ever greater and greater portion of the nation's citizens was reduced, succumbing to the unscrupulous and liberalistically sanc- tioned avarice of the "robber barons." Labor had become deper- sonalized as regards the relations of employer and employee. Corporate ownership and control lodged in the hands of a rela- tively few. These few, interested primarily in greater profits, better business, and more production, neither saw nor cared to see the laborers, nor still less the slums in which they existed. Public opinion protested, and government took action again and again, but the philosophy of wealth continued unconquered and almost unquestioned except in subconscious thought, and the conditions of labor, even though improved, lagged behind that of the favorites of fortune as far as ever.
Keeping pace with economic changes, the destructive influence of these new conditions on the home and family life now made themselves sadly felt. With the appearance of the factory system home occupations decreased quite generally. Competition with factory products forced members of the family to seek employ- ment in the large-scale industries. Spacious homes were aban- doned for dingy, unsanitary shacks near the noisy, smoking fac- tory. The health and well-being of women were menaced. Low wages for men, brought lower by the competition of women in industry, left marriage to be deferred or renounced. After mar- riage both husband and wife were often compelled to continue in their former outside employment so that the family might be able to subsist. Ideals of family life were thus shattered by the absence of one or both parents. Children were left without care and childless homes became common. Self-interest was created by the separate purses of husband and wife. Divorce increased. Submarginal living was almost the rule for larger families. Com- mercialized amusements, the movie, dance halls, soft-drink parlors, saloons, and the automobile assisted in drawing people out of the home.
War, the War of 1812, gave roots to the factory system as already stated. Another armed conflict, the Civil War, immensely has-
The Third Struggle for Liberty 7
tened the growth of the system by its army demands and high protective tariffs. Large-scale industry and a marked competitive laissez-faire policy date from this war. Finally, the World War surpassed all other periods of our history in the percentage of in- crease in capital, value of products, and also wages.
Depression and the Present Struggle
Materialistic philosophers taught that Liberalism, free and un- restrained, would bring the nation to the peak of prosperity. Capital falsely claimed that efficiency and security for any indus- try was attained by way of complete monopoly. Labor wondered wistfully, and submitted and hoped with infinite patience, but the peaks of prosperity seldom ever broke the level horizon of day- by-day toils.
Today, with consumption deadlocked for years and the unful- filled desires of the masses soured to envy, distrust, and destruc- tiveness, capital too has paused to calculate whether its excessively high profits were really so excessively profitable.
Have the unhampered ambitions of the fortunate brought about the highest common good ? Americans form the wealthiest nation in the world. Our productive potentiality is, so to say, limitless. But consumption has collapsed, and gone on relief for artificial stimulation. Overproduction and starvation are puzzling neigh- bors. We think our money gods have tricked us. We are unhappy. We seem to have sold our birthright of freedom for a mess of pottage. Our tenants and sharecroppers are numbered in millions. Few slaves lived lives as wretched and insecure. A sharecropper "in the red" is bound to remain on his land, not as a serf with recognized rights, but as an exploited commodity. He is an American robbed of freedom.
The armies of America's third struggle for freedom are being mobilized. A struggle is under way, not against a foreign enemy, nor yet a mere strife of parties, but a struggle for freedom, for an individual freedom in accordance with the American ideal. It is the opening attack against a hard and selfish philosophy en- trenched behind walls of gold that have thickened for over a hundred years. From time to time, much has been accomplished in exposing and tearing down this defense. But often, too, much
8 Rural Roads to Security
was done in turn to pad the walls and mend again the breaches made in them.
There are more ways than one of storming these bastions. Loud-mouthed leaders raise their shout for Socialism, Com- munism, or Fascism. Give full control, they say, to the State or some dictator, and all will be corrected in a flash. Make everybody step in time. Only let an invincible, centralized, omnipresent or- ganization be formed, with unquestioned authority to take, dis- tribute, and rule, and all problems, social or economic, will be settled forever. So can proper provision be made for everyone !
Do these leaders forget they are speaking to Americans? Another mess of pottage, another, and still another, served by a paternalistic bureaucracy or a militaristic tyrant, will not content Americans. Our desperate proletariat is in a daze, where any change seemingly must be a change for the better. But even in them true Americanism will revive in a flash once their eyes are given half a chance to clear their vision.
We do not want to be "taken care of." We want our birthright back. Let those who despair use the methods of despair. We have our dream, our ideal. We dreamed of liberty, equality, precious freedom, our inalienable, God-given rights. We can give no more than a passing thought to anything less.
But, surely, all this is just another sour joke, they will tell us, that some day may come in handy to humor the crowd. An ideal! Americans with dreams? Observe those who pass, these dissatis- fied, listless job holders with a haunting fear in their eyes lest the job that is theirs today will be no longer theirs when the sun rises tomorrow; migratory tenants always hoping for the better and getting the worse; dehumanized sharecroppers artificially always "in the red"; the army of unemployed frantically walking the streets till even the beautiful sunshine is cruel; spiritless men and women on relief, some wishing life could pass more quickly, others spinelessly content to remain as they are; old age filling in government blanks; youth staring into a blank future. Behold flourishing American cities grown tiresome, harsh, and cold; fertile American valleys commercialized, gullied, barren, and parched. This scene reminds us of the picture presented in the Seventh Prophecy for Holy Saturday:
The Third Struggle for Liberty 9
In those days the hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord; and set me down in the midst of a plain that was full of bones: and He led me about through them on every side. Now they were very many upon the face of the plain, and they were exceeding dry. And He said to me: Son of man, dost thou think these bones shall live? And I answered: O Lord God, Thou knowest. . . . Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live. . . . And the spirit came into them, and they lived; and they stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army. . . . And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchers, and shall have brought you out of your graves, O My people: and shall have put My spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land: saith the Lord Almighty.2
Mammoth-scale industry, commercialized farms, human lives ground by marvelous machines, efficiency substituted for liberty, money codes displacing justice, with God and His spirit forgotten — these, too, are lifeless bones, well shaped and bleached to a beautiful, gleaming white, yet mere bones. Bones that need not be destroyed, but rather let sinews and spirit be given them. We want to remain modern and also be human and live. We shall do this when we come once more to know that we are the Lord's, that He opens our sepulchers and brings us from from our graves, and puts His spirit into us, makes us live and brings us to rest upon our own land. If philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made mistakes, it can be set right in the twentieth, for the nineteenth already pointed out the error and the remedy. Rugged individualism must yield to love of fellow men. The striving to become rich, measuring success by fortunes, and seeing values in all things only by the dollars marked on the price tag, should give place to the joy of life. Human living must again be able to lift its thought above the passing things of earth to see the dignity and immortal destiny of man.
New Values — New Life
"We the people" are the power and authority that can make the change. Our first activity is to establish a new view of life. We
"Ezech. 37:1-14.
io Rural Roads to Security
want truly to live. All our strivings should aim to win, not a for- tune, but a greater fullness of life, for happiness, comfort, and security by honest, God-pleasing work. Next we need a plan to make this possible. From our side, it is only made possible by breaking down this iron-clad wage slavery. Pope Leo XIII, the workingman's truest friend, wished to see every laborer owner of some productive property.
Ownership of productive property in the industrial world is available to labor through coupon clipping. Though such owner- ship, when practical steps are taken to establish it, is good and commendable, it is not an ownership which gives effective control. A way to both ownership and control, for the many, in some productive property is the way by land.
Ownership of Homes with Small Acreages
The movement for ownership of homes on the land is em- inently human and satisfying whether it is the relief garden planned toward ownership for the needy, the subsistence home- stead or part-time farm for the industrial family, or the full-time diversified family-unit farm for the rural people.
Modern comfort and modern, small, human-scale machines in many forms of production without any loss of efficiency, point the way to restored freedom and security through the ownership of a few acres. A blend of the rural and urban modes of life, in both part-time and full-time farming, a mode of life which modern technocracy makes possible, is the one which can accomplish the aim expressed by Alexis Carrel: "Restore to man his intelligence, his moral sense, his virility, and lead him to the summit of his development."3
The major economic and social need in work for spiritual and cultural advancement and the preservation of liberty in American life is: family-unit operation and fee-simple, family-basis owner- ship of land based on religious principles and spiritually moti- vated. Landownership is a determining factor in human well- being. This is not a matter of selfish concern for rural life and rural people. It is a matter of great national importance. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of changing America is the general decline
'Carrel, Dr. Alexis, Man, the Unknown (Harper and Bros.), p. 296.
The Third Struggle for Liberty n
from landownership to mere factory work and tenancy. The number of landowners, tenants, and wage earners will in large measure determine whether the life of the nation is to be dem- ocratic or proletarian, and will ultimately decide the destiny of our civilization. Landownership goes hand in hand with a predisposi- tion for education and the building of good communities and a democratic citizenship. The problem of this change from land- ownership to tenancy, the status of mere factory workers, demands the study and help of all those who are interested in the spiritual and democratic progress of America.
Extremes to Be Avoided
It is a wise policy, when discussing a complex problem, to avoid extremes. In the present instance, those who demand, for the good of society, a clean cleavage either in favor of agrarianism to the exclusion of industrialism, or industrialism to the exclusion of agrarianism, are extremists. Some zealots tell us to flee to the fields in order to avoid contamination of soul and body in the city, which is a blot on the face of the earth; others, equally foolish, extol commercialized, scientific progress and dream of the day when the countryside will be completely covered over with the sprawling works of big industry and big farming.
Both views are untenable. A nation cannot be prosperous, unless there is a proper balance between town and country, between the rural and urban way of life.
Why can't we develop a constructive economics and sociology ? Why can't we restore some natural economic functions to the family, the natural economic unit ? Why should all economic and social functions be swallowed up by corporations and states in a mad rush toward concentration and collectivism of one form or another? Why can't we plan and work for the proper preserva- tion of many natural units in a food raising economy, a home- owning and home-building environment? We would soon dis- cover that such work would result in the building of a new democratic nation at much less expense than it takes to give pen- sions and doles and maintain an artificial system that leaves human capabilities exposed to corruption and decay, and sets the mind in a groove of false thinking.
12 Rural Roads to Security
Some Family-Centered Production
The best way to restore the home is to provide for some family- centered production, family-centered activity where the child can soon become an economic asset instead of remaining an economic liability. That is why the food-producing homestead has economic, social, cultural, and ethical significance. That is why every hous- ing program should be a homestead program. Nothing prevents the successful combination of industrial wage earning and part- time farming today save a certain spirit of narrow urban indus- trialism, an erroneous self-sufficiency, and a want of democratic vision. Many industrial workers would welcome the new type of living which homesteading embodies — a life which is neither strictly rural nor strictly urban, a life which is an intermediate type between the two, combining the benefits of both. These are some of the vital issues to be discussed in this volume.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the leader of Scholastic thinkers, gives us a very clear and helpful analysis of the problem of city life:
Now since men must live in a group because they are not sufficient unto themselves to procure the necessities of life were they to remain solitary, it follows that a society will be more perfect the more it is sufficient unto itself to procure the necessities of life (Bk. I, c. i).
For an individual to lead a good life two things are required. The first and most important is to act in a virtuous manner, for virtue is that by which one lives well; the second, which is secondary and as it were instrumental, is a sufficiency of those bodily goods whose use is necessary for an act of virtue (Bk. I, c. 15).
Now there are two ways in which an abundance of foodstuffs can be supplied to a city. The first is where the soil is so fertile that it nobly provides for all the necessities of human life. The second is by trade, through which the necessities of life are brought to the town from different places. But it is quite clear that the first means is better. For the higher a thing is the more self-sufficient it is; since whatever needs another's help is by that very fact proven inferior. But that city is more fully self-sufficient which the surrounding country supplies with all its vital needs, than is another which must obtain these sup- plies by trade. A city which has an abundance of food from its own territory is more dignified than one which is provisioned by merchants. It is safer, too, for the importing of supplies can easily be prevented
The Third Struggle for Liberty 13
whether owing to the uncertain outcome of wars or to the many dangers of the road, and thus the city may be overcome through lack of food (Bk. II, c. 3).
Again, if the citizens themselves devote their lives to matters of trade, the way will be opened to many vices. For since the object of trading leads especially to making money, greed is awakened in the hearts of the citizens through the pursuit of trade. The result is that everything in the city will be offered for sale: confidence will be destroyed and the way opened to all kinds of trickery: each one will work only for his own profit, despising the public good: the cultivation of virtue will fail, since honor, virtue's reward, will be bestowed upon anybody. Thus in such a city civic life will necessarily be corrupted (Bk. II, c. 3).
Finally that state enjoys a greater measure of peace whose people are more sparsely assembled together and dwell in smaller proportion within the walls of the town. For when men are crowded together, it is an occasion of quarrels and all the elements for seditious plots are provided. Whence according to Aristotle, it is more profitable to have the people engaged outside the cities than for them to dwell con- tinually within the walls (Bk. II, c. 3).
Consequently, the perfect city will make a moderate use of mer- chants (Bk. II, c. 3).*
*The Governance of Rulers (De Regimine Principum). Trans, by Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Sheed and Ward).
Chapter 2
CENTRALIZATION
WHAT does the future hold in store for the United States? As we survey the vast outlines of the nation looking beyond today's par- ticular flood, drought, strike or election, we can trace two broad general tendencies, two main movements, two currents in Amer- ican life. The one is a movement of population toward a few con- gested cities which are centers of finance-capitalism and mass- production factories. It is the movement of life from the farm to the city — change from the small proprietor to the feudalism of finance and industry. The other is a movement of population from the congested cities out to the surrounding countrysides. It is a movement to break up a number of the large inefficient corpora- tions, to build small efficient units in localities where the goods are consumed. It is a return of life to its natural abode, the country, and a restoration of freedom through effective ownership.
The concentration of factories and mills in a few cities is the story of a hundred years. The industrial revolution grew up with the invention of the power loom to weave the cloth of England and the steam engine to furnish its power. The machines tended to get bigger, heavier, and more expensive. Big buildings had to be provided, and as time went on, staffs of office workers. Such a factory with power supplied by steam and coal had to be built in the city. Poor workers gathered round it. Farmers left farm homes and crowded into poverty-stricken dwellings around the factory where they hoped to get work. Slums were built up and unfor- tunately were perpetuated, even though electricity has for some time pointed the way to efficient decentralization of cities and industry.
15
i6
Rural Roads to Security
Population Increase of Cities from 1790 to 1930
Population Groups 2,500 to 10,000. . 10,000 to 25,000 to 100,000 to 250,000 to
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Abandonment of the Land Graphed from 1870 to 1930.*
Industrialism, steam and coal and their massive techniques, and the politically favored "corporate device," piled factory on factory
* These tables, based on data issued by the United States Census Bureau, show the vast changes in the occupational distribution of the population of this country since 1870. We have two billion acres of land, and yet, most of our people live in the highly congested areas of the cities.
Centralization 17
and corporation on corporation. Such centralizing agencies put hordes of workers under the control of a few executives and jammed armies of men, women, and children into slums. Work was transferred from the manor and the cottage to the centralized plant where both work and ownership were dehumanized and depersonalized. New forms of "centralized control" emasculated ownership and maneuvered for a position where a few men could manipulate labor and capital, to reap profits in an economic action without the risks of any great ownership, and with the divorce of property rights from social duties.
"Collective" Property
To one who investigates the Minority Controls, the Manage- ment Controls, and the Legal Devices used today to place the direction of vast industrial empires in the hands of a few, it soon becomes evident that incorporated, industrial properties resemble "collective" property more than private property, and that what is left of private property in industry is scarcely more than an empty legal shell or fiction.
Dr. Richard B. Ransom indicates how corporations received the power to manipulate vast sums and monopolize industries:
By a legal fiction both State and Federal courts have assumed that the constitution guarantees to corporate entities every appropriate legal and property right in which it protects the private citizen. This is a richly fertile assumption. Under its stimulus corporations have not only flourished, and monopolized the most productive business fields within the States, but have made a veritable legal jungle of the no-man's-land that lies between States' rights and the entrenchments of the national authority. The extent of that territory has never been mapped or precisely defined, and practically its only explorers have been corporation lawyers and criminals seeking refuge. Neither of these is primarily concerned with the public interest.1
In calling for a reconstruction of the social order Pius XI found it necessary to deal with what may be called joint-stock "corpora- tionism." In Quadragesima Anno, Pius says that the "laws enacted for joint-stock companies with limited liabilities, have given occa-
1 Agar and Tate, Who Owns America, contribution by R. B. Ransom (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1936), p. 68.
i8 Rural Roads to Security
sion to abominable abuses." This modern economic "corporation- ism" results in the creation by the State of a vast number of pseudo-societies, based on legal privilege and organized solely for private profit. Unless these artificial entities, the joint-stock, pri- vate-profit corporations, are properly controlled, they engage in much antisocial manipulation. Their managements and stock- holders often collectively accomplish by corporate acts and policies that which any decent personal morality in business would reject as unfair, unjust, or illegal. When these pseudo-societies become too numerous and too strong in every economic field, the organic character of the national economy is broken down. Everywhere the factors of production are divided into two widely separated artificial classes, the employer and the employee, the incorporated owners and the proletarians. The nominal, bare legal ownership by corporate title tends more and more to supersede the original, real, private, personal ownership and control of small holdings in productive property. The system of sound investment, based largely on private property in the real sense, tends to become, upon the multiplication of incorporated ownerships, a matter of universal and blind speculation. The middle classes were his- torically the personal owners of productive property — an owner- ship very different from the ownership of stocks and bonds, an ownership which once made the middle class the stable element in society. "Corporationism" has displaced the middle classes by a vast number who constitute the propertyless proletariat, helpless people who can get no stake in the country or in the city. Both the giant Wall Street with its incorporated concentrations and the government concentrations under commissars, which is Com- munism, move in parallel columns under similar management toward the common destructive objective, the Totalitarian State.
"Corporationism" and Economic Dictatorship
The two hundred giant corporations in America have less than three thousand separate individuals serving as directors. There are approximately five million to five and a half million separate in- dividuals who are the investors and putative owners of these cor- porations. These stockholders hold their stock certificates in the expectation of profits without responsibilities of ownership, and
Centralization 19
for the most part they are ignorant and morally unconcerned about the methods in which their property is used and managed.
Toward the close of the Middle Ages the growing "absentee landlordism," with its delegated managements and the vast num- ber of poor people working, on land that was not their own, brought death to the social and economic regime of that period. In this present period, the same, if not more serious deadening economic and social results are flowing from the absentee owner- ships and the delegated managements of large corporations, with their vast hordes of exploited, propertyless proletarians.
In a syndicated editorial column Walter Lippmann gives a suc- cinct analysis of the puzzling change that is gripping the world with regard to peoples and properties, rights and liberties:
We live in a time when great masses of civilized men have either voluntarily surrendered their liberties or at least have submitted with- out serious protest or resistance to the destruction of their personal liberties. It is important that we should understand the causes. This is not too difficult. For while a library of books might profitably be writ- ten on the subject, one fundamental aspect of the question at least is clear enough to any one who passes back and forth between the totali- tarian and the free nations of Europe.
It is this: The peoples who have lost their civil rights had previously lost or had never obtained the means of economic independence for individuals, families and local communities. It is very clear, I think, that the masses who have fallen under the spell of demagogic dictators and their terroristic bands were recruited from individuals who had no property, no savings, and either no job at all or a job which they could not feel sure of holding. They were in the exact sense proletarians even if they happened to be earning fairly high salaries at the moment. For they had no reserves to fall back upon. They could not afford to lose their jobs. They could not afford, therefore, to speak their minds or to take risks, to be in any real sense of the word individual citizens. They had to be servile or they starved. Wherever a dictatorship has been set up in Europe, the mass of indi- viduals had already become so insecure that they no longer dared to exercise the legal liberties that the demagog was attacking.
To have economic independence a man must be in a position to leave one job and go to another; he must have enough savings of some kind to exist for a considerable time without accepting the first
20 Rural Roads to Security
job offered. Thus the peasant, for all his poverty and the exploitation which he suffers, is relative to his own needs still the freest man in central Europe. The fact that he can exist by his own labor on his own piece of land gives him an independence which every dictatorial regime, except the Russian perhaps, has been forced to respect.
But the industrial worker who has a choice between working in one factory and not working at all, the white collar intellectuals who com- pete savagely for the relatively few private positions and posts in the bureaucracy — these are the people who live too precariously to exer- cise their liberties or to defend them. They have no saving. They have only their labor to sell, and there are very few buyers of their labor. Therefore, they have only the choice of truckling to the powerful or of perishing heroically but miserably. Men like these, having none of the substance of liberty themselves, have scant respect for any law or any form of civil rights. . . .
The more I see of Europe the more deeply convinced do I become that the preservation of freedom in America, or anywhere else, de- pends upon maintaining and restoring for the great majority of indi- viduals the economic means to remain independent individuals. The greatest evil of the modern world is the reduction of the people to a proletarian level by destroying their savings, by depriving them of private property, by making them the helpless employees of private monopoly or of government monopoly. At that point they are no longer citizens. They are a mob. For when the people lose this sense of their separate and individual security, they cease to be individuals. They are absorbed into a mass. Their liberties are already lost and they are a frightened crowd ready for a master.
Though the actual measures to be taken are debatable, the objec- tives for a free government are, I think clear. It should use its authority to enable the independent farmer, the small and moderate-sized enter- prise, the small saver, to survive. It should use its authority to see that large enterprises are no larger than technology requires, depriving big business of corporate privileges and other forms of legal and economic advantage which make it bigger than on economic grounds it needs to be. A resolute democracy should favor the dispersion of industry rather than its concentration, and it should favor the rise in as many communities as possible of different kinds of enterprise rather than a high degree of specialization on some one product. For unless the means of independence are widely distributed among the people them- selves, no real resistance is possible to the advance of tyranny.2
'Lippmann, Walter, New York Herald Tribune, July 15, 1936.
Centralization 21
Concentrations in Business Enterprise
The depressions with their contractions of credit, foreclosures, liquidations, etc., hasten the process of concentration. Within the past ten years the loan corporations, financed by the United States Government alone, have come into possession of more than one fourth of the real-estate mortgages. The twenty largest life insur- ance companies hold 60 per cent of the remainder. Less than 5 per cent of all real-estate mortgages are held by private individuals. The national wealth tends to be massed in larger and larger ag- gregates of ownership, and these are held together under cor- porate business titles and perpetuated even though there is positive
Business Concentrations in Specific Industries, in the United States3
Number of Percentages of Industry Companies Nations Business
Aluminum i 100
Automobiles 3 86
Beef products 2 47
Bread and bakery products 3 20
Cans 3 90
Cement 5 40
Cigarettes 3 80
Bituminous coal 4 10
Copper 4 78
Corn binders 4 100
Corn planters 6 91
Flour 3 29
Glass (plate) 2 95
Glass (safety) 2 60
Iron ore 4 64
Lead 4 60
Oil wells 4 20
Steel 3 60.5
Whisky 4 58
Wood pulp 4 35
Zinc 4 46
Women's clothes 4 2
"Moody's Railroad, Public Utility and Industrial Manuals, Willard Thorp — Dun & Bradstreet; The Modern Corporation and Private Property, A. A. Berle, Jr., and Gardiner C. Means (Macmillan).
22 Rural Roads to Security
CONCENTRATIONS IN OWNERSHIP
Growth of the 200 Giant Corporations (Nonbanking)
Combined Assets
42 railroads 1909 $26.0 billion
52 public uitilities 1919 $43-7 billion
106 industrials 1929 $81.1 billion
economic and social disadvantage in the concentrated ownership. Many of the fields of American business are now entirely mo- nopolized by corporations. Small independent enterprises are rapidly being forced into mergers or subjugated to the policies and economic pressure of the dominating corporation. The tables on pages 21, 22, and 23 show the degree of concentrations in owner- ship, in banking operations, and in pyramided,- economic control. In 1929 these two hundred companies controlled 49.2 per cent of all corporated wealth, while the remaining 50.8 per cent was owned by the 300,000 smaller companies. At the 1924-29 rate of growth it would take only thirty years for all industrial activity to be absorbed by the two hundred giants. Two tenths of i per cent of all industrial corporations hold 52 per cent of all corporate assets.
Concentrations in Banking Corporations
Bank Resources in the Nation, 1930 $72 billion
Bank Resources in 250 Largest Banks, 1930 $33-4 billion
One per cent of the banks directly controlled 46 per cent of the total national resources in banks. Twenty-four New York banks or less than one tenth of i per cent of the banks have combined resources of $10.8 billion, i.e., 15 per cent of total resources in banks. Their capitalization is nearly $700,000,000 — a sum large enough for the capitalization of 20,000 country banks situated in towns of 10,000 or less. In 1924 the one hundred largest banks had total deposits of $15,150,000,000. In 1930 the one hundred largest banks had total deposits of $22,158,000,000. One per cent of the banks control three fourths of the Nation's commercial deposits. Ninety-nine per cent of the banks control one fourth of the com- mercial deposits.*
4 Craig B. Hazlcwood, American Bankers' Association Journal, October, 1929; Com- mittee on Banking and Currency, Seventy-first Congress, Branch, Chain and Group Banking, Vol. i, Part i, pp. 3, 4; American Banker, 1931; New York Times, January 20, 1931.
Centralization 23
Concentration in Economic Control5
1. Legal Device — blocks of nonvoting stocks pyramiding
"Pyramiding" — control by a majority of stock in one corporation which in turn holds a majority in another, etc. An interest of one eighth or one sixteenth or less can become entrenched in control.
2. Minority Control — a group in a position to dominate through their
stock.
3. Management Control — existing management appoints proxy committee
and virtually dictates.
SUMMARY OF CONTROL IN SOME OF THE 200 LARGEST
CORPORATIONS 42 Railroads:
Minority Control 13
Legal Device i
Management Control. . 14 52 Public Utilities:
Minority Control 17 — Thought to be so controlled — 5
Legal Device 10
Management Control . . 5 — Thought to be so controlled — 5 1 06 Industrials:
Minority Control 14 — Thought to be so controlled — 24
Legal Device 10
Management Control . . 2 — Thought to be so controlled — 39
It is evident that business in the United States is marching on toward economic dictatorship, if it has not already become a dictator in many ways. The wealth of the nation is being concen- trated rapidly in the hands of relatively few persons. When wealth is put into the form of corporation securities and the corporation itself tends to become more and more a veritable spider web for national and even international economic action, the control of property passes from the individuals who own, to the few direc- tors. The directors are sometimes under the control of investment bankers. They are dependent upon them for entrance into the capital market. Interlocking directorates, banker-director relation- ships, and other legal devices place the banker in strategic posi- tions. Directors of our modern corporations, investment bankers,
5 The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Bcrle & Means; New York Times, Wall Street Journal.
24 Rural Roads to Security
and wealthy persons exercise a tremendous economic power. Of the three groups, wealthy persons are the least powerful, i.e., if they are merely the holders of large blocks of stocks. The invest- ment bankers are more powerful than the corporation directors. However, the investment bankers are not in complete control, because they apparently do not act as a compact group. Indeed, it is known that they compete among themselves, but their cumu- lative power, though exercised in separate and conflicting groups, is enormous.
Inefficiencies and Giant Enterprises
Only those who refuse to look at the modern world realistically accept the assumption that all these concentrations lead to effi- ciency, security, or prosperity. It is becoming increasingly evident that the advantages that the giant enterprise has are more often the advantages conferred by grace of law and government than advantages of economic efficiency resulting from size. The success of a few large corporations is constantly before our minds and we soon forget the many cases of merger which fail to work. After ten years of operation 35 industrial mergers were studied by Arthur S. Dewing in 1919. He found that during this period the average earnings of 22 of them were less than the previous com- bined earnings of their merged units.
In March, 1938, fortune magazine offered a sound critique of corporate bigness and gave expression to some philosophy of decentralization:
... It may be time to wonder whether profits and the national in- come would not be bigger if the corporate units of industry were not so big. . . .
This technique of bigness, involving the artificial control of prices and other basic factors, is a collectivist technique. And the operation of the collectivist technique has created for business a precarious situa- tion. Business has carried collectivism so far in its private affairs that its affairs are no longer private, but, by the bigness of their impact, public. . . .
Thus collectivism in industry begets collectivism in Government. And if this is not collectivism as practiced in the so-called collectivist states, it is only a couple of theoretical steps removed from it. Carried
Centralization 25
to its extreme it means the downfall of the economy upon which American Business has been reared; the perversion of the democratic order; the destruction of the right to risk-and-profit; and all too easily, the loss of those civil liberties that are at present based upon the prin- ciple of the limitation of governmental power. . . .
But if, finally, neither business nor government makes any moves whatever in the direction of breaking down industry into smaller, more compact, more mobile, and better earning units; if bigness is allowed to remain as the standard concept of economy: then the Amer- ican business man, and the American politico, and in short all Amer- ican citizens, must prepare themselves for a different order of things; an order in which the powers of government are not limited; in which the right to risk-and-profit is not clear; and in which the making, the selling, and even the buying of the products of the biggest show in history are all mysteriously directed from above.6
What Builds the Giant Corporation?
The usefulness and the efficiency of concentrated joint-stock companies or corporations operating on a national or international basis is highly questionable. Now and then a corporation becomes large because its large-scale operation is genuinely efficient. Most of them owe their gigantic size to governmental privilege and skillful legal manipulations. By the favor of the law, the business corporation is a permanent thing, except when an occasional cor- poration is limited in its life tenure by special legislative decree or charter limitation. The corporation can expand indefinitely; can get long-term or semipermanent control of credit; sell, divide, or concentrate aggregates of shares in its enterprise. With the pros- pect of incorporated continuity through many generations, cor- porate managements, and incorporated vendors of credit are en- couraged to build up bonded indebtedness. The general trend leads to the burden of too much debt from generation to genera- tion. Thus credit which would ordinarily be mobile and directed toward newly productive enterprises is absorbed. New bonds and stock certificates are often issued to cover the cost of new busi- ness and plant extensions. Payment of dividends is often un- naturally preserved and the stockholders are thus led into the
6 Fortune, editorial, "Unmerging for Profit," March, 1938.
26 Rural Roads to Security
unsound expectation of permanently maintained high profits. Then, when it is suddenly realized that a large part of the pyr- amided corporate structure is insecure, the shock of loss is unduly magnified.
The corporation with its legal fiction of artificial personality sets its owners practically free of all personal responsibilities in the conduct of its affairs. The liability of organizers and owners is very limited according to charter or statute, and their general responsibility is highly impersonal. In practice the management is often entirely independent of the titular or actual ownership. These limitations in individual liabilities and responsibilities, make it impossible to repair the economic and social injuries which are inflicted on the investing and trading public. Armed with chartered privileges and statutory favors, the strong corpora- tions become ruthless in their competition with private citizens. They frequently operate independently of the natural law. Small private enterprise fails, sometimes because it is inefficient but more often because it does not compete on a basis of equality with cor- porations. The natural person is limited by his expectation of life. At his death his enterprise is divided among his heirs and further diminished by inheritance taxes. The natural person is personally responsible for all his acts, and his entire estate is liable without limitation for the payment of debts. Creditors cannot be shut of! from any part of the natural person's estate by reason of "limited liability" technicalities.
Results Under Giant "Corporationism"
When corporations become numerous, as in recent years, their privileged positions and complexities, their size and opportunities for expansion play an active part in the breakdown of small in- dividual enterprises. Democratic foundations are disturbed. Indi- vidual and social securities are lost. Legal sanctions which may be quite adequate for the control of small enterprises and private persons in accordance with the requirements of the common good, are not adequate for incorporated monopolies and artificial legal persons.
The large corporation sometimes attains an apparent economy through volume of production and volume of sales. But there is
Centralization 27
always the tremendous and deadening overhead supervision plus the costs of distribution and advertising. The vast majority of the employees are usually on a low wage scale. When chain-store or- ganizations are compared with groups of small independent grocers, the chain has the advantage in the purchase of quantity goods. The chain corporations set aside dividends more regularly than the independent grocers. The larger part of the saving in quantity purchases is appropriated as profits. The chains sell their goods at a higher average markup in prices than the independent groups. Yet, the independent grocers invariably pay a higher average wage.
There is no striking evidence that a growing monopoly makes for efficiency. Aluminum prices have held a ten-year fixed level. Four of these years were years of the greatest depression and price decline in history. The aluminum monopoly certainly had the opportunity to show its efficiency. There was on the contrary greater profit taking and uneconomic exploitation through patented processes. Farm-machinery monopolies went through the same period with the same profit taking, retaining their high price levels and high profits.
Chapter 3
PROLETARIANISM
THE real evils which men and society encounter when there is too much monopolization through corporations, too much ur- banism, and too much commercialism, are not the losses sustained through the inefficiencies of new processes in the supply of necessi- ties. The real evils are spiritual, social, and political losses. These grow with the gradual change of a democratic society into a proletarian society, the gradual change of the free man into one wholly dependent upon a wage, and often wholly dependent on governmental relief and charity. As this change continues the few privileged owners of productive property begin to live in dread of falling into the proletarian condition. And this catastrophe lies ahead for most of them.
Proletarians Lose Freedom and Ideals
The proletarians forget what it is to be free. In one country after another they accept a despot. This despot frequently speaks in terms of democracy to his new nation of slaves. The proletarians are slaves ready to accept another form of slavery, provided, of course, it be something new. They find but little difficulty in speaking of it under the name of Democracy.
The proletarian millions are a dangerous thing. Deprived of property, these men and women and children begin to regard work as an evil thing, a burden wrongfully imposed by another. They know that this work enriches someone else, not themselves. They cannot save anything and they would not acquire any in- dependence if they did, because in a society which is generally speaking proletarian, the small owner is repeatedly ruined. Only the exceptional man can rise out of the proletariat into the privileged owning class, and when he does, it will often be at the expense of his fellow men.
28
Proletarianism 29
The proletarian mind is not natural. It feels no incentive to save. In a proletarian society it is easy to sell worthless gadgets. The proletariat loses its sense of home, for it has no roots. It lives in a changing labor market. It drifts from place to place. It in- herits nothing and it has no hope of handing on anything to its children. Save for the necessity of keeping alive, there is no incen- tive to work. Livelihood is doled out through the wage, relief, or charity. A low ideal becomes the highest; namely, get as much as possible for as little effort as possible. The privileged minority, the owners, set this example. Frequently their effort is slightly anything beyond the gambler's effort.
Proletarians Confuse Democracy and Tyranny
The proletarian mind finds no difficulty in the verbal profession of democracy. It openly acclaims leaders who glibly talk about the "new democracy" under the dictatorship of Fascism or the "new democracy" under the so-called Dictatorship of the Prole- tariat, which we know is the dictatorship over the Proletariat by the chief Communist Bureaucrat.
The confused minds of both the leaders and their followers are not able to see that the two concepts are contradictory. The ideologies of propertyless people and their leaders are often placed in juxtaposition with the words of the Constitution, and the philosophy of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. This forced and illogical connection is errant falsehood. The democratic so- ciety of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln was inspired by the free mind of the free man. The proletarian mind, however, has well-nigh forgotten what it is to be free and it is incapable of democratic action. The mind that has no experience of anything but modern social injustice, oppression, and exploitation is filled with bitterness, hatred, and despair. It cannot grasp the strength and value of human bonds, of loyalty, affection, law, justice, lib- erty, and the rights and duties between those who are poorer and those who are wealthier.
Gardens and Farms and Homes Remove Proletarianism
This proletarian mind is found in every nation of the world today. It does not always appear in this bare, unyielding outline.
30 Rural Roads to Security
So long as the cities are not too large, so long as there are many families who own their own plot of land, so long as there are some independent craftsmen and businessmen who conduct small enterprises, the proletariat is in frequent contact with democratic modes of living. At this stage old loyalties, traditional ties, domestic and community solidarities will still tend to hold the two elements of society together. The proletarians too may still have the opportunity to possess themselves of a house and a garden. At least they share to some extent the mind of their neighbor who is a small-property owner and has a sense of being at home and taking an active part in the democratic responsibili- ties of his community. The proletarians at this stage are inter- spersed with the owners. Developments will- not have reached the point where the cities are too large. The proletarians will not have been herded too closely together. All natural ties have not yet been broken and their individual lives do not yet take on the sharp angularity and sordidness of the average industrial working day and year. Warming rays of light still reach the proletariat as they stream from the richer life of the neighbors who own some property.
We do not have proletarianism in its extreme in America, but we do have entirely too much of it, and our concentrations and centralizations in social, economic, and political activity are un- fortunately hastening its advance.
However, it is not too late to attempt the restoration of our world-famous democracy. That restoration will be measured in direct proportion to our sincerity and our success in the progres- sive abolition of proletarianism, which is the same thing as the multiplication of small ownership in productive property, the abolition of the proletarian mentality, and the restoration of the free mind. Private ownership is not fulfilled and proletarianism is not removed by the mere ownership of goods for consumption. Private ownership means primarily the title, possession, control, and personal management of productive property. It is precisely this distinction in the ownership of property that will "produce" and property to be "consumed" that makes or unmakes the proletariat.
Proletarianism 31
1 .
Sufficiently Widespread Distribution of "Productive" Property
Editors of newspapers, politicians, magnates of industry, cham- ber-of -commerce speakers, economists, and commencement speak- ers are forever repeating the story of American wealth. They tell us that the United States with 7 per cent of the world's population and 6 per cent of the world's land area owns 45 per cent of the wealth of the world. These men continually repeat the statement that the distribution of our wealth is "reasonably equitable." For proof and illustration of this statement they repeatedly summarize the facts of distribution relative to consumable goods; namely, that there are in America 29,000,000 radios, 11,000,000 washing machines, 25,000,000 automobiles, 20,000,000 electric irons, 10,- 000,000 vacuum cleaners, and 9,000,000 million electric refrig- erators. We do not deny this distribution of consumable goods. Statistics relative to consumable goods prove nothing. The statis- tics that we must study to determine the extent of property owner- ship are the statistics relative to productive property/What is the distribution relative to productive goods ? What is the distribution of ownership in land, in buildings and equipment, in farms, fac- tories, mines, in commercial enterprises, in machinery and appli- ances? Do those who always dwell on statistics relative to con- sumable goods want to forward the impression that the distribu- tion of productive property is "reasonably equitable" too? Or are they obviously trying to evade this all-important point; namely, the facts about the distribution of land and homes, business and commercial enterprises, machinery and appliances used in produc- tion ? Or do they want us to conclude that these things are reason- ably distributed too? Their statistics are correct so far as they apply to consumable goods and gadgets, but if they make the conclusion of a reasonably equitable distribution of productive property from the statistics relative to the distribution of con- sumable goods, then, as Herbert Agar states, "the conclusion is an insult to the mind." ,
The statistics are doubtless correct, but the conclusion is an insult
to the mind. Of course we have the lion's share of the world's wealth; that is what Providence did for us. But our special problem is the one
32 Rural Roads to Security
I described in the Prologue: the poverty of rich nations. Our problem, and the measure of our failure, is that being so rich we should have millions of destitute citizens. Forty-five per cent of the world's wealth — twenty-five million automobiles — the most prosperous middle class in the world's history — and God knows how many million workless, landless, undernourished people. We have not even taken the trouble to count them. Perhaps we are afraid that if we knew their numbers we could not dodge the question, "what has gone wrong?"1
Distribution of Productive Property
The statistics of productive property are an entirely different set of statistics, and tell an entirely different story. They are not the facts about the multiplicity of automobiles and radios, the mul- tiplicity of bric-a-brac and the general use of similar accessories. The statistics relative to the distribution of productive properties tell the story of the rise of tenancy from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, the foreclosures of 600,000 farms within a few years, widespread tax liens on land, the heavy burden of mortgage debt. Like- wise, the story relative to productive property is the story of gigantic mergers and extreme concentration of the ownership and control and management of industries into the hands of a relatively few corporations and the hands of relatively few stock- holders. The story of the distribution of productive property is not a pleasant story. It is the story of the multiplication of the wage slaves, and the final appearance of millions who have become the paupers of the State. It is the story of the concentration of credit control, the continual removal of the small enterprise by the large corporation, and the growth of government holdings in proper- ties that once belonged to individuals and small corporations.
Because the story relative to productive property is not a story of "a reasonably equitable distribution," we have an American proletariat numbering in the millions. Yes. This proletariat con- tinues to exist. It drives an automobile; it listens to the radio; and it uses up its gadgets. It somehow eats and sleeps, but it has no plot of land, no tools, no small enterprises, no reasonable securi- ties. This proletariat lives in the labor market — a market which is even more uncertain than the Stock Exchange. A description
*Agar, H., Pursuit of Happiness (Houghton Mifflin Co.), p. 357-
Proletarianism 33
of the commercialization of labor and its effects is seen in the following:
One of the primary causes [of the Proletariat] is the commercializa- tion of human labor power — the fact that labor has become a market commodity and that production, socially speaking, is nothing more than a money transaction between employer and employee. The effect of this commercialization is a lack of security, or assurance of a decent standard of living. . . . This may occur because of personal circum- stances— sickness, accident, age, sex, race, disqualifications of one sort or another; it may be due to the lowering of the demand for a par- ticular kind of labor; or it may be caused by those phenomena in the business cycle, crises and depressions, which occur in the very nature of modern economic life. ... A second result of the commercializa- tion of labor power is that labor and the employer-employee relation- ship are largely divested of their moral and personal quality. Both tend to lose the feature in their character that had so much to do in former days with the energy and the steadiness with which work was performed. In place of a moral willingness to work and a joy and pride in the work accomplished we now have the compulsion of economic pressure and shop discipline. . . . The raising of wages does assuredly take out of the industrial world a considerable part of the existing tensions, but not nine-tenths, as some writers would have us believe.2
Human Labor Marketed as Simply Another Commodity
When human labor is generally reduced to a commodity in the market, the social standing of the working classes begins to drop. Responsibility is concentrated with the aid of machines and cor- porations into the hands of a few. Most of the workers are reduced to the level of automatons. The wage is too meager and the work is too mean for the great majority to reach any important place, while achievement is under the false sign of the dollar. Financial success becomes the builder of an empty, artificial, social hierarchy.
Shop Discipline
Another primary cause for the existence and attitude of the proletariat is what Doctor Brief calls the "methodology of modern industry" with its relentless pursuit of profit, with maximum out- briefs, Dr. Goetz, The Proletariat (McGraw-Hill Co.), pp. 33-35.
34 Rural Roads to Security
put for minimum outlay, continuous production, and all manner of segmentation of function and mass-production measures. Men are not desirable for employment after forty. Women and children are employed instead of men. Efficiency tests are given, etc. "The purely human, with its unpredictable possibilities, its curious va- garies, its moods and tempers, has no place in the gross material- ism of factory organization." The modern shop is a military organ- ization. Men and women must work under rigid limitations of time, space, and material. "This naturally leads to a minute divi- sion of responsibilities, and there is plenty of room for arbitrari- ness, for misunderstandings, for distrust, and for actual or sup- posed injustice."
Congested Areas
Another reason for the growth of proletarianism is the concen- tration of production centers in limited areas. With this come all of the evils attendant on highly undesirable, congested, living conditions. "Capital and labor find more and more occasions of friction — to say nothing of the mental tensions, the unwhole- some restraints and deprivations which always exist where human beings are closely crowded together, out of contact with nature and away from their native sod."3
Dr. Alexis Carrel declares these conditions of the proletariat and proletarianism itself should be progressively abolished and he indicates the way:
Gigantic factories, office buildings rising to the sky, inhuman cities, industrial morals, faith in mass-production, are not indispensable to civilization. Other modes of existence and thought are possible. Cul- ture without comfort, beauty without luxury, machines without en- slaving factories, science without the worship of matter, would restore to man his intelligence, his moral sense, his virility, and lead him to the summit of his development. . . . There have been, in the past, industrial organizations which enabled the workmen to own a house and land, to work at home when and as they willed, to use their in- telligence, to manufacture entire objects, to have the joy of creation. At the present time this form of industry could be resumed. Electrical
1 Ibid., p. 41.
Proletarianism 35
power and modern machinery make it possible for the light industries to free themselves from the curse of the factory. Could not the heavy industries also be decentralized? Or would it not be possible to use all the young men of the country in those factories for a short period, just as for military service? In this or another way the proletariat could be progressively abolished. Men would live in small communi- ties instead of in immense droves. Each would preserve his human value within his group. Instead of being merely a piece of machinery, he would become a person. Today the position of the proletariat is as low as was that of the feudal serf. Like the serf, he has no hope of escaping from his bondage, no hope of being independent, of holding authority over others. The artisan, on the contrary, has the legitimate hope that some day he may become the head of the shop. Likewise the peasant owning his land, the fisherman owning his boat, although
; obliged to work hard, are, nevertheless, masters of themselves and of their time. Most industrial workers could enjoy similar independence and integrity. The white collar people lose their personality just as factory hands do. In fact, they become proletarians. It seems that mod- ern business organization and mass-production are incompatible with
.' the full development of the human self.4
The Proletariat a Slave of the System
It may be argued that any worker can always quit, and that therefore he is free. But is a worker actually free to quit when his livelihood and that of his family will end with his job? Can he quit and expect to be taken care of by charity or public relief ? He cannot expect anything like a full subsistence from charity or relief. His family will suffer. This is a far greater grief to him than his own privations. His employer may hire him or fire him. His livelihood is in another man's hands; his fate rests with another man's will. The ordinary worker does not own any property which he could turn into enough money to live on. The propertyless worker is at the mercy of the employer's will.
Perhaps the worker could easily find some land where he could raise enough to satisfy his and his family's needs. Many obstacles block this. If the worker has no capital for such a self-reliant effort toward subsistence he is still helpless. There are difficulties about pulling up stakes to seek a livelihood in a new location. Ties of
4 Carrel, Dr. Alexis, Man, The Unknown (Harper and Bros.), pp. 296 and 315.
36 Rural Roads to Security
friendship and blood relationship often make it hard to leave the old family circle. Associations formed over a period of years make strong bonds. Frequently a man has contracted debts with local businessmen. It is hard enough in this case to pay off his obliga- tions; the old debts are an obstacle to his moving to a new place. Besides this, wherever he moves, moving will cost money. There will be new debts to pay.
When we glibly suggest that a man may go West to the harvest fields, or to some other big factory to get a new job, we forget that the expense may be more than the working family can risk. Work is promised in the harvest fields or in a factory. Yes, but who knows whether others will not snap up the opportunity before he himself arrives. Every year word comes from the West that hopeful young men seeking work in the harvest fields are being turned away disappointed. The worker, indeed, "seems" to be free; it "seems" possible for him to go to some new, less fre- quented spot, to take up a new line of work. But for pioneering he would need a little capital. Productive goods is one of the worker's greatest needs. If he had productive goods he would be on the road to freedom.
Besides capital the worker needs training in order to take up a new line of work. This is especially true if he tries to support him- self on the soil. If he started with small capital, he would be in dire need of direction so as to avoid costly mistakes. At the present time there is no adequate provision for this training. Pioneering today is not quite so practicable a possibility as it was in the past century. Tax rates are much higher. The high taxes, county taxes and township taxes, State taxes and Federal taxes make it impossible for the untrained man to start on a shoestring and make ends meet.
Even at a time when there is a labor shortage the laborer has no assurance that the shortage will continue and that employment will continue. The typical employer on the other hand is assured of a livelihood even if he closes down his plant. He depends on still other property for his support. The employee, however, is at the mercy of another. When Henry Ford decides to lay off 150,- ooo men, he has only to make up his mind and the thing is done. The motive makes no difference. He may want to spite General
Proletarianism 37
Motors, or show the Federal Government his power. In any case, the worker is simply dependent on the will of the boss.
If there is a labor shortage, the worker can find employment elsewhere. But suppose he has paid for a small home and has been living in it for a year or two. Often he cannot sell the property ': at a good price; he cannot afford to sell it at any great sacrifice. In order to realize on his investment, he must occupy the home himself. Once again his liberty is limited. He is not free to go out and get work somewhere else. Certainly if there is labor shortage in the future it will not necessarily mean a shortage of unskilled laborers. As machines are multiplied, they will replace men in many cases where work has been done by unskilled labor. This will make it all the more dangerous for the unskilled man ; to lose his job. The present substitution of strip mills for roller i mills in the steel industry will ultimately mean that 85 per cent of the present steelworkers will have to find work elsewhere. The cotton picker, if expensively and massively built for the large commercial farm and not constructed inexpensively and along the lines of a human scale unit for small acreages, will in a few years render three million hand pickers jobless.
The Giant Factory Dictator is Supreme
The important thing to consider is that the owner of the means of production has the whip hand. If the owners decide to hire men, the workers have jobs, otherwise not. For the sake of argu- ment we may admit that during a "boom," when there is a labor shortage, the worker can always move and find a job. Then, in the rare case of a labor shortage, the worker could move and pick up a new job at will.
The worker is not only dependent on the will of his employer, i but there is also another element of insecurity in his hold on a weekly or monthly wage. The boss may not be efficient as the i manager of a business. The two hundred giant corporations own : more than half of the productive property. This staggering con- centration of property gives the large corporations an advantage. The small enterprise is not certain of survival in the face of such concentration. Business failures for small enterprises is a source of insecurity for many workers. Hence, all-powerful concentration
38 Rural Roads to Security
is not the only cause of failure. As already stated, the. manager of the business may simply be incompetent or wasteful; he may not know how to manage; he may not know how to sell. As a result the worker will suffer in getting less than a comfortable, living wage; or in the loss of his job.
In ten years, over ten thousand banks went out of business. Once the depression set in, a tremendous number of firms were bound to go under. The various branches of business in this coun- try are dependent on each other. If one branch suffers serious loss, the others lose too. This loss grows very quickly, like a snowball rolling down hill. Soon the whole country feels a severe decline in income, in employment. The propertyless worker finds himself in a position of utter dependence on the functioning of business machinery which is too delicate, because it is too highly concen- trated. Too many external, arbitrary circumstances must be ad- justed by a few men, or the worker must beg. If a single factor in the interlaced business mechanism fails, the worker's income falls below subsistence level, or falls farther below the subsistence level than it was before. Big business is governed by a few men. These men do not need to keep their plants in operation in order to live; the workers do. Workers may strike, but they cannot strike for long. They must live. Other men may be secured to take their places. With only one fifth of the workers organized, collective bargaining is not very effective. If labor were organized so that men could always have recourse to collective bargaining, they would, as a group, have tremendous power. The way to organiza- tion is a long and difficult one. And again, once in the union, the worker must surrender much of his freedom to the union. If union and corporation cannot agree, there must in the end be submission to government intervention. If capital and labor are deadlocked, a higher authority must be called in — either the local or national government. Again the wage earner becomes subject to the will of another. He is again dependent on the will of another for the chance to make a living.
Irresponsible Leaders in Unions
If big unions take over the work of collective bargaining, the worker often shifts his responsibility to the union's irresponsible
Proletarianism 39
leaders. Any complete unionization of workers which does not amount to a genuine partnership of capital and labor does not give us an occupational group. There must be a basis for coopera- tion between boss and worker. There is a basis of cooperation only when both employer and employee work for the good management of the industry, only when both shoulder the respon- sibility for that good management.
The Proletarian Low Ambition: Job and Pay Check
What has been the ambition of the employee in a giant corpora- tion ? Has he been interested in turning out a good product and in good management? The prevailing position of economic slavery puts the ambition of the worker too low. Working for a large corporation unfits the worker for taking part in management or taking the burden of management to heart. We all know that the chief concern of nearly all workers on a weekly wage is to keep their job, or get a slight advance in pay. The ambitions of workers are not connected with business realities; such as the production of goods of better quality, better management in the industry, more efficient and more abundant production at lower costs, and better service to the community, etc. Why do the workers throw off such responsibilities? They become irresponsible because the employer will not share responsibility with them. For the workers there is nothing but jobs and pay checks and layoffs. For the work- er finally, the job and the pay check begins to mean "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." He looks immediately to his job and not the company's product, as the thing on which his family depends. But the pay check and the job are not real things, not fundamental things. The job is an exceedingly insecure thing, an imitation of real employment. The dehumanized, impersonal, mechanized workman is not interested in the burden of respon- sibility. His whole tendency is to slough off such a burden, but the tendency is hardly conscious.
Slow Growth Disguises Hideousness of Proletarianism
If the wage system were suddenly placed on us while we were still peacefully occupied with our own tools, machines, and our own little farms, we would see the full effect of the system on the
40 Rural Roads to Security
mind of the worker. Fortunately for our study, we have this scene practically enacted for us on the coast of South America. The Indians, native there, lived peacefully in a little village. Each family had what property it needed and for the most part sup- ported itself. One day the world's great oil company arrived and built a pumping station. It hired Indians, paid them wages. The wages were not high by our standard, but to the natives the money represented untold wealth, especially since the industrialists brought to this quiet spot not only money but new things to buy. The Indian's appetite for money had been aroused. He developed a craving for this "token" wealth. His desire for spicy entertain- ment and gaudy baubles was inflamed. When his new source of income was threatened, he was ready to use any kind of violence to keep from losing his pay check. He had in a brief time become a wage slave. The oil company, of course, hired men as it needed them and dropped them as soon as the work was done. But the natives had been drawn into a state of mind where they demanded work and money. Grave trouble threatened if they did not get it. An official of the oil company sensed the danger and brought the facts to a prominent member of a religious order, the spiritual leader of the Indian colony. The official asked the priest to ask his Religious Order to set up a complete system of social service for the South American colony in order that the Indians might be pacified and kept under control. The priest turned a withering fire on the policies of the company and its willingness to have religion step in to palliate the evils which the company had worked on the appetites, ambitions, and outlook of the Indians. Before, the Indian had been interested in producing what the family could use and what the community could use. He had been engaged in genuine things. Now, however, his whole thought was to keep a job, to get money, and to buy accessories and novel- ties as well as necessities. His whole thought and desire was taken up with less essential things. Does this make a man more inclined to escape his own responsibilities? Does it make him less con- cerned about his fundamental duties as a father of a family, a producer for a family, and a leader for the community in social, economic, and religious matters? Obviously, it does. The effects, the results, are the same in any modern country.
Proletarianism 41
Mental Effect of Economic Slavery: Fear
We defined economic slavery as dependence on the will of another who holds the whip handle, because he has complete control over the productive plant. The worker depends on the will of the entrepreneur. His tenure of employment is very un- certain. Curtailment of production does not necessarily conflict with the plans of the capitalist. He may prefer to keep high prices and cut production, or he may cut prices and sustain production. Curtailment of production and high prices puts certain firms at the mercy of the owners of other firms. This is often purposely done to force merger and bring pressure for concentration. It matters little what the motive may be, the practice is common, and the worker lives in continual fear of losing his job. Unless he has productive property or is the exceptional man who is indispensable to some employer, this fear undermines his independence of character.
By independence of character we mean self-reliance. We mean backbone. We mean the strength of will necessary to undertake responsibility rather than pass it on to another. We mean the courage to face a problem and take command, the courage to dominate a situation, to accept and carry duties assigned by nature and circumstances; duties of family life, duties of citizenship, duties in administering one's own property, duties of leadership in the social and economic betterment of one's own community. You will say that the necessity of doing one's duty is extremely general, that priests, preachers, educators, parents, and teachers have always labored at building up courage and strength of will. That is true but the circumstantial odds against achievement have never been as great as they are now. Economic slavery is the peculiar evil of our time which puts too many men and women in a position where they easily refuse to be responsible in the direction of affairs. When millions of people are managed in every detail of their work, they are soon in a position where they look for management in government, in play, in education, in social affairs, in all situations. This is the terrible surrender that econom- ic slavery fosters. Courageous assumption of responsibilities, by the many, dies out. In its place comes subservience, dependence, a re-
42 Rural Roads to Security
fusal to stand on one's own feet, a refusal to be self-reliant, a refusal of the drudgery, the anxieties, and the hazards of manage- ment, and consequently the tremendous loss of independence, security, freedom, and happiness. There is a general weakening of backbone and courage. And with this there springs up a gen- eral attachment to worthless gadgets.
Mass-production factories, owned and controlled by a few, in- troduce the "speed-up" system. From these factories "metal de- vices come forth, marvelously transformed, while- men are abused, degraded, and corrupted." Adam Smith bubbled with enthusiasm when he found that the process of making straight pins had been divided into twenty-five operations, giving each worker a differ- ent mechanical motion. Smith did not see that this universal segmentation of labor would undermine character, leave deep dis- satisfactions, wound self-respect, and dehumanize workers, tying them down to monotonous, mechanical repetitions.
Out of work, out of a job, propertyless, men become helpless and hopeless. And when men become helpless and hopeless they are all the more dependent on the job, or on the political boss and his dole. Boys who could support themselves on a little land go to the city and get a job in a factory. Because they are young and energetic they get jobs. They replace men of forty who are used up. Perhaps, they earn $150 a month for six months. When the job and the pay stops at the end of six months or a year, they putter about as well as possible until they can get a job again. They give up all thought and hope of independence. With some knowledge of agriculture and a little effort to obtain a home and a few acres they would have been capable of raising much food for themselves and their children. They would in fact have been capable of much more. They could have built up a new center of farm and cooperative life. They could have been leaders in the building of a relatively self-sufficient community. They could have made themselves and others partially independent of the big city factory.
The big corporations now possess all the approaches to domina- tion. More and more men want the corporation to manage for them. The corporation therefore takes in more property, controls greater amounts of capital. As this centralization and collectiviza-
Prolctarianism 43
tion proceeds, the worker has less and less chance of gaining any independence.
Economic Slavery
The bond of slavery in the mass-production wage system is by no means open and evident. The state of utter dependence is disguised by certain little concessions or apparent concessions to freedom. The first argument that opponents use to show that the worker is not an economic slave is that there are bosses and highly trained workers who are free and yet are wage earners. Officials of a company receive high salaries. They are not bound to do the bidding of a master, therefore, no special slavery seems to follow from the fact that a man is a wage earner. We readily grant that such wage earners are the exception. They are not always on the receiving end when orders are given. They do the hiring and firing. The fact that certain authority is delegated to them gives them more security. Consider the case of a valuable worker — the brilliant lawyer, retained with handsome fees. He has no great fear of insecurity as a wage slave. He is highly trained and his services are in demand. It matters little to him who employs him. The fact that he is a wage earner does not make him subject to economic slavery. This argument falls down because these par- ticular pay rollers have special advantages the ordinary workers do not have. They are the exception. Economic slavery does not hold in their case. And yet, these high-salaried wage earners are often capable of showing a disgusting degree of subservience to their financial lord or political boss.
Another argument opponents use to show that the ordinary worker is free points to choice of occupation. Provided the worker has the necessary ambition, he may become a bricklayer, a plum- ber's helper, a plasterer, a mechanic, an electrician's helper, or a stage carpenter. All that the worker has to do, is to put in a little time making himself a little more expert in a commercial way. After that he is able to make a job secure. The answer is simply: the jobs are too few. Let us say, a union for stage electricians re- quires applicants to obtain certain training. Only a fortunate few are taken into the training school. Sons and nephews and favor- ites will be given the preference. In the building trades, how can
44 Rural Roads to Security
the worker have the liberty of choosing to work at his trade, when building is not being done?
The clerk or factory "hand" has a family. He must support them and he must keep his job to do it. Is he a free man ? He is bound to keep his job. He depends on the job for a living. He is not interested in the shaping of an independent career. He does not fit his work into the needs of his community. He throws off responsibility. His general attitude toward the control and direc- tion of affairs is "Let George do it" — "Let somebody else run things" — "Someone else should take the responsibility, moral, economic, social, which makes up the burden of management" — "The world owes me a living" — "Society owes me a 'job.' "
This does not mean that the wage slave always expressly says, "Let someone else take the responsibilities. I throw the burden from my shoulders. I wash my hands of them." What really hap- pens is that the ordinary job holder does not even think about the matter. He is not interested in the burden of any responsibility. His whole tendency is to slough off such a burden, but the tend- ency is not always conscious. If the industrial worker should put his feelings and his thoughts into words, he would refuse the burden of running, of managing a business or industry. But the matter simply doesn't enter his mind. Even if the industrialized worker bitterly criticizes the official management of affairs, even if he loudly proclaims how the government should be adminis- tered, he would shrink from the work itself. Proletarian talk is common. A greater freedom, and security and independence must exist before we can have the necessary occupational grouping and sharing of responsibility in industry. Any business depends not only on the character and skill of its officials, but also on the alert- ness and persistence of the workers in producing articles of supe- rior quality and sharing a responsibility for efficient administra- tion. Similar alertness and persistence are needed for the effective operation of democracy in government. These qualities spring from the character of independent, responsible people. Jobs and pay checks do not produce these qualities. People acquire these qualities through small holdings in productive property and some experience in effective ownership, management, and control.
Proletarianism 45
Historical Growth of Proletarianism
As early as 1837 Simon de Sismondi in a publication — Etude sur L' economic Politique — warned Western civilization of the emergence of the proletariat and stated that unless social, eco- nomic, and political leaders, in fact all leaders, attacked this problem, society was face to face with a fundamental change that would ultimately spell its doom. He denied that there could be progress wherever there was an aristocracy of capital and a pro- letariat running into the millions. He used the word proletaire and described it in terms of the conditions which separated wage earning from property holding. One hundred years ago he saw pauperism developing in every country where mass production was growing. He spoke of many having no productive property, becoming aggregations of destitutes, exercising no foresight, dis- playing no thrift, and suffering acutely in crises which came with underconsumption. The proletaire was indentured, as it were, to capital, for it owned nothing. The competition among such work- ers operated to the advantage of capital, and on capital's part there was no portion of responsibility for the workers. The helplessness of the worker grew from generation to generation and where the proletarian lot seemed to be cast, there was no incentive to provide for the distant future. In a keen analysis, Simon de Sismondi saw, one hundred years ago, that there was already at that time in the history of urbanism, industrialism, and liberalism too wide a gulf between property and labor, between capital and the proletaire, that unorganized group of wretched human beings.
With a keen insight into industrial problems and what now seems to be an unwarranted faith in the State and the propertied classes as agents of reform, Sismondi called upon the State and the propertied classes to make a complete break with laissez faire, Calvinism, Economic Liberalism and, to a great extent, with mass- production technocracy. He recommended that industry be de- centralized, that small factories be placed in rural areas as well as in towns, that a halt be called on large-scale production, and that employers accept responsibility for the personal welfare of their employees. Another French writer, Pecqueur, a contem- porary of Sismondi, suggests in his Nouvelle Theorie D'Economie
46 Rural Roads to Security
Sociale et Politique, that the proletarians must expect their real liberation only from themselves, and that if they don't accom- plish it, they will fall back into industrial and agricultural serfdom.
Productive Wealth Not Adequately Distributed
Productive wealth cannot make an important contribution to the welfare of a human society unless its ownership and control is somewhat equitably distributed. Do we have ,such distribution when it is actually true that "one third of our population is ill fed, ill housed and ill clothed" ? We get a fair idea of the unequitable distribution of wealth in the United States from the figures drawn up by Senator La Follette. He says that if we take the figure one hundred as representing the total population and then take one hundred dollars as representing the total wealth, we have the fol- lowing distribution or lack of equitable distribution: One in- dividual would hold $59, a second individual would hold $9, then 22 individuals would each have $1.22, and the remaining 76 would each have less than 7 cents. The chart on page 47 indicates the distribution or rather the lack of distribution in incomes.
Subordination of All to Dollar Sign
Meanwhile the chartered companies manipulate their "gold- digging stocks," speculate greedily with their "big-machine" com- plex, and dehumanize large hordes of men, women, and children who work for them or wait for work, because they think that there is nothing to do but to be the willing slaves of a corporation. The entire nation is beset with a strange economy of disorder. Too many social thinkers and legislators try to clear the way for a greater and greater centralization of .all incorporated enterprise, no matter how many human values must pay the forfeit. We are invited to surrender our liberties and pledge ourselves to the doc- trine of larger dividends and bigger sales for the two hundred and more gigantic corporations who "humbly" serve us at a larger and larger profit to themselves. We are asked to overlook the fact that the sun rises and sets on a nation of bankrupt homes. We are asked to believe that if the corporations can make mergers, employ heavier machines instead of the nation's hungry workers, then
Proletarianism
47
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s J
13
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48 Rural Roads to Security
there is a greater dividend, then there is greater efficiency, and the ultimate good of mankind, the highest achievement of society, has been attained.
Will Other Standards Prevail?
How much longer will Americans have faith in such an empty philosophy of life and reap its barren fruits? Will we weigh human values in the light of a saner philosophy and a better civilization, or will we sink deeper and deeper into the treacher- ous mire of social and economic degradation under the false leadership of industrialists and bankers while they cling tena- ciously to stock profit, usury, and monopoly ? We, the people, are too often misled by the noisy promulgation of policies which are calculated to make all business bigger, all banks more independent and usurious, and all utility companies more monopolistic and avaricious. Industry and banking must be taught to talk in terms of the nation's welfare and help to carry their proportionate share of the social burden.
The leading corporations clamor on radio wave, magazine cover, and billboard: "We provide you with a new vitamin, we offer you a new cut in clothes, we equip you with a new model in everything each year, and offer you an installment plan which will rescue your purchasing power. We have harnessed science and nature. There is nothing left for you to do but breathe. We will supply leisure-time programs and educational frills. We will manage the government for you through our lobbies. It matters very little what views you have on any legislation. We will en- trench our powerful, far-flung undertakings and supply you with every need."
Extreme Industrialism and Concentration March to Own Doom
We are somehow expected to have purchasing power, even though funds contract and banks offer credit only on a usurious basis. Even though there are fewer and fewer jobs, even though it seems to be cheaper to let crops rot in the fields, we are expected to relieve the incorporated magnates of their tariff-protected novel- ties. We are expected to become thoroughly indifferent about
Proletarianism 49
governmental responsibilities that we always thought somehow rested upon our shoulders as American citizens. Because of the fact that we still have our fundamental human nature, and that life always returns to a truer philosophy in which men assert their superiority to brute beasts, fight for their independence and their social, economic, and political liberties, it is not difficult to predict what history will record about such a period of extreme indus- trialism. History will one day present the truth about the greed, the economic and political trickery, which make joint-stock cor- porations thrive while families starve and great crowds of the nation's manhood wait in vain for a job.
Chapter 4 i
THE URBAN FAMILY IN MASS PRODUCTION
A FAMILY is defined as an enduring moral union of husband, wife, and children for a common good to be attained by their cooperative activity. A group of families united under an inde- pendent authority to effect the well-being of all constitutes a community.
Family, a Unit
Families, therefore, are the units which compose the State. The State is an outgrowth of the single family; a natural expansion because an increase in number of single families necessitates order and guidance. It exists to preserve the integrity and assure the well-being of its member families, not to supersede them. Destroy the individual family and ultimately you destroy the State. Like- wise the religious, moral, economic, and social health of the State is conditioned by a like prior health in the family. This primary dependence of the State on the family may be likened to the dependence of a body on its cells. A body is made up of a mul- titude of cells in such a way that without them there would be no body. They are the manner in which the body exists, the units of its composition; and if the individual cells do not preserve themselves as cells, the body would cease to exist. So with the family. It is the unit of the composition of the State in such a way that without it the naturally perfect State would eventually disappear. Thus it has been decreed by the nature of things and inexorably follows from that nature.
Family, a Natural Unit
The term natural in reference to the origin of the family is explained in the following citation:
50
The Urban Family in Mass Production 51
The family is a natural society because it is necessary for the con- tinuance of the race, and nature intends that the race should be con- tinued. . . . The double tie of parent to parent and of parent to child originating in natural necessity is cemented by certain natural sub- jective impulses, such as the love of parent for parent, of parent for child, and of child for parent. And, therefore, the family is natural in the fullest measure, since the ties that bind the parts together are all from nature.1
People possess the gift of speech. They crave love, sympathy, un- derstanding, and comradeship, and are eager to share their ideas with others. Isolation is not natural for them. Furthermore men and women differ in physical organism. In them has been im- planted the mating instinct in order that a man and a woman form a union for the procreation of children for the perpetuation of the race. And since the child, the result of this union, is utterly dependent on the care of parents during infancy and formative years, the union must be permanent. A man is more virile phys- ically to brave the exacting toil for daily bread, whereas the woman is blessed with a nature in keeping with her prerogative of childbearing and the management of the household. Her emo- tional, sympathetic, and domestic instincts are highly developed and flourish best in a sheltered atmosphere, free from the jarring aspects of the world of labor.
Family, a Living Unit
Activity is the sign of life. A stone is lifeless; unlike an animal it does not nourish itself, it does not grow, nor does it reproduce other stones. It has no activity. If a thing is living, it is active. The family is simple in structure but manifold in function and by its very nature active. Without activity it would deteriorate. Eva Ross calls the family "the mother cell of society." So to designate it, is to convey the idea that the family, as the organic unit of activ- ity in the State, may analogously be compared to the cell, the organic unit of activity in the body. Activity in the body depends on the functioning of the cells. If the cells die, the body dies also. So, too, the activity of each member of the family, working with
1 Cronin, Rev. Michael, The Science of Ethics (London: Gill and Son, Ltd.), Vol. II, p. 388.
52 Rural Roads to Security
the others for the good of all, achieves the end of preserving the family and the State. The more active a family is, the better it fulfills its nature and thrives; on the contrary, if it is not active, it dies. More important still, if the family is not active coopera- tively, each member performing the duties assigned to it by rea- son, its well-being is imperiled. The activities of a family are many and varied.
Activities of the Family .
Since the principal end of marriage is the procreation and education of children, it follows logically that procreation and education are the principal activities of parents. Children are the keystone of family life and an increase in their number is a bless- ing. Only when parents are unable to provide for the wants of children, or some other real impediment lies in the way of genera- tion, may an objection be raised to additional children. But, as will be shown, it is natural and necessary that a family be in a position to satisfy the wants of offspring, and a well-ordered State will be characterized by offering a reasonably certain opportunity for parents to provide for children. Attainment of the happiness, welfare, and perfection of all its members through association and cooperation is the secondary activity of the family. Parents, active in providing for the religious, physical, educational, and social needs of offspring, are at the same time realizing the de- velopment and fruition of their own personalities. In a discussion of family activity, this principle is paramount: that family unity and development are best attained when the activities of its members are centered in concerns directly connected with the preservation and welfare of the family group.
Duties of the Family
Duties also may be classed as activities, of which the obligation to preserve existence is fundamental. For this purpose a family needs food, fuel, shelter, and clothing. Otherwise it would be impossible to keep alive. And since the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms have no ascertainable purpose except to pro- vide these necessaries, and since there is no other source from which they can be had, every family is entitled to use them to
The Urban Family in Mass Production 53
eke out a livelihood. It rests with the father to secure food and with the mother to prepare it for consumption. Until sustenance is assured, the members of a family cannot devote themselves to a second duty, that of ministering to their religious and social needs. Moreover, to fulfill the duty of self-preservation, certain other requirements are also essential; namely, the ownership of property, liberty, and responsibility.
The Ownership of Property
In his Encyclical, On the Condition of the Wording Classes, Pope Leo XIII says that "every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of dis- tinction between man and the animal creation. It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten. In no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of lucrative property." The land, however, is the only self-subsistent unit. It yields the pri- mary things — food, fuel, raw material for clothing, and lumber for a sheltered dwelling. Therefore a family should ordinarily own land as well as the tools to work it. As Eric Gill, in his book Wor\ and Property, states, "only when men own the means of production is it possible fully to control the manipulation of natu- ral materials." And when it is a question of securing the neces- saries for existence, a family should fully control the means of production; otherwise self-preservation would be jeopardized, be- ing dependent on factors external to it. This basic natural right to property secures the means of self-preservation.
Liberty
Ownership is an intrinsic guarantee of liberty. Within just limits a family must be free. If it does not own land, tools, and a home, it is under the domination of another; and to be under the domination of another in primary things is unnatural unless wages paid for hired-out labor are sufficient to enable a family to fulfill its functions. Freedom is essential to the economic life of a family. Take away freedom, the right of a family to engage in activities natural to it as an institution, and its very existence is insecure.
54 Rural Roads to Security
Responsibility
Responsibility flows from the nature of a human being. The philosophical definition of a man is that he is a rational animal. Like a brute beast he has a body, eats, sleeps, and dies; but what distinguishes him from a dog or a cow is his reason. Gifted with an intellect he perceives relationships between things and can convey ideas in language; he is pleased intellectually by the sight of a beautiful landscape in which symmetry and proportion are discernible; and most important for this discussion, he can form an idea, let us say, of a table in his mind, the spiritual part of him, and then proceed with the aid of tools and wood to express this idea in a material thing, a finished table as we see it. In other words he is responsible for the table. If it is made well, he is praised; if poorly, the blame rests squarely with him. A brute animal cannot form an idea of a table because the idea is spiritual whereas an animal is material and nothing else. Therefore, as often as a man makes a table, a chair, a barn, or anything else, he is acting in a way that proclaims him to be more than a brute animal. He is exercising that faculty which, because it distin- guishes him from a beast, is more important than his body. As a maker of things, man functions spiritually and materially. Con- sequently, for the ordinary man to use things continually that have been made by a machine, or to work mechanically at a task that requires no exercise of his spiritual faculty, is to deaden that faculty and to make him less a man in the very thing which proclaims him to be a man and not a beast. This point looms large in a consideration of modern industrialism.
Modern Industrialism
Lest any misunderstanding arise over the question of terminol- ogy, let us define what we mean by the words Modern Indus- trialism. They are used to indicate that system now in vogue for the production and sale of material goods in which the means of production — capital and labor and land — are controlled by a few men who employ the masses at a wage, in which the large factory and the use of machines as distinguished from tools are dominant features, in which competition is rampant, in which
The Urban Family in Mass Production 55
high-pressure advertising is a weapon used to lure buyers, in which the profit motive is paramount, and in which the market is either flooded with goods regardless of demand or made scarce by monopolistic price fixing. The particular phase of Industrial- ism, thus defined, which is of interest here, is its effect on family life. Yet, when we prove that Industrialism militates against family life, the inference that it should be condemned does not follow, but rather there should be a correction of abuses in fac- tories and the restoration of family activity whereby the family will not exist mainly for industry. To expose the pernicious effects of Modern Industrialism on family life, the relationship of each member to the industrial system will be considered. The father as a wage earner comes first; and four statements regarding him are to be examined. They are as follows:
1. The industrial worker too often is valued not as a person but as a thing, to be used or replaced at the whim of an employer.
2. The industrial worker too often does not receive sufficient wages, and therefore is not valued as the head of a family.
3. The industrial worker too often does not possess immovable property.
4. The industrial worker too often is mechanized — reduced to a subhuman condition because he is made an irresponsible workman.
i. The industrial worker too often is valued not as a person but as a thing, to be used or replaced at the whim of an employer.
To understand why this is so, one need only to take cognizance of the present plight of the industrial worker. More and more the machine is replacing human labor and the lines of the un- employed are lengthening. To confirm this point, several author- ities will be cited.
While technological improvements in industry are steadily reducing the number of workers necessary to provide all the goods and service industry can market, the number of men and women who want work is steadily increasing.2
The labor-saving machine has done its work: it has "saved" labor
2Borsodi, Ralph, This Ugly Civilization, quoting William Green of American Fed- eration of Labor (Harper and Bros., 1933), p. 30.
56 Rural Roads to Security
and dispossessed the laborer. In the United States alone, some twelve million potential workers are unemployed and are become a charge on the community.3
Consequently the owner of a business can replace a worker at a moment's notice and he is independent of his employees. An employee, whether a clerk in an office, a manual laborer, or the minder of a machine, who becomes dissatisfied with his lot, soon finds himself minus a job. His value as a person with rights is ignored by those whose norm of morality is expediency, and an expediency concerned with increasing the profits of the owner at the expense of the laborer. This temper of mind is exposed by Monsignor Haas writing:
Prior to the National Recovery Act, as a nation we clung to the fiction that the wages and hours of each worker are purely private relations between the worker and the corporation, partnership, or in- dividual employing him. We paid little heed to the social character of labor . . . our national policy was Individualism, Free Competition, Economic Liberalism, or Laissez Faire . . . the theory underlying this position was, as it is now, that employers, corporate or individual must be free to make profit, and must be left free. If they see chance for profits, they will operate, and even expand their plants, sell goods, and thereby keep workers employed. If they do not, they will curtail operations, or close down. Profit was the mainspring of the whole system, if system it could be called. That a country's economy should be operated to produce enough goods so that the entire population can live self-respecting lives and share the benefits of civilization was only a secondary consideration, if it was given any thought.4
In such a game of economic chess, the employee is only a pawn, not a person.
2. The industrial worker too often does not receive sufficient wages in very many cases, and therefore is not valued as the head of a family.
In his Encyclical, Forty Years After, Pius XI gives a complete treatise on the question of wages, from the standpoint of the employer, the employee, and the times. Regarding the employee, the subject of consideration here, Pope Pius said: "In the first
* Cram, Ralph, Adams, The End of Democracy (Boston: Marshall Co., 1937), p. 9- 4 Haas, Msgr. Francis, Wages and Hours of American Labor (Paulist Press) , p. 7.
The Urban 'Family in Mass Production 57
place the wage paid to a workingman must be sufficient for the support of himself and of his family." When we make a careful study of wages and the costs of essential necessities, we find that there are many laborers who do not receive a living wage. The elements of a decent livelihood are summarized as follows:
Food, clothing and housing sufficient in quantity and quality to maintain the worker in normal health, in elementary comfort, and in an environment suitable to the protection of morality and religion; sufficient provision for the future to bring elementary contentment, and security against sickness, accident, and invalidity; and sufficient opportunities of recreation, social intercourse, education, and Church membership, to conserve health and strength, and to render possible in some degree the exercise of the higher faculties.5
Divorced from the land, and living in a complete industrial setting, the family becomes wholly dependent on the weekly wage.
3. The industrial worker too often does not possess immovable property.
An airplane view of an industrial city would support this con- tention. Long, interlocking rows of tenement houses, each har- boring a colony of families for whom the payment of monthly rent is an important item in their budgets, would be glimpsed; also, near them, the two-family type of house, rented for the most part, not owned by the occupant.
Because factories employ a huge number of people at less than a living wage, it is necessary for workers to live close to the factory in order to eliminate the item of transportation; and since the weekly salary is needed for sustenance, the family of a laborer must seek living quarters proportionate to its income. Ownership of a home is too often out of the question. In commenting on the plight of the laborer William L. Chenery states:
The possibility of being workless and without income hangs over the great majority of wage earners. The factory worker of today knows little else that he could turn to account. He must live by his trade or not at all. In order to obtain employment he must ordinarily reside in congested cities, where the possibility of subsidiary means of support
5 Ryan, Msgr. J. A., Distributive Justice (Macmillan Company), p. 361.
58 Rural Roads to Security
are denied him. Usually he does not own the house or the tenement he lives in. He neither cultivates nor harvests vegetables and fruits which his family consumes. If he is able to eat eggs, or to drink milk, he obtains these articles from dealers who are themselves far removed from the scene of actual production. His clothes are bought, not made at home. The modern factory worker must retain his job if he wishes to continue to live, and yet knows that at recurrent intervals, regardless of zeal or fitness, many men and women will not be employed.6
A recent article in Forum, by Henry Goddard Leach, is illus- trative of the fact that lower, nonfarming, income groups lack decent homes.
The National Housing Committee, of which the Editor of the Forum is a member, is a private organization with headquarters in Washington. Monsignor John A. Ryan is chairman. This committee recendy issued a report on the housing shortage for non-farming families in the United States. For those who can afford to pay $30 a month or more, according to the report, there is no shortage of hous- ing; this group is well supplied already with decent homes. For those who can afford to pay $10 to $20 a month in rent there appears to be a shortage of 1,405,779 units. This is 69 per cent of the total shortage. There are needed 146,409 units for those who can afford only $10 a month and 435,370 dwelling units for families who can pay $20 to $30 a month. In other words there is a latent market for 2,000,000 dwelling units outside the farming groups.7
It is a sad commentary on the condition of affairs today that, although real estate is at a low level due to the depression and the need of many owners to sell in order to get cash for other needs, buyers of individual homes now on the market are few and far between.
4. The industrial worker too often is mechanized, reduced to a subhuman condition because he has been made an irresponsible workman.
The following excerpts from three different writers present the issue clearly and succinctly:
We are witnessing nowadays not the control of machines by men, but the control of men by machines. . . . Every day fresh improve-
'Chenery, W. L., Industry and Human Welfare (New York: Macmillan Co.), p. 116. 1 Leach, H. G., "A Housing Era," in Forum, Feb., 1938, p. 66.
The Urban Family in Mass Production 59
ments are being made, more and more machines are becoming auto- matic, that is to say the human workman is becoming less and less necessary. More and more the human workman is becoming simply a minder or tender of machinery, and less and less is he responsible for the form and quality of what the machine turns out.8
Mechanical labor injures a man psychically and stunts his personal- ity. Men who labor under such conditions cease to be normal; and ceasing to be normal they seek not culture in their leisure time but external distractions, for the pursuit of culture demands a measure of mental concentration and self-control of which they are incapable.9
If each new invention, if each new automatic machine, if each new factory means a degradation of a particular type of labor, then cumu- lative inventions, cumulative labor-saving machinery, cumulative in- dustrialization, must involve a cumulative degradation of labor. With the perfection of factory production, the degradation would reach its apex. The work he did would express nothing of the worker's own capacities. The worker would become an automaton. He would have to compensate himself for his dehumanized labor by the increased joy which he would get out of the consumption of the things which greater production and lower prices would enable him to buy. Hav- ing been cheated out of all chance to get happiness out of his work, he would have to be satisfied with the happiness he could extract from an ever-increasing consumption of factory-made products.10
To stifle the potentialities of a worker gifted with a spiritual faculty that, if developed, would take pride in creative work and responsibility, is to blind oneself to the nature of a person — a sin too often committed by the custodians of the industrial sys- tem. The father of a family, blunted by monotonous work in a factory where the less intelligence he displays and the more he conforms to a clockwork performance of a mechanical task the better he is valued, is unable to fulfill the duty of guiding his children, to open their eyes to new wonders, or to enjoy playful leisure with them.
Mother and Children
The mother, lacking sufficient money for the management of the household, frequently resorts to sinful measures to prevent
8 Gill, Eric, Wor\ and Property (London: Hague and Gill, Ltd.), pp. 19, 20. 9Penty, Arthur, Means and Ends (London: Faber and Faber), pp. 99, 100. 10 Borsodi, Ralph, This Ugly Civilization (Harper Bros., 1933), p. 145.
60 Rural Roads to Security
the arrival of additional children. Often too she is compelled to enter the business and industrial world in order to add her pit- tance to the weekly wage of the father, and thus the home is imperiled. Children lack her care and guidance if this happens. Besides, their failure to receive a wholesome home life is due to the poor environment of the home of an industrial worker. When a family is devoting all its time and interests to the problem of keeping the wolf from the door, the delights, normal to people, of cultural or recreational leisure, are unknown. -Consequently, in a thousand ways, familiar to the social worker, the present setup of the industrial system is ruinous to family life.
Ours is a complex society in which reforms often counteract one another because of ignorance of fundamental issues. To over- come this shortsightedness, it is necessary to repeat again and again that the family is the natural, essential unit of all human society. Chpke its activity and the social structure, whatever form it may have assumed, deteriorates. Yet this stunting of the growth of the family is an acknowledged feature of our urban life. Witness a recent commentary appearing in the American Mercury of March, 1938:
Today the disadvantages of marriage are countless; the advantages chiefly a matter of illusion and outworn ideology. Marriage no longer necessarily implies a home. People live in apartments, with their pos- sessions limited to an automobile, a radio, a few small pieces of furni- ture, some linens, silver, and glassware (chiefly wedding presents), and wearing apparel. Man no longer comes home to mow the lawn or to putter about the yard. He no longer sits up late at night devising a way to finance a new roof, buy tomato plants, and negotiate eye- glasses for Susy and a tonsillectomy for Bill. The landlord finances the roof, tomato plants won't grow in apartments, and most probably there is neither a Susy nor a Bill.11
This is indeed a setting wholly different from that of an Eng- lish home of fifty years ago which, Douglas Jerrold, in his Georgian Adventure, says "bound its occupants to the past and gave them a sense of responsibility for its preservation in the future." Tradition is the leaven of society. A home that has wit- nessed the birth and death of generations of the same family
1 "Why Get Married" in American Mercury, March, 1938, pp. 270, 271.
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gives to each succeeding group ideals, a worth-while legacy from the past. Life is deeply significant when these ideals, cherished by ancestors, are imperishable, being deeply rooted in human nature. Incidentally, too, it was the members of such households who entered the political, professional, and literary worlds of their day and endeavored to impart to others the fruit of mature judgments. Such men and women did not miss the forest for the trees and they saw passing vogues for what they were, flotsam and jetsam on the surface of society. These men also were illus- trative of the principle that "being" is more important than "change." And it is this valuable apothegm that has been nullified with the advent of the industrial city. The old homes personified familial solidarity; the new glorify familial divergence.
It would not be unkind to say that a city block has no soul. There is no common interest that could bind the many families living there into an organic whole. Industry, because of its con- cern with individuals, rather than with the family, has promoted the cleavage. According to H. Robbins, "it demands what biol- ogists call 'segregation of unit characters.' That is, while the bulk of the industrial personnel, necessarily and under any conceivable political system, are deprived of integral responsibility, a minority have thrust upon them an undue strain of responsibility which is almost as fatal to human integrity as is the work of the 'single operation slave.' " Individualism in industry has been paralleled by individualism in the home. Nowadays occupational and social interests blaze a trail away from the hearth.
When the family ceases to be the natural, essential unit of eco- nomic life, it also ceases to be the natural unit of social life. In- tellects, dulled and rendered stagnant by mechanical work in a factory, cannot be restored during the hours of leisure. Conse- quently, instead of creative enjoyment within the home being the nucleus of the social activity of a family, and because urban families in general are not bound together in a common, per- sonal social life, a vast system of commercialized pleasure has been introduced. The family suffers. The home is now little more than an inn, a stopping-off place for eating and sleeping. It is foolhardy to talk of family loyalty or a wholesome gregariousness when old and young prance here and there, satisfied with ephem-
62 Rural Roads to Security
eral and synthetic pleasures. The poet's, "evening bringing all things home," has lost its connotation of twilight reuniting a scattered family. Today it refers rather to the witching hour, midnight, and the return of the nighttime revelers with one idea — to bed and quickly. In all this craze for pleasure seeking, passivity is dominant, creativeness conspicuous by its absence. Instead of manufacturing their own enjoyment, thus to stimulate the faculties given them by God, people allow others to attend to this phase of their lives until it has become a- big business, the deleterious effects of which can be gauged by the admission of movie magnates who, when assailed for the intellectually inferior brand of pictures emanating from Hollywood, avowed that the average intelligence of Americans, to judge by the infallible box office, is slightly above that of a thirteen year old; in other words, moronic. Nevertheless no sensible person would want to banish all entertainment which is to be had outside the home. What must be decried, however, is the completeness with which passive enjoyment has won the day, and the disappearance of the home as a center for the unifying of life.
To a careful observer of an urban milieu, it is evident that the social structure today is composed of numerous quasi-societies whose reason for existence is the accumulation of profits pro- tected by legal privileges. And by this encroachment on the eco- nomic and social activities of natural units, they have destroyed the organic character of life. These artificial class organizations are subversive of the two elements that guarantee security to the commonwealth; namely, the rural farm home and domestic solidarity in the city. This condition can be remedied only by a program that will adjust the relative economic equilibrium of local, natural units and provide those cultural and social elements essential for the reconstruction of the home. Units, natural and according to human scale, must be restored to vital function and vigorous, though perhaps limited, activity.
Seemingly paradoxical, it is nevertheless true that the good things in urban life will not be preserved unless supported by a sympathetic and practical attitude toward the land. When every- thing rural is scornfully dubbed "hayseed," the economic founda- tion of society is being undermined. That this is a destructive
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position is startlingly revealed in a comment of Stuart Chase in Survey Graphic:
To give an overall picture, we are informed by the National Re- sources Committee that at least one half of the original fertility of the American continent has disappeared through water and wind erosion, and. mining the soil for crops. . . . What are we, or our children, going to swap for automobiles, washing machines and electric ice boxes when we have nothing below our feet to offer in exchange. ... It is an interesting question. It is interesting to know that already some ten million Americans have lost their resources base in land, water or mineral deposit and have nothing to exchange. So they go on relief.12
Likewise H. Robbins, Editor of The Cross and the Plough, organ of the Catholic Land Associations of England and Wales, ob- serves that "of all forms of natural life, that of the farmer is the archtype. Next to it is that of the craftsman, who deals directly with realities. Whatever other forms of natural life there may be, these two are primary and secondary." The land existed before the advent of money. It endured throughout the changes in monetary systems, and will undoubtedly be with us even if money should cease to be the medium of exchange. Rightly, then, it is called the "good" earth. Directly it provides sustenance to the farmer, and indirectly to the dweller in cities who must depend on the activity of intermediaries in order to procure these necessaries, a fact which proves that in reality the distance be- tween a penthouse and a farm is not as great as some New Yorkers imagine.
The important question of part-time farming for industrial families will be fully dealt with later on in this volume, partic- ularly in Chapter 10, "Part-Time Farming: Soil and Industry." It is here, as we shall see, that the family is restored to its true function, making possible the building up of a true Christian Democracy, and so aiding the welfare of the community and the nation.
City Work and Play Do Not Unite the Family
The typical work of city wage earners does not bind them more closely to their own families. The farm family is an eco-
12 Chase, Stuart, in Survey Graphic, Dec., 1937, p. 625.
64 Rural Roads to Security
nomic unit, but work in the office or factory takes a man away from his home. Not only is the father of a family taken outside the house circle by his work, but commonly sons, daughters, and even at times the mother, are drawn from the home to different places of employment. The work has nothing to do with the real family activities of the father, son or daughter; hence their work tends to draw them away from the home. The farm family is actually employed in building its home and supplying its need. City life is crowded; many children leave from their earliest years to find their fun away from home. We are all familiar with the idea that the city's bright lights and the distractions of its amusements tend to draw young people away from home. The city tends to draw the family apart, in that the members make contacts with different acquaintances who have different activ- ities. We are all familiar with the picture. We know from experi- ence the attractions of city amusements. We know that many of the entertainments, theatrical, musical, or even the simple business of keeping in motion, are vicious attractions. The distractions can come to replace home life so that in many cases children are not desired.
The Great Modern Evil
Artificial birth control is the insidious sin. It completes the breakdown of family life. Our falling birth rate is undoubtedly due largely to economic restrictions. The birth rate declines, of course, also among well-to-do families. Fashionable suburbs are occupied by the type that can best afford to raise children, and provide them with the education and background desirable. But fashionable suburbs do not harbor large families. The apartment and suburban rich are not even reproducing themselves. Many young married people feel they are too poor to rear children in the city. They fall into the evil practice of artificial birth pre- vention. On the other hand the small farm demands more helpers; it is the hope of our future generations.
Danger of Decline
Even in the world of economics, a falling birth rate is held to be a great evil. As a race we certainly do not care to pass out of
The Urban Family in Mass Production 65
existence. We do not wish to decline and disappear under the attack of some virile race of savages. But unless our families and our homes work for the strong and numerous youthful genera- tion of tomorrow, this is not a remote conjecture. A steady de- cline in birth means, first of all, that we become a nation of old people. Since 1921 there have been 60,000 less babies born every year. The business of producing baby shoes is on the downward trend. The buying group in our nation dwindles. The demand for our industrial and agricultural products shrinks. There comes a smaller demand for housing, clothing, and even for what is called the luxuries of life. The attendance at football games will drop. Old folks do not go to these pageants of youth. Perhaps, the best business to enter will be the production of false teeth.
Cities: The Graveyards of the Family
The gradual disappearance of the normal family may be traced to the decline of births which follows immigration to the cities. Dr. O. E. Baker gives the record of this decline in population in the Catholic Rural Life Objectives:
With urbanization the nation is becoming middle-aged, and the prospect is that old age will creep upon it prematurely — only twenty five to fifty years hence. During the next quarter of a century there should be the strength of middle age, and then, unless the birth rate rises, or there is heavy immigration from abroad, a decline will set in. No nation can suffer such a decrease — over twenty per cent — and not suffer the decline in strength that accompanies a rapid aging of the population.13
The population of the United States has become largely urban. For the purpose of comparative studies the rural population is taken to be that which lives in the open country plus the in- habitants of villages and towns under 2,500 in population. The urban population is taken to be that which lives in all cities, towns, or villages of more than 2,500 inhabitants. The movement toward the larger population units is very marked during the past sixty years. In 1880 the population was still 71 per cent rural
"Baker, Dr. O. E., "Population Trends" in Catholic Rural Life Objectives, Series I, 1936, p. 7.
66 Rural Roads to Security
and 29 per cent urban. In 1890 the rural percentage was 64. In 1930 the rural percentage of population had diminished to 43. In 1935 the percentage of American population actually residing on farms was placed at 25 per cent. Relative to employment statistics, in 1870, 51 per cent of the employed population worked in agriculture. In 1930 this employment percentage had decreased to 21 per cent. Interesting statistics are available for each state. In 1900, Iowa was 56 per cent rural; in 1910, 50 per cent rural; in 1920, 43 per cent rural; and in 1930, 41 per cent rural. And Iowa cities over 2,500 in population grew as follows: in 1910, 30 per cent; in 1920, 36 per cent; and in 1930, 39 per cent. In 1937, 16,000 young men and women left the farms of Iowa.
It is revealing to learn through the careful study of statistics on centralization made by Dr. Ralph L. Woods in his book, America Reborn (Longmans, 1939), that 20 per cent of our entire population resides in five metropolitan districts; that one seventh of i per cent of the nation's land area now contains 43.8 per cent of all the wage jobs; that two thirds of all the factory jobs are to be found in a few concentrated areas which constitute only 5 per cent of the total national land area. Recently a group of television engineers made a careful survey to determine where the televi- sion transmitters would have to be built in order to reach the greatest number of people. At present the range of the television transmitter is very limited, because television is broadcast on very short waves, which are effective only as far as the horizon. The transmission is effective only as far as one can see from the place where the transmitting antenna is situated. At this point there must be another transmission. The NBC's transmitter at the top of the Empire State Building has a range of about 45 miles. In their survey the television engineers found that, if 96 television transmission stations were strategically placed, television broad- casts would reach half the population of this country. In other words, half the population of this country lives and works in 96 highly concentrated urban areas.
An interesting study in connection with the urbanization and the cityward trends is the study of birth rates. In 1800 there were 976 children under five years of age for every thousand women of childbearing age (15-44), whereas in 1930 there were only 350
The Urban Family in Mass Production 67
children under five years of age for every one thousand women of childbearing age. The following chart shows how the birth rate has been decreasing in the United States for over a century.
NUMBER OF CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OF AGE PER J.OOO WOMEN ISTO ^ YEARS OF AGE ON APRIL 1. 1930. URBAN COMPARED WITH RURAL POPULATION IN UNITED STATES
CLASS OF POPULATION
URBAN
7 CITIES LARGELY AMERICAN STOCK
NUMBER OF CHILDREN PER 1.000 WOMEN 200 300 M)0 500 600 700 800
900 1.000
. 225
ALL CITIES
OVER 100.000 293
POPULATION
ALL CITIES
2500 TO 100.000 -- 3<rl POPULATION
RURAL
RURAL NON-FARM
(MOSTLY VILLAGE)-
POPULATION
RURAL FARM POPULATION
LESLIE COUNTY EASTERN KENTUCKY -915 (957.0N FARMS)
SAH rKAHCHCO. LOS AH6CUS. KANSAS Cur. ST LOUIS.HASMVIUt.AHO ATLANTA
The great decline shown at the end of the decades 1850, 1870, and 1890 is accounted for by an abnormal under-enumeration of young children, but for the rest the decline from 1920 to 1930 was over twice as rapid as in previous decades, while the drop from 1930 to 1934 equaled that of almost any previous decade.
The following chart gives the urban and rural distribution of the 407 children per one thousand women — the birth ratio which existed in 1930. About 360 children under five years of age per one thousand women, are required to maintain stationary popu- lation when the expectancy of life is 61 years, as it was in 1930. These figures indicate therefore a deficit of nearly 20 per cent in all cities over 100,000 population. The smaller cities had a deficit of about 6 per cent. The rural population had a birth surplus of about 40 per cent. This rural surplus often balances the urban deficits, but a national deficit, or decline from the number required for a national stationary population has mani- fested itself from time to time.
In 1910 the census of that year was made to serve as a basis
68
Rural Roads to Security
PER.AOQO. WO
/L
900 IPOO
1934 -
*EST/MAT£S OF PROF. WALTER WILLCOX PR/OR TO /88O. Sff PUBLICATION AMERICAN STATISTICAL. ASSOCIATION. VOLUME XII, PAGE 495, BOSTON I9IZ.
^CHILDREN- RATIO OF BIRTHS I32S~/S£9 TO CEN-SU-S /33O. APPL/EO TO B/RTHS t9£S-/333
for the study of birth rates in a number of selected counties in accordance with the occupation of the husbands. The following chart indicates the degree of difference in the number of births.
CHILDREN PER 100 WIVES 50 100 150 200 250
300
URBAN SAMPLE RURAL SAMPLE
PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS
SKILLED WORKERS- UNSKILLED LABORERS FARM OWNERS FARM RENTERS FARM LABORERS
296
The following chart tells the story of how the nation is quickly growing old. In 1870 about 45 per cent of the population was between the ages of 20 and 60. In 1930, 52.6 of the population was between the ages of 20 and 60. From the trends that we have it is estimated that in 1980, 55 per cent of the population will be between the ages of 20 and 60.
The Urban Family in Mass Production 69
PROPORTION OF THE POPULATION IN VARIOUS AGE GROUPS, (850-1930, AND THOMPSON'S AND WHELPTON'S" LOW" ESTIMATE, 1930-1980*
1850 '60 »70 "80 *90 1900 '10 '20
•UHlTta STATE*
The charts and the figures of the Bureau of Agricultural Eco- nomics, prepared under the direction of Dr. O. E. Baker, tell the story of population declines which accompany our urbaniza- tion and the abandonment of the land. The New York Times in November, 1938, told the same story of how the family shrinks. It gave the method used by the administrators of relief to find the number of beneficiaries in the average family. They multiply the number of relief clients by 3.9. In other words the standard family according to relief statistics now consists of 3.9 persons. In 1910 the average family consisted of 4.5 persons, in 1920, 4.3 persons, in 1930, 4.1 persons, and in 1938 the average family con- sisted of 3.9 persons.
The rural and urban reproduction rates, according to present birth ratios, may be indicated as follows:
Descendants in 25- Year Periods
Cities: 10 Mothers -7 -5 -3.5
Rural: 10 Mothers -13 -17 -22
Nearly jour children are required per childbearing mother in order to keep the population stationary. In this connection we must remember that only 55 per cent of the women reproduce the race. Fifteen per cent of the women die before they reach the
70 Rural Roads to Security
age of 21, 15 per cent do not marry, and the other 15 per cent are sterile.
According to some estimates there are in the United States 21 million couples of childbearing age. Seven million of these couples of childbearing age have no children, five million of them have one child, four million have two children, and the remaining five million have three or more children.
Within recent years there has been a 3i-per-cent drop in birth rate in South Carolina. In the years 1918 to 1921 and the years 1929 to 1931, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Cali- fornia, Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Washington dropped below the number of four children per family — the number required for a stationary population.14
Graduates of Harvard in 1800 averaged eight children per family. Graduates of Harvard in 1930 average 0.5 children per family. The 633 graduates of Western Reserve University in 1915, who are now married, have 617 children in their families.
If these general American family statistics apply to Catholics, then we will have the following results. In 1939 there are approxi- mately 20,000,000 Catholics. Sixteen million or 80 per cent are urban Catholics, and four million or 20 per cent are rural Cath- olics. When we apply the present urban and rural rates of in- crease over a period of one hundred years we get the following interesting results: If the rates apply and if urbanization and other trends continue, then in the year A.D. 2000 there would be in the United States five million urban Catholics and nine million rural Catholics.
For very many reasons it is time to study the family and the home and to work for their restoration. Should the nation have more or less people on the land? Undoubtedly there should be more people on the land engaged either in part-time or full-time farming; but there is no need for more farmers who will follow the destructive industrialized methods of commercial farmers. There is much room on the land for many people with the cor- rect rural philosophy of life, much room for more real homes, more economic security, more children, more loyalty to the
"Insurance statistics and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.
The Urban Family in Mass Production 71
family and to national ideals. The land is the foundation of the family and the family is the foundation of the State. The small farm, the family farm, can be a veritable beehive of activities. Many hands are needed. None are unwelcome. Together the members of the family build their little world. The small farm is limited in earning power. Therefore, it is more dependent for self-support for its sustenance. Self-support means varied produc- tion and a variety of chores. Such a varied enterprise requires more members. At an early age children can help to lighten the labors and make contributions toward their livelihood without any injury, but with much profit toward their successful develop- ment. Work with the land brings them into close contact with fundamental realities — the growth of plant and grain, the work of soil and sun. The marvels of fertility surround country people. They behold the handiwork of God and the marvelous powers of nature working directly and visibly in growing things. In the city it is trade and commerce, money and machinery and mo- notonous work day after day.
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Ireland, and to a great extent Switzerland, are countries of agriculture with family farms and small owners. Switzerland is largely agricultural; much of its advanced industry is still in the hands of small owners, crafts- men, watchmakers, and lacemakers. The people of these countries are God fearing; they raise their children in piety. Knowledge of God is the normal possession of rural parents and it is easily handed down to their children. One may say that this condition is easy to develop in a small nation. What is the answer? Sup- pose we transplanted two million New Yorkers to Finland to replace the population of that country, and organized them into city life, a replica of New York, based on mass production and centralized corporation control. Would we have a nation of God-fearing people, happy in their peaceful, useful, thrifty, eco- nomic organization, just as we had when the country was agri- cultural? It is rather obvious that the answer is, no!
In 1788 George Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson as follows:
I perfectly agree with you that the introduction of anything which
72 Rural Roads to Security
will divert our attention from agriculture must be extremely prejudicial, if not ruinous to us.
Benjamin Franklin held to the same view and he believed that as long as our interests were chiefly agricultural, our governments would remain virtuous, but that if we should ever get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, then corruption would come. It is not pleasant to compare the reality in the United States today with the visions that the Founders had for it. When they looked at the fertile unravished West their thoughts were agricultural, not industrial, and they felt that Providence had designed this country for a new experiment where human life would be really free in a living democracy of homes and many small holdings. They thought that for most of the people there would be the peaceful setting of the farmer at his labor, removed from the hubbub of the industrial world with its tensions and rush and general commotion, its barrage of senseless advertising, its tabloids and indecent shows. Washington and Jefferson and Franklin thought that the generations in this great new country would always be sufficiently removed from the selfishness and greed which grows rampant when all is reduced to commerce and trade, when there is legalized robbery in high and com- plicated finance, and when there is concentrated factory indus- trialism. They thought that the greater part of the men and women of America would always be in the healthier atmosphere of the fields and their own farm homes and small communities. It would make them sad to learn how we have left the fields and piled ourselves up around the smokestacks of giant factories, and how squalor and sordidness and moral decay have entered into our lives.
We have two billion acres of land. We can decentralize our citizens. We are not forced to cram them into crowded districts. But somehow we have lost our land consciousness. When there is question of removing a slum, we build another slum on the very same spot. Our foolish cure for congested housing is to build a new congested house on the very spot of congestion, whether it be in New York, or Chicago, or St. Louis or any of the other smoke-defiled centers of proletarianism.
Chapter 5
THE RURAL FAMILY IN MASS PRODUCTION
Proletarianism in the Fields
INCORPORATED capital, with its profit-seeking, stockholding, and its mechanized, dehumanized proletariat, makes its bid today for the concentration of the last form of productive property which is operated in family units. It is setting up its "chain" farms, its "factory" farms, its wheat corporations, cattle corpora- tions, fruit corporations, cotton corporations, sugar corporations, corn-hog corporations, etc. Under large-scale, commercialized, highly specialized cash-crop systems, the land becomes simply another factory for the exploitation of natural resources in the commercialized production of food and raw materials. Titles to land are concentrated in the hands of financial groups and with this concentration of ownership a new rural proletariat rises up on the land to take its place alongside the urban proletariat. Com- mercialism and its materialistic philosophy have led us to the point where we no longer appreciate the fact that agriculture and the land have an infinitely larger job in the life of any nation than the mere production of the nation's food supply and raw ma- terials; namely, the building of better homes, better families, better hearts, better farms.
Commercialized farming on the family basis leads us into practically all the fallacies of corporation farming. When the family-farm owner and operator gambles in a special cash crop, and large-scale production, the result is that sooner or later banks, insurance companies, and other investment companies become the landowners. Then both companies and tenants rob the land of its substance, for the commercial investor will have nothing of diversified, subsistence farming; and the tenants, though they may prefer a less commercial land use, will nevertheless be com-
73
74 Rural Roads to Security
pelled to follow the general profit-driving system. With the coming of farm service departments and company managers and agricultural charters, the landowning companies take over opera- tions, and in consequence tenants become mere workers. They must abandon the land completely when massive machinery and cheaper labor is available.
Corporation Farming: A Public Menace
In 1932 the State of Kansas appealed to its Supreme Court for the abolition of a farm corporation — The Wheat Farming Cor- poration. This land company had obtained a Kansas Charter for agricultural purposes and at the time of the trial was cultivating 64,000 acres in a large-scale mass production, capitalistic fashion. In rendering its decision the court abolished the land company, revoked its charter, and firmly held that such agricultural com- panies constituted a public menace. Such corporate use of capital in land, the court continued, would destroy the distribution of land among many families, a distribution which had been achieved in some measure through state and national land policies of homesteading.
In this trial the supreme judicial tribunal of Kansas established a legal precedent of great, social, economic, and political sig- nificance, if only our leaders will have the wisdom and vision to follow its principles in other states. The decision affords the legal foundation for the preservation of farming as a worth-while, cul- tural occupation in which the owner of the land is himself the operator and in which there are many other important values beyond mere profit. The Court maintained that such an excellent social and economic institution as the distribution of land for many families was not to be put in jeopardy by grants of agricul- tural charters to privileged financial groups. It was the firm con- viction of the judges that our past land policies were not merely temporary measures, to endure only until finance-capitalism should bring the corporation into agriculture; but that land poli- cies were permanent measures, enacted to give this country a lasting social and economic foundation, permanent measures, promulgated and executed in order to give agriculture a rightful primacy in the lives of our people. In the opinion of the court the
The Rural Family in Mass Production 75
basic distribution of land and the family-owned and operated farm would not be permanent if agricultural companies and absentee landlords were favored.
And yet today, with commercialism to the right of us, com- mercialism to the left of us, commercialism above us, commer- cialism below us, and the worship of its sprawling gods around us — it will require more than one State Supreme Court decision to safeguard the future continuation of the good economics, the social values, the cultural advantages, and the security of our democratic principles through the preservation of a well-dis- tributed freehold private ownership of farms by individuals oper- ating with their families as the basic economic unit. The joint- stock companies or business corporations must not be allowed to displace them. The states which invented the sweeping charters for corporations in all enterprise have swept out whatever policies or limitations in corporate landownership that might have been established. Our people steeped in commercialism are now quite willing to see something else substituted for the family-owned and family-operated farm. The corporation, they predict, will mechanize the farm work and produce all crops with the exten- sion of factory methods on the land. Those who can see no dis- tinction between collectivism, concentration, commercialism on the one hand, and private ownership, private property, and private operation with the use of the family unit on the other, are already speaking of the vast, colossal farm corporation which will come to the fore to take its place with General Motors, American Tele- graph, and Bethlehem Steel. Already they proudly boast of ten thousand agricultural companies and their income-tax reports. They favor an early use of the monopolizing, merging process, and they look for the day when General Farms Incorporated will send out its managers over its far-flung agricultural domain.
The Small-Family Farm
The homestead distribution of land, on the family-ownership and family-operation basis, was the system that we once used to build this free and democratic nation. This is the landownership structure that we must retain in order to preserve our freedom
76 Rural Roads to Security
and democracy. But in the settlement of our pioneer families we often manifested woeful ignorance about soil and climatic condi- tions, encouraging many families to acquire the ownership of land that was submarginal — unable to sustain a family in comfort and with modern conveniences under any type of farm economy. In their efforts to remain on such land the farmers accepted a mortgage system devised by bankers who were attracted by high interest and inflated land values rather than by any concern about the welfare of farm families. In the more favored regions, excel- lent for the practice of an agrarian economy, where extreme droughts and submarginal acres did not run the farmers into debt, there commercialized, single-crop, factory-method, over- mechanized farming with soil exploitation and land speculation brought an indebtedness. And after all these years foreclosures or transfer of deed to the mortgage holder seems to be about the only remedy, if it may be called a remedy, which is used. Some very weak efforts have been made to readjust debts and reduce interest rates, teach soil conservation and better methods of diver- sified farming with a supply of food for the farm home and a supply of feeds for livestock. In the meantime banks, land com- panies, insurance companies, and absentee landlords go busily on, gathering in the title deeds to farms.
The people on the land are moving down the agricultural ladder. Owners become tenants; tenants become sharecroppers; sharecroppers become workers. And the day of the land prole- tariat has arrived. The tables on the following pages indicate the growth of incorporated agriculture, some of the high tenancy rates, and the extent of commercialism on the land. '
In 1926, the Bureau of Internal Revenue reported that nine thousand corporation farms had filed income-tax returns. The United States Chamber of Commerce made an analysis of 74 such farms in various sections of the country. The average acreage of each in this group was 11,797 acres, and the average capitalization was $553,743. In the group there was one general farm which con- tained 300,000 acres. One of the farms was a sugar plantation capitalized at $3,350,000. Another was a dairy farm with a gross income average of over $600,000 annually. In 1926 the gross in-
The Rural Family in Mass Production 77
come from the factory farms was $709,000,000. In this year this total was almost 6 per cent of the total gross income from Amer- ican Agriculture.
Factory Farms1
Corporation Acres State
Miller and Lux, Inc 400,000 California
Campbell Farming Corporation 95,000 Montana
Sibley Farms 12,000 Illinois
Miller Brothers 110,000 Oklahoma
Citizen's National Bank 10,000 Illinois
Albert M. Todd Farm 10,640 Michigan
San Jacinto Rice Co 30,000 Texas
Within the past few years the Metropolitan Life Insurance Com- pany has become the owner of a vast agricultural empire of i,- 618,000 acres. This empire contains enough land to make a farm one mile in width extending from New York to Los Angeles. Since the depression years numerous nonfarm organizations find themselves in the possession of a chain of farms, numbering from ten to one hundred farms. Some banks and insurance companies hold many more. Individual farms in the hands of private indi- viduals have also become much larger. In Musselshell County, Montana, in 1920, 1,604 farms had an average size of 623 acres. In this same county, in 1925, 650 farms had an average size of 758 acres. In Logan County, Kansas, in 1910, 809 farms averaged 562 acres, and in 1925, 582 farms averaged 911 acres.
In its work in 1937 the Iowa Tenancy Committee2 found a decided relationship existing between the size of farms and the rate of tenancy. In a group of Iowa counties where 87 per cent of the farms were over one hundred acres, the tenancy rate was 60 per cent. In a second group of counties where 71 per cent of the farms were over one hundred acres, the tenancy rate was 51 per cent. And in a third group of counties, where 64 per cent of the farms were over one hundred acres, the tenancy rate was 38 per cent. The graph on page 79 shows the relationship of ownership and tenancy of smaller farms based upon three groups of counties.
1 For a complete list of such farms see Bulletin of United States Department of Agriculture (BAE), "Large Scale and Corporation Farming" (Nov., 1929), Margaret T. Olcott.
aCf. Appendix: "Farm Tenancy Committee Report — Iowa."
78
Rural Roads to Security
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0061
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UTbl OC6I 0861 0161 0061 0691 riooi |
**7 |
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The Rural Family in Mass Production
79
GROUP A
IN THESE COUNTIESJ37%_OF THE FARMS ARE OVER IOO ACRES AND_60%_OF THE FARMS ARE OPERATED BY TENANTS
GROUP B
IN THESE COUNTIES _?!%_ OF THE FARMS ARE OVER 100 ACRES AND.51/LOF THE FARMS ARE OPERATED BY TENANTS
GROUP C
IN THESE COUNTIES _64%_OF THE FARMS ARE OVER 100 ACRES AND 38 % OF THE FARMS ARE OPERATED BY TENANTS
The graphs on page 78 show the tragic picture of the ownership of American agriculture. The figures are based on the United States census.
This loss of ownership and rise in tenancy is repeated in each individual state with but slight variations. For example, in the State of Nebraska in 1910, 45 per cent of the farmers owned their farms, 17 per cent were part owners, and 38 per cent were tenants. In 1935, 50 per cent of the farmers of Nebraska were tenants, 32 per cent were part owners, and only 18 per cent had retained the ownership of their farms. The Department of Agriculture made a study of the equities in land in 1930. The table compiled from
EQUITIES IN FARM REAL ESTATE, UNITED STATES, 1930
(INVESTMENTS OF FARM OPERATORS AND OF OTHER PEOPLE)
PERCENT 40 60
100
ALL FARMS
FARMS OPERATED BY FULL OWNERS
FARMS OPERATED BY PART OWNERS
MANAGER FARMS
• Equity of fAe ' operator
TENANT FARMS -::::
of others. Mortgage rrra Farm real estate in which the debt of the operator *~^*operator had no ownership interest
8o
Rural Roads to Security
the figures available at that time showed that the land operator's equity was but a little more than 41 per cent of the total equities in land.
In its land studies in 1930 the Department of Agriculture found that the value of the farm dwelling was generally much greater where the land was owned by the operator. Under a system of tenancy such as prevails in the United States no one takes an in- terest in good housing on the land of the absentee landlord, neither the landlord nor the tenant. The following graph illus- trates the value of farm dwellings in relation to tenure of land by the operator of the farm.
VALUE OF FARM DWELLING IN RELATION TO TENURE OF FARM OPERATOR
9 North Central Compared with 16 Southern States, 1930
9 NORTH CENTRAL STATES
TENURE DF OPERATOR
VALUE OF FARM DWELLINGS
OWNERS AND TENANTS AND FARMS MANAGERS CROPPERS {THOUSANDS) (PERCENT) (PERCENT)
100 50 Q 50 100
(DOLLARS)
16 SOUTHERN STATES
TENURE OF OPERATOR
FARMS OWNERS AND TENANTS AND (THOUSANDS) MANAGERS CROPPERS
I (PERCENT) (PERCENT) 100 50 O 50 100
324. 3,000 AND OVER.. 97.. 370.. 2,000-3,000... 114..
655. ..1.000-2,000... 372.. ..399... 500-1,000... 674..
244. ..UNDER 500. .1,695. .. 88.. NOT REPORTED.. 271
The Department of Agriculture made a further study of 489 counties to find if any relationship existed between tenancy and the practice of a greater commercialism on the land, i.e., produc- tion for cash markets and securing necessities such as the food supply through the commercial economy rather than through the domestic economy or "production-on-the-land-for-family-use" and the farm production of feeds for livestock. This study of 489 coun- ties revealed that there was a marked relationship between the rate of tenancy and the degree of commercialistic economy used
The Rural Family in Mass Production
81
by the rural family. Self-sufficiency, or production for home use, was much less among tenant groups. It must be remembered that the policies of absentee landlords whose outlook is commercial, the policy of the migrant tenants whose outlook is exploitive, and the highly commercial nature of many rent contracts remove many opportunities for the practice of domestic economies in the case of tenant families. In counties where the tenancy rate was 49 per cent, the production for home use was less than 10 per cent; where the tenancy rate was 35 per cent, production for home use was from 10 to 15 per cent; in counties where the tenancy rate was 29 per cent, production for home use averaged from 15 to 20 per cent; and where the tenancy rate was 23 per cent, production for home use exceeded 20 per cent. Landowners tend to follow the more efficient economy of production for use on the home- stead as can be judged by the following graph.
PERCENTAGE OF FARM PRODUCTS USED BY THE FARM FAMILY IN
RELATION TO PERCENTAGE OF FARMS OPERATED BY
TENANTS, NORTH CENTRAL STATES*, 1930
FARMS
OPERATED
BY TENANTS
(PERCENT)
50
40
30
20
JO
35
40
10 15 20 25 30
FARM PRODUCTS USED BY THE FARM FAMILY (PERCENT OF THE VALUE OF ALL PRODUCTS OF THE FARM)
*TH£*89 COUNTIES COMPRISE ALL COUNTIES OF OHIO. INDIANA. ILLINOIS. IOWA. AND ALL BUTTHE SEVEN MOKE IMPORTANT COTTON-PRODUCINO COUNTIES OF MISSOURI
Within the past twenty years 600,000 farm owners lost their holdings in land. The loss of this family ownership in productive property is an economic disaster. In 1880, 75 per cent of the farms were owned by the families who operated them. Today more than
82 Rural Roads to Security
50 per cent of the farms are owned by absentee landlords. This alarming increase in farm tenancy and the problem of landowner- ship are matters of vital, national concern. Some of the most sig- nificant contributions that pioneer farmers left as a heritage to American democracy are in danger of being lost.
Tenancy is a destructive force in society. The existence of almost three million tenant families on the land, the members of whose households constitute approximately thirteen million people, sets up a social problem of the first magnitude. The, fact that the rate of tenancy has moved up from 25.6 per cent in 1880 to 42.1 per cent in 1935, and the fact that the number of farm-tenant families has almost trebled between 1880 and 1935 clearly indicates that this condition is being aggravated instead of being alleviated as time goes on. The problem of tenancy has long been a Southern problem, but it is rapidly becoming a Northern problem as well. The decline from farm ownership to tenancy is moving rapidly in all the states, and especially in the more highly developed agri- cultural states — in Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Percentage of Farms Operated by Tenants in Seven of the States3
7950 7955
Kansas 42.0% 44-0%
Illinois 43.1% 44.5%
South Dakota 44.6% 48.6%
Nebraska 47.1% 49.3%
Iowa 47.3% 49.6%
Georgia 65.9%
Mississippi 69.8%
There has been a steady increase in farm tenancy from the year 1880. The rate of increase has varied from decade to decade, but throughout there has been a continual growth in number and per- centage of tenants. The following numbers were added each decade in the fifty-year period:
From 1880 to 1890. . . . .'., . , . .... 270,392 new tenants
From 1890 to 1900 730,051 new tenants
From 1900 to 1910 329,712 new tenants
From 1910 to 1920 100,128 new tenants
From 1920 to 1930 • - • > - 209,561 new tenants
'Department of Agriculture.
84 Rural Roads to Security
During the years 1930 to 1935 another 200,790 tenants were added to the total. This makes the total number of tenant families 2.8 times as large as in 1880, with a percentage increase from 25.6 per cent to 43 per cent in 1935.* The trend should have been toward ownership. In Denmark all tenancy has been removed except 6 per cent. This was accomplished through a wise land- tenure program and an effective use of cooperatives.
But in America we are approaching the strange condition of a democratic society composed of landless tenants. This condition is attested to in the following extract:
Tenancy is a phase of social development, and the degree to which, either in city or country, families own their homes or rent them is a fairly good but rough measure of the extent and nature of democracy prevailing in any given State or nation. We had as well try to think of a democratic nation composed of men bound to the soil in servile fashion as of a democratic society constituted of landless tenants. A nation is aristocratic or plutocratic in which ownership of land or wealth is concentrated in the hands of relatively few. Where a strong trend exists in the direction of a nation of tenant farmers, we are obliged to think that agriculture is developing toward a condition in which the welfare of the masses of farmers is in jeopardy.5
Soil Erosion and Human Erosion
The economic aspect with its soil mining and soil robbery is only one part of the story of a land of landless tenants.6 The social and spiritual loss is a loss of much greater significance. If the majority of farmers are tenants it is impossible to have a well- ordered community life. Tenants cannot and do not support the institutions of a community whether these be institutions of a social or religious nature. The distributed ownership of the land among tillers of the soil, the mode of settlement of families on the land, and the conditions which make it possible for tenants to rise to ownership are matters of great concern in democratic com- munities. Sound educational institutions and democratic citizen- ship go hand in hand with the ownership of farms in the various
4 Cf . Soils and Men, Yearbook, 1938, Department of Agriculture. Cf. Also, Report of National Farm Tenancy Comm.
8 Gillette, J. M., Rural Sociology (Macmillan Co., 1936), p. 505. 8 Cf . Appendix: "Farm Tenancy Report Made to President."
The Rural Family in Mass Production 85
communities by the families who operate them. The President's Farm Tenancy Committee took the problem of farm tenancy seriously. It recommended that a Farm Security Administration be created and that it deal primarily with the evils of tenancy. It points out that Federal and state legislation should aid tenants to become owners, help farm laborers to a better status, protect the debt-burdened farmers against the loss of their farms and conserve farm youth "whose future and insecurity is a threat to the integrity of rural life." The members of the committee were alive to the social and spiritual peril that is inherent in farm tenancy and they pointed out that rural decadence threatens the nation.
At its best, the tenant status is a normal rung on the ladder from farm labor toward farm ownership. Under proper rent contracts, the tenant status could serve as a useful apprenticeship during a period in which one might learn the successful methods of farm- ing. Under properly planned rent contracts the tenant status, since it is a method of farm operation that requires a minimum outlay of capital, could serve for the accumulation of the partial purchase price of a farm. It is true that many farmers are tenants now because of commercialism, high land taxation, and severe fore- closure laws, and because of such conditions these land operators are probably also tenants by choice. They choose tenancy because they wish to follow the prevailing practice of mining out the greatest cash profits within the shortest possible time. There is no long-range planning. It is the general attitude in the city and on the farm to take the most profit today, and to forget about the depressions and the crop failures that will follow.
Tenancy could serve very well, when properly regulated, as a step toward ownership, as an apprenticeship or as a training ground for the acquisition of sound farming knowledge; but in commercial America these ends are not frequently found in the tenant status. As a rule, in all of the states, we have tenancy at its worst, because the rent contracts are short-term contracts; all im- provements on a farm are made at the tenant's risk; and finally the absentee owners are primarily land speculators. With these circumstances and conditions present, tenancy forces family living standards below levels of decency, develops rural slums, breeds poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Competition among tenants and
86 Rural Roads to Security
the commercial-minded landlords leave tenant familes to live in houses of poor construction, almost universally in need of repair, often without doors and windows, with leaky roofs, and some- times even without floors. No one is interested in equipping these houses with running water, electricity, or bathrooms. No interest is taken in landscaping or in beautiful surroundings. The yard of the farm home is usually unsightly and devoid of beauty. The tenant family's food is simple, and often bought in the plantation store or in the chain store. It lacks variety and often lacks the essentials of good nutrition. There is no one who has not heard of Southern Pellagra induced by the starvation diet of cornmeal, molasses, and the rejected parts of the hog. Tenant farmers and their families in a great many cases wear clothing which is inade- quate for the mere protection of the body. Thousands of families live under such conditions from year to year and incessantly move from farm to farm, from community to community. These migratory families constitute a disintegrating influence upon all social institutions. All forms and types of social participation — recreational, educational, religious — feel the effects of this in- security and instability. Neighborhood relations are constantly disrupted. School attendance for the children of tenant parents is periodically interrupted. Systematic church attendance and participation in programs of leadership and effective action are impossible. The many benefits of community living and enter- prizes undertaken for the common good are wanting to the transient families.
Land and Freedom — Productive Property and Freedom
If a study of the urban proletariat does not make it clear that men are not really free unless they possess completely — i.e., per- sonally own and effectively control — some small holding in pro- ductive property, then a careful study of the rural proletariat should make it clear that there is an unmistakable relation be- tween productive property (some land) and a man's freedom and security. The farmers will never achieve economic, social, and spiritual security through continued and rising tenancy. The owner-operated family farm is the only guarantee of the essential democratic liberties and securities.
The Rural Family in Mass Production 87
The Renter a Transient
The agricultural renter is a transient, with no stake in a com- munity, in a parish, in a school, in a cooperative, or in any other community institution. He has no stake in the land which he farms and therefore he neglects it. Statistics of the Department of Agriculture show that the cash renter has only 3.8 years as an average period of occupancy. For share croppers the period of oc- cupancy is 2.8 years. For mortgaged owners, the period of oc- cupancy is 9.2 years. This short tenure period has a destructive influence in many directions, and soon registers its evil results in soil, farm crops, farm livestock, school, church, and other neigh- borhood institutions. In Nebraska twenty thousand farm families move on the first of March each year. March first is moving day on the land in every state in the Union.
Again, under our system of farm tenancy, should the tenant improve the farm in any way, such as ditching, tilling, fertilizing the soil by outlay of manure or commercial fertilizer or by crop rotation, build fences or make other improvements, the tenant has no legal remedy to recover anything, in case of his removal from the farm. When tenants want specific provisions for reimburse- ment in the case of such improvements placed in the contracts, landlords look for other tenants.
There is too much ownership of farm land by large and small speculators. Many individuals and corporations buy and sell land today for the unearned increment. Their motive is always to make money by selling and by cash contracts, and cash-producing agri- culture. It would be better to call this simply the hurried extrac- tion of all fertility from the soil, a mining process from year to year and certainly not agriculture. There is only the predominant motive of exploitation of land and families and communities.
Whether agricultural lands are to be tilled by tenants or owners, is not a matter of secondary significance. This question is a matter of primary importance in any nation, but especially is it a question of the highest importance in a nation such as ours where we cling to the philosophy of our constitution and hope to build better and better from generation to generation, the democracy which it outlines. Democratic institutions, cultural attainments, coopera-
88 Rural Roads to Security
five efforts will flourish where the families own the land. When the families do not own the land, the livelihood of millions, the fertility of the soils and local community institutions and respon- sibilities are continually being broken up or they are at least weak- ened and undermined to such a degree that there is always insecu- rity where there should be security, there is always gambling and rugged individualism where there should be cooperation. These conditions will continue unless corrected or checked for we realize that:
Tenancy like pauperism may become a state of mind. Whenever an individual is pauperized in mind he is practically hopeless. To be pauperized in mind is to be pauperized in soul, which indicates that the mainspring of life, the motivating power, is broken. There is evi- dence that a large portion of farm tenants in this country remain so for life. . . . The multitude of renters in the South, in 'the North and in the West have been molded into more or less apathetic acceptance of the status of tenancy by years of disappointment at not being able to scale the ladder of ownership.7
In the United States we have two billion acres of land — land which offers an excellent opportunity for the masses of men to acquire ownership and independence. And yet, tenancy with its moral, social, and economic consequences increases at an alarming rate. Under an exploitive land tenure, millions of once fruitful acres lose their fertility, and degrading standards of living are forced on a multitude of farm families. A stake in the land in earlier days gave the family an excellent anchorage, identified it with its rural community, gave it an abiding interest in its local, social institutions, tethered it to law and order, and gave it protec- tion against the inroads of pernicious doctrine. Tides of increas- ing farm tenancy, however, have brought rural decadence. The wholesale dispossession of farm families is accompanied with the complete loss of the savings of a lifetime and the loss of hope for the future. In many places the tax loads on land are almost con- fiscatory, especially in certain drainage districts, and in many school districts, especially consolidated school districts. The land once having been lost to the owner is seldom regained.
7 Gillette, J. M., op. cit., p. 505.
The Rural Family in Mass Production 89
No "White Spot" for Farmers
In the State of Nebraska, "The White Spot," we should expect to find the farmers owning their land and free from the burdens of heavy land taxes. When we investigate we find that the "White Spot" has no reference to Nebraska farmers. It refers to the ab- sence of sales taxes and industrial taxes. The "spot" is "white" because these taxes are not levied on Nebraska industries. Ne- braska is not an industrial state. If it intends to make a "White Spot," it should make a "White Spot" for its chief economic activity ; namely, agriculture. But when we look at the land and its taxes in Nebraska we find that from 1910 to 1935, the farm real- estate values in relation to the total wealth of the state increased from 52 per cent to 54 per cent. During this same period the tax burden borne by agriculture in Nebraska increased from 54 per cent to approximately 70 per cent.
The following table summarizes the percentage of net income consumed by taxes on owner-operated farms in Nebraska, in the West North Central States, and in the United States as a whole.
Ratio of Land Taxes to Net Income on Owner- Operated Farms8
Selected Counties West North United
^ear in Nebraska Central States States
1927 32.2 18.9 18.5
1928 24.2 17.1 18.1
1929 19.1 18.6 19.2
1930 31.2 100.0 75.4
In the years 1927, 1928, and 1929, the relative tax burden borne by owner-operators in Nebraska was somewhat greater than that borne by owner-operators of the West North Central States, and the owner-operators of the United States as a whole. In 1930, however, the burden on Nebraska owner-operators was consider- ably less than in the other groups. This is not enough though to extend the White Spot advertising to include farmers in Nebraska. It must be remembered that although the income from Nebraska farm property is at present less than 25 per cent of the total income
8 Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Nebraska.
90 Rural Roads to Security
of the residents of Nebraska, almost 70 per cent of the total tax revenue of the state is secured by taxing farm property. In all of our states the tax burden on the land is too great to give any con- tinued security to family landownership and operation. In every state the taxation system should be re-examined with the view of arriving at a more equitable distribution of the state tax burden ac- cording to the ability to pay. If the land must continue to pay the greater part of the rising state tax loads, then the states and ab- sentee landlords will soon hold all the titles to -farms, and as a consequence family farm ownership, approved throughout Amer- ican history as a primary means of attaining security, for the family, the community, and finally the nation, will disappear.
Commercialism, inequitable tax burdens, wholesale foreclo- sures have very undesirable effects upon both land and living standards. Tenant families and rural laborers do not establish constructive contacts with the community : its churches, its schools, and its cooperative organizations. Farmhouses are not improved or repaired, buildings are allowed to deteriorate, crops are not properly rotated, the fields are allowed to erode, and the entire cycle of life on the land is caught in a downward spiral of decadence.
There is no correction for this except a development of a pro- gram for secure land tenure with family-unit ownership and operation. Secure tenure changes a man's attitude toward the land. The home is changed when eviction and foreclosure are not con- tinually threatening. Where the prospect of occupancy is reason- ably permanent the house will be repaired, improvements made, and trees planted. Intelligent methods of agriculture with a view to maintaining the fertility of the soil will be studied and fol- lowed. The tenure stability will increase the family's interest in community activities. Secure tenure removes the faint possibilities for speculative profits, but it increases the opportunities for steady income.
The only way that secure tenure may be had, is through the encouragement and protection of farm-home ownership, and im- provements in landlord-tenant relationships. A well-co-ordinated use of both education and legislation will have to be made. Legis- lation without education and popular support is bound to fail.
The Rural Family in Mass Production 91
Education of the people in the values of secure land tenure is the most important line of action, but under present conditions edu- cation cannot bring about a substantial and lasting betterment in tenure conditions without the assistance of appropriate legislative action. There must be sane measures to prevent land speculation and the concentration of landholdings, especially in the hands of companies that hold titles in perpetuum and exist only for profit. In years of crop failure and depression there must be ade- quate legal protection for the owner-operator's equity in his farm. In most cases it is not the owner's personal disability or incom- petence that causes defaults in payments. The farmer's inability to pay is very often the result of national policies which are unfair to agriculture, and to other conditions over which the farmer has no control. Statutory measures must be worked out in the states to give adequate protection to the encumbered landowner, when- ever and wherever it is needed.
Tenancy Could Serve As a Step Toward Ownership
Tenancy is important as a step toward ownership. But even when it is used in this way the landlord-tenant relationship should not result in neglect of good techniques on the land. Intelligent agriculture requires that any tenant must be permitted to develop a genuine long-time interest in, and a reasonable security of tenure on a particular farm. Crop rotations with soil-building legumes usually run over four or more years. Frequently limestone must be applied before clover or alfalfa can be grown. Livestock invest- ments must be made. Hay and adequate pastures must be provided for. In fact any intelligent farm program for soil conservation and successful farming must be planned ahead for four or five years. Such plans cannot be followed and will not be followed by the one-year renter or the two-year renter or even the three-year renter. Something should be done to guarantee reasonable secu- rity of tenure even under lease contracts. The annual transfer of farms to the highest bidder destroys land resources, the welfare of rural families and rural institutions, and finally the welfare of the entire nation. A simple statute protecting the tenant's equity in farm improvements would go far to help tenants take the initia- tive in improving the productivity of farms and in making farm
92 Rural Roads to Security
homes better places in which to live. Tenants, under the protec- tion of such a statute, would not be outbid by outside tenants. The landlords would not raise the rents because of such improvements, when a statute governing rent contracts wisely makes the land- lords or the incoming tenants liable for compensation to the out- going tenants for the unexhausted values of such improvements. In each state lease forms should be prepared which embody the principles of intelligent agriculture, long-range planning, and other helps for security of tenure on rented farms.- These approved model lease forms should be made available in local courthouses, local banks, offices of farm organizations and real-estate offices, and their general use by landlords and tenants should be en- couraged by every feasible means.
The Curse of Factory Farming
Tenancy and land speculation constitute a very serious economic menace and should be reduced to a minimum. But there is a more serious economic menace on the horizon which also involves the land, and follows when ownership and tenant systems break down; namely, corporation farming. Although this menace has not progressed very far, yet it is very serious because it is being promoted by the industrialized, urban-minded, mechanized, stock- gambling forces of this generation. The unsound, agricultural technique of corporation farming will ultimately bring this sys- tem to naught. But America, unless we do some thinking and take effective action, may try this unsound agriculture too, if for no other reason than that it makes so many promises under the aegis of our American economic idol, the corporation.
Corporation farming will in time destroy itself with its me- chanical methods in a field essentially biological, but before this stupidity will reap its empty harvest, our American families will be finally and completely uprooted from the soil. All ownerships will pass to United 'Farms Incorporated. All rural skills, cultural patterns, traditions, communities will be obliterated. In many places, if not in all places, the present farm population will be replaced by people not now engaged in agriculture, for the ineffi- cient land corporations will have great need of imported cheap labor. They will have to reduce the populations in their wheat,
The Rural Family in Mass Production 93
corn, cotton, livestock, and fruit factories — their vast soil-mining territories. Any rural homesteads remaining on soil acquired by them will have to be removed. Gigantic, collectivized mass shelters will have to be provided for the men and women and children who will come to the company camps. These laborers may be left to camp on the roadsides as we have witnessed in California and Missouri. Homesteads for these people will be unthinkable. The entire corporation process will make it clear that in its philosophy the giant factory farm is more important than the farmer whom it reduces to the status of the proletarian hired man. Tenancy does much harm to our rural population; but it remains for the land corporation to destroy the farm homes, reduce the farm families to serfs, and erase forever all the economic, social, and spiritual values in our traditionally free and independent, brave and democratic American rural life. This last octopus of Wall Street will drive the remaining families from the land and crush the enterprises upon which they have spent the best years of their life — the personally owned and controlled productive enterprises on which democracy is built. Senator Arthur Capper gives a cor- rect report on corporation farming and its destructive implications when he says:
Corporation farming is bad public policy. It is dangerous. . . . Every farmer and every business man in rural America and every worker in the big industrial centers should oppose it. I feel that we are justified by the facts as known and the possibilities of the future as indicated by those facts, in using every proper means to nip this corporate farm- ing development before it gets firmly established.9
In the areas where farm corporations have picked up the title deeds to their 20,000- and 30,ooo-acre tracts, the experience of the man, the farm home, the farm family, the school, the church, the community has been a sad one. In these areas social and spiritual leaders have learned what to expect under a system of factory farming. These leaders know that their social, moral, and spiritual institutions are given but a small chance to establish themselves and can never hope to become vital factors in these rootless com-
"Dawber, M. A., quoted in Rebuilding Rural America (New York: Friendship Co., 1937), P- 38.
94 Rural Roads to Security
munities of landless people who are allowed to become even more transient than the harvest in their efforts to find work in the specialized farm factories. Mark A. Dawber gives us a sound warning when he writes:
The maintenance of the family the year-round is not the overhead of farming. It is the overhead of civilization. Replace individual farm- ers with floating hands employed for a few months in the year and you might just as well nail shut the doors of the churches and the institutions of learning. Individual farmers, not floating farm hands, rear children and give opportunities for scholastic education.10
A picture of what he calls "floating farm hands" is graphically given us in these verses. It will not readily be forgotten.
THE MOVERS
The East wind whips the skirts of the snow
with a passing shower,
and over Iowa on the first of March
wheels churn hub deep in the mud
or grit their teeth across the icy roads.
Home is only a shadow
flying down the wind in a
twisted swirl of snowflakes,
travelling down the road in an old lumber wagon
drawn by two shaggy horses
whose bones are too big for their flesh.
Even the wild goose
is not so homeless as these movers.
Peering ahead through the sliding curtain
of March rain they pass
with the furniture of home packed in a wagon.
Past corner, past grove, to the hilltop they go
until only chairlegs point from the skyline
like roots of trees torn from the earth.
And they are gone . . .
™lbid., p. 40.
The Rural Family in Mass Production
This, the parade of the landless, the tenants,
the dispossessed,
out of their Canaan they march
with Moses asleep in the Bible.
Who will call them back, who will ask:
are you the chosen people, do you inherit
only a backward glance and a cry and a heartbreak?
Are you the meek?
But the early twilight
drops like a shawl on their shoulders
and sullen water
slowly fills the wagon ruts and the hoof prints.
— James Hearst of Maplehearst, Country Men (The Prairie Press)
95
PART II
MULTIPLICATION OF SMALL OWNERSHIPS IN LAND
Chapter 6
THE HOME ON THE LAND
Man not only should own the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth, he has to lay up provision for the future. Man's needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied today, they demand new supplies tomorrow. Nature, there- fore, owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth. ... If working people can be encouraged to look forward to owning a few acres of land, the result will be that the gulf between vast wealth and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the two orders will be brought nearer together. Another consequence will be the greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which is their own, nay, they learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of the good things for themselves and those that are dear to them.
So in his Rerum Not/arum1 wrote Leo XIII. How have we heeded his words of golden wisdom ?
Abandoned houses and impoverished fields mar the beauty of our rural landscapes. "Vast rural areas have the appearance of exploited colonies," was the description of our countryside given by Dr. O. E. Baker of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. In an agricultural situation where one farmer in every two is a tenant, and where the other is an owner loaded with debt to the extent of one half of his investment and taxed far beyond his ability to pay, the farm home is no longer the place of beauty, the place of security, the place of freedom, or the place of independence that it was in the days of diversified agrarian life and culture.
1 Latin words used by Leo in reference to ownership are: dominatum, full owner- ship, adipiscendi with in suo. This last phrase repeats the idea of complete ownership.
99
The Home on the Land 101
The Tenant "Shack"
Both tenant and mortgaged owner mine, exploit, and hunt for gold in commercial crops. Both work and sell for the cash that is needed to meet maturing obligations. The old homestead, once firmly established as the natural economic unit, where the family produced its own supplies of food and sometimes cloth- ing; the old homestead around which technology could have built a grand modern life and culture; the old homestead, once a castle, a kingdom, and a secure dominion, is today scarcely more than another shack for the housing of an agricultural rent or wage slave. The farmhouse today bears great resemblance to the "company" shack, whether it stands on the farm of the land corporation or the farm of the absentee landlord. Those who occupy the farm home no longer advance slowly and securely in the ownership of property. They fall from owner to tenant, from tenant to sharecropper, from sharecropper to hired laborer. Already thousands of farm families move over the highways in trailers and old Ford automobiles to find new acres to rent, or to follow the seasonal harvesting of crops on mass-production, twenty-thousand-acre, incorporated farms, pitching their tents where the harvest is on, but where work will be available but for a few days.
Rootless Families
With the breakup of distributed landownership and the agra- rian economy, the American family gives up its last distinctive economic function as a family unit. The American commercial- ized family may travel as a unit, sleep as a unit, consume goods as a unit, but it no longer produces wealth as a unit from its own productive property. Because the American family travels to find labor, having lost its own productive property as a basis for family economic enterprise, the life of the American family as a basic natural productive unit is well-nigh destroyed. Food, clothing, and shelter, the basic essentials for living and the sources from whence they come, are gathered up into the huge inter- locking hands of incorporated commercial owners and distrib- utors. With this continued centralization and industrialization
102 Rural Roads to Security
of food, clothing, and shelter, the last vestiges of American free- dom and security are wiped out. As far as the people are con- cerned, there is no land on which to build better homes and own them, there is no land for the production and consumption of food at home — the only efficient and conserving land economy. When absentee landlords, land corporations, and one-crop farmers shall have industrialized the fields, then there will be only wages for the many, wages both on the land and in the factory, while for the unemployed millions and their dependents, there will be relief extension whenever patronage requires it, rather than when, and as, hungry mouths may require it, and there will be odd gifts of food and clothing whenever charity takes the trouble to think of it.
What has become of this land of opportunity, democracy, free- dom, security? What is happening to the billion acres of home- stead land in this country ? What is to be the destiny of this land where we built our homes for our children; this land that produced our food, fruits, vegetables, livestock and feeds for livestock, our lumber for homes and furniture? We are being reduced to slavish workers in the homes and fields that we once owned. Such a process of dispossession could not have the momentum that it has, had we not encouraged it in one way or another; had we not accepted a wage for ownership, a tenement shack for a home, a city street for a few acres of our own; had we not substituted the faint promise of a quick fortune in the wizardry of modern business for a permanent home and family on a few acres that give security; had we not become hunters and exploiters instead of remaining husband- men, improving our homes and the culture of our families.
The Farm Not a Factory for Massive Machines
Wartime, high profits in corn and wheat and cotton made industrialists of our rural people. And as industrialism finally destroys the cities it creates, industrialism is now destroying agri- culture. It is destroying our farm homes and their owners, our broad acres and their fertility.
The soil is not a machine for producing cotton, as the loom is a machine for weaving. Raw materials and typewriters and
The Home on the Land 103
automobiles are not the same as animals and crops. Animals and crops are living things and they follow laws of nature that we must respect. We too are living things, spiritual as well as material living things, but rather than adjust ourselves to the laws of life in our material and spiritual being, we have in recent years spent most of our time in destructive efforts to reduce ourselves to machinery.
How anyone can speak of mass production as something which is inevitable, as something having its roots in the laws of nature, is hard to understand. Mass production is nothing more than a shortsighted, profit-driven, artificial work of incorporated device, centralized money, and heavy machinery. There is nothing natural in its development. It is chiefly the work of arbitrary power and conceded privilege. How can we dare to transfer this type of production to agriculture where above all the laws of nature must be respected?
A student of Rural Sociology once remarked : "Have diversified, family-basis agriculture in the South? Impossible! Why, God Himself wanted the South to be a cotton belt." Now, if God wants only the production of cotton in the South, then, why didn't He take measures to insure it? Then, why did He so carelessly construct the soils and climates and the laws of living things in such a way that practically all growing things flourish in the South, if they are given but half a chance? Then, why do the laws of crop rotation build up and conserve the soil in the South in the same way that crop rotation builds up and conserves the soils everywhere? Then, why does the continual production of the same crop, namely, cotton, impoverish the Southern soil in the same way that one repeated crop impoverishes any soil? No. It is clear from the facts of nature that God does not want the one-crop cotton South any more than He wanted slavery in the Southern States.
Industrialism is man-made and tramples upon God and His laws in its dealing with raw materials and men. Its engineers and financiers perhaps have the power to industrialize the farm and we as a nation have the economic ignorance not only to permit but to cooperate in the industrialization of agriculture. This final industrialization on the land will reduce a nation of free citizens
104 Rural Roads to Security
to slaves, bring death to living things, barrenness to its soils, and the final reduction of its rich acres to deserts, gullies, rocks, and dust bowls.
The "Homestead" Way
Rich acres and productive plants and animals are safe only in the hands of the small owner, a man, a family man, who can respect and cooperate with the laws of nature, make provi- sion for crop rotation, prevent erosion, and give paternal care to the plants and animals that feed and shelter him and his dear ones.
And strange as it may seem to the self-satisfied, capitalistic mind, blinded by profit and power, and the communistic mind, blinded by hatred and power, it is only in the hands of such small family-basis owners of productive property that democracy, culture, freedom, religion, and life itself are safe and secure. The man and his family, living on a few acres of their own land with a culture that is agrarian and a religion that is Christian, is the last bulwark against an extreme enslaving centralization and its final collapse into the hands of Red Commissars. The homestead and its family is the last bulwark in an urban civi- lization which is losing its property and freedom and failing to reproduce itself.
The men and women, who have gone commercial and admire themselves for it, while they cling to a pernicious ideology that considers life as a mere by-product of artificial economic process, must once again be taught that farming for home consumption is not only a worthy but an imperatively essential work for the majority of people in any nation. The men and women of the cities must be brought to change their sophisticated attitudes toward the man on the land.
However, the major attack is not to cry about false urban standards and attitudes, Communism, proletarianism, wage slavery, tenancy, etc. We need temporal and spiritual salvation for our people. Our time and best efforts must be directed in planting the seeds, nurturing the roots, and cultivating the elements of life which will reproduce a solid Christian order and culture. We must have a rising birth rate. We must have
The Home on the Land 105
a new vitality in Christian home life and home culture. We must have a large increase of the primary natural groups of the family and the cooperative neighborhood. And we must make these groups more secure and independent through the development of a higher degree of self-sufficiency in food, clothing, shelter, etc. We shall accomplish all this in the most effective way if we rescue and perpetuate, renew and stimulate life and progress in the home on the land. In the past our populations came from the countryside and with them came our best moral and spiritual forces. Therefore among all social factors or social institutions, the home on the land must continue