752 THE RURAL COMMUNITY 



robbing the farm of its manifest advantages for family life. The 

 farmers are being welded into a more compact society. They are 

 being nurtured to greater alertness of mind, to greater keenness of 

 observation, and the foundations are being laid for vastly enlarged 

 social activities. The problem now is to extend these advantages 

 to every rural community in itself a task of huge proportions. 

 If this can be done and isolation can be reduced to a minimum, the 

 solution of all the other rural social problems will become vastly 

 easier. 



Farmers' Organization 



Organization is one of the pressing social problems that American 

 farmers have to face. The importance of the question is intrinsic, 

 because of the general social necessity for cooperation which char- 

 acterizes modern life. Society is becoming consciously self-directive. 

 The immediate phase of this growing self -direction lies in the attempts 

 of various social groups to organize their powers for group advantage. 

 And if, as seems probable, this group activity is to remain a dominant 

 feature of social progress, even in a fairly coherent society, it is 

 manifest that there will result more or less of competition among 

 groups. 



The farming class, if at all ambitious for group influence, can 

 hardly avoid this tendency to organization. Farmers, indeed, 

 more than any other class, need to organize. Their isolation 

 makes thorough organization especially imperative. And the 

 argument for cooperation gains force from the fact that relatively 

 the agricultural population is declining. In the old days farmers 

 ruled because of mere mass. That is no longer possible. The 

 na'ive statement that " farmers must organize because other classes 

 are organizing " is really good social philosophy. 



In the group competition just referred to there is a tendency 

 for class interests to be put above general social welfare. This 

 is a danger to be avoided in organization, not an argument against 

 it. So the farmers' organization should be guarded, at this point, 

 by adherence to the principle that organization must not only 

 develop class power, but must be so directed as to permit the farmers 

 to lend the full strength of their class to general social progress. 



Organization thus becomes a test of class efficiency, and con- 

 sequently a prerequisite for solving the farm problem. Can the 

 farming class secure and maintain a fairly complete organization? 

 Can it develop efficient leaders? Can it announce, in sound terms, 

 its proposed group policy? Can it lend the group influence to 

 genuine social progress? If so, the organization of farmers becomes 

 a movement of preeminent importance. 



