384 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



and home " to its projects, and agricultural colleges and religious 

 bodies took the first " surveys " of rural life. 



Broad interpretation. To thinking people the country life 

 movement is not in any sense a literary revival of the poetic 

 appreciation of nature, the open road, the pictured sky, and the 

 rural landscape. Nor is it a philanthropic enthusiasm with an 

 " uplift " motive. The country is not a national, out-of-the-way 

 slum to be cleaned out. Neither is the movement a conscious 

 class struggle of farmer against townsman. 



But rather this new movement is to be interpreted as a creed, 

 a belief, if you please, that country life has latent social forces 

 which are susceptible of development; that reorganization of 

 rural forces in such manner as to replace poorly adjusted social 

 relations with natural and logical adjustments will free the 

 farm population for a full and fair life. Those most closely 

 in touch with the new rural hope believe that national life, yes, 

 even urban life, will be equally benefited by a development 

 and reorganization of country fife and its institutions. How 

 far this rural hope, aroused by the country life movement, is 

 justified by the facts of country life, labor, and struggle, it is 

 our purpose to determine in the topics which follow. 



Rural investigations. The Country Life Commission, in its 

 list of deficiencies, gave prominence to " a lack of knowledge on 

 the part of farmers of the exact agricultural conditions and possi- 

 bilities of their regions. . . . The time has now come," the 

 report reads, " when we should know in detail what our agri- 

 cultural resources are. . . . We cannot make the best and most 

 permanent progress in the developing of a good country life until 

 we have completed a very careful inventory of the entire country. 

 . . . This would result in the collection of local fact, on which we 

 could proceed to build a scientifically and economically sound 

 country life." 



The chairman of the Country Life Commission had been an 

 exponent of agricultural surveys for nearly two decades. It 

 was but fitting that he should be the person to sound the note 

 for country life surveys and expound the survey idea as applied 

 to the social side of farm life. In 191 1 he set forth the following 



