THE FARM COMMUNITY* 



By LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY, Director College of Agriculture, Cornell 



IRRIGATION profoundly affects so- the development of the community or 



ciety and institutions ; and any per- neighborhood sense, and this is the 



son who is interested in rural civ- proper theme of my paper. Before I 



ilization must necessarily, therefore, be discuss this subject, however, I must 



interested in irrigation. present a point of view as to the in- 



The best rural civilization will de- terest of society, or of all the people, in 

 velop out of native rural conditions the class of work for which this con- 

 rather than be imposed from without, gress stands. 



Irrigation makes a rural condition. It The people have made it possible for 



provides the possibility for a community irrigation-reclamation to be developed ; 



to develop ; and it must, therefore, color for whether the work is performed by 



the entire life of the community! As the Government directly or by private 



the civilization of New England devel- enterprise, it nevertheless rests on na- 



oped about the town-meeting, and that tional legislation ; and this legislation 



of the South about the court-house, so expresses the consent and the interest 



must the civilization of irrigation of society in the work. All of the peo- 



communities develop about the ditch- pie have not only a right to an interest 



meeting. in irrigation-reclamation, but they carry 



Irrigation communities are compact, an obligation to be interested in it, since 



As all the people depend on a single it reclaims and utilizes the fundamental 



utility, so must the community life tend heritage of all the people. I take it that 



to be solidified and tense. Probably no society's interest in the work is of two 



other rural communities will be so uni- kinds : to see that the land is properly 



fied and so intent on local social-prob- utilized and protected, and to see that 



lems. We shall look, therefore, for a persons desiring homes shall have an 



very distinct and definite welfare to opportunity to secure them. Society is 



arise in these communities ; and they not interested in speculation in land or 



will make a peculiar contribution to in mere exploitation, 



rural civilization. In the last analysis the land belongs 



The life of the irrigation community to all the people. No man really owns 



will be expressed not only in institutions his land ; society allows him to use it, 



of its own, but in the literature of its and to say who shall use it when he is 



own. Much of the world's literature done with it ; and every man is under 



does not have significance to country- obligation to society to maintain the fer- 



life conditions, and very little of it has tility of his land. Even a farm is not 



significance to an irrigation civilization, a man's own, in the sense that he has a 



I look for poetry to come directly out right to abuse it without check. More 



of the irrigation ditch, and to express than that, he is under obligation to 



the outlook of the people who depend use all the natural resources of the 



for their existence on the canal and the earth with a care for those who are to 



flood-gate. It is most significant of a come after him. No man has a moral 



new feeling in art and literature that or social right to denude the land of 



we have a national irrigation ode. its forest, unless he leaves the land in 



All our efforts in forwarding rural condition for his successor to utilize it 



civilization must express themselves in with satisfaction. The American prac- 



*Delivered at the National Irrigation Congress at Spokane, Wash., on August 12, 1909. 



627 



