FARM PROFITS AND WELFARE 59 



lift" for an ignorant, helpless and downtrodden class. 

 In some instances even, resolutions of denouncement 

 were passed by farmers' associations. The report of 

 the Commission showed that its members had no such 

 conception of the situation. But the feeling just de- 

 scribed has persisted to such an extent that where an 

 effort is made to study, discuss, or improve farm life 

 conditions, there are those who cry "uplift," and the 

 effort is at once thereby condemned. There is without 

 doubt some basis for resentment against rural "slum- 

 ming." There have been for many years past wild 

 statements about rural decadence, especially in the east- 

 ern part of the country. Men and women from the 

 city, with good intentions but with an inadequate back- 

 ground of knowledge or experience in rural affairs, have 

 made "first-hand studies" of local farming regions, 

 and from the very superficial material gathered have 

 reached broad conclusions, almost always inaccurate, 

 regarding the country life problem as a whole. In 

 some instances there has been a tendency to investigate 

 rural regions in merely curious fashion. Not seldom 

 earnest efforts to help, where help was really needed, 

 have been given with such obvious condescension and 

 tactlessness that all has gone for naught. 



As a matter of fact the most thoughtful and far- 

 sighted farmers have never failed to sense the signifi- 

 cance of the human side of agriculture. The Grange, 

 which is the oldest, the most broadly conceived, the best 

 organized, and on the whole probably the most suc- 

 cessful of the great farmers' organizations, has always 

 stood four-square for what we now call the social aspect 

 of the farm problem. In its famous "Declaration of 

 Purpose," promulgated in 1873, it puts first among its 

 purposes "To develop a better and higher manhood 



