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Its prevalence shows that we are still in land-farmer conditions: and the criticism to which it is now subjected indicates that we are conscious of a new epoch in rural life. It fits well into the life of the land farmer because it gives obviously a mere hint of learning. It has been the boast of its advocates that it taught only the "three Rs."
Some rough and crude forms of economic co-operation also grew up in this period, as modifications of the competition on which the land-farmer type is based. "The farmer type produced a definite social life," says Prof. Ross. "The second period, extending from 1835 to 1890, had as its chief objective the enrichment of the group life."
Nearly all the Protestant churches in New York City are land-farmer churches; "and that," says a noted city pastor, "is what ails them." This church centers its activities in preaching, rents or assigns its pews to families, and organizes societies for the various factors of the family group.
The dignifying of personality with land ownership has been such a general social experience in the country that every individual is thought of in the farmer period as a potential landowner. The institutions of the rural community of the land-farmer type are the country store, the rural school, and the church.
The most representative farming communities today are those of Scotch or Scotch-Irish people, whose instinctive tenacity, their "clannishness," has perpetuated longer than in other instances the rural economy and the country community. In using the term land-farmer I am aware of its close resemblance to the term exploiter. The word itself points to exploitation of land.
The country community of the land-farmer type is being undermined and is crumbling away under the influence of exploitation.
The beginning of this transformation, it is striking to observe, came at the end of the land-farmer period, about 1890. The land-farmer, then, whose period according to Prof. Ross, extended from 1835 to 1890 in the Middle West, is the best known agricultural type. He is the typical countryman as the countryman is imagined in the cities and recorded in our literature.
Around his warm stove in the winter and at his door in summer gather the men of the community for discussion of politics, religion and social affairs. In addition to all else, he has been usually the postmaster of the community. The one-room rural school which is the prevailing type throughout the country is a product of the land-farmer period.
These hopes from earliest years should be disciplined by the practise of giving. For this end the church is a rarely well fitted means. The financial system of the church must be made democratic. The custom of renting pews belonged in the land-farmer period.
The condition of Center Hall, Pennsylvania, has been described in another chapter, in which there are within a radius of four miles from a given point twenty-four country churches. This community represents a condition of transition from the land-farmer type to that of exploitation.
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