The country-life movement is the working out of the desire to make rural civilization as effective and satisfying as other civilization.
It is not an organized movement proceeding from one center or even expressing one set of ideas. It is a world-motive to even up society as between country and city; for it is generally understood that country life has not reached as high development within its sphere as city life has reached within its sphere.
We call it a new subject. As a "movement," or a recognized set of problems needing attention, it may possibly be called new; but in reality it is new only to those who have recently discovered it.
It is not a back-to-the-land movement.
The country-life movement must be sharply distinguished from the present popular back-to-the-land agitation. The latter is primarily a city or town impulse, expressing the desire of townspeople to escape, or of cities to find relief, or of real estate dealers to sell land; and in part it is the result of the doubtful propaganda to decrease the cost of living by sending more persons to the land, on the mostly mistaken assumption that more products will thereby be secured for the world's markets.
The back-to-the-land agitation is not necessarily to be discouraged, yet we are not to expect more of it than it can accomplish; but whatever the outward movement to the land may be, the effort to effectualize rural society, for the people who now comprise this society, is one of the fundamental problems now before the people.
The country-life and back-to-the-land movements are not only little related, but in many ways they are distinctly antagonistic.
This book.
The foregoing paragraphs indicate the subject of this book. I mean only to express opinions on a few of the questions that are popularly under discussion, or that are specially important at this time. I shall present no studies, and I intend to follow no systematic course. Some of these subjects I have already discussed with the public, but they may now have new expression or relations.
The lack of adjustment between city and country must be remedied, but the remedies lie in fundamental processes and not in the treatment of symptoms. Undoubtedly very much can be done to even up the economic situation and the distribution of population; and this needs careful and continuous study by commissions or other agencies created for the purpose. We are scarcely in sight of the good that such agencies could accomplish. I hope that this book may suggest some of the things to be considered. The past century belonged to the city; the present century should belong also to agriculture and the open country.
