sociology
Countryside and Nation, 1916
12/11/09 17:07
Another of Danbom's primary sources. Vincent begins, “The world-war forces upon us the idea, if not the ideal, of nationality.” (1) This is indeed one of the ideas the war highlighted -- although in retrospect, perhaps not completely in the “heroic” and “strenuous” way Vincent meant. But for Vincent and his audience, individualism is the enemy of “community spirit.” “Can the farming population be counted upon to contribute to state and federal policies more than a local or class point of view?” he asks. “What can the governments of state and nation do to increase the efficiency of the rural population in its service to the United States?”
Vincent acknowledges there are “persons who feel the missionary spirit” who “may resent the idea that rural folk are to be exploited for national welfare. [Danbom quotes this, but without the next, qualifying, sentences] The reply is obvious. It is open to the countryside to raise similar questions about urban populations, and about all the organizations of the national life. The national point of view spares no individual, class, or function. Of each it asks: Is the work of the nation being done well or ill?” (3)
This is an interesting point. Relating it to Conkin’s criticism of Danbom, it does seem as if the point is not so much the Country Life Movement’s sinister plan to do this to country people, as Progressive statist technocracy’s plan to do this to EVERYONE. I’m amazed at how relevant some of the libertarian stuff sounds, in this context. This is what they're fighting. The “Organization” of American life cuts across rural/urban -- but maybe it’s not for nothing that pretty-much 100% of rural folks are classed with the urban underclass as “those against whom social control is directed.” They're the cogs in the machine.
Interestingly, Vincent goes on to ask, how can people be incented to do what the nation needs? Let’s make their lives better he says, so they’ll want to stay on their farms. “It is absurd to describe the rural population as...in any way degenerate or...a pathological problem. Talk of uplifting the countryside by sending out urban missionaries is at once pharisaical and irritating.” He even seems to appreciate the irony of his own position: “An omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent despot could reorganize the nation promptly, put each of us in his proper place, assign tasks, appeal to the requisite motives, and make our common life a marvel of team-play. No wonder that we sometimes long for Plato’s philosophers to come and take charge of us.” The interesting point here, is that Vincent seems to harbor no illusions of the “Invisible Hand” being able to achieve this. Does intelligence and sophistication excuse his choice of technocratic social control? Or has Danbom portrayed him a little too harshly? Vincent seems milder than I expected. “A social job does not get well and persistently done unless it insures these things,” he says: “a satisfying economic reward, a sense of mastery over a technique, an occupational pride, congenial comradeship, social esteem and recognition.” (4) The problem with country life, he says, is that rural people aren’t getting these things.
Vincent is another of the primary sources Danbom uses to suggest the Country Life Movement was a more-or-less sinister plot of urban technocrats to increase agricultural productions for the benefit of industry. But Vincent’s 1916 ASS speech seems more complicated than Danbom’s portrayal. In the conclusion of his talk, Vincent describes three possible futures of farming. In the first, tenants work land owned by absentee landlords. In the second, agriculture is industrialized. Vincent paints a vivid picture of “an agricultural corporation village...[where] every mechanical appliance is available. Overhead trolleys and grain chutes center in the barns and elevators...Every efficiency device is employed.” The result, Vincent says, is “the creation of a class of farm wage-earners...a heavy price to pay.” (8) Instead, Vincent hopes farmers will develop cooperative structures like those in Denmark, and farm intensively and scientifically to improve both their yields and their own value in the production process. This is precisely the concern with farmers’ wellbeing that Danbom accuses Vincent and other reformers of ignoring.
The situation was obviously more complicated and multidimensional than Resisted Revolution suggests. Does that more faceted view show us something important for the present moment? Is this a story that should be retold, once more with feeling and depth?
