Beyond Economics - USDA

Beyond Economics by M. L. WILSON '

AN ECONOMIST by training, the author of this article is a rural philosopher by nature. He holds that economics, and in fact most social sciences, attempt the impossible when they try to fit human affairs into neat little cubbyholes and make rigid rules according to which human beings ought to behave. Not reason but custom is the force men obey, lie says, and the problem of adjusting agriculture to the modern world is basically psychological and cultural rather than physical and technological. But to admit these things is not to be unscientific ; in fact, the more scientific a man is, the more clearly he will see that our economic problems are really moral problems. On a foundation of these ideas the author builds a philosophy of agricultural reform. He deals especially with new possibilities for a better life for those whom we have been unable to fit into our economic system.

THE COMPLEXITY OF THE AGRICULTURAL PROBLEM

WHOEVER has studied the social and economic aspects of agriculture as they are presented in detail in the articles that make up this book

1 M. L. Wilson is Director of Extension Work. The autiior wishes to aclcnowledge a debt of thanlts to Paul H. Johnstonc, of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, for his generous assistance in the preparation of this article.

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Beyond Economics 923

must be convinced that there is a problem of adjustment in agricultural and rural life tiiat is not simple and cannot be solved by simple means. Even the major questions are numerous.

There is first of all the question of which we are most keenly aware— that of producing an adequate income for agriculture. This has received much attention, anc) a great deal has been done about it in the last decade. But although the grievousncss of the condition of economic disparity has been alleviated, it is by no means cured. It remains a problem which will require for some time to come the best efforts of all those who seek justice for American farm people.

There is the problem of tenure. The long-time trends in tenure relationships do not fit into the pattern of what most of us believe is to be desired. The proportion of tenants in the agricultural population has continued to increase for a long time; and those farmers who are called owners have in general found their burden of mortgage debt mounting heavily, large numbers of them finding their hold upon the land ever more precarious. If the tenure trends that have now been operating for so long continue, there will soon be few small owners left—our land wÛ be farmed by tenants and day laborers work- ing on vast estates. Even if one assumes, as few people do, that the road toward greater technological cfficienc}^ must be based on huge units and high capital outlay, there arc not many today who can ignore the tremeridous social costs of such changes. And even if one assumes that tenancy is not in itself a bad thing, the particular forms and conditions of tenancy as they actually prevail in many places allow no security to the tenant and make no provision for proper care of the land. We tried liberalizing credit because that seemed the best way to halt the trend away from ownership, but the trend has continued. Undoubtedly liberal credit must be a key factor in efforts to assure greater security and continuity of ownership, but experience has taught us that credit alone camiot solve the problem.

Then there is a problem of population adjustment in agriculture. More people are now engaged in agricidture than can attain a good standard of living by ordinary commercial farming under prevailing economic conditions and institutions. This is the result partly of technological progress, partly of declining foreign markets, partly of urban industry's failure to maintain full production and employment opportunities. Tliere are undoubtedly many other causes. The effect has been to burden agriculture as a whole with the support of a population out of proportion to agriculture's share in the national income. This disproportionate burden, moreover, has not been equally divided within agriculture; certain areas, certain classes of farmers, certain types of production have suffered far more than others. There can be no hope of immediate relief of the conditions that have produced a surplus rural population. But it is possible for agriculture to adjust itself in such a fashion as to support better and more equitably than at present all those wiio must make their living by the plow.

Closely related to overpopulation, tenure evils, and inadequate income for agriculture as a whole is the problem of the very low standards of living of a substantial portion of American rural people. Theirs is a poverty that so far at least has not been appreciably

924 Yearbook of Asriculturc, 1940

relieved b}' the momentary prosperity that has sometimes favored otJier farmers and farm groups. Tliey live sometimes in houses that man3^ prosperous farmers would not want as chicken, coops. They frequently lack facilities for education and sanitation and medical care. Many of them lack the dietary elements required for good health. The kind of poverty in which, they live has in many cases robbed them of the vitality, the iTicentive, and the means to improve their condition unless they get at least some small measure of outside aid. Yet it is people in such circumstances who produce a substantial part of some of our major crops and who likewise supply a dispro- portioTiately large share of our younger population because of their unusually high birth rate.

There is also a problem of land adjustment—of reforming our use of the soil so that future generations may live well upon it. This frequents means new methods of tillage. It sometimes means shifting agricultural productioi] from one area to another or from one kind of production to another that is better from the point of view of total social efficiency.

There is the problem of adjusting production not only for the sake of soil conservation and of reducing surpluses but also for the purpose of supplying in a better way the diverse needs of our whole population. For instance, it seems apparent on the basis of our national dietary needs that we should produce relatively more dairy products, fruits, leafy vegetables, a^nd other health-building foods^ and relatively less of certain grains and fibers of w4iich wê have a superabundance.

In some parts of tlie country there is a crucial problem of taxation. This is especially acute in regions that were settled with, booming optimism in (expectancy of agricultural income w4iich for one reason or a,nother nt^vcr materialized. Bonded, indebtedness was assumed and tax-consuming institutions were established that have continued as an unbearable^ burden upon the agriculture of communities that were once so hopeful.

These brief notations are intended to suggest the complexity of the total agricultural problem which all of us w^lio have rural welfare at heart must face. For howêver much we may wish that the problem wêre a simple one and even though many sincere and devoted friends of agriculture seem to believe it is simple, a ca.reful exploration of the facts discloses an infinite complexity of causes and interrtîlationships. The problems of tenure, for instance, are closely interwoven with those of farm income, population, land use, increasing capital costs, the disappearance of a frontier of free land, and the rise of a metropolitan and industrial iîcouoiny. They cannot be separated wholly from the ÍTiflue.nce of urban, ways and thoughts and social standards extending into the countryside noi' from the intangible but crucial change in attitudes that has accompanied the coming of the modern world. And all the problems of agriculture are aiïected, sometimes partially, sometimes crucially, by the conditions that prevail in industry.

Rural standards of living depend primarily upon income; yet in many places increased income by itself can never solve standard-of- living problems. Unless 07ie is a thoroughgoing economic deter- minist, he must realize that such important matters as sanitation, education, medical care, and the birth rate are not determined ex-


clusively by economics. Customary practices and traditional beliefs are vitally important determinants. The standard-of-living problems we have to deal with must be recognized as the product of the whole culture of a people and related to all of the prevailing customs, institutions, attitudes, and moral ideas. They add up to far more than straight economics. There can be no effective and lasting improvement of living standards in places where poverty is associated with disease, ignorance, and illiteracy or where there is an over- crowding of people upon slender or wasted natural resources, unless these conditions are altered first. Some of the poorer farm people have no fair chance to improve their lot because bad health and poor food have cut their vitality below the point where it is possible for them to lift themselves without outside help. In some places there are too many farmers for all of them to make a decent living by fol- lowing prevailing agricultural practices, even if prices rose as high as there is any reason to hope they ever will. Absorption of a large portion of the population into industry seems the only hope of improvement in these cases—a faint hope in view of long-continued industrial unemplo3^ment—unless a new pattern of agriculture is adopted that can supply a higher standard of living without increasing cash costs. Much good would result from an extension of subsistence practices, with broad diversification and less dependence upon a single cash crop of which there is already a surplus and which consequently brings a low price. The adoption of such a. program, embodying as it would farm practices so different that in many cases an. almost totally different pattern of life would be involved, could not be accomphshed quickly or by simple means but would entail, sometimes at least, much education and a change in the fife philosophy of those who practiced it.

Because of this complexity of our farm problems there cannot possibly be a quick and easy panacea. Neither suddenness nor simplicity can characterize an agricultural program that would be really effective and lasting because the problem is not simple and its roots lie so deep in the past that they are embedded in many of our institutions and attitudes. There must be a long-time program of agricultural reform, but the reform must be slow and gradual, not for reasons of policy but because the very nature of the problem requires it.

SOME ESSENTIALS OF AGRICULTURAL REFORM

Reform in agriculture must grow from the ground up and be built upon the solid rock of democratic opinion. It must answer the desires of farm people, and they must determine its form. Its character must be shaped out of the native social soil of this country; and agricultural leadership can do no better than to provide devices whereby the rank and file may set their local problems into a national perspective, help to articulate the opinions that are formed on this basis, and finally assist in turning ideas into action.

Nothing is more important to the success of such a democratic program than that it be conducted upon a level of high tolerance. There must be on all sides a disposition to credit the other fellow with intelligence and sincere intentions. To do so is not only to recognize

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the fundamental decency of men, but also to avoid the bitterness that prevents both understanding and real aecomplishnient. Tlie oc- casional reformer who seems more moved by hatred of those he deems oppressors than by love of the oppressed seldom aids the cause he enlists in.

THE CULTURAL APPROACH TO AGRICULTURAL PROBLEMS

The point of view best adapted to avoid oversimplification on the one hand and harsh intolerance on the other, and calculated to guide us to^vard the most practical methods of reform, is the cultural approach. The cidtural approach is based upon a keen appreciation of the interrelatedness of all social phenomena. Both laymen and social scientists generally recognize that the facts of our daily lives cannot be clearly divided up and put in separate pigeoidioJes, as the artificial divisions of the social sciences suggest. Economists, political scientists, historians, ps3^chologists, geographers, sociologists, and theologians all j't^cognize that the crucial facts in the life of any individual or in any social situation cannot be correctly thought of as exclusively political, exclusively rc^ligious, exclusively economic, or exclusively anything else. They all merge into one another; and a single fact viewed from one angle may seem, wholly economic, while from another, equally legitimate point of view it appears wholly psychological. Actually, of coiu'se, facts in themselves are not economic, political, or psychological.

The interrelationship of the whole range of social facts is at least vaguely perceived by everyone who gives serious thought to the subject. And it has been admitted by the social scientists of every specialized field. The point, however, is that while ordinarily this interrelationship is dimly recognized and grudgingly admitted, the cultural concept accepts the implications fully, gives them primary emphasis, and even makes them the foundation of its method.

One of the most important implications is that established attitudes and patterns of thought have as much to do with the total culture as more tangible, physical phenomena. Habits of thinking, special skills, social ideals, and customary judgments of value and of right and wrong develop and cluster around the material facts men live with. These all-important intangibles serve to make material traits function. Without them, the material traits wôuld not exist. Things have effective being for men in society only to the extent that they integrate these things into their lives by the process of thought. This thought is partly skill or knowledge, partly explanation.

Man has an innate necessity for explaining to himself the reasons for the institutions and things he lives with. Whether or not he can explain them correctly, he must make the effort. If he does not have the necessarj^ facts, he explains them by myths. Such, myths are not to be disdained; they have a very necessary and important social function. Men are also inchned to think in absolute rather than in relative terms. In substance, therefore, we generalize from particular cases, and thus derive moral and social convictions which we consider absolute but which are based upon the temporary conditions of our own peculiar experience and social inheritance. This circumstantial


origin of ideas that we are inclined to regard as universal and absolute is a very crucial matter in times of social change. Because of it, our traditional institutions, habits, and customs are associated with the abstract moral qualities and virtues that we most revere. And the changes in ways of doing things and in customs of hving that inevitably come when our technological and physical environment is changed appear to be more than mere innovations; they seem an attack upon the very virtues with which the institutions they displace were associated.

The cultural approach sees a maladjustment, such as that of agri^ culture today, fundamentally as an unbalance between the world of things and the world of thought. Our customary institutions and ways of doing things, born in and adapted to a different set of physical conditions, are no longer wholly adequate and suitable to our needs. We are in the midst of a period in which these institutions and ways of doing things are changing relatively fast. Actually we submit to these institutional changes very slowly, generally only when we absolutely have to.

Why, it may be asked, do we change our customs so slowly if the need is really so pressing? Some people would answer this by saying that reform and change are prevented by the opposition of interests vested in obsolescent institutions or privileg€is. There is some truth in this, but the explanation seems to create personal devils—''the interests''—that seldom exist in large enough numbers to do all we attribute to them; nor does it explain the reluctance of the masses to change in matters in which, from the point of view of detached rationality, change would seem wholly to their advantage. The simplest explanation seems to be that we are creatures of custom rather than of reason. Not only are generalized ideas of right and wrong associated with customs and institutions, but in man3^ cases they were actually developed as a moral justification of institutions that already existed. For this reason, many necessary innovations that amount essentially to a social accommodation to new factors introduced into the environment cannot avoid giving moral offense, for they seem to be an attack upon things that experience has taught were right and morally good.

Seen in this light, the problem of agricultural adjustment to the modern world appears to be basically psychological and cultural. We have the means already at hand for the desired technical and ph^^sical manipulation of the material elements in oin* altered environment. We have, that is, both machines and skills. We also have statistical inventories of physical resources and production techniques which enable us to calculate our capacity to produce goods to satisfy physical needs. On the basis of this knowledge of material things, it would therefore seem possible to direct our own destinies sufficiently well to avoid the kind of irrational maladjustments in the supply and distribution of goods to which actually we are grievously subject. But psychological and cultural obstacles so far have intervened to prevent a rational and feasible social control of these physical matters. This is so much the case that it is safe to say that the real genius of any feasible reform effort will reside not in its technical competence in any material concern but rather in its psychological and cultural insight. There are tens of thousands of men who can easily provide

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a blueprint of Utopia that is developed solely on the physical facts of our existing technology and natural resources. But because the crux of the problem is moral and psychological rather than physical and technological and because such blueprints are not based primarily upon psychic considerations, they are no more practical in specific application than so many phantasies.

We only admit the truth when we recognize that our economic problems are moral prob] ems. The greatest difficulty in the traditional and accepted application of the social sciences to major social problems has arisen from the fact that they have tried to deal largely or exclusive^ with the material phases of social problems as opposed to the psychological and cultural phases. Among some social sciences and scientists there has been a distinct tendency to assume a rationality in man and a separateness m social phenomena that do not exist in fact. The social sciences and their applications have moreover tried to avoid dealing with moral and spiritual phases of social problems. This has seemed reasonable because of the recognized disposition of moral and spiritual things to be beyond the scope of recognized forms of scientific rationality. Yet the inner relationship both in cause and effect of these spiritual and moral factors with the kind of material things that science frankly deals with makes it impossible to ignores them. Thoiy have a mixed relationship with material facts that includes both cause and effect. They must be considered a part of the total picture from wdiich there is no real escape. To ignore them is to be blind to the most important of social determinants. To take them for granted as absolutes that are unrelated to the transient conditions of the social and physical environment of man is to deny the most convincing evidence that has been presented upon the subject. To make a mere guess at them that is partly intuitive and largely unconscious—which is by far the most common practice—is to neglect the advantage of the systematic observations and theories of those who study such matters scientifically.

Anatysis of attitudes toward important social issues generally discloses that a crucial determiuing factor underlying these judgments is very generally a moral consideration even when it is overlaid with a presumably rational explanation. Anyone who talks with farmers, businessmen, statisticians, wage workers, housewives, economists, scientists—in fact, people of any sort—about crucial issues and problems in agriculture, will find, if he analyses their opinions on the basis of the surest knowledge that psychology can supply, that the basis of judgment lies in moral ideas and attitudes not regularly considered by most social scientists. Very frequently the moral basis of the social opinion is unconscious. Sometimes it is candidty conscious. In point of method, the more conscious and candid the consideration of moral judgments is, the nearer is the approach to a scientific attitude toward that phase of social problems that is most commonly ignored. For it may be said fairly and without malice that in framing an opinion upon an issue that involves moral values and very few social issues do not involve moral values—learning and logic and intellectual bril- liance frequently serve principally to give an impressive and apparent^ rational argument in favor of opinions that really are formed for entirely diflêrent reasons.


The cultural approach recognizes the presence, influence, and importance of these moral considerations. It is, in fact, inclined frequently to concentrate upon them as the recognized crux of a social situation. In connection with contemporary agricultural problems, this would mean that psychological possibilities would form the starting point of all consideration of reform efforts. The psychological determinants within the total cultural situation would be considered as the first facts of the situation, and other matters would have to be bent to fit them rather than attempting to lay the major emphasis on bending psychological facts into conformity with physical factors.

Our thinking in matters that concern economic reform wall be clearer and more useful if we learn to distinguish institutions from the human needs they exist to serve. Freedom and security may be accepted, for instance, as enduring human needs. But the particular institutions whereby they wore attained in an age of free land may very well not continue to be effective in an age when there is no free land. And to confuse those older institutions with the freedom and security they once served is a dangerous kind of mistake.

The cultural point of view would indicate that educational processes and procedures must be a basic part of any serious reform effort. But since the cultural point of view regards conventional forms of education primarily as an institution for passing on to the younger generation the customs, techniques, and attitudes sanctioned by tradition and by established institutions, the specific content and procedures of education become very important in a ¡jeriod of cultural change. Good educational procedure adapted to present needs would not consist in experts telling farmers what the truth is, for experts frequently need educating JTist as much as do farmers. Education appropriate to contemporary needs would consist rather in an effort to stimulate the critical senses, to develop broader points of view, and to develop creative imagination by applying a scientific skepticism to those ideas we have that do not conform to the contemporar}^ world of fact.

Both scientific analysis and popular demands indicate that con- tinuing agricultural adjustment requires new kinds of action. New kinds of action programs are in fact already established and func- tioning in a way that suggests they will continue indefinitely. And in all probability many other new forms of action will evolve in the future. Since it is ordinaril}^ impossible to do one thing and think another without developing serious conflicts, the matter of our attitudes and thinking becomes highly important. There should, therefore, be an expanding effort to increase both the amount and the intensity of thought and discussion concerning agricultural problems. And this thought and discussion should be popular and widespread because of the democratic ideal that is the first assumption of all our ideals of agricultural progress. There should be no restraint upon the philosophic implications of such thought and discussion. There should be no fear of pushing ideas beyond the frontier of wiiat is known and factually proved into the region of philosophic ideals and moral preferences. It is obvious enough that no direct or scientific applications can come out of such exploration of ideals and opinions of ultimate goals in agricultural life. But philosophic probing, if it is sincere and deep enough, can rcahne our total think-

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ing in such a way as to alter the nature of our attack upon those problems, for which immediate, calciihvble, and practical programs are possible.

TWO OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS OF AGRICULTURAL REFORM

There arc in one sense twô polar extremes of thought in respect to the direction agricultural development should follow^ in the future. The first extreme school of thouglit would follow the line set by sheer technological and production eíRciency. Whether they are laissez faire theorists or sociahstic theorists, the exponents of this point of view^ advocate agricultural development along lines for which technological eificiency is almost the sole criterion. If costs could be low^cred by production units of 1,000 or 10,000 or even 100,000 acres, they feel that such units should be an important part of ultimate aims.

On the other hand, the exponents of the opposing school of thought seem to resent most of the mechanizíjtion and centralization of the modern, world. This group is much impressed by the additional distribution costs that come wîth speciídization and concentration of production. Whether it is for this economic reason, whicli contains a degree of truth, or whether it is because of a dishke for tiie more glar- ing aspects of modernity, those of this opiriion advocate a return to the subsistence practices that wêrc connnon before the industrial revolution destroyed the earlier individual self-sufficiency.

The members of the first group look upon the recommendations of the second group as an expression of defeatism and as íTJspired basically by an emotional reaction coming out of a mahuljustment with the modern world. The second group is inclined to look upon the opinions of the first group as being headlong and lacking in a perception of the social and psychological maladjustments into which modernity in its industriahzing and centralizing tendency may leacJ us. The difficulty in accepting either line of thought is the wây it wholly excludes the other. Both lines of thought conform better to the rigidities of logic than to the variety of fact. Highly systematized social philosophies generally fail because they have a kind of geo- metrically perfect logic that assumes ordei' and rationality wdthin the social universe that seems to have no real existence outside the minds of those w^lio create sucli systems.

If those things that deal wdth the psychic and more ultimate vahies of life are properly called philosophical, then there must be a greater disposition toward philosophy, for we need to strip ourselves of the preconceived notions and systematic ideas that so frequently prevent us from seeing things in the light in which the}^ really exist. We see them too much according to the description that is handed dow^n to us by tradition. This is an age in which wê need to reexamine facts because a previous viewpouit entirely appropriate to an earlier environment is no longer wdiollv applicable. We must have philosophical consideration, but philosophical consideration does not mean making highly involved and ligidly logical systems. On the contrary, it shoidd consist of a determined effort to test our dogmas in the light of the facts that are around us toda3^ And if our


dogmas do not conform to the facts, we should k)ok for ideas that do. The cultural approach follows no extremes of snuple doctrine.

Riither, it inclines to a program of many specific reforms varied in detail according to the peculiar needs of individual cases. It looks upon adjustment and reform of a social kind as an accommodation or a compromise btitween matcvrial facts and psychologica] factors. The cultural approach realizeos ttie necessity for integration and harmony among the varied functions and phases of living, but this docs not necessitate a systematic uniformity through all soci(>ty.

It must be freely admitted that specialization, centralization, and intercJependency seem to be the irresistible trend within industry. This trend docs not seem by any nKâns to be entirely spent. We must assume tlierefore that the industrial circumstances of modern society will continue indefinitely to necessitate a large degree of commercial agricultural production, to supply raw materials for industry and to feed the industrial and metropohtan population. Since we are not headed for a return to handicrafts in industry, we must keep a large commercial agricultural plant that includes a great deal of specialized production for the urban market. But this does not mean that all agriculture caTi or should be established on an industrial basis. It is perfectly possible to have a specialized, highly interdependent, and even col- lectivized organization of industry and have txiside it an agriculture that is in a large measure organized on a pattern of small individual units. Perfect conformity in ideas and organization does not need to extend from the factory into the field.

In agricidture, modern technology does not involve advantages to large units eitlier universally or to the same dc^gree as in. industry. Specialized, large-scale agricultural production has sometimes^ ap- peared to be efficient when it really was not. It has sometimes created this appearance of (ifficiency by the device of shifting production costs to other agencies and institutions.. It has utilized farm labor for short periods of the year at relatively low wages by shifting the living costs of that labor to relief or to charit^^ during the seasons when it was not wanted. It has on occasion. Reduced the production costs of some individuals by dispossessing others and by increasing the proportion of individuals within the submerged social strata who live on tli(^ precarious border line of (^.conomic slavery and deprivation.

Much agriculture that is thoroughly commercial and highly specialized has been prodigal wnth the soil. Single cropping of various kinds has mined the soils and prepared them for rapid erosion. Con- centration of production within, specialized areas has increased the threat of diseases and insects and necessitated expensive operations for their control. It has run up the fertihzer bill and, by piling on transportation and handling charges, has nicreased those costs of distribution which have worried so many when they consider the diiïerence between the price paid to the farmer and the price paid by the ultimate consumer.

Thus, while we may admit that commercial and specialized production is necessary and that on the whole it has provided great benefits, we must appreciate that its costs have not always beom fully counted and that in many cases the social costs exceed the gain. Wo should notj therefore^ make an all-embracing doctrine of it; but rather be

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prepared to let individual circumstances determine the nature of policies to be applied in specific cases.

A LIVE-AT-HOME PROGRAM OF REFORM

In many areas of our country more people are trying to make a living from the land than can possibly attain what has come to be recognized as a desired standard of living unless some of the prevailing customs and institutions of agriculture are altered. There is, according to all customary economic analyses, a surplus rural population. According to every economic theory that has any prestige to back it, the surplus of population that is in excess of the number required to produce most efficiently the goods that agriculture ordinarily supplies should be diverted into other occupations. This is a point upon which classical economists and Marxists are in perfect agreement.

But it is in fact the very condition of underemployment in industry tiiat is partly or largely the cause of overpopulation in rural areas. The customary outlet for the excess rural popidation has been very much restricted. Industry has for a long time been unable to provide employment even for those who are dependent wdioUy upon it and not at all upon agriculture. To add to this number oï unemployed all those from agriculture who are surplus by present commercial standards would be to aggravate an industrial unemployment situation that is already in many respects almost intolerable. Industry cannot be expected voluntarily to provide employment opportunities in the near future sufficient to take care of the surplus rural population. To force industry to take this surplus into deccTit and permanent employment would involve coercive measures that few if any people are prepared to accept. Regardless therefore of wliat pure theory might consider to be the most perfect solution of the problem, agriculture itself must provide a livelihood for a larger number of people than sheer production efficiency requires. In view of the fact that we have a national agricultural plant geared to produce more than the market will profitably pay for and since even with the best control measures we are still precariously near overproduction for the market, the only practical and expedient measure in many cases by which rural living standards can be raised is through the increase of subsistence practices.

Some people seem to imagine that an increase of self-sufficiency is a return to the Middle Ages. Perhaps that is because they have complete faitli in the universal application of the theory of comparative advantage. Perhaps they like the quality of bigness and the outward appearance of rationalized system that characterize many aspects of modern economic organization. Or perhaps they do not know all the facts about twentieth-century methods of subsistence. Perhaps tliey are inclined to think of modern agriculture exclusively in terms of the most prosperous big farmers and to forget that a great deal of the specialized commercial production where self-sufficiency is lowest is pursued by means of relatively primitive technology under conditions of great poverty. Commercialization of agriculture, specialization in agriculture, and lack of self-sufficiency do not correlate very well with high living standards. Some of the very lowest rurar living


standards occur in areas of the most highly commercialized and specialized production. This is true in many of the cotton and tobacco regions of the South and in the truck aiid fruit areas of the Soutli and of the Pacific coast. When we think of farm people we have to give a place to small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, hired hands, and migratory workers along wâth big operators and proprietors.

For vast runnbers of farm people that no other practical plan takes into consideration, small proprietorship with self-sufFicien t practices could produce a much higher standard of living than is now their lot. A change to self-sufficient agriculture would in these cases constitute material progress rather than retrogression. There is nothing medieval or retrogressive about a family supplying its own food from its own acres by means of progeny-tested hens, blooded sires, hybrid corn, pressure cookers, glass jars, electric refrigeration, and quick freezing. Yet it is precisely by such, applications of modern technology that subsistence practices can be most efi'ective. There are hundreds of thousands of farm families who produce practically nothing but a single crop of which, there is such a market surplus that the price is too low to provide them mth cash to buy the things they need. Yet they remain dependent upon the precarious and insufficient cash income from their oTie marlêt crop to supply many things they could produce themselves with little or no out-of-pocket costs. Diversity of production to include a supply of their own consuming needs would in the first place reduce the need for cash outlay and in the second place tend to decrease the surplus which stands in the way of a ôod price for the crops that are sold.

A cash income for subsistence groups would continue to be necessarj^—a cash income sometimes greater than is now received. This would undoubtedly require a greater total cash income for agriculture as a whole than it now receives. But there is no cheaper way of taking good care of our disadvantaged rural people than by lowering the cash cost of a decent and secure living. To the degree that an increased cash income cannot be realized for agriculture by increased urban consumption of farm products, we should resort to a frank and open subsidy for as long a period as economic inequality exists. For the alternative to subsidy is peonage and the development of a proletarian group on a scale that is dangerously incompatible with the ideals of opportunity and democracy upon which our most cherished national institutions are based.

Self-suflicient farming, howêver, cannot be instantaneously em- barked upon by those who have never practiced it. Self-sufficient farming practices are in the first place impossible in tens of thousands of cases imless tenure arrangements as they now stand are considerably changed. Many sharecroppers could not employ self-sufficient practices even if they would. Many who have the economic opportunity to do so cannot because they simply do not know how. In any case a change of farming practices from one or twô cash crops to a rounded, live-at-home economy involves vastly more than the mere physical change of planting six crops instead of one or two and tending a score of animals instead of a lone mule. It means new foods to get used to. It means new kinds of concerns, new kinds of practices, and new kinds of knowledge. It means new Idnds of pleasures and satis-

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934 Yearbook of Agriculture, 1940

factions to supplant older ones, and new ideas about life's basic values. And it nieaTis almost certainly that there must be a great extension of cooperative activity. For in this modern world of technology, the humble little man can retain his independence generally only through devices of cooperative effort and action that will reduce his disad- vantage in competing wdth vast organizations.

liaising the rural standard of living through increased subsistence practices or by smj other means is bound to include educational procedures as a first essential to success. It is also bound in mau}^ cases to be a matter of very delicate social engineering. Some reform efi'orts in the past have come dangerously near to imposing standards that were neither desired nor needed by those whose condition was to be 'împroved." This has perhaps not been the case in sufficient degree to be a cause for much concern; but nevertheless it is well to remember that what individuals on one cultural level consider essential in a liviTig standard may not seem either necessary or desirable to individuals within another culture or upon a different cultural level. The best and soundest wây to introduce a desired practice or material benefit is to wôrk somew^hat by indirection—to encourage slowdy the desire for a thing while developing at the same time the means of attaining it.

THE BASIC CRITERIA OF PROGRAMS OF REFORM

For the determination of reform programs and policies in agriculture, particularly those that apply to the less privileged groups, there is need for a more scientifically reliable understanding of the basic nature and needs of men. The physical sciences are already able to give us in reliable detail some of the physical requirements of health and well-being. There are certain needs—for food, housing, clothing, sanitation, and medical facilities:—that liave their basis in man as a biological being. These needs with only a little more clarification and specification than has already been attempted should be established as primary minimums of an agricultural program. There should be no hesitation or delay in adopting measures to remedy deficiencies on this score. In making programs to this end, the best rule would seem to be to devise different measures for specific pur- poses according to the nature of the circumstances. Proposals or programs that are practical for an. immediate situation should of course not conflict with other special programs or w4th general programs and ideas that wê can be sure are practicable and soundly based on fact. But we must for some time avoid generalized programs and ideals and give our attention rather to w4iat is immediately factual and specific, with complete respect for the psychological conditions that are certain to be involved. Above all we must avoid the frequent mistake of deserting a practical and specific program because it seems to contradict a mere tlicory of how the economic system ought to work if only men and facts were difl'erent from wlmt they really are. For wê must know that fact precedes theory, and that much of our social theor}^ amounts merely to a combined justification and explanation of the wây something w-as once supposed to work.

Besides the physical i-equirements of men, certain psychic needs


must be coiisidered. In a sense they are more important than the material needs, for they are the ends that material things serve. They cannot in. many cases be separated, because they are interdependent. A standard of living, for instance, is imintelligible unless it is set in a psychological a.nd cultural context. Beyond the mere satisfaction of our most elementary biological needs, our wants are determined by the cultu]'c in which we live. We wa.nt and believe we need electric lights today in the same way that our grandfathers wanted kerosejie lamps. Many of the things that are essential to our happiness are essential in no absolute sense bnt only in relation to the cultural background in which wc live. The psychic needs of mau may be, in a sense, universal; yet they differ in form and context íTI different cultures and at diñTrcrnt tinu^s. Some of these psychic needs secim to be for security, for self-respect and pi'cstige^ for intimate experience, and for a relationship with the unknown.

Concerning the need for security, man needs not only to be fed well today but to feel som(^ assurance that he will have food tomon'ow also. He cannot enjoy the things he has today if he feels insecure or threatened in their possession. The nei^l for self-respect and prestige meaTis essentially that men desire to think w(ill of thi^mselves. The valu(î standards upon which men may thiuk well of themselves generally derive from their particular culture. A going culture should be expected to provide wide opportunity for the attaiiunent of those things which its value system estabhshes as n(^c(\ssary to self-respect and happiness. The need for satisfaiitory intimate experi(^nce includes the need for warm fellowship and UTiquestioning loyalty and in our culture generally finds its most complete expression in relationships within the family. The relationship with the unknown is ordinarily providi^l for by the institutions of religion.

These psychic necids of man must for the present remain vague because we know relatively little about them. They deserve study and thought and, when they are better understood, must be includcxl within our social goals; for we already know that the denial of these needs leads to maladjustment within individuals and dislocation within society. Because all of these ps^'chic qualities are inextricably related to the material features of life wherever it is lived, we must be ready at all times to recognize not only their presence but also their primary importance, even though we cannot appraise them fully.

The cultural concept inevitably considers reform according to evolutionary principles. Because of the human basis of social institutions in persanal habits and attitudes that ordinarily the individual clings to throughout his life, regardless of changes about him, profound social change is a matter of generations rather than of years. The cultural point of view conceives it highly unlikely that any great change in social institutions, however desirable, coidd be efi'ected with rapidity.

If the evolutionary principle of social (îhange and reform is to pri^- vail peaceably dvu-ing sucdi a period of accelerated cidtural change as the present one, there must be a rathei" widespread disposition among those of all views to crculit their opponents with siucêrity and honest motives, and there must be distrust of extremt^ views and violent language. For in a p(\riod such as this, two dangerous conditions

936 Yearbook of Agriculture, 1940

almost inevitably dovolop: one is a confusion of ideas (hie to the dislocation of old institutions, and the other is a widespread feeling of insecurity that is both economic and psychologiciil in character.

Although absolute certaint}^ could he the only basis of intolerance in a purcl^^ logical sense, it actually works out that intolerance generally develops out of a sense of insecurity, wliich is at least akin to uncer- tainty. For it is insecurity and confusion that drive men into frantic loyalty to extreme ideas and into desperate and harsh oppression of those who disagree with them. Thus it is the very insecurity and uncertainties of this age that produce the harshc^st forms of bigotry and dogmatism and intolerance of action. This is the greatest danger, both in agriculture and throughout our national life, that confronts the hope for social progress with a minimum of grief. It is a threat to our spiritual and moral freedom. Tolerance of religious beliefs and practices that we do not ourselves subscribe to must go hand in. hand with tolerance of political, social, and economic opinions that we do not agree with. For such tohirance provides a guaranty of a form of human liberty that is basic and a part of tlie most lasting and timeless of human needs. And above all, toh^rance of minority groups and opinions leaves the door open for the development of the new disposi- tions and arrangements that will be necessary as long as society is dynamic and not static.

The preventive of the danger of intolerance seems to lie, first, in the continuation and practical elaboration of measures to increase the economic security of the vast number of people who are most in need of it, and, second, in the encouragement of a widespread and popular disposition on both an emotional and an intellectual plane to reahze that social and economic truths arc not absolutes to which mortals have ready access, but rather are valuable but shifting points of view which have immediate practicality'^.

A PRACTICAL AND PECULIARLY AMERICAN BASIS FOR A REFORM PHILOSOPHY

It is perhaps the greatest tragedy in American, history that there has not been in this country a fully developed and distinctly indigenous philosophy of social reform that is applicable to the industrial situation that dominates so much of our modern social problems. The result of this lack has been that an unduly laxge share of socially minded Americans have attached themselves to creeds and docti-ines that may suit the situation elsewhere but are rigid, and unrealistic here.

Yet all the while there were in the United States the materials for just the kind of social philosophy that has been most needed. Those materials are to be found in the philosophy of pragmatism, in the economic thought of the so-called ^înstitutionalists," and in the concept of culture. The philosophical pragmatism of William James, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey considers rationality as an instrument for the prediction, and control of experienced facts rather than as a device for grasping realities hidden from the ordinary methods of science, as was typically assumed by the older philosophers. Institutionalist economics, inspired by pragmatism, developed out of the perception that many observed economic facts did not jibe with


accepted économie theory. As a consequence, among institntionalists emphasis came to be placed upon the observation and description of economic institutioTis as they actually exist rather than upon the elaboration or application of theories and principles conceived in the abstract. The concept of culture, which has already been described, though not so peculiarly American as cither pragmatism or institutionalist economics, has so far been more widely explored and developed by American social scientists thaii by any others.

The essence of all of these philosophical concepts is an underlying sense of the relativity of things, a belief that the most ambitious hope that men can hold for their power of understanding is that it serve them well in the particular age and circumstance in w^hich they live. We live upon this earth but once, and at best wô see but one small segment of it during a very brief existence. And what we see, we see through limited senses, clouded by the mists of the particular ideas of the culture in which we live. Under such circumstances, wisdom would seem to reside in an effort to work with the materials at hand, trying to fit them together as best we may according to the needs of the moment and the powers we actually possess. In such an effort, man-made doctrines of immutable truth are likelv to confuse our thinking more than they clarify it. The greatest intellectual task we have may well be that of stripping our minds of those misconcep- tions that prevent us from seeing things in the way that in our present circumstances would be most useful to us.

Ont of the materials of such, relativistic thinking should evolve a social philosophy that is peculiarly American in origin and character. It would not be a rigid creed, in any sense, invless it were in a refusal to be a creed. It would be a philosophy that left no place for personal devils or for class or racial devils. It would be democratic, not for reasons of ideological loyalty but rather as a matter of practical effectiveness. It would be pluralistic in rejecting cure-alls and relativistic in. rejecting pretensions to absolute or static perfection. It would recognize the interdependence of social phenomena all the way from the monthly creamery check aiid the Monday-morning washing to the highest aesthetic or philosophic or spiritual concern. It would perceive the impossibility of sharp separation of ends and means because it would see that means tend in the long run to become ends. And it would appr(>ciate that the material thiTigs so generally the symbols of desires really exist only for the satisfaction of psychological or spiritual needs. Such a program of agricultural adjustment and reform should be able to avoid the equal evils of rashness on the one hand and dangerous delay on the other.

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