The Sociology of a Changing Agriculture

IT SEEMS only yesterday, let us say between 1900 and the first world war, that agriculture was an occupation carried on in the open country by farmers, members of their families, and sometimes a few hired hands. For most farm families, farming was both a way of living and a means of earning a modest cash income. A large part of the farmer's production was used to feed himself and members of his family. His cash income was used sparingly to buy farm supplies and equipment, to pay taxes, interest, mortgage installments, an occasional doctor's bill, a modest contribution for the preacher, and less frequently a few dollars for family recreation, such as a carnival or a country fair, or possibly a short train ride to visit grandma. The methods of farming were largely traditional ones passed on from father to son and from neighbor to neighbor. Horse and mule power was used to operate the relatively few pieces of farm machinery, such as a turning plow, a drag harrow, a planter, and a cultivator. Larger pieces of equipment, such as grain harvesters and threshers, were usually hired on a custom basis. The farmer's business and social relationships were likewise relatively simple. He had a local market for his cash crops and livestock although his prices were frequently determined by economic conditions in distant cities and countries. Most of his purchases were made in country stores and in small town trade centers usually on a Saturday afternoon. The trips to the small country towns were also social occasions when the farmer and his family could visit with friends and neighbors. Only on rare occasions did the farmer of that day go to larger towns and cities for major purchases such as for furniture or farm machinery. And as James Mickel Williams points out: "The neighborhood was his cooperative society, for neighbors cooperated in butter making, in planting and cultivating, in harvesting, and in a hundred other ways."' It was in this early period that the present adult generation built up its concept, its image of agriculture (farming) as an open country occupation. It was thought to be a hard way of life with low economic returns and few social amenities. Occupations in nearby towns and villages were considered to be superior both economically and socially. Education was considered by many farm parents to be a means by which their children could escape the hardships of agriculture and enter occupations in which they would not have to work so hard. On the other hand, it was the agriculture of this period that provides for many of us the basis for holding certain ideas and beliefs regarding the social, moral, and psychological values in rural living. The country was and is still thought to be a "good place in which to raise a family." Farm children were part of a working economic and social unit. They were required to do the farm and home chores as well as to work in the fields. It is believed that under such circumstances farm children learned to take responsibility, to be self-reliant, and to be obedient to authority. Also, being usually members of large families, farm children learned to share family belongings and to cooperate in work and play. I'ersons who were reared on a farm will remember that children * Presidential address read at the twenty-first annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Asheville, North Carolina, April 11, 1958. 1 The Expansion of Rural Life (New York: Knopf, 1926), p. 296.