October 30, 2003

Plains Folk: Country Life

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

It may surprise many of us on the plains to learn that people were talking about "the rural problem," young people abandoning farm and small-town life-long before mobility became the American way of life after the Second World War -- even before the terrible 1930s. Already at the beginning of the 20th century Americans feared that rural decay was threatening our supply of food and our sources of virtue.

This led reformers, mostly urban, to begin what was known as the Country Life Movement. Across the land they debated how to keep country boys down on the farm. Some said tractors would do it. Others said recreational opportunities, still others community ties. In sum, the Country Lifers said everything about farm and small-town life needed to be updated and improved. It was sort of like a fellow who marries a girl for love, then decides she needs to change everything about herself. The Country Lifers said country life was wonderful, but everything about it was wrong.

Another problem was that they did indeed focus on country boys, not on country girls. As it turned out, girls were the ones who led the flight to the city, often for good reasons.

Now on my desk appears a book by one George Walter Fiske and entitled, "The Challenge of the Country," publication date 1912. Fiske was a Congregational minister, a graduate of Amherst College from Massachusetts. His book found its way to the plains because it was adopted as a text for the reading course of the Valley City (North Dakota) Chautauqua. A special edition was published with "Valley City Chautauqua" embossed on the cover. This collectable volume comes to me courtesy of a friend and student. (Thanks, Matt.)

Now I imagine the good people of Valley City assembled in their Chautauqua Park along the Sheyenne, fanning themselves and swatting mosquitoes, their eyes lifting during moments of inattention to the elegant trestles of the Hi-Line bridge, but mostly staying on task, discussing ardently the proposed solutions to the rural problem.

The Rural Problem is the title of the first chapter in Fiske’s book. It is surely an instructive book, although perhaps not in the way the author intended. It is, rather, a model of how not to talk about country life if you really want to be of help.

The problem is, everything is a problem. Subtitles in the introductory chapter include: Rural Depletion and Rural Degeneracy and Stages and Symptoms of Rural Decadence. Fiske tells of one town where, he says, in a population of 669, there are "232 licentious women and 199 licentious men." Now, before you start asking directions to the place, see Fiske’s note about "the great proportion being mentally as well as morally defective."

Chapter 5, entitled Rural Opportunities for Social Reconstruction, looks promising until you read that the opportunities are all, well, problems. The chapter provides lengthy treatment of Country Life Deficiencies, including Weakness in Rural Institutions, Failures in Rural Cooperation, and Lack of Wholesome Social Life for Young People.

Each chapter ends with test questions. Not discussion questions, but test questions, with expected right answers. Questions like, "Why do many rural communities take so little interest in their schools?" or, "What common weakness do you notice in every sort of rural institution?"

If you were a country boy or girl, and you read such a book, what would you do? Buckle down and try to correct all these deficiencies? Not me. I’d get as out fast as I could. Depletion, degeneracy, decadence, deficiency. Thanks a lot, Reverend Fiske.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu 

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