addition of coloring matter and also of seeds to imitate berries from
which they are supposed to be made; the cheap apple jelly is itself
often imitated by a mixture of glucose, starch, aniline dye, and
flavoring. Lard nearly always contains added tallow. Bakeries in large
cities have used decomposed products, as decayed eggs. Cheap ice-cream
is often made of gelatin, glue, and starch. Cottonseed-oil is sold for
olive-oil. The poison saccharine is often used in place of sugar in
prepared sweetened products.

The attentive reader of the public prints in the recent years can
greatly extend this humiliating recital if he choose. It is our habit to
attach all the blame to the adulterators, and it is difficult to excuse
them; but we usually find that there are contributory causes and
certainly there must be reasons. Has our daily fare been honest?

_The admiration of good materials_

Not even yet am I done with this plain problem of the daily fare. The
very fact that it is daily--thrice daily--and that it enters so much
into the thought and effort of every one of us, makes it a subject of
the deepest concern from every point of view. The aspect of the case
that I am now to reassert is the effect of much of our food preparation
in removing us from a knowledge of the good raw materials that come out
of the abounding earth.

Let us stop to admire an apple. I see a committee of the old worthies in
some fruit-show going slowly and discriminatingly among the plates of
fruits, discussing the shapes and colors and sizes, catching the
fragrance, debating the origins and the histories, and testing them with
the utmost precaution and deliberation; and I follow to hear their
judgment.

This kind of apple is very perfect in spherical form, deeply cut at the
stem, well ridged at the shallow crater, beautifully splashed and
streaked with carmine-red on a yellowish green under-color, finely
flecked with dots, slightly russet on the shaded side, apparently a good
keeper; its texture is fine-grained and uniform, flavor mildly subacid,
the quality good to very good; if the tree is hardy and productive,
this variety is to be recommended to the amateur for further trial! The
next sample is somewhat elongated in form, rather below the average in
color, the stem very long and well set and indicating a fruit that does
not readily drop in windstorms, the texture exceedingly melting but the
flavor slightly lacking in character and therefore rendering it of
doubtful value for further test. Another sample lacks decidedly in
quality, as judged by the specimens on the table, and the exhibitor is
respectfully recommended to withdraw it from future exhibitions; another
kind has a very pronounced aromatic odor, which will commend it to
persons desiring to grow a choice collection of interesting fruits;
still another is of good size, very firm and solid, of uniform red
color, slightly oblate and therefore lending itself to easy packing,
quality fair to good, and if the tree bears such uniform samples as
those shown on the table it apparently gives promise of some usefulness
as a market sort. My older friends, if they have something of the
feeling of the pomologist, can construct the remainder of the picture.

In physical perfectness of form and texture and color, there is nothing
in all the world that exceeds a well-grown fruit. Let it lie in the palm
of your hand. Close your fingers slowly about it. Feel its firm or soft
and modelled surface. Put it against your cheek, and inhale its
fragrance. Trace its neutral under-colors, and follow its stripes and
mark its dots. If an apple, trace the eye that lies in a moulded basin.
Note its stem, how it stands firmly in its cavity, and let your
imagination run back to the tree from which, when finally mature, it
parted freely. This apple is not only the product of your labor, but it
holds the essence of the year and it is in itself a thing of exquisite
beauty. There is no other rondure and no other fragrance like this.

I am convinced that we need much to cultivate this appreciation of the
physical perfectness of the fruits that we grow. We cannot afford to
lose this note from our lives, for this may contribute a good part of
our satisfaction of being in the world. The discriminating appreciation
that one applies to a picture or a piece of sculpture may be equally
applied to any fruit that grows on the commonest tree or bush in our
field or to any animal that stands on a green pasture. It is no doubt a
mark of a well-tempered mind that it can understand the significance of
the forms in fruits and plants and animals and apply it in the work of
the day.

I sometimes think that the rise of the culinary arts is banishing this
fine old appreciation of fruits in their natural forms. There are so
many ways of canning and preserving and evaporating and extracting the
juices, so many disguises and so much fabrication, that the fruit is
lost in the process. The tin-can and the bottle seem to have put an
insuperable barrier between us and nature, and it is difficult for us to
get back to a good munch of real apples under a tree or by the fireside.
The difficulty is all the greater in our congested city life where
orchards and trees are only a vacant memory or stories told to the
young, and where the space in the larder is so small that apples must be
purchased by the quart. The eating of good apples out of hand seems to
be almost a lost art. Only the most indestructible kinds, along with
leather-skinned oranges and withered bananas, seem to be purchasable in
the market. The discriminating apple-eater in the Old World sends to a
grower for samples of the kinds that he grows; and after the inquirer
has tested them in the family, and discussed them, he orders his winter
supply. The American leaves the matter to the cook and she orders plain
apples; and she gets them.

I wonder whether in time the perfection of fabrication will not reach
such a point that some fruits will be known to the great public only by
the picture on the package or on the bottle. Every process that removes
us one step farther from the earth is a distinct loss to the people, and
yet we are rapidly coming into the habit of taking all things at second
hand. My objection to the wine of the grape is not so much a question of
abstinence as of the fact that I find no particular satisfaction in the
shape and texture of a bottle.

If one has a sensitive appreciation of the beauty in form and color and
modelling of the common fruits, he will find his interest gradually
extending to other products. Some time ago I visited Hood River Valley
in company with a rugged potato-grower from the Rocky Mountains. We were
amazed at the wonderful scenery, and captivated by the beauty of the
fruits. In one orchard the owner showed us with much satisfaction a
brace of apples of perfect form and glowing colors. When the grower had
properly expounded the marvels of Hood River apples, which he said were
the finest in the world, my friend thrust his hand into his pocket and
pulled out a potato, and said to the man: "Why is not that just as
handsome as a Hood River apple?" And sure enough it was. For twenty-five
years this grower had been raising and selecting the old Peachblow
potato, until he had a form much more perfect than the old Peachblow
ever was, with a uniform delicate pink skin, smooth surface, comely
shape, and medium size, and with eyes very small and scarcely sunken;
and my Hood River friend admitted that a potato as well as an apple may
be handsome and satisfying to the hand and to the eye, and well worth
carrying in one's pocket. But this was a high-bred potato, and not one
of the common lot.

This episode of the potato allows me another opportunity to enforce my
contention that we lose the fruit or the vegetable in the processes of
cookery. The customary practice of "mashing" potatoes takes all the
individuality out of the product, and the result is mostly so much
starch. There is an important dietary side to this. Cut a thin slice
across a potato and hold it to the light. Note the interior
undifferentiated mass, and then the thick band of rind surrounding it.
The potato flavor and a large part of the nutriment lie in this
exterior. We slice this part away and fry, boil, or otherwise fuss up
the remainder. When we mash it, we go still farther and break down the
potato texture; and in the modern method we squeeze and strain it till
we eliminate every part of the potato, leaving only a pasty mass, which,
in my estimation, is not fit to eat. The potato should be cooked with
the rind on, if it is a good potato, and if it is necessary to remove
the outer skin the process should be performed after the cooking. The
most toothsome part of the potato is in these outer portions, if the
tuber is well grown and handled. We have so sophisticated the potato in
the modern disguised cookery that we often practically ruin it as an
article of food, and we have bred a race of people that sees nothing to
admire in a good and well-grown potato tuber.

I now wish to take an excursion from the potato to the pumpkin. In all
the range of vegetable products, I doubt whether there is a more perfect
example of pleasing form, fine modelling, attractive texture and color,
and more bracing odor, than in a well-grown and ripe field pumpkin.
Place a pumpkin on your table; run your fingers down its smooth grooves;
trace the furrows to the poles; take note of its form; absorb its rich
color; get the tang of its fragrance. The roughness and ruggedness of
its leaves, the sharp-angled stem strongly set, make a foil that a
sculptor cannot improve. Then wonder how this marvellous thing was born
out of your garden soil through the medium of one small strand of a
succulent stem.

We all recognize the appeal of a bouquet of flowers, but we are unaware
that we may have a bouquet of fruits. We have given little attention to
arranging them, or any study of the kinds that consort well together,
nor have we receptacles in which effectively to display them. Yet,
apples and oranges and plums and grapes and nuts, and good melons and
cucumbers and peppers and carrots and onions, may be arranged into the
most artistic and satisfying combinations.

I would fall short of my obligation if I were to stop with the fruit of
the tree and say nothing about the tree or the plant itself. In our
haste for lawn trees of new kinds and from the uttermost parts, we
forget that a fruit-tree is ornamental and that it provides acceptable
shade. A full-grown apple-tree or pear-tree is one of the most
individual and picturesque of trees. The foliage is good, the blossoms
as handsome as those of fancy imported things, the fruits always
interesting, and the tree is reliable. Nothing is more interesting than
an orange tree, in the regions where it grows, with its shining and
evergreen leaves and its continuing flowers and fruits. The practice of
planting apples and pears and sweet cherries, and other fruit and nut
trees, for shade and adornment is much to be commended in certain
places.

But the point I wish specially to urge in this connection is the value
of many kinds of fruit-trees in real landscape work. We think of these
trees as single or separate specimens, but they may be used with good
result in mass planting, when it is desired to produce a given effect in
a large area or in one division of a property. I do not know that any
one has worked out full plans for the combining of fruit-trees, nuts,
and berry-bearing plants into good treatments, but it is much to be
desired that this shall be done. Any of you can picture a sweep of
countryside planted to these things that would be not only novel and
striking, but at the same time conformable to the best traditions of
artistic rendering.

I think it should be a fundamental purpose in our educational plans to
acquaint the people with the common resources of the region, and
particularly with those materials on which we subsist. If this is
accepted, then we cannot deprive our parks, highways, and school grounds
of the trees that bear the staple fruits. It is worth while to have an
intellectual interest in a fruit-tree. I know a fruit-grower who secures
many prizes for his apples and his pears; when he secures a blue ribbon,
he ties it on the tree that bore the fruit.

The admiration of a good domestic animal is much to be desired. It
develops a most responsible attitude in the man or the woman. I have
observed a peculiar charm in the breeders of these wonderful animals, a
certain poise and masterfulness and breadth of sympathy. To admire a
good horse and to know just why he admires him is a great resource to
any man, as also to feel the responsibility for the care and health of
any flock or herd. Fowls, pigs, sheep on their pastures, cows, mules,
all perfect of their kind, all sensitive, all of them marvellous in
their forms and powers,--verily these are good to know.

If the raw materials grow out of the holy earth, then a man should have
pride in producing them, and also in handling them. As a man thinketh of
his materials, so doth he profit in the use of them. He builds them into
himself. There is a wide-spread feeling that in some way these materials
reflect themselves in a man's bearing. One type of man grows out of the
handling of rocks, another out of the handling of fishes, another out of
the growing of the products from the good earth. All irreverence in the
handling of these materials that come out of the earth's bounty, and all
waste and poor workmanship, make for a low spiritual expression.

The farmer specially should be proud of his materials, he is so close to
the sources and so hard against the backgrounds. Moreover, he cannot
conceal his materials. He cannot lock up his farm or disguise his crops.
He lives on his farm, and visibly with his products. The architect does
not live in the houses and temples he builds. The engineer does not live
on his bridge. The miner does not live in his mine. Even the sailor has
his home away from his ship. But the farmer cannot separate himself from
his works. Every bushel of buckwheat and every barrel of apples and
every bale of cotton bears his name; the beef that he takes to market,
the sheep that he herds on his pastures, the horse that he
drives,--these are his products and they carry his name. He should have
the same pride in these--his productions--as another who builds a
machine, or another who writes a book about them. The admiration of a
field of hay, of a cow producing milk, of a shapely and fragrant head of
cabbage, is a great force for good.

It would mean much if we could celebrate the raw materials and the
products. Particularly is it good to celebrate the yearly bounty. The
Puritans recognized their immediate dependence on the products of the
ground, and their celebration was connected with religion. I should be
sorry if our celebrations were to be wholly secular.

We have been much given to the display of fabricated materials,--of the
products of looms, lathes, foundries, and many factories of skill. We
also exhibit the agricultural produce, but largely in a crass and rude
way to display bulk and to win prizes. We now begin to arrange our
exhibitions for color effect, comparison, and educational influence. But
we do not justly understand the natural products when we confine them to
formal exhibitions. They must be incorporated into many celebrations,
expressing therein the earth's bounty and our appreciation of it. The
usual and common products, domesticated and wild, should be gathered in
these occasions, and not for competition or for prize awards or even for
display, but for their intrinsic qualities. An apple day or an apple
sabbath would teach the people to express their gratitude for apples.
The moral obligation to grow good apples, to handle them honestly, to
treat the soil and the trees fairly and reverently, could be developed
as a living practical philosophy into the working-days of an
apple-growing people. The technical knowledge we now possess requires
the moral support of a stimulated public appreciation to make it a
thoroughly effective force.

Many of the products and crops lend themselves well to this kind of
admiration, and all of them should awaken gratitude and reverence.
Sermons and teaching may issue from them. Nor is it necessary that this
gratitude be expressed only in collected materials, or that all
preaching and all teaching shall be indoors. The best understanding of
our relations to the earth will be possible when we learn how to apply
our devotions in the open places.

_The keeping of the beautiful earth_

The proper care-taking of the earth lies not alone in maintaining its
fertility or in safeguarding its products. The lines of beauty that
appeal to the eye and the charm that satisfies the five senses are in
our keeping.

The natural landscape is always interesting and it is satisfying. The
physical universe is the source of art. We know no other form and color
than that which we see in nature or derive from it. If art is true to
its theme, it is one expression of morals. If it is a moral obligation
to express the art-sense in painting and sculpture and literature and
music, so is it an equal obligation to express it in good landscape.

Of the first importance is it that the race keep its artistic
backgrounds, and not alone for the few who may travel far and near and
who may pause deliberately, but also for those more numerous folk who
must remain with the daily toil and catch the far look only as they
labor. To put the best expression of any landscape into the
consciousness of one's day's work is more to be desired than much
riches. When we complete our conquest, there will be no unseemly
landscapes.

The abundance of violated landscapes is proof that we have not yet
mastered. The farmer does not have full command of his situation until
the landscape is a part of his farming. Farms may be units in
well-developed and pleasing landscapes, beautiful in their combinations
with other farms and appropriate to their setting as well as attractive
in themselves.

No one has a moral right to contribute unsightly factory premises or a
forbidding commercial establishment to any community. The lines of
utility and efficiency ought also to be the lines of beauty; and it is
due every worker to have a good landscape to look upon, even though its
area be very constricted. To produce bushels of wheat and marvels of
machinery, to maintain devastating military establishments, do not
comprise the sum of conquest. The backgrounds must be kept.

If moral strength comes from good and sufficient scenery, so does the
preservation of it become a social duty. It is much more than a civic
obligation. But the resources of the earth must be available to man for
his use and this necessarily means a modification of the original
scenery. Some pieces and kinds of scenery are above all economic use and
should be kept wholly in the natural state. Much of it may yield to
modification if he takes good care to preserve its essential features.
Unfortunately, the engineer seems not often to be trained in the values
of scenery and he is likely to despoil a landscape or at least to leave
it raw and unfinished.

On the other hand, there is unfortunately a feeling abroad that any
modification of a striking landscape is violation and despoliation; and
unwarranted opposition, in some cases amounting almost to prudery,
follows any needful work of utilization. Undoubtedly the farmer and
builder and promoter have been too unmindful of the effect of their
interference on scenery, and particularly in taking little care in the
disposition of wastes and in the healing of wounds; but a work either of
farming or of construction may add interest and even lines of beauty to
a landscape and endow it with the suggestion of human interest. If care
were taken in the construction of public and semi-public work to reshape
the banks into pleasing lines, to clean up, to care for, to plant, to
erect structures of good proportions whether they cost much or little,
and to give proper regard to the sensibilities of the communities, most
of the present agitation against interference with natural scenery would
disappear. One has only to visit the factory districts, the vacation
resorts, the tenement areas, the banks of streams and gorges, to look at
the faces of cliffs and at many engineering enterprises and at
numberless farmyards, to find examples of the disregard of men for the
materials that they handle. It is as much our obligation to hold the
scenery reverently as to handle the products reverently. Man found the
earth looking well. Humanity began in a garden.

The keeping of the good earth depends on preservation rather than on
destruction. The office of the farmer and the planter is to produce
rather than to destroy; whatever they destroy is to the end that they
may produce more abundantly; these persons are therefore natural
care-takers. If to this office we add the habit of good housekeeping, we
shall have more than one-third of our population at once directly
partaking in keeping the earth. It is one of the bitter ironies that
farmers should ever have been taken out of their place to wreak
vengeance on the earth by means of military devastation. In the past,
this ravage has been small in amount because the engines of destruction
were weak, but with the perfecting of the modern enginery the havoc is
awful and brutal. While we have to our credit the improvement of
agriculture and other agencies of conservation, it is yet a fact that
man has never been so destructive as now. He is able to turn the skill
of his discovery to destructive ends (a subject that we have already
approached from another point of view). The keeping of the earth is
therefore involved in the organization of society. Military power heads
toward destructiveness. Civil power heads toward conservation. The
military power may be constructive in times of peace, but its end, if it
uses the tools it invents, is devastation and the inflicting of injury.
When the civil power is subjugated to the military power, society is
headed toward calamity.

To keep and to waste are opposite processes. Not only are we able to
despoil the earth by sheer lust of ravage and by blighting the fields
with caverns of human slaughter, but we shoot away incredible supplies
of copper and petroleum and other unrenewable materials that by every
right and equity belong to our successors; and, moreover, we are to make
these successors pay for the destruction of their heritage. Day by day
we are mortgaging the future, depriving it of supplies that it may need,
burdening the shoulders of generations yet unborn.

Merely to make the earth productive and to keep it clean and to bear a
reverent regard for its products, is the special prerogative of a good
agriculture and a good citizenry founded thereon; this may seem at the
moment to be small and ineffective as against mad impersonal and
limitless havoc, but it carries the final healing; and while the land
worker will bear much of the burden on his back he will also redeem the
earth.

_The tones of industry_

One of the clearest notes of our time is the recognition of the holiness
of industry and the attempt to formulate the morals of it. We accept
this fact indirectly by the modern endeavor to give the laboring man his
due.

The handworker is more or less elemental, dealing directly with the
materials. We begin to recognize these industries in literature, in
sculpture, and in painting; but we do not yet very consciously or
effectively translate them into music.

It is to be recognized, of course, that melody is emotional and dynamic
not imitative, that its power lies in suggestion rather than in direct
representation, and that its language is general; with all this I have
nothing to do. Meunier has done much with his chisel to interpret the
spirit of constructive labor and to develop its higher significance. His
art is indeed concrete and static, and sculpture and music are not to be
compared; yet it raises the question whether there may be other bold
extensions of art.

The primitive industries must have been mostly silent, when there were
no iron tools, when fire felled the forest tree and hollowed the canoe,
when the parts in construction were secured by thongs, and when the game
was caught in silent traps or by the swift noiseless arrow and spear.
Even at the Stone Age the rude implements and the materials must have
been mostly devoid of resonance. But now industry has become universal
and complex, and it has also become noisy,--so noisy that we organize to
protect ourselves from becoming distraught.

And yet a workshop, particularly if it works in metal, is replete with
tones that are essentially musical. Workmen respond readily to unison.
There are melodies that arise from certain kinds of labor. Much of our
labor is rhythmic. In any factory driven by power, there is a
fundamental rhythm and motion, tying all things together. I have often
thought, standing at the threshold of a mill, that it might be possible
somewhere by careful forethought to eliminate the clatter and so to
organize the work as to develop a better expression in labor. Very much
do we need to make industry vocal.

It is worth considering, also, whether it is possible to take over into
music any of these sounds of industry in a new way, that they may be
given meanings they do not now possess.

At all events, the poetic element in industry is capable of great
development and of progressive interpretation; and poetry is scarcely to
be dissociated from sound. All good work well done is essentially poetic
to the sensitive mind; and when the work is the rhythm of many men
acting in unison, the poetry has voice.

        The striking of the rivet
        The purr of a drill
        The crash of a steam-shovel
        The plunge of a dredge
        The buzz of a saw
        The roll of belts and chains
        The whirl of spindles
        The hiss of steam
        The tip-tap of valves
        The undertone rumble of a mill
        The silence intent of men at work
        The talk of men going to their homes,--
        These are all the notes of great symphonies.

Nor should I stop with the industries of commerce and manufacture. There
are many possibilities in the sounds and voices that are known of
fisherfolk and campers and foresters and farmers. Somehow we should be
able to individualize these voices and to give them an artistic
expression in some kind of human composition. There are rich suggestions
in the voices of the farmyard, the calls of wild creatures, the tones of
farm implements and machinery, the sounds of the elements, and
particularly in the relations of all these to the pauses, the silences,
and the distances beyond.

Whether it is possible to utilize any of these tones and voices
artistically is not for a layman to say; but the layman may express the
need that he feels.

_The threatened literature_

A fear seems to be abroad that the inquisitiveness and exactness of
science will deprive literature of imagination and sympathy and will
destroy artistic expression; and it is said that we are in danger of
losing the devotional element in literature. If these apprehensions are
well founded, then do we have cause for alarm, seeing that literature is
an immeasurable resource.

Great literature may be relatively independent of time and place, and
this is beyond discussion here; but if the standards of interpretative
literature are lowering it must be because the standards of life are
lowering, for the attainment and the outlook of a people are bound to be
displayed in its letters.

Perhaps our difficulty lies in a change in methods and standards rather
than in essential qualities. We constantly acquire new material for
literary use. The riches of life are vaster and deeper than ever before.
It would be strange indeed if the new experience of the planet did not
express itself in new literary form.

We are led astray by the fatal habit of making comparisons, contrasting
one epoch with another. There may be inflexible souls among the
investigators who see little or nothing beyond the set of facts in a
little field, but surely the greater number of scientific men are
persons of keen imagination and of broad interest in all conquests.
Indeed, a lively imagination is indispensable in persons of the best
attainments in science; it is necessary only that the imagination be
regulated and trained. Never has it been so true that fact is stranger
than fiction. Never have the flights of the poets been so evenly matched
by the flights of science. All great engineers, chemists, physiologists,
physicists work in the realm of imagination, of imagination that
projects the unknown from the known. Almost do we think that the
Roentgen ray, the wireless telegraphy, the analysis of the light of the
stars, the serum control of disease are the product of what we might
call pure fancy. The very utilities and conquests of modern society are
the results of better imagination than the world has yet known. If it is
true that the desire to measure and to analyze is now an established
trait, equally is it true that it directs the mind into far and untried
reaches; and if we have not yet found this range of inspiration in what
is called artistic literature, it must be because literary criticism has
not accepted the imagery of the modern world and is still looking for
its art to the models of the past.

The models of the past are properly the standards for the performances
of their time, but this does not constitute them the standards of all
time or of the present time. Perhaps the writing of language for the
sake of writing it is losing its hold; but a new, clear, and forceful
literature appears. This new literature has its own criteria. It would
be violence to judge it only by standards of criticism founded on
Elizabethan writings. We do not descend into crude materialism because
we describe the materials of the cosmos; we do not eliminate imagination
because we desire that it shall have meaning; we do not strip literature
of artistic quality because it is true to the facts and the outlook of
our own time.

It may be admitted that present literature is inadequate, and that we
are still obliged to go to the former compositions for our highest
artistic expressions. Very good. Let us hope that we shall never cease
to want these older literatures. Let us hope that we shall never be
severed from our past. But perhaps the good judge in a coming
generation, when the slow process of elimination has perfected its
criticism, will discover something very noble and even very artistic in
the abundant writing of our day. Certainly he will note the recovery
from the first excess of reaction against the older orders, and he will
be aware that at this epoch man began anew to express his social sense
in a large way, as a result of all his painstaking studies in science.
Even if he should not discover the highest forms of literary expression,
he might find that here was the large promise of a new order. Possibly
he would discover major compositions of the excellence of which we
ourselves are not aware.

It is less than forty years since Darwin and less than fifty years since
Agassiz. It is only twenty years since Pasteur. It is only a century and
a quarter since Franklin, fifty years since Faraday, less than
twenty-five since Tyndall. It is sixty years since Humboldt glorified
the earth with the range of his imagination. It is not so very far even
if we go back to Newton and to Kepler. Within the span of a century we
count name after name of prophets who have set us on a new course. So
complete has been the revolution that we lost our old bearings before we
had found the new. We have not yet worked out the new relationships, nor
put into practice their moral obligations, nor have we grasped the
fulness of our privileges. We have not yet made the new knowledge
consciously into a philosophy of life or incorporated it completely into
working attitudes of social equity. Therefore, not even now are we ripe
for the new literature.

We have gone far enough, however, to know that science is not
unsympathetic and that it is not contemptuous of the unknown. By lens
and prism and balance and line we measure minutely whatever we can
sense; then with bared heads we look out to the great unknown and we
cast our lines beyond the stars. There are no realms beyond which the
prophecy of science would not go. It resolves the atom and it weighs the
planets.

Among the science men I have found as many poetic souls as among the
literary men, although they may not know so much poetry, and they are
not equally trained in literary expression; being free of the restraint
of conventional criticism, they are likely to have a peculiarly keen and
sympathetic projection. Close dissection long continued may not lead to
free artistic literary expression; this is as true of literary anatomy
as of biological anatomy: but this does not destroy the freedom of other
souls, and it may afford good material for the artist.

Two kinds of popular writing are confused in the public mind, for there
are two classes that express the findings of scientific inquiry. The
prevailing product is that which issues from establishments and
institutions. This is supervised, edited, and made to conform; it is the
product of our perfected organizations and has all the hardness of its
origin. The other literature is of a different breed. It is the
expression of personality. The one is a useful and necessary public
literature of record and advice; the other is a literature of outlook
and inspiration. The latter is not to be expected from the institutions,
for it is naturally the literature of freedom.

My reader now knows my line of approach to the charge that literature is
in danger of losing its element of devotion, and hereby lies the main
reason for introducing this discussion into my little book. We may be
losing the old literary piety and the technical theology, because we are
losing the old theocratic outlook on creation. We also know that the
final control of human welfare will not be governmental or military, and
we shall some day learn that it will not be economic as we now
prevailingly use the word. We have long since forgotten that once it was
patriarchal. We shall know the creator in the creation. We shall derive
more of our solaces from the creation and in the consciousness of our
right relations to it. We shall be more fully aware that righteousness
inheres in honest occupation. We shall find some bold and free way in
which the human spirit may express itself.

_The separate soul_

Many times in this journey have we come against the importance of the
individual. We are to develop the man's social feeling at the same time
that we allow him to remain separate. We are to accomplish certain
social results otherwise than by the process of thronging, which is so
much a part of the philosophy of this anxious epoch; and therefore we
may pursue the subject still a little further.

Any close and worth-while contact with the earth tends to make one
original or at least detached in one's judgments and independent of
group control. In proportion as society becomes organized and involved,
do we need the separate spirit and persons who are responsible beings on
their own account. The independent judgment should be much furthered by
studies in the sciences that are founded on observation of native forms
and conditions. And yet the gains of scientific study become so rigidly
organized into great enterprises that the individual is likely to be
lost in them.

As an example of what I mean, I mention John Muir, who has recently
passed away, and who stood for a definite contribution to his
generation. He could hardly have made this contribution if he had been
attached to any of the great institutions or organizations or to big
business. He has left a personal impression and a remarkable literature
that has been very little influenced by group psychology. He is the
interpreter of mountains, forests, and glaciers.

There is one method of aggregation and social intercourse. There is
another method of isolation and separateness. Never in the open country
do I see a young man or woman at nightfall going down the highways and
the long fields but I think of the character that develops out of the
loneliness, in the silence of vast surroundings, projected against the
backgrounds, and of the suggestions that must come from these situations
as contrasted with those that arise from the babble of the crowds. There
is hardiness in such training; there is independence, the taking of
one's own risk and no need of the protection of compensation-acts. There
is no over-imposed director to fall back on. Physical recuperation is in
the situation. As against these fields, much of the habitual golf and
tennis and other adventitious means of killing time and of making up
deficiencies is almost ludicrous.

Many of our reformers fail because they express only a group psychology
and do not have a living personal interpretation. Undoubtedly many
persons who might have had a message of their own have lost it and have
also lost the opportunity to express it by belonging to too many clubs
and by too continuous association with so-called kindred spirits, or by
taking too much post-graduate study. It is a great temptation to join
many clubs, but if one feels any stir of originality in himself, he
should be cautious how he joins.

I may also recall the great example of Agassiz at Penikese. In his last
year, broken in health, feeling the message he still had for the people,
he opened the school on the little island off the coast of
Massachusetts. It was a short school in one summer only, yet it has made
an indelible impression on American education. It stimulates one to know
that the person who met the incoming students on the wharf was Agassiz
himself, not an assistant or an instructor. Out of the great number of
applicants, he chose fifty whom he would teach. He wanted to send forth
these chosen persons with his message, apostles to carry the methods and
the way of approach. (When are we to have the Penikese for the rural
backgrounds?)

Sometime there will be many great unattached teachers, who will choose
their own pupils because they want them and not merely because the
applicants have satisfied certain arbitrary tests. The students may be
graduates of colleges or they may be others. They will pursue their
work not for credit or for any other reward. We shall yet come back to
the masters, and there will be teaching in the market-places.

We are now in the epoch of great organization not only in industrial
developments but also in educational and social enterprises, in
religious work, and in governmental activities. So completely is the
organization proceeding in every direction, and so good is it, that one
habitually and properly desires to identify oneself with some form of
associated work. Almost in spite of oneself, one is caught up into the
plan of things, and becomes part of a social, economic, or educational
mechanism. No longer do we seek our educational institutions so much for
the purpose of attaching ourselves to a master as to pursue a course of
study. No more do we sit at the feet of Gamaliel.

In government, the organization has recently taken the form of mechanism
for efficiency. We want government and all kinds of organization to be
efficient and effective, but administrative efficiency may easily
proceed at the expense of personality. Much of our public organization
for efficiency is essentially monarchic in its tendency. It is likely to
eliminate the most precious resource in human society, which is the
freedom of expression of the competent individual. We are piling
organization on organization, one supervising and watching and
"investigating" the other. The greater the number of the commissions,
investigating committees, and the interlocking groups, the more complex
does the whole process become and the more difficult is it for the
person to find himself. We can never successfully substitute bookkeeping
for men and women. We are more in need of personality than of
administrative regularity.

This is not a doctrine of laisser-faire or let-alone. The very
conditions of modern society demand strong control and regulation and
vigorous organization; but the danger is that we apply the controls
uniformly and everywhere and eliminate the free action of the
individual, as if control were in itself a merit.

In some way we must protect the person from being submerged in the
system. We need always to get back of the group to the individual. The
person is the reason for the group, although he is responsible to the
group.

It is probably a great advantage to our democracy that our educational
institutions are so completely organized, for by that means we are able
to educate many more persons and to prepare them for the world with a
clear and direct purpose in life. But this is not the whole of the
public educational process. Some of the most useful persons cannot
express themselves in institutions. This is not the fault of the
institutions. In the nature of their character, these persons are
separate. For the most part, they do not now have adequate means of
self-expression or of contributing themselves to the public welfare.

When we shall have completed the present necessity of consolidation,
centralization, and organization, society will begin to be conscious of
the separate souls, who in the nature of the case must stand by
themselves, and it will make use of them for the public good. Society
will endow persons, not on a basis of salary, and enable them thereby to
teach in their own way and their own time. This will represent one of
the highest types of endowment by government and society.

We begin to approach this time by the support, through semi-public
agencies, of persons to accomplish certain results or to undertake
special pieces of work, particularly of research; but we have not yet
attained the higher aim of endowing individuals to express themselves
personally. There are liberated personalities, rare and prophetic, who
are consumed only in making a living but who should be given
unreservedly to the people: the people are much in need.

Never have we needed the separate soul so much as now.

_The element of separateness in society_

If it is so important that we have these separate souls, then must we
inquire where they may be found and particularly how we may insure the
requisite supply. Isolated separates appear here and there, in all the
ranges of human experiences; these cannot be provided or foretold; but
we shall need, in days to come, a group or a large class of persons, who
in the nature of their occupation, situation, and training are
relatively independent and free. We need more than a limited number of
strong outstanding figures who rise to personal leadership. We must have
a body of unattached laborers and producers who are in sufficient
numbers to influence unexpressed public opinion and who will form a
natural corrective as against organization-men, habitual reformers, and
extremists.

It is apparent that such a class must own productive property, be able
to secure support by working for themselves, and produce supplies that
are indispensable to society. Their individual interests must be greater
and more insistent than their associative interests. They should be in
direct contact with native resources. This characterization describes
the farmer, and no other large or important group.

We have considered, on a former page, that we are not to look for the
self-acting individuals among the workingmen as a class. They are
rapidly partaking in an opposite development. They are controlled by
associative interests. Even under a profit-sharing system they are parts
in a close concert.

How to strike the balance between the needful individualism and social
crystallization is probably the most difficult question before society.
Of the great underlying classes of occupations, farming is the only one
that presents the individualistic side very strongly. If individualism
is to be preserved anywhere, it must be preserved here. The tendency of
our present-day discussion is to organize the farmers as other groups or
masses are organized. We are in danger here. Assuredly, the farmer needs
better resources in association, but it is a nice question how far we
should go and how completely we should try to redirect him. Fortunately,
the holding of title to land and the separateness of farm habitations
prevent solidification. If, on this individualism and without destroying
it, we can develop a co-acting and co-operating activity, we shall
undoubtedly be on the line of safety as well as on the line of promise.
It would be a pity to organize the farming people merely to secure them
their "rights." We ought soon to pass this epoch in civilization. There
are no "rights" exclusive to any class. "Rights" are not possessions.

I do not know where the element of separateness in society is to be
derived unless it comes out of the earth.

Given sufficient organization to enable the farmer to express himself
fully in his occupation and to secure protection, then we may well let
the matter rest until his place in society develops by the operation of
natural forces. We cannot allow the fundamental supplies from the common
earth to be controlled by arbitrary class regulation. It would be a
misfortune if the farmer were to isolate himself by making "demands" on
society. I hope that the farmer's obligation may be so sensitively
developed in him as to produce a better kind of mass-cohesion than we
have yet known.

_The democratic basis in agriculture_

All these positions are capable of direct application in the
incorporation of agriculture into a scheme of democracy. A brief
treatment of this subject I had developed for the present book; and this
treatment, with applications to particular situations now confronting
us, I used recently in the vice-presidential address before the new
Section M of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(published in _Science_, February 26, 1915, where the remainder of it
may be found). Some of the general points of view, modified from that
address, may be brought together here. The desirability of keeping a
free and unattached attitude in the people on the land may be expounded
in many directions, but for my purpose I will confine the illustrations
to organization in the field of education.

The agricultural situation is now much in the public mind. It is widely
discussed in the press, which shows that it has news value. Much of this
value is merely of superficial and temporary interest. Much of it
represents a desire to try new remedies for old ills. Many of these
remedies will not work. We must be prepared for some loss of public
interest in them as time goes on. We are now in a publicity stage of our
rural development. It would seem that the news-gathering and some other
agencies discover these movements after the work of many constructive
spirits has set them going and has laid real foundations; and not these
foundations, but only detached items of passing interest, may be known
of any large part of the public. I hope that we shall not be disturbed
by this circumstance nor let it interfere with good work or with
fundamental considerations, however much we may deplore the false
expectations that may result.

We are at the parting of the ways. For years without number--for years
that run into the centuries when men have slaughtered each other on many
fields, thinking that they were on the fields of honor, when many awful
despotisms have ground men into the dust, the despotisms thinking
themselves divine--for all these years there have been men on the land
wishing to see the light, trying to make mankind hear, hoping but never
realizing. They have been the pawns on the great battlefields, men taken
out of the peasantries to be hurled against other men they did not know
and for no rewards except further enslavement. They may even have been
developed to a high degree of manual or technical skill that they might
the better support governments to make conquests. They have been on the
bottom, upholding the whole superstructure and pressed into the earth by
the weight of it. When the final history is written, the lot of the man
on the land will be the saddest chapter.

But in the nineteenth century, the man at the bottom began really to be
recognized politically. This recognition is of two kinds,--the use that
a government can make in its own interest of a highly efficient
husbandry, and the desire to give the husbandman full opportunity and
full justice. I hope that in these times the latter motive always
prevails. It is the only course of safety.

Great public-service institutions have now been founded in the rural
movement. The United States Department of Agriculture has grown to be
one of the notable governmental establishments of the world, extending
itself to a multitude of interests and operating with remarkable
effectiveness. The chain of colleges of agriculture and experiment
stations, generously co-operative between nation and State, is unlike
any other development anywhere, meaning more, I think, for the future
welfare and peace of the people than any one of us yet foresees. There
is the finest fraternalism, and yet without clannishness, between these
great agencies, setting a good example in public service. And to these
agencies we are to add the State departments of agriculture, the work of
private endowments although yet in its infancy, the growing and very
desirable contact with the rural field of many institutions of learning.
All these agencies comprise a distinctly modern phase of public
activity.

A new agency has been created in the agricultural extension act which
was signed by President Wilson on the 8th of May in 1914. The farmer is
to find help at his own door. A new instrumentality in the world has now
received the sanction of a whole people and we are just beginning to
organize it. The organization must be extensive, and it ought also to be
liberal. No such national plan on such a scale has ever been attempted;
and it almost staggers one when one even partly comprehends the
tremendous consequences that in all likelihood will come of it. The
significance of it is not yet grasped by the great body of the people.

Now, the problem is to relate all this public work to the development of
a democracy. I am not thinking so much of the development of a form of
government as of a real democratic expression on the part of the people.
Agriculture is our basic industry. As we organize its affairs, so to a
great degree shall we secure the results in society in general. It is
very important in our great experiment in democracy that we do not lose
sight of the first principle in democracy, which is to let the control
of policies and affairs rest directly back on the people.

We have developed the institutions on public funds to train the farmer
and to give him voice. These institutions are of vast importance in the
founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather
than by class legislation, or by favor of government, or by any attitude
of benevolence from without.

Whether there is any danger in the organization of our new nationalized
extension work, and the other public rural agencies, I suppose not one
of us knows. But for myself, I have apprehension of the tendency to make
some of the agricultural work into "projects" at Washington and
elsewhere. If we are not careful, we shall not only too much centralize
the work, but we shall tie it up in perplexing red-tape, official
obstacles, and bookkeeping. The merit of the projects themselves and the
intentions of the officers concerned in them are not involved in what I
say; I speak only of the tendency of all government to formality and to
crystallization, to machine work and to armchair regulations; and even
at the risk of a somewhat lower so-called "efficiency," I should prefer
for such work as investigating and teaching in agriculture, a dispersion
of the initiative and responsibility, letting the co-ordination and
standardizing arise very much from conference and very little from
arbitrary regulation.

The best project anywhere is a good man or woman working in a program,
but unhampered.

If it is important that the administration of agricultural work be not
overmuch centralized at Washington, it is equally true that it should
not be too much centralized in the States. I hear that persons who
object strongly to federal concentration may nevertheless decline to
give the counties and the communities in their own States the benefit of
any useful starting-power and autonomy. In fact, I am inclined to think
that here at present lies one of our greatest dangers.

A strong centralization within the State may be the most hurtful kind of
concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here
the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration,
but the best results for the people. The farm-bureau work, for example,
can never produce the background results of which it is capable if it is
a strongly intrenched movement pushed out from one centre, as from the
college of agriculture or other institution. The college may be the
guiding force, but it should not remove responsibility from the people
of the localities, or offer them a kind of co-operation that is only the
privilege of partaking in the college enterprises. I fear that some of
our so-called co-operation in public work of many kinds is little more
than to allow the co-operator to approve what the official
administration has done.

In the course of our experience in democracy, we have developed many
checks against too great centralization. I hope that we may develop the
checks effectively in this new welfare work in agriculture, a desire
that I am aware is also strong with many of those who are concerned in
the planning of it.

Some enterprises may be much centralized, whether in a democracy or
elsewhere; an example is the postal service: this is on the business
side of government. Some enterprises should be decentralized; an example
is a good part of the agricultural service: this is on the educational
side of government. It is the tendency to reduce all public work to
uniformity; yet there is no virtue in uniformity. Its only value is as a
means to an end.

Thus far, the rural movement has been wholesomely democratic. It has
been my privilege for one-third of a century to have known rather
closely many of the men and women who have been instrumental in bringing
the rural problem to its present stage of advancement. They have been
public-minded, able, far-seeing men and women, and they have rendered an
unmeasurable service. The rural movement has been brought to its present
state without any demand for special privilege, without bolstering by
factitious legislation, and to a remarkable degree without self-seeking.
It is based on a real regard for the welfare of all the people, rather
than for rural people exclusively.

Thrice or more in this book I have spoken as if not convinced that the
present insistence on "efficiency" in government is altogether sound.
That is exactly the impression I desire to convey. As the term is now
commonly applied, it is not a measure of good government.

Certain phrases and certain sets of ideas gain dominance at certain
times. Just now the idea of administrative efficiency is uppermost. It
seems necessarily to be the controlling factor in the progress of any
business or any people. Certainly, a people should be efficient; but an
efficient government may not mean an efficient people,--it may mean
quite otherwise or even the reverse. The primary purpose of government
in these days, and particularly in this country, is to educate and to
develop all the people and to lead them to express themselves freely and
to the full, and to partake politically. And this is what governments
may not do, and this is where they may fail even when their efficiency
in administration is exact. A monarchic form may be executively more
efficient than a democratic form; a despotic form may be more efficient
than either. The justification of a democratic form of government lies
in the fact that it is a means of education.

The final test of government is not executive efficiency. Every
movement, every circumstance that takes starting-power and incentive
away from the people, even though it makes for exacter administration,
is to be challenged. It is specially to be deplored if this loss of
starting-power affects the persons who deal first-hand with the surface
of the planet and with the products that come directly out of it.

There is a broad political significance to all this. Sooner or later the
people rebel against intrenched or bureaucratic groups. Many of you know
how they resist even strongly centralized departments of public
instruction, and how the effectiveness of such departments may be
jeopardized and much lessened by the very perfectness of their
organization; and if they were to engage in a custom of extraneous forms
of news-giving in the public press, the resentment would be the greater.
In our rural work we are in danger of developing a piece of machinery
founded on our fundamental industry; and if this ever comes about, we
shall find the people organizing to resist it.

The reader will understand that in this discussion I assume the
agricultural work to be systematically organized, both in nation and
State; this is essential to good effort and to the accomplishing of
results: but we must take care that the formal organization does not
get in the way of the good workers, hindering and repressing them and
wasting their time.

We want governments to be economical and efficient with funds and in the
control of affairs; this also is assumed: but we must not overlook the
larger issues. In all this new rural effort, we should maintain the
spirit of team-work and of co-action, and not make the mistake of
depending too much on the routine of centralized control.

In this country we are much criticised for the cost of government and
for the supposed control of affairs by monopoly. The cost is undoubtedly
too great, but it is the price we pay for the satisfaction of using
democratic forms. As to the other disability, let us consider that
society lies between two dangers,--the danger of monopoly and the danger
of bureaucracy. On the one side is the control of the necessities of
life by commercial organization. On the other side is the control of the
necessities of life, and even of life itself, by intrenched groups that
ostensibly represent the people and which it may be impossible to
dislodge. Here are the Scylla and the Charybdis between which human
society must pick its devious way.

Both are evil. Of the two, monopoly may be the lesser: it may be more
easily brought under control; it tends to be more progressive; it
extends less far; it may be the less hateful. They are only two
expressions of one thing, one possibly worse than the other. Probably
there are peoples who pride themselves on more or less complete escape
from monopoly who are nevertheless suffering from the most deadening
bureaucracy.

Agriculture is in the foundation of the political, economic, and social
structure. If we cannot develop starting-power in the background people,
we cannot maintain it elsewhere. The greatness of all this rural work is
to lie in the results and not in the methods that absorb so much of our
energy. If agriculture cannot be democratic, then there is no
democracy.

_The background spaces.--The forest_

"This is the forest primeval." These are the significant words of the
poet in Evangeline. Perhaps more than any single utterance they have set
the American youth against the background of the forest.

The backgrounds are important. The life of every one of us is relative.
We miss our destiny when we miss or forget our backgrounds. We lose
ourselves. Men go off in vague heresies when they forget the conditions
against which they live. Judgments become too refined and men tend to
become merely disputatious and subtle.

The backgrounds are the great unoccupied spaces. They are the large
environments in which we live but which we do not make. The backgrounds
are the sky with its limitless reaches; the silences of the sea; the
tundra in pallid arctic nights; the deserts with their prismatic colors;
the shores that gird the planet; the vast mountains that are beyond
reach; the winds, which are the universal voice in nature; the
sacredness of the night; the elemental simplicity of the open fields;
and the solitude of the forest. These are the facts and situations that
stand at our backs, to which we adjust our civilization, and by which we
measure ourselves.

The great conquest of mankind is the conquest of his natural conditions.
We admire the man who overcomes: the sailor or navigator in hostile and
unknown seas; the engineer who projects himself hard against the
obstacles; the miner and the explorer; the builder; the farmer who
ameliorates the earth to man's use.

But even though we conquer or modify the physical conditions against
which we are set, nevertheless the backgrounds will remain. I hope that
we may always say "The forest primeval." I hope that some reaches of the
sea may never be sailed, that some swamps may never be drained, that
some mountain peaks may never be scaled, that some forests may never be
harvested. I hope that some knowledge may never be revealed.

Look at your map of the globe. Note how few are the areas of great
congestion of population and of much human activity as compared with the
vast and apparently empty spaces. How small are the spots that represent
the cities and what a little part of the earth are the political
divisions that are most in the minds of men! We are likely to think that
all these outlying and thinly peopled places are the wastes. I suspect
that they contribute more to the race than we think. I am glad that
there are still some places of mystery, some reaches of hope, some
things far beyond us, some spaces to conjure up dreams. I am glad that
the earth is not all Iowa or Belgium or the Channel Islands. I am glad
that some of it is the hard hills of New England, some the heathered
heights of Scotland, some the cold distances of Quebec, some of it the
islands far off in little-traversed seas, and some of it also the
unexplored domains that lie within eyesight of our own homes. It is well
to know that these spaces exist, that there are places of escape. They
add much to the ambition of the race; they make for strength, for
courage, and for renewal.

In the cities I am always interested in the variety of the contents of
the store windows. Variously fabricated and disguised, these materials
come from the ends of the earth. They come from the shores of the seas,
from the mines, from the land, from the forests, from the arctic, and
from the tropic. They are from the backgrounds. The cities are great,
but how much greater are the forests and the sea!

No people should be forbidden the influence of the forest. No child
should grow up without a knowledge of the forest; and I mean a real
forest and not a grove or village trees or a park. There are no forests
in cities, however many trees there may be. As a city is much more than
a collection of houses, so is a forest much more than a collection of
trees. The forest has its own round of life, its characteristic
attributes, its climate, and its inhabitants. When you enter a real
forest you enter the solitudes, you are in the unexpressed distances.
You walk on the mould of years and perhaps of ages. There is no other
wind like the wind of the forest; there is no odor like the odor of the
forest; there is no solitude more complete; there is no song of a brook
like the song of a forest brook; there is no call of a bird like that of
a forest bird; there are no mysteries so deep and which seem yet to be
within one's realization.

While a forest is more than trees, yet the trees are the essential part
of the forest; and no one ever really knows or understands a forest
until he first understands a tree. There is no thing in nature finer and
stronger than the bark of a tree; it is a thing in place, adapted to its
ends, perfect in its conformation, beautiful in its color and its form
and the sweep of its contour; and every bark is peculiar to its species.
I think that one never really likes a tree until he is impelled to
embrace it with his arms and to run his fingers through the grooves of
its bark.

Man listens in the forest. He pauses in the forest. He finds himself. He
loses himself in the town and even perhaps in the university. He may
lose himself in business and in great affairs; but in the forest he is
one with a tree, he stands by himself and yet has consolation, and he
comes back to his own place in the scheme of things. We have almost
forgotten to listen; so great and ceaseless is the racket that the
little voices pass over our ears and we hear them not. I have asked
person after person if he knew the song of the chipping-sparrow, and
most of them are unaware that it has any song. We do not hear it in the
blare of the city street, in railway travel, or when we are in a
thunderous crowd. We hear it in the still places and when our ears are
ready to catch the smaller sounds. There is no music like the music of
the forest, and the better part of it is faint and far away or high in
the tops of trees.

The forest may be an asylum. "The groves were God's first temples." We
need all our altars and more, but we need also the sanctuary of the
forest. It is a poor people that has no forests. I prize the farms
because they have forests. It is a poor political philosophy that has no
forests. It is a poor nation that has no forests and no workers in wood.

In many places there are the forests. I think that we do not get the
most out of them. Certainly they have two uses: one for the products,
and one for the human relief and the inspiration. I should like to see a
movement looking toward the better utilization of the forests humanly,
as we use school buildings and church buildings and public halls. I wish
that we might take our friends to the forests as we also take them to
see the works of the masters. For this purpose, we should not go in
large companies. We need sympathetic guidance. Parties of two and four
may go separately to the forests to walk and to sit and to be silent. I
would not forget the forest in the night, in the silence and the
simplicity of the darkness. Strangely few are the people who know a real
forest at dark. Few are those who know the forest when the rain is
falling or when the snow covers the earth. Yet the forest is as real in
all these moments as when the sun is at full and the weather is fair.

I wish that we might know the forest intimately and sensitively as a
part of our background. I think it would do much to keep us close to the
verities and the essentials.

_A forest background for a reformatory_

Some years ago I presented to a board that was charged with establishing
and maintaining a new State reformatory for wayward and delinquent boys
an outline of a possible setting for the enterprise; and as this
statement really constitutes a practical application of some of the
foregoing discussions, I present the larger part of it here. With
delinquents it is specially important to develop the sense of obligation
and responsibility, and I fear that we are endeavoring to stimulate this
sense too exclusively by means of direct governing and disciplinary
methods. The statement follows.

I think that the activities in the proposed reformatory should be
largely agricultural and industrial. So far as possible the young men
should be put into direct contact with realities and with useful and
practical work. An effort should be made to have all this work mean
something to them and not to be merely make-believe. It is fairly
possible to develop such a property and organization as will put them in
touch with real work rather than to force the necessity of setting tasks
in order to keep them busy.

Aside from the manual labor part of it, the background of the
reformatory should be such as will develop the feeling of responsibility
in the workers. This means that they must come actually in contact with
the raw materials and with things as they grow. When a young man has a
piece of wood or metal given to him in a shop, his whole responsibility
is merely to make something out of this material; he has no
responsibility for the material itself, as he would have if he had been
obliged to mine it or to grow it. One of the greatest advantages of a
farm training is that it develops a man's responsibility toward the
materials with which he works. He is always brought face to face with
the problem of saving the fertility of the land, saving the crops,
saving the forests, and saving the live-stock. The idea of saving and
safeguarding these materials is only incidental to those who do not help
to produce them.

It is important that the farm of this reformatory should be large enough
so that all the young men may do some real pieces of work on it. Such a
farm is not to be commercial in the ordinary farming sense. Its primary
purpose is to aid in a reformative or educational process. You should,
therefore, undertake such types of farming as will best serve those
needs and best meet the abilities of the inmates. A very highly
specialized farming, as the growing of truck-crops, would be quite
impracticable as a commercial enterprise because this kind of farming
demands the greatest skill and also because it requires a property very
easily accessible to our great markets and, therefore, very expensive to
procure and difficult to find in large enough acreage for an institution
of this size; and it is doubtful whether this type of farming would have
the best effect on the inmates. Of course, I should expect that the
institution would try to grow its own vegetables, but it would probably
be unwise to make truck-gardening the backbone of the farming
enterprise. I also feel that it would not be best to make it primarily a
dairy farm or a fruit farm or a poultry farm, although all these things
should be well represented on the place and in sufficient extent to
supply the institution in whole or in part.

There should be such a farming enterprise as would give a very large and
open background, part of it practically wild, and which would allow for
considerable freedom of action on the part of the inmates. You should
have operations perhaps somewhat in the rough and which would appeal to
the manly qualities of the young men. It seems to me that a forestry
enterprise would possibly be the best as the main part of the farming
scheme.

If the reformatory could have one thousand acres of forest, the area
would provide a great variety of conditions that the inmates would have
to meet, it would give work in the building of roads and culverts and
trails, it would provide winter activity at a time when the other
farming enterprises are slack, it would bring the inmates directly in
touch with wild and native life, and it would also place them against
the natural resources in such a way as to make them feel their
responsibility for the objects and the supplies.

Perhaps it will be impossible to secure one thousand acres of good
timber in a more or less continuous area. However, it might be possible
to assemble a good number of contiguous farms in some of the hill
regions so that one thousand acres of timber in various grades of
maturity might be secured. There would be open spaces which ought to be
planted, and this of itself would provide good work and supervision. The
trimming, felling, and other care of this forest would be continuous.
The forest should not be stripped, but merely the merchantable or ready
timber removed from year to year, and the domain kept in a growing and
recuperating condition. One thousand acres of forest, in which timber is
fit to be cut, should produce an annual increase of two hundred thousand
to three hundred thousand board feet, and this increase should not
lessen as the years go on. This timber should be manufactured. I have
not looked into the question as to whether a market could be found for
the materials that would be made from this timber, but I should suppose
that a market could be as readily secured for this kind of manufacture
as for any other. The educational and moral effect of seeing the
material grow, then caring for it, then harvesting it, and then
manufacturing it would be very great. One could follow the process from
beginning to end and feel a responsibility for it in every stage. I
should suppose that the manufacture would be of small work and not
merely the sawing of lumber. It might be well to determine whether there
would be market for chairs, cabinets, and other furniture, whip-stocks,
or small material that could be used in the manufacture of novelties and
other like articles. Possibly the reformatory could supply some of the
stock to the prisons that are manufacturing furniture, although the
educational and moral effects would be better if the inmates could see
the process from beginning to end.

Of course, you would not limit the manufacturing activities of the
reformatory to wood-working. You probably would be obliged to have other
kinds of factories, but the wood-working shops ought to be part of the
plan and I should hope a very important part.

I have not made any careful study of this question, and do not know how
feasible these suggestions may be; but they appeal to me very strongly
on the educational and reformational end. These suggestions are made
only that they may be considered along with other suggestions, and if
they seem to be worth while, to have the question investigated.

If something like one thousand acres of land were secured for a forest,
it would mean that the farm itself would be rather large. There ought to
be probably not less than two or three hundred acres of land that might
be used for grazing, gardens, and the ordinary farm operations that
would contribute to the support of the inmates of the institution. Of
course, this arable land ought to be valley land or at least fairly
level and accessible along good public highways. The forest land could
be more remote, running back on the hills. If the property could be so
located that the forest would control the sources of important streams
and springs, the results would be all the better. The young men should
feel their responsibility for creeks and ponds, and for the protection
of wild life as well as for the crops that they raise.

Where the reformatory should be located is a matter that should receive
very careful attention. It is not alone the problem of finding a site
that is proper for a reformatory, but also the question of so placing it
that it will have some relation to State development and some
connection with the people's interests and desires. State institutions
should be so separated that the greatest number of people may see them
or come into contact with them. I dislike the tendency to group the
State institutions about certain populous centres. In these days of easy
transportation, the carrying problem is really of less importance than
certain less definite but none the less real relations to all the
people. There are certain great areas in the State of considerable
population in which there are no State institutions, and in which the
people know nothing about such affairs beyond the local school and
church. Perhaps at first blush the people of a locality might not relish
the idea of having a reformatory in their midst, but this feeling ought
soon to pass away; and, moreover, the people should be made to feel
their responsibility for reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries as
well as their responsibility for any other State institutions, and the
feeling should not be encouraged that such institutions should be put
somewhere else merely because one locality does not desire them.

The character of the property that is purchased will determine to a very
large extent the character of the institution, and, therefore, the
nature of the reformatory processes. This is more important than
transportation facilities. It is a more important question even than
that of the proper buildings, for buildings for these purposes have
been studied by many experts and our ideas concerning them have been
more or less standardized and, moreover, buildings can be extended and
modified more easily than can the landed area. It seems to me that
before you think actually of purchasing the land, you should arrive at a
fairly definite conclusion as to what kind of a farming enterprise it is
desired to develop as a background for the institution; you could then
determine as far as possible on principle in what general region the
institution ought to be located; and then set out on a direct
exploration to determine whether the proper kind and quantity of land
can be secured.

_The background spaces.--The open fields_

Here not long ago was the forest primeval. Here the trees sprouted, and
grew their centuries, and returned to the earth. Here the midsummer
brook ran all day long from the far-away places. Here the night-winds
slept. Here havened the beasts and fowls when storms pursued them. Here
the leaves fell in the glory of the autumn, here other leaves burst
forth in the miracle of spring, and here the pewee called in the summer.
Here the Indian tracked his game.

It was not so very long ago. That old man's father remembers it. Then it
was a new and holy land, seemingly fresh from the hand of the creator.
The old man speaks of it as of a golden time, now far away and hallowed;
he speaks of it with an attitude of reverence. "Ah yes," my father told
me; and calmly with bared head he relates it, every incident so sacred
that not one hairbreadth must he deviate. The church and the master's
school and the forest,--these three are strong in his memory.

Yet these are not all. He remembers the homes cut in the dim wall of the
forest. He recalls the farms full of stumps and heaps of logs and the
ox-teams on them, for these were in his boyhood. The ox-team was a
natural part of the slow-moving conquest in those rugged days. Roads
betook themselves into the forest, like great serpents devouring as they
went. And one day, behold! the forest was gone. Farm joined farm, the
village grew, the old folk fell away, new people came whose names had to
be asked.

And I thought me why these fields are not as hallowed as were the old
forests. Here are the same knolls and hills. In this turf there may be
still the fibres of ancient trees. Here are the paths of the midsummer
brooks, but vocal now only in the freshets. Here are the winds. The
autumn goes and the spring comes. The pewee calls in the groves. The
farmer and not the Indian tracks the plow.

Here I look down on a little city. There is a great school in it. There
are spires piercing the trees. In the distance are mills, and I see the
smoke of good accomplishment roll out over the hillside. It is a
self-centred city, full of pride. Every mile-post praises it. Toward it
all the roads lead. It tells itself to all the surrounding country. And
yet I cannot but feel that these quiet fields and others like them have
made this city; but I am glad that the fields are not proud.

One day a boy and one day a girl will go down from these fields, and
out into the thoroughways of life. They will go far, but these hills
they will still call home.

From these uplands the waters flow down into the streams that move the
mills and that float the ships. Loads of timber still go hence for the
construction down below. Here go building-stones and sand and
gravel,--gravel from the glaciers. Here goes the hay for ten thousand
horses. Here go the wheat, and here the apples, and the animals. Here
are the votes that hold the people steady.

Somewhere there is the background. Here is the background. Here things
move slowly. Trees grow slowly. The streams change little from year to
year, and yet they shape the surface of the earth in this hill country.
In yonder fence-row the catbird has built since I was a boy, and yet I
have wandered far and I have seen great changes in yonder city. The
well-sweep has gone but the well is still there: the wells are gone from
the city. The cows have changed in color, but still they are cows and
yield their milk in season. The fields do not perish, but time eats away
the city. I think all these things must be good and very good or they
could not have persisted in all this change.

In the beginning! Yes, I know, it was holy then. The forces of eons
shaped it: still was it holy. The forest came: still holy. Then came the
open fields.

_The background spaces.--The ancestral sea_

The planet is not all land, and the sea is as holy as the soil. We speak
of the "waste of waters," and we still offer prayers for those who go
down to the sea in ships.

Superstition yet clings about the sea. The landsman thinks of the sea as
barren, and he regrets that it is not solid land on which he may grow
grass and cattle. And as one looks over the surface of the waters, with
no visible object on the vast expanse and even the clouds lying
apparently dead and sterile, and when one considers that three-fourths
of the earth's surface is similarly covered, one has the impression of
utter waste and desolation, with no good thing abiding there for the
comfort and cheer of man.

The real inhabitants of the sea are beneath the surface and every part
is tenanted, so completely tenanted that the ocean produces greater bulk
of life, area for area, than does the solid land; and every atom of this
life is as keen to live and follows as completely the law of its
existence as does the life of the interiors of the continents. The vast
meadows of plankton and nekton, albeit largely of organisms microscopic,
form a layer for hundreds of feet beneath the surface and on which the
great herbivora feed; and on these animals the legions of the carnivora
subsist. Every vertical region has its life, peculiar to it, extending
even to the bottoms of the depths in the world-slimes and the darkness;
and in these deeps the falling remains of the upper realms, like gentle
primeval rains, afford a never-failing, never-ending source of food and
maintain the slow life in the bottoms. We think of the huge animals of
the sea when we think of mass, and it is true that the great whales are
the bulkiest creatures we know to have lived; yet it is the bacteria,
the desmids, the minute crustaceans, and many other diminutive forms
that everywhere populate the sea from the equator to the poles and
provide the vast background of the ocean life. In these gulfs of moving
unseen forms nitrification proceeds, and the rounds of life go on
unceasingly. The leviathan whale strains out these minute organisms from
the volumes of waters, and so full of them may be his maw that his
captors remove the accumulation with spades. The rivers bring down their
freight of mud and organic matter, and supply food for the denizens of
the sea. The last remains of all these multitudes are laid down on the
ocean floors as organic oozes; and nobody knows what part the abysmal
soil may play in the economy of the plant in some future epoch.

The rains of the land come from the sea; the clouds come ultimately from
the sea; the trade-winds flow regularly from the sea; the temperatures
of the land surface are controlled largely from the sea; the high lands
are washed into the sea as into a basin; if all the continents were
levelled into the sea still would the sea envelop the planet about two
miles deep. Impurities find their way into the sea and are there
digested into the universal beneficence. We must reckon with the sea.

It is supposed that the first life on the earth came forth where the
land and the waters join, from that eternal interplay of cosmic forces
where the solid and the fluid, the mobile and the immobile, meet and
marry.

Verily, the ancestral sea is the background of the planet. Its very
vastness makes it significant. It shows no age. Its deeps have no doubt
existed from the solidification of the earth and they will probably
remain when all works of man perish utterly.

The sea is the bosom of the earth's mysteries. Because man cannot set
foot on it, the sea remains beyond his power to modify, to handle, and
to control. No breach that man may make but will immediately fill; no
fleets of mighty ships go down but that the sea covers them in silence
and knows them not; man may not hold converse with the monsters in the
deeps. The sea is beyond him, surpassing, elemental, and yet blessing
him with abundant benedictions.

So vast is the sea and so self-recuperating that man cannot sterilize
it. He despoils none of its surface when he sails his ships. He does not
annihilate the realms of plankton, lying layer on layer in its deluging,
consuming soil. It controls him mightily.

The seas and the shores have provided the trading ways of the peoples.
The ocean connects all lands, surrounds all lands. Until recent times
the great marts have been mostly on coasts or within easy water access
of them. The polity of early settlements was largely the polity of the
sea and the strand. The daring of the navigator was one of the first of
the heroic human qualities. Probably all dry land was once under the
sea, and therefrom has it drawn much of its power.

From earliest times the sea has yielded property common to all and free
to whomever would take it,--the fish, the wrack, the drift, the salvage
of ships. Pirates have roamed the sea for spoil and booty. When
government appropriates the wreckage of ships and the stranded derelict
of the sea, the people may think it justifiable protection of their
rights to secrete it. Smuggling is an old sea license. Laws and customs
and old restraints lose their force and vanish on the sea; and freedom
rises out of the sea.

And so the ocean has contributed to the making of the outlook of the
human family. The race would be a very different race had there been no
sea stretching to the unknown, conjuring vague fears and stimulating
hopes, bringing its freight, bearing tidings of far lands, sundering
traditions, rolling the waves of its elemental music, driving its rank
smells into the nostrils, putting its salt into the soul.