UNIV. OF

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The welfare of any large group of the population should be of vital concern to all. This principle applies especially to homemakers and to farmers since more persons, by far, are engaged in these occupations than in any other two. The home provides the personnel for all industries, professions, and institutions, both rural and urban. Agriculture provides a way of living for those who follow it and also food and raw materials for persons in other occupations. National welfare in the United States is certain to be influenced greatly by the rise and fall of the fortunes of homes and of agriculture.

The Rural Population

It is recognized that the Industrial Revolution has changed the mode of urban life and the economy of manufacturing goods in cities, but it has done much more; it has influenced tremendously the balance in population between rural and urban communities. The machines turning the wheels in factories find their counterpart on farms; these machines, combined with agricultural science, enabled one farmer to produce approximately two and one-half times as much in 1930 as he could have produced in 1870. With the consequent diminishing need of agricultural manpower during the past 60 years, about 60 percent of the persons born on farms in the United States have been released for occupations other than farming.1

In 1790, approximately 95 percent of the population of the United States was rural; in 1930, 44 percent was rural.' The figure 44 percent is inflated because of the practice of the United States census of classifying populations in towns

1 O. E. Baker, The Outlook for Rural Youth, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Extension Service Circular No. 203 (mimeographed, 1934), p. 2.

? U. S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, vol. I (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1931), pp. 9, 14.

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and villages under 2,500 as rural. The percentage of the population living on farms and in unincorporated villages was 36 in 1930, but actually only 21 percent of all workers were engaged in agriculture.3

Despite the fact that the number of people in the United States has increased nearly 40 percent since 1910, there were in 1937 about 1 percent fewer persons on farms than in 1910.* According to a recent report of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the United States Department of Agriculture there were approximately 80,000 fewer persons living on farms at the beginning of 1937 than a year earlier. This was a reversal of the trend in farm population during the years from 1930 to 1935. The Bureau of Agricultural Economics estimated that the farm population on January 1, 1937, was 31,729,000.6

The rural birth rate has declined over a period of years, but the farm still produces a surplus of population above its needs. Baker' reports the following data: Approximately 370 children under 5 years of age per 1,000 women 15 to 45 are required to maintain the population stationary. In 1930, seven cities, with over 100,000 population, composed largely of American stock, lacked about 40 percent of having enough children to maintain their population without accessions from outside. All cities with over 100,000 population, taken as a whole, had a deficit of over 20 percent, and the smaller cities (those from 2,500 to 100,000 population) had a deficit of about 8 percent. On the other hand, the rural nonfarm population had a surplus of 30 percent, and the rural farm population had a surplus of nearly 50 percent. In 1930, there was an approximate balance between the urban deficit and the rural surplus.

3 Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, vol. III, pt. I, pp. 6, 12.

4 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Farm Population Estimates January 1, 1937 (mimeographed, June 24, 1937), p. 2.

Ibid., p. 1.

Ibid., p. 7. It must be kept in mind that the farm population (the number of people actually living on farms) is less than the rural population, which includes towns and villages up to 2,500.

7 O. E. Baker, Relation of Population Trends to Commercial Agriculture. . . November 29, 1935, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics (mimeographed) p. 3 and Figure 5.

Need for Educating

the Rural Population

In a Nation committed to the principles of an educated citizenry and equality of opportunity, all groups of the population should be provided with adequate educational facilities. Important consideration should be given to rural people, who constitute nearly one-half of the total population and send from 30 to 50 percent of their young people to urban centers.8

Educational provisions for the rural population should meet their needs as fully as do those for other groups in the population. Such education as far as practicable should train them to use the tools of knowledge effectively, to plan their leisure time wisely, to be good citizens, to take care of their health, to choose an occupation wisely, and to earn a satisfactory income from their work. It should also develop their personal qualities and acquaint them with the cultural arts. Facilities for the education of farm people are, on an average, not so good as facilities provided for people in urban areas. This is a condition of which educational leaders have been aware for two or three decades. It is an unfortunate situation about which too little has been done when viewed for the United States as a whole. Each day it is becoming more evident that at least the most marked disparities that exist between rural and urban educational opportunities in most of the States must be reduced by raising the level of opportunity in country districts.

Special Educational Needs

of the Rural Population

Agricultural education is important not only to the farming population but to society as a whole. In a complex economic structure, all groups are affected by the quality of the work done by any group. This principle is especially applicable to industries like agriculture which are basic to so many others and which employ so many people. Agricultural education of the proper kind may make it possible

U. S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1936 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1938), p. 7.

for the consumer to enjoy a higher quality of product at a reasonable cost; it conserves human and natural resources; it looks toward the insurance of adequate production for national needs in times both of peace and of war; and it is a large factor in insuring national prosperity.

Many of the problems which aggravate the ills of the agricultural industry can be alleviated or cured by education. Failure to use the land intelligently, to reduce tenantry, to adjust production to market demands, to increase labor income, and to improve health and housing can be corrected to some extent, at least, by the proper kind of education.

The significance of the home as a social institution and its influence upon the health and training of growing children make effective education in homemaking important. The effect of diet upon health is so large that a study of foods and nutrition is needed in any educated society. Equally important are instruction in child care and training, family relationships, home management, clothing, and home beautification.

Few occupations, if any, call for as wide a variety of skills and technical knowledge in order to do the various tasks as does homemaking. Proper training in homemaking should result in improvement of homes and the people in them, and, at the same time, add purpose and dignity to the work of the homemaker. A number of the areas of knowledge in the field of homemaking are not well developed experimentally but, on the whole, there is much more knowledge available than is generally diffused among those who could make use of it. Current practices in many homes, as on many farms, are years behind the best thought and knowledge in the field.

Life in a democratic society calls for much the same education for rural and urban folk. Basically the objectives of education for the two groups are the same. The chief differences are in the conditions under which education for each must be developed. There are certain inherent difficulties in providing educational facilities for a scattered population such as characterizes a farming community-that do not have to be met in urban centers. These factors, combined with the limited financial resources that are often

found in the rural areas, all too frequently result in schools for farming communities that are inadequate for present-day needs of children, youth, or adults.

For approximately three-quarters of a century the Federal Government has directed effort toward the mitigation of the inequalities in educational provisions for rural and urban communities by the development of institutions designed to contribute to the improvement of rural life through resident instruction at the college level, research in agriculture and home economics, and extension in agriculture and home economics for both adults and youth. The land-grant institutions are the result.

The Land-Grant Institutions

The term "land-grant college or university" is applied to any institution of higher education that has been designated by the legislature of the State in which it is located as being qualified to receive the benefits of either or both of the Morrill funds. The term "land-grant college" originated from the wording of the First Morrill Act, adopted by the Congress of the United States in 1862. The Act provided for a grant of 30,000 acres of land or its equivalent in scrip to the several States for each Representative and Senator in Congress, to be used for ". . . the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college in each State." At present there are 69 land-grant colleges and universities. They may be classified into the following three groups: 1. Twenty-four separate colleges. 2. Twenty-eight universities, in which work in agriculture, engineering, and home economics forms a component part of the work of the institution.

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3. Seventeen institutions of higher education devoted to the education of Negroes.

The first two groups of institutions listed above are similar in respect to the large provision made in each for instruction and research in certain technical subjects and their under

Sec. 4. For text of Act see Appendix A.

10 A complete list of the land-grant colleges and universities for 1937 is presented in Appendix B.