NFO-9 (AV10418): Renovation of the Rural Community

and the panel members that are here is Paul hammer professor of New Testament now a Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities the long-ago Church of Christ he's on my far left and next to him is Vince Rossiter he's president of the Bank of Hartington Nebraska and he's a member of the Catholic Church and right next to me is George Donohue professor of sociology in the head of rural sociology university Minnesota he's a layman in the Episcopal Church and myself E.W. Mueller secretary of town and country churches national Lutheran council and we will be discussing the general topic of the new development and we're gonna zero in on the specific issues that deal with community development but before I do this before we go on discussing of these top is this issue I would like to extend an invitation to all of you to come to the farm seminar which will be held at 8:00 p.m. Saturday at the festival hall NDSU where some of these issues will be further dialogued now let's get into our general topic and the topic I'd like to discuss with you as a basic issue is resignation or renovation of our rural communities or we might also say revitalization or nobody is saying it are we going to accept change and adjust to it and I would say ask you the Vince being a banker in a rural community what do you see and view is happening in a rural area well there's been a general deterioration in the rural areas in the past several years E.W. I think it's apparent most router is in most rural communities we've lost population we've lost customers and there's been a general decline we've also suffered I think rather disastrously from a declining farm price level Oh as economy has survived in rural America as well as it has because we have had unusually large volume of physical production there is a trend that continued or the trend that rural people can do something about it resigned to it no I don't think we can resign to it and I don't think we should because I think the things that are coming from the exodus of rural farm families and world town families aren't necessarily good for the urban economy because it is putting pressure on unemployment that is creating problems of housing and schooling and new churches in the urban areas and I don't know that it's good to reconstruct all of the facilities of the rural areas in the metropolitan areas because it isn't come from it isn't coming from a natural or normal causes is coming from a direct underpayment of the rural economy these people are being forced out changes that have come largely because new machine technology these are changes that rural people however have more or less asked for there's no one told them that they had to buy a seven bottom plow or new equipment they more or less chose this now what is who initiate change or what this change really deal with George would you like to come in on this one now I'd like to come in on that one but I'd like to go back to something that because all very interesting even said that the only reason the rural areas have held their own relatively well over the past few years is by tremendous volume of physical production now Vince you're a banker and I'm sure an economist to boot most of our economists indicate to us that a great volume of production depresses the price perhaps this great volume of production instead of saving rural area have been one of the reasons for the relatively depressed price level undoubtedly it is George and I think we're at a place now in our American economy where we have to learn to deal with abundance we can't let the law of supply and demand or the so-called law supply and demand as I put it just run rampant we're consuming the goods that are being produced in agriculture but we're not consuming it at a high enough price to keep rural America prosperous we can afford to pay rural America but we should pay in order to keep it prosperous and to slow down and I don't mean stop the exodus of rural people into the metropolitan areas but at least bring it back to something more normal the scale before or shortly after World War two when we did have prosperity in agriculture was a deal with our mass productions you're saying Vince are we gonna let everybody to decide is what he's gonna do or will this not require a group decision and we get into group decision does this not Morris violate some of our basic ethical principles of individual responsibility yes it does it's away from our rugged individualism but and it has gotten so bad now I feel that ordinary groups and organizations that we have available to us in rural America that are dealing with this problem probably can't handle it by themselves they are probably going to have to have intervention by government and I think this would be acceptable with the knowledge that when we can learn to handle it ourselves that the government will step out and our government usually has done this who makes the decision I mean the decisions are gonna have to be made I think in in the public interest as much as they're going to have to be made in the in the farmers interest in rural America's interest and these decisions can only be made objectively by the government I believe Paul Vince told us that these must be made in the interest of the public interest who determines what is public interest [unclear] do we do it because of a certain group or is there a more basic responsibility well it seems to me as one of the important factors here is that is that we come to see that we are working together all of us on the particular problem you take for instance now the individual family it isn't there that that one person in the family determines everything that is to happen within that family but that it is a matter of each member of a family contributing to an understanding of how they are going to meet a new crisis or a new problem within that family but by the same token it seems to me that if we're going to move towards a solution of the of the farm problem it's going to take the kind of dialogue the kind of discussion not only among farmers and various farm groups but in relationship to the total economy of the nation so that we don't come with as farmers with with our convictions and and everybody is to adhere to this but rather we seek more and more to listen to one another it's going to take the farmers it's going to take the producers of agricultural machinery it's going to take the instruments of government I think it's going to take a look at the whole world economy because when we stop to think that we have overproduction in this land and yet that while we're talking here this morning 300 people will die that do rural people have the capacity because of their background their history do they have the capacity to take that broad look I agree with you they ought to see but will they and they don't they are pretty- let me inject the common here because Paul I think your desire for consensus your desire for togetherness your desire for understanding are very laudable however I think a realistic view of society doesn't indicate that we even have the opportunity to sit down with one another except in the forms that our leadership may sit down and have consensus with one another I think we're a multi group society we're growing more and more into a splintering of special interest groups because of the diversity of our economy as a whole and the complexity of the economy so I think if what you're speaking about might have been possible in the days where we had a sort of all homogeneous mass of individuals on subsistence farms where they had interest in common and values in common with one another but this isn't the matrix of modern society at all yeah there are conflicting points of view points of view which are diametrically opposed in labor and management for instance certainly there are areas of consensus between labor and management there are areas in which let's say the farm interest group is diametrically opposed to the non farm interest group but there are areas where they have a common ground and a common interest and I think that what we're going to have to deal with is the fact that some of these conflict issues their conflict issues are gonna be have have to be resolved by some reference to the public interest which you speak about fence there has to be an arbiter anytime you get a complex society where there is a diversity of interest which exists then the public interest becomes a concern of government and this is why I think you you said that you'll have to have some government intervention in the long run you have it now the question is whether ought we whether the type of intervention we have now is the type that we should have in the long run all right so this is a basic problem in the rural people have accepted technology they made this choice not just now but way back and they had their [unclear] into the position of mass production but I don't think that they really know what the basic issues are or the implications of having accepted or made those choices a mass production in other words is absurd the farmer he's very efficient and productive in the area of producing stock and cattle and so forth and so on see and here he's made it acceptable but I would say he has it to produce structures in the area of marketing for example and and I don't think that but he has the capacity for example when here it's an area of production he works primarily with cattle with soil with plants these don't talk back but as soon as he moves the area of marketing he has to work with people and I don't think that the rural person that has perhaps the capacity but training or background to really deal with people because it is strong individualistic approach allow me to mike once again he has the capacity has a trained incapacity is what he has and this is true of many people in times of change they have trained incapacities trained incapacities in terms of their attitudes their values and their skills now the trained incapacity let's say of the rural person today is just what we've been talking about he does not know how consensus is reached in a society made up of diverse interest groups which have conflicts with one another as well as interest in common he goes back to the rugged individualism you spoke of earlier rugged individualism was particularly appropriate to subsistence farming where an individual could let's say stay on his own piece of land and produce whatever he wished however he wished and not interfere with his neighbor today however when we move from subsistence farming where production was largely at that time for consumption to where production is largely for sale and immediately when it goes into the market there's a common interest here you're influencing your neighbor farmer you're also having an impact upon the consumer in the urban area and I would say that this requires some rules and regulations which would do away with the rugged individualism of the past but would substitute for it individualism based upon interdependence based upon diversity of interest now if you think the only type of individualism is rugged individualism based upon property rights where you can do what you wish then I would say that you divorce at least 90 percent of the American population from the possibility of ever achieving individualism because most of us don't own producer property and we can't do what we want on our we're zoned in certain fascism fashions were restricted in certain fashions professionally and occupationally so that we are continually guarding our own area and being let's say restricted from entering the areas of others George I'll go along with you to this extent I think the farmer has the intelligence to understand his problem but too often he has a long deep understanding that he feels has been right for many years and he's not willing to look at somebody else's picture now the law of supply and demand loosely described as his functions when you have equal bargaining power on both sides of the bargain when each group is equally capable of dealing with the other farmers notoriously have been not under organized but over organized if anything probably but they haven't been organized in that fashion that Orient's them to this particular problem now the laws find a man with equal bargaining power both sides of the bargain then does result in a price that is fair to the producer and fair to the consumer and in the public interest and this is where I feel that the government steps into this picture it has to make this thing function in order to maintain equity of income in all levels of the economy in order to consume all that we're capable of producing with the labor that we have before we go backward in desire of government let's come back and you said that the farmer had the capacity but he had the intelligence but he had the he was untrained capacity he was incapacitated because of prior tradition and heritage all right now let's fix the responsibility for this prior traditional heritage who mistrained him or and if he saw who should retrain him the stand point is now the church who definitely teaches a man has has individual responsibility and this is has also been very strong in our product groups but I would say from the doctor of creation we also learn that people are created for each other see and that there anything that the Bible teaches is that teaches interdependence of people and if you say there's mistraining who fail here and and how get at it at the school it's the church where do we fix the responsibility for this mistraining and who is the poor who what are these people could produce these type of people it isn't necessarily mistraining at all it may be mistraining let's say you're trained incapacity for the type of situation which exist today but it was ideal training for the development of the country because we needed this type of rugged individualism to develop the frontiers we needed this type let's say during the initial periods of the development of capitalism or industrialized society I think this was a very this was a driving force unquestionably in the motivation and determination of men the fact is that the socio-economic structure of the country has changed so that we have to change our concept of individualism now when you say I think the church was indeed responsible for the training of the rugged type of individual and it's still hallowed for that matter in most churches today I mean you might say who's gonna train the leaders in the church rather than the farmers out there in the land at the present time whose responsibility is it well it's a society's responsibility let's say we have to come to this I think not by any dictate from Washington or St. Paul or from Lincoln for that matter but we need to get this through basic understanding and education and I think these movements in the farm area are provoking people to thought at the present time if I can interrupt here that just a minute here on this this understanding of the church as somehow being a champion of into the rugged individualism I would have to say that that this is really a distortion if the church has espoused this kind of a rugged individualism it really is a distortion of the basic Old Testament and New Testament perspective of kind of interdependence E.W. that you were talking about and it seems to me that unless we can come to see that the primary values in society today are human values if we make as it were the kind of Idol of of our of our pocketbooks and make this the the primary criterion as important as this is ultimately then it seems to me we're going to undercut the very the very concerns for for people that you have mentioned and I think too this whole question of the of the desire to keep the status quo no desire for change we want to get to the good old days or to keep the good old days but it is the it is really the tradition of the whole American history that change is part of this that the the revolution that really gave us birth has been the very character of the American society and I think it's interesting to note that that we're undergoing now a Negro revolution today of involving 22 million people where human values as well as economic values are coming to the fore and with 15 million people on our farms it seems to me that the same kind of the same kind of revolution in one sense is going on here in order that we can arrive now at a new understanding it's not a matter of various groups trying to find a consensus of what they already believe but rather of each group seeking to to talk together in such a way that they arrive at a new consensus that conserves the human values and there aren't any simple solutions sort of foster and put the clear development in retro valid example then we aren't going to be against change to try to bring back the good old day that you said see or try to go back to simpler technology you have to accept the change and try to have even more changes but we will have to make the necessary adjustments now these adjustments will not necessarily just be made in the area of production but probably in the area of our training and our understanding of new relationships new social organization properly in order to get the maximum production out of it we have to work with well doctor I may interrupt you I think that we're overlooking something here and is that this this problem that we have in rural America the exodus to the people they vacating of the farms in enlargement and etc stems to a large degree from underpricing now for example you mentioned the Red River Valley and we are entitled in the weak areas of the United States today to $2.90 cent for a bushel wheat if we had earned the same relative income that all other segments of the economy have earned we're entitled to $3.67 cents per bushel I entitled because the other segments of the economy can readily afford to pay us this price but we're getting back to your problem that you mentioned before of marketing this is the big failure in agriculture we have failed to come up with a marketing program that will handle abundance of production we our marketing has all been based on scarcity and we have achieved now abundance not only in agriculture but in every segment of the economy the other segments of the economy have learned to deal with abundance they could administer their prices they can regulate their production now farmers must whether they like it or not come to substantially the same conclusion or they cannot participate in the fruits of the economy that the rest of us can readily afford and this is the thing I think that is really the crux of the erosion in rural America and if we restore the price level then we look at the picture again it'd be different i'm disturbed by you stating entitled because this means somebody is going to set the price and for a just price and at what basis would you arrive at the pride well let me say entitled and it's all right there's nothing wrong with that term but on the other hand if we're going to consume all of the goods that are available our share of the goods are available from the urban and industrial areas to restore approximate full employment to restore the other good factors in our economy that prevailed from 1946 to 52 if we're going to do this then the world areas have to earn an adequate income to provide the reciprocal market for goods and services to restore employment to restore production in the factory and things of this nature to restore the profit level this is your real motive in getting an adequate price here for the farmer is twofold first because of justice for the farmer but secondly that he can also buy the products of urban production for that economy right and its ideal is that simple I think it's a very interesting approach you have here Vince but I want to ask you a couple of questions that bother me about this I think this question of entitlement I think perhaps you'd agree that if I said equity because we have equity formulas already now and these are administered through various types of group of voluntary and governmental devices for instance school aids are based upon an equity formula for rural versus urban areas in terms of income tax in the state of Minnesota as well as other states but apart from that I think as you say that the price factor is the real reason for the deterioration of rural communities I think this is nice to believe and it's nice to believe that if you increase price you are retain people in the rural area and perhaps you will some of them but the fact is the the exodus from rural areas the out migration whether it's in Minnesota or Nebraska or the Dakotas has been rather consistent as a matter of fact during periods of prosperity in the economy and prosperity in the rural economy in particular it's even been higher than it has during depress periods in depressed periods you tend to retain people in rural areas because the poll opportunities don't exist in them urban areas in the when the whole economy is operating at full tilt you tend to substitute capital for labor because you can't invest at that point in rural areas and the out-migration continues to the job opportunities in the urban areas so I would say that the current condition of depopulation in most rural areas and the consolidation of rural communities is not a result of price it's a result of basic innovation in society an industrial society an affluent society tries to minimize the amount of human effort labor in particular in any one area to get maximum return I would say that this is what is happening in agriculture the price is still a factor George because because this added capital investment that has replaced this individual is costing the farmer three and a half dollars an hour where the individual cost him a dollar an hour so he still has to have his price I'm not contending if we can stop the the out migration of rural people I'm saying we could only slow it down to more normal times or normal conditions such as the post-war period that you mentioned now we were up to 200,000 300,000 farm families a hundred thousand farm families a year would seem to be somewhat normal when you talk about price this what comes up how much will the consumer pay this liquor will be heard in this point is they we do get too high you will say you'll price yourself out of the market now I often hear discussions about a responsible role that labor should play the role responsible role that farmers should play responsible role that the industry should play but I seldom hear about what is a responsible consumer we tend to make the consumers for the king see hey is this justified it's whatever he wants is right oh I that's a whole issue in itself and I could do nothing at this point but disagree with you we'll discuss it sometimes summer is not good in our economy let me make this statement Dr. Mueller most senior [unclear, name] is noted for a statement he made one time that the consumer who knowingly buys his groceries, shoes, clothing, beverages, tobacco at a price it doesn't return the farmer an adequate income is guilty of the sin of theft I don't know how much stronger you put in the matter George well I would say I find if I know that shirts for is that is produced with sweatshop labor see I tend not to a buy them I would also like to not have to buy food that has been produced at low cost and I'm trying to get at is that this back to this point of interrelationship that must exist it is not just a farmer's concern it's also a concern of the people in the towns and that we must be concerned for each other's welfare and each other's fulfillment and unless we again you said this is idealistic but I would say the church meets to project that college isn't attainable but it still needs projected well I think there's a question what is idealistic and what is unrealistic and the to something maybe idealistic and it may be unrealistic but I think we can have realistic ideal in terms of at least target goals along the way to this state of perfection or the ultimate ideals and I do I do feel definitely that this question of whether or not the farmer is getting this return is an equity question it's not a question of the economics of the situation or the technological aspects of change it is an equity question that you're asking I don't say the farmer doesn't deserve a greater return I'm saying under the present methods of operation he is not getting that return and in all probability the way our society operates he will not get it and I expect the Minnesota where we have 125,000 farm operators we will drop to 80,000 farm operators before this shrinkage of farm families is over Paul what role do you see you being as a seminar what role you see the church might play more vigorously in this type of a thing or where did it come in it well it seems to me now here again that that if in the in the Christian community we espouse a concern for one another now what better thing could happen that for instance here right in the very churches of Fargo-moorhead there would be people farmers businesspeople who come together to talk through their problems not just to talk past one another but to talk with one another so that the church ought to be a place because of a common kind of loyalty of concern where people really come to grips with these things with something more than a kind of superficial goodwill-ism but where they really deal with the issues and all too often the church is sort of stood on the side as a kind of collection of pious people for certain purposes when it ought to be the kind of a fellowship that that is concerned about all of these issues in a very concrete way so that word the church does not have it pat answer the church has a concern gentleman I think our time is up I thank you for a very interesting discussion