'A Challenge to Farm Youth' by Upton G. Wilson of Madison, NC, 1935

 “A Challenge to Farm Youth” By Upton G. Wilson in the October, 1935 issue of Carolina Co-Operator

The power to make life on the farm more attractive is in the hands of farm boys and girls of today—but will they stay on the farm and do it? “They will!” says Mr. Wilson.

Twenty-three years ago a drunken cook whom he had discharged, shot Mr. Wilson through both lungs and through the spine. Since that time he has been confined to his bed in Madison, N.C.  Weaker souls would have given up—but not Mr. Wilson. He turned to writing and since that time has written over two million words for publication, typing his manuscripts himself while lying on his right side in bed.

If there is one thing wrong with our country more than another, it is that too few persons are doing its thinking and planning—not because only a few of our people are capable of thinking and planning but that thinking and planning are not required of the vast majority of individuals who do our work.

Eighty-five per cent of our corporate wealth, we are told, is controlled by five per cent of our corporations; which means, of course, that corporate thinking in America is done by a comparative handful.

Millions labor for corporations but only a few think for them, most of those employed being mere automatons. Mechanized industry asks little more of its help that nimbleness of limb and quickness of eye—the ability, that is, to wait on machines without becoming entangled in wheels, cogs, and belts.

Stay On the Farm

Which is a valid reason why farm boys and girls now on the farm should remain there, where individual thought and initiative are still permissible. They may help to shape the nation’s thought and policies by continuing to till the soil.

With millions of unemployed thronging the streets of our cities and with the millions fortunate enough to hold jobs having to conform to certain patterns, the farm today offers ambitious youth its greatest opportunity, not only to earl a livelihood but also to win distinction in politics, statecraft, and social service.

Industry is deadening the minds of its workers, while agriculture is demanding more and more headwork from those who live by the productions of the earth, which is a challenge that physically industrious, mentally alert boys and girls cannot ignore. They can do no other than answer the call that promises occupation both for brawn and brain.

Agriculture Calls for Education

Agriculture is no longer a vocation for the dull and indolent. Insistently, imperatively it is calling for those with educated minds and hands. Today the successful farmer is entitled to the respect of himself and others. He lives not only by the sweat of his brow but by the exercise of his brain cells as well. He is both an individualist and a specialist and his mind is free of cobwebs.

Will farm boys and girls give up the intellectual freedom that is theirs in agriculture for the mind-shriveling inhibitions of industry? I do not think so. I do not believe they will choose to become executors of other men’s plans when they can remain where they are and execute plans of their own.

Agriculture is the fountain head of all enterprise. Always men and women will depend upon agriculture for the food they eat and the clothes they wear. This is a fact of utmost significance to those who have the ability to think. It means, if it means anything at all, that those who control agriculture may control the world.

Hitherto agriculture has too often tamely submitted to dominance by industry and commerce, but this need not be so any longer.  Boys and girls now coming to mental and physical maturity on the farm may change all this.

What reason is there that agriculture should be last instead of first in reaping the rewards of honest endeavor? There is no reason whatever for its laggard position except the laggard minds of those who have made agriculture their vocation. Agriculture is the foundation upon which American prosperity has been built and it is high time that it should demand its just share of this prosperity.

It is for this reason, if no other, that agriculture is calling so loudly to farm boys and girls to remain where they are and restore agriculture to the place it deserves in our national economic scheme. Farm boys and girls may easily do this if they will dedicate themselves to the task. It is a task that calls them to that highest and most glorious of all adventures, the upbuilding of a great and essential industry.

Nor need farm boys and girls sacrifice their desire for social activities by remaining where they are and fighting the battles of agriculture. The city, with its amusements, if ample recreational facilities be lacking on the farm, is no farther away than the nearest church was a decade ago. Automobiles and good roads have reduced distances to next to nothing.

A part of the challenge to modern farm boys and girls, of course, is to provide for the social life of those who dwell upon the land. It should not be necessary for farm boys and girls—even underprivileged farm boys and girls—to go to town for social recreation. Provision must be made for this in rural recreation centers.

Education instead of being a dead loss on the farm will pay greater dividends there than elsewhere. It is the one place, in fact, that a boy or girl may put knowledge to use in an individual way. On the farm one is his own master rather than the slave of a machine. 

Basically more important than industry, agriculture must be made more attractive, more remunerative than industry, and only educated farm boys and girls can do this. Soil erosion and the drift cityward of farm boys and girls must be stopped. It is in the power of our farm boys and girls to do both.

Will they do it? They will. It is a challenge they cannot refuse to accept, a dare they cannot overlook.

-=-=-=
After a gunshot left 23-year-old Upton G. Wilson bed-bound, he studied journalism through an extension service of the University of North Carolina and then got a job writing a column called "Ragweeds and Cockleburs" for the Winston-Salem Journal. He also wrote a book called "My 33 Years in Bed."
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=95651604

The March 1942 issue of The Bennett Banner, a student publication of Bennett College in Greensboro, has a letter to the editor from Wilson. The newspaper is on the Web at:
http://morehead.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/newspapers/id/17448/rec/11