Commission on Country Life
In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a Commission on Country Life, with Bailey as its chair. Bailey described the country life movement as “the working out of the desire to make rural civilization as effective and satisfying as other civilization. ” The Commission held thirty public hearings throughout the country, circulated over half a million brief questionnaires, and held numerous other meetings. Its report, edited by Bailey, was printed in 1911 and republished in 1944. The Commission offered three recommendations: a nationalized extension service, which was formalized by the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914; continuing fact-finding surveys, fostering the development of agricultural economics and rural sociology in universities and the federal government; and a campaign for rural progress. Numerous state conferences were held, and in 1919, the American Country Life Association was founded.
The Country-Life Movement in the United States
L. H. Bailey. The Country Life Movement in the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1911.
Bailey believed that the requirements of a good farmer were fourfold: “... the ability to make a full and comfortable living from the land; to rear a family carefully and well; to be of good service to the community; to leave the farm more productive than it was when he took it.”