Small Community Economics in 1943

Field Reading Notes

Small Community Economics, Arthur E. Morgan.  Yellow Springs, OH: Community Services, Inc. 1943

(Arthur E. Morgan 1878-1975, born in Cincinnati, grew up in St. Cloud, MN.  Engineer, Unitarian, President of Antioch College. Was 1st head of TVA in 1933, removed in 1938 for criticizing TVA’s direction. Utopian. Wrote a biography of Edward Bellamy.  Founded Community Service, Inc. (http://www.communitysolution.org/)in 1940.)

Morgan begins with foreword titled “What Is Rural Life?”  He says that according to the USDA, there are “about 22,000,000 persons living on American farms.”  (5)  This is about 17 percent of the 1943 population, and Morgan goes on to say that the “better half of the farms” produce “90 per cent of all marketed farm produce.”  If those farms would “increase their production by only 10 per cent, which seems entirely feasible, the rest could go out of business without reducing the total of American agricultural produce.”  

Morgan disagrees with sociologists like T. Lynn Smith (President of the Rural Sociological Society and author of The Sociology of Rural Life) who claim “farmer and countryman are almost synonymous terms.” (6) “Even in agricultural communities,” Morgan says, “the population of towns which directly serve surrounding farm areas is from a quarter to a half as great...Most of these village residents also are rural people. Then there are fishing towns, mining towns, railroad towns, summer resort towns, quarry towns, lumbering towns, hydro-electric power plant communities, textile mill towns, and oil well towns, all with their non-farm, rural populations.  At the present moment probably about half of the rural population of America is non-farm population.”

In view of this “strikingly new picture of rural life,” Morgan calls for a balanced approach to rural community planning.  The “dominant economic activity” should not be the area’s only economic activity, he says.  (8)  Rather, “Variety and range of economic activity” are keys to developing communities that can satisfy “the normal range of human needs.” (9)    Although a “rural community is wise to produce a major part of its own food supply,” Morgan believes “producing crops for the general public seldom is profitable to the amateur.” (10)  He concludes that “few American communities are more than fifty  per cent self-sufficient by local production,” and urges rural communities to think about what they can produce for the outside market.

While parts of Morgan’s booklet seem to betray a slightly “New Deal” technocratic orientation, his suggestions generally make sense.  And they’re directed at rural people, not at bureaucrats -- possibly a result of Morgan’s falling-out with TVA and its techno-bureaucracy.  The guy makes sense, and he’s probably worth looking into a little more deeply, when I get around to writing about rural reformers and radicals.