I'll Take My Stand

Although Allan Carlson's The New Agrarian Mind is sufficient for anyone who wants to gain a basic understanding of twentieth-century agrarian thought, we think that the Nashville Agrarians were so close to the mark that it is worth studying them in more depth. I'll Take My Stand is a collection of twelve essays that describe and argue for a way of life that was prevalent in the South prior to the Civil War and stood in direct defiance to the industrial way of life embodied by the North, a way of life that was nearly gone by 1930 when this book first appeared. Modern folks have a hard time with agrarianism partly because they find it inconceivable that people could have ever lived that way, much less that they could have thrived. This book counters that by describing an agrarianism that was actually lived out, and not so long ago.

First published in 1930, this manifesto constitutes one of the outstanding cultural documents in the history of the South. In it, twelve southerners—many of whom later became leading poets, novelists, and literary critics—defended individualism against the trend of baseless conformity in an increasingly mechanized and dehumanized society.

In one of the most insightful essays in the book, Andrew Lytle paints a evocative picture of what it meant to be a yeoman farmer in the pre-modern South, and then goes on to explain how industrialization of the family farm not only destroyed the farm, but the family:

One common answer is heard on every hand: Industrialize the farm; be progressive; drop old-fashioned ways and adopt scientific methods. These slogans are powerfully persuasive and should be, but are not, regarded with the most deliberate circumspection, for under the guise of strengthening the farmer in his way of life they are advising him to abandon it and become absorbed. Such admonition coming from the quarters of the enemy is encouraging to the landowner in one sense only: it assures him he has something left to steal. Through its philosophy of Progress it is committing a mortal sin to persuade farmers that they can grow wealthy by adopting its methods. A farm is not a place to grow wealthy; it is a place to grow corn.

If it were an idle experiment, there would be no harm in such an indulgence; but it is not idle. It has a price and, like everything else in the industrial world, the price is too dear. In exchange for the bric-a-brac culture of progress he stands to lose his land, and losing that, his independence, for the vagaries of its idealism assume concrete form in urging him to over-produce his money crop, mortgage his land, and send his daughters to town to clerk in ten-cent stores, that he may buy the products of the Power Age and keep its machines turning.

And having so clearly identified the problem, Lytle proposes a solution that will warm the hearts of everyone who is deeply suspicious of the modern project:

The small farmer must deny himself the articles the industrialists offer for sale. It is not so impossible as it may seem at first, for, after all, the necessities they machine-facture were once manufactured on the land, and as for the bric-a-brac, let it rot on their hands. Do what we did after the war and the Reconstruction: return to our looms, our handcrafts, our reproducing stock. Throw out the radio and take down the fiddle from the wall. Forsake the movies for the play-parties and the square dances. And turn away from the liberal capons who fill the pulpits as preachers. Seek a priesthood that may manifest the will and intelligence to renounce science and search out the Word in the authorities.

So long as the industrialist remains in the saddle there must be a money crop to pay him taxes, but let it occupy second place. Any man who grows his own food, kills his own meat, takes wool from his lambs and cotton from his stalks and makes them into clothes, plants corn and hay for his stock, shoes them at the crossroads blacksmith shop, draws milk and butter from his cows, eggs from his pullets, water from the ground, and fuel from the woodlot, can live in an industrial world without a great deal of cash. Let him diversify, but diversify so that he may live rather than that he may grow rich. In this way he will escape by far the heaviest form of taxation, and if the direct levies grow too exorbitant, refuse to pay them. Make those who rule the country bear the burden of government.

Daniel Boorstin said of I'll Take My Stand, "The courage, which few Americans, North or South—then or now—have shown, to speak to the prevailing prospering America from the outside, remains a courage which our America needs. It is seldom better exemplified than in this book. All students of American life should read it."

Related books

• The New Agrarian Mind
• Ideas Have Consequences
• Henry and the Great Society
• Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian