I learn so much from the subjects I interview, and I learn about subjects I often know little about. To write for the reader’s understanding requires understanding what I’m writing about first.
For a woman whose dream job is be a college student forever, being a journalist seems forever-college-student adjacent.
Nerd alert: I love research.
In May, I visited with the executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library for the story on page 4.
After, I had more questions about America’s 26th president. Who was this man loved by the left and the right? Teddy Roosevelt, the North Dakotan by North Dakota’s claim and favorite president of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley?
I wondered, what was Roosevelt’s take on cooperatives? The research led me to the Country Life Commission, which Roosevelt appointed during his presidency.
“The object of the Commission on Country Life therefore is not to help the farmer raise better crops, but to call his attention to the opportunities for better business and better living on the farm. If country life is to become what it should be, and what I believe it ultimately will be – one of the most dignified, desirable and sought-after ways of earning a living – the farmer must take advantage not only of the agricultural knowledge which is at his disposal, but of the methods which have raised and continue to raise the standards of living and of intelligence in other callings,” Roosevelt described in a Feb. 9, 1909, letter to Congress.
Roosevelt explained how European farmers had organized to form cooperatives and improve their economic and personal positions.
“The cooperative plan is the best plan of organization wherever men have the right spirit to carry it out,” he wrote.
Incredibly, the seeds Theodore Roosevelt planted by encouraging American farmers to form cooperatives to improve their lives and livelihoods would be watered decades later by a president of the same name, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, through the passage of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which electrified country life.
In addition to cooperation among farmers, Roosevelt listed other immediate needs of country life: rural schools, improved sanitation and better means of communication, including good roads and mail delivery.
Is that not still what matters most? An equal playing field for rural people, where hard work is rewarded not with more hard work, but earnings that translate into quality of life. Good schools for our kids. Safe roads. An effective postal service. Healthy communities.
To this day, T.R. connects with a melting pot of people, perspectives and ideologies, because he took the time to walk in other shoes. He was a city slicker and a country mouse.
And he understood this to be true: “The strengthening of country life,” he said, “is the strengthening of the whole nation.”
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Cally Peterson is editor of North Dakota Living. She can be reached at cpeterson@ndarec.com.
