In Research

Sponsored by
The Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West
Stanford University

In August 1908, amidst concern about the conditions of farm life in America, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned a study of life in rural America.  In the span of just five months, The Country Life Commission held more than 30 public hearings and gathered survey responses from over 200,000 rural Americans.  At the end of January 1909, the committee reported back to the president with a wide-ranging assessment of the current state of country life.

With the arrival of the centennial of The Commission on Country Life, The Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West plans to revisit the state of life in the rural West.  The Rural West Initiative will bring together scholars from many disciplines to study the development of the rural West since the early part of the century, assess the opportunities and challenges currently confronting the rural West, and make policy recommendations designed to address the most pressing problems of life in rural America west of the Mississippi.

Although a century has passed, issues that shape life in the rural West have remained remarkably constant.  The Rural West Initiative will take up subjects that are the same or closely related to the issues that drew the attention of The Commission on Country Life.  A comparison of the scope of the commission report and the center’s initiative appear on the following page.

Humanities scholars will play a vital role in a comprehensive study of life in the rural West.  We expect that historians and philosophers will make crucial contributions as we address, among other issues, topics such as:

• The effect of the commissioners’ recommendations on political development in the rural West
• The history of economic development in the rural West
• The history of public health provision in the rural West
• The history of education policy and institutions in the rural West
• The evolution in public attitudes toward what the Commission referred to as “the inherent rights of the farmer”
• Evolution in American political thought about the relationship between the city and country

For more about the initiative, please contact Dr. Tammy Frisby.