Rural policy has been on the American agenda since the Nation’s beginning. During the past 100 years, rural problems have challenged policymakers and interest groups as the country evolved from a primarily agricultural Nation to one where over three-quarters of the population live in urban areas (fig.1) and farmers make up less than 2 percent of the workforce. 建国伊始，农村政策就被列上了美国政府的日程表。在过去的百年间，美国从一个农业国转变为一个有四分之三人口居住在城市、只有2%的就业人口是农民的国家（见图1）。在这个过程中，农村问题对于政策制定者、利益团体来说都是挑战。
Rural development programs have been the focus of renewed interest in recent years as economic and social changes have brought the problems of rural America once again into public view. A reversal in the historic pattern of rural outmigration, the ongoing information revolution, and the greater exposure of rural areas to overseas trade competition have called previous rural development strategies into question. As such, any reassessment of rural policies can benefit from a better understanding of how rural development policies have evolved, which elements have remained constant, and what conditions make the present situation historically unique. 随着近年来的经济和社会变化，美国农村问题再次进入社会关注的视野，也使得对农村发展计划的关注成为兴趣焦点。当今农村与过去的向外迁移所相反的现状、信息革命、以及国际贸易竞争对农村的影响，使得以往的农村发展策略遇到新的问题。充分理解农村发展政策的演化——哪些因素保持不变，哪些因素使得当今形势变得前所未遇——有助于重新评估农村策略。
The Complexities of Rural Policymaking
农村政策制定的复杂性
Few areas of policymaking have been as fraught with difficulty as rural development and few programs have been harder to coordinate once put into motion. The massive scale of nonmetropolitan America, covering as it does some four out of five U.S. counties, has made many policy options too expensive or too diffuse in their effects to have a noticeable impact. Once seen as farm issues that could be addressed through agricultural policy, rural problems are now far more varied as rural areas have diversified to a point where less than a sixth of rural counties depend heavily on farming for personal income. 在所有政策的制定中，农村发展的政策面临的困难是罕见的；而一旦开始实施，其协调的难度也是其他政策难以比拟的。美国非城市地区的广袤地域，占美国国土面积的五分之四。这使得很多可供选择的政策代价过大，或者作用过于分散，因而难以取得显著效果。农村问题过去曾经被看做是单纯的农业问题，并试图通过农业政策来解决。但实际上，现在的农村问题要远远超出这个范畴，因为仅有不到六分之一的农村主要依赖农业取得个人收入。
Some earlier solutions to rural problems have led to difficulties of their own. Better roads and automobiles, for example, have reduced the once sharp cultural differences between city and country. But, by widening the choices for marketing and consumption, they helped undermine the economies of many small towns dependent on local trade. Rural policymaking has been further complicated by operating within a political system more complex than that of any other modern democracy. Decisionmakers have had to deal with a Federal system divided between national, State, and local governments; a national government divided into three branches; and responsibility for rural development programs scattered among the branches themselves. Moreover, rural policy has had to contend with deep-seated feelings about the role of rural America in forming the Nation's character. 以往对农村问题的一些解决办法引发了新的问题。比如改善公路和交通工具的政策，一方面确实缓解了一度尖锐的城乡文化差异问题。但另一方面，由于这一政策使得市场和消费选择更加广泛，因此破坏了很多小镇建立在本地交易基础上的地方经济。使农村政策的制定更加复杂的是，这一政策的制定，必须在美国比任何民主制度都复杂的政治体系下进行。联邦政府由国家、州、和地方政府组成，决策者必须在此制度下行动；联邦政府三权分立；而农村发展的责任则分散在这些分支机构中。另外，乡村是美国国家特质的一个重要部分，因此农村政策还必须符合这种根深蒂固的情结。
The government machinery and many of the issues that rural policymakers must deal with today have deep roots. Developments during the first century or so after the American Revolution determined both the form of government and the expectations that people had about government's role in rural affairs. The governments, State and Federal, created after the Revolution embodied a suspicion of power that has been a recurring theme in American history. To guard against any return of Britain's arbitrary rule, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 carefully apportioned power among three separate branches of government and further divided the legislative branch into two chambers. Nor did the States, which were similarly constituted, readily concede power to the Federal Government. The Civil War may have ensured the supremacy of national government, but by no means did it end power of the States, which often argued that programs belonged to them rather than the Federal Government. Moreover, when political parties settled into their modern form in the 19th century, they generally avoided the sharp ideological contrasts that have characterized parties in other democratic countries. The result has been a style of government that has discouraged quick policy changes and has often required a slow consensus building before a major policy change can take place. Rural development policy, crossing as it does all the various levels and branches of government, has been a particularly difficult challenge. 政府机构和农村政策制定者今天所面临的很多问题，都有其深刻的根源。美国独立战争后一个世纪中的发展，基本上确定了政府的形态，以及民众对政府在农村问题中应起作用的期望。独立战争后的联邦和州政府对于权力的怀疑，成为美国历史上反复出现的主题。为防止英国统治时期专制统治的再度出现，1787年的制宪会议谨慎地设立了三权分立制度，之后又进一步把立法分为参议院和国会两院。而有类似构架的州政府，则不愿意把权力上交给联邦政府。美国内战确立了联邦政府的最高权力，但远远没有终结州政府的权力。州政府认为很多发展计划应归属于州而不是联邦。另外，当19世纪，美国政党逐渐形成其现代政党制度的雏形时，他们尽量避免其他民主国家政党体系中尖锐的意识形态矛盾。其结果是这样一种政府形态，它不鼓励快速的政策变更；在重大政策变更前，往往需要一个缓慢的建立共识的过程。农村发展政策的制定，由于要跨越政府的所有层级和分支，就需要面临特别艰难的挑战。
Nineteenth Century Rural Policies 十九世纪的农村政策
The founders' distrust of power was complemented by their belief that government had only limited functions to perform and that it ought to perform them with a rigorous economy befitting a republican government. Since that time, there has been a nearly continuous debate over which matters belong to government and which to the private sector. Yet, Americans never expected their governments to remain completely on the sidelines. From its inception, when about 90 percent of the people lived on farms, the United States had what may be considered a rural policy. This policy was based on the desire to develop the country's vast interior and the belief that rural life--especially on the farm--had virtues that were essential to the preservation of liberty. Thomas Jefferson best summed up the prevailing belief about farmers in the early republic when he declared that, "Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God...whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." Cities, Jefferson feared, bred poverty and dependence, while land-owning farmers had enough autonomy and strength of character to ensure the preservation of democracy.1 Thus, to Jeffersonians, farm communities and the rural craftsmen supporting them in villages and small towns were to be the bulwarks of the new republic. Even early advocates of industry looked to the countryside rather than the cities as ideal sites for factories. Gristmills, sawmills, textile mills and many other industries depended on water power to operate machinery. Rural factories "by the fall of waters and the rushing stream," as the Society for Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures put it, would use a clean form of energy and give industrial workers the benefit of country life. When Boston capitalists opened their textile factories in the new town of Lowell, MA in 1822, they expected to save the United States from the industrial squalor then overtaking parts of England.2 美国的缔造者们对权力持怀疑态度；同时，他们相信政府应该只有有限的职能－－遵循一个共和政府应该遵守的严格体系。从建国伊始，哪些事务属于政府职能范畴，哪些属于私营范畴的争论从未中断过。然而，美国人民也从来没有期望他们的政府完全袖手旁观。从最初90%的人口生活在农场开始，美国就有了农村政策的雏形。这一政策，是基于对美国广袤内陆开发的渴望，以及一种理念－－在农村生活中，特别是真正在农场上的生活中，蕴藏着对于保护自由至关重要的内涵。托马斯.杰佛逊（Thomas Jefferson）对这种广为接受的理念，及农民在早期共和中的作用，做了最好的总结“那些在田间劳作的人，是上帝选中的人。。。他在他们胸中播下了厚重和真切的美德。”杰佛逊担心城市会孕育贫穷和依赖性，而拥有土地的农民，他们的自主性和性格中的坚强，则使得民主得以保障。因此，对于杰佛逊来说，农场社区，以及村庄、小镇中对这些社区提供支持的农村其他从业者，是新共和国的基石。甚至早期工业化的倡导者们也认为乡村比城市更适合设立工厂。谷物加工、锯木厂、纺织厂以及其他工业都依赖水力驱动。如“国内制造促进会（Society for Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures）”指出，设立在农村的工厂“由河水的落差和湍急的溪流驱动”使用的是洁净的能源，同时给工人带来乡村生活的享受。再如， 1882年，当波士顿的资本家在洛厄尔新城开设纺织厂时，他们期望能够使美国避免当时已经影响英国很多地区的工业污染问题。
Thus, many 19th century Americans favored policies that would keep the Nation rural, and much legislation had this as its intent. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and subsequent acquisitions in the Southwest added enormously to the supply of potential farm land. Land disposal laws made it progressively easier for farmers to purchase undeveloped land from the huge public domain. An act in 1796 offered 640-acre tracts to the public at $2 per acre. This was succeeded by laws gradually lowering the price and minimum purchase until the Homestead Act of 1862 gave prospective homesteaders 160 acres of land if they would live on and improve it for 5 years.因此，19世纪的美国对于保持整个国家农村化的政策给予倾斜，很多立法都基于此。1803年的路易斯安那购买以及之后收购的西南部国土，进一步增加了大片的可耕作土地资源。土地处置的相关法律使得农民从巨大面积的国有土地中购买未开垦土地变得越来越容易。一项1796年的法案规定，可以2美元一英亩的价格出售每片640英亩的土地。而后继的法律逐渐降低购买价格和土地购买的最小面积。直到1862年的《宅地法（Homestead Act）》规定，自耕农只要在一块160英亩的土地上生活和开垦5年，就可以拥有这块土地。
Transportation received much government assistance. States went deeply in debt to build canals. They chartered and often subscribed to railroads and turnpike companies, which attempted to pave the country's muddy system of rural highways. The Federal Government extended some aid to roads, canals, rivers, and harbors, and made extensive land grants to western railroads. These improvements lowered the cost of marketing farm products and enabled farmers to move to areas far from the more densely settled East. The Government's banking and tariff policies varied, but until the late 19th century they generally worked to increase credit and encourage agricultural trade. In education, the United States was the first nation to begin a system of mass schooling for its citizens. This began on the local and State levels, but Federal policy encouraged it by reserving part of public domain sales for common schools in Federal land areas. In 1862, a system of land-grant colleges ensured that rural people would have access to higher education. 政府对交通建设给予大力资助。很多州政府为建运河债台高筑。他们许可，甚至经常资助铁路和收费公路建设公司，将全国原本泥泞的乡村道路系统上铺设公路。联邦政府则大力资助公路、运河、河运、港口，并为西部铁路建设特许土地拥有权。这些交通设施的改善，使得销售农产品的成本大大降低，并使得农民可以迁移到远离人口密集的东部的地区。政府的银行和关税政策不断发生变化，但至19世纪晚期，一般来说是以增加信贷和鼓励农产品交易为主。在教育方面，美国是第一个为其公民普及学校教育的国家。最初，这起始于地方和州政府，而联邦政府则通过把国有土地预留给联邦辖地上的学校，来鼓励教育。1862年，一个在特许土地上建立大学的体系保障了农村人口也有可能接受高等教育。
These development policies had important consequences for rural areas. While those who otherwise would have lacked sufficient capital to enter farming benefited from cheap land, disposal policies also helped prevent the subdivision of land into unprofitably small units, a persistent problem in many older societies. The relatively large size of American farms coupled with the shortage of labor for hire (partly caused by the ease of farm ownership) forced U.S. agriculture to mechanize and pursue agricultural efficiency. From the outset, agricultural exports were one of the driving forces of the growing American economy. Every improvement in transportation helped commercialize agriculture more and forged stronger economic ties between farmers and distant markets. 这些发展策略对农村地区产生了重要影响。那些原本没有足够资金的人，得益于廉价土地和置地政策，开始投入农业生产。避免了小块土地变为荒芜这一很多其他国家都面临的问题。美国农场相对广大的面积，加上劳动力的缺乏（部分原因是获得土地太容易了）迫使美国农业向机械化和提高效率的方向发展。从最初，农业出口就是美国经济增长的一个驱动因素。而交通运输的每一次变革，都进一步促进农业的商业化，并强化了农民和外部市场间的经济纽带。
On the other hand, rapid disposal of the public domain had less fortunate implications for rural society. The rush to buy desirable land spread settlement much more thinly than would have occurred otherwise. Many of these new communities lacked the resources to build adequate roads and other infrastructure. Rural towns in less populated areas, whose market hinterlands were limited by poor transportation as well as low population, were often too small to support the level of marketing, purchasing, and credit services that a larger population base would have permitted.3 Nor was the public school subsidy sufficient to prevent communities from having to rely principally on their small local tax bases to pay for schools. The Government's development policies were implemented at a time when natural resources seemed inexhaustible. Little thought was given to the conservation of soil, trees, or minerals. Only later would the effects of this exploitation be appreciated and reversing the damage made a part of rural policy. Finally, the Government’s policy of placing Native Americans in reservations isolated them from the general economy and would complicate future development efforts. 另一方面，国有土地的快速私有化对农村社会也有负面的影响。急于置地，使得人口居留过于稀疏。很多新的社区没有足够的资源修建公路和其他基础设施。很多人口稀疏的农村乡镇，其市场受不良交通条件和稀疏人口的限制，往往不能象人口密集地区那样支撑相应的市场、购买、和信贷服务。而对公立学校补贴的不足，使得这些地区的学校只能主要依赖于本地原本就微弱的税收来源。另外，政府农村发展策略的制定，实施在一个自然资源似乎会取之不尽的年代。因而对土地、树木、矿产的保护给予的考虑很少。直到后来，这种过度使用的影响被认识后，扭转这种破坏的努力才成为农村政策的一部分。最后，政府把印第安人限制在保留地的政策使得他们与大的经济环境隔绝。这使得未来的发展进一步复杂化。
The Rise of Cities 城市的崛起
Despite policies favorable to widespread land ownership, the Jeffersonian dream of a permanently rural Nation was eroded by the rise of large cities in the 19th century. With only 2 towns larger than 25,000 inhabitants in 1790, the United States had 38 cities with more than 100,000 residents by 1900. The urban population--those living in towns of 2,500 or more--had grown in this period from 5 percent of the total to 40 percent.4 When steam power superseded water power by midcentury, the growth of factories in rural areas tapered off. Towns that had relied chiefly on commerce became industrial centers when manufacturers opted to be closer to the centers of transportation, labor, and capital. Even some rural factories had spawned cities around them. More and more, economic decisions and cultural tastes were determined by urban dwellers. Yet Americans did not lose their emotional attachment to rural life nor their concern that cities might subvert republican virtues. By the 1850s, landscape architects such as Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted were urging the benefits of bringing the country to the city by means of large parks. New York's Central Park was only the first of many romantically landscaped urban parks that attempted to give urban dwellers green areas for relaxation and exercise reminiscent of the countryside. Urban boosters often argued that large cities expanded the market for agricultural products, thus putting a floor under farm prices. 尽管政府的农村政策鼓励广泛的土地所有权，杰佛逊使美国成为一个永久性农业国的梦想，随着19世纪大城市的崛起慢慢消亡。1790年，美国仅有2座人口超过25,000的城镇；而到1900年，人口超过100,000的城市有38 个。在这百年间，城市人口－－那些居住在人口超过2,500的城镇的居民－－从占总人口的2%增加到40%。当蒸汽动力代替水力成为工业的驱动力后，乡村地区工厂的增长停止了。那些主要依赖商业活动的城镇逐渐成为工业中心，制造业则选择靠近这些交通、劳动力和资金的地方建厂。甚至有些城市在一些原本位于农村的工厂周围出现。而经济决策和文化品位，则越来越多地被城市居民所左右。然而美国人民仍旧没有丧失他们对农村生活的感情纽带，也仍旧担忧城市会颠覆最初的共和精神。十九世纪五十年代，城市设计师如Andrew Jackson Downing和Frederick Law Olmsted强烈要求通过在城市中保有大面积的公园来把乡村带入城市中。纽约中央公园就是众多充满浪漫色彩的城市公园景观中的一个，使得城市居民可以在绿地中放松并带来乡村的回忆。而城市的支持者则认为大城市扩大了农产品市场，因此保证了农产品的最低价格。
To rural Americans, however, the growth of cities was ominous. Stories of labor unrest, crime, corruption, and waves of impoverished foreign immigrants who populated vast urban slums did nothing to dispel Jeffersonian warnings about the danger that cities posed to democracy. As business became more urbanized, it also became more concentrated. Monopolies, trusts, and holding companies came to dominate some major industries, including several that affected farmers. Concentration of ownership occurred in flour milling, meat packing, agricultural machinery, sugar, tobacco, and other commodities of interest to farmers. Moreover, the railroads on which farmers increasingly depended often charged whatever the traffic would bear in rural areas, where they seldom had competition. Grain elevators, many owned by railroads, were frequently local monopolies that could determine the price of grain by the way they chose to grade it. Behind the rise of these new industries lay a banking system that farmers regarded as stacked against them, charging high interest rates for mortgages and shortterm loans during a time of overall deflation. 而在美国农村看来，城市的崛起则不是件好事。关于工人骚动、犯罪、腐败、以及贫穷的外国移民潮的消息，似乎都印证了杰佛逊关于城市会成为民主之威胁的预言。商业更加城市化，也因而更加集中化。垄断集团、托拉斯、控股公司开始垄断主要行业，包括一些会对农民产生影响的行业。产权的合并发生在面粉加工、牲畜加工、农业机械、制糖、烟草和其他与农民相关的行业。更重要的是，农民越来越依赖的铁路的收费，在农村地区往往高到几乎不能忍受的程度。因为在那里基本没有竞争。很多被铁路公司拥有的谷物仓库，通常形成地方性垄断，他们通过制定谷物级别来决定谷物价格。在这些行业发展的背后，还有一个被农民认为是在和他们对着干的银行体系。在整体通货紧缩的时期，这个体系抬高抵押贷款和短期借款的利息。
Changes in agriculture itself were having unsettling effects on rural areas in the decades following the Civil War. Widespread adoption of agricultural machinery--reapers, threshers, and better plows, for example--rapidly increased the productivity of individual farm workers and reduced the demand for labor. The use of machinery usually improved the economic condition of individual farms which, in turn, brightened the outlook for rural towns. While farm population stabilized between 1890 and 1940, rural population as a whole continued a slow, steady growth. But many farm children found better opportunities in cities rather than the countryside.5 Moreover, productivity gains and the bringing of new western land under cultivation put a downward pressure on farm prices for the final third of the century. This was especially disturbing to farmers because they were becoming more dependent on purchased inputs and, therefore, more susceptible to the effects of overproduction. 在美国内战后的几十年间，农业本身发生的变化也给农村地区造成了不安的因素。农业机械的广泛使用－－比如收割机、打谷机、更先进的犁，迅速提高了单个农民的生产力，并降低了对劳动力的需求。农业机械的使用通常会改善单个农场的经济状况，并让农村地区乡镇的前景更光明。在1890到1940年间，当从事农业工作的人口基本保持不变的同时，农村地区的总人口却在缓慢、稳步增长。很多农民的孩子发现在城里比在乡村有更好的机会。另外，生产力的提高和新开发的西部土地在19世纪后三分之一给农产品的价格带来向下的压力。这对农民影响甚大。因为他们越来越依赖原料和工具的购买，从而对过度生产的影响就更加敏感。
Farmers throughout the country had to make serious adjustments to changing economic realities. The Great Plains, Pacific Coast, and parts of the Midwest saw many new farms from the Homestead Act and railroad land sales. In dry land areas, settlement moved back and forth as rainfall permitted or discouraged cultivation. The large gains in grain acreage and the spread of railroad lines made western growers more than competitive with eastern growers. Southern States, recovering from the Civil War’s destruction of its slavery and plantation system, moved increasingly to tenancy and the monoculture of cotton, which left the South as the poorest rural section of the country. Eastern farmers had to adapt to competition from cheap western products. In New England, communities stagnated, leaving few prospects for young people either on farms or in towns.6 面对经济现实发生的变化，全国的农民都必须进行重大的调整。美国中部的广大平原地区、太平洋沿岸、中西部的部分地区，由于《宅地法》和铁路用地销售，出现了大量新农场。在干旱的地域，定居者随着雨水对耕种的影响迁入迁出。耕种面积的大幅增加和铁路的扩展使得西部的农民比东部更有竞争力。南部各州正从内战对其奴隶制度和农业体系的摧毁中逐渐恢复，日渐转型为土地租赁制以及单一种植棉花的农业体系。这使得南部各州成为全国最穷困的地区。而东部的农民则需要面对来自西部廉价农产品的竞争。在东北部的新英格兰地区，公社停止运作，这使得农场或乡镇中的年轻人几乎看不到希望。
