{"id":233,"date":"2015-03-20T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socrates.litsios.org\/site\/?page_id=233"},"modified":"2024-05-27T14:58:08","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T12:58:08","slug":"gunns-rural-reconstruction-program","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/socrates.litsios.org\/site\/the-life-of-selskar-gunn\/gunns-rural-reconstruction-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Gunn’s Rural Reconstruction Program"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In December 1934, the long-awaited report of the Committee on Appraisal and Plans appeared. Its 113 pages dealt with the whole of the Foundation, as it represented an attempt to re-think its work in light of developments since the reorganization that had taken place in 1929. The Committee expressed its confidence in the program of psychiatry under Gregg’s direction. It also took note of \u201ca minor activity\u201d that he had initiated concerning the teaching of public health to medical students!<\/p>\n

Slightly more than 3 pages were dedicated to \u201cMr Gunn’s Program for China\u201d. There was \u201clittle question\u201d that his program represented \u201ca realistic approach to present difficulties in China\u201d. The \u201cplastic condition of her life and institutions\u201d was \u201can inviting challenge to a positive kind of service. Indeed there is a sense in which China might become a vast laboratory in the social sciences, with implications that would be international in scope\u201d. The suggested program \u201chelps to conserve and revivify the work\u201d that has already been done through the PUMC.<\/p>\n

The lack of time limitations was recognized. \u201cIf we embark, we embark for the voyage, and we must contemplate a trip of considerable duration if any significant contribution is really to be made\u201d. This could be seen as a \u201cconclusive argument against the project\u201d. Furthermore, \u201csome kind of integration, or at least a carefully matured understanding\u201d between the program in Peking and that of Shanghai, was desirable and necessary \u201cif some degree of uncertainty and perhaps confusion\u201d was to be avoided. The fact that this was a different technique for approaching public health was recognized, although not made explicit, as one might read into this \u2018difference\u2019 opposing views on medical education as well as public health. Finally, the question was raised as to whether China was the best place in the world for the Foundation to engage \u201cto push our attack\u201d. The committee made no recommendation on this latter point but did propose Mexico, India the South American countries as presenting \u201can inviting field\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite these questions, reservations and doubts, the Board of Trustees endorsed the program. They voted to appropriate US$ 1 million for a three-year experimental program in rural reconstruction to begin July 1935. Grant, who was still employed by the IHD, was placed under Gunn\u2019s full responsibility.<\/p>\n

Gunn, who had been absent from China for nearly a year, returned in high spirits. He traveled with Grant, as well as with Fosdick, who was sent to try to appease the PUMC Board of Trustee\u2019s anger at Greene’s dismissal. Although Greene had been removed from office, the protest that it had raised in China led to him staying on until April 1935 when he resigned. By March, Gunn was able to report that he and Grant had made much progress and were \u201cvery keen about the new program…,\u201d and that they were \u201cgoing to make a pretty good team\u201d. Gunn was going to make Grant the \u201cdetail\u201d man, which would relieve him of \u201cunnecessary and long conversations,\u201d while providing Grant the possibility of not having to agree before consulting with Gunn, who Grant could portray as being \u201cvery hard-boiled\u201d if necessary.<\/p>\n

Grant had already laid out some of the principles of their program in his long letter to Grant referred to earlier. He identified the \u201cessential problem\u201d that he found to be the lack of a \u201cmarketing policy\u201d in the \u201csocial fields of medical, agricultural and economic protection\u201d. Man has progressed in the production of knowledge, \u201cbut has learned very little of the technique of its marketing\u201d. The impracticality of someone who proposed, for example, to \u201cprotect against community ignorance without the organization now known as primary and secondary education with its primary and secondary schools\u201d would be derided. Even more so if that someone were to work \u201conly through personnel limited to university graduates instead of normal school products specifically trained to meet the institutional demands of organized perfection against ignorance\u201d. And so it was with medicine where \u201cthere has been an almost entire lack of thought even to a marketing policy, much less of technical personnel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Grant referred to welfare centers that had been created as an outcome of \u0160tampar’s visit to help create a demand \u201cfor the utilization of scientific knowledge in the daily life of the villager\u201d related to medicine, education, agriculture and economics, yet \u201cin all of China there is not a single agricultural, medical or economic institution able to train personnel competent to undertake such ‘primary’ duties and responsibilities, should such a demand be created\u201d. What institution, for example, could provide a \u201cmedical officer to receive not more than $50 a month and able to discharge the demands that a system of primary medical protection would involve?\u201d<\/p>\n

In March Grant formulated a \u2018tentative\u2019 set of principles for the China Program which Gunn sent on to Mason. It contained many of the same points that Grant had sent to Gregg earlier, but \u2018packaged\u2019 in a more programmatic fashion, beginning with the \u201cdefinition\u201d of the China program, which was:<\/p>\n

The advancement of knowledge through research, education and demonstrated application, for the purpose of solving definite problems which may result in improvement in the conditions of life and community welfare.<\/p>\n

The attack, in whatever social field chosen to \u201cmake available to individuals in the community the advances made in knowledge and to secure utilization of this knowledge for the general good\u201d, \u201cshould be the long range one of organization and method\u201d. In medicine, for example, \u201cthe prime importance would be that of organization and methods of medical protection as a whole\u201d. At this point Grant took on the whole history of the IHD by proclaiming that such an attack \u201cwould ultimately be more effective in dealing with such individual problems as hookworm and malaria and their control\u201d!<\/p>\n

This audaciousness was already in evidence in his opening paragraphs, where Grant took on the whole of the Foundation:<\/p>\n

The five major but diverse interests of the RF have been carried on for the most part entirely separate from each other. It has long seemed to me desirable to break down the walls of the practically water-tight compartments in which these have been carried on, but thus far it had not been possible in the China program to demonstrate the practicability of coordinating these interests in a single objective to which each would make its distinctive contribution but in which there would be a certain uniformity of approach and method, which would increase the effectiveness and significance of the contribution of the RF to \u2018human welfare\u2019.<\/p>\n

Also new in this formulation was the importance given to the \u201csimultaneous development\u201d of the various constituent functions and factors that contribute to human welfare. Functions included funds, personnel, organization and methods, while factors covered the whole range of social and economic sectors involved in development.<\/p>\n

Finally, Grant indicated the desirability of carrying out experiments in the same region, so that \u201ceventually there may be a demonstration in a single area of the essential interdependence of the various social functions and of their effective coordination for the good of the community\u201d. This would also \u201ccentralize all the training of personnel for the various social fields\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gunn, in his letter dated March 23, 1935 to Mason, attached Grant\u2019s \u201cstatement\u201d and went on to identify Tinghsien as being the \u201cmost significant piece of work going on in China at the present time in connection with reconstruction\u201d and where the Foundation could train\u00a0 \u201cpersonnel for reconstruction programs\u201d. Tinghsien was already cooperating with Nankai and Yenching Universities while both Tsing Hua and Nanking Universities were cooperating along certain technical lines. At this point (March 1935) Gunn was only asking funds for one year as an experimental period. If successful, \u201cwe shall undoubtedly ask for funds for the two following years\u201d. Tsing Hua University was located in Beijing and was known for its agricultural research.<\/p>\n

One can easily imagine that those not use to this kind of heavily jargonized approach to development might be put-off, especially in an organization where very few other staff members spoke the same language! The reaction of Russell, in particular, is very revealing in this regard. He found Grant\u2019s principles to \u201cbe very general and because of that \u2026 difficult to criticize, except in the most general terms\u201d, which he then proceeded to do in a memorandum to Mason.<\/p>\n

Grant\u2019s assertion that methods and personnel are dependent on the type of organization seemed to Russell to be \u201ccompletely erroneous. It dignifies organization with an importance which it does not deserve. Organization in any wide-awake and progressive group is dependent upon the type of personnel. The Foundation since I have known it has changed its type of organization several times and any other progressive group will outgrow any organization\u201d.<\/p>\n

Concerning public health training to be carried out in Nanking, Russell expressed the feeling \u201cthat our money should not be expended in any schemes, the object of which is quantity production, which apparently this is\u201d. On the other hand, he continued, \u201cwe have no right to object to any plans the Chinese Government may have for training its personnel, but the subsidy which we grant to any such scheme should, in my opinion, be limited to such parts of the project as provide for improving the quality of the instruction without any reference to the quantity production of graduate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russell took the occasion to explain to Mason that the IHD plan of attack had always been different from this:<\/p>\n

Our plan has been to set up on a small scale an experimental organization which by trial and error, under the direction of excellent men, can gradually work out a system suitable to the local conditions and that after this has been done extension can be made by copying the satisfactory elements of the experimental program, that the whole emphasis is placed on working out a program which is within the means of the community to support, always with a provision that nothing will be done in the absence of well-trained personnel. In other words, we have always emphasized quality and never quantity in our program.<\/p>\n

Mason, while sharing Russell\u2019s concern with the meagerness of Grant\u2019s description, concluded, as regards the issue of quantity versus quality, the \u201cquestion is academic. I am sure there would be no tendency to support a properly conceived organization if it were in the hands of inadequate personnel and that we should demand both excellent personnel and proper organization\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The positive result of the Hsiang-Ya conference on Experimental Medical Curriculum, discussed earlier, opened up a new possibility for linking \u201cmedical development\u201d with \u201csocial reconstruction\u201d as there existed a provincial health administration project, Farmers Cooperative that would welcome medical cooperation, and \u201cmany local social reconstruction projects\u201d that had already started, one example being the Nanshao Rural Reconstruction experiment where health was part of the program and in which Hsaing-Ya was cooperating.<\/p>\n

An Important Shift in Gunn\u2019s Strategy<\/h2>\n

A few months later, following a visit to Tinghsien, Gunn wrote Mason:<\/p>\n

Doctor Grant is up in the North, and he writes me very interestingly concerning the progress which is being made in bringing together Yenching, Nankai and Tinghsien. It looks as if we may be able to report later on that a really concrete beginning has been made towards providing the Social Sciences of two universities concerned with community laboratory facilities controlled in a manner not dissimilar to that used by the Natural Sciences in teaching and research. The significance of this may prove to be really important.<\/p>\n

The notion of a \u2018community laboratory\u2019 which Grant had used several years earlier and which Gunn used when he was in Europe, was common in colonial circles. ???<\/p>\n

Gunn\u2019s list of appropriations made during the first months following his arrival at the end of 1934 totaled just over US$300,000. Leading the list was the MEM (75,000), followed by grants to the National Health Administration (44,000), University of Nankai (42,000), and fellowships in China (38,000). Grants to other rural development activities included Yenching University (30,000), the Institute of Economics at Nankai (19,000), the National Central University (17,000), and the National Agricultural Research Bureau (17,000). The only possible \u201cnew items\u201d that Gunn could foresee at that point were \u201ca small appropriation for Lingnan University, and an increase in the appropriation for Yenching\u201d. Concerning the Natural Sciences, Gunn had decided that the Universities \u201cshould and could take care of these items in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n

The hopes expressed by Gunn for building his project around Tinghsien proved to be overly optimistic. Within a few months he was lamenting that \u201cDoctor Grant and myself have had a good deal of difficulty in getting the Chinese in these three institutions to cooperate as we had anticipated. These people are highly individualistic and we found that real cooperation was much more difficult to obtain than the \u2018lip service\u2019 which was given to the word \u2018cooperation\u2019 prior to our actual grants\u201d. Yen, in particular, was disinclined to yield to the opinions of others. While he was \u201calways warm, regardless of any differences of opinion,\u201d he \u201cwas inclined to dogmatism (believing) that his philosophy had all the answers\u2026. Perhaps it is natural that Jimmy Yen, who has been \u2018going it alone\u2019 for so many years finds it a bit irksome to have men from other institutions putting their fingers into his private pie. As a matter of fact, the weakness of Yen\u2019s work has been largely due to his lack of desire to give too great a prominence to men who have not been connected with his Movement\u201d.<\/p>\n

These sentiments led Gunn to indicate to Mason that it was \u201ctime for us to make hay slowly\u201d. While he was \u201cnaturally perturbed about the situation\u201d which was facing them, he had not come to feel \u201cthat we are facing failure in our Chinese venture\u201d. A more conservative approach was needed. He abandoned the idea of extensive visits to other areas because of the difficulties involved in making such visits without getting involved in ultimate financial assistance. Rather than focusing on \u201cthe more revolutionary concepts of the Tinghsien experiment\u201d, the objectives of the program could be \u201cbetter obtained through a concentration on University investigation and training into the community field\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since ongoing projects had only been funded for one year, Gunn proposed that he attend the meeting of the Trustees, scheduled for April 1936, to explain in more detail his ideas concerning the role of the Universities. Mason cabled acceptance on 17 October.<\/p>\n

Essentially this new direction moved the focus of the project from Tinghsien to the universities. By supporting Nanking University, for example, Gunn hoped to obtain \u201ca coordination of policy\u201d amongst its agricultural institutions, one \u201cwhich has been hitherto lacking\u201d. Professor Buck, who helped make Nanking\u2019s program in agricultural economics \u201cbecome pre-eminent in China,\u201d was working half time at the National Agricultural Research Bureau, which had been created in early 1934 and which then had \u201cmade very great strides.\u201d National Central University, which was also located in Nanking, was responsible for Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine, but whose training to date was \u201cmuch below professional standards,\u201d and in need of correction. Gunn expected that this University would \u201coccupy an increasingly dominant place in professional education due both to its location in the capital and to local educational circumstances\u201d. The major portion of the grant offered was for demonstrating satisfactory development of hog-raising as an important major field of animal husbandry. Another new direction outlined by Gunn was aimed to develop effective control of insects, a direction that had only received little attention to date in China.<\/p>\n

Gunn had to pressure the Nanking agricultural institutions to cooperate with each other. As he reported to Mason in March 1935 \u201csome of the Nanking University crowd \u2026 are not very keen toward cooperating with the Government [and] would like to see us finance their institution so that they could go ahead without any particular relationship to the National Central University Agricultural College or the National Agricultural Research Bureau\u201d. He concluded that the \u201cbest thing the Rockefeller Foundation could do in Nanking was to force the three institutions to work together\u201d.<\/p>\n

Working with individual institutions proved less complicated as witness Gunn helping Yenching University to develop a program for training personnel needed for reconstruction, although, earlier, he had had \u201csome doubts\u201d as to their sincerity, suspecting that their \u201cswing\u201d in favor of rural reconstruction \u201cwas motivated by the hope of getting money\u201d. He was now convinced of the \u201csincerity\u201d of its President, J Leighton Stuart, and the leading members of the various faculties of the University.<\/p>\n

As it had become \u201capparent \u2026 that an effective coordinated program must be still broader in scope than is possible within one single private organization [i.e. the MEM]\u201d, council was developed in the fall of 1936 that brought together all of the interested parties \u2013 the North China Council of Rural Reconstruction. This was a cooperative organization whose participating members were:<\/p>\n