Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/562

550 problem of combined action, consequently he has not fully "realized" upon his energies. The economic loss, however, great as it is, is but a trifle, compared with the woeful waste of social energy. From this comes that abiding soul weariness suffered by so many farmers, and still more by their wives and their children. This, again, reacts against their economic value."

If the farmer is doomed to have a poorer social life than men in other vocations, then the bright farmer's boys, naturally craving those things which sweeten and brighten human life, will not stay upon the farm, and the force which drives them into their share of associated life is just as natural and just as much to be counted upon as the force which drives the wind through the tree tops. If the girl who engages in domestic labor is doomed to a narrow social life, if she is isolated from her family and natural industrial associations, then it follows that the brightest girl will not engage in domestic labor, but will follow the natural trend of their times, towards factory work and associated effort.

The cry of the whip-poor-will never struck so lonely upon the heart of the young man sitting in the dusk upon the farmhouse porch as it did last summer, because the farm work itself and the farmhouse production has never been so far away from the spirit and tendency of its times. All over the country various experiments are being made to reorganize the conditions of farm life, that the farmers may live in villages, where may be sustained some of the higher forms of education and social civilization. Will women again fail in this time of reorganization, as they utterly failed to reorganize their half of the world's work, upon the introduction of the factory system? Will they utterly disregard the lonely girl within their household, and when she demands a fuller life, and leaves that household, will they weakly continue to complain, rather than make a vigorous effort for bringing household industry into the trend of the times? To fail to apprehend the tendency of one's age, and to fail to adapt the conditions of an industry to it is to leave that industry ill adjusted and belated.