Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/640

622 The farmer's work, like woman's, may be thought of as consisting of a variety of operations which may in thought be separated. But in practice they are bound together by his isolation, by the meteorological conditions which separate seed-time and harvest, and make them both so short that the rest of the year must be filled up with other duties or wholly lost; and by other circumstances too numerous to mention. So he, like the woman, must go pottering around at odd jobs, never acquiring in any one kind of work that time-saving, nerve-saving, attention-saving proficiency which is rated by all economists, since Adam Smith, as one of the three greatest advantages of specialization. In a general way, to be sure, the farmer may have a specialty. It may be wheat, it may be corn, it may be cotton, it may be hogs, cattle, wool, horses, or what not. Whatever specialty he has, he usually gets from the nature of his soil, his distance from the market, or some inherited skill or inclination. But it is not usually an exclusive specialty. It does not furnish the whole of his employment, but only the most important part of it. In fact, it is regarded as rather a misfortune than a blessing that his soil or other environs should bind him down to any one crop. Thus, the exclusive cultivation of cotton is considered an unfortunate thing for the farmers of some of our Southern States. The loan companies, whose existence and profits depend on their making a deep and candid study of this question of agricultural specialization, are always glad to advertise to their loaning customers that their borrowing customers live in what they call an "all-crop" region. Seasons are uncertain: in the "one-crop" region the ill-wind blows nobody good; in the "all-crop" region it blows everybody some good, and the people who have money to invest in farm-mortgages think this is not wholly offset by the correlative fact that in such regions the good wind is pretty apt to blow everybody some ill.

We have now discussed the obstacles to specialization which lie in the way of about three fourths, numerically, of the population of the civilized world—one half being women, and half the rest farmers. We may now pass to those industries and professions aside from farming which must be carried on in the country, or in villages, as well as in large towns and cities. We find them less highly specialized in the country than in the city. The physician and the journalist, spoken of in the beginning of this article, illustrate the difference. It is most perfectly pictured to the eye when we walk into a country store, with its groceries, dry-goods, ready-made clothing, boots and shoes, hats, books and stationery, hardware, tinware, queen'sware, etc., and then, after a short ride on the train, go the rounds of the city shops, where all these things are separately handled.

It needs no profound scientist to tell us why. We see at a glance that density of population conduces to specialization. This is one of the ways in which it relieves its own evil consequences. World-crowding increases the necessity of our making our mutual help more