Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/264

 260 The formation of a numerous and influential suburban type of people may, therefore, be anticipated for three reasons: the introduction of new methods of transmitting and distributing power; an increasing demand for goods of a varied, unstandardized character; and the development of scientific intensive agriculture. The development of such a social type may be hastened by appropriate legislative action. The city will gradually take on many desirable rural characteristics; and, on the other hand, the country will receive the benefits of many hitherto purely urban conveniences. The characteristic rural and urban types will present fewer dissimilar and discordant features. Decentralization—the merging of the urban and rural into the suburban—only can remove the well-known antagonism between the interests of city and country. State political machines have been constructed upon the foundations laid and cemented by this mutual antagonism and distrust between the city man and the farmer. True representative government breaks down and becomes a farce in the face of such an unfortunate situation. This line of demarcation may, as the suburb grows, be expected to fade away until the two types blend into the suburban; and then the forbidding menace to our democratic institutions caused by the distinct and often divergent interests of country and city will be, in a large measure, removed. Legislative power can not initiate or suppress such a social and industrial movement, but it can accelerate or retard such a tendency.