Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/256

252 because food is expensive there should be more farmers? It is found that lima beans retailing in New York City for $4.80 a bushel paid the Long Island farmer who grew them 30 cents a bushel, after making allowance for commission and freight charges. Surely the additional charges on food due to the middleman is no justification for more men to engage in agriculture. Food is still cheap as it leaves the hands of the farmer.

Let us also admit the prevalence of unscientific and wasteful methods of agriculture. There is certainly great need of reforming the practise of farming. The abuses of agriculture are so patent, such as the keeping of inferior stock, the neglect of farm machinery in the west, the impoverishment of the soil due to lack of proper rotation of crops and fertilizing, and improper methods of tillage, that public interest has been aroused. But this aspect of agriculture surely does not warrant the cry of back to the land, but rather a demand for more intelligence in production. Indeed, with more scientific farming fewer men would be needed on the land. The increased use of machinery on the farm has already decimated the rural population. It by no means follows from the high cost of farm products at retail or from the evident waste from poor agricultural methods that a relative increase in agricultural population is desirable.

The need of clearness in regard to the real basis for the size of agricultural as compared with urban population is evident. There must be some rather definite relationship between country and city populations, lying deeper than passing modes of thought or superficial enthusiasms. Is there not a question as to whether there should be a relatively larger agricultural population? May it not even be disastrous eventually for migration countrywards to be stimulated? That there are acute questions in regard to the farm and life in country must be admitted. But the very common assumption that there should be a movement back to the farm, in the sense of numbers, may be open to doubt.

May we not first of all dismiss the idea that people leave the farm primarily because of preference for city life? As a matter of fact the country makes an immense appeal to millions of people who are forced to live in cities to earn a living. The hardships of the farm, such as are not forms of poverty, would hardly deter people from living on farms. Hardships did not prevent the "forty-niners" from seeking gold, nor do hardships of weather, exposure, or isolation successfully oppose the seeking of wealth in any field.

It may perhaps be safely argued that the number of persons engaged in any occupation bears a very close relation to the economic attractions offered. If the ease of securing gainful employment is greater in city than in country nothing will prevent a transfer of population. If a farmer with a capital of $4,000 can by moving to town get as much for