Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/258

254 goods, the product of cities, occupy the space between the indefinitely extended sides of an acute angle.

Hence it is that the future belongs to the non-agricultural sphere, for we may assume an indefinitely rising standard of living among all classes. Non-agricultural goods and occupations are bound to increase their lead over straight agriculture commensurately with advancing civilization, which implies the acquirement of more wants of acceptable type. Were man but to feed and sleep the case were different. Inasmuch as population, urban and rural, must be correlated with the production of goods and corresponding income there is reason for believing that the drift toward the occupations at present largely local to cities must be accepted as a final decree of civilization.

It is true, of course, that the farm is the source of many materials which enter into manufactured articles. But where manufacturing processes are superimposed on agricultural production, the selling price of the final product is rarely divided at all equally between the farm and the factory. A farmer sells a hide for about the sum received by the department store for a purse. Whole wheat breakfast foods return the farmer one cent to 11 cents for other industries, the wool in a suit of clothes returns the grower $1.84, while the finished suit is sold by the tailor for $50. Wherever finishing processes are applied to raw farm products, whether in the case of Saratoga chips or peanut candy, the division of the final selling price is usually overwhelmingly in favor of the non-agricultural industries.

Unquestionably in many cases the division is unfair. The farmer does not get enough and other participators get too much. Considering the unflagging labor for long hours on the farm and the almost desperate struggle waged on many a farm for income, it is beyond doubt that the exploitation of the farmer has been equaled by nothing except the factory system at its worst or the institution of slavery. When one considers that a real cabbage must be sold by the farmer for cents while an artificial rose will sell for dollars the irony of the farmer's position is manifest. A steer sold by the farmer for $80 is served in fashionable restaurants for $2,500. The current division of values between farm and city industries is one of the monstrosities of civilization, the correction of which would steady the flow of population to cities, perhaps even suddenly check it for a period, but in view of the nature of human wants the ultimate dominance of city occupations can not be gainsaid.

Assuming a tendency toward correlation between agricultural and urban wealth and population, it is interesting to note the relative standing of city and country at the present time. Is the national population divided between country and city in proportion to the division of wealth?

While the last census gives the rural population as 53.7 per cent, of