Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/181

Rh What this change has meant is difficult to state in few words. This shifting in population is effect as well as cause. Parallel with it has gone the development of factories, which has taken many industries to the city which were once a part of farm life. And it is to be remembered that whatever affects the economic life affects also the social life in all its institutionalized expression. So the home life on the farm, the country church, the country school, all have been influenced by these changes. Likewise with the development of machinery, farming is being made more and more scientific. Hand labor is therefore disappearing, and cooperation between farmers along with it. So the old life on the farm, that was in itself a broad education, is gone, and it is the legitimate function of the school to fill this gap. But it is not yet filled, for legislation has constructed a school adapted to the old days, when wealth was evenly distributed, and democratic ideals were best met by systems of local control and local support.

In this age of city-building it is interesting to note the tendency toward the operation of farms by tenants. In 1880 there were 74.5 per cent. of the farms operated by owners. In 1910 this had decreased to 62 per cent. At this rate the absent landlord will be supreme ruler in the course of a few generations. The accompanying table will be illuminating in this connection. True, the price of land has raised

(having almost doubled in the past ten years), and it is necessary, therefore, for each succeeding generation to remain as tenant a little longer than the generation before; true also that the number of farmers who are retiring to a quiet city life, but holding their farms, is increasing; and true that city investors are buying land but not farming it. So, if it is not a wilful desertion of the farm in all cases, it is nevertheless bringing the question of absent landlordism among us, and that is not a wholesome tendency. It should be remembered that this has been the tendency in the face of a vast supply of cheap government land, which will soon be a thing of the past. And now, add to this the further fact that the number of farms under mortgage is on the increase, having risen from about 28 per cent. of all the farms in 1890, to nearly 34 per cent. in 1910, and we seem to complete the evidence that something needs to be done if we are to succeed as an agricultural people.

It will only darken the picture to add that the per cent. of illiteracy