RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 717 



intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of a people, as well as 

 to their physical evolution. Perhaps the most encouraging character- 

 istic of the times is the improvement in farm-life in respect to the 

 means of culture. Formerly the isolation and loneliness of country 

 life was the chief cause of that exodus from country to city which 

 until recently continued to depopulate our rural communities. It is 

 a sad fact that the majority of the inmates of our insane asylums in 

 these states are women, a large per cent of them farmers' wives, sent 

 to the hospitals as a result of melancholy induced by the narrowness 

 and monotony of their lives. But now all these conditions are im- 

 proving. The consolidated school and free transportation of pupils 

 is fast converting the little " red schoolhouse " into a centre of vital 

 community life. The rural free delivery of mails takes not only the 

 letters of friends, but the daily papers and illustrated magazines, 

 into all the farm-homes; the telephone makes visiting easy for lone- 

 some women; and the traveling library stimulates many to improve 

 their minds, who would otherwise live in stupid ignorance. Many of 

 the features which formerly made farm-life so distasteful and narrow- 

 ing, even maddening at times, are thus being removed; and many of 

 the advantages, which heretofore could be had only in the city, are 

 being put within the reach of those who spend their lives on the farm. 



Every one concedes in a general way that the prosperity of one 

 class diffuses itself throughout the whole community; but good 

 harvests are far more valuable and important to the people than 

 prosperity anywhere else. Agriculture not only provides food and 

 raw material for those engaged in manufacture and commerce, but 

 good harvests increase the purchasing power of the largest and most 

 intelligent body of our citizenship, scattered throughout the whole 

 land. The relation of the farmer to the merchant, the miner, and the 

 manufacturer, is indeed a reciprocal one. Each consumes what the 

 other produces. In the circle of trade, whatever produces a demand 

 at any one point accelerates the amount and velocity of exchange in 

 all directions. Good crops, by supplying the manufacturer, mer- 

 chant, and miner with food or raw materials, are, the world over, the 

 chief factor in profitable exchange. 



But abundant harvests signify even more than this. Every series of 

 exchanges must have a beginning, and the first step in starting the 

 movement of products must be taken by those who supply the ele- 

 mentary and vital wants of the race. The miner will dig no ore, the 

 manufacturer make no machinery, the merchant store no goods, until 

 he knows or thinks he knows that somebody wants these things; but 

 the farmer, being very sure that everybody wants food at all times, is 

 sure to plant and to reap, whether there is an expressed demand for 

 his produce or not. The nature of the demand, it is true, will decide 

 for him which seed he should sow and whether on one or two acres; 



