AGRICULTURAL POPULATION 251 



THE QUESTION OF AGRICULTURAL POPULATION 



Bx Professor ARLAND D. WEEKS 



NORTH DAKOTA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



IN current discussions of country life there seems to be the implica- 

 tion if not the direct claim that the urban population of the 

 nation is relatively too large as compared with country population. 

 Regret is general because boys and girls leave the farm. The steady 

 regression of percentage of rural as compared with urban population 

 in the decades of our national life gives rise to apprehension. It is 

 held as a disquieting fact that so many agricultural counties — 230 by 

 the last census — should show an absolute decline in population, while 

 the growth of cities is phenomenal. 



There are no doubt many reasons for the sentiment in favor of a 

 larger agricultural population. We have not yet come to believe in the 

 city as a normal mode of life. When the older people of the United 

 States were young the country took precedence over the city, and the 

 experiences of childhood passed on the farm perhaps affect the point 

 of view at present. The sentimental claims of agricultural life no 

 doubt color our economics. The sentiment, too, for a return to nature, 

 recrudescing periodically with Horace, Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau, 

 and John Burroughs, and always deep in the nature of man, fallaciously 

 carries with it the inference that the agricultural population should be 

 relatively large. Of course, the desire for living close to nature has 

 no connection with the economic question of how large the actual agri- 

 cultural population should be. 



But among the most active causes of interest in agricultural popu- 

 lation is the high retail price of food. The products of the farm reach 

 the consumer at high expense. It matters little to the consumer where 

 the increase of cost attaches, so long as he must pay prices which by 

 comparison with those formerly prevailing seem to be those of famine. 

 There is perhaps a lurking feeling that farm products should not cost 

 much. The time was when to help oneself to fruit from the farmer's 

 trees or invade his vegetable garden bore not the slightest resemblance 

 to larceny — it simply showed a confidence in the philanthropic nature 

 of farming. Things were "free" in the country, though no one, of 

 course, would feel free to carry off a peck of lead pencils from a sta- 

 tioner's or half a bushel of rubber balls from a toy store. 



Let us admit the acceptability of cheaper food. How does this 

 affect the question of agricultural population? Does it follow that 



