TEE PROBLEM FOR THE RURAL SCHOOL 



177 



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 remem- 

 bered 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 legiti- 

 mate 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, there- 

 fore, 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 



