10 Jan., 1919.] Ajnerica and Australia Compared. 13 



history, and abundance of cheap food a tale that is told by the grand- 

 father dozing in his dotage. 



America, too, must evolve a permanent agriculture — a thing no coun- 

 try has yet succeeded in establishing. For no race of people has suc- 

 ceeded in feeding itself except at the expense of the fertility of their 

 own or some other country. 



The Chinese are often pointed out as a people who have solved the 

 problem of a permanent agriculture and a permanent food supply, yet 

 reliable authorities affirm that on the highlands of China there are 

 regions once peopled, and now abandoned, where for stretches of 10 

 miles no man lives. China, with its population of 400 to the square 

 mile, must presently either move, adopt new methods, or starve. 



So much for what may be called the business side of agriculture — 

 an agriculture reasonably profitable, highly productive, and certainly 

 permanent. What now on the human side? What is to be the develop- 

 ment of the farmer as a man to match the development of his business. 

 as an occupation? 



Agriculture is not only a business, but it is a mode of life as well, 

 and if it is to be successful in the latter, it must afford its devotees the 

 same comforts of life as are obtainable in other occupations. This has 

 not hitherto been possible, but its realization is becoming every day more 

 probable, for one of the distinctive developments in American farm life 

 is the establishment of comforts and conveniences. 



The rural telephone, adequate lighting and water systems, the use 

 of shelter and ornamental trees, the development of the farm garden, 

 and the installation of toilet facilities are becoming common features in 

 the farm homes of America. The farmer has hitherto provided himself 

 with all sorts of machinery and ingenious mechanical devices to cheapen 

 production, and make labour easier for himself, his hired help, and even 

 his animals. 



In the meantime the wife is given no real domestic conveniences and 

 no comfortable home— she lives and scrapes along for the day when tha 

 family will build its home in town and " have the conveniences." 



Many a man has turned his back upon the farm that made his 

 wealth, and stripped the land of its fertility to build in the town the 

 home to which the farm was entitled. This tendency had become so 

 widespread in America as to excite public alarm, and no one topic is 

 featured in the findings of the Country Life Commission more than the 

 abandonment of the farm at the stage of house building. 



Farming and pioneering started off together, and the life of the 

 pioneer farmer was hard, not because he was a farmer, but because he 

 was a pioneer. Nature was unsubdued, men and women were poor, 

 and life was hard indeed when necessities were counted as luxuries. But 

 those days are over on real agricultural lands, and farming is coming 

 into its own; but it will not come fully into its own until farmers learn 

 to build comfortable houses for themselves and their children, and instal 

 some of the conveniences that are regarded as essential in every city 

 home. That is Avhat is meant by saying the country must be comfort- 

 able. 



Finally, the men and women who live upon the land and till the 

 soil — it is really the nation's soil and not theirs — should be given an 



