112 



The Journal of Heredity 



varied conditions. Neither the theory 

 nor the practice of agriculture can be 

 reduced to the simple system or prs- 

 scribed routine of an industrial opera- 

 tion. The farmer knows by experience 

 how the soils vary, even in parts of the 

 same field, and that every season 

 brings new combinations of conditions. 

 Each variety of plant, each breed of 

 animals is different, with special habits 

 and qualities that capable farmers 

 recognize and take into account, as 

 affecting production, home uses, and 

 market requirements. 



Farmers ha\'e perennial novelty and 

 interest in their work, and thus are able 

 to live without the artificial "pleasures" 

 that city people crave as a relief from 

 the monotony of a routine existence. 

 The urban idea of agriculture, as a kind 

 of serfdom or privation that needs to be 

 alleviated, takes no account of the 

 more normal functions and deeper 

 satisfactions of rural life. The true 

 urbanite does not understand why any- 

 body would stay in the country and do 

 farm work, except under compulsion. 

 He would not think of living or of tak- 

 ing his family to a farm home that 

 lacked the domestic conveniences of 

 light, heat, running water, baths and 

 sewage disposal, as provided in modern 

 cities. Although it is easier to have 

 "modern improvements" in city houses, 

 this does not justify neglect of health 

 and comfort in farm homes, unless farm 

 people are to be reckoned as an inferior 

 or peasant class, as in foreign countries. 

 Painful contrasts are often to be noticed 

 between the many good houses in 

 towns, and the few comfortable homes 

 in the surrounding country, even in 

 rich agricultural districts. Such dis- 

 parity is an alarming portent to all who 

 believe with Roosevelt, that "our 

 civilization rests at bottom on the 

 wholesomcness, the attractiveness, and 

 the cojnpleleness, as well as the pros- 

 perity', (A life in the coinitry." 



Farming is facilitated by modern 

 implements, in the sense that fewer 

 men are ref|uired, but running com- 

 plicated machines and keeping them in 

 repair is harder and more exacting work 

 than the old hand labor. Certainly the 



conditions and comforts of farm life 

 have not improved in proportion to the 

 use of machinery. The chief social 

 effect of "labor-saving" inventions thus 

 far is that more people find ways to 

 retire from th^ work of production and 

 live in idleness, or engage in nonproduc- 

 tive urban activities. It seems natural 

 to city people to be supported by others, 

 and furnished with luxuries and amuse- 

 ments. Lightening the load of labor 

 has begun with the shorter hours that 

 urban workers of Eurf)pe and America 

 have secured, but farming still is done 

 on the "Can to Can't" system, as they 

 say in Texas, "from the time w^hen you 

 can see to the time when you can't." 

 The use of machinery has not brought 

 the "universal opulence" and "general 

 plenty" that were to diffuse through the 

 machine-using nations, according to the 

 prophecy of Adam Smith in the 

 famous chapter on division of labor, 

 in "The Wealth of Nations." If the 

 true cost of a thing is the amount of 

 life that must be exchanged for it, our 

 industrial system is very imperfect. 

 Some find themselves compelled to 

 work all their lives without getting a 

 living, while others are deprived of 

 work and discontented from ha\ing 

 nothing to do. 



Leisure as well as wealth must be 

 shared by the city with the country, 

 to afford equal opportunities of prog- 

 ress. Freedom from too continuous 

 labor is necessary to give us time to see 

 and think, to cultivate the fields of 

 science and develop the arts. The 

 urban prepossessions of our educational 

 systems need especially to be challenged 

 and displaced, before our minds can be 

 liberated to think constructi\ely about 

 agriculture or other fundamental prob- 

 lems. Factory methods are out of place 

 in education no less than in farming, 

 lulucation is o\'er-grown as a system, 

 but poorly dexelopt-d as an art. Chil- 

 (Irc)i uecd full coiitacls with nature and 

 -with parents and i^^rand parents as in the 

 life of the farm, instead of being 

 bulked and graded mechanically with 

 other children of the same age for 

 formal instruction in schools. The 

 world of plants and animals is the 



