Cook: City and Country 



171 



tinguish predatory profits from legiti- 

 mate returns for the labor of production 

 and distribution. Fixing of prices may 

 not be feasible, but relative values 

 of different products may be recognized 

 to avoid the dangerously artificial 

 "values" that speculation develops. 

 With markets once stabilized, we 

 would look back to our present com- 

 mercial vicissitudes as not much better 

 than trading cotton bales for lottery 

 tickets. 



Impro\-ing agriculture by lending 

 more money to farmers is another ur- 

 ban remedy, more specious than practi- 

 cal. How shall credit facilities be 

 equalized while farming remains pre- 

 carious and unprofitable in comparison 

 with urban industries? Many fann 

 products are too perishable to serve 

 as security for loans, and even an 

 imperishable article like cotton is 

 subject to speculative impairment of 

 value. Too much credit is given for 

 speculative farming, to those with 

 little knowledge or judgment, who rush 

 in to make fortunes from high-priced 

 crops. The financial risks of such 

 undertakings are not good, and regular 

 producers are injured by having their 

 markets destroyed or stampeded 

 Loaning and speculating are "business 

 industries" that are easily overdone, 

 and sap too much from production. 

 Not a larger use of credit by farmers, 

 but less need of horroiving money and 

 paying interest would mark a real 

 improvement in the economic status 

 of agriculture. 



The relations of city and country are 

 becoming acute because the city has 

 so many new ways to reach out to 

 the country. Urban propaganda have 

 gained an enormous momentum. Even 

 farm pa,pers are published in cities, 

 and draw rural apostles to town. In 

 primitive times, with facilities of com- 

 munication undeveloped, urban parasi- 

 tism could destroy only neighboring 

 populations, but modern cities draw 

 supplies and people from remote re- 

 gions. Tendencies that under more 

 primitive conditions would work out 

 in centuries may now become effective 

 in decades. 



ROME FELL WHEN ITS AGRICULTURE 

 DECAYED 



It is the way of civilizations to 

 become urbanized, and of city popula- 

 tions to lose touch with agriculture. 

 The farm is where we climb up the 

 scale of civilization, the city where we 

 run down. Our nearest analogy is 

 with Rome, an imperial republic that 

 outgrew the older nations and centered 

 the activities of the Mediterranean 

 world. Liberty enlightens and ener- 

 gizes, but with progress more rapid 

 there is more danger of running com- 

 pletely off the track. In the construc- 

 tive phase of their civilization the 

 Romans were devoted to farming, but 

 agriculture decayed in the period of 

 political and commercial expansion. 

 "For many centuries war and the 

 cultivation of the soil were regarded 

 as the only occupations befitting a 

 free-born citizen." Yet a few centuries 

 of urbanism wrought complete destruc- 

 tion. The Roman agriculture had a 

 family organization at first, slavery 

 during the period of foreign conquest 

 in the late republic, and tenant- 

 serfdom in the stage of imperial 

 decline. 



Cato and other patriotic statesmen 

 foresaw the ruin of the Roman system 

 when agriculture began to decay, 

 Augustus and Maecenas were at pains 

 to enlist the talent of Virgil and Horace, 

 to secure the most attractive expres- 

 sion of the rural traditions and ideals 

 of the nation, and lead the currents of 

 thought away from the city, Rernedial 

 legislation in many forms was at- 

 tempted, and especially to attract 

 tenant-farmers to the public lands, but 

 production and population continued 

 to decline. A fever of speculation 

 ravaged the Roman world in the last 

 centuries of the republic, and added 

 to the devastation of the civil wars. 

 Feeding and amusing the urban pro- 

 letariat became the chief tasks of the 

 government, until the whole parasitic 

 system broke down and was swept 

 away by the northern barbarians. 



That our age is more scientific — 

 more inclined to investigate and recog- 

 nize facts — should give us better 



