1912] Rural Depopulation in Southern Ontario. 267 



members of the household specialised, for instance, in spinning and the 

 production of clothes. When the factory system of weaving and garment- 

 making superseded the old domestic system, what wonder that such 

 persons left the farm and betook themselves to the cities and towns, 

 where alone the power was available to run the machinery of the new 

 factories? Who would expect them to remain at home and compete with 

 the machines — a method of procedure which would have been both un- 

 economic for the country and hopeless for themselves? And if still 

 others who were better at house-building than at grain-growing left 

 the farm and devoted themselves to the occupation for which they were 

 best suited, is there not an economic gain here also? Here again we have 

 Adam Smith's principle of the division of labour: "Let every man do only 

 that which he can do best, and the total product of the community will 

 be the greatest possible." The whole displacement of Ontario's rural 

 population during the past ha!f-century is due to this law of the divi- 

 sion of labour which has taken people who are not fitted for farm work 

 away from it, or to the invention of labour-saving machinery which has 

 freed agricultural labourers for the opening up of the West. Both of 

 these causes are productive of economic gain, and help to produce a 

 greater quantity of wealth in the country. 



Has this not been the case? Is not the average farmer to-day ever 

 so much better off than he was fifty years ago, and is not the production of 

 a given number of people engaged in agricultural pursuits much greater 

 than it has ever been in the past? The average annual product on the 

 Ontario farm of to-day, according to the Department of Agriculture, is 

 worth about $2000. Even in the last decade there has been a striking 

 increase in rural wealth, as far as we can see from the assessment rolls. 

 The Ontario Bureau of Industries shows that in 1900, 1,094,241 persons 

 resident in the townships of the Province were assessed for $453,917,203, 

 or a trifle under $415 per head, while in 1909, 1,049,240 persons were 

 assessed for $607,173,285, or over $578 per head. 



The case then seems quite clear that the decline of our rural popu- 

 lation is due to causes predominantly economic, and that on the whole 

 it has been productive of great economic benefits to society. Critics 

 and sentimental laudatores temporis acti who believe that it implies a 

 weakening of the fibre of the younger generation are absolutely in the 

 wrong. Both the westward movement and the movement from the 

 country to the cities are simply due to the desire for the economic better- 

 ment of the individual, which generally coincides with the best interests 

 of society. Since this desire is the strongest motive of mankind, it is 

 as vain for the critics to combat it with the ordinary superficial "back to 

 the farm" address as to drive back the Atlantic with a mop. 



