EPILOGUE 5l 



irresistible force in the progress of civilization. He argues that as society 

 advances, the demands for "foodstuffs and materials for clothing," the 

 satisfaction of which has been one of the main tasks of the farmers, fall 

 off and other needs far more elastic arise in their place to be met. He 

 further adds that with the growth of commerce, trade, and industry, there 

 inevitably follows a rise in living standards; the professions and the service 

 callings increase; and the importance of agriculture wanes as that of non- 

 agricultural activities grows. Wrote this same economist: 



. . . Every progressive nation shows this. Even unsatisfactory data for a cen- 

 tury or more, such as those for Great Britain and the United States, bear elo- 

 quent testimony to it. The forces at work are well-nigh irresistible; the trends 

 they cause can be reversed, if at all, only at terrific cost. Where farmers still 

 constitute a high proportion to the total population, as in China, India, Bulgaria, 

 and the USSR, this is a symptom of a retarded civilization and a backward agri- 

 culture. 11 



No doubt the highly accelerated industrial order in which the farmers 

 operated was bound to afTect them adversely in various respects. One of 

 the big agrarian complaints of the twenties was that the interests of the 

 farmers either were "ignored or evaded by those responsible for the direc- 

 tion of national policies," and that the government, because it had fallen 

 into the hands of these elements, provided them with "a mechanism 

 through which special groups under the guise of law exploited those less 

 strategically placed." Professor E. R. A. Seligman, a leading economist 

 in his day, wrote: 



If there were no tariff on industrial products the farmer could secure many 

 of his articles, both of production and consumption, at a lower price; if there 

 were no restrictive immigration law he could secure his farm labor at a cheaper 

 rate; if there were no adherence to outgrown methods of taxation he would 

 not have to suffer the unfair burdens which now rest upon him; if credit con- 

 ditions were as satisfactory in agriculture as in business he could secure his 

 capital more cheaply; if freight rates were so adjusted as to put the emphasis 

 still further upon value than upon bulk, his outlays would be reduced. 12 



11. Joseph S. Davis, On Agricultural Policy, 1926-1938 (Stanford, Calif., 1939), 

 pp. 439-40. 



12. E. R. A. Seligman, The Economics of Farm Relief (New York, 1929), quoted 

 by Cassius Clay in The Mainstay of American Individualism (New York, 1935), 

 pp. 58-59. 



