RELATIONS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY 729 



contrasting effects of capitalism are produced; and these contrasting 

 effects alone make the " flat land " in Europe appear as the support 

 of a separate " rural society." For with the conditions of old 

 civilized countries the differences caused by capitalism assume the 

 character of a cultural contest. Two social tendencies resting upon 

 entirely heterogeneous bases wrestle with each other. The old 

 economic constitution asked: How can I give, on this given soil, work 

 and sustenance to the greatest possible number of men? Capitalism 

 asks: How can I produce as many crops as possible for the market 

 from this given soil with as few men as possible. From the technical 

 economical point of view of capitalism the old rural settlement of 

 the country is, therefore, considered overpopulation. Capitalism 

 produces the crops from the soil in mines, foundries, and machine 

 factories. The past of thousands of years struggles against the 

 invasion of the capitalistic spirit. 



This combat assumes, however, partly the form of peaceable trans- 

 formation. As to certain points of agricultural production the little 

 peasant, if he knows how to free himself from the fetters of tradition, 

 is able to adapt himself to the conditions of the new husbandry. 

 The rising rate of rent in the vicinity of the cities, the rising prices for 

 meat, dairy products, and garden vegetables, the intensive care of the 

 young cattle, which the self-working small farmer can employ, con- 

 nected with the higher expense for hired men, usually opens very 

 favorable opportunities to the little farmer who works without hired 

 assistance, near wealthy centres of industry. This is the case every- 

 where, where the process of production is developed in the direction 

 of increasing intensity of labor, not of capital. 



The former peasant is transformed here, as we observe in France 

 and southwestern Germany, into a laborer who is in the possession 

 of his means of production and perseveres in this independence, be- 

 cause the intensity and high quality of his work, increased by his 

 private interest in it, and his adaptability of it to the demand of 

 the local market, procures for him an economical superiority, which 

 continues to exist, even where the agriculture on a large scale would 

 preponderate technically. 



The great success of the formation of corporations among the small 

 farmers of the Continent must be ascribed to these peculiar advan- 

 tages which, in certain branches of production, the work of the 

 responsible small agriculturists possesses in opposition to the hired 

 labor of the large farmer. These corporations have proved to be the 

 most influential means of the peasants' education for husbandry. But 

 through these corporations new communities of husbandry are created, 

 which bind the peasants together, and change this way of economic 

 thinking and feeling from the purely individualistic form which the 

 economic struggle for existence in industry assvmes under the pres. 



