AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Percentage 



Date Engaged in 



Agriculture 



1820 87, 1 



1840 77-5 



1870 47-5 



1880 44-3 



1890 39.2 



1 900 35-6 



Perhaps the most important explanation of this 

 more rapid increase in the percentage of those 

 engaged in other occupations than agriculture, is 

 the transfer of a share of the agricultural popula- 

 tion to the other industries. This has often been 

 spoken of as the movement from the country to 

 the city. Men who have long been farmers 

 sometimes move to the cities and enter other occu- 

 pations, but what is more significant than this is 

 the movement of the farm boys from country to 

 city. A large percentage of the boys who are 

 brought up in the country are educated and sent 

 into the city, where they enter occupations of 

 every description. A large percentage of the men 

 who control the industries of cities to-day were 

 one time farm boys. 



This movement from country to city has been 

 especially rapid in the last twenty years and that 

 for two reasons : First, agricultural methods 

 have been transformed by the introduction of 

 labor-saving machinery, until a much smaller per- 

 centage of the total working population is re- 

 quired to produce the same supply per capita of 



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