;i2 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



required for the successful management of the corporations which 

 control the great industrial enterprises of modern times finds 

 the seat of its business activity within the confines of cities. 

 Further, those engaged in professional pursuits who receive large 

 rewards for their services, as well as the large and increasing 

 class of skilled and well-paid mechanics found in every progres- 

 sive society, live in the midst of city surroundings. Owing to the 

 inertia of the agriculturist and his inability to adapt himself to 

 many of the more highly paid positions of the city, the unequal 

 rewards of urban and rural workers are not rapidly reduced to a 

 level. That is, city and country form two distinct and non-com- 

 petitive groups of industrial society. The foregoing suggestions 

 still further explain the greater progress of the cities in the race 

 for riches. 



8. Our study has thus far been confined to the economic 

 forces in modern society which have promoted the more rapid 

 increase and accumulation of urban than of rural wealth. But 

 the problem we are considering is not explainable on economic 

 grounds alone. These are fundamental, for economy of produc- 

 tion has made necessary concentration of wealth in cities, and 

 this has made concentration of population indispensable to getting 

 a living ; but the social tendencies of our century have also been 

 toward the densely populated centers. Cities, with their density 

 of population and vast aggregation of values, are not only essen- 

 tial to economy of production, but are also able to command such 

 superior and attractive social, educational, and religious advantages 

 that many people of means move from the farm to the city. In 

 the olden time, before the rise of the factory system, many who 

 longed for social life had to endure the loneliness, dullness, and 

 monotony flowing from the isolation of farm life. But the advent 

 of the railroad and the rise of the modern system of industry 

 provide for such an avenue of escape to the greater social oppor- 

 tunities of city life. All the advantages which man's social nature 

 craves the theater, the picture gallery, the public library, church 

 privileges, the daily newspaper, intercourse with one's fellow men, 

 the sight of the bustling crowd in short, all that goes to make 

 social opportunity, are to be had most readily near the great 



