CAPITALISTIC AGRICULTURE 175 



arrogate to himself the title of " business man" and look down on 

 the farmer as a mere tiller of the soil. 



Capitalistic Agriculture. When agriculture in America became 

 a capitalistic business, there came also a new attitude towards 

 credit. The word "credit" came into use in place of the old word 

 "debt." Debt was no longer considered a badge of dishonor, a 

 mark of non-prosperity, or even as something to be avoided. The 

 practice of the great public utility corporations, particularly the 

 railroads, of piling up big debts, at low rates of interest, in long 

 term bonds, invested in income yielding property, and with the 

 fixed business policy of never paying off these debts (but of re- 

 funding them) proved suggestive to agriculture. Why should a 

 railroad, for instance, keep out of debt, when it can borrow at 

 4 per cent and make a return of 8 per cent on this money? Evi- 

 dently, the more a railroad could increase its debt provided 

 always the interest rate was low, the investment safe, and the 

 return large the better off it would be financially. The instinct' 

 of the individual farmer, however, leads him to desire to own his 

 farm in fee simple and free from encumbrance. But for the sake 

 of securing the balanced investment of land, labor, and capital, 

 it has come to mean in many cases that the farmer must borrow. 

 The social significance of farm credit and a permanent agriculture 

 is apparently grasped by but few writers and speakers. The 

 country is under obligation to Dean Thomas Forsyth Hunt of 

 the University of California for clearly seeing this problem and 

 in clearly stating it to his country. 1 Quoting from his remarks 

 on this subject we have the following excerpts: 



"As long as the people in the country raise larger families than those in 

 the cities, and the cities continue to grow faster than the country, it follows 

 that in the cities every generation must be affected by the character of the 

 previous generation in the country. 



"New York and Boston are rapidly becoming un-American cities for the 

 simple reason that they do not raise enough children to maintain, let alone 

 increase, their population. Almost exactly one-half of the people of Manhattan 

 are foreign-born. Less than 15 per cent have two American-born parents. 

 Los Angeles' has become the puritanic center of America; Boston is now the 

 second Dublin of the world. Hoboken does not dare to have a parade on the 

 Fourth of July. Unless our children occupy the country, our grandchildren 

 will not occupy the cities. It is the people who occupy the land who will 

 eventually inherit the earth ... If farms must be recapitalized at least three 

 times in a century; if young men are born into the world without capital to 

 finance them; if the permanence of society is dependent upon a rural popula- 

 tion, not merely because it creates wealth, but because it grows children, then 

 what are we going to do about it? ... For years the savings of the people 

 have been used in developing railways, manufacturing plants, department 



1 64 Cong. 1 Sess. Senate Doc. 239. 



