GENERAL PRINCIPLES 23 



At the same time an unmarried farmer is at a still greater 

 disadvantage. In most cases he must live on his farm, in all 

 cases it is to his advantage to do so. The sparseness of the 

 agricultural population makes it impossible to depend upon board- 

 ing houses. The geometrical as well as the social conditions of 

 farm life dictate that there shall be an independent household 

 on every farm. No such set of conditions exists in the city. The 

 unmarried business man and the unmarried business woman 

 may suffer moral and social loss, but they can scarcely be said 

 to be under the slightest disadvantage in a purely business sense. 

 The farmer needs a wife as a part of his business equipment 

 because, on the farm, the home is a part of the business and 

 the business a part of the home. Accordingly there are, in the 

 country, very few of those old unmarried males who infest the 

 business and professional circles of our cities. The sexes need 

 one another in the work as well as in the life of the country. 

 Partly for this reason, and partly because of the more wholesome 

 and normal style of living in the country, there is a more whole- 

 some attitude of the sexes toward one another than is found in 

 the city, particularly in certain business and professional circles, 

 where the artificialities of life are most abnormally developed. 



Finally, farming is almost the only occupation left where the 

 child can, under wholesome conditions, contribute a share of the 

 work necessary to the support of the family of which he. is a 

 part. Where children work at other occupations the conditions 

 are usually so abnormal, and so morally or physically unwhole- 

 some, that a strong prejudice has arisen against child labor as 

 such. There are stronger objections to child idleness than to 

 child labor. A certain amount of work under wholesome condi- 

 tions is necessary for the physical, mental, and moral develop- 

 ment of the average child. The farm furnishes those conditions, 

 la the first place the child can work with the parents, learning 

 from and being guided by them. In the second place, the work 



