24 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



of the farm or the farm household includes many desultory oper- 

 ations, commonly known as chores, which do not require long 

 hours or continuous and sustained attention. For this kind of 

 work the child is physically and mentally adapted, since he is 

 what might be called a desultory creature, whereas he is un- 

 adapted for any work which requires continuous attention to the 

 same operation hour after hour and day after day. Again, a 

 part at least of the farm work is done out of doors, and chil- 

 dren do not suffer from close confinement as they do in stores, 

 mines, and factories. 



Because of the help which children can, without harm to 

 themselves, render in the work of the farm, they can pay, in part 

 at least, the cost of their upbringing. This is another reason 

 why marriages are, as a rule, earlier and families larger in the 

 country than in the city. It is sometimes insinuated that such 

 motives ought to have no place in the problems of marriage and 

 of family life. Such insinuations, however, are based upon an 

 idealism which is not only impractical but vicious. No one 

 need apologize for this admixture of economic and romantic 

 motives when he understands that all sound romance has an 

 economic foundation. No pure form of social or domestic life, 

 no high type of morality, has ever been developed among 

 any people except where it has been organized around some 

 kind of productive work. The ideal of production for a com- 

 mon family purpose, of building a family and perpetuating a 

 prosperous, productive family estate, instead of subtracting from 

 the dignity of family life, is really one of the greatest factors in 

 adding dignity to it. Where there is no purpose of this kind 

 there is nothing to deserve the name of marriage. However, 

 when the economic motive becomes perverted, as it sometimes 

 does, and the children are looked upon as financial resources for 

 the benefit of the parent alone, and the income is devoted mainly 

 to his own selfish gratification, it is quite a different thing. 



