28 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



country, a degree of ignorance, inefficiency, and moral degener- 

 acy which it would probably be impossible to find in any of the 

 countries of western Europe. The stern competition of those 

 old and thickly populated countries makes short work of all such 

 incapables and sends them speedily to the almshouse, or drives 

 them to crime, and thence to prison or the gallows. We must 

 look forward in this country, as our population increases and 

 land comes to be in greater and greater demand, and the con- 

 ditions of life become harder and harder, as they inevitably will 

 for weaklings, to the unpleasant prospect of a century or so of. 

 weeding out. 



These country slums seem to be, so far as conditions outside 

 the individual are concerned, the product of isolation, just as 

 the city slums are, in the same sense, the product of over- 

 crowding. Though the fundamental conditions in both cases 

 are personal and not environmental, yet the environment has its 

 influence in one case as well as in the other. The effect of iso- 

 lation upon weak characters is to destroy all respect for tradition, 

 authority, or social convention. Society tends to break up into its 

 atomic elements, and each individual to become a law unto him- 

 self, following his weak and vacillating will, sometimes toward 

 amiable nonmorality, sometimes toward vicious lawlessness. The 

 weak character, without any of the restraints which society fur- 

 nishes to strengthen it, loses its sense of social obligation and is 

 governed by whim and caprice, or becomes suspicious, morose, 

 and impatient of restraint or interference. 



