350 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



In agriculture one must wrest a living from nature, and nature 

 cannot be tricked or deluded. But a large element of our city 

 populations and generally they are the dominant element 

 get their living out of other people ; and people are easily de- 

 ceived. Instead of laboring to make two blades of grass grow 

 where one had grown before, their business is to make two dol- 

 lars emerge from other people's pockets where one had emerged 

 before. Neither impudence, nor a smooth tongue, nor a distin- 

 guished manner, nor lurid rhetoric ever yet made an acre of 

 land yield a larger crop of grain ; but they have frequently 

 made an office, a sanctum, a platform, and even a pulpit yield 

 a larger crop of dollars. They who get their living out of other 

 people must, of necessity, interest those other people ; and men 

 are so constituted that queer and abnormal things are more inter- 

 esting to them than the usual and the normal. They will pay 

 money for the privilege of seeing a two-headed calf, when a 

 normal calf would not interest them at all. The dime-museum 

 freak makes money by showing to our interested gaze his phys- 

 ical abnormalities. He is an economic success in that he makes 

 a -good living by it, but it does not follow that he is the type 

 which is fitted to survive, or which religion ought to try to pro- 

 duce. Other men, going under the names of artists, novelists, 

 or dramatists of certain nameless schools, make very good liv- 

 ings by revealing to interested minds their mental and moral 

 abnormalities. They, like the dime-museum freaks, are eco- 

 nomic successes in that they make good livings, but it does not 

 follow that they are the type of man fitted to survive, or that 

 religion ought to try to produce. This type of economic success 

 is an urban rather than a rural one, and it flourishes under urban 

 rather than rural conditions. So long as it flourishes there is 

 no reason why religious men who conserve their energies for 

 productive service should succeed in crowding them out of 

 existence. The only chance of attaining that end will be for 



