PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 365 



Against this pessimistic view there are two arguments. In 

 the first place, during the entire latter third of the nineteenth 

 cenuiry agriculture was relatively unprofitable in this country. 

 This is the period when the displacement of American-born by 

 foreign-born farmers was so noticeable. For an American of 

 good education and business capacity, who was therefore fitted 

 for business or professional life, there is no doubt that dur- 

 ing that period the city offered better opportunities than the 

 country, on the average. The foreigner, unless he were a man 

 of unusual education and culture, had to take his choice be- 

 tween farming on the one hand, and some form of hand labor 

 on the other. To him farming was frequently the only attrac- 

 tive opportunity. The reason the American farmer was willing 

 to sell out at a price which the foreigner could pay was not alto- 

 gether because the foreigner could make the farm pay better, 

 but because the American had opportunities in the city which 

 the foreigner did not have, not having yet become sufficiently 

 adjusted to the conditions of American life. Now that agri- 

 culture is becoming more prosperous, so that the American-born 

 farmer may have as good opportunities in the country as in the 

 city, it remains to be seen whether he can be displaced by the 

 foreigner, that is, whether he will generally be willing to sell out 

 at a price which the foreigner can afford to pay, or whether he 

 will not be willing and able to pay as much for land as the 

 foreigner will. In the second place, a cheap standard of living 

 is not necessarily an efficient one. A more expensive standard, 

 provided it is rational, may be more efficient in competition 

 than a cheaper one. An expensive standard of living, which 

 includes forms of expenditure that minister to mere pride and 

 ostentation, or to unwholesome appetites, and does not add to 

 one s intelligence or working capacity, will handicap one in 

 competition with men whose standards of living do not in- 

 clude these irrational forms of expenditure. But an expensive 



