244 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



cannot afford to lose that pre-eminently typical American, the 

 farmer who owns his own farm. 



ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FACTORS AFFECTING RURAL POPULATIONS 



Yet it would be idle to deny that in the last half -century there 

 has been in the eastern half of our country a falling off in the rela- 

 tive condition of the tillers of the soil, although signs are multiply- 

 ing that the nation has waked up to the danger and is preparing to 

 grapple effectively with it. East of the Mississippi and north 

 of the Ohio and the Potomac there has been on the whole an 

 actual shrinkage in the number of the farming population since 

 the Civil War. In the states of this section there has been a 

 growth of population — in some an enormous growth — but 

 the growth has taken place in the cities, and especially in the 

 larger cities. This has been due to certain economic factors, 

 such as the extension of railroads, the development of machinery, 

 and the openings for industrial success afforded by the unprece- 

 dented growth of cities. The increased facility of communi- 

 cation has resulted in the withdrawal from rural communities of 

 most of the small, widely distributed manufacturing and com- 

 mercial operations of former times, and the substitution therefor 

 of the centralized commercial and manufacturing industries of 

 the cities. 



The chief offset to the various tendencies which have told 

 against the farm has hitherto come in the rise of the physical 

 sciences and their application to agricultural practices or to the 

 rendering of country conditions more easy and pleasant. But 

 these countervailing forces are as yet in their infancy. As com- 

 pared with a few decades ago, the social or community life of 

 country people in the East compares less well than it formerly 

 did with that of the dwellers in cities. Many country communi- 

 ties have lost their social coherence, their sense of community 

 interest. In such communities the country church, for instance, 

 has gone backward, both as a social and a religious factor. Now, 



