THE NEW ERA IN POLITICS 261 



to face with one of two consequences. Either we 

 will travel the road of Rome and Great Britain, in 

 which countries agriculture was destroyed by bad 

 economic conditions permitted or created by the 

 state, or we will dedicate ourselves courageously to 

 the ending of the abuses and apply the surgeon's 

 knife to the privileged interests that have gained 

 such control of the economic foundations of our life 

 that farming must inevitably cease to be a profitable 

 occupation. If present tendencies continue we will 

 not be able to feed ourselves. Food prices will rise 

 to exorbitant heights. The standard of living of 

 the poor and even of the well-to-do will be lowered. 

 The future of the United States is involved in the 

 agricultural problem, which is the primary industry 

 on which the life of the state depends. 



Bad as is the system of distribution, costly as it 

 is to the consumer and to agriculture, it is far less 

 ominous to our national life than the economic con- 

 ditions under which farming is compelled to be car- 

 ried on, conditions which have become so bad that 

 only a big, revolutionary change of attitude by the 

 States and the nation will save it from decay and the 

 farm from extinction. 



Rome survdved many disasters; she could not sur- 

 vive the disappearance of husbandly m Italy. It 

 was the source of her power. When the Roman 

 farmer was driven from the land and crowded into 

 the cities, there to exist by such labor as there was, 



