8 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



only in response to the demands of general 

 manufactures, but also because he has chosen 

 to turn his back on Land, and created the 

 necessity of delivering his food from his hand 

 to his mouth. Around him are clerks, stenog- 

 raphers, merchants to administer to his needs, 

 carpenters, masons, plumbers, artisans of hun- 

 dreds of specialized trades, lawyers, doctors, 

 ministers for his material and spiritual needs, 

 and actors, musicians and buffoons to make 

 him happy, merely for the purpose of permit- 

 ting him to toil that he may live. 



It would be an interesting task to determine 

 (or to attempt to determine, for the task would 

 be difficult) how great a percentage of the 

 population of five million souls who constitute 

 the city of New York have their entire time 

 employed in the process of feeding their fel- 

 lows who, by their efforts, produce nothing 

 but the means of transporting food to satisfy 

 their own hunger who elect to devote their 

 lives to the task of moving food from the 

 spot where it is produced in abundance to the 

 spot where it is not produced at all. It is a 

 far cry indeed from the Jeremiah of to-day to 

 the simple pastoral self-sufficiency of his an- 

 cestors. Yet the population of the cities is be- 



