46 The State and the Farmer 



try to restock many of the present farms 

 merely by putting a foreign family on them. 

 Perhaps the very reason why these farms are 

 in the process of decline is that they are neces- 

 sarily ineffective economic units and are not 

 capable of being directed into a farm manage- 

 ment that is adaptable to present conditions. 

 Merely to put families back on many of these 

 farms would be to continue the old order; 

 and it is this old order that we need to modify 

 or to outgrow. 



Viewed as an economic question, the shifting 

 of farm occupation should not disturb us 

 more than other shifting of population. In 

 the present day, some of the lands that are 

 now " abandoned " would not have been set- 

 tled. They would remain in timber ; and now, 

 by the inexorable power of economic forces, 

 they are returning into woodland. Some of 

 these farms ought to be abandoned to other 

 uses. It is a misfortune for a man to be 

 obliged to inherit one of them, and be sen- 

 tenced for life to live on it. He would much 

 better try to escape. 



