CHAPTER III 



FARM V. FACTORY: THE RURAL EXODUS 



For years throughout the United Kingdom there 

 has been a continual drifting from the country to 

 the town. Many are the solutions which have been 

 put forward to check this rural exodus — the multi- 

 plications of small holdings; the brightening of 

 rural life by furnishing more amusements; and the 

 erection of more labourers' cottages. Few people, 

 however, seem to have realised that the main cause 

 for the migration from the country to the town is 

 not the greater attraction (as the word is generally 

 understood) of town life, but the better wage and 

 better conditions of employment which industrial 

 life, as compared with rural life, has to offer. 



INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 



This matter of labour is the root question of our 

 decadent agriculture. There are few farmers who 

 do not realise the truth of the latter statement. 

 There are still fewer who realise in what direction 

 its economic solution lies. Yet the problem must 

 be solved, if we are to supplant our grass-growing 

 prairie farming by tilled fields. 



It is not alone to the agricultural labourer and his 

 sons and daughters that the town, or industrial life, 

 has proved more attractive than the countryside. 

 The same attraction has operated as regards the 



