62 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



edly much can be done properly to disperse our aliens and to place 

 them where they will be of service to themselves and to employers 

 without constituting a problem of congestion. This, however, is a 

 question of plain distribution rather than of land settlement. The 

 real country-life movement itself will do something directly to 

 relieve city congestion, because it will tend to keep country people 

 in the country; and yet we must recognize the fact that many 

 country people are better fitted by temperament for city life than 

 for agricultural life. 



There seems to be much needless alarm over the decline of rural 

 populations. We must remember that we have passed through the 

 rural or agricultural phase of our evolution. In 1790, about 

 nine-tenths of all our people were on the farms; a hundred years 

 later about one-third (counting men, women, and children) were 

 on the land or very closely connected with it. I expect that the 

 present census will show a smaller proportion, and possibly the 

 census of 1920 will show a still smaller ratio, although the ratio has 

 already undoubtedly sunk too low in some localities or regions. 

 We shall never again be a rural people. The best society is neither 

 exclusively rural nor exclusively urban. What proportion the 

 rural population must hold to the whole population, no one now 

 knows. The decline in rural population is only one expression of 

 the sorting of our people into their groups; and we have not yet 

 struck bottom in this process. 



The powers of a single farmer are being much augmented by 

 the application of knowledge, the development of business manage- 

 ment, the use of machinery, and by cooperative enterprises. Of 

 course, the actual number of farmers will immensely increase, but 

 the ratio cannot be expected to increase: There will be a great 

 increase in demand for products of the farm as civilization prog- 

 resses and as tastes become more complex, but the expanding 

 powers of individual landsmen will be able to supply these enlarging 

 demands. What will be the ratio of increase in demand for agri- 

 cultural products, no one yet can say. It is true that the progress 

 of civilization does not greatly enlarge a man's eating capacity, but 

 it greatly increases the variety of his food and improves its quality, 

 and this of itself, wholly aside from the quantity of the demand, will 

 call for much greater activity and skill on the part of the farmer. 



