THE OUTLOOK COUNTRYWARD. 63 



But human food crops are probably not one-half the agricultural 

 produce, and these other products increase in intimate ratio with 

 the progress of civilization. These other supplies are cotton, wool, 

 hemp, and other fibres, timber and all timber products, all paper 

 materials, the output of floriculture and other special industries, 

 leather, and practically all other produce of the earth with the 

 exception of metals and minerals and coal. Very much is going to 

 be demanded of the farmer to supply all this wealth and variety 

 of material. 



There is probably sufficient ratio of persons now living on the 

 land, to supply all this increasing demand for the raw materials, 

 if only these persons were properly effective. To displace them or 

 to augment them by city people may provide a corrective here and 

 there, but it can be only an incidental factor. The great question 

 is how to reach the people who live on the land, how to sort out 

 those who ought not to live on the land, and how to direct our 

 economic and social growth so as to make it profitable and attrac- 

 tive and in every way worth while for a man to live on the land 

 throughout his life. 



I do not think that the mere lessening of the numbers of rural 

 people has any very close relation to the cost-of-living question. 

 The great problem in this regard is to improve our means of dis- 

 tribution, so that the materials may be taken from the producer 

 to the consumer with the least delay, the least cost, and the least 

 waste. It is a shameful commentary on our economic and social 

 system that in these days of great production of agricultural prod- 

 uce in the fertile land of North America, people still suffer for food 

 in the great cities. We need to give much more attention to the 

 distribution of our products than merely to placing more persons 

 on the land. Persons will be satisfied to live on the land just as 

 rapidly and as far as it is economically profitable and socially 

 pleasant for them to live there. 



Our civilization is a system of economic loss. Society is built 

 on the process of waste. The city drains the goods from the open 

 country, extracts the kernel, and throws the husks into the rivers 

 and the sea. The cities are half-way stations between the potash, 

 phosphoric acid, and nitrogen of the farms and the bottom of the 

 ocean. The city tends always to destroy its province. It sits 



