64 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



like a parasite, running its roots into all the surrounding country 

 and draining it of its life-blood. Many a rural community is 

 already sucked dry. Our business or commercial structure is 

 responsible for the wastes of distribution. That it should require 

 sixty-five cents out of every hundred to remove a good part of 

 our produce from the land to the dinner-table is an indication 

 that we are living in a very imperfect and undeveloped economic 

 era. 



The organization of society does not seem to have within itself 

 the means of its own correction or salvation. We are obliged to 

 apply correctives by extraneous legislative and legal processes in 

 order to control the streams of waste. Until we evolve a structure 

 in which economic waste is inherently reduced to the minimum, we 

 cannot expect to make great progress toward a self-sustaining 

 civilization. We have yet no large permanent agriculture; and 

 this means that we have yet no permanent civilization. 



To find some real economic relationship between city and country 

 whereby the city will give back something to the country rather 

 than to take everything from it, and whereby it will be as much 

 interested in maintaining the producing-power of land as in devel- 

 oping art and literature and municipal systems, is the fundamental 

 problem of civilization. City and country are coming together 

 sympathetically, but this is largely a matter of acquaintanceship. 

 There is no real adequate coordination between the two. If the 

 city is ever really to aid the country it must be mostly by the 

 development of this mutual coordination and not by the city going 

 into farming. Farming is a business for farmers. 



