PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 97 



the farmer, for their interest is limited to the mass results in the 

 form of millions of bushels and does not extend to the matter of 

 their production, the welfare of the producer, or the effect upon 

 the land. 



Everybody agrees that this is to be a different world after the 

 war, but no thoughtful man can fail to be struck with the char- 

 acter of the economic and social questions that begin to loom 

 large in connection with reconstruction : trade routes, the new 

 merchant marine, raw materials, improved facilities for extending 

 credit, cooperative business, public ownership of public utilities, 

 government oversight of private enterprises, excess profits, in- 

 heritance taxes, prohibition, woman suffrage, the perennial 

 problems of the relations between capital and labor, the mini- 

 mum wage, the maximum day, and time and a half for overtime. 

 Not an item, not a suggestion, of anything agricultural either as 

 a business or as a mode of life, if we may except the occasional 

 mention of the word "land" and certain plans for providing 

 homesteads for the returning soldiers, which is an army, not an 

 agricultural, proposition. 



For the most part our considerable list of reconstruction 

 problems may be reduced to the two great questions that mainly 

 concern the public mind to-day; namely, foreign and domestic 

 trade, and the perennial contest between capital and labor. We 

 forget the citizen because we have learned to think politically 

 and socially mainly in terms of commerce based upon manu- 

 facture, under conditions requiring vast combinations of capital, 

 concentration of population, and division of labor the very con- 

 ditions that inspire not only greed of gain and social unrest, but 

 international war. Yet our interest lies here rather than with 

 the peaceful pursuits of the open country. 



It may well be said that if there is a dearth of live problems 

 in the public mind regarding agriculture, it is the fault of the 

 farmers themselves inasmuch as each interest is assumed to be 

 responsible for promoting its own affairs. Granted, but even 

 so the conclusion is irresistible that people generally do not regard 

 agricultural problems as of public concern, while my chief con- 

 tention is that the public even more than the farmer is interested 

 in the discovery and the proper solution of every problem con- 

 nected with the public domain, with the production of food, and 



