108 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



so influential for weal or woe, not only to men and families, but 

 to the public at large, as are investments in land. For this 

 reason, therefore, in one way or another, investments in land 

 will one day be limited as to amount and prescribed as to condi- 

 tions. In no other way can private ownership be preserved from 

 the general wreck of Bolshevism certain to follow a bad land 

 policy. 



We all know what has been done in Russia and what is being 

 done in Hungary. We know that England has been forced to 

 control land ownership by limiting the conditions of inheritance, 

 by progressive taxation, and by applying the principle of excess 

 profits. Even so, one of the points insisted upon now by the 

 British Labor Party is the nationalization of land. 



Among the achievements necessary to insure the proper de- 

 velopment of American agriculture whether from a private or a 

 public point of view, the following at least are of sufficient 

 significance to be considered as fundamental in a national policy. 



First. Subsidization of country schools to an extent that will 

 insure to every child born upon the farm the opportunity of a 

 good high school education admitting to college, with choice of 

 differentiation along agricultural, mechanical, commercial, scien- 

 tific, or literary lines and this without leaving the father's 

 roof or breaking up the home and the business. 



Second. Public recognition of the fact that the farmer is 

 neither a capitalist nor a laborer, as the terms are understood in 

 the commercial world, but a managing operator of a small busi- 

 ness of which the home and the family are integral parts, and 

 therefore entitled to stand in the public esteem as a typical demo- 

 crat, not as a "rube," or even as an eminently useful laborer 

 that should be contented with his lot. 



Third. Recognition of the fact that the American farmer, as 

 a typical citizen representing our largest and most fundamental 

 industry, and as our greatest home-builder, is entitled to an in- 

 come comparable with his labor, his investment, and his 

 managerial skill. 



Fourth. The assurance of this income, not by arbitrary price 

 fixing in defiance of the economic law of supply and demand, not 

 by force, but by conference between producer, distributor, and 

 consumer. 



