300 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



of more effective methods, requiring greater intelligence and more 

 capital than the old-style farmer had. In one region studied the 

 attempt is made to carry on farming in the old ways. Here a 

 large proportion of the farmers are poor. Two-thirds of those 

 who have records in the farm bureau have labor incomes varying 

 from below $200 to $500 a year. Of this two-thirds, one-fourth 

 make from $100 to $200, while one-fifth have no labor income at 

 all. And in the hill districts the abandoned farms are more 

 numerous than the cultivated. 



Such unfavorable economic conditions mean poor and insani- 

 tary living conditions, overwork, lack of recreation, and diffi- 

 culties in the way of making use of educational opportunity. 



Another region studied is, as a whole, rich and flourishing. 

 Its population is increasing rapidly. Land values are constantly 

 rising everywhere. It is, in fact, a land of milk and honey, of 

 large, imposing farmhouses and enormous barns, of beautiful 

 automobile highways winding their way between miles and miles 

 of apple trees and peach trees and vineyards. Nearly every 

 farmer owns an automobile, their boys go to college and their 

 girls go to the various normal and training schools. There is a 

 high level of comfortable living and progressive Americanism. 

 The village population is largely made up of retired farmers, 

 who have either leased their farms or sold them and come to the 

 village to live. 



These villagers are often wealthy, owning several farms within 

 a radius of five or six miles. There are high schools in the larger 

 villages and the children of the well to do drive in from their 

 farms in comfortable carriages drawn by sleek horses. 



But in this region, too, out from the villages, back from the 

 fertile farms, will be found rocky, infertile districts where 

 poverty-stricken tenant farmers find it hard to make a living. 



In all but one of the communities studied the farm and its 

 work are seen to be a powerful influence in the child's life, espe- 

 cially that of the boy. The boy living in a farming district is 

 expected, as soon as he is big enough to hold a hoe, to do his part 

 in the work of either his father 's or some one else 's farm. 



Even where farmers are prosperous and farming pays, the 

 work the boy has to do is hard and lonesome. If the boy is at 

 work on his father's farm, the father is in no hurry to pay him 



