42 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE 



is also a careful student of farm life in the South, 

 writing to me recently about the enormous percentage 

 of preventable deaths of children due to the unsani- 

 tary condition of Southern farms, said: 



"Personally, from the health point of view, I 

 would prefer to see my own daughter, nine years 

 old, at work in a cotton mill, than have her live 

 as tenant on the average Southern tenant one- 

 horse farm. This apparently extreme statement 

 is based upon actual life among both classes of 

 people." 



I doubt if any other nation can bear comparison 

 with our own in the amount of attention given by 

 the government, both federal and state, to agricul- 

 tural matters. But practically the whole of this 

 effort has hitherto been directed toward increasing 

 the production of crops. Our attention has been 

 concentrated almost exclusively on getting better 

 farming. In the beginning this was unquestionably 

 the right thing to do. The farmer must first of all 

 grow good crops in order to support himself and his 

 family. But when this has been secured, the effort 

 for better farming should cease to stand alone, and 

 should be accompanied by the effort for better busi- 

 ness and better living on the farm. It is at least as 

 important that the farmer should get the largest 

 possible return in money, comfort, and social advan- 

 tages from the crops he grows, as that he should get 

 the largest possible return in crops from the land he 

 farms. Agriculture is not the whole of country life. 



