RURAL STATESMANSHIP 209 



tries, like Belgium, England, France, or Germany, the 

 laboring man, the wage earner, will be the spokes- 

 man for social reconstruction. Labor has already 

 made its demand that it shall be represented at the 

 peace table. Taking the world around, however, la- 

 bor as compared with agriculture is a minority party. 

 It has everywhere a big stake in democracy, but so has 

 agriculture. Nine-tenths of the people of Russia are 

 rural. Poland, the Balkans, the larger part of Aus- 

 tria, Asia Minor are either all distinctively or strongly 

 rural. If the democratic movement spreads to India 

 or China, it will have to deal to a very large extent with 

 rural people. Indeed, there are but few really urban 

 nations. Labor is rightfully insistent upon a fuller 

 measure of democracy, and it is more vocal than agri- 

 culture, perhaps because it feels more keenly its dis- 

 ability. If the laborer is out of work he soon ap- 

 proaches the dead line of starvation. The farmer may 

 be economically oppressed and yet manage to get bread 

 for himself and his family. But labor is heard chiefly 

 because it is well organized and groups itself in the 

 great centers of population where it has access to pub- 

 lic opinion. The farmers are scattered and unorgan- 

 ized and have few organs of public opinion. The great 

 populations of the world can become democratic only as 

 their agriculture is organized and their farm population 

 is intelligent and cooperative. 



Agriculture as a world issue will be forced upon us 

 by the demand for food, even if the demand for democ- 

 racy should fail as a rallying cry. Both sides in the 

 world war were compelled to unify the problem of their 

 food supply. The moment the armistice was declared, 

 an effort was made to treat the problem of supplying 

 food to all the nations that have been at war as one 



