182 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



by which is meant systems which individual farmers can use ; and it 

 requires no prophet's vision to predict that one of the chief concerns 

 of a thinking public in this country is to provide ways for retaining 

 upon the land the largest possible proportion of home-owning and 

 home-building citizens. 



This is a task never yet successfully performed by any country; 

 and it is the chief problem concerning a self-governing people, because 

 agriculture is about the only remaining industry engaging the atten- 

 tion of large numbers of people in which the individual is necessarily 

 an enterpriser and in which all the family can take part : which is only 

 another way of saying that it is the only occupation involving large 

 numbers, which, by its nature, breeds resourcefulness and individual 

 independence. These matters must all enter into and characterize 

 the coming task of the College and Station. 



The greatest immediate menace to agricultural welfare and to 

 the proper development of any state is a growing degree of irresponsi- 

 ble tenantry in which the owner and the tenant conspire to operate 

 the farm for immediate results at the expense both of fertility and of 

 typical American country life. This is the impending danger to the 

 future of Illinois, and adequate plans for transferring ownership of 

 farm homes from one generation to the next by a proper system of 

 long-term credits is one of the chief problems of the commonwealth. 

 This, too, calls for scientific investigation and treatment. 



The fact must not be overlooked, at a time like this, that a great 

 struggle is developing the world over between the country and the 

 town. This struggle arises from the fact that while the farmer works 

 for what the economist calls "goods," corn, wheat, horses, cattle, 

 hogs, the city works for money, the capitalist for profit, and the 

 laborer for what he calls a living. One consequence is to unduly 

 exalt capital in city enterprise, and another is to lead the laborer to 

 abandon ideas of thrift and to adopt instead measures designed to 

 secure the best living obtainable with the least exertion possible, often 

 without regard to consequences. This false economy is pushed often 

 to the point of systematic reduction of the results of labor in order 

 to compel the work to provide as much employment as possible. 

 Because of these conditions and because of a prevailing confusion 

 as between money and goods, the whole machinery of city enterprise 

 operates to inordinately increase the cost of standard necessary com- 

 modities, not only to the world at large but also and necessarily to the 

 laborer himself. This is one prime cause of the gulf that is forming 

 between the country and the town. Such a system is of course bound 



