AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 713 



industrial centers. Our educational systems and all the intellectual 

 forces of our time stimulate a mental activity which seeks some 

 professional pursuit in the midst of the bustle and whirl of the 

 city ; the road to political preferment and social distinction also 

 leads from the quiet of the country home to the noisier scenes 

 of the city ; and the enviable success achieved by some who have 

 left the country and gone to the town fires the social ambition 

 and creates among those who have remained on the farm a feel- 

 ing of unrest, which accelerates the movement of population to 

 the busier fields of action. Finally, the inclination of the rising 

 generation for city life is still further stimulated by a feeling 

 more or less prevalent that the young woman who supplies city 

 customers with butter, or the young man who soils his hands 

 with the dirt of honest toil on the farm, is somehow socially infe- 

 rior to the one who as a clerk in a city store sells goods over 

 the counter. All of these social considerations have stimulated 

 the flow of population from country to city, have given rise to 

 urban' residences, have furnished laborers for the industrial ex- 

 pansion of cities, and have contributed toward hastening their 

 progress in wealth. 



In the course of our study of the relative increase of rural and 

 urban wealth we have arrived at the following conclusions : 



a. While the increase of wealth in the United States has been 

 phenomenal, its distribution is such that three-fourths of the 

 aggregate amount is today found in cities. 



b. This unequal distribution of wealth is, if we have been 

 correct in our analysis, due chiefly to the new industrial organi- 

 zation introduced through the agency of steam power. 



c. The wealth-concentrating influence of steam is due to the 

 fact that it has admitted in only a limited degree of direct appli- 

 cation to agricultural production, to the difference between man's 

 physical and social wants, to the fact that steam power cannot 

 be economically transmitted long distances, and to its use as an 

 agent in transportation. Other influential factors in enriching 

 the cities have been the economy of the factory system of produc- 

 tion, the /private ownership of monopolistic industries, the fact 

 that successful crop production is determined quite as much by 



