756 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



65 per cent own their homes, while but 36 per cent of the 

 homes in towns and cities are owned by the occupants. It is 

 true that the opportunities to acquire a vast fortune are greater 

 in the cities than in the country, but it should not be overlooked 

 that these opportunities are relatively few, and that rural wealth 

 is not marked by that inequality of distribution so characteristic 

 of urban wealth. Notwithstanding the more rapid increase of 

 the latter, it is probable that on an average the farmer of the 

 United States ends his days in a better financial condition than 

 he would have attained had he begun his industrial career in 

 the city rather than in the country. 



Home ownership, however, is not always a trustworthy crite- 

 rion of the relative well-being of classes. There is in the cities 

 a considerable class who do not generally own their homes, but 

 who are far above the farmers in material prosperity. It is 

 not, however, with this class that the farmers are naturally com- 

 pared, but with that great majority who work for wages or for 

 small salaries. Here again the test of home ownership is illu- 

 sory, for, owing to the uncertainty of tenure in employment 

 among the wage-earning class, the inducement to home owner- 

 ship is far weaker than among farmers. But in this very fact 

 appears the more desirable position of the latter ; since they 

 have what the wages class lacks a controlling voice in 

 determining the conditions under which they labor. 



Again, the farmer is less disastrously affected than others 

 by panics and commercial depressions. Three reasons may be 

 assigned in explanation of this. In the first place, the products 

 of the farm are largely articles of absolute necessity. However 

 much the masses of the people, in times of economic pressure, 

 may dispense with the comforts of life, the demand for food 

 remains relatively constant. Consequently, during times of eco- 

 nomic disturbance the prices which farm products command are 

 less unfavorably affected than those of many other classes of com- 

 modities. In the second place, in the words of a high authority, 

 "farmers deal on a cash basis to a larger extent than most pro- 

 ducers. The main trouble in panic times is that those who have 

 relied largely upon credit find their credit withdrawn or largely 



