152 AMERICAN FARMS. 



industries, — a condition which is not likely to occur 

 again very soon, certainly not over the principal part of 

 the globe. In the States and Provinces every year sees 

 the incomes from most other occupations rise in com- 

 parison to the value of farms, and Mr. George was in 

 profound error when he said : " It has already become 

 impossible in our older States for a man starting with 

 nothing to become by his labor the owner of a farm," 

 ("Social Problems," p. 314.) 



The facts are that, in the old States and Provinces, it 

 is becoming all the time easier for the farm laborer to 

 buy out the typical American farmer who employs him ; 

 at the same time, he is less and less inclined to do so, 

 preferring, as he gains means, to make his escape to the 

 cities, or to mechanical occupations. At no period have 

 there been greater opportunities for men of small capital 

 to gain land than during the last twenty years. Yet 

 never in America has the concentration of population in 

 the cities been greater than during this period. 



In leaving the country they leave land, if not falling in 

 value, certainly, in most cases, not rising, to go to where 

 land is rising rapidly in value. The human family, for 

 some cause or other, is preferring those very spots where 

 to obtain land gold enough to near cover it must be 

 offered. It follows that if there is an evil in this flocking 

 to cities, it comes not from pressure for want of land, but 

 from something outside or anterior to the land-pressure 

 trouble. Then the flocking of people to cities, in its 

 relation to land values, is a cause, and not an effect, as 

 the single-tax advocate maintains. The first cause lying 

 back of the flocking of people to cities, other causes 

 than those ascribed by Mr. George for the gregarious 

 tendency of the time must be found. 



