288 GENERAL SCIENCE 



history, petroleum is a natural resource limited in amount. 

 Its restricted production and possible exhaustion may reason- 

 ably be forecasted. 



The use of farm machinery when operated by horses has 

 more than doubled the area of farm land that one man can 

 cultivate. Because of the wide use of farm machinery not 

 as many men are needed in the farming districts. Farms 

 which were sufficiently large when labor was done by hand 

 have proven unprofitable when expensive machinery is 

 employed. Abandoned farm buildings are not infrequently 

 seen in many sections of the United States, bearing witness 

 to a readjustment of rural conditions inevitable, perhaps, 

 but not altogether satisfactory. In many sections there has 

 been a marked increase in the size of farms, and a decrease 

 in the number of families living on them. 



The standards of living during this time underwent change. 

 People demanded more of the comforts of life in their homes, 

 and less of the hardships and the drudgery endured by the 

 forefathers in an undeveloped new country. Farms that 

 had supported successive generations of prosperous American 

 country-folk were declared to be no longer desirable places 

 of residence. Better schools were provided for children 

 in the towns. There was the possibility in towns and cities 

 of steady employment in office, store, shop, mill, or factory 

 for women as well as men. An income from wages was not 

 subject to losses by bad weather and crop failures. All these 

 conditions, together with the various advantages that town 

 life offered in other ways, contributed to a phenomenal drift 

 in population from the farms to the cities, especially in the 

 eastern portion of the United States 1 . There was a radical 



1 The Census Reports of the United States by decades show the percentage 

 of the population of the country resident in cities and towns of 2500 or more 

 inhabitants as follows: 



1880 1890 1900 1910 



29 . 5 per cent 36 . i per cent 40 . 5 per cent 46 . 3 per cent 



