104 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



womanhood from no higher motives than actuated thousands in 

 raising soldiers for the Kaiser. 



Fourth. Men who have obtained their lands in an early day at 

 a nominal rate, often as low as fifty cents an acre, and who have 

 worked the land "for all that's in it," mining out fertility as 

 the operator mines out coal. Here is where most of the rich 

 fanners will be found a crop that can be produced once and only 

 once in any country. 



Whoever knows the conditions that actually obtain in respect 

 to home-building will understand the deep-seated unrest that is 

 becoming wide-spread in this country because of the increasing 

 difficulty in securing ownership to land. To the public generally 

 this is a sealed chapter in the notes of an unwritten history, but 

 to those of us who can remember when there was no "Great 

 West," when Cincinnati was called Porkoplis, and when steers 

 were fed from the open ranges across the prairies to the central 

 market, this is no mystery. We understand perfectly well what 

 the mass of Americans do not know, that until about the opening 

 of the present century, men, women and children worked will- 

 ingly and often cruelly without money and without price for the 

 sake of developing out of nature's raw material "a home of their 

 own." That opportunity has now gone and witli it the impulse 

 to labor for something better than money. Hereafter the farmer, 

 like other people, will have to reckon his income in terms of 

 cash. 



The wave of land hunger now going up over this country is 

 but the premonition of what is coming if it is to remain as diffi- 

 cult as now for country-minded young families to obtain, within a 

 reasonable period, homes of their own. Here within our midst 

 almost unnoticed and for the most part unknown is growing up 

 a situation of vastly more import to public welfare than are all 

 the questions of merchant marine, trade routes, raw materials, 

 and preferential tariffs combined. The facts are that as matters 

 are going now, land is slipping awa}- from the typical farmer, and 

 his children will soon be disappearing from our colleges. 



But why be so solicitous about a class of people who cannot 

 or will not take care of themselves ? That is exactly the point. 

 We have now reached a time in world development when we 

 recognize the fact that many very good things cannot take care 



