146 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



as wasteful, extensive modes of cultivation prevail, the growth 

 of cities clamoring for food and raw materials powerfully tends 

 to increase both "the cost of living" and the monopoly of land. 

 It is true that intensive agriculture by increasing the pro- 

 ductivity of the land tends to increase its price. But in in- 

 tensive agriculture the part played by labor is greater and the 

 proportional part played by land is less, so that the land values 

 do not increase as rapidly as does the product, and there is a 

 gain in position to those who contribute the labor required for 

 production. 



Whether the rural population is made up of independent 

 farmers or of tenants and hired laborers, increase in the number 

 of those who dwell in the country and maintain a high standard 

 of living there, is dependent upon the increase of manufacturing 

 cities, either of the same nation or abroad, to absorb their prod- 

 uct of food and raw materials. Thus the high rate of urban 

 increase is favorable to intensive agriculture, and to the increase 

 of rural population in numbers and prosperity. 



A second and more important qualification of the tendency to 

 form an agrarian aristocracy and proletariat is found in the 

 absence of laws of primogeniture and the wish of parents, as 

 testators, to divide their holdings among their children. 



A third counteracting tendency is in the fact that in the long 

 run farming land is worth more to the man who cultivates it 

 than to any one else, because it gives him a steady job, inde- 

 pendent of the will of any employer. The price of farming land 

 contains at least three elements: first, a sum which if invested 

 at interest would yield annually an amount equal to the rental 

 of the land ; second, a price paid for the expected unearned in- 

 crement ; third, a sum paid by the purchaser for the opportunity 

 of independent self-employment. In time the second element 

 will dwindle, for there will no longer be so great an expectation 

 of unearned increment ; indeed, that expectation might largely 

 be extinguished by taxation, as the next paragraph will show. 

 Then, unless land be valued as a basis of social prestige, or for 

 some other extraneous consideration, the third element will tend 

 to become the decisive factor in its ownership, for it will raise 

 the price of land above the capitalized value of its rental, and 

 only he who values it as an opportunity for independent self- 



