However that may be, there is one symptom in modern politics of which the gravity is generally acknowledged, while its special connection with the towns is an easily ascertainable fact; I mean the growth of the cruder forms of Socialism. The town artisan or labourer, who sees displayed before him vast masses of property in which he has no share, and contrasts the smallness of his remuneration with the immense results of his labour, is easily attracted to remedies worse than the disease. A fuller and more exact understanding of the means by which the wealth of the community is created is, for the townsman, the best antidote to mischievous agitation so far as it is not merely the result of poverty. But the countryman, especially the proprietor of a piece of land, however small, is protected from this infection. The atmosphere in which Socialism of the predatory kind can grow up does not exist among a prosperous farming community—perhaps because in the country the question of the divorce of the worker from his raw material by capitalism does not arise. The farm furnishes the raw material of the farmer; yet he cannot be said to spend his life creating the alleged "surplus value" of Marxian doctrine. For these reasons I suggest that the orderly and safe progress of democracy demands a strong agricultural population. It is as true now as when Aristotle said it that "where husbandmen and men of small fortune predominate government will be guided by law."
I have now shown that for every reason the interests of the rural population ought no longer to be subordinated to those of the city. That such has been the tendency in English-speaking countries will hardly be questioned. In Great Britain the rural exodus has gone on with a vengeance. The last census (1901) showed that seventy-seven per cent of the population was urban, and only twenty-three per cent rural. A few years ago there were derelict farms within easy walk of the outskirts of London. In Ireland the rural exodus took the form of emigration, mainly to American cities, and this has been the chief factor in the reduction of the population in sixty years from more than eight millions to a trifle above four. But it may be thought that in the United States no similar tendency is in operation. Certainly those who admit the townward drift of country life may fairly say that it does not present so urgent a problem in the New World as in parts of the Old. Even granting that this is so, the fact remains that the town population of America is seriously outgrowing the rural population; for, while the towns are growing hugely, the country stands still. Moreover, we must not forget that, Australia apart, America is even still the most underpopulated part of the globe. We are accustomed to think Ireland underpopulated, owing to emigration, yet even to-day the scale of population is almost six times greater than that of the United States. If the Union were peopled as thickly as Ireland even still is, the population would be nearly five hundred millions. There is still a vast deal of filling-up to be done in America, mostly in the rural parts.
But the main consideration I wish to emphasise throughout is that the problem under review is moral and social far more than economic, human rather than material. This is the natural view of an Irish worker, who knows that the solution of his problem depends upon the possibility of endowing country life with such social improvements as will provide an effective compensation for a necessarily modest standard of comfort. But the citizens of the United States may be pardoned for being physiocrats. The statistical proof, annually furnished, of the growing agricultural wealth, is apt to obscure other essentials of progress. The astronomical proportions of the figures stagger the imagination, and engender the kind of pride a man feels when he is first told the number of red corpuscles luxuriating in his blood. How can there be agricultural depression in a country whose farm lands Secretary Wilson, in his notable Annual Report for 1905, declared to have increased in value over a period of five years at the astounding rate of $3,400,000 per day? Yet to the deeper insight, the same moral influence through which we in Ireland are seeking to combat the evils of material poverty may in the United States be needed as a moral corrective to a too rapidly growing material prosperity. The patriotic American, who thinks of the life of the Nation rather than of the individual, will, if he looks beneath the surface, discern in this God-prospered country symptoms of rural decadence fraught with danger to National efficiency.
The reckless sacrifice of agricultural interests by the legislators of the towns is condemned by the verdict of history. We need not now fear that invading hordes of hardy barbarians will mar the destiny of the great Western Republic, as they ended the career of the Roman Empire. There are, however, other clouds upon the horizon. Only a few years ago, the American people could well treat with contempt the bogy of the Yellow Peril. With a transformation unprecedented in history, the situation has been changed. Japan is already devoting to the arts of peace qualities but yesterday displayed in war, to the amazement of the Western world. In another Eastern empire there are vast resources—especially coal and iron in juxtaposition—awaiting only industrial leadership to utilise a practically limitless labour supply for their development. These are facts worthy of consideration for their potential bearing upon the industrial and commercial standing of the United States.
To the onlooker, it does seem a happy circumstance that there has just been, for seven critical years, at the head of American affairs the strenuous advocate of the strenuous life. I read through his Messages the warning that in the struggle for preëminence the ultimate victory will lie with those nations who found their prosperity on the high physical and ethical condition of the people. That is the oldest, as it is the latest, wisdom of the East. It is in this spirit that the neglected problem of Rural Life should now be given some share of the attention hitherto devoted to the life of the towns.
CHAPTER IV
THE INNER LIFE OF THE AMERICAN FARMER
I recently asked a German economist if he could tell me the best books to read upon the problem of rural life in Germany. His reply was: "There are no books, because there is no problem." It is generally true, no doubt, that the Rural Life problem, in so far as it consists in the subordination of the country to the town, is peculiar to the English-speaking countries, where it seems to be mainly attributable to three causes. The chief of these was no doubt the Industrial Revolution in England, of which enough has already been said. Secondly, in the United States and in some portions of the British Empire, the opening up of vast tracts of virgin soil led not unnaturally to the postponement of social development until the pioneer farmers had settled down to the new life. The third cause was immunity from the danger of foreign invasion, which eliminated the military reasons for maintaining a numerous, virile, and progressive rural population.