AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL POPULATION
§ 1. Agriculture and farms in the United States. § 2. Rural and
agricultural. § 3. Lack of a social agricultural policy in America. § 4.
Period of decaying agricultural prosperity. § 5. Sociological effects of
agricultural decay. § 6. Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use
of machinery. § 7. Transfer of work from farm to factory. § 8. The
rural exodus. § 9. The farmer's income in monetary terms. § 10.
Compensations of the farmer's life. § 11. Ownership and tenancy.
§ 1. #Agriculture and farms in the United States#. There were
nearly 12,400,000 persons in the United States gainfully occupied in
agriculture in 1910, this being 32.5 per cent of all in occupations.
These, together with other family members not reported as engaged
in gainful occupations, constitute the agricultural population, and
comprize more than one third of the total population of the country.
"Agriculture" is here used in a broad sense, including floriculture,
animal husbandry (poultry, bee culture, stock raising), regular
fishing and oystering, forestry and lumbering. Agriculture thus
produces not only the food but (excepting minerals, including coal,
stone, natural gas, and oil) the raw or partly finished materials for
all the manufacturing and mechanical industries.
With the exception of areas devoted to forestry on a large scale and
to fishing, the industry of agriculture is pursued on the 6,400,000
farms, covering 46 per cent of the total land area of the country. Of
the land in farms, a little over half is classified as improved. The
estimated value of farm property, including buildings, implements,
machinery, and live stock, was, in 1910, about $41,000,000,000,
somewhere near one fourth of the estimated wealth of the country at
that date.[1]
§ 2. #Rural and agricultural.# The adjectives rural and agricultural
are often used loosely as synonyms. Agricultural refers primarily to
the occupation of cultivating the soil, and is properly contrasted
with other occupations, as mechanical and professional; whereas rural
refers to place of residence outside of incorporated places of
a specified minimum population (of late, 2500), and is properly
contrasted with urban, applied to those living in larger population
groupings. In 1910 the rural population comprised 53.7 per cent of the
total population. It is true that the two groups of the agricultural
and the rural populations are largely composed of the same persons,
but to a considerable extent they are not. Many farm houses, together
with part or all of the farm lands, lie inside urban boundaries, and,
besides, some persons engaged in agriculture reside in urban places.
On the other hand, any one acquainted in the least with a rural
district (in the statistical sense) can at once think of many
persons living there that are not engaged in agriculture; they may
be merchants, warehousemen, railway employees, physicians,
handicraftsmen, teachers, artists, retired business men, and others.
The percentages given in this and in the preceding section indicate
that about two fifths of the rural families are not engaged in
agriculture.
It is often important to make this distinction, tho it is difficult
to do; for some of the much-discussed rural questions are of a
broad social nature, are matters of rural sociology, relating pretty
generally to the rural population; while other questions of "rural
economics" are more strictly matters of agricultural economics and
relate to the farm as a unit of industry, or to agriculture as an
occupation.
§ 3. #Lack of a social agricultural policy in America.# It is a common
remark that the farmer lives an independent life. This develops in him
a self-reliant spirit. He readily gives and takes simple neighborly
help in informal ways, but he does not readily turn to government
for aid. While every influential urban group, organized or
unorganized--manufacturers, merchants, wage-earners--has sought and
obtained special protective social legislation, the farmer has, from
choice or necessity, usually had to work out his economic problems
unaided. The exceptions are few and of small importance. For example,
the prodigal land-policy of the state and national governments
encouraging the settlement of the frontiers was not a farmers'
policy. It was originally inspired by the larger political purpose
of extending the bounds of the nation; later it was advocated and
fostered by a land-speculating element, linked with bad politics, in
the frontier states, and not by farmers as such. It in time greatly
injured the farmers of the eastern states. The "Granger legislation,"
to regulate railroad rates, was so called by the East in a spirit of
derision because it began in the distinctively agricultural states
of the Northwest; but it had neither the aim, nor the result, of
obtaining especially for farmers any rates that were not open to
every one on the same terms. The tariff rates on American agricultural
products, placed in the acts as a matter of form, have, with minute
exceptions, been ineffective to favor farmers, as the shipments were
all outward and none inward, while heavy and effective rates were
placed on most things that the farmers had to buy.[2]
In part the explanation of the lack of legislation favoring farmers
is to be found in their small part and influence, as a class, in
political affairs, outside of minor executive offices in township and
county governments. In the state legislatures farmers are few relative
to their numbers in the community, and still fewer in either House in
Washington. Among the real exceptions to the otherwise fair record of
the farming class in this respect is the tax on oleomargarine and the
special favor accorded to farmers' associations in the Clayton Act. It
might be cynically said that the farmer has not been "sharp" enough
to get his share of the "good" things" that the business classes were
passing around in protective legislation. But farmers have, as has
every economic group, interests which may legitimately be the subject
of social legislation; whereas they have limited their attention to
their private affairs at home and have been prone to vote patiently
and proudly the "straight ticket" to elect business men and lawyers to
office.
§ 4. #Period of decaying agricultural prosperity#. Despite the facts
just stated, every campaign orator admits that there is no other
occupational class of the nation of greater importance to the nation
than the farmers, or more deserving of prosperity. Every other part
of the industrial organization of a nation is interrelated with
its agriculture. Great changes, in respect to growth of population,
immigration, exhaustion of natural resources, mechanical inventions,
scientific discovery, and many things more, have been occurring,
which have altered and, in some communities, have destroyed the very
foundations of agricultural enterprise in America since the close
of the Civil War in 1865. But the farmers have been left to struggle
individually with their individual difficulties, tho the outcome was
of the gravest portent to the whole social economy. Such was the case
in the period of agricultural depression from 1873 to about 1896.[3]
Multitudes of ancestral homesteads were then left behind by the last
farmer-descendant of the old line. No longer able to make a living on
the soil, he took up an urban occupation.
§ 5. #Sociological effects of agricultural decay#. Such changes caused
a relative decline in the birthrate of the old American stock. The places
of many of these long-settled families remained unfilled as thousands of
abandoned farm houses testified. The places of others were taken by a
tenantry, white or black, lacking the thrift of ownership; the lands of
others passed to new owners of alien races. The populations of many rural
neighborhoods thus became heterogeneous, with results calamitous to the
social life. Once prosperous schools declined, once thronging country
churches were deserted, and much of the old neighborhood democracy
disappeared. When, about the year 1900, prosperity began slowly to return
to the American countrysides in the form of rising prices of farm produce,
it was in large part too late to remedy the evil, except as it may be
done by generations of effort under more favoring conditions. There
are merely suggested here some of the complex sociological effects of
past economic changes in American agriculture. It is certain that in
the future also the economic changes in this field will be related
closely to social and political changes of a fundamental character.
§ 6. #Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use of machinery.#
Probably ever since the first census in 1790, the relative number of
agriculturists in this country has been decreasing. Beginning in
1880, the numbers of those occupied in agriculture for gain have
been reported at the census dates in a form that makes them fairly
comparable.[4]
The explanation of this decrease in the proportion of the population
that is engaged in agriculture is twofold; the first is the real
increase in the productive output per person in agricultural industry.
In larger part this is due to the increasing use of machinery in place
of simple hand tools, and the substitution of horse-, hydraulic-,
windmill-, steam-, and gasoline-power for human labor. This change has
been made readily in the regions of level fields, but of late has been
made possible to a greater extent in hilly country, by rearranging
and combining the old irregular fields into regular fairly level
rectangular fields easily tillable, while turning the rougher lands
and hillsides into wood lots and pastures.[5] One man, thus, driving
three or four or more horses, can do the work formerly done by two
or more men and do it just as well. The farmers' incomes in different
parts of the country vary pretty nearly with the amount of horse-power
used per man. Economies equally great are made in the work done in the
barnyards and barns. In most parts of the country only a beginning
has been made in these ways, and in future the census will continue to
reflect the progress in these directions.
§ 7. #Transfer of work from farm to factory#. The other part of the
explanation of the decrease in the proportion of the population that
is engaged in agriculture is that many operations are, step by step,
being transferred from the farm to the factory. "Agriculture," we have
observed, is a great complex of industries, in which many different
products are taken from the first simplest extractive stage, and then
put through successive processes to make them more nearly fitted for
their final uses. Not so long ago grain cut in the field was threshed,
winnowed, shelled, made into flour, and baked on the farm, as it still
is in many places. Logs were cut into boards, planed, and made into
houses or furniture by the farmer. The old-time farmer made by hand a
large number of his farm implements--rakes, ax handles, pumps, carts,
and even wagons. Until a generation ago all butter, cheese, and other
dairy products were made on the farm. Now these things are being done
in steadily increasing proportion by workers classified as in the
manufacturing industries, and agriculture contains fewer separate
industries and processes. Of course there is economy of labor in
nearly all of these changes, but the number occupied in agriculture is
greatly reduced. Many farmers and more farmers' sons are moving from
agriculture into occupations of manufacturing, trade, transportation,
and the professions, and are becoming more narrow specialists.
§ 8. #The rural exodus#. The percentage of persons in the rural
population changes at about the same rate as does that of the persons
occupied in agriculture. In 1890 it was 64, in 1900 it was 60, and in
1910 it was 54 per cent. The percentage of the population in cities of
8000 or more has steadily increased. This phenomenon has been marked
in all of the countries that have been developing along industrial
lines. It has been variously described as "the rural exodus," "the
abandonment-of-the-farm-movement," and "the city-ward drift."[6] It
is only in part explained by the change from agriculture to other
occupations; perhaps even in greater part it is due to the decline
and disappearance in many rural places of small manufacturing and
mercantile businesses before the competition of large business in the
cities. In much of the long-settled area of the country every hillside
stream once turned a little mill to saw timber, grind corn, forge
iron, or weave cloth. Most of these mills are now deserted. In
countless villages the old blacksmith shop, once a center of business,
is abandoned. Here and there a patriarchal smith still serves a
dwindling group of customers and speaks with mingled pride and pathos
of his sons, now in the automobile business in the city.
The movement away from the countryside has been but little
counteracted as yet, but may be more in future, by the growing
enjoyment of rural life, by the back-to-the-land movement, by
interurban railways, by improved roads, and by automobiles.
§ 9. #The farmer's income in monetary terms#. Census figures and some
additional investigations have led to the estimate of the average
real income of the farmers of the United States in 1909, expressed in
monetary terms, as $724. The estimated value of all products, whether
sold or used by the farmer, plus the value of his house rent and fuel
consumed by family, was $1236, from which expenditures of $512 are
deducted for outside labor, and for materials used for operating and
maintaining the farm. Of the $724 the sum of $402 is estimated to
be the labor-income of the family and $322 is estimated to be the
wealth-income (at 5 per cent of the capitalization of the farm). This
was in a period of rising values in farm lands, averaging about $323
per farm annually, and this to most farmers was equivalent to so much
monetary savings. The main items of net income, therefore, are as
follows:
Rent $125
Food from the farm 261
Fuel 35
Cash 303
Total $724
Increase in value of farm 323
Total estimated monetary income $1047
Of the total, $422 is a labor-income, and $645 is a wealth income.[7]
It would be difficult, even if the available statistics were much more
exact than they are, to compare exactly the farmer's income with those
of urban classes. Averages of such large numbers and over such a wide
area have a limited significance in the specific case; and living
conditions and the purchasing power of money are so different in
country and city and in different parts of the country.[8]
§ 10. #Compensations of the farmer's life#. In bare monetary terms
the average farmer's family gets a labor-income less than that of the
ordinary wage-earner in a factory, and it is only by the aid of the
wealth-income that it appears to fare as well or better. Even the few
largest incomes made in farming are small in comparison with many of
those made in commerce, transportation, and manufacturing. The great
mass of farmers of the nation are hard-laboring men, poor in the eyes
of the city dwellers.[9]
But this much is certain: the farmer's income in monetary terms has
on the average much larger power to purchase the main goods of life
(material and psychic goods) than it would have in town. Equally good
house usance would cost more in nearly all towns, and much more in
larger cities. Retail prices of the same food and fuel even in small
towns would be much greater. The necessary outlay for clothes to
maintain the class standard is much less for farmers than for city
dwellers. Moreover, in the use of horses and carriages, and now of
automobiles, and in the free control of his own time--in many elements
of psychic income--the farmer is on a parity with men in other
occupations of double or quadruple his income expressed in monetary
terms.
Tho the farmer's working day in the busiest season of summer is very
long compared with that of factory or office workers, his working
day at other seasons is usually much shorter than the average urban
worker's day. The farmer's life is nearly always free from the
excessive pressure, haste, and competition of city life, and the
value, to many a man, of the more natural and wholesome conditions of
outdoor life and outdoor work are hardly to be measured in terms of
even the most untainted dollars.
§ 11. #Ownership and tenancy.# Since 1880, when the first figures
on farm tenures were collected, the proportion of farms operated by
owners has steadily decreased.
Percentage of farms operated by
Owners Cash tenants Share tenants
1880 ............ 74.5 8.0 17.5
1890 ............ 71.6 10.0 18.4
1900 ............ 64.7 13.1 22.2
1910 ............ 63.0 13.0 24.0
These statistics arouse fears that the class of independent farmers
operating their own farms is gradually giving way to a tenantry
in America. But in some respects the figures are misleading unless
carefully interpreted. The increasing proportion of tenants is due not
so much to owners falling into the class of tenants as to the
hired laborers rising into the class of tenants. The number of male
operating owners compared with all male workers (not merely with all
farms) has remained almost constant at about 42 per cent; while the
per cent of hired workers has decreased from 43.3 (in 1880) to 41.4
(in 1890) and to 34.6 (in 1900). Most hired men on farms are farmers'
sons; the city boy does not adapt himself readily to farm work. Most
hired men of native stock become tenants, and finally owners. Only 11
per cent of the hired workers in agriculture (in 1900) were over 35
years of age.
The landlord of a farm let to a tenant, especially to a share tenant,
is still to a large extent the general manager, controlling in a
large measure through the renting contract and by his oversight, the
operations of the farm. Older men find that letting the farm to
a share tenant is easier for them and gives better results than
continuing to operate the farm with hired labor. And it evidently
gives a man a somewhat higher status to become a tenant than to
continue to be a hired laborer. In the South this movement has taken
on large proportions in the breaking up of large plantations once
operated by the owner with hired labor, and now let in smaller lots
to operating tenants. Yet such a change appears, statistically, as a
decrease in the proportion of farms operated by owners. Despite these
somewhat reassuring facts, the problem of maintaining and increasing
operating ownership of farms in America is one deserving of the most
earnest thought and efforts. The best form of farm tenure is
not necessarily that giving the best immediate economic results.
Politically in a democratic nation, and sociologically in its effects
upon the size of families and the raising of healthy children, the
preservation of an independent American yeomanry is of fundamental
importance to the nation.
The problem is as difficult as it is important, and becomes more
difficult with the rise in the acreage value of lands and with the
economical size of farms, both calling for a larger investment to
become an owner. Changes in the system of taxation should be made with
reference to this object; the system of agricultural credit should be
developed and administered to assist; special efforts in agricultural
education should be made and active administrative efforts should be
directed, toward this important end.
[Footnote 1: See above, ch. 1, secs. 7 and 8.]
[Footnote 2: See ch. 14, sec. 5.]
[Footnote 3: See Vol. I, p. 437.]
[Footnote 4: It must be observed in studying these figures, that
farmers' wives and children, working at home, are not reported as
gainfully occupied. But a widow or a spinster owner, if herself acting
as the enterpriser, is reported as "occupied" in agriculture. The
increasing number of such cases in the past generation in part
explains the growing number and percentage of females in agriculture.
Number occupied in agriculture Per cent of all persons occupied
Males Females Both sexes Males Females Both sexes
1880... 7,068,658 594,385 7,663,043 47.9 22.5 44.1
1890... 7,787,539 678,824 8,466,363 41.4 17.3 37.2
1900... 9,272,315 977,336 10,249,651 39.0 18.4 35.3
1910...10,582,039 1,806,584 12,388,623 35.2 22.4 32.5
]
[Footnote 5: See further, ch. 26, secs. 1 and 2 on the size of farms
as an economic factor.]
[Footnote 6: See above, sec. 2, on the distinction between rural and
agricultural. In part the change here noted results from increases in
the population of towns and incorporated places from a little below
2500 to something about 2500. For example, if there were 2499 persons
in a town in 1900 they would all be classified as rural; if in 1910
there were 2500 or more they would all be classified as urban.]
[Footnote 7: Sec Vol. I, p. 225, and note 11.]
[Footnote 8: See Vol. I, p. 206.]
[Footnote 9: See Vol. I, p. 227, note, for figures on owners and farm
laborers.]