suggests weariness. Even young girls

reared on farms too often lack that buoyancy and freedom which belong to youth. The farmer himself, also, to a greater extent, his sons, have variety of occupation, bringing them in touch with men and questions; but apart from occasional shopping in town farmers' wives and daughters have at best little enough to spice or enrich their toils. It is said that the majority of the women in the asylums are farmers' wives; if so, it is undoubtedly owing to the dreary sameness of their experience, rare breaks or pauses in work that can never end, the treadmill, the plodding, the ever abiding shadow. Husband and father, can you do less for these loved ones than doing your best according to your means to make the Farmstead Beautiful?

CHAPTER II

THE NATIONAL IMPORTANCE OF

RURAL INTERESTS

N the United States two great move

IN

ments which have extraordinary social importance are now progressing. One is the rush of population into the cities; the other, the syndicating of most wealth in a manner which threatens to lower the fortunes of the rural classes. These classes, being among those which cannot easily combine, have to sell their products competitively, whereas for most things which they buy they must pay syndicate prices. These two movements are so sweeping and in their effects so decisive that some thinkers regard them. as destined to reduce the rural population of America to ignorant peasants such as we see and pity in most European lands.

Whether or not the danger is so great as is alleged, we need not inquire. One thing is certain, that the welfare of rural communities is no mere affair of these commu

nities alone, but is important to the entire Republic. For its continuance and strength the whole nation requires that the rural classes should thrive. As these classes are, so is the state.

In the United States the conjunction of virile population with boundless natural resources has created wealth with a rapidity never before attained. Then right in the midst of this incomparable development mankind reached the world's limit of free arable land. For the first time in history it became impossible to acquire fertile soil by simply traveling to it. As the population of the globe was meantime increasing by leaps and bounds, the disappearance of free arable forced a rise in the values of all agricultural land within reach of markets, giving to our wealth a new and incalculable accession, since our arable land, all of it near centers of population, was at once vaster, richer, and in better cultivation than that of any other nation. Thus the principle of unearned increment has wrought, with our energy and industry and with our country's