to her. We should, therefore, await with hope that the present Administration may solve what for us was an insoluble difficulty.

Mr. Root, whose great constructive labors in the cause of world peace have just received most just recognition' in the Nobel Prize, in his visit to South America attempted to convince the people of those republics that we wish no more territory, and that we wish only the prosperity of all our neighbors. And Mr. Knox in his visit to Venezuela, and to all the republics of the West Indies and Central America, made the same effort. I hope that Mr. Roosevelt may carry the same message to South America. Doubtless he is doing so.

After some years, I hope that a consistent course on our part may effect an abatement of the present feeling described by Professor Bingham and others. But however that may be, and whatever injustice the South American peoples may do us in suspecting us of selfish plans against them and their territory, we ought not to allow the present expressed hostility to the Monroe Doctrine, which involves no assertion of suzerainty or sovereignty over them, to change our course. The Doctrine is based on a wise policy in our own interest to exclude from this hemisphere the selfish political interference of European governments, and their appropriation of territory, not for the purpose of increasing our power or territory, but for the purpose of promoting the prosperity, independence, and happiness of the peoples of these two continents and so of insuring our own peace and safety.

II. C. INFORMAL ARGUMENT

IS AGRICULTURE DECLINING?1

KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD

THERE is no likelihood that the number of rural people will ever be less than now. There can be no doubt that, relatively, agriculture as an industry and the number of persons engaged in rural pursuits are declining. This fact has led some thinkers to the apparent conclusion that because urban population and industry are eventually to be the more dominant features of our civilization, rural industry and rural population must become minor factors in American life. Indeed this idea leads some to suppose that the temper of rural life is to be one of decadence. Of course the very fact that agriculture as an industry has not advanced so rapidly as manufacturing, is a cause for some concern; although the business of agriculture as a whole is now so flourishing, that we are not much given to worry about it. What causes still greater concern is the small return that comes to the average farmer for his labor and use of capital. This is a matter of first importance in a business so large as that of agriculture. We cannot afford to have on our land a class of workers generally underpaid. But let us dwell for a moment upon this question of the numbers of rural residents. Josiah Strong states that the tendency cityward will persist because fewer men than formerly are needed on our farms to produce the food required by the city dwellers. There is no doubt about the general principle; but there are some important qualifications to it. In the first place, the very fact of city growth makes constantly new demands upon agri

1 From The Country Church and the Rural Problem. University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission.

culture. The more people who must buy their food, the greater the supply needed. Higher standards of living also require higher grades of food products. True, it is a well-known economic law that the proportion of income spent for food decreases as the income increases. But the total amount spent for food does increase with general growth of population; besides, the increased expenditures for other things, if made in purchase of the results of productive enterprise, create a new and considerable, if indirect, demand for more food, on the part of the workers thus given new employment. Another qualification lies in the fact that while the product per agricultural worker has steadily increased, a great part of our enlarged food supply in America has come from the use of new areas. We are passing rapidly out of this condition. While millions of acres are yet to be redeemed by irrigation, and other millions by drainage, the era of great farm land expansion has passed. Of the two processes, it is vastly easier as a practical matter to increase production by the use of new land than by better use of the old. We have then a rapidly increasing non-agricultural population, coincident with a check in the supply of new agricultural land. More scientific farming is to be the outcome. Each farm worker will produce more than now; but it does not necessarily follow that less than the present number of workers will be needed on our farms. In fact, it is probable that the number of agricultural workers, and consequently of the rural population, will slowly but steadily increase for an indefinite period of time.

STATE CONTROL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 1

A. D. LINDSAY

1

"THE only real moral worth is in choice and spontaneity: government action destroys choice and therefore destroys moral worth." This argument depends on an almost wage fund

1 From Introduction to the Essays of John Stuart Mill.

theory of choice. It supposes that if the state does for me compulsorily what I might have done for myself, I am robbed of an opportunity for choice. Actually, if the state action is at all sensible, my opportunities for action, and therefore for choice, are greatly increased. If it were left to me to mend or neglect the road in front of my house, I might go through an excellent moral discipline in making up my mind to mend it, however much the state of the road where my neighbors had not responded to their moral opportunities made traffic impossible. If the state levies a compulsory rate on all, and provides a good road, though that particular moral discipline may be gone, I need not sit and mourn that I might have been mending the road had not a paternal government robbed me of my choice. Easy communication made possible by good roads will bring the opportunities of countless social duties never thought of before. The notion that the moral struggle in itself is the only thing of value, implies that we ought never to form moral habits, since in so doing we shall decrease the area of moral struggle. Given that I am a person who cannot pass a public house without going through a moral struggle against the temptation to get drunk within, is it really an advantage that I should pass a hundred rather than one? I shall have a hundred more moral struggles, provided I do not succumb; but I shall be incapable of thinking of anything else. If I never thought of it at all, I should have the opportunity of proving myself a really good citizen instead of struggling not to be a very bad one. To suggest that any means which produce this result would destroy true temperance is to suggest that getting drunk or not getting drunk is the only moral alternative which we are capable of considering. The theory is abstract. It isolates, not only the individual, but the action of the individual, and examines the effect of social action in that. No account of liberty can be satisfactory which does not see the individual as he actually exists, a member of society in relation to other members. Society may not give him full liberty, but without society he can have none at all.

ORGANIZATION OF FARMERS 1

KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD

THE history of agricultural organizations in America is a very interesting one, beginning with the development of the agricultural fairs, the farmers' clubs, etc., and including the greater farmers' movement of the last third of the nineteenth century, which arose during the period of general agricultural discontent, and which attempted to combine the entire farming class into one compact organization. It would take us too far afield to describe even briefly these various efforts to secure the group strength of the farmers. It is important, however, not to omit from a discussion of the rural problem the place which organization fills in its solution. It is a fundamental necessity. It may sound like an echo of the doctrine of brute strength to assert that the farming class, like other classes, needs to assert itself in order to play its part in on-going civilization. I would call your attention to a remark made by Professor Charles H. Cooley :

The self-assertion of the wage-earning class, so far as it is orderly and pursuant of details which all classes share, has commanded not only the respect but the good will of the people at large. Weakness - intrinsic weakness, the failure of the member to assert its function -is instinctively despised. I am so far in sympathy with the struggle for existence as to think that passive kindliness alone, apart from self-assertion, is a demoralizing ideal, or would be if it were likely to become ascendant. But the self which is asserted, the ideal fought for, must be a generous one-involving perhaps self-sacrifice as that is ordinarily understood or the struggle is degrading.

Organization, then, becomes a test of class efficiency. Has a great class of people like the farmers the power to combine, the intelligence to combine, the will to combine? Organization, moreover, and by the same token, tends to conserve class efficiency. Can the class maintain an organization that enables

1 From The Country Church and the Rural Problem. University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission.