It is often important to make this distinction, though 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.
§ 4. 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 ob tained special protective social legislation, the farmer, from choice or necessity, has usually had to work out his economic problems unaided. The exceptions are few and of small im portance. 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 in spired 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 in jured the farmers of the eastern states. The "Granger leg islation" 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 nearly all outward and few inward, while heavy and effective rates were placed on most things that the farmers had to buy.' 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 legisla tures farmers are few relative to their numbers in the com munity, and still fewer in either House or Senate in Wash ington. Moreover, the farmers have rarely asked or re ceived, as a class, any favoring legislation. 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 pro tective legislation. But farmers have, as has every economic group, interests that 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. There are evidences, with increas I See ch. 16, ˘ 5.
ing organization among farmers, of an intention to seek political power and favors, which promises to present a new problem of monopoly and bodes ill for the other elements of the community. The road of true progress is not toward more monopoly for farmers, but toward less monopoly for large business and favored commercial interests.