NOTE: This does not include value of live-stock products, the total of which is fully half as great.
well. The farmers' incomes in different parts of the coun try 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 coun try only a beginning has been made in these ways, and in fu ture the census will continue to reflect the progress in these directions.
§ 8. Transfer of work from farm to factory. The other 4 See further, ell. 27. § 1 and § 2, on the size of farms as an eco nomic factor.
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 Fig. 3, Chapter 26.—Manufactures.
NoTz: The scale of valuation is not the same as in Fig. 2. Observe how in the northeast manufactures and farming are combined.
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 pro portion by workers classified as in the manufacturing indus tries, 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.
§ 9. The rural exodus. The percentage of persons in the rural population changes at about the same rate as does Fig. 4, Chapter 26.—Products of mines. Compare with distribution
of farm crops and manufactures.
that of persons occupied in agriculture. In 1890 it was 64, in 1900 it was 60, in 1910 it was 54, and in 1920 it was 48 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 "cityward drift." It is only in part explained by the change from agriculture to other occupations; perhaps even as much 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 cit ies. 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 patri archal 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 rail ways, by improved roads, by telephones, and by automobiles.
The great growth of education (in the sense of school ing) and rise of educational standards has put the country child at a disadvantage as compared with the child in the city. For this reason, great numbers of farmers' families move to villages and cities, to enable the children to attend high school, even when the move involves a sacrifice. Better roads and the consolidated country school, with free trans portation for the pupils, replacing the one-room, one-teacher schoolhouse, have done much to meet this need. Still, as com petent observers have pointed out, the normal farming life of the country is an education in the manual arts and in other ways, so that even with briefer school terms the coun try child may be better educated for life than is the city child.