The epochal changes since 1890 have resulted in many maladjustments, giving rise even to alarm, and to a widespread discontent with the agricultural status. All this constitutes the "rural problem") of the present.
An early and significant aspect of the prob lem was the "abandoned farm." As early as 1&40, but more widely about 1875, press and platform discussed the deserted farm, particu larly in New England, but to some degree throughout the older States of the East. The double attraction of the cheap and rich Western lands, and the call of the rising industrial cities, combined with a difficult soil, and partly the disturbing influences of the Civil War, made the condition active and alarming. The State governments were moved to take action about 1889. Investigation showed no wholesale aban donment, although some 5,000,000 acres, mainly improved, had been from time to time abandoned; the causes were seen to be general, not local; that agriculture was not decadent except relatively with the profits of farming in other regions and other kinds of business; in general, that it was changing, but not declin ing. Later experience has shown the same phenomena in other parts, even in some of the newest and most prosperous farming regions, and the whole matter has come to be regarded as simply one of the many striking evidences of the sweeping and radical changes our agri culture and rural life is at present undergoing. The reoccupation of these lands is almost com plete, and Eastern land values have arisen sharply, products increased with intensive agri culture, prosperity followed from the access to great urban markets, and every phase of rural social betterment, for example, the centraliza tion and consolidation of schools; the new country church, social and federated; traveling libraries; the "good roads and the Grange have been most active. The transfor mation of farming and farm life in the East gives promise of successful readjustment else where. Above all it shows the necessity for perspective in judging American agriculture.
In New England also thephenomena of rural depopulation first appeared, but like the abandonment of farms was soon seen to be symptomatic of the great "agricultural shift" of an expanding and developing country, that al though it often had serious social consequences in the disruption of the farm family, the coun try school and country church, it always repre sented rather a movement from one farming region to another for the realization of better conditions and opportunity, and that it never was largely due to the superior attractiveness of industry and city life, for these called only the few—often the elite, but also many unde sirable elements—and never the vast majority of shifting farmers. All parts, except the very
newest States, have at some time, and in some degree, been affected thus, and the richest agri cultural State, Iowa, actually suffered slight loss in total population due to rural decrease.
This agricultural shifting, so caused, is now over, however, and the new intensive agricul ture, with the rising farm villages, will doubt less absorb the surplus farming population. The present opportunity on the farm is great, it calls for the freer use of labor, machinery, capital and the exercise of management, as well as for better social institutions, and politi cal reorganization, and though difficult, offers attractions at least as great as those of industry and commerce.
These new conditions may also well lessen the movement of "retired This practice is distinctive of American farming, in contrast with the permanent agriculture of Europe; it has occurred in all parts of the country, but particularly in the Middle States, and mainly as the result of the doubling of land values in the last decade. This has enabled not only aged farmers to retire from the hard ships of pioneer and homestead farming, but also the younger generation to go into town with a small fortune for investment. The re tiring farmer has always largely entered the smaller cities, and though often inactive and unprogressive, has latterly usually entered into active business, and become the builder of our country towns. More and more they seek the business opportunity of the nearby town or village, less seldom sell the farm and more often rent it, thus furnishing a vital connecting link between town and country. Conditions are increasingly in favor of a relative cessation of the whole movement.