In the period through which we are now passing a transformation is taking place. The rural exodus is no longer that of individuals, but of whole families. The farms thus vacated are let to tenants, generally on a three years' lease, at a competition rent. The Country Life Commission says that this tendency to move to the cities "is not peculiar to any region. In difficult farming regions, and where the competition with other farming sections is most severe, the young people may go to town to better their condition. In the best regions the older people retire to town because it is socially more attractive, and they see a prospect of living in comparative ease and comfort on the rental of their lands. Nearly everywhere there is a townward movement for the purpose of securing school advantages for the children. All this tends to sterilize the open country and to lower its social status." The Commission points out that the new addition of what is likely to be a stationary element, whose economic interests lie elsewhere, to the citizenship of the town, may create there a new social problem, while the tenant in the country will not have that interest in building up rural society which might be expected in the owners of land. Mr. Ross's studies lead him very definitely to the same conclusion. Churches and educational institutions, he tells us, are being starved, and rural society is fast reverting to the type which was prevalent from thirty to fifty years ago. But there is one great difference between then and now. Then, rural civilisation was passing through a stage of marked social advancement which was common throughout the country; now, there are distinct indications of social degeneration, which Mr. Ross regards as the inevitable consequence of the new landlord and tenant system. Many members of these communities must have left the Old World to escape from the selfsame conditions which they are reproducing in the New.
Rural society in the Middle West, as it presents itself to the observer whose authority I have cited, is obviously in a transitional stage. The lack of farm labourers, which is the common subject of complaint by farmers in all parts of the United States, cannot fail to be aggravated by the change in the conditions of tenancy just noted. The man whose chief concern is to get the most out of the land, at the least expense, in two or three years, will not treat his labourers so well--nor the land so well--as will the man who means to spend his life on the farm; and therefore the labourers will not stay. This scarcity of labour may be met to some extent by an increased use of machinery; but it is more likely to lead to poorer cultivation, which means the depopulation of agricultural districts. England and Ireland furnish too many examples of the rural decay immortalised in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." It would be strange and sad if the experience were to be repeated on the richest soil of America.