below United States and India, Egypt produced in 1905 over six and a half million pounds of cotton, and the average value estimated for eight years was about $70,000,000. In upper Egypt sugar-cane is cultivated, and the estimated annual value is as high as $4,000,000. Rice is a crop in the northern part of the Delta. Corn, wheat, and barley are grown, the acreage of the last aggregating 2,000,000 acres. The annual crop values in the staples have totaled as high as $15,000,000. 8

The fisheries also produce a possible million a year, and there are rice and flour mills, silk-looms, potteries, soap-factories, and tanneries; cotton, woolen, and linen goods are produced; cabinet and jewelry manufacturing is carried on. But the basis of it all is the land, and upon the reclamation of the soil by bringing the waters of the Nile to the arid wastes that border the narrow belt of perennial overflow now rests the question of Egypt's future. Improved agriculture and improved machinery will, under English rule, transform the land of the Pharaohs into a land of homes and farms. To the traveler steeped in the lore of antiquity the invasion of modern life in such lands as Greece, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and even such countries as lie beyond the roof of the world brings a feeling of regret. Where passed Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen, the plow and the reaper are now to win the victories, and subdue the desert in the new and greater conquest of peace.

8. Brigham: Commercial Geography, pp. 414 ff.

Professor of Sociology, University of North Dakota

There seems to be a consensus of opinion among writers of books and papers relative to country life that there is a rural problem. How far the farmers of the nation participate in this belief is, of course, undemonstrable. Unless they believe that there is something wrong with their estate it will be of no immediate benefit to the country for writers to agree. In this case a beneficial change could be produced only by a long and elementary process of education.

That the farmers are of the opinion that there may be something wrong with country districts there are some indications. There is a growing interest on their part in the discussion of rural matters. These pertain to more than the consideration of improvement of soil, crops and machinery. The schools and neighborhood conditions are discust with interest. This is noted not only in the frequency with which educational subjects appear on the programs of farmers' meetings but in the marked attention and interest farmers manifest toward the papers and discussions on social subjects.

THE PROBLEM AS AN INTELLECTUAL PRODUCT.

Before seeking to discover in what the rural social problem consists it may be well to consider in what sense there is such a problem.

It would be an error to think that the problem exists because of rural deterioration. There has been no such deterioration in the United States in any general sense. In fact there has been conspicuous progress made by our agriculturists in several directions. We have but to compare the present conditions of life on the farm with those of pre-Revolutionary times to see this. Indeed a comparison with more recent times Our contemporaries who were born in the earlier third of the nineteenth century well remember the hard

will prove sufficient.

*Chapter VII. of Dr. Gillette's forthcoming book on "Constructive Rural Sociology." All rights reserved.

ships, privations and primitive methods of farming and farm life which prevailed in their youth. It is one of the glories of the average well-settled community of today that it is better fed, housed, and clothed, and does its work more easily and rapidly than was possible in the earlier period.

It is true there has been retrogression in some respects in certain communities. It is also true that many communities have failed to make the advance sustained by the agricultural regions generally. Those communities constitute special pathological studies. They are to be located and mapped out in all their conditions just as the sore spots in the cities are now undergoing study with a view to improvement.

It is also true that certain communities have shown a very recent tendency to deterioration in general social matters. This is particularly true of those regions of such fertility and prosperity that the farmers have retired into the neighboring villages or cities, leaving the conduct of the farms and the leadership of the neighborhood in the hands of renters, who may or may not be inferior to the owners in ability and ambition but who, it would hardly be expected, would show the same interest in the up-keep and the upbuilding of the community as the permanent.

owners.

The rural problem is in reality a product of the intellectual faculties and has come into existence because we have certain ideals of life which we want to impose on the country. There was no rural problem a matter of ten years ago. Conditions in the country have not grown worse since then. Country life was regarded as alright and as perfectly suited to the needs of the farming classes. Then a few people got to thinking about rural conditions. Rural education was subjected to a fierce criticism. The few persons who had pursued courses in rural sociology in universities began to agitate for improvement. The press of the country took up the discussion, agricultural schools responded, farmers' institutes were infected, and the President of the United States took the important step of appointing the Country Life Commission. This move itself had an enormous effect. The whole country from Maine to California and from North Dakota to Texas was filled with opinions about rural decline. It would not have been astonishing if the farmers had decided they were a bad lot and should have abdicated for a more likely generation. The origin of the problem lay in the discovery that

conditions in the country might be improved, that they are not as good as the people living there deserve, that the majority of the owners of farms could well afford better things in the home and in education than they support, and that there is no inherent reason why the farming class may not and should not live as well as people of equal financial ability who dwell in the cities.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM.

In coming to the consideration of the nature of the problem of the country we face the fact that the farmer cannot escape being wrapt up with the destiny of the rest of the nation and the world. The discovery of this interdependence and relatedness of farming life to all other kinds of life and to farming life all over the world is a part of the location of the problem. It is in the nature of a revelation to the nation and to the farming class that there is something to do. To put clearly before the farmers that they are on a competitive basis with others of their class in this country and outside, and that they also compete with other classes in given particulars is to state conditions which they must meet. We are coming to a recognition that the farmers. as such are a distinct and organic class in the national and international social mechanism, occupying a distinct place, having specific functions, with rights to obtain and defend, possessing characteristics by which they may be defined, and holding certain interests in common which constitutes a basis on which they may rise to class-consciousness. The farmers form an economic and social class having such separate interests and characteristics that they cannot be identified with any other part of the nation.

It is no reflection upon the farmer to state that in his outlook he has been an intense individualist. His philosophy of life has been developed from his contact with nature in a direct manner and from his apparent aloofness from the social mechanism. His crops and his stock, his income and his prosperity have seemed to come by the application of his own individual effort to the conditions which the physical environment afforded. Occasionally it has been preached to him by party politicians that it was his duty to vote for certain party men so that they might carry out the traditional policy of protection, the realization of the opposing policy meaning disaster. Occasionally he has asked that the government should assist him by means of agricultural schools, or by putting a curb on railways and on other corporations. But these appeals, or approaches toward an appreciation

of his relationship to society at large, dependence on social conditions, and of a control of his destinies thru the social organization have been spasmodic and incidental. They have only appreciably changed his philosophy from intense individualism to one of cooperative effort. He has generally believed that he and nature would prove sufficient to take care of things and that any constant organized cooperative effort was unnecessary. Of late years he has been getting a larger view of matters but it cannot be said that he has, as yet, come into the possession of an adequate and comprehensive view of his social relatedness so that he is able to put it into effect.

That the farmers constitute an important and distinct economic and social class, and that they fail to exercise the power and influence for their own and the nation's good which a class of their importance should, may be made apparent by a few considerations.

Farmers form a very large part of the nation's population. In 1900 there were 10,381,765 farmers and farm laborers. The next largest occupational group comprised a little over seven million workers. By classification of population 51.9 per cent of all persons in 1900 were rated as rural, that is, as dwellers in the country or in cities of 2500 or less inhabitants.

Mesured in terms of wealth agriculturists are one of the most important classes. In 1900 their wealth was estimated at twenty

and one-fourth billion dollars out of a total national wealth of 107 billion. The thirteenth census will doubtless show a decidedly large increase. Reports thus far state that the value of farm lands has grown from $13,051,033,000 in 1900 to $28,$384,821,000 in 1910, an increase of 118 per cent. It is questionable if any other kinds of property values can show any such growth. There are smaller numbers of people belonging to the commercial and industrial classes who by controling the machinery of distribution of wealth have come into the legal possession of the greater portion of the wealth of the entire nation. In 1888 there were 25,000,000 acres more in cultivation in the United States than there were in 1880. The farmers produced from their land 491,000,000 bushels of cereals above their previous yield. But they received $41,000,000 less for the 1888 crop than for that of 1880. This additional wealth flowed into the coffers of the industrial classes. The short sighted policy of