h
of the multiple shop or the private trader, of guilds of workers or
autocrats of industry? Economic desires generally depend on the nature
of the industry men are engaged in. The jeweler would probably desire
the permanence of the social order which created most wealthy people who
could afford to buy his wares. The farmer's industry, if we consider it
closely, is the most democratic of any in its application to society.
The produce of the farm, in its final distribution, is divided into
portions more or less equal and conditioned in quantity by the digestive
powers of an individual. The wealthiest millionaire cannot eat more
bread, butter, meat, vegetables, or fruit than the manual laborer would
eat if the latter could afford to get such things. In fact he would
eat rather less, because the manual worker has a much better appetite,
indeed requires more food. It appears to be the interest of the farmer
to support any urban movement whose object it is to see that every
worker in the towns is remunerated so that he, his wife, and his
children can procure as much food as they require. Any underpaid worker
in the towns is a wrong to the farmer--a willing customer who yet cannot
buy. If there is, let us say, a sum of fifteen hundred pounds a week to
be paid away in a town, it is to the interest of farmers that that sum
should be paid to a thousand men at the rate of thirty shillings a week
rather than to fifty men at thirty pounds a week. In the case of the
workers a greater part of the money will be spent on food. But if fifty
men have thirty pounds a week each, it will be spent to satisfy the
appetites of a much smaller number of people. A larger proportion will
be spent on furniture, pictures, motor-cars and what not. It may be
spent so as to give some kind of employment, but it will not be a
division of the money so much to the interests of the farmer. However
we analyze the problem it appears to be to the farmer's interests to
support democratic movements in the cities, certainly up to the point
where every worker in the towns has a wage which enables himself and his
family to eat all they require for health. It is also to the interests
of farmers to support any system of distribution of goods which
eliminates the element of profit in the sale. After the farmer gets his
price it is to his interests that food should be increased in cost as
little as possible when the article is transferred to the consumer,
because if far