g so I guess I
will take care of the house and let them go to work."[201]

Ironically, additions such as electrification, intended to improve the
rural standard of living, seem to have done little to check the
migration. USDA and United Nations studies show that the very amenities
which should have made life in the country more attractive often
resulted in a large flow of the population towards urban areas, a trend
which continues today in developing countries. Even increased education,
which had as its goal professional quality in agricultural training,
sometimes simply broadened the farmer to possibilities outside his own
realm. Sociologists and agriculturalists have found these repercussions
puzzling and have not discovered clear-cut reasons for them. Perhaps
with country and city life being ever homogenized by the use of radios,
automobiles, consumer goods and the interflow of people, the step of
leaving the farm to try city life seemed less foreign and formidable. In
Fairfax County the proximity of Washington and Alexandria made it
especially tempting.[202]

It was not only farm owners who left home for city jobs, but the farm
laborers. The effect of this exodus was devastating to the county's
small farmer. Initially the scarcity of help meant cutting back
additional farm activities, the products of which were not earmarked for
the market. Rebecca Middleton remembered, for instance, that farmers
stopped raising their own hogs chiefly because of the difficulty of
hiring laborers to help with butchering.[203] As labor shortages grew,
the available help raised their prices significantly, eventually
outpricing themselves for most farmers. As Joseph Beard observed, this
trend did not affect Fairfax County in a really dramatic way until after
World War II, "by virtue of the fact that most farmers raised anywhere
from two to five children. Most every farmer's hired hand raised from
two to five children. Now there just wasn't room on this farm to employ
ten to twelve children." With such large families the drain to
Washington did not so clearly affect the farms at the outset.[204]
Nevertheless, the trend retains its significance, for the high cost of
labor, which contributed greatly to the demise of the self-supporting
farm, had its roots in the optimistic improvement of transportation
systems in the second and third decades of the century.[205]

The improved roads carried yet another liability: an increase in land
valu