hich suggest a
closer study of rural conditions. First, there is the interdependence of
town and country, less obvious than it was in the days of the local
market, but no less real. Any fall in the number, or decline in the
efficiency, of the farming community, will be accompanied by a
corresponding fall in the country sale of town products. This is
especially true of America, where the foreign commerce is unimportant in
comparison with internal trade. To nourish country life is the best way
to help home trade. And quite as important as these considerations is
the effect which good or bad farming must have upon the cost of living
to the whole population. Excessive middle profits between producer and
consumer may largely account for the very serious rise in the price of
staple articles of food. This is a fact of the utmost significance, but,
as I shall show later, the remedy for too high a cost of production and
distribution lies with the farmer, the improvement of whose business
methods will be seen to be the chief factor in the reform which the
Rural Life movement must attempt to introduce.

The essential dependence of nations on agriculture is the second
economic consideration. The author of "The Return to the Land," Senator
Jules Meline (successively Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Commerce
and Premier of France), tells us that this remarkable book is "merely an
expansion of a profound thought uttered long ago by a Chinese
philosopher: 'The well-being of a people is like a tree; agriculture is
its root, manufacture and commerce are its branches and its life; if the
root is injured the leaves fall, the branches break away and the tree
dies.'"

This truth is not hard to apply to the conditions of to-day. The income
of every country depends on its natural resources, and on the skill and
energy of its inhabitants; and the quickest way to increase the income
is to concentrate on the production of those articles for which there is
the greatest demand throughout the commercial world. The relentless
application of this principle has been characteristic of the nineteenth
century. But the augmentation of income has in one special way been
purchased by a diminution of capital. The industrial movement has been
based on an immense expenditure of coal and iron; and in America and
Great Britain the coal and iron which can be cheaply obtained are within
measurable distance of exhaustion. As these supplies diminish, the
indust