there is also an actual loss in population, and in
the North and Middle West the States generally are making no rural
gain. But the most disheartening element in the movement of population
from the point of view of rural communities is the loss of the most
substantial of the older citizens, who move to the city to enjoy the
reward of years of toil, and of the most ambitious of the young people
who hope to get on faster in the city. Loss of such as these means
loss of competent, progressive leaders. Added to this is the loss of
laborers needed to cultivate the farms to their capacity for urban as
well as rural supply. The loss of labor is not a serious economic
misfortune, for it can be remedied to a large extent by the
introduction of more machinery and new methods, but the loss of
population reproduces in a measure the isolation of earlier days, and
so tends to social degeneration. It is idle to expect that the
far-reaching causes that are contributing to city growth will stop
working for the sake of the rural community, but it is possible to
enrich community life so that there will be less relative attraction
in the city, and so that those who remain may enjoy many of the
advantages that hitherto have been associated with the city alone.

READING REFERENCES

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 11-37.

GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 32-46, 281-292.

ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 57-91.

SEMPLE: _Influences of Geographic Environment._

GALPIN: "Method of Making a Social Survey in a Rural Community,"
_University of Wisconsin Circular of Information_, No. 29.

CARROLL: _The Community Survey._

CHAPTER XV

OCCUPATIONS

109. =Rural Occupations.=--An important part of the study of the rural
community is its social functions. These do not differ greatly in name
from the functions of the family, but they have wider scope. The
domestic functions are confined almost entirely to the homes. The
village usually includes a boarding-house or a country inn for the
homeless few, and here and there an almshouse shelters the few
derelicts whom the public must support.

Economic activities in the main are associated with the farm home. The
common occupation in the country is agriculture. Individuals are born
into country homes, learn the common occupation, and of necessity in
most cases make it their means of livelihood. Rural people are
accustome