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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The welfare of any large group of the population should be of vital concern to all. This principle applies especially to homemakers and to farmers since more persons, by far, are engaged in these occupations than in any other two. The home provides the personnel for all industries, professions, and institutions, both rural and urban. Agriculture provides a way of living for those who follow it and also food and raw materials for persons in other occupations. National welfare in the United States is certain to be influenced greatly by the rise and fall of the fortunes of homes and of agriculture.

The Rural Population

It is recognized that the Industrial Revolution has changed the mode of urban life and the economy of manufacturing goods in cities, but it has done much more; it has influenced tremendously the balance in population between rural and urban communities. The machines turning the wheels in factories find their counterpart on farms; these machines, combined with agricultural science, enabled one farmer to produce approximately two and one-half times as much in 1930 as he could have produced in 1870. With the consequent diminishing need of agricultural manpower during the past 60 years, about 60 percent of the persons born on farms in the United States have been released for occupations other than farming.1

In 1790, approximately 95 percent of the population of the United States was rural; in 1930, 44 percent was rural.2 The figure 44 percent is inflated because of the practice of the United States census of classifying populations in towns

10. E. Baker, The Outlook for Rural Youth, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Extension Service Circular No. 203 (mimeographed, 1934), p. 2.

U. S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, Vol. I (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1931), pp. 9, 14.

and villages under 2,500 as rural. The percentage of the population living on farms and in unincorporated villages was 36 in 1930, but actually only 21 percent of all workers were engaged in agriculture.3

5

Despite the fact that the number of people in the United States has increased nearly 40 percent since 1910, there were in 1937 about 1 percent fewer persons on farms than in 1910.* According to a recent report of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the United States Department of Agriculture there were approximately 80,000 fewer persons living on farms at the beginning of 1937 than a year earlier. This was a reversal of the trend in farm population during the years. from 1930 to 1935. The Bureau of Agricultural Economics estimated that the farm population on January 1, 1937, was 31,729,000.

The rural birth rate has declined over a period of years, but the farm still produces a surplus of population above its needs. Baker reports the following data: Approximately 370 children under 5 years of age per 1,000 women 15 to 45 are required to maintain the population stationary. In 1930, seven cities, with over 100,000 population, composed largely of American stock, lacked about 40 percent of having enough children to maintain their population without accessions from outside. All cities with over 100,000 population, taken as a whole, had a deficit of over 20 percent, and the smaller cities (those from 2,500 to 100,000 population) had a deficit of about 8 percent. On the other hand, the rural nonfarm population had a surplus of 30 percent, and the rural farm population had a surplus of nearly 50 percent. In 1930, there was an approximate balance between the urban deficit and the rural surplus.

3 Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, vol. III, pt. I, pp. 6, 12.

4 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Farm Population Estimates January 1, 1937 (mimeographed, June 24, 1937), p. 2.

Ibid., p. 1.

• Ibid., p. 7. It must be kept in mind that the farm population (the number of people actually living on farms) is less than the rural population, which includes towns and villages up to 2,500.

7 O. E. Baker, Relation of Population Trends to Commercial Agriculture . . . November 29, 1935, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics (mimeographed) p. 3 and Figure 5.

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