refer again to their report. But I may here
say I am firmly convinced that a complete change in the whole attitude
of public opinion towards the old question of town and country must
precede any large practical outcome to the labours of the Commission. It
has to be brought home to those who lead public opinion that for many
decades we, the English-speaking peoples, have been unconsciously guilty
of having gravely neglected one side, and that perhaps the most
important side, of Western civilisation.

To sustain this judgment I must now view the sequence of events which
led to the subordination of rural to urban interests, and try to
estimate its probable consequences. It will be seen that the neglect is
comparatively recent, and of English origin. I believe that the New
World offers just now a rare opportunity for launching a movement which
will be directed to a reconstruction of rural life. It is this belief
which has prompted an Irish advocate of rural reform to turn his
thoughts away for a brief space from the poorer peasantry of his own
country and to take counsel with his fellow-workers in the United States
and Canada on a problem which affects them all.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] These, as a matter of fact, were defrayed by the trustees of the
Russell Sage Foundation.

[2] The Commission consisted of L. H. Bailey, of the New York State
College of Agriculture at Cornell University (chairman); Henry Wallace,
editor of _Wallace's Farmer_, Des Moines, Iowa; Kenyon L. Butterfield,
President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst,
Massachusetts; Walter H. Page, editor of _The World's Work_, New York
City; Gifford Pinchot, United States Forester, and Chairman of the
National Conservation Commission; C. S. Barrett, President of the
Farmers' Co-operative and Educational Union of America, Union City,
Georgia; W. A. Beard, of the _Great West Magazine_, Sacramento,
California.

CHAPTER III

THE ORIGIN AND CONSEQUENCES OF RURAL NEGLECT

The most radical economic change which history records set in during the
last half of the eighteenth century in England, as the result of that
remarkable achievement of modern civilisation, the Industrial
Revolution. Mechanical inventions changed all industry, setting up the
factories of the town instead of the scattered home production of the
country and its villages. In the wake of the new inventions economic
science stepped in, and, scrupulously obeying its own law of dema