ds to the business side of the farming industry. Better living is
the building up, in rural communities, of a domestic and social life
which will withstand the growing attractions of the modern city.

This threefold scheme of reform covers the whole ground and will become
the basis of the Country Life movement to be suggested later. But in the
working out of the general scheme, there must be one important change in
the order of procedure--'better business' must come first. The dull
commercial details of agriculture have been sadly neglected, perhaps on
account of the more human interest of the scientific and social aspects
of country life. Yet my own experience in working at the rural problem
in Ireland has convinced me that our first step towards its solution is
to be found in a better organisation of the farmer's business. It is
strange but true that the level of efficiency reached in many European
countries was due to American competition, which in the last half of the
nineteenth century forced Continental farmers to reorganise their
industry alike in production, in distribution and in its finance. Both
Irish experience and Continental study have convinced me that neither
good husbandry nor a worthy social life can be ensured unless
accompanied by intelligent and efficient business methods. We must,
therefore, examine somewhat critically the agricultural system of the
American farmer, and see wherein its weakness lies.

The superiority of the business methods of the town to those of the
country is obvious, but I do not think the precise nature of that
superiority is generally understood. What strikes the eye is the
material apparatus of business,--the street cars, the advertisements,
the exchange, the telephone, the typewriter; all these form an
impressive contrast with the slow, simple life of the farmer, who very
likely scratches his accounts on a shingle or keeps them in his head.
But most of this city apparatus is due merely to the necessity of swift
movement in the concentrated process of exchange and distribution. Such
swiftness is neither necessary nor possible in the process of isolated
production. But there is an economic law, applicable alike to rural and
to urban pursuits, which is being more and more fully recognised and
obeyed by the farmers of most European countries, including Ireland, but
which has been too little heeded by the farmers of the United States and
Great Britain. Under modern economic cond