ame persons,
but to a considerable extent they are not. Many farm houses, together
with part or all of the farm lands, lie inside urban boundaries, and,
besides, some persons engaged in agriculture reside in urban places.
On the other hand, any one acquainted in the least with a rural
district (in the statistical sense) can at once think of many
persons living there that are not engaged in agriculture; they may
be merchants, warehousemen, railway employees, physicians,
handicraftsmen, teachers, artists, retired business men, and others.
The percentages given in this and in the preceding section indicate
that about two fifths of the rural families are not engaged in
agriculture.

It is often important to make this distinction, tho it is difficult
to do; for some of the much-discussed rural questions are of a
broad social nature, are matters of rural sociology, relating pretty
generally to the rural population; while other questions of "rural
economics" are more strictly matters of agricultural economics and
relate to the farm as a unit of industry, or to agriculture as an
occupation.

Sec. 3. #Lack of a social agricultural policy in America.# It is a common
remark that the farmer lives an independent life. This develops in him
a self-reliant spirit. He readily gives and takes simple neighborly
help in informal ways, but he does not readily turn to government
for aid. While every influential urban group, organized or
unorganized--manufacturers, merchants, wage-earners--has sought and
obtained special protective social legislation, the farmer has, from
choice or necessity, usually had to work out his economic problems
unaided. The exceptions are few and of small importance. For example,
the prodigal land-policy of the state and national governments
encouraging the settlement of the frontiers was not a farmers'
policy. It was originally inspired by the larger political purpose
of extending the bounds of the nation; later it was advocated and
fostered by a land-speculating element, linked with bad politics, in
the frontier states, and not by farmers as such. It in time greatly
injured the farmers of the eastern states. The "Granger legislation,"
to regulate railroad rates, was so called by the East in a spirit of
derision because it began in the distinctively agricultural states
of the Northwest; but it had neither the aim, nor the result, of
obtaining especially for farmers any rates that were not open to
every one on t