to the decline
and disappearance in many rural places of small manufacturing and
mercantile businesses before the competition of large business in the
cities. In much of the long-settled area of the country every hillside
stream once turned a little mill to saw timber, grind corn, forge
iron, or weave cloth. Most of these mills are now deserted. In
countless villages the old blacksmith shop, once a center of business,
is abandoned. Here and there a patriarchal smith still serves a
dwindling group of customers and speaks with mingled pride and pathos
of his sons, now in the automobile business in the city.

The movement away from the countryside has been but little
counteracted as yet, but may be more in future, by the growing
enjoyment of rural life, by the back-to-the-land movement, by
interurban railways, by improved roads, and by automobiles.

Sec. 9. #The farmer's income in monetary terms#. Census figures and some
additional investigations have led to the estimate of the average
real income of the farmers of the United States in 1909, expressed in
monetary terms, as $724. The estimated value of all products, whether
sold or used by the farmer, plus the value of his house rent and fuel
consumed by family, was $1236, from which expenditures of $512 are
deducted for outside labor, and for materials used for operating and
maintaining the farm. Of the $724 the sum of $402 is estimated to
be the labor-income of the family and $322 is estimated to be the
wealth-income (at 5 per cent of the capitalization of the farm). This
was in a period of rising values in farm lands, averaging about $323
per farm annually, and this to most farmers was equivalent to so much
monetary savings. The main items of net income, therefore, are as
follows:

Rent $125
Food from the farm 261
Fuel 35
Cash 303

Total $724
Increase in value of farm 323

Total estimated monetary income $1047

Of the total, $422 is a labor-income, and $645 is a wealth income.[7]

It would be difficult, even if the available statistics were much more
exact than they are, to compare exactly the farmer's income with those
of urban classes. Averages of such large numbers and over such a wide
area have a limited s