THE FARMERS’ INDEMNITY 
difference: The Frenchman wouldn't sell, even at his inflated 
price; the American would shade his price considerably in order 
to sell. The Frenchman's price is only a private fancy which 
has nothing to do with the state of agriculture. The American’s 
inflated price is an active force in building up the burden of 
debt borne by the farms. If one traced out the history of the 
French wheat farm one would probably find that from the time 
of the French revolution to the present day it has never paid 
a sou of interest on mortgage debts or of rent to absentee owners. 
[ts proprietors have lived on it in contentment, and at death 
have left it, with regret, to contented sons or daughters. For 
every franc’s worth of produce sent to town the farm has been 
able to bring back a franc’s worth of goods: brick, tile and lum- 
ber for the extension of the buildings, commercial fertilizer, 
such implements and machinery as the state of technique might 
require, and of course not a few mere gauds, ribbons and tinsel 
for the wife, pipes and shotguns and government bonds for the 
husband. There is a just balance of trade between farm and city, 
in France, and therefore, though the French are not the best 
farmers in the world, the whole countryside smiles with prosper- 
ous contentment. Our American balance is all out of Kkilter; 
therefore a countryside which by nature should be entrancing is 
too often utterly disconsolate. 
The frequent turnover of farms loads the country up with 
lebts and robs it of the surplus on which a rich and agreeable 
rural life could be based. And the resultant dullness and thin- 
ness of life accelerates the farm turnover. Discontent is one 
of the most infectious of diseases. You may be as serene a 
spirit as ever yearned to sit still. Yet if all around you men are 
selling out or longing to sell out, you become infected yourself 
and sell out if you get a chance. The rising generation is most 
seriously affected by this community restlessness. In some dis- 
tricts they regularly fly the nest as soon as their feathers are 
half grown, and nothing remains to hold down the farms but 
men and women of middle age and downward. 
The women—and this is the worst sign of all—are seriously 
infected with the prevailing discontent. Forty years ago almost 
every farmer's wife had a whole repertory of songs, the burden 
of which was: “Stay on the farm.” Those songs have died out. 
The farmer’s wives of today, if they were not too discouraged to 
225