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Show LEAVING THE FARMS. According to the report of the Department of Agriculture there were 193,000 fewer farmers in the United States in 1927 than there were in 1926. The number has been steadily decreasing! decreas-ing! year from year and we have heard a great deal about the emigration emi-gration from the farm to the city with the disastrous results that were sure to follow. There have even been predictions that if the migration continued the time would come when the people of the United States might be called on to face a serious food shortage. But there is another side to the picture and one which is not quite so gloomy. The diminishing of the farm population in 1927 was not so great as it had been in the years previous. For instance: the loss in 1926 in farm population was 649,000 while in 1925 it was 44 L, 000. The farm population of the country in 1920 is estimated esti-mated to have been 31,000,00'0, while in 192 7 it is said to have shrunk to a little over twenty-seven and a half million. The record in 192 7, however, was encouraging and it is not at all improbable that the figures of 1928, when completed, will show that the drift from the country to the city has been definitely stopped. Of course, with the increased production necessary during the war, and the deflation following the war, it was logical to expect some increased moving from the country to the city. The industries indus-tries of the cities recovered from post-war deflation more quickly than the farm did, aand the drift to the cities continued, because more money could be made working in the cities than on the farms. But it would now seem, basing the opinion on the 1927 figures fig-ures quoted above, that a new balance is being struck and that this desertion of the farms may stop in another year. This is a situation situa-tion we will all hope for. When the drift to the cities stops we will know that the farmer is coming into his own again. |