Social reasons also have their influence in the movement of rural populations to towns. The social resources in the country in recent years have been very meager, because the social attractions of the towns have drawn away from the activities of the open country, and also more or less because the population itself is decreasing and does not allow, thereby, for so close social cohesion. It is not to be expected that the counter-movement from the towns and cities to the open country will yet balance in numbers the movement of population from the country to the city. It is important that conditions be so improved for the open country that those who are born on the farms and who are farm-minded shall feel that opportunities are at least as good for them there as in the city, and thereby prevent the exodus to the city or to other business of persons who really ought to remain in the rural regions. _Significance of the decline._ It is commonly assumed that a decline in rural population in any region is itself evidence of a real decline in agriculture. This conclusion, however, does not at all follow. The shift in population as between town and country is an expression of very many causes. In some cases it may mean a lessening in economic efficiency in the region, and in some cases an actual increase in such efficiency. It must be remembered that we have been passing from the rural to the urban phase of civilization. The census of 1900 showed approximately one-third of our people on farms or closely connected with farms, as against something like nine-tenths a hundred years previous. It is doubtful whether we have yet struck bottom, although the rural exodus may have gone too far in some regions; and we may not permanently strike bottom for some time to come. We think of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and other early patriots as countrymen, and we are likely to deplore the fact that countrymen no longer represent us in high places. The fact is that "the fathers" represented all society, because society in their day was not clearly differentiated between city and country. They were at the same time countrymen and city men, but the city was the incidental or secondary interest. To-day, the conditions are reversed. The city has come to be the preponderating force, and the country is largely incidental and secondary so far as the shaping of policies is concerned; but this does not prove that a greater ratio of country population is needed. The number of persons now living in the open country is probably sufficient, if the persons were all properly effective. The real problem before the American people is how to make the country population most effective, not how to increase this population; the increase will be governed by the operation of economic law. The sorting of our people has not yet reached its limit of approximate stability. Many persons who live on the land really are not farmers, but are the remainders of the rural phase of society.