from “The world history” — by Boak and Anderson
“The life of those who live in cities is vastly different from the life of those who live on farms. The farmer, at least in Europe (this is not so true of new countries), spends most of his life in one place and knows all his neighbours. He can raise his eyes from the harvest field and see the little church where he was married and the “God’s acre” where his father and grandfather were buried. His interests and affections are local. But the town labourer is used to moving on from one job to another and from one house to another. He is always meeting new people and hearing new things. So one reason why changes come so thick and fast nowadays is that more people are uprooted from the soil and have broken with the past.
Another difference is that a farmer is likely to have an all-round job, in which he does a great many different things for himself and his family, while the townsman works at just one thing and with his wages buys what he needs. The farmer milks his own cow, the townsman buys milk from the dairy. The farmer has his own well, the townsman depends on the city waterworks. In short, the farmer wrestles every day directly with Nature, while the townsman depends at every turn on the services of other men. Not at first, but bit by bit, the cities found it necessary to supply policemen to protect people against thieves, fire companies to protect them against fire, water mains, gas plants, schools, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, street-sweepers, road-menders, food-inspectors, and a hundred other services which a country villager in 1800 would never have expected.
Governments had a comparatively easy job in 1800. They had only to protect people from foreign enemies and from criminals, settle disputes over lands and inheritances, coin money, and collect taxes. Most other tasks were left to private persons to do, or were simply left undone. It is true, of course, that government used to do some things that they had better left alone, such as punishing people for having the wrong opinions in religion. In some countries, the government provided a few schools, poorhouses, and hospitals, fixed prices and wages but the general opinion among educated men was that if the government would limit itself to the few things it had to do, everybody would be better off.
