The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1872-06-12
The Loneliness of Farming Life In
America.

In SeyiJner's Monthly for June,
which is already upon our table, DR.
j. G.. Holland gives a new and not
ovcr-agreeable picture Of American
farm life in the following sketch:
An American traveller in the Old
World notices, among the multitude
of things that are new to his eve, the
gathering of agricultural populations
into villages. He has been accus-
toned in his own country to see them
distributed upon the farms they cult
vatc. The isolated farm-life, so uni
versal here, either does not exist at
all in the greater part of continental
Europe, or it exist as a comparative
" modern institution. The old pop
ulatiOns, of all callings and profes-
siohs, clustered together for self-de-
fense, and built walls around them
selves. Out from these walls, for
miles around, went the tillers of the
soil in the morning, and back into the
gates they thronged at night Cot
tages were clustered around feudal
castles, and grew into towns; and so
Europe for many centuries was culti-
waited mainly by people who lived in
villages and cities, many of which
were walled, and all Of which pos
sessed appointments of defense. The
early settlers in our own country took
the same means to defend themselves
from the treacherous Indian. The
towns of Hadley, Mortified and
Deerfeld, on the Connecticut River,
are notable examples of this kind of
buildings; and to this day they re-
main villages Of agriculturalists.-
That this is the way in which farmers
ought to live we have no question,
and we wish to say few words about
it.
There is some reason for the gen
eral disposition of American men and
women to shun agricultural pursuits
which the observers and philosophers
have been slow to find We see Young
men pushing every where into trade,
into mechanical pursuits, into the
learned professions, into insignificant
clerkships, into salaried positions of
every sort that will take them into
towns and support and hold them
there. We find it impossible to drive
poor people from the cities with the
threat of starvation, or to coax them
with the promise of better pay and
cheaper fare, There they stay, and
starve, and sicken, and sink. Young
women resort to the shops and facto-
ries rather than take service in far
mer's houses, where they are receiv-
ed as members of the family; and
when they marry, they seek an alli-
anee, when practicable, with mechan-
les and tradesmen who live in vii
lagos and large towns. The daugh-
tiers of the farmer fly the farm at the
first opportunity. The towns grow
larger all the time, and, in New Eng
land at least, the farms are becoming
wider and longer, and the farming
population are diminishing in num-
bers, and, in some localities, degraded
in quality and character.
1t all comes to this, that isolated
life has very little significance to a
social being. The social life of the
village and the city has intense fas-
cination to the lonely dwellers ON the
farm, or to great multitude of them
Especially is this the case with the
young. The youth of both sexes who
have seen nothing of the world have
an overwhelming desire to meet life
and to be among the multitude. They
feel their life to be narrow in its op-
portunities and its rewards, and the
pulsations of the great social heart
that comes to them in rushing trains
and passing steamers and daily news
papers, damp with the dews of
hundred brows, thrill them with long
ings for the places where the rhythmic
throb is felt and heard. They are not
to be blamed for this. 1t is the most
natural thing in the world. If all of
life We're labOr-if the great object of
life We're the scraping together of
few dollars, more or less--why, iso-
lation without diversioR would be
economy and profit; hut SO long as
the object of life is life, and the best
and purest and happiest that can
come of it, all needless isolation is a
crime against the soul, in that it is a
surrender and sacrifice of noble OPP
pOrtunities