Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-05-30
The Loneliness of Farming Life i'm
America.

America.
AN American traveller in the Old
" orid notices, among the multitude of
things that are new to his eye, the gather
ing of agricultural populations into vii
lagos. He has been accustomed in his
own country to see them distributed upon
the farms they cultivate. The isolated
so universal here, either does
not exist at all in the greater part of con-
tinental Enrepe, or it exists ~ compar-
atively modern institution. The old pop
of all callings and professions,
cluster together for self-defense, and built
walls around themselves. 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 cas-
ties, and grew into towns; and so Europe
for many centuries was cultivated mainly
by people who lived in villages and cities,
many of which were walled, and all of
which possessed appointments of de-
fense The early settlers in our own
country took the same means TO defend
themselves from the treacherous Indians.
The towns of Hadley, Hatfield, Northheld
and Deerfield, on the Connecticut River,
are notable examples of this kind of
building; and to this day they remain
villages of agriculturists. = That this is
the way in which farmers ought TO live
we have no question, and we wish to say
a few words about it.
There is some reason for the general
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
everywhere 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 the factories rather than
take service in farmers houses, where
they are received as members of the
family; and VIII, n they marry, they seek
an alliance, when practicable, with me-
chanics and tradesmen who live in viii
lagos and large towns. The daughters of
the farmer fly the farm at the first oppor.
tunity. The towns grow larger all the
time, and, in New England at least, the
Aoi hAo hlO bNSOAhAhS "AASA ohh AOAESAf
and the farming population are dimin-
ished in numbers, 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 fascination 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 oppor
tunities and its rewards, and the pulsa
tions of the great social heart that come:
to them in rushing trains, and passing
steamers, and daily newspapers damp
with the news of a hundred brows, thrill
them with longings for the places where
the rhythmic throb is felt and heard
They are not to be blamed for this. 1t i:
the most naturH thing in the world. i
all of life were labor-if the great object
of life were the scraping together of afev
| dollars, more or less-why, isolation with
out diversion would be economy anC
profit; but so long as the object of life i.
| life, and the best and purest and happies
that can come of it, all needless isolation
| is crime against the soul, in that it is
surrender and sacrifice of noble Oppor
| tunities.
We are, therefore, not sorry to SCI
| farms growing larger, provided thos'
who work them will get nearer together
and that is what they ought to do. Any
farmer who plants himself and his family
alone-far from possible neighbors-takei
upon himself a terrible responsibility.
is impossible that he and his family shoulC
be well developed and thoroughly happy
there. He will be forsaken in his olC
age by the very children for whom he ha
made his great sacrifice. They will fly t.
the towns for the social food and stimuli
for which they have starved. We neve
hear of colony settling on a Westerl
prairie without a thrill of pleasure. 1t i
in colonies that all ought to settle, and il
villages rather than on separated farms
The meeting, the lecture, the publi
amusement, the social assembly, shoult
be things easily reached. There is NJ
such damper upon free social life a
distance. A long road is the surest bar {
neighborly intercourse. If the social lif
of the farmer were richer, his life woul,
by that measure be the more attractive
After all, there are farmers who wi
read this article with a sense of affront o
injury, as if by doubling or disputin
the sufficiency of their social opportun
ties we insult them with sort of col
tempt. We assure them that they cannC
afford to treat thoroughly sympatheti
counsel in this way. We know that thei
wives and daughters and sons are on ou
side, quarrel with us as they may an
the women and children are right 9Th
old man." who rides to market and th
post office, and mingles more or less
business with the world, gets along tole
ably well; but it is the stayers at HON
who suffer. Instead of growing wise
and better as they grow old, they lose a
the graces of life in unmeaning drudgerl
and instead of ripening in mind an
heart, they simply dry up or decay. w
are entirely satisfied that the great ours
} of farming life in America is its isolation
1t is useless to say that men shun the fam
because they are lazy. The American
not lazy man anywhere but he is 81
cial, and he will fly from a life that is NJ
social to one that is If we are to have
larger and better population devoted I
agriculture, isolation must be shunne'
and the whole policy of settlement her
, after must be controlled or greatly mod
, fled by social considerations.-Dr .