Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1875-04-01

There is hardly city in the United
States which does not contain more
people than can get fair, honest living,
by labor or trade, in TIE best times.
When times of Business depression
come, like those through which we have
passed, and are passing, there is large
class that must be helped, to Keep them
from cruel suffering. Still the cities
grow, while whole regions of the
country-especially its older portions
are depopulated year by year. Yet the
fact is patent to-day that the only pros
porous class is the agricultural. We
have now the anomaly of thrifty farmers
and starving tradesmen. The agricult-
ural classes of the West are prosperous.
They had a good crop last year, and
have received good prices for all their
products; aud while the cities are in
trouble, and manufactures are running
on half time, or not running at all, the
Western farmer has money in his pocket,
and ready market for everything he has
to sell. The country must be fed, and
he feeds it. The city family may do
without new clothes, and a thousand
luxurious appliances, but it must have
bread and meat There is nothing that
can prevent the steady prosperity of the
American farmer but the combinations
and "corners of middlemen that
force unnatural conditions upon the
finances and markets of the country.
This is not the first occasion We have
had for allusion to this subject, and it is
not likely to be the last. The forsaking
of the farm for city life is one of the
great evils Of the time, and, SO far, it has
received no appreciable check. Every
young man, apparently, who thinks he
can get living in the city, or at the
minor centers of population, quits his
lonely home upon the farm and joins the
multitude. Once in the city, he never
returns. Notwithstanding the confine-
~
his new life, he clings to it until he dies,
adding his family to the permanent popu-
alton of his new home. Mr.. Greeley, In
his days of active philanthropy, used to
urge men to leave the city-to go West
to join the agricultural population, and
thus make themselves sure of compe-
tent livelihood. He might as well have
talked to the wind. A city population
can neither be coaxed nor driven into
agricultural pursuits. 1t is not that they
are afraid Of work. The average worker
of the city tolls more hours than the av-
erage farmer in any quarter of the
country. He is neither fed nor lodged
as well as the farmer. He is less indie
pendent than the farmer. He is bond
slave to his employers and his condi-
tions; yet the agricultural life has no
charms for him.
Whatever the reason for this may be,
it is not based in the nature of the work,
or in its material rewards. The farmer
is demonstrably better off than the
worker of the city. He is more indie
pendent, has more command of his own
time, fares better at table, lodges better,
and gets better return for his labor.
What is the reason, then, that the farm
er's boy runs to the city the first chance
he can get, and remains, if he can posi-
bly, find there the means of life2
1t can only be found, we believe, in
the social leanness, or social starvation,
of American agricultural life. The Amer
lean farmer, in all his planning, and
all his building, has never made pro-
vision for life. He has only considered
the means of getting living. Every
thing outside of this-everything relat
ing to society and culture-has been
steadily ignored. He gives his children
the advantages of schools, not recogniz
ing the fact that these very advantages
call into life a new set of social wants
A bright, wen-educated family, in lone
~ IdIul-uOuSe, Is very uiucfcut IutucIIt
from a family brought up in Ignorance
An American farmers children, who
have had few terms at a neighborine
academy, resemble in no degree the
children of the Eur pean peasant. They
come home with new ideas and new
wants, and # there is no provision made
for these new wants, and they find NJ
opportunities for their satisfaction, they
viii be ready, on reaching their majority
to fly the farm and seek the city.
If the American fGrirer wishes to keel
his children near him, he must learn the
difference between living and getting s
living and we mistake him and hi
grade of culture altogether If he does
not stop over this statement and wonder
what we mean by it. To get living
to make money, to become " fore