The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1882-12-28
Contrast Between City and Country
1Chicago Journal

One of the serious questions that
confront certain class of the fathers
and mothers of the present generation
is how to break up the monotOny of
farm life, as it exists in the United
States to-day. The farming popula-
ton find it impossible to get good
hired help for the reason that the
Young men and women who have to
earn their own living prefer to seek
their fortune in the city instead of in
the country, and farmers sons and
daughters are equally disconnected at
home, and flee off to the city the mo-
ment there is good opportunity. The
result is that our cities are increasing
in population in a much more rapid
rate than our rural districts, and the
effects of this is neither Salutary nor
encouraging from the moral stand
point. The great city, at its best estate,
is an unwholeSome and peStifer-
Gus blotch upon the body polite,
which tends to demoraliZe all who
breathe its heated atmosphere, and is
the nursery of vice, wickedness and
immortality of all sorts. 1t is to the
country with its peaceful and happy
homes, and its slower methods, that
the patriot and the philanthropist look
for that conservative influence and
that benignant power which are to
preserve our free institutions and
hand them down unimpaired to future
generations. No president of the
United States has ever been selected
from city-thOugh that is perhaps a
mere accident-but certain 1t is that
with all its superior advantages the
city does not breed the best type of
manhood and womanhood. 1t is the
Unsuitable consumer OF all the best en-
ergies of modern life.
The home, in its best and most
sacred function, is built on lower
plane in the city than it is in the coun-
try. In the former people live more
from hand to mouth, are more noma-
die, and have fewer permanent attach
ments, than in the latter. Not one in
a thousand of the jewellers in a great
city owns the house in which he re-
sides, or ever knows what it Is to feel
the independent sense of ownership in
the roof that shelters him. Hence it
is that the children reared under such
circumstances have natural tendency
to a vagabondish kind of life, which
seldom ends as well as could be wish
ed.
There are thousands of young men
in Chicago at the present time who
rent rooms and eat at restaurants and
know no more of true home life or of
pure social enjoyment than so many
Hottentots, except the blessed memory
that still fingers of the places where
they were born and the wholesome in
fluenceS under which they were reared
in some distant state. In the great
overcrowded city they are very much
alone, as paradoXical as it may seem,
and the doors that swing most freely
on their hinges to admit them are
those that lead into the broad road to
ruin. There are ten or twenty thou
sand families in this city who either
board or live in apartments in a
way that robs home of half of its sa-
cred enjoyment and tends to domestic
unrest and inIelicity. Life in the city
is too artificial, has too much outside
gloss, while life in the country is too
practical and needs the polishing
which nothing but social attritiOn can
give it.
Our rapidly developing civilization
has rendered the isolation of farm-life
in America more Objectionable than
formerly, because the contrast between
city and country is daily becoming
more apparent and striking. The
city and the large towns afford a
far better oportunity for social
intercourse than the rural dis
tricts; they are filled with places OF
amusement that cannot be sustained
away from the centres of large aggre-
cations of people; they contain the
best of everything that contributes to
the aesthetic taste of men and women;
they have the public library, the the
atre, the opera, the lyceum, and they
are the leaders in fashion, art and
science. With all the wickedneSs,
| folly and misery that are inSeparable
from the great city, it nevertheless
contains advantages and opportunl-
ties for personal enjoyment and intel
lectual culture which satisfy, to a GER
tain extent, craving that is the natu-
raj OutgrOwth of mans advancement.
The American farmers children will
continue to be discontinued at home
and they will continue to run off to
the cities, until some more efficient
steps are taken by parents to make
i
| joyable. The southern planter, in
ante-bellum days, knew better how to
provide entertainments for his house
hold, and destroy that isolation OF
| which so many farmers families in
! the north and west complain. His
house was generally filled with the
latest and best literary productions OF
/ all countries, and was never insensiblt
| to the pleasures that are to be de
rived from social enjoyment. The
| door of the family mansion was
always wide open to every agree
! able visitor, and even the intel
ligent stranger was always certain OF
IA cordial welcome. Games of all
kinds, parlor theatricals, tableaux
dancing, reading, ETC., broke up the
monOtOny of plantation life, and
made it both pleasant and profitable
| The winter season that is now upon
us, and which hangs so heavily upoI
the hands of people of little resources
/, in catering for the intellectual tastes
of others, is especially adapted to pro
I viding the ways and means to make
country living more endurable. II
should be especially devoted to the
welfare, pleasure and improvement Of
the young people, into whose hand:
the future welfare of this great
country is soon to be committed.
An Attack on Mr.. Dodge.
New York Special
The Sun this morning publishes 6
| latter from William F. Dodge the