Wichita eagle., 1888-08-21
Ci11Y AND COUNTRY.
ONE-FOURTh OF AMERICAS PEOPLE
LIVE IN TOWNS.
The Complain in Other Countries Sim
liar to That in Ours-Farners' Sons
F1ocking to the Cities-Whefe VIII It
End?-Another Side.


liar to That in Ours-Farmers' Sons
F1ocking to the Cities-Whefe VIII It
End?-Another Side.
1t has been lately estimated that more
than one fourth of the American popula-
ton now live In towns Of over 5000 in
habitants. whereas fifty years ago only
one-ffteenth lived in this way The
change is usually attributed partly to
railroads, which make it possible to sup
ply these large collections Of people with
the necessaries Of life. and partly also to
the demand felt for city conveniences,
luxuries, excitements and companioI;ship
at any rate. the results are confined to
no single nation or continent. NJ. Kebbel,
in his Agricultural Laborer, says of Eng
land: The rising generation Of peas
antry take no interest in agricultural
work. The best boys from the
schools all set their faces toward the
town and scorn the plow." In France, NJ
Baudriliart finds that while the popula-
ton of the farming districts diminishes,
that Of the towns increases. This, he
thinks, due largely to popular education
which has created new wants and broken
up the old intellectual stagnation. He
complains that in France a new and lower
grade of laborers Is being imported from
Belgium and Italy to take the place Of the
French peasant. who seeks the towns
All this is curiously like the complaint
we hear among ourselves. In New Eng
land, where farming is difficult and unre-
munerative, we see many farms passing
into the hands of the Irish and the
SvyoHoS Will, Tho L,,,1 l>xy
tho sons of those who were once farmers.
As you cross the prairies, where farming
Is still profitable, you may sometimes see
wheat fields or corn fields stretching to the
horizon, and titled by the joint labor Of
some colored family which came within
thirty years out Of slavery. Not that
those fertile regions do not still sustain
thriving race Of farmers of the Anglo
Saxon race; but even there they are
dividing the soil, it seems, with races
more backward. With all the skill
brought to bear upon scientific agricult-
ure, it may be doubted whether 1t Is On
intellectual pursuit requiring as high a
brain power as the more difficult branches
Of mechanical work-the various applica-
lions of electricity, Cor :nstance-and if it
were, it has Oh element of solitude about
it that dissatisfes.
A STRANGE SITUATION.
"God made the country, and man made
the town, says Cowper; but man seems
for some reason to prefer his own handi-
work. To one who approaches the mat
ter simply as lover of nature the situa-
ton seems strange one, but he is CON-
PEELED to recognize it. Talking in Colo
RADIO the other day with Scotchman who
owns sheep ranch of 5000 acres, nat
urally congratulated him on an employ
ment SO attractive, and spoke Of the de-
ightful associations with the pursuit in
the Scottish ballads, the writings of the
Ettrick Shepherd, and so on He inter-
rupted me with the bluff assurance that
he hated sheep, that he had herded them
first in South Africa, and then in Colo
RADIO, but wished that he might never see
one Of those animals again, or even hear
its name mentioned. Thus, it seems, do
poetry and fact diverge when people come
to talk about rural occupations.
Where is this sort of thing to end? II
In England, with all the immense artif-
cial prestige that has SO leng attached it
self to the ownership Of the soil, there IL
q growing Indifference to farming, how
long will even our broad acres of virgin
soil prove attractive9 Yet there certainly
is, somewhere In our hearts, love not
merely for wild nature, but for the pro-
cess of subduing it to order and produc-
tiveness. talked the other day with a
young Harvard graduate, who went hal:
a dozen years ago from fashionable clubs
and the leadership of the german" to
very isolated ranch in Washington terri
tory, and he told me that such was his de-
light in the sense Of ownership and
growth that often, after hard days.
work. he would stroll out in the evening
simply to look on his growing crops and
Il felt about them" he said.
about her children" Though the sense
partly, however, for the sake of his young
;amily-he still felt the tie and the long.
ng.
ANOTHER VIEW OF IT.
Side by side with this vast thronging
oward town life in the winter has come IL
longing for the country In
he summer. All persons beyond middle
lge can remember the beginning of this
lmazing division of social life between
ummer and winter, which now gives to so
many persons of moderate means dupli- I
ate residence for the two seasons. In
'ur larger cities, where whole streets of (
'rown stone palaces remain all summer as
ilent as the catacombs, it was formerly I
he custom for those who resided in such /
louses to keep them open all summer, tho
amily taking perhaps fortnight's out
ng to 1.-The springs or ''the beach, and .
hen returning home.
The lengthening vacations Of public and /
rivate schools illustrate the same change
f habit; there was formerly almost az
ong a vacation in winter as in summer; in
ONE colleges much longer, that the
tudents might teach school. But now tho ;
vacations last in some cases three
old months; and the migration includes
OF merely the occupants Of the brown
tone fronts. but vast multitudes of hard
Torking families, who dwell all summer
l tent on the beach, or in those hives
summer population by inland lakes or
eneath mountains. If this tendency
oes on developing for the next fifty years
5 for the last fifty, it may not solve the
roblem of scientific agriculture, but it
i'll certainly furnish some antidote to the
legged evils of cities.-T w. Higginson
/ Harper's Bazaar.