Arizona weekly enterprise., 1888-10-13
CITY AND COUNTRY.
ONE-FOURTH OF AMERICAS PEOPLE
 LIVE IN TOWNS.

The Complaint in Other Countries Sim liar to That in Ours-Farmcr.' Sous Flocking to the Cities-Where Will It Esd?-Another Side.
 It has been lately estimated that more than one fourth of the American popula- tion now live in towns of over 5000 in habitants, whereas fifty years ago only one-fifteenth 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, settlements and mpanionship. 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 blow" In France. NJ Baudrillart finds that while the popula- tion 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 bll6 Oltl iHltI1cCludl AAO 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- muncrative, we see many farms passing into the hands of the Irish and the Swedes, while the cities are built up by the 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 a 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. 1t may be doubted whether it is an intellectual pursuit requiring as high a brain power as the more difficult branches of mechanical work-the various applica- tions of electricity, for instance-and if ii were, it has an element of solitude about it that dissatisfes.
 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 ono who approaches the mat ter simply as a lover of nature the situa tion seems strange one, but he is com | pelled to recognize it. Talking in Colo rado the other day with a Scotchman who owns sheep ranch of 6,000 acres, nat ] ll,- *aI hir,, 1 ment so attractive, and spoke of the de 1 lightful associations with the pursuit il the Scottish ballads, the writings of thC Ettrick Shepherd, and so on. He inter rupted me with the bluff assurance tia he hated sheep. that he had herded then first in South Africa, and then in Colo rado. but wished that he might never SCI one of those animals again, or even hea its namo mentioned. Thus. it seems, dt poetry and fact diverge when people conn to talk about rural occupations.
 Where is this sort of thing to end? l in England, with all the immense artifi cial prestige that has so long attached it self to the ownership of the soil, there i a growing indifference to farming, hoy long will even our broad acres of virgil soil prove attractive? Yet there certainl is, somewhere in our hearts, love no merely for wild nature, but for the pro cess of subduing it to order and produC tivoness. l talked the other day with young Harvard graduate, who went hal q dozen years ago from fashionable club and the leadership of the german to very isolated ranch in Washington terr tory, and he told me that such was his dC light in the sense of ownership an ,.-ra.ss4la -+haf .f'4'>-- ,s1~~-~l l.a,,d-zlav work, he would stroll out in the evenin simply to look on his growing crops all orchards. Il felt about them," he sait very much as 1 suppose a mother feel about her children" Though the sens of isolation had finally driven him away partly. however, for the sake of his youn family-he still felt the tie and the long ing.
 ANOTHER VIEW OF IT.
 Side by side with this vast throngin toward town life in the winter has come proportionate longing for tho country i the summer. All persons beyond middl age can remember the beginning of thi amazing division of social life betwee summer and winter, which now gives to S many persons of moderate means dupl cate residence for the two seasons. our larger cities, where whole streets ( brown stone palaces remain all summer 6 silent as the catacombs, it was formerl the custom for those who resided in sue houses to keep them open all summer, th family taking perhaps q fortnight's ou+ ing to ''the springs" or 'the beach, an then returning home.
 The lengthening vacations of public an private schools illustrate the same chang of habit; there was formerly almost | long vacation in winter as in summer; i some colleges much longer, that tL students might teach school. But now tl summer vacations last in some cases thrt solid months; and the migration include not merely the occupants of the brow stone fronts, but vast multitudes of bar working families, who dwell all summC in tent on the beach, or in those hive of summer population by inland lakes beneath mountains If this tendenC goes on developing for the next fifty yeal as for the last fifty, it may not solve u problem of scientific agriculture, but will certainly furnish some antidote to tl alleged evils of cities.-T. w. Higginsc ill Harper's Bazar.
 Some Alloys of Gold.