, 1888-08-02
CITY AND COUNTRY.
oNE-FouRTH OF AMERICAS PEOPLE
LIVE IN TOWNS.

The omplaIn In other Countries Sim
liar to That In Ours--Farmers' Sons
FlockIng to the Cities-where WIN Il
End9-Another Side.
1t has been lately estimated that more
than o~ne-fourth of the American popula-
tion now live in towns of over 5000 in
habitants, whereas fifty years ago only
one-tifteenth lived in this way. The
change is usually attributed partly to
railroads, which mako 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,
iu&uries. excitements and companionship.
At any rate. the results are confined to
no single nation or continent. M. Kebbel,
In his Agricultural Laborer, says of Eng
land: The rising generation of peas
antry take no interest in agricultural
work. y The best boys from the
schools all set their faces toward the
town. and scorn the plow." In France, NJ.
Baudrillart finds that while the popula-
ton of the farming districts diminishes,
that of the towns increases. This, he
thinks, due largely to popular education,
winch 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
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, 1t seems, with races
more backward. With all the skill
brought to bear upon scientific agricult-
ure, it 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-
lions of electricity, for instance-and if it
were. 1t has an element of solitude about
it that dissatisies.
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 n who approaches the mat
ter simply as a lover of nature the situa-
ton seems a strange one, but he Is COM
PEELED to recognize it. Talking in Colo
a the other day with a Scotchman who
owns a sheep ranch of 5000 acres, l nat
urally congratulated him on an employ
ment so attractive, and spoke of the de-
lghtful 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. ThusSi it seems, do
poetry and fact diverge when people come
to talk about rural occupations.
Where is this sort of thing to end7 If
in England, with all the immense arti6-
cial prestige that has so long attached it.
self to the ownership of the soil, there is
a growing Indifference to farming, how
long will even our broad acres of virgin
soil prove attractive? Yet there certainly
is, somewhere in our hearts, a love not
merely for wild nature, but for the pro-
cess of subduing it TO order and produc-
tiveness. l talked the other day with a
young Harvard graduate, who went half
a dozen years ago from fashionable clubs
and the leadership Of the german" to a
very isolated ranch in Washington terri
tory, and he told me that such was his do
light in the sense Of ownership and
growth that often, after a hard days
work, he would stroll out in the evening
simply to look on his growing crops and
orchards. 81 felt about them" he said,
very much as l suppose a mother feels
about her children" Though the sense
of isolation had finally driven him away
partly, however, for the sake of his young
family-he still felt the tie Il the long.
ing.
ANOTHER VIEW OF 1T.
Side by side with this vast throngina
toward town life in the winter has come a
proportionate longing for the country in
the summer. All persons beyond middle
age can remember the beginning of this
amazing division of social life between
summer and winter, which now gives to SO
many persons of moderate means a dupli-
cate residence for the two seasons. In
our larger cities, where whole streets of
brown stone palaces remain all summer as
silent as the c~atacombs, it was formerly
the custom for those who resided in such
houses to keep them open all summer, the
family taking perhaps q f~ortnight's out
Ing to "the springs" OF 1.-THE beach, and
then returning home.
The lengthening vacations of public and
private schools illustrate the same change
of habit; there was formerly almost rs
long q vacation in winter as in summer; In
some colleges much longer, hat the
students might teach school. But now the
summer vacations last in some cases three
solid months; and the migration includes
not merely the occupants of the brown
stone fronts, but vast multitudes of hard
working families, who dwell all summer
In a tent on the beach, or in those hives
of summer population by inland lakes or
beneath mountains. II this tendency
goes on developing for the next fifty years
as for the last fifty, 1t may not solve the
problem Of scientific agriculture, but 1t
will certainly furnish some antidote to the
alleged evils of cities.-T. w. Higginson
In Harpers Bazaar.