Frostburg mining journal., 1895-10-05

'the evidence fails to show that the
growth of cities increases the dangers
from agitation. discomfort and social
upheaval that while there have been
riots at Chicago and Pittsburg, there
have been riots at Cripple Greek and
at Cour d'Alene = that there are
probably ten times as many homicides
in the Southern rural districts as in
the urban communities having an
equal population y that the farmer is
not more virtuous than other people !;
that the dweller in the city does not
subsist upon pork, potatoes and pie to
the same extent as the farmer, and
ton, the city man can make out "A
pretty good case for himself and 1t is
all right If the population is budding
into the cities"
Neither Mr.. Fletcher nor the editor
of the Evening Post gives evidence of
a discovery of the new tendency so
plainly indicated in the adoption of
the Livesey farm reform by 100000
people within one year, by the opera
tlon of the Plngree potato patch plan,
which has converted thousands of the
cities poor into permanent truck
ralsers on rented or purchased ground
of their own, and by the recorded dec
larations of men in higher walks of
life in widely separated communities
that they had become weary of the
strife of the cities and were turning
with longing eyes to the green fields
and babbling brooks. And the posi-
ton of the Post Is one of the most will
full blindness and lack of candor.
THE AWFUL soUALoR OF THE CITIES.
OF course no one expects the men of
abundant means, whose ample income
is fixed. for whom the fascinatons of
the club and all the little conveniences
of the city have become part Of his
daily life, to turn to the pillow and
wrest from the soil his daily bread
but it may not be amlss in this connec-
tion to take note that one significant
feature of the present rush for the
country is furnished by the vastly in
creased popularity Of the country club,
which not so long since WAS exclusive
ly a warm weather adjunct of the ac-
tive athletic clubs. but which now
contains a membership so general that
athletic exercises, furnish an inslgnif-
cant portion of the life of the club.
While it is true that not every tiller
of the soll is freed from the pangs of
penury, it is unquestionably the fact
nowhere on the acres will such awful
squalor be found as necessarily mark
the lives of dwellers in the tenement
districts of every city in christendom.
The poverty OF the cOuntrymen is in
wherever found, for a constant com
munion with nature gives a rugged
manhood in spite of the benumbing
effects of penury's chill, and nowhere
except in the sums of a city will be
found those miserable wretches, de-
void of every element Of independent
manhood, lacking the dignity and the
assertiveness of. its rights which marks
the character of even the farmers oxen.
TIE CITY BREEDS CRIMINALS AND THE COUNTRY
INDEPENDENT PATRIOTS.
AS to the tendency to crime in the
cities. the pages of history are so fair
ly reeking with testimony that it is
amazing to find a paper of the Posts
dignity hiding with a shifty denial be-
hind an atrociously hbellous assump-
ton about the criminaiity of the
southern rural districts. Crime is
universal, but it takes more even than
one generation of contact to drag the
son Of the soil down to the depths of
depravity in which thousands of the
dwellers of the more populous cities
are Immersed from the day of their
birth to the end of their miserable
~
point is furnished to the legislature of
the tenement house commission of
New York city.
In one section of New York the
population was found to be packed in
at the ratio of 100000 to the square
mile, and with this herding of families
and individuals such shocking prac-
tices of such common and unnoticed
occurrence were discovered as would
have damned whole rural section.
and we'll nigh u whole State had two
such families been discovered within
its borders. They white cap such
people in some places and the whole
world hears about it; in the cities the
inquities of even a whole block are
only periodically known to an apa-
thetic few.
The poor man of the city may not
become wealthy on the farm very
likely he will not, nor attain even
financial ease but he can at least
make of himself self supporting ele,
ment of society and gain an independ-
ence of industrial depressions and
artificial distress, conditions which
forever threaten the wage worker of
the city. And, not least of all, he
will have his home. 1t is universally
recognized that homes breed patriot
ism; for nothing truer was ever said
than that men will never shonlder a
musket to defend tenement or
boarding house. Southern States.
Excursion Rates to Atlanta.