The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-31
NEW ENGLAND FARMS.
Influx of Foreign Settlers Bringing
 Back Old-Time Prosperity.


 Back old-Time Prosperity.
 We have heard much for many years now about the abandonment of New England farms and the decline in Yam kee agriculture under the pressure of staggering competition from the great grain fields of the wide West. Indeed, every citizen east of the Hudson who takes an occasional trip into the country surrounding his city sees for himself to what little use rural lands are being put. In the suburban districts 1t is true. he finds many fields given over to vegetable gardening, but after he passes beyond the zone of the one-fare city electric car line he comes upon large. well-or- dered prospering farm only at rarest in- tervals.
 Members of that large class of success full New England business and profess sional men who were born in the country and worked well into manhood in the woods and fields and about the stable are inclined to give another reason besides Western fertility and activity as an ex- plantation for the local decline in the calling their fathers followed In their opinion ambitious men of American birth are now only in a few instances ready to lead the manner of life which a gen. eration or two ago the New England farmer was content with, largely because the scale of living even in the larger towns and cities about him was not then, considering the greater freedom and the more sanitary conditions that will doubt less always be found in the country appreciably higher than his own. He lived largely upon potatoes and salt pork in the winter; in the summer he added fresh vegetables to this diet. The man in the city who owned small estate en- joyed on the whole a better and more varied menu, but there were also many disadvantages; his work confined him within doors many hours every day, and granted him few, If any. vacations, to mention only two of the more unpleasant features of his life.
 But in these later years conveniences and comforts have so multiplied in the thickly settled communities and they are to be had at such comparatively low cost that few men who could enjoy them for the same amount of labor are going to live lives of useless self-sacrifice in the country. Most of the idyllic pleasures of rural life are now to be enjoyed in New England only by those people who are rich enough to bring with them to the farm many of the luxuries of the city.
 For these reasons, and perhaps for sev- eral others farming in New England has fallen within recent years to a low ebb and country lands are extremely cheap To this fact, for long so distressing to people interested in agriculture in this region of the country, Is due however. present tendency toward revival of the local industry. Clarence Deming of Connecticut. in The Independent, has re- gently written of the many signs of re- suscitation. He showed that while ninety strictly agricultural towns of his State decreased in population from 121,124 in 1880 to 5.054 in 1890. they had made up more than half this loss by 1900. when their population was 117.7H. In the farm ing towns of Western Massachusetts there was a large decline in the number of in- habitants during the first of these two decades, but during the last there was a slight advance.
 But these rev farmers are not natives. They are Swedes. Italians. Germans and. especially here in Rhode Island. Portu- gese. The land Is so cheap that they can afford at least to hire 1t. though in many cases they buy it; and their natur- ally frugal habits and unceasing industry make them in many ways worthy suc- cessors of the old, shrewd Yankee farm CTS
 The invasion of rural New England by members of these European races. which up to this time have for the most part settled in It's cities, creates a new prob lem To assimilate them is now the work of many a country town that has been altogether under Yankee influence ever since 1t was settled in the old Indian times. Prejudices in places of this kind are not soon or easily lived down, and 1t will doubtless take many years for the New England farmer of the old type to become used to the sight of Catholic Church in the village. and tie children of a much darker skin playing with his boys and girls in the district school yard. But he will doubtless work out his prob lem as well and with as happy results to his strengthened and industrious commu- nifty as the native city man .Ias thus far succeeded with an exactly similar prob lem, which now, after 90 many years standing, is quite unterrifying.