The Union times. [volume] (Union, S.C.) 1894-1918, 1904-09-02
VAST CITIES AND IDLE FARMS.
An Evil that Might Be Lessened BY
Wise Education.

The little red brick school house of The
earlier days of the settlement of the
Mississippi Valley States was the princi-
pal factor i'm the elevation Of our great
middle class which made of the Ameii-
can nation people of intelligent think
ers, ready and able in time of crisis to de-
eide right and to do. Higher education
has followed and new systems and metl,-
ods have supplanted the "Hoosiev school
MASTER" and the birch rod, identified
with the little red school house The
educational level of the country has un-
dcubtedly risen many degrees, but with
this advance have come problems more
parpleXipg than those which troubled the
pedagogues of our fathers The trend
of the country raised boy is all too IRE
sistably toward the city, while there is
no countervailing current impelling the
Young people of the cities to fill his place
in the country. The problem is Que for
te most serious consideration of our best
stat esmen, this constant and cenlripe,al
movement, which is over crowdng our
centres of industry, where men work for
day wages, and which 10 steadily draw
ing from our rural communities where
mtn own the land they live upon and get
their sustenance from the soil
t TO STEM THE DRIFT.
Yet there are qniet forces at wnik,
yee< ~ year, becoming better organized
aHd M broader power, whosetendrncy is
,o,nzsrcame this hurtful -corditon and
mduce miSrah ion. back toibeIspd and
away from The Over eroafied cen!rese
Industrial and agricultural educations
are playing an importaAt part, and ma
ture study courses and .Sty school gar
drns, where children are taught to know
something OF the soil and plants and the
real wonders of nature worBing around
us at every hand. are no longer looked
upon as fads An interesting move in
the direction was made the other day in
the organization of the American League
for Industrial. Education in Oh cago,
with such national characters for officers
Louis, who has founded the village and
school of LIE Claire, adjacent to his fac
tories at Edwardsville, Illinois; Thomas
Kane, president of the Winona Assem-
bly,, which is establishing an institution
for the teaching of agriculture in India
napols. J. H. Krauskorj, founder and
president of the now noted national farm
school at Doylestown, Pennsylvania;
John H. Patterson, president of the
National Cash Register Company, whose
school gardens and model factory equip
ments at Dayton, Ohio, have awakened
wide spread interest; Gen. r.. =. Tut
hill, through whose efforts the St. Charles
Home for Boys at Chicago, was founded; /;
o j Kern, superintendent of schools
for Winnebago County. Illinois, who
has done great work in the consolida-
tion of county schools, and perfected
plans Tor engrafting on them methods
for the practical teaching of improved
agriculture in experimental gardens;
E B. Butler, president of the board of
trustees of the Illinois Manual Training
School Farm; and Milton George, the
founder of that school, Jane Adams,
head of the Chicago Hull House Social
Settlement, and Others of note i'm this
movement.
TEACH THE DIGNITY OF WORK.
The league is working for an indus
trial public school system which will in
clude the teaching of domestic science.
and both agricultural and manual train
ing in all the public schools, so that chill
dren shall be taught to work with their
hands and farm as they are taught in the
public schools Of France and Denmark.
It, maintains that every school should
have school garden where every child
should be taught to be lover of nature
and of the country, and trained toward
the land as a source of honorable liveli-
hood, rather than away from it.
Such system of education would un-
doubted tend to check the constant
movement toward the cities, The farm
boy who receives fa'r school or high
school education naturally turns toward
the place where he can best apply il
fIis training las not been such as would
help him to farm better, or make of
farming an interesting science And SO
he goes to the city On the other hand,
the city boy, as he grows up and marri s
wou d like to have home of his own on
the land, but he knows only the trade he
has learned. He knows moi hing of farm
ing and would not know what To do on
piece of land if he had it. 1t has been
often said that it is useless to put the
poor of the great cities out in the cOun-
Try, because they will not stay there
They cannot be expected To, for to hem
it is a strange and barren land The ex-
perience of the Salvation Army, how
ever, found in its many irrinted colon
les, shows that men will go out from the