Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1905-10-06
Back to the Farm.

How often we read of the
warnings of city people for the
country, but seldom read such
reasons for this great desire as are
advanced by a writer in Maxwell |
Talisman, as follows:
People flock to the cities today, |
and stay there, not SO much be-
cause they like to, as because
they must. Before the inexor-
able conditions that dominate
men in an industrial age, they
are as helpless as chips carried
by great torrent, and the coun-
try man who drifts to the city is
like the twig that is washed from
the soil far inland or swept by
the current into great ocean. A
multitude of people of small
means, and not owning land, are
now in the cities, not because
they find the city more agreeable,
but because circumstances force
them there. Apparently in each
case there is an immediate cause,
but careful observation will show
that there is one great underlying
cause Of all the migrations from
country to city. There is a great
force from which no man is free,
that carries away a definite per-
centage of the people to replenish
the cities, which with each new
growth acquire the power of
absorbing and blighting still
more lives. 1t is not only that
the city attracts; the country re-
pels. This is why there has been
so little response to the cry of
"Back to the Landp AS long
as it continues impossible for the
people to get back to the land
they will stay where they are: in
} the cities. The. country pro-
duces people and thrusts them on
the cities, but never takes them
back. The reason is to be found
j, in the relative opportunities offer
ed to the wage Garner.
Opportunity is the gate to the
cities and lack of opportunity is
! the unsurmountable barrier that
excludes great number of the
people from the boon of country
life. However much the wage
Garner may yearn for the freedom
and pure air of the country,
his only opportunities are in the
S city, and there he must stay. A
limited number of people can
live in the country as farmers;
the rest of our population must
forever depend on work in the
cities or towns for a livelihood.
If we are to preserve the vigor
of the race, we must provide tor
r the health and happiness of these.
ci 1t matters not how much room
r we have left in the country, if
. the man who wants to go to the
= country finds it impossible to get
there. We can only get the
wage Garner back to the land by
getting the factory and office
J back to the land and there re-
: placing the tenement by homes
> on the land. Every clerk and
factory operative who so desires,
should be enabled to buy home
] acre convenient to his. work.
Y Rural life, within the reach oi
every wage Garner, would place
5 modern industrialism on a sound,
: social and moral foundation. thai
r it has heretofore lacked. The
J. menacing problems of present
day congested city life will
Fl vanish before the wage Garner:
4 6reside and me-garden of the
! future. And not until modem
| lIindustrialism has been adjusted
in this way to the needs OF :
healthy moral development of th'
factory people will the democrac,
i of our forefathers have permeatet
i the industria1ism of later gener
/ atoms.