The independent. [volume] (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907, 1906-09-06
The Farm Home the Hope Of the
Nation


ton and population is degenerating
our workers and rotting their physical
and moral fibre. Where will you find
any citizenship in the slum and tene-
ment districts of our cities to whom
you can effectively appeal for help
to stop the waste of our forests? They
know nothing about it and care less.
The first need of any nation is an
intelligent citizenship, and the slums
and tenements of our great cities
are maelstorms into which the citi-
zenship of this country is being drawn
to its destruction in a steadily in
creasing volume.
We are suffering just now from
spasm of national hysteria because
what everybody who ever took the
trouble to go and look, knew long ago
the revolving conditions under
which the great packers of Chicago
have been operating their plants, and
because diseased meat has been sold
for food. But you may draw the
worst picture that your imagination
can paint of the horrors of slaughter
ing and packing of meat in those es-
adjustments, and nothing you can
imagine can equal the horror of
: blighting the lives of the thousands
of children who are condemned to
live and grow up in the foul physical,
social and moral miasma that per-
meates the whole slum district of
Packingtown. 1t is a national dis
grace and is bound to prove national
curse.
There is only one remedy for these
horrible conditions of life for the chill
dren, and that is to get the working
people and their children, out of the
slums, and into the suburbs where
they can have sunshine and fresh air
and pure and nourishing food from a
home garden.
The great cities are our most seri-
GUS menace in this country Our
greatest national danger lies in the
Capitalization of wealth and popula-
ton and trade and industry. The
hope of the nation is in the farm and
suburban home and village. 1t is not
in the cities that this country now
needs the service of the flower of it's
patriotic manhood. 1t is in the coun-
try where the great national problem
OF the Improvement of the rural life
is to be solved, where more beautiful
towns and villages and better roads
are to be built, better schools to be
established, telephones and trolley
lines constructed, and all the infiu-
ences put to work that will improve
the country, and drive away the iso-
lation and hardships that were for
merly its drawback
We must not only stop and reverse
the great tide of population that has
been drifting from the country to the
cities. We must decentralize indus
try and trade as well as population
The patriotism that is latent in every
heart must find an outlet in every
town and country village in the work
of village improvement, of creating
an environment for human life where
the highest utility and beauty will
surround the entire community, anc
where a local civic loyalty will pre-
vail that will anchor the people tc
their own hearthstones and where
eHOy VIII i've Coneclt uHuci lHelT OWL
vine and fig tree, This local pride
and love of home and the home towl
is one of the strongest of human feel
ings when once it is deeply planted
The great central and controlling
thought that must arise from all 9th
ers as national ideal is the convic
ton that the real bulwarks of tn,
nation are the homes of its citizens
and that the first thought and tn,
highest of every young man shoul,