The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1908-02-15
..PERILS OF PARCELS POST"

Maxwell's TaIisman. one OF the best
journals devoted to country life in the
United States. devotes the greater part
of its January issue to a discussion
of the "Perils of Parcels Post Exten-
sion.'' The article is one OF the
ablest we have seen on the subject.
We quote the following Introductory
paragraphs:
"The Capitalization of trade in the
great cities of the country resulting
from the growth of the mail order
business is a national menace of far
reaching proportions.
Population follows trade. If the
business is done in the country town
and village. of supplying the needs of
the country side for merchandise and
manufactured articles of all kinds. the
people who carry on the trade the
merchant and his helpers. will live in
the town or village.
eff, on the other hand, the trade
is done by mail, cutting out the,
country merchant. the latter is final
" driven out of business, his store
ceases to exist, his village home is
abandoned, and if he should continue
in the trade, he and his assistants
must move to the city and become
employees for some great centralized
mail trade institutions, where men are
mere machinse, fitting like cogs into
one great wheel which they must day
after day revolve.
1.-THE country merchant, with his
self-reliance, his sturdy individuality.
his broad acquaintance, his know
ledge of local affairs and needs, his
support for local institutions, his
civic usefulness. his neighborly offices,
his public services, and his CO opera
tion in movements for local improve
ments. has been uprooted and driven
away. There is no one to take his
place. The trade that gave him his
vocation his gone. And with it has
gone the prosperity of the town or
village which was his home. The
mail trade has destroyed them.
''The village life and the citizen
ship developed by it constitutes the
only hope of perpetuity for the free
institutions of this countryH The
most grave and serious dangers that
now menace it's future result from
the overgrowth of the average citizen
ship of the nation.
sin the place of the"plain people,
whose country environments has made
them stable. steady headed, self-re-
liant and independent in action.
thought and character. we have the
volatile city multitude, a floating
population, anchored to nothing,
either mentally or physically, and
blown about by every breeze Of pop
ular predjuice or passion-ready for
any rash experiment. social or politi-
cal.
mo stronger portrayal of the effect
OF the cities on our citizenship was
ever made than in these striking
words OF Wendell Phillips:
my ideal of civilization is a very
high one; but the approach of 1t is a
New England town of some two thous-
and inhabitants, with no rich man and
no poor man in 1t, all mingling in
the same society, every child at the
same school. no poor house, no bse-
gar opportunities equal, nobody too
proud to stand aloof, nobody too hum
Die to be shut out. The civilization
that fingers beautifully on the hill
sides OF New England. nestles sweetly
In the valleys of Vermont, the mo-
ment 1t approaches crowd like Bos-
ton. or million Of men gathered in
one place like New York. rots. Il
cannot stand the greater centers n
modern civilization
Another has said;x "No nation was
ever overthrow BY its farmers
Chaldea and Egypt. Greece and Rome
grew rotten and ripe for destruction
not In the fields. but in tho r.r,ou,