The Winchester news. [volume] (Winchester, Ky.) 1908-19??, 1908-12-30
NEW NATIONAL IDEAL.
UpbuiIding Of Town and Village
UpbuiIds the Race.
SALVATION OF THE COUNTRY.

u Depends Upon Checking the Tend
sncy of the People to Gather In
consested centers--How the Mail
Order System Kills Rural Life.
am an editorial article by George
n. y well in Maxwelrs Talisman the
following pertinent extracts are taken:
There are many country merchants
who see their trade gradually slipping
away from them, leaving the country
town and going to the great cities by
the channel of the mail order trade.
There are many country editors who
see the prosperity Of their towns de-
pleted and circulation and advertising
income reduced for the same reason.
There are very few, however, who
realize that their problem is a national
one and that it is wrapped up in and
q part of the great fundamental ques-
ton whether this nation shall be per-
petuated or shall be destroyed by the
physical Degeneration of humanity, the
social unrest, industrial discomfort,
moral and political corruption and class
hatred bred in the city slums and ten
ements and certain to eliminate in
anarchiStic crimes, riOtOus mObs and
all destroying social upheavals as the
result of some long continued period
sion.
The fact is that the upbuilding of
the country town and suburban vii
lage as an antidote and safeguard
against the poisonous social, moral,
physical and political consequences of
herding millions of our working peo-
pie together in the unnatural congested
life of the tenements is the one great
question that rises above all others in
importance as a problem that this ma
lion must solve. Unless it does solve
Il it will suffer death from human de-
generacy-the fate of so many nations
and civilizations that have risen in the
likewise destroyed unless we take heed
In time.
The danger arises from the conges-
ton of population in cities and from
nothing else.
The solution Hes in checking the fur
fher growth Of cities at the homes of
industrial workers and scattering those
homes into and among suburban home
croft villages and in country towns
and rural settlements.
To do that trade and industry must
be decentralized Industries of all
kinds must be established in the sub
urbs Of the cities or in the towns in
stead Of in the congested centers. That
A. something that requires an organized
campaign, but first it requires a cur
rent of right thought in the minds Of
the people.
1t requires that everything should be
done that can be done to hold in the
existing towns and villages the trade
that now naturally centers there. Any
part Of it. small or large, that is di-
verified to any Of the huge central mall
order concerns In the big cities and
thereby taken away from the locality
where 1t originates and belongs is an
influence that promotes just to that
extent the growth Of the evil that is
eating at the heart of our national life.
Whatever is needed to supply the needs
OF every household in every rural COM
munity should be sold over the counter
OF local store and not through the
postoff1ce and the mail trade.
Then comes the question of the
growth of towns and villages. There
IL where the country editors and mer-
chants can help themselves. Once get
1t into the minds Of the whole Amer
1can people that the salvation of the
nation depends on the upbuilding of
the country towns and suburban vii
1ages-get the idea planted and deeply
rooted so it will grow itself-and a
thousand influences will, enter the field
and enlist for this great campaign for
rural and country town and village
development to check the overgrowth
of cities, with all its resultant evils.
1t cannot all be done at once. The
first thing is to get public thought ac-
lively aroused and turned into right
channels. There must be a complete
common conception in the minds of
millions of people of this new national
ideal. Then there must be united, con-
eerted and vigorous action to realize
that ideal. The facts and arguments
TO support it must be disseminated
through a great educational campaign,
entirely separate and apart from poll
tics. 4,