Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1908-08-24
MODERN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES

INC UldMlHk Va AehAAAA 'fN''Ns 50
lard county next month calls attention
TO the fact that modern farm homes
can be created with little of the hard
shin that characterized the earlier
village communities in the West
one company is laying out a modern
town in which electric lights, lithia
water piped into the house, and daily
trains on the railway line that con
meets Salt Lake and Los Angeles are
announced as features.
1t was not like this in other days
Yet tho pioneering OF early times IN
Utah was not all hardship; and the
influences OF culture and civilization
among the pioneer villages were almost
as budly at work, II using less et-
fectlve means, as they are today. Sew
eral conditions in Utah helped to al
leyiate tho otherwise desolate situation
of the early settlers. AS pointed out
by one of Professor Pauls articles on
Utah the separate farms here were
usually much smaller in area than
those OF most other parts Of the coun-
try The pioneer farmers, moreover
always settled in groups constituting
little towns or villages, and did not
scatter their homes about on the farm
ing tracts as is the usual custom else
where. Each valley or farming group
was, from the outset, a real village
community. There were several rea-
sons for this permanent popularity in
the grouping of the farm-homes Of
Utah. First there was the strong de-
sire for human companionshp. which
( was the more insistent because Of the
(. loneliness and desert like solitude of
q the country at that time. no centers
{ of civilization being near. Secondly,
The danger from attacks by predatory
Indian bands or from border ruffians.
was always imminent, though neither
4 of these dangers was ever unusually
great in this State, owing, chiefly, to
& the fact that the people treated the
< Indians with great kindness, and to
the further fact that mining camps.
the proyerbial western centers for bad
men" and outlaws, we're not developed
in Utah until permanent population
had become so great and SO we'll cent
3 cred In large towns as to exert a strong
n influence against those forms OF law
rs lessless usual In Western camps, A
third element making for the concen-
tration of the settlers was the neces-
"a sity for cooperation in making canals
3 and I'm lending such mutual assistance
Il in every form of enterprise as alone
could have made success of any of 1t
IN the isolated distance from the
markets of the world and the extreme
+ difficulty OF procuring labor-saving
machinery. tools, and the ordinary APP
planes of industry. In the fourth
place. the counsel of tho religious lead
ers was that the people should keep
close together for the sake of religious
communion and education, as we'll as
of industrial and commercial CO. opera
ton. Last, but not least, the sufficient
stream of pure canyon water which
was necessary to the town life of any
considerable numbers of families, was
limited to places rather widely separ-
ated, This condition of itself would
have dictated the aggregation of the
colonists in many places, apart from
the other considerations noted. At all
events the population OF Utah was al
ways of the village community type,
and from this fact of aggregation there
resulted a number of important CON
sequences.
There has never been much distinc-
ton here between the urban and the
rural populations owing to the social
izing tendencies of the town VILLAGE