The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1908-01-30
KEEP THEM HOME
How to Make Farm Boys and
JIiIs Stay On The Farm
MORE IMPROVEMENTS
The Telephone Helps To Make the
farm Life AttrdCtive--PayS to
Stay on The Farm

JOYS anu gins W say vi Idc loi LIS Ill
stead of Fastening to the crowded
cities TO seek their fortunes as soon
as emancipated from parental author
itE has engaged the attention IF
thinkers, writer's and takers IN Amer
lca for a good many years. Var
ious remedies have been suggested
for a state OF affairs that was recog-
o.: another to remove what was felt
to be the main cause of dissatisfac-
ton of the rising generation with the
life which had satisfied their parents,
namely it's isolation and monOtOny as
compared with that of the town.
Meanwhile, while students and
theorists were discussing what ought
to be done, the drain cityward of
the sons and daughters of the farms
continued until, in the fullness Of
progress, the farmer himself and the
industrial organizer began in prac-
teal fashion to change conditions by
introducing the improved facilities
OF communication which the growing
prosperity of the farming communi-
ties enabled them to pay for. Good
roads first and the extension of free
mail delivery to rural communities
did much, says the Northwestern Agri
culturist. Along with them work
ed the rural trolley lines reaching
ont from the cities in all directions
and creating a brand new freight
and passenger traffic wherever they
went. Finally, what promises to be
more potent influence than all else
has come the telephone, striking iso-
lation forever from the list of rural
ills and binding the farthest COM
munity it reaches firmly into the
web of national activity and inter-
ests.
Where the nearest neighbor, in
stead of being half a mile away, Is
within easy conversational distance
and can be communicated with at
any time, without stopping the farm
work and in spite of the biggest
snowstorm that ever came out OF the
Northwest, it makes difference IN
a good many ways, economically ana
socially. That is what the telephone
has done in the country and that Is
why country villages and farm COM
munities are linked together today
by thousands of miles of wire and
local lines built and equipped by the
subscribers themselves, and why tele-
phone development is proceeding
more rapidly in this field than in any
other at the present time, chiefly by
the method of cooperative construc-
ton.
The strongest possible indication
of the hold which the telephone has
gained on the farm, and the future
which is before it there, in the belief
of telephone men themselves, has
been given by the change of policy
of the greatest telephone manufac,
turing company in the world which
has just entered the competition fol
this trade. By making it possible
for the first time, for the organizers
of such local systems to obtain stand
ard apparatus and equipment, such
as is used on the lines of the long,
distance system, it will facilitate the
connecting Of these rural systems with
those reaching to every part of the
country.
There are approximately 7,00O,0
farms in the United States and it is
prophesied that within a decade two
thirds of them will have telephone
service Meanwhile less is heard OF
the monotony and isoltion of the
farmsteads and more of the boys, and
especially more of the girls, are con-
tented to stay where life is natural
and healthy and is still, under new
conditions, in touch with the whole
big and busy world.
OAsToE
IT, vi I. ll..-. n...~