Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1909-09-18
Our Poor White Trash.

| Il
a matter as some of the newspapers
try to make it, but it is well to air
our shortcomings now and then, for
only in this way can we hope 80 to
| improve our conditions as to make
it impossible for the poorest farmer
in the remotest and most barren of
Hardscrabble Hollows to remain long
in ignorance, and for his children 10
fail to get education, interest In
things, sufficient refinement and a
fair share of the pleasures OF life.
Moreover, a little sermon to Vermont
can be preached from the text, "Our
Poor White Trash.j
First of all it should be said that
poor whites are not a special YER
mont product. They may be found
in all the older states, wherever condi-
tions develop them. Massachusetts,
with the best school system and the
most effective agencies of civilization
of all the states, finds degenerate
families and communities in her
northern and western hills, and even
within few miles of Boston. New
Jersey has recently rediscovered
disgraceful conditions of poverty,
ignorance, indifference and shiftless-
ness in the hills of the north, not
fifty miles from New York city, and
in the pine barrens of the south,
within fifty miles of Philadelphia.
The conditions which make a fam
lily or group of farmers careless,
hopeless, slnthful, poverty-stricken
sometimes degraded, are suf-
ficiently well known. The soil has
run out; the cleverest sons and
daughters have gone west or to. the
cities and towns for two or three
generations past, leaving the less
competent to battle with the disad-
vantages of poor soil and failing
market; neighbors become fewer and
the interchange of help and of
products grows less and less, and the
possibilities of neighborhood meet
ings, of daily social intercourse, of
schools, of churches, parties, dances,
picnics, huskings and whatnot, that
prevented farm life of former days
from relapsing into daily solitary
round of drudgery, grow less and
less. The result is natural enough.
The few who by choice or by force
of circumstances remain tied to the
farm in the distant valley grow
poorer, duller, more apathetic and
more helpless year by year.
In rough outline that is the whole
story. The world moves along rap
idly in these days, and few of those
who chance to be left out of the cur
rent tend to degenerate.
The other side of the picture is
seen as soon as we take note of some
of the things that are making farm
life today more social, progressive
and cheerful. The telephone brings
distant neighbors close to one an
other and all of them near to town
or city; the consolidated schools,
though sometimes more remote than
the old district ones used to be, are
much better and more inhuential;
! rural free delivery brings friends
and the life of the world close to
hand almost every day; the churches
make possible Sunday gatherings in
some Of the remotest settlements
through their missionary work; the
summer visitor adds a little variety
to the landscape, buys an abandoned
farm, rushes by III his automobile
and stirs up in addition to the ira
ditional scorn-a bit of righteous
discomfort in the mountain atmos-
phere.
The conclusion is, that the situa-
ton as to stranded, neglected poor
farmers. in Vermont at least, was
never very bad, and is slowly but
steadily improving.
Every good friend of Vermont,
however, wishes improvement to be
more rapid. It can not be more
rapid until the whole state forgets
the civil war and either puts into
Office men who will, of their own
motion and because they feel that
a public Office is a trust, work
to improve Vermont's educational
social and commercial conditions; or
insists that the ancient professional