Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1911-09-29

KANSAS CITY. Mo-. Sept. 26.-Declar-
claring that many farmers of the pres
ent day have more faith In moon signs
than in agricultural colleges and expert
ment stations, more faith in ordinary
politicians than in college professors and
scientists: more faith in yellow journals
than in the hest agricultural papers, and
that the 18th century farmer was no
farmer at all, btu a robbebr of the soil,
Henry Wallace, president of the Third
National Conservation congress. deliv-
cred an address before that body Mon
day. strongly urging scientific farming as
the only means by which the cost of liv-
ing can be reduced. In part Mr.. Wallace
said:
ut will be my object in this address
not to discuss any phase of the conserv-
alton movement exhaustively, but to out
line briefly two drifts of population. The
drift from the farm to the city, and the
drift from the city toward the land and
the work or this congress as related
thereto
Even before the daily press had be-
gun the crusade back to the land the
movement toward the land had already
begun.
''The lane hunger is not peculiar 70
any class of people nor to anv state!
The me, chant, the banker, the RAILROAD
official OF New York and Boston. zach
.ongs for a farm, possibly only as n
summer home, but is willing to pay for It
in Investment, in improvements and cost
of management, more than 1t is worth
in dollars or ever will be. He, too, is
bitten with land hunger. Many small
business men of our cities, who cannot
hope to secure a farm and live on 1t,
invest greedlly In acreage in the sub
urbs. The workman In the factory aims
to secure two or three acres on which
he can build himself home.
THE growth of large cities has ceased
to be in the business or even in the old
residence sections. and is entirely In the
suburbs. The same holds true abroad. If
men cannot have country life in the
country, they are constantly aiming to
ge as much as possible of the country
In the city. While the steam railroads
tend to concentrate population, as they
have from the beginning. the trolley
lines tend to lure the people back toward
the country.
BACK TO THE FARM.
Latent in the heart of nearly every
man, be he man of business, clerk or
other employee. or laboring with his
hands there is q yearning desire to have
a piece of land to call his own
Alongside of this movement back to-
ward If not always to the farm, the
counter movement from the farm to the
town, which has been going on for 80
years. continues with increasing and ac-
CELEBRATED force. Farmers all over the
older west move in great numbers or
retire to the country towns; and notwith-
standing all this constant influx of
population from the farms these towns,
as the late census reveals, have barely
held their own and often have lost in
population, the annual increase of the
towns themselves pouring into the larg-
err towns and cities, In which the ma
jority live with less comfort than the
farmers who remain on the farms. Vast
numbers of boys and girls fall prey to
alluring vices of the city, and many of
them eventually talA their places with
the down and out Comparatively few
succeed and become well-to-do. The chill
dren of these few become wealthy; their
grandchildren usually spend gaily the for
tunes they never earned; and naturally
the family dies out, at least so far as
force and power is concerned, in anoth-
er generation ar OF most two or three.
The city uses up men and families as it