The farmer and mechanic., 1911-10-03
THE DRIFT FROM
The FARM TO CITY
And the Drift From the
City Toward the Land,
Viewed BY Mr.. Thomas

Henry Wallace, OF the conservation
Congress. in session 1t Kansas City, Is
worth the careful reading of every
subscriber of this paper.
The subject-The Drift from Farm
to City and from City Toward the
Land"-delvered in the present tense,
is one Of wide concern and great i'm
portance to the American people at
this time
Declaring that many farr>ers of the
present day have more faith in moon
signs than in agricultural colleges and
experiment stations; more faith in Or
binary politicians than in college pro-
feSSOrS and SCIENTISTS more faith in
yellow journals than in the best ag-
ricultural papers, and that the nine
teenth century farmer was no farmer
at all, but robber Of the soil, Henry
Wallace. president of the Tnird Ma
tionai Conservation Congress, deliver
ed an address before that body today,
strongly urging scientific farming as
the>only means by which the cost Of
living can be reduced In part Mr..
Wallace said:
'It will be my object in this address
not to discuss any phase Of the con-
servation movement exhaustively, but
to outline briefly two drifts of popu-
lation: The drift from the farm to the
city, and the drift from the city to-
ward the land and the work of this
congress as related thereto.
Even before the daily press had
begun the crusade back to the land
the movement toward the land had
already begun.
'The land hunger is not peculiar to
any class of people nor to any State.
The merchant. the banker. the rail-
road official of New York and Boston,
each longs for a farm, possibly only
as a summer home, but is willing
to pay for it in investment, in i'm
49,
more than it is worth in dollars or
even will be. He. too is bitten with
land hunger Many small bushes
men of our cities, who cannot hope
to secure a farm and live on it. in
vest greedily in acreage in the su-
burbs. The workman in the factory
aims to secure two Or three acres on
which he can build himself a 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, thew
are constantly aiming to get 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.
man. be he man Of business, clerk
or other employee, or laboring with
his hands. there is a yearning desire
to have a piece of land to call his
own.
alongside Of this movement back
toward If not always to the farm, the
countermoVem from the farm to
the town. which has been going on
for fifty years continues with increas-
ing and accelerated force. Farmers
all over the older west move in great
numbers or retire to the country
towns; and notwithstanding 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
natural increase of the towns them
selves pouring into tire larger towns
and cities, in which the majority live
with less comfort than the farmers
who remain on the farms. Vast num-
bers of boys and girls fall a prey to
alluring vices Of the city, and many
of them eventually take their places
with the down and out
Comparatively few succeed and be
come well-to-do. The children of
these few become wealthy: their
grandchildren usually spend gaily the
fortunes they never earned: and
naturally the family dies out, a least
SO far as force and power is concern
ed, in another generation or at most
two or three. The city uses up men
and families as it uses UP horses And
this Is true not only in this but in
the older countries as we'll All Ire
land, for example. except Dublin and
Belfast, has lost population in the last
ten years. as also has nearly all Of
Wales and Scotland
regard it as important that you
should understand as clearly as pos
sible the conditions that have caused
TINS worldwide movement from the
narin 10 the city, as only in this way
snail we be able to foresee and de-
scribe the conditions that will cause
ana are even now causing a return
flow or movement back toward the
land. The movement downward began
with the use Of improved machinery
or the application of science to the