The Lake County times. [volume] (Hammond, Ind.) 1906-1933, 1911-10-03
The Conservation Congress

farmers wife is now organizing her
own clubs and giving her town sisters
lessons in club work. The movement
to organize life clubs is spreading. The
boys and girls are organizing for
games. The country church is begin
ming to realize its mission. and in sew
eral states country preachers are TAX
ing short courses in agricultural col
leges in order that -they may teach
morals and religion to farmers in terms
of their daily life.
Alongside of this movement. back
toward. IL not always to the farm. the
counter movement from the farm to the
town, which has been going on for fifty
years, continues with increasing and
accelerated force. Farmers all over the
older West move in great numbers or
retire to the country towns; and not
withstanding 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
| population. the natural increase of the
| towns themselves pouring into the
| larger towns and cities. in which the
majority live with less comfort than
the farmers who remain on their farms
Vast numbers of boys and girls fall a
prey to the alluring vices of the city;
and many of them eventually take their
places with the down and out" Com
paratively few succeed and become
well-to-do. The children of these fe W
become wealthy; their grandchildren
1 usually spend gaily the fortunes they
never earned; and naturally the family
dies out. at least so far as force and
power is concerned, in another genera
ton 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 old countries as well
All ireland. for example, except Dublin
and Belfast, has lost population in the
last ten years as has also nearly all OF
Wales and Scotland.
Henry Wallace president of the con-
gress said in regard to these move
ments and counter movements:
! II regard it as important that you
should understand as clearly as posi-
BILE the conditions that have caused this
world wide movement from the farm to
the city. as only in this way shall we
be able to foresee and describe the con-
ditions that will cause and are even
now causing return flow or move
ment back toward the land.
| RMS movement downward began
with the use of improved machinery, o,
the application of science to the opera
tions of manufacturing and distributing
1 the things necessary for the supply OF
our ever-increasing human wants II
has increased in proportion to the sue
lcess of the inventions and discoveries
The power loom put all other looms on,
of business. The spinning jenny SEN
the spinning wheel to the attic. The
small industries-the wagon shops, the
blacksmith shops. the grist mills ant
carding mills found in and around tn.
county seats and smaller towns fifty
Years ago--"folded their tents like tn,
Arabs and silently stole away" wher
1t was found that large plant and i'm
proved machinery, coupled with trans
portation facilities, could supply hu.
man wants at less cost.
I'm the factory we no longer ain
to supply local demands, but state in
terstate, national and even interna
tional. For this there must be trans
portation. and therefore we have nov
la railroad problem closely intertwine,
with the labor problem, intimately con
Injected with the whole process of manu-
featuring and distribution. The pro
/ ducts of these great factories must b,
used by consumers living at long dis