Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-03-01

Professor Ross in the following letter
of summary:
my impressions from the more back
ward parts of Vermont and New Hamp-
shire all confirm and corroborate one
another. For from fifty to seventy
years the energetic persons who natu-
rally are the generators and up-holders
of high standards have been going out
from these rural communities and en-
riching other communities in other
parts of the country. More and more
the community has come to be COM
posed of culls, and these lack the initia-
tive to improve their farming or intro
duce new industries which may be we'll
adapted to the locality. Each genera
ton of young people grows up with the
feeling that the town is dead" and
that anyone who has ginger in him will
get out. Thus stagnation breeds more
stagnation and the exodus is acceler-
ated. The economic consequence of the
community being continually ''fished
OUT is unthrift, persistence in slack,
antiquated methods, and poor ways of
living resulting in poverty and hopeless
ness. The religious consequences are
failure to support the church and
deafness to all spiritual appeal. The
moral consequences are low standards
of life and conduct, stinginess, furtive-
| nal- ~ h .t-t+
precocious seXuality, unfaithfulness to
the marriage vows, and a taste for
crude pleasures.
''There are two remedies, one super
fetal, the other fundamental. The one
perceives that the trouble with these
depleted communities is lack of the
leadership toward better things enjoyed
in all normal communities, and proposes
to fill this need in a measure by putting
in qualified leader from outside and
setting him to discover and train up
such material for leadership as is found
among the rising generation. This
policy is rational and helpful, but it
leaves the community dependent for its
higher life on the continual injection of
stimuli from outside.
1.-THE more fundamental policy is to
keep the natural leaders of each gener-
alton in the community by showing
them how they can prosper as well by
staying as by departing. This calls for
outside aid in showing the community
the path toward economic betterment,
in teaching them more scientific meth
DDS of farming, or marketing, in max
ing them acquainted with new crops, or
in fostering the development of new
local industries. The resulting eco
nomic regeneration will automatically
cause the better element among the
young people to remain in the commu-
nifty and they in time will impose upon
their fellows higher sanitary, moral,
and religious standards.
Really, both lines of endeavor ought
to be followed. The state government
ought to send into the decaying COM
munities economic missionaries to dem
onstrate the profitabeness of scientific
farming, or apple growing, or raising
small fruits, or cooperative marketing,
or scientific forestry, on the other
hand, philanthropy ought to put in
men to discover and foster such leader
ship material as there is among the
young and to turn it toward better
things. The county work of the Y. M.
c. A. strikes me as wisely conceived
and well adapted to the purpose Only
the Y. M. C. A. ought to push hard to
induce the state government, the col
leges, the grange, or other agencies to
back up and support its work by putting
forth efforts to restore economic pros
perity to the stagnant rural towns.
THE tendencies here mentioned to-
ward the depletion of purely farming
districts have become noticeable in
Southern Michigan, Indiana and Iowa.
The outflow, however, has not been
going on for nearly so long and the de-
pletion of the natural community has
never become so serious as found it in
Northern New England"