Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1913-06-26
Gone to look for job in Chicago

Toms mail order stove didn't work |
very well,
But no one in town could repair it;
At last he was forced to admit he was
wrong,
His neighbors weren't slow to ad-
NIT it.
With no stores there was no one to
buy or to sell,
The drummers stopped coming, they
closed the hotel,
Twas surprising how quickly the
town went towel
A very long way from Chicago.
True Patriotism Begins at Home.
There is both truth and eloquence in
the following address of William Allen
White at the Southwestern Lumber
mems convention in Kansas City:
The preservation of the home trade
to the home town carries with it the
preservation of many of our American
Institutions.
/ 1t seems to me that a lot of good
things in American life will pass if the
country town passes. And it will pass
just as surely as Capitalization of re-
tail business in cities continues.
The American country town, the
town of from one hundred to fifty
thousand people, preserves better
than the crowded city and better than
the lonely ranch the things that make
America great.
Here in these country towns the
spirit of. neighborliness is the prevail
ing spirit. The American country
town with its broad circle of friend
ships, with it's close, homely, simple
relations between men, with it's spirit
of cooperation and with its economic
status that permits the creation of no
indecently rich and no abjectly poor
the American country town, it seems
to me, is the most hopeful of our
American institutions.
To destroy that town, furnishing the
market for the farmer and giving
steady employment to labor, means a
reorganization of our commercial, So
cial and industrial life that will be
revolutionary-and more, a matter of
doubtful value.
The mail order house, therefore, be-
comes menace to this country. The
mail order house unrestricted will kill
our smaller towns, creating great
cities with their terrible contracts OF
life, with their cruel social relations
with their inevitable caste feeling that
comes from the presence of strangers
who are rich and poor living side by
side.
Friendship, neighborliness, fratern
ity or whatever you will call that spir
it of comradery that comes when mel
know one another well, is the cement
hi Of n
J. states. 1t is not created in grea
cities.
Great cities give much in aims. bu
little in justice. Only as we know
each other we'll can we treat eacl
other justly; and the city is a wilder
ness of careless strangers whose in
: stincts of humanity are daily becom
: ing more and more blunted to suffer
ing because in the nature of things
suffering in cities must be impersonal
So the mail order house, crushing GU
our towns, is drying UP the milk o
human kindness in our hearts.
IL we who live in these small towns
, in America can not see that our dut.
to our country lies first of all in ou
duty to our neighbors, then we arr
blind indeed to the basis of real pa
triotism- For, after all patriotism il
only neighborly kindness. Patriotism
is not in cheering for the flag; it i!
: not in feeling our eyes filled with emo
tional tears at hearing The Sta
Spangled Banner; patriotism is jus
old fashioned human duty.
, To sacrifice our neighbor-the maj
who helps the town with it's taxes
with its public business, with it,
myriad activities for neighborly right
eousness-to sacrifice that man anC
his business for the mere sake of say
ing a dollar on the purchase of hun
dred dollars worth of goods is just as
unpatriotic as it is to spit at the flag
The motto of the mail order house
is, every man for himself and the devi
take the hindermost-and you bet the
devil will.
That spirit never fails to work; anC
the weak man, the unprotected man
the man alone-the man on the farm
; at the end of the fact, when his farm
market is gone, when his town is
: gone, when the spirit of selhshness