The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1913-11-11

THE back-to-the farm movement
;. M empty dream. 1t has been TAX
on I'D by fashion and wealth, and
hen fashion and wealth set the
.+omn of approval on anything it's
,onuIarity is assured. 1t is a far cry
fron, a Fifth avenue ball room to
country chicken yard, but no less
Sodical is the change which has come
over faded society of late. There has
Hoan a general exodus from the
dwellings, of fashion and wealth in
New York city to the country es-
tatee.
There are two or three reasons for
+bis One is that business is con-
stantly encroaching on the residential
lotions in Manhattan. What used
n he exclusively streets of quiet re-
6nad homes are now taken over by
cumming industry or busy COM
D,nrce Each year sees an expansion
f,r+ber north of the center of trade.
The time is not far distant when the
ortire island of Manhattan will be
ora great business office. There will
no NO residential section on the is
land. as the term is now understood.
hotels there will be for transients,
theatres there will be to entertain
travellers overnight, apartments there
will he to shelter those who must
stav in town to do the city's great
work. but the capital, the wealth,
+he fashion of the city will reside
outside. For many years commuters
have Jared back and forth for econ
omy's sake. Now the best people"
M longer consider it a mark of dis
+inction to reside on Fifth avenue.
That is too common. Commercial
and social reasons are the prime
canses of the farm exodus.
But there is another reason deep
or About once in so often society's
rich become stated with the artificial
tiles of life and revert from them.
Nauseated at the hollow sham the
ostentatious display of empty mock
ery of the position of leaders of So
ciety," whose leadership would fade
in a night we're wealth to vanish,
they seek surcease in nature. How
often has the energetic son of society
parents, grandson of a pioneer of bus
mess, feeling the pioneer impulse in
his own veins, gone in for ranching
in the west, because he wanted the
genuine life and had no use for the
artificial, stirling atmosphere of con-
ventional fashion.
Something of this feeling seems to
have attacked society as a whole. To
recount the names of those who have
abandoned New York's former cen
ters of fashion would be to recite the
list of names that figured in the socl-
ETY. columns of the New York papers
few years back. The Vanderbilts,
the Astors, the Whitneys, the Fishs,
the Webbs-and so on down through
the Blue Book list. Everybody who
has the money has country place,
and everybody who has one is living
on it the major portion of the time.
Not only are they living on their
country places, but they seek to make
them commercially profitable The
old instinct to turn a penny, the rul-
ing passion of the founder of each
Of the reigning houses of wealth, per-
sists in the blood.
The example of E. H Hartman,
who at the time of his death was
putting his 5000 acre estate at Ar
den, N. Y. on a paying basis, is fol
lowed by many another Hartman
had no idea of making of his farm an
idle toy simply because it was his
diversion He had the satisfaction
of seeing his farm as we'll as his rail