The log cabin Democrat., 1914-06-08
FIGHT THE LURE
 4 OF THE BIC CITY
Chautauqua Helps Keep Boys
 and Girls at Home.
\ GREAT AGENT FOR GOOD.

Ososnerates In the Cities Are Coun-
 try 6orn-The Small Town Must Stop Thia.
 If au enemy were to invade this country he would be resisted. We would volunteer just as in the days of former invasions. We would beat the drums and organize companies. regi ments and armies and drive out the invader.
 We would not rise up as individuals, each with his own plan of attack. We would organize into an army with one concerted plan of attack.
 Individualism wins admiration, but cooperation brings salvation. Indi- vidualism can walk from Chicago to New York in a month. perhaps, but cooperation can take you in a day and for less money.
 An enemy Is invading every small town. city and rural community. It is the Lure of the City. It fevers the young people. and they yield just as fast as they can get away. So the villages are barely holding their own or shriveling. They are becoming in many instances the "culls" and the "leftovers." while the ambition, the red blood and the hustle have been talk en captive and are yearly heinz led into the prisons of city life Much of 1t is exile in dingy hall bedrooms. The Lure selects the strongest and fairest, so the census reveals the stagnatiou of rural population. though the birth rate be higher than the death rate, .nd shows how very. very many communi- ties and states have lost population. The average small town today is sieve. .. --~-
 The city receives it's influx. Here and there one rises to distinction. It is the country bred youth who does win out. not the city one, for he has started with more strength from the simpler life. But the masses who go from the country to the city be- come hewers of wood and drawers of water. They spend an hour to two hours each morning and evening hang ing on a strap as they go from their cheap. lonely lodgings to their down. town grind. They are jostled in the crowd, they see the seamy side of life, they see the easy morals and no ques- tions asked. they see temptation every where, they get lonely and discOurag- ed and. without home influences to strengthen and cheer them, with but enough wages to exist and daily struggle to keep up fine front, little by little their moral moorings slip. Only the young person with the strongest character can fight single handed and alone the temptations of great city
 Go 10 the blear eyed young man in a cheap saloon or in the street crowd listening to some blatant agitator and you will find be came from King man. Kan., or from Dunkirk. o. You will find the painted girl on the street came from Crystal Falls. Mich, or from Waco. Tex. If they had never seen Chicago they would have been saved from their degradation
 Meanwhile the worthy citizens of Kingman and Dunkirk and Crystal Falls and Waco read of the problems of the city with merely idle curiosity. ''That isn't our problem. Thank God, we have none of itr' Oh, how King man and Dunkirk and Crystal Falls and Waco need pumping! The city should send them the names of their own children that have been thrown upon the scrap heap. Every small town should be furnished the annual list of victims that were taken right out of Its borders because it was asleep with the doors unlocked.
 The Invader Is despoiling the small towns of their most precious product, the young people. and yet the small towns do not organize into companies to resist No drums beat. DO flags fly, l no army rises up. So they are help less. They rely upon individual ac- | ton. Each man works on his own plan. What we have said of four towns was said of forty thousand The citizens are so wrapped in self right eousness and self satisfaction they 
 don't want to act. They won't line up. Each man Is interested in himself and his business and his church and too often thinking his success Is only to be won as ha worsts his competitor. Each small town church Is inclined to | envy the other churches. The town Is not a town, but collection of little cliques and factions and clubs and parties, A new movement is started if one church or one faction takes 1t up the others will fight 1t. So Chris
 ttanity and progress are halted at the corporation line.
 No, not all small towns! Here and
 there one Is waking and getting to- 1 gether.
 If the small town is to be saved it
 must get together. The Lure of the City must be fought down by creating
 the Lure of the Country.
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