Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1915-03-09
Why Is q City?

Il pawn ~ iueo eEoas CitAco9
| have been watching my neighbour
and studying my city. On my left live {
young married couple, he from village
she from farm. They seem to know
nobody; at least nobody ever comes
there, and they never go out except to a
moving picture show. On my right are
an elderly married couple who occasion
ally get visit from a married son and
his wife. Across the street is hand
some apartment building-a snowy hu.
man rookery inhabited by salaried mems
families, usually two and dog, A
school census-taker the other day told
me he did not find a single child in that
whole great building. find the city
full of such things from one end to an
other. In this great congestion of hui
mapity there is more loneliness than
there is in a wilderness. There is
wealth-a high per capita of riches.
But anybody who thinks there is much
information in per capita statistics like
that has only to take financial census
OF our city to find that there is nothing
more misleading.
What's the good OF it? Here we have
a million people, in round numbers. We
are proud of our city and everybody is
boosting to make it bigger. Will any.
body, except those who have real estate
to sell, be the better or happier If We
can double our population? Not soul,
| do believe.
We have substitutes for neighborli-
ness and happiness. Last night spent
the evening in a cafe, place OF warmth
and light and good clothes and chatter,
of high priced food and drinks and tips
and servilty. To be there an evening
costs enough to keep a family a week.
Is that happiness? l doubt 1t very
much; and | know that many are very
unhappy trying to live that life.
What shall be said for an institution
that does away with neighborliness,
with warm human associations and with
babies?
II you could cut a cross-section
through hearts and homes, how would
the average well being of our million
city people compare with that of the
thousand people in the village my young
neighbor came from, or the handful in
the country township his wife was born
in? Can there be more than one answer
to that? What ia it profitiug humanity
to build these great cities, il they mean
less human happiness instead of more?
These cities are rich, brilliant, slightly
in spots, but not in the slums or where
most working people live; they are not
happy.
Two blocks from me is factory en-
ploying 500 men, with the homes of the
workers grouped about it-houses hud-
died together so they almost seem to
struggle for breath. There are no lawns,
no flower beds, no gardens. There is no
spear of green or burst of bloom any
where, except an occasional struggling
gerauium in a tin can. Suppose that
factory and its workers were moved to
the village my ueighbor came from
The workers could live cheaply and
well, thanks to the rich farming
country around il. Land would be
cheap enough so that there could be
for each family yard for the kiddies
to play in, and place for a garden and
flower beds and shrubs and vines. The
farmers around the village would find
market right at home; the workers, in
stead Of paying tribute to half dozen
middlemen, could buy direct from the
farmer. The city wouldn't miss the fac
tory or its Z, 800 people. There is moth
ing good in the city that these workers
aud their families would lose by the
change; there is much good that they
would gain by 1t.
Suppose, while we are supposing, that
our million people, instead OF being
crowded together in one spot to make
land dear and human associations diff
cult and babies scarce, were scattered
among 200 small cities; or part in such
small cities, part in villages, aud part on
the soil. Can any body doubt that the
average well being of this million would
be vastly grester?,
On the other hand, suppose that mil
lion inhabitants of small cities, villages
and rural towns were suddenly to be
drawn together in a new city OF mil
lion people, modelled after our city and
others like it. A certain small proper
ton would be enriched and fitted out
with high power cars, with which to
break their necks, with gingerbread
mansions to be lonely 10, and with rich
living 10 ruin their livers. Another and
larger proportion would be consigned to
squalid slums, radiating hotbeds of evil,
evilly glowing menaces to humanity and
organized society. The rest would be
to the loneliness and bitter
of my neighbors; or, il they
were lucky, to the chill cheer OF the
babyless apartments across the street.
We are talking Of bringing the produc-
or and the consumer closer together-by
better roads, by shorter and more direct
marketing methods, by this and by that.
Why not, instead of widening the gap
between the source of supplies and the
market by congesting our people in
cities like cramped, unhappy sardines
in box,-why not, / say, start moving
our city dwellers back toward the soil?
Not upon the soil, necessarily, for most
of us in this generation would do but
poorly there, / fear, though our chill
dren might be taught how to 60 there;
but closer to the soil, and closer to its
freedom.
Why is a city?-Stillman Fl. Bingham,
10 Farm Journal.