Norwich bulletin., 1917-10-26
YOU CAN'T EAT YOUR CAKE AND HAVE IT, TOO

], by cities or villages. The rest is open
 land mostly in farms or adapted to l be made into ia arms.
 Half century ago. more than
 three quarters of the population or 1 that state lived on farms and was en-
 gagged in working the farm-lan'ds. l Today. only about third of the states total population lives outside i the cities. Nor is all that pitiful third engaged in actual farm produc- l tion. ! over the east. We of New England | know it. You can't take an auto ride I or even a ten mile walk from the l center of your own city. without pass | n,g abandoned farms and deserted, roof-rotted, crunbling farm houses. l My own wholly rural town, without even a'village in it's limits. ten miles l from the nearest city. fifty years ago 1 lad double it's present population,- all farmers or farmers: farnilies,-anu they regularly cultivated almost dou- ble the acreage now under blow. Why,
 the little town actually sent more vol Lrteers to serve in the Civil War than tfe entire present number of draft Ii. ble men in it's borders. I don't know a single mile of road in the whole town from. which one cannot see either deserted farm house, or a once cultivated and pro-
 dnctive field now abandoned and go- ing back to scrub and woods.
 They left no complete records, in
 those old days. of the amount and
 value of farm crops raised here. Nor
 should I know just how to go to work
 to find out how much is produced. this
 year. But. in spite of the larger, use of machinery and improved methods.
 I'd be willing to wager a dime against doughnut that the whole town
 doesn't now produce two thirds the food stuffs which Is used to. produce in the 1s50s.
 In my own school district know of hundreds and hundreds of hillside acres which used to grow rye or
 ture in the between crop intervals. which are now scrubby woods. Only year or so since. some woodmen. cutting fuel in the forest. came 'Ipon the remnants of a row of old apple trees Inquiry from "the oldest i'm habitant" brought out the fact that 1 that very hillside where the men were | cutting cordwood was, in his own | farms. with good houses. ample barns, orchards. etc. They had also pro duced big families but the younger 1 folks had gone away, one after the | other. to this city or that, the old | folks had died. the houses had fallen | tC ruins, the barns disappeared. even | the. wells and cellar-holes had been filled up: only half-a dozen decaying 1 old apple trees along the line of what l had once been a fence remained to | identify the place where life had once I flowed so busily in such volume.
 Records of my own farm show me ] that in the 1s5os seed potatoes were | bought for twelve and a half cents q bushel. and twelve -hours-a a-day labor thought itself amply paid with fifty cents day. Last spring. the ruling | price of seed potatoes. right here. was i s4 bushel, and farm labor, not so competent nor so loyal as in the old | days, has demanded $3 a day foi- pre- ! ending work eight or ten hOurS
 Whats. all this got to do with "You ! can't eat your cake and have it too"? l, you ask.
 My dear brother or sister: If ycu ! and hundreds of thousands like you have deserted and continue to desert 1 the country for city sidewalks and ]; tenements you by that very action abandon farms which you might have worked: you decrease the supply of labor essential to working all farms: your action diminisfes production and inevitably induces scarcity, which is the imperative cause of increa sed prices and the high cost of living"
 You. by your absence from the fields. net only reduce the production which in the city. you increase the ranks of non producing consumers. You di- minish the supply and. at the very same instant. you increase the de- nland. And ther you kick about the high prices of farm produce!
 But,-you don't want to live in the country and be mere farmers or mere farmers wives You'd .rath- er' live in the city. Why; of coul.e; thats why you're doing it. That's from the outset. You want that particular piece of cake: you're hungry for it and you want to eat it. Very well: that's your privilege and right to eat it right now. eat it to the last crumb and the last tiVy mor- 1 sel of frosting.
 But. after eating it. why in the