Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-04-29
THE TIE TO EARTH
Bv ,JOhn Breck

CTRANGE how divorced practice and
- theory are in the most logical of us.
w. We may keenly understand the evils of
possession resent the fact that the owner
ship of things implies that they also own
us, will ourselves free from such ties, we
may even live whole lifetime in the city
where such logic is an inner compensation
for the fact that our secret ambition is i'm
possible to realize, but how many of us do
not truly hunger for our own bit Of land?
How many of us realize why?
Why do farmers still cling to the earth
their forefathers wore out with it's own
prodigality before they weres born? Not
that they hope for any miracle of recrudes
cence unless it be the one wrought by their
own labors, but because they feel rooted to
it by some intangible tendrils.
Why do gypsies, living off the land
through which they rove, return year after
year to the self-same haunts? Why, in
deed, does the bird return to nest near
the place where it was Matched, and the
i, salmon, after it's seven-year wandering, to
the waters in which it was spawned?
Why do the older immigrants, especially
the Jews, ungrudgingly pay premium for
foods from the land Of their nativity? Why
did the older natives, snatched from the
African coast in the old slave-trading days,
starve themselves, pine away to death in
their inconsistencies? And why, most curious
of all, has there sprung up among the
y
adaptable enough to survive the conviction
that there is voodoo on eating food out of
the district where it is grown?
You can multiply such examples amazing
ly. There is the difficulty of ''acclimating'
animals into fresh conditions where the
mere matter of climate may seem an easier
rather than a more difficult adjustment.
There is the waste of foods shipped into
starvation districts, not because the suffer
ers are unwilling, but because they seem
unable to adapt themselves to the change
offered them. On the other hand, who does
not remember, sometimes, the delicious sat-
sfaction from some simple food of our child
hood which escapes us now?
Why, the very outcry over the tenure Of
land is not that no one wishes to own 1T,
but that under the conditions which gave
rise to dissatisfaction no one could be sure
of holding it. What the Irish peasant or
the Russian serf hungered for was not the
mere title to property but the assurance
that he remained with the earth he titled
after the days of his labor were over and
done. See the farmers of France creep
back to the devastated soil that still is their
earth to them. Remember those who faced
danger and death rather than leave it.
There is a tie. No mere matter of senti-
ment-it is felt most strongly by those
creatures of earth in whom feeling is not
an intellectual process. 1t is because the
fruits of the earth are best adapted to sus-
tain life under the exact conditions where
they are planted and grown. 1t is because
bodies find in them their needed sustenance,
thing they miss when both surroundings
and food are changed. There is a real
hunger for the earth where they were slow
ly built up, fibre by fibre, from the soil
itself Deeper, more subtle still, is it be-
cause the dust of their kind has mingled
with it?
The old lady was looking for something to
grumble about. She entered the butchers
with the light o. battle in her eyes.
81 believe you sell diseased meat here?"
Worse!' replied the butcher blandly.
what do you mean worse?" demanded
the astonished patron.
1.-The meat We serve is dead!" conf1ded the
hut in q WI .isnar