Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-04-04
SoIue q Serious Problem
By Settling the SOIL

T@1E enormous growth of cities at the
expense of agricultural production
- and healthful freedom must be al
tered, one way or another, if national well
fare and human progress are to be conserved.
New Yorks population has swollen to six
million-about six per cent of the nations
total. That of London bids fair soon to reach
ten million, or almost twenty per cent OF the
United Kingdom. This state Of affairs ap-
pears in smaller but hardly less significant
proportions in divers parts of the United
States and of the world. How prevailing the
tendency is in this country is seen from the
fact that, whereas a few generations ago
sixty-fve per cent of our population dwelt
on farms and in villages and small towns, to-
day only thirty-fve per cent is found there,
the larger number residing in cities or COM
munities of considerable size.
Now, what does this mean economically?
Richard Spillane, a special writer for the
Newspaper Enterprise Association, who has
given the matter extensive study, Declares:
ITO transport the food and fuel re-
quired each day by city like New
York takes hundreds of trains and thou
sands of cars. Much of the food comes
from points a thousand or more miles
away. Much Of the fuel comes from
sections far distant. A French scientist
made possible such cities as London and
New York when he invented the
method of food preservation known as
cold storage. New York could be cut
off from communication with the rest
of the world for few weeks and 1--we
So could London. Formerly, such pop
ulations as these cities have would have
persisted if their lines of supply had
been cut off for week..
The cost of this herculean labor of trans
portation and the vast system of incidental
artificialities is stupendOns; and stupendous
is the waste involved. Add the loss to farm
productiveness and the loss of health and
vigor-inescapable consequences OF over
crowded cities-and the economic penalty is
all too manifest.
No less pronounced are the social and
moral penalties 1t is doubtful indeed, if
the richer and racer social virtues-thOse
s. Swinging from neighborliness and fostered
| by the individual touch-can truly thrive in
| .ose-packed, sitting centers where popula-
| ton towers high into the millions. Isolation
and congestion alike lay one liable to anti
social maladies of the spirit and retard Or
| repress some of the happiest and Wholesom-
| est of human impulses. o.
| In this, as in most excuses, there will com
| remedy, re-balancing, soon or late; for
extremes tend to destroy themselves. But
| America knows her deeper interests, she Will
not wait until the i'll reaches tragic crest
| and from it's very violence forces recession.
| Rather, she will take steps betimes to
| quicken and foster a love of the soil and of
| those priceless blessings which belong to life
| under clean and spacious skies.
| In Georgia, as in the South-at-large, we
| are happily free from the graver snadoWlngs
| of this problem. Nevertheless we shall do
we'll to look prudently futureWard and
strengthen all the ties that bind our people
| t. rural life. More than this, we can make
| tie opportunities and attractions OF rural
| life in Georgia so farreaching that the State
! will draw home-seekers from cities in every
| corner of the Union. Let us build, from the
mountains 20 the sea, the best system of in
| ter-county highways that skill and none
| can produce; let US establish in every cOun-
| trysde the best schools that Well-pald, ettl-
| cent and devoted teachers can conduct; let us
| inaugurate for rural and urtan commUnit
| alike the best sanitary and public health
| service which science can devise; or top OF
| this, let us carry forward through State and
| county cooperation, reinforced at divers
points by Federal aid, comprehensive pro-
gram of agricultural education and develop
ment;-let us do these humanity helpful
| things and the people will turn to rural
Georgia, with its smiling heavens and fertile
soil as to an Eden at whose gateway a
friendly angel beckons
Germany doesn't seem to like the old
phrase coming to terms"
| When we learn whether the Georgia peach
crop was really killed or not, we will give at
tention again to the Paris conference.
| Nothing is sure except death and city,
state and county, income, excess profits, cor
poration and few other axes.
Russia is also conspicuous for the most
spectacular retreat in history.