Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1921-08-24
Dying Communities and Crime.
(Rutlnrd Hara1d1

(huClAnQ dcTalOD
Byron Pettibone and Arthur Mud
gett, life prisoners in the state prison
at Windsor, are said to be model in
mates and are making good-conduct
records.
It is. going fairly far to say that
both Of these men should have been
sent to Windsor about ten years ear
lier than they were, but is is undoubt-
brought under strict discipline and
example, compelled to work under di-
rection and required TO live lives Of
decency and service they would never
have been in prison as convicted MUIR
derers.
So far as observation goes both Of
these men were victims of their own
INDUCED and undisciplined passions;
both are fairly intelligent and are by
no means degenerate except in moral
apprehension; both could have made
useful and productive members Of
society with the right influences and
training.
From observation necessarily has
ty and incomplete, it is the opinion of
the writer that potential Pettibones
and Mudgetts exist in every commun-
ity that comes under the head of "dy-
ing towns" The testimony Of edu-
cational surveys in such towns points
inevitably to the fact that not only
does aodense darkness of intellect
exist in many of them but that where
there is no organized effort toward
community uplift, the residue of pop
ulation has descended to moral plane
that is hideous almost beyond belief.
One needs only to hear the CONVEX
sation that passes from mouth to
mouth where men and boys assemble
at the crossroads grocery, the post
Office, blacksmith shop or creamery
to realize that the chief topics of con-
versation reek with filth, indecency
and depravity.
1t is more obvious there, perhaps,
than in the larger centers, because in
the latter there are at least diver
sions, occupations, interests, amuse-
ments- and public topics on which ideas
can be exchanged, even crudely and
vaguely, but in the community-and
by this we mean certain neighbor-
hoods more than towns-in the COM
munity where there is no church, no
lodge, no library, no community CEN
ter, no school worthy of the name; no
home, in fact, much above the level of
a howell, the conversation standard is
low and it's influences a trif1e lower
than those suggested by the moral
inhibitions of the averabe stock-horse.
It is from that sort of an environ
ment and from a education derived
from minimum of years in poorly
equipped and badly taught school that
the Pettibones and Mudgetts come,
and it is those communities that con-
stitute the greatest problem and the
most serious menace to Vermont's
progress and the moral average of
her inhabitants.
The problem runs down into the
actual fundamentals of our whole So
cial and industrial fabric. Most of
those communities or >neighborhoods
are dying because there is not a de-
cent living left for the people who
live there. The timber has been cut
off. The virgin fertility of the soil
has departed. The freshets, drougths.
weeds, "hardtack" and encroaching
sand, perhaps, have had their way in
the pastures. Many of the farms
should never have been cleared in
the first place. The problem is not
simply one of building up; in many
cases it is problem of actually re-
creating values long ago destroyed by
the axe and shiftless farmer. 1t is
a big job, costly job, and while it
IS being done the people must live
1t is too big subject to be even
hastily SKINNED in brief article,
and depend upon tive shall have
Pettibones and Mudgetts a-plenty just
SO long as standards of morals and liv-
ing are as low as they are in some
nelghborhoods. the location of which
is VIGOROUSLY known to men concern
ed with the broader educational prob
lens of the state.
Instead of wasting hundreds of
thousands of dollars on eradicating
disease among cattle, we might pro-
htably spend a little in sending mis-
slonarles to some of these diving
towns. who. before they die, seem like
ly to infect others.