Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 227, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1911 — Lure of the City Reaches Out to Farms [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Lure of the City Reaches Out to Farms

ST. LOUIS, MO.—Sixty per cent, of the young men who wear blue uniforms on the trolley cars are farmers’ sons. Most of them have pulled and tugged at plow lines over the backs of refractory mules long before they ever pulled a bell cord in this city. Half the clerks in the big railway offices in St. Louis are boys from the smaller cities and the little railway stations where the fast trains never stop. Fifty out of every hundred of the young men who are putting kinks in their spineß and ruining their eyesight over long columns of freight earnings and “ton miles,” know when to plant potatoes and how to ,plow corn. ' Every other waitress in the quick lunch places down town was once a countqr lassie. That is, they were born and raised up in one of those little towns that dot and speckle the state maps. Thirty out of 40 of the men who run train*, hammer telegraph keys and make out bills of lading for the railway systems were recruited from the farms. Many of the little stenographers who scurry in and out of the office buildings at lunch hour were once upon a time little pigtailed lassies, who played about the big yards of some little half forgotten town with elm shaded streets. When a middle aged man or woman goes Ipto the city to make his or

her home thpre, it is nine chances t# ten that they have failed at everything they have ever tried In the lit tie cities, and have come to the big town to Btart a boarding or a room ing house. ' i And nine out of every ten of them is certain that the city, any city, ii the very wickedest of wicked places Back in the country, where they com* from, the big town was held up to them as a symbol of sin. The older folks talked in low tones of its snares and pitfalls, of the sin and degrada tion that were everywhere in the big town. Why do they come? Many of them fail to drag themselves back to take up life where they left it out oh the farms. The great majority manage to live on the salaries they receive or the wages they are able to earn. A few of them become wealthy and successful, and are able to go back and buy up a whole township around the old homestead, if they desire.