Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1912 — “BACK TO THE LAND.” [ARTICLE]

“BACK TO THE LAND.”

An Open Letter to Mrs. Margaret Springer, 306 Canal St., Chicago. Dear Madam:—-In the Chicago lnteivOcean of Feb. 15th, I saw an account of what you propose in the way 6f a farm colony near Kniman, Jaaper county, Indiana. Your idea is right! If the millioniares of the country would do the same the solution of all our problems would be found, It is very natural that the Socialist lawyer, .Seymour Stediman, w'ill not agree with you. Socialists want nothing that has an element of manual! labor in it. People whose Ideal is two to four hours work for a day cannot sympathize with anything on your line. They prefer to work for child labor laws, compulsory education laws and for the shortening of working hours everywhere. The great obstacle to any getting of poor people back to the land are these very child labor and compulsory education laws. They are responsible for the idlers and youthful! criminals of the day. The poor people whom you get to the land must be entirely unhampered by social. religious or educational obstacles. They must go there to work, and otherwise to do as they choose and be let alone. The cry everywhere is for the back-to-the-land movement. Yet even the people who cry it are oblivious of the things, necessary for its realization, and utterly intercept it with other demands, Ev- 1 ery poor man that, goes to one of! your 4 0 acre farmis with his family should have the labor of every! member of his family, yet here is Owen R. Love joy planning to let 1 no child work on a farm until it ! is 14, 16 or 18 years of age. For some twenty years I have been making this call of back-to-1 the-land. I have sent out thousands; of circulars and newspaper articles. I 1 have called on every rich man! in „ the Hand to help. I have even callled on the States to abolish the public schools and put to the move-! ment the cash that to them,! for a time at least. I have been! called the father of the movement I in this country; but, as yet, neither; private nor public help to the end' has amounted to anything—as Mr I Stedman says, failure has marked such attemlpts as have been made. I The whole country is drifting to-' ward Socialistic laziness and living off of the state. All this is the re- 1 fult of the public schools. Just the other day Mins. Ella "Flagg Young 1 confessed and deplored this. Your colony is about the right distance from Chicago, but it is in a state where compulsory education 1 and child labor laws exist with a' vengeance, and if they could not be repealed in the case of your colony, with application to work considered as application to books, vain wild be all hope. Poor people moist have children’s help. Very respectfully, FRANCIS BUCK LIVESEY, West Friendship, Md.