Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1875 — Why the Cities Are Overcrowded. [ARTICLE]

Why the Cities Are Overcrowded.

There is hardly a city in the United States which does not contain more people than can get a fair, honest living, by labor or trade, in thejiest times. When times of business depression come, like those through which we have passed and are passing, there is a large class that must be. helped to keep them from cruel' suffering. JStill the cities grow, ..while whole regions' of the country—especially its older portions—are depopulated vear by year. Yet the fact is patent to-day that the only prosperous class is the agricultural. We have now the anomafv of thrifty fWpers andstarv*

ing tradesmen. The agricultural classes oftheWest are prosperous. They had a good crop last year, and have received good prices for all their product; and while the cities are in trouble, and manufactories are running on half time, or not running at all, the Western farmer has money in his pocket and a ready market for everything he has to sell. The country must be fed, and he feeds it. The city family may do without new clothes and a thousibd-Jnxurious appliances, but it must have bread and meat. There is nothing that can prevent the steady prosperity of the American farmer but the combinations and “ corners” of mid-dle-men that force unnatural conditions upon the finances and markets of the country. . This is not the first occasion we have had for allusion to this subject, and it is not likely to be the last. The forsaking of the farm for city life is one of the great evils of the time, and, so tar, it has received no appreciable check.. Every young man, apparently, who thinks he can get a living in the city, or at the minor centers of population, quits his lonely home upon the farm and joins the multitude. Once in the city he never returns. Notwithstanding the confinement and the straitened conditions of his new life, he clings to it until he dies, adding his family to the permanent pop ulationofhis new home. Mr. Greeley, in his days of active philanthropy, used to urge men to leave the city—to go West—to join the agricultural population, and thus make themselves sure of a competent livelihood. He might as well have talked to the wind. A city population can neither be coaxed nor driven into agricultural pursuits. It is not that they are afraid of work. The average worker of the city toils more hours than the average farmer in any quarter of the country. He is neither fed nor lodged as well as the farmer. 'He is less independent than the farmer. He is a bondslave to his employers and his condi tions; yet the agricultural world has no charms for him. ' , , Whatever the reason for this may be, it is not based in the nature of the work, or in its material rewards. The farmer is demonstrably better off than the worker of the city. He is more independent, has more command of his own time, fares better at table, lodges better and gets a better return for his labor.. What is the reason, then, that the farmer’s boy runs to the city the first chance he can get, and remains, if he can possiblv find there the means of life?

It can only be found, we believe, in the social leanness, or social starvation, of American agricultural life. The American farmer, in all his planning, and all his building, has never made provision for life. He has only, considered the means of getting a living. Everything outside of this —everything relating to society and culture—has been steadily ignored. He gives his children the advantages of schools, not recognizing the fact that these very advantages call into life a new set of social wants. A bright, well-educated family, in a lone ly farm-house, is very different material from a family brought up in ignorance. An American farmer’s children, who have had a few terms at a neighboring academy, resemble in no degree the children of the European peasant. They come home with new ideas and new wants, and if there is no provision made for these new wants, ana they find no opportunities for their satisfaction, they wifi be ready, on reaching their majority, to fly the farm and seek the city. If the American farmer wishes to keep his children near him he must learn the difference between living and getting a living; and we mistake him and his grade of culture altogether if he does not stop over this statement and wonder what we mean by it. To get a living, to make money, to become “ forehanded’ this is the whole of life to agricultural multitudes, discouraging in their numbers to contemplate. To them there, is no difference between living and getting a living. Their whole life consists in gett'ypg a living; and when their families Mine back to them from their schooling, and find that, really, this is the only pursuit that has any recognition under the internal roof, they must go away. The joys push to the centers or the cities and the girls follow them if they can. A young man or a young woman, raised to the point where they apprehend the difference between living and getting a living, can never be satisfied with the latter alone. Either the farmer’s children must be kept ignorant, or provision must be made for their social wants. Brains and hearts need food and clothing as well as bodies; and those who have learned to recognize brains and .hearts as the best and most important part of their personal possessions will go where they can find the ministry they need. What is the remedy? How shall farmers manage to keep their children near them? How can we discourage the influx of unnecessary —nay, burdensome — populations into the cities? We answer: By making agricultural society attractive.- Fill the farm-houses with periodicals and books. Establish central read-ing-rooms, or neighborhood clubs. Encourage the social meetings of the young. Have concerts, lectures, amateur dramatic associations. Establish a bright, active, social life, that shall give some significance to labor. Above all, build, as far as possible, in villages. It is better to go a mile to one’s daily labor than to place one’s self a mile away from a neighbor. The isolation of American farm-life is the great curse of that life, and it falls upon the women with a hardship that the men cannot appreciate, and drives the educated young away.— Dr. J. O. Holland , in Scribner's Monthly.