Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1876 — Coming to the City. [ARTICLE]

Coming to the City.

Bdth by experience and by observation we know the eager, restless desire of a certain class of young men on the farm to get away from farm life and come to the city. They dislike the drudgery, the steady, hard work of the farm, and think it would be much better and nicer if they could stand behind a counter in some dry goods store, or work in an office, or even drive a city team. They would then be “among folks.” they think, and would be able to see for themselves “what was going on.” The glare and glitter, the noise and bustle, the activity aud commotion, the apparent splendor and gayety of a city life, they think, would just suit them, and would be so different from the solitude and lonesomeness of the farm and the farm home. Now we have a few plain words that we desire to address directly to this class. Not that words of similar import have not been spoken before, but it will do no harm to remind you of them again. And first, “ all is not gold that glitters.” There is drudgery to lie done in the city, as well as in the country, and if anything, even more. There is also as much hard, steady work. It is a little different in kind, to be sure, but then it tires you out just as soon, and you feel just as weary at night. Besides, a man can work to much better advantage in the stillness and quietude and amidst the unexcitable surroundings of country life than he. can with the noise and confusion of passing multitudes around him. There would be far less of nerve-exhaustion and vital consumption at the old home than there would be here. But again, if all this were not true, the city, at present, is the last place in the world that any man should think of coming to. Cities are generally overcrowded, but at the present time they are unusually full. Chicago is as well circumstanced as any large place in this respect, and in Chicago to-day, by a safe estimate, there are from one to five thousand men out of employment. Some of these are men with families who reside here, but a large proportion of the number are young men who have come in from.all quarters, looking for a situation, because they wish to change their mode of life, and feel dissatisfied with their present condition. No one by looking merely at the outside can begin to tell me amount of magnificent misery and gilded poverty which exists within the city walls. The number of large business houses' that are making anything more than a bare living now is venr small. To any young man, or old man, who is even comfortably situated on a farm, we say, by all means, remain contented. “ Better endure the evils you already have than fly to others you know not of.” The temptations and seductiveness of city life, its opportunities for self-destruction by gambling, drinking, licentiousness, and a thousand other evils, the peculiar isolation and lonesomeness of living and moving among people whose name t,:ven, you do not know, is not half as peasant as it might appear at first thought. The man who ought to be the happiest of all men is he who has a nice farm, free from debt, and under a Btate °I cultivation, with a cheerful, loving wife, and a goodly number of healthy, bright, dutiful children to make music in his home, B °d to assist in keeping his homestead.— Prairie Farmer.