get them on at all; but it is so expensive hiring a horse to go on, that as long as the waggon alone can be drawn 3 or 4 miles a day, it will not be done; but I feel provoked, as you will easily see, so I will write no more on this subject. I am so anxious to end my journey, that I have lost all interest about the country I pass through. It snows or rains every day, constantly. I think in good weather the ride from Warren to Pitts'g must be pleasant. If that were at present the case, my journal would be as much more interesting as my journey would be pleasanter. Thursday eve. 10 miles as usual, has been our day's ride. I have not walk'd my 9 miles, but I walk'd as much as I could. We are in a comfortable house before an excellent fire. It is snowing very fast. WARREN! Saturday, P.M. After so long a time. Friday morning we set out early, with the hope of getting to Youngstown at night and to Warren to-night, but 4 miles from Youngstown the horses were so tir'd they would not stir, so we stopt at a private house for the night, an hour before sundown. We had been in the house but a little time, when Susan look'd out and told me she thought there was some one after me, and I soon saw Mr Edwards and 2 horses. 'I was never so happy, I think.' I ran out to meet him. He came in and set a while, and just at dark we started for Youngstown. Mr Edwards insisted upon Susan's going with us, so she rode behind him, and I rode the single horse. We reach'd Cousin Joseph Woodbridge's about the middle of the eve. They got us a good supper and gave us a bed. Mrs W. is a very pretty woman (I mean pleasing). They have 3 children, and appear to be very well off (you understand me), and happy. They live in a very comfortable loghouse, pleasantly situated. A cousin in this country is not to be slighted, I assure you. I would give more for one in this country than for 20 in old Connecticut. This morning Mrs Todd came over to see us, and urg'd us to stay and spend the day with her. But spite of her solicitations, we set out for Warren soon after breakfast. My horse was extremely dull and we did not get here till near 2 oclock. Cousin Louisa was as happy to see me as I could wish, and I think I shall be very happy and contented. The town is pleasanter than I expected, the house better, and the children as fine. Cousin has alter'd very little, in any way. I found a Mrs Waldo here just going to Connecticut, and lest I should not have another opport'y, I intend sending this by them, without even time to read it over and correct it. I am asham'd of it, my dear Elizabeth, and were it not for my promise to you, I don't know that I should dare to send it. I will write your Mama by mail, I have not time for a letter now. My very best love to everybody. I have a great deal more to say, but no more time than just to tell you, I am ever and most affect❜ly THE RURAL PROBLEM AND THE COUNTRY MINISTER BY JOSEPH WOODBURY STROUT to account. In the great forward movement of fort is made to turn the unused power the times, the country is far behind the city. Modern improvements have obtained slowly among the farmers. Machinery has taken the place of men everywhere, even to a certain extent on the farm; but apart from the necessities of his economic life, the farmer has been slow to introduce new things. The rural home is not yet comfortable. The great majority of farmers still go to the spring, or draw water from a well with the old oaken bucket. Hot and cold water, modern conveniences, sanitary surroundings, heat, light, and the rest, are easily within the reach of every rural householder, yet not one in a hundred has them. An electric-lighting plant is possible in almost every rural district. Rarely is there a country town through which some stream of water is not flowing, and now, since the passing of the old woolen and grist mills, these streams are running entirely to waste. In the three communities where I have lived during the last twenty-five years, there are valuable waterways altogether unused. Each one of these streams offers good opportunity for damming, and with small outlay the power of a fifteen-foot fall might be had. In my present location, in the centre of the town is a fall of water amply sufficient in power to light the village, and run small machinery of various kinds. In the city such power would have been in use long ago. This loss and waste is seen and acknowledged by the men of the different communities, and yet no ef VOL. 110-NO. 3 For more than a century cities have been paving their streets, and for half a century, at least, they have been building macadam roads, while the roads in the country, where roads are vital to economic life, have been mainly left to nature. In fifty years, omitting possibly the last decade, the poor country road itself has robbed the farmer of half his profits. He has not been ignorant of the fact, but he has been too apathetic to attempt a remedy. Since the state began building roads and aiding the towns to do likewise, some improvements have come, but even now rural communities will not take any initiative. Only when the road commissioners say that they will pay one half the cost does the town make a movement. Within fifty years this town where I now live has sunk in bad roads enough money to have macadamized every piece of highway in town; yet, with one or two exceptions, the farmers still draw heavy loads to market through an ungraded way of mud and mire. There is great wealth in these rural districts. The resources of land and wood and water have lain undeveloped for hundreds of years, while men have toiled for daily bread, and died with just enough ahead to bury them. And they are not much more awake to these things now than they were fifty years ago. Moreover, the farmer spends in the city the little wealth he does accumulate. If he sells his produce in the 353 city, he spends his extra dollars there also. He unwittingly helps the city to build good roads, to have electric lights, comfortable homes, and all the luxuries of modern times, but fails to help himself to any of them. He invests the little money he accumulates in the city. He votes for the city, at least the manufacturing city, every time. He stands pat on the tariff, and fights reciprocity, just as the great manufacturer wants him to, and is generally relied upon to hold everything down to the old-fashioned, worn-out, beggarly economics of twenty-five years ago. The riches of his own locality are passed over, and his energy is given, in large measure, to the exalting of cities. The diamonds at his own door he will not gather. If the rural inhabitant thus remains apathetic in the things which immediately concern his economic welfare, one may expect to find a similar condition of apathy in other quarters. And he is not disappointed. The rural schools are far below their possibilities. 'What was good enough school for us is good enough for our children,' is still the great argument of the orator of the town meeting. And the men chosen for the school committee still exploit the old notion that their chief aim should be to save the town's money, instead of to educate the town's children. The boys and girls are measured in dollars and cents, and the dollar is big and the boy is small. The country schools are indeed better than they were one hundred years ago, but the advance has been along a line of training and development peculiarly calculated to fit the pupil for city life. The point of view of the farmer is taken from the city. In every sporadic attempt at improvement he invariably apes the city. No attempt is ever made to turn the educational forces toward developing the country genius of the pupil. It is no wonder the young people go to the city. So far as they have any training in school, it is toward that end. They learn nothing about the farm life. Most country boys leave school at the end of the sixth grade, hardly able to read, write, or cipher. They have no knowledge of the grasses and the flowers, of the bugs and the worms, of the birds and the animals, save, perchance, that which is involved in the folk-lore of the community, generally wrong. Here, where the country-side should place its chief emphasis and train its boys and girls for the rural life, the time is taken up with imparting quite another sort of knowledge. The absence of local or civic pride in these communities is sometimes striking. In the centre of our town, a cluster of houses forms a small village. Nature has been generous with us in planting trees and giving us a small lake, bordered with the wild honeysuckle, the pink azalea, the blueberry and the shadbush, while along the streets grasses grow profusely, and in the centre, between cross-sections of the road, little malls and parks are cut out; but the grass is never mowed, the edges of the malls are never trimmed, the shores of the pond are never graded, the trees, except by the state, are never sprayed; bills are posted on the trees, the sheds, and the fences. The meeting-house stands here, but except that men outside of the town have taken it in hand, it would be as forlorn and neglected as the rest of the district. Pigmy political bosses, and little party machines, dominate the town. These say who shall be selectman, school committee, representative to the general council, and who shall sit in the jury-box. The rest of the town does not care enough to want a voice in the matter. A landmark in all these communities is the meeting-house. The fathers of the hamlet were men of vision. The meeting-houses are old. They would not be here otherwise. The modern farmer has not much use for a church; he is too apathetic, too penurious, too close to the physical side of life, to organize one. But, thanks to the old men, there is no rural district without at least its one meeting-house. But this is a cold affair, unattractive in general, and out of repair, about starved out. Its architecture is commonplace or fantastic, and its vestry usually underground. The singing is led by an oldfashioned reed-organ, and the hymnbooks are at least forty years behind the time. Congregations are small, and one sometimes wonders why there are any, so unattractive and downright oppressive are the surroundings. The services in most of the churches are like those fifty years ago, except that, instead of the second sermon, there is now a Sunday school. The mid-week meeting is composed of a few old ladies, with an occasional old man sandwiched in, who say the same things, pray the same prayers, that they have been saying and praying for half a century. Sometimes the young people have an organization, but it is sure to be an exact copy of the old peoples' meeting. Yet this church has been a light and a life to the community for many years, and may contain the secret of the community's salvation. Behind this array of facts are still sadder ones. Below the intellectual and moral laziness of these districts is an old past, dragged along like a whirl of dead water. The city has cut away from its past. It has left the dead to bury the dead. Not so the country. In the country the custom of inbreeding is still dominant. Not in the inter-marrying of relatives, perhaps; yet, what is quite as bad, in the marrying into each other's families. No new blood comes to change the old current of life. The boys seek their wives at the house of the next-door neighbor, or possibly in the next school district; good romance, but bad eugenics. And the end is not yet. They have developed a kind of consciousness of inferiority. They feel inferior to the world. Individually they think of themselves as on a lower plane than the men and women of the city. The result is a lack of moral courage. The rural youth is bashful. He has not the courage to get away from his father and mother and seek a wife from a different environment. Sometimes this happens, but it is an accident; and the wife, if a woman of education and vision, is soon starved out, or, in the dogged persistence of dullness, falls a victim to environment and settles down to the common level. But the sin of the rural community is not what it has done, or what it is; it is what it has not done, what it is not. Time was when the men of these communities were the leading men in our economic and political life. The countryside was once the strategic point in our civilization. The farmer carried his produce to market and named his price for it. But to-day he is not even asked his price. He must take what the buyer will give. In those old days he had a voice in choosing his representative, his governor, his president. The old farmer had to be reckoned with then, but to-day he is of no account. He has yielded his place to the man from the city. He has allowed the city to select his brightest boys and girls and train them for itself. He has allowed the city to get his money. He has watched the city ride in palace cars, build homes of comfort and refinement, educate its children in attractive schoolrooms, add the luxury of fine libraries, establish churches of rich architecture, and man them with efficient talent. He has watched the city merchant move from the small shop to the great market, the manufacturer build new and magnificent mills, and the banker control millions of dollars weekly. He may have thought, once in a while, that these men have simply taken the place that once was his, and may not be able to give a satisfactory reason why he should not hold it still. He may have noticed that the great prizes have gone to the city, while he toils from sun-up to sun-down for his daily bread. He may now and then think of these things, but the fact probably is that he is satisfied with things as they are, has all he deserves, and cannot take the trouble to turn things about. He has never tried to rise to his own natural place in the movements of the world. Communities, like individuals, must be measured not by what they are, but by what they might be, what they ought to be. The rural district ought to be a power in the life of the country to-day. It ought to be conscious of the fact that it is essential to the life of the nation. But it will never come into its own, or rise to the demand of the day, by aping the city. It does not want the city life. It has no call for the city ideal. It cannot use the city plans. It must follow its own deep dreams, perfect its own plans in its own way. It must find itself. The best of its life is lost in measuring everything in terms of dollars and cents. It has been too ready to ask alms of the city, some library, school-building, hall, church, -and too unwilling to get things for itself. It may be true that the city, getting the country's money and its best energy, owes it, in return, some of its wealth. But neither the city, nor any other power outside, can redeem the rural community. The rural community must redeem itself. The deepest call to-day is for a rural consciousness; a sense of life in the fields and forests, a passion for the life of the country. Until this is had the community will not come up to its possibilities. Two conditions confront these communities: either, by continuing as now, they must sink into insignificance in the nation's life, or by stirring themselves, they may come forward and take a hand in the activities of the day. There are indications that the latter alternative will be chosen; but as yet there is no real awakening in the rural community itself. The city is waking up to this condition and call of the country town, but it receives little or no response from the countryside. The villages slumber on, indifferent to what they have been, or what they may be. Men of vision from the great centres, looking out upon these little hamlets scattered up and down the country, realize their native beauty, their rich possibilities, their strength of life, their unmeasured resources, and try to do something for them, but usually they are not well enough acquainted with the problem to accomplish results, or they offend the farmer with their patronage. Educators have taken up the problem, and have contributed an immense amount of information on the matter, but these, even, are too much on the outside to help. No solution of so great a problem can come from outside the rural life itself. Any amount of money poured into the country in the form of renovating abandoned farms, gifts of public libraries, churches, what not, can never save the country. No one is helped by conditions that impoverish him. That is equally true of communities. The country must find its own soul. It must think its own thoughts. It must renovate its own abandoned farms, build its own public libraries, churches, and all the rest. In a word, it must become responsible for its own life, or it is bound to lose that life utterly. Such, in the main, are the conditions. Where lies the remedy? Primarily in a |