emergency, for laborers to gather wheat.1

The farmers were at

their wits' ends to save their crops. It was said that the city was full of the unemployed who were looking everywhere for jobs. He found them, as he says, "seated on the park benches in all sections of the city and overflowing to the curb stones. Work, it seemed, could not be found. Some of the men were on the verge of starvation, and the charitable organizations of the city were taxed to their utmost capacity to provide for them." It looked as if his task would be an easy one and he could

He picked out his men

take back as many men as he wished. and told them he wanted their help. They were eager for the chance and said they could do anything. He spoke of the service he had in mind in the country and on the farms, when instantly their faces fell and they were as glum as they had been before. Their answer was: "We don't want to go to the country, boss. We don't want to live on a farm. There's nothin' for us there, no life, no entertainment, no lights, nothin' but monotony and work. We'd rather stay in the city and starve than go to the country an' have nothin' to do but work. No, sir, we stay right here." And stay they did. He couldn't get one of them to go with him, and the farmers had to harvest their wheat as best they could while the city held in its grasp, unemployed, enough men to garner all the crops of the

state.

We cannot suppose that Minneapolis was any worse than other cities in this particular. It is likely that a proposal of this sort would have been received by the unemployed in any one of a thousand American cities in much the same way. And that is the worst of it, for it means an essentially wrong attitude of mind in multitudes of people. Willingness to lie idle rather than to undertake anything they do not quite like, to hang on charity rather than to go where they are wanted and can be of use, with callous incapacity for hearing any call of duty or feeling 1 "What I am Trying to Do." By Adoph O. Eberhart. The World's Work, April, 1913, p. 671.

any thrill of interest at a summons for help in an hour of somebody's crying necessity. That is the kind of men that our cities make, or too many such.

People flock to the cities for the advantages there offered, and find disadvantages. Parents sell their wholesome country homes because of their children, and go where there are grand churches, superior schools, and attractive libraries, to find themselves in close proximity to drinking saloons, dance halls, gambling dens, and indescribable allurements to vice. Is that better for their boys and girls, or is the new atmosphere heavy with influences that are a peril? There are fifty churches in a city and a thousand saloons. The churches are open one day and two or three evenings in each week. The saloons are open every week-day all day long and far into the night. Boys and young men are not attracted to the churches. The saloons hold out all sorts of attractions to beguile them within their doors. What wonder that so many city boys grow up with disordered appetites and depraved tastes! A gentleman was recently heard to say, "As I go along the street the sight of cigars in the store windows makes me want to smoke and I step in and buy when otherwise I should not think of it." This gentleman is an eminent scholar, a principal of a boys' school, an advocate of reforms, and influential in church and society. If the temptation of the store windows was too much for him, can we expect his pupils to be proof against it?

Do we understand the extent to which these artificial appetites are being cultivated and what this means? With a lessening of the food supply there comes a more constant resort to stimulants and narcotics. The hungry go for solace to drink and tobacco, sometimes to more powerful drugs. We can easily imagine that those loungers whom Governor Eberhart saw in the parks of Minneapolis were, most of them, habituated to these indulgences. But these practices grow in prevalence among all classes of people. They are not so common in the country, but are most rife in all our centers of population. And

abundant provision is made for them. The prices of flour and meat may advance, but somehow the cost of whiskey and tobacco is kept within the reach of even the very poor. Cigarettes to-day do not cost more than half what they did ten years ago, and three or four times as many of them are used.1

Some products of the farm have not decreased during this decade. Barley, which goes largely to breweries and distilleries, was grown on 3,228,000 more acres in 1910 than in 1900, the product was greater by 53,709,000 bushels, and the valuation by $50,826,000. Tobacco was grown on 193,451 acres more, its product was greater by 187,652,000 products, and its valuation by $47,315,000. We find too that while exports of breadstuffs and meats have declined, it has not been so with tobacco; on the contrary, the export of leaf tobacco increased within the ten years including 1912 some 79,000,000 pounds.

Our Internal Revenue receipts offer a measure of the amount of these products. The taxes derived from distilled and malt liquors and from tobacco, as reported by the United States Commissioner, in 1912 amounted to $290,250,000. This was considerably more than the entire congressional appropriations for the army and navy; and in sixteen months these taxes pour into the treasury more than the estimated cost of the Panama Canal. These taxes have nearly doubled within twenty years, indicating how rapidly these habits of cultivating and indulging artificial appetites have been spreading throughout our country.

In a highly organized community there is a possibility that children will grow up to be like the parts of a machine, fitting snugly into their little places and moving there with hardly a thought of what their life means; making of custom a slavery; bowing in craven fealty to a boss, to a business, a sect, an order,

1 The number of cigarettes on which revenue tax was paid for the year ending June 30, 1906, was 3,793,359,903; for the half-year ending December 31, 1912, it was 7,121,012,610, equivalent to over fourteen billion a year. This is the increase in seven years.

a party, any sort of fashionable convention, with never a sentiment of devotion to any burning truth or any grand cause, and with scarcely any recognition of those responsibilities which give to life its dignity and splendor. Many great human qualities come to their best in a life of comparative isolation. A big tree, an oak or elm, standing out in an open field, has a toughness of fiber, a spread of boughs, and roundness of shape that are never seen in a tree that stands in the woods. So people get individuality by being much alone. They become self-reliant by relying on themselves. They gain clear opinions by thinking things over, and thinking them out to their necessary conclusions. They acquire inflexibility of purpose by facing obstacles and conquering them. The pioneers of our country and the fathers of the republic were such men. The projectors of great undertakings carried through triumphantly have acquired their power in this way. The country is the natural nursery of such qualities. People are wanted on the farms to raise corn and grow stock for the markets; but they are wanted there far more for the training of manhood and womanhood in moral worth, in religious sensibility, in all the traits of a strong, upright personality. In the future as never heretofore, our cities, with their multiplying wealth and lavish luxury, are likely to need the country for that steady renewal of their better life which shall keep them from relaxing into sensuality and sinking into decay.

A HOPEFUL VIEW OF THE URBAN PROBLEM1

MARK JEFFERSON

ONE has heard so much of late years about the exodus from the country, in the United States, that it is time some one pointed out that no such exodus has taken place. Individuals leave some country places for the city or for other country places, but generally speaking the country is gaining inhabitants at a fairly rapid rate. These are not figures of speech, but rather figures from the Census. The Census defines country places now as all those with less than 2500 people in a single settlement, and states that there were in 1910 over four million more people in them than in 1900. If one cares to look further back, in the last thirty years the country people have increased by more than fourteen millions. As to rate of increase, our country dwellers have increased in the last decade by eleven per cent. The whole German Empire, cities and all, has only increased by thirteen. The American exodus from the country is one of the three great myths of the nineteenth century!

There are counties in which country people are diminishing. There are even ten states out of our forty-eight which show losses of country people. These are Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Their losses in the decade were 469,702. But the gains of the other thirty-eight states were so great that the whole country had 4,963,959 more country people in 1910 than in 1900. These figures are taken from a recent bulletin of the Thirteenth Census entitled "Population

1 Copyright. Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly by permission of the publishers.