are not allowed, we have not yet become adjusted to the new situation, especially in the rural districts; and there is a strong tendency toward the formation of groups on the basis of likes and dislikes, and for the social life to run within these groups. This is clearly a long step in advance of the caste system, or of the stratification of society according to aristocratic principles, in that the grouping is based upon something besides the accident of birth; but it falls short of a thoroughly democratic ideal, according to which social life ought to run freely without regard to the boundaries of class, creed, or fraternal order. This ideal, however, has not yet been realized, for those countries and communities where hereditary aristocracy is least in evidence are the places where secret societies and fraternal orders are most highly developed and most influential. Doubtless they furnish a protection against the disagreeable obtrusiveness of the mob element in our aggressive democracy; but there is danger that their very exclusiveness should breed a spirit of snobbishness.

Shall Rural People Set Their Own Standards, or Shall They Imitate City People?

But all the organizations and agencies which contribute to the social life of rural communities will fall short of their highest possibilities unless they make rural life socially selfsupporting, and independent of the standards and fashions of the city; unless, in short, they give to the social life of the country a character and dignity of its own, instead of being a bad copy of city life. So long as country life lacks this distinctive character and dignity, so long as country people look to the cities for their standards of dress, their social habits, and their ideals of propriety, so long will rural social life remain unsatisfactory. The domination of the city over the country is, in last analysis, a mental or spiritual domination. It will end when country people are able to set their own standards, when they stop trying to be city people, or

to be like city people. When they develop a reasonable pride in the fact that they are country people, and in their country dress, country habits, country customs; and when this pride is justified by the inherent sanity and simple, unostentatious dignity of their lives, then we shall have a rural civilization worthy of the name. Unless this result is achieved, many of the so-called rural improvements will merely serve to link the country to the city and still further increase the domination of the latter over the former. If rural free delivery does no more than to bring to the farmer the daily paper from the city, with its garish advertisements and its neurotic sensationalism, and if this should develop among country people a desire for those forms of excitement which city people seem to like and to be willing to pay for, the result will be not to diminish but to increase the lure of the city. When the quiet and serenity of country life are referred to in such terms as lonesomeness and monotony, and the rural free delivery is regarded merely as a means of relieving that lonesomeness and monotony, the symptoms are not favorable for the development of a wholesome rural life. But if rural free delivery, like the rural telephone, is a means of linking one country neighborhood with another, of exchanging ideas among country people as well as between city and country, if it results in the development of an esprit de corps among country people, and enables them to develop a social life of their own, all these things will help in the building of a worthy rural civilization, and in making country life satisfying and agreeable.

This is a factor of great financial as well as social importance. When the city contains everything which country people really want, then the city will be the place where country people will go to spend their money. If a farmer becomes prosperous enough to retire from work, he will go to town to live; he will buy a lot and build a house in the town and spend his time and his money there. But if the country contains the things which country people want, then the country is

the place where they will go to spend their money. If the farmers who wish to retire from active work would spend in the country, on their own farms, for example, the money which would be necessary to buy and maintain residences in the towns and cities, it would not take very long to make the country a most attractive place of residence. Schools, churches, library facilities, plumbing, and steam heat can all be had in the country as well as in the city. But if people cultivate a liking for the noises, the electric displays, the large billboards, and other similar delectations of the cities, the country can furnish few attractions of this kind to compete with the city. Country people will continue to move cityward, seeking a chance to spend their money for the things of their choice.

It may be supposed that if the country should furnish the things which city people really want and are willing to pay for, it would contribute to the financial prosperity of the country; but this conclusion must not be too hastily reached. It must not be imagined that a mere willingness on the part of certain townspeople to spend a part of their time and money in the country is in itself a mark of genuine appreciation of country life, or that it tends to make real farmers, who have to make their living at farming, more appreciative of rural enjoyments. It is one thing to go to the country once in a while to disburden one's self of an accumulation of surplus cash, and then return to the city to talk about it; it is quite another thing to appreciate the quiet and homely enjoyments which lie within the reach of the plain farmer, — enjoyments which do not require even an automobile as an accessory. Against the idea that the rural-life problem is to be solved by a few wealthy capitalists building themselves palatial residences in the country and spending a part of their surplus time there, Sir Horace Plunkett uses the following weighty words:

I am not, so they tell me, up to date in my information; there is a marked reversion of feeling upon the town versus the country question; the tide of the rural exodus has really turned, as I might have observed without going far afield. At many a Long Island home I might see on Sunday, weather permitting, the horny-handed son of week-day toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls. These supply a select circle in New York with butter and eggs, at a price which leaves nothing to be desired, — unless it be some information as to cost of production. Full justice is done to the new country life when the Farmers' Club of New York fulfills its chief function, — the annual dinner at Delmonico's. Then agriculture is extolled in fine Virgilian style, the Hudson villa and the Newport cottage being permitted to divide the honors of the rural revival with the Long Island home. But to my bucolic intelligence it would seem that against the “back-tothe-land" movement of Saturday afternoon the captious critic might set the rural exodus of Monday morning.1

A few magnificent villas, where wealthy townsmen spend the money which they acquire in town, will not help to solve the problem of country life for those who have to make their living from the soil, except where wealth is combined with taste, tact, and sympathy. If these qualities are absent, the display of urban magnificence in the country tends rather to increase the discontent of the young men and women of the neighborhood. It helps to create the impression that the only satisfactory way to live in the country is to go to town and make a fortune, and then come back to the country to spend it. There were many magnificent villas owned by Roman magnates in Italy, even in the very worst period of rural decline under the Roman Empire. The dominance of the city was so complete that the country was never looked upon as a place in which to live unless one had a fortune to spend there. Aside from its function of furnishing pleasing sites for villas, the country was regarded merely as a place where the city could get supplies of food. People really lived in town. In fact, this dominance of the town over the country was one of the characteristics of ancient civilization, though

1 The Rural Life Problem in the United States (New York, 1910), p. 152.

that dominance was more complete at certain times than at others.

On this point the following passages are significant:

Rome was, in its origin, only a municipality, a corporation. The government of Rome was merely the aggregate of the institutions which were suited to a population confined within the walls of a city; these were municipal institutions, — that is their distinguishing character. This was not the case with Rome only. If we turn our attention to Italy at this period, we find around Rome nothing but towns. That which was then called a people was simply a confederation of towns. The Latin people was a confederation of towns. The Etruscans, the Samnites, the Sabines, the people of Græcia Magna, may all be described in the same

terms.

There was at this time no country, that is to say, the country was wholly unlike that which at present exists; it was cultivated, as was necessary, but it was uninhabited. The proprietors of lands were the inhabitants of the towns. They went forth to superintend their country properties, and often took with them a certain number of slaves; but that which we at present call the country, that thin population sometimes in isolated habitations, sometimes in villages which everywhere covers the soil, was a fact almost unknown in ancient Italy.

When Rome extended herself, what did she do? Follow history, and you will see that she conquered or founded towns; it was against towns that she fought, with towns that she contracted alliances; it was also into towns that she sent colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome is the history of the conquest and foundation of a great number of towns.

In Gaul, in Spain, you meet with nothing but towns. At a distance from the towns the territory is covered with marshes and forests. Examine the character of the Roman monuments, of the Roman roads. You have great roads, which reach from one city to another; the multiplicity of the minor roads, which now cross the country in all directions, was then unknown; you have nothing resembling that countless number of villages, country seats, and churches, which have been scattered over the country since the Middle Ages. Rome has left us nothing but immense monuments, stamped with the municipal character, and destined for a numerous population collected upon one spot. Under whatever point of view you consider the Roman world, you will find this almost exclusive preponderance of towns and the social nonexistence of the country.1

1 Guizot, F., The History of Civilization (London, 1856), Vol. I, pp 27-29.