Missouri Country Life Conference. 237 



Another reason why boys and girls are leaving the farm! 

 We are building good roads and we must have more good roads 

 in this State. But where, other than the church houses, out in 

 the open country can as many people be seated comfortably as 

 are seated here comfortably today, to hear good lectures, good 

 music and good entertainment; lectures which the men and 

 women from your normal school in your district or from any 

 department of your University would be only too glad to give 

 if you would furnish them the meeting place and the audience. 

 Again there are farm homes in Missouri that do not bear very 

 many attractions for the good, healthy Missouri boy and girl. 

 You have seen them. The chief reason, however, for the coun- 

 try boy and country girl leaving the farm is that they are edu- 

 cated away. We have in the curriculum of our country school 

 things that admit them to city high schools, things that per- 

 tain to everything other than the things with which they will 

 come in contact on the farm. Consequently, all the result of 

 this and the other things that I have mentioned is that they 

 become dissatisfied and leave. I have told you where they go — 

 to the same towns and the same cities to which their classmates 

 have gone — but not to go to school. Where do they go? Into 

 the factories and workshops to learn the trades, in the stores as 

 clerks, in the offices as office boys and office girls. Perhaps 

 some of the boys go to town to push an automobile for some- 

 body at a dollar and a half a day and spend the money before 

 sunup, or perhaps to become a street car conductor. 



What do these boys and girls take with them when they 

 leave the home in the country and go to the city? In ninety- 

 nine cases out of a hundred they take the joy of a mother's 

 heart, strong muscles, rosy cheeks and clear eyes, but ere long 

 they have worked in the hurry and the hum and the hustle of 

 the city, in the places that I have mentioned; that sort of life 

 soon robs their muscles of their strength, plucks the roses from 

 their cheeks and drives from their eyes the innocent clearness 

 which they once possessed. Many country boys and country 

 girls have left good homes with fathers and mothers and gone 

 to the city to work from early morning to late at night for a 

 pitiful sum compared to what they might have received had they 

 stayed at home on the farm and worked just half as hard. 



Enough, then, for the fifteen per cent who go away to 

 school and for the class of eighty-five per cent who become dis- 

 satisfied and leave. 



