PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 



371 



serve to link the country to the city and still further increase 

 the domination of the latter over the former. If rural free de- 

 livery 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 re- 

 garded 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 

 witli 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 coun- 

 try life satisfying and agreeable. 



This is a factor of great financial as well as social impor- 

 tance. 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 



