CHAPTER II 

 THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 



THE actual task of gathering up our be- 

 longings and starting "back to the land" is so 

 much more of an undertaking than the mere 

 talking about it, that the so-called movement 

 has never gone much beyond breakfast-table 

 conversation. We began talking about it a 

 decade or two ago when we were still pastoral 

 enough as a nation to count two-thirds of the 

 population as rural. To-day nearly one-half 

 of our ninety-two millions elect to live in cities, 

 places remote from the food surplus actually 

 forty-six per cent, in the last census. So the 

 pendulum has swung in the other direction and 

 is still swinging. 



Occasionally, however, an individual does 

 break away, with a vague idea of following in 

 the foot-steps of his grandfather or maybe his 

 father who went "west" with a yoke of oxen 

 and an iron kettle. Such a one, for instance, 



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