City and Country Phases 61 



The social questions. 



Country affairs must be redirected. The 

 problem is chiefly social. Good farmers are 

 making the farms pay. The financial part of 

 the business is improving. The community 

 feeling, however, seems to be dormant, if, in 

 fact, not actually perishing in many places. 



We need to give as much attention to the 

 social welfare of the rural country as to simi- 

 lar questions of urban regions. Our studies 

 of social questions have been confined very 

 largely to congested populations, but these 

 questions are just as many and just as import- 

 ant in communities of scattered homes as in 

 cities and towns. Even the question of con- 

 gestion of population is not a city problem 

 alone. Part of the city population comes from 

 the country and this movement may distress 

 the country from under- populating it at the 

 same time that it distresses the city from over- 

 populating it. But even if city congestion 

 were to come wholly from the city itself, it 

 nevertheless would still affect the country, not 

 only because some of the surplus might find 



