16 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



and manners and from the absence of class distinc- 

 tions based on differences in wealth. The inland villages 

 were by no means entirely lacking the opportunities for helpful 

 and stimulating social t intercourse ; but it was from the home 

 rather than from the community life that the principal virtues 

 of the agricultural population, of which their descendants have 

 been so justly proud, were chiefly derived. 



WHAT AWAITS RURAL NEW ENGLAND 1 



THOMAS NIXON CARVER 



MY most salient impression was that agriculture as an inde- 

 pendent industry able in itself to maintain a community does 

 not exist in the hilly parts of New England. Outside of such 

 exceptionally fertile sections as the Connecticut Valley, the 

 farmers engage in such occupations as lumbering and keeping 

 summer-boarders, often carrying on farming merely to supply 

 their own tables with vegetables and their horses and cows with 

 forage. I found few farmers who could secure sufficient revenue 

 even from sales of hay and milk, the most profitable of New Eng- 

 land farm products. 



These facts, however, do not indicate a decline in agriculture. 

 Farming never was a self-sufficing industry in New England. 

 In the days of so-called prosperity domestic manufactures were 

 carried on in farm-houses. The transfer of manufacturing from 

 the farms to the towns accounts as much for the decline of rural 

 prosperity as anything else the rise of agriculture in the West, 

 for example. Moreover, the development of farming, dairying, 

 and market gardening near the cities offsets the decline in the 

 remote districts. 



Now, domestic manufactures can never be revived in New 

 England, though an attempt is being made to revive them at 

 Deerfield, Mass. Summer boarders cannot support the whole 

 country, nor can lumbering. But, why should not northern 

 New England become a great stock-raising country? The land 

 has become so cheap, and the grazing lands of the far West have 



i Adapted from World's Work, 9; 5748-52, Jan., 1905. 



