38 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



churches, and places of amusement, tempts the mercurial young 

 man to stay on the farm. 



LIFE IN THE CORN BELT 1 



T. N. CARVER 



THE average Western farmer is as well informed upon the 

 questions of the day as the average business or professional man 

 of our Eastern cities, though he lacks acquaintance with many 

 things which some regard as essential to culture. He takes a 

 deep interest in politics, and he is better informed about what 

 goes on in our legislative halls than any other class. 



The corn belt is probably the most prosperous agricultural 

 region of any considerable size in the world, but success requires 

 great industry and a degree of knowledge that comes only from 

 experience. In the East, especially in New England, where 

 farming is not prosperous and the cities furnish better oppor- 

 tunities for men of capacity, it happens that the best men are 

 drawn from the country to the city, leaving, as a rule, only the 

 less competent to people the country districts. That is why 

 there has been so much discussion during the last year or two 

 over the degeneracy of the farming regions. But in the corn 

 belt the conditions are quite reversed ; the best opportunties are 

 furnished by the farms, and one of the most striking facts that 

 one observes on a tour of this kind is the manifest superiority of 

 the average farmer, physically, intellectually, and morally, to 

 the average dweller in the towns of that region. With the 

 exception of the retired farmers, who make up a fair proportion 

 of the population of the country towns and small cities of the 

 West, the bulk of the population seems to be made up of people 

 who are not fit to make good farmers. 



Even some of the so-called retired farmers have retired, not 

 because they have accumulated a competence, but because they 

 were unable to make farming pay or because they have found 

 work too hard. They have moved to town, where their wives 

 keep boarders while they loaf around the stores. For this 



i Adapted from World's Work, 7: 4232-9, Dec., 1903. 



