252 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



One of the crying evils of modern country life is the rapid re- 

 moval from general use of all streams, stream banks, lakes, lake 

 shores, forests and hills. Within the memory of all elderly peo- 

 ple such sources of recreation were open freely to the world. 

 Every boy could hunt, swim and fish where he liked ; and all peo- 

 ple, old and young, held their picnics on the river banks or went 

 boating on the lakes as they pleased. All this property is now 

 being rapidly taken up by private owners and common people 

 stringently excluded. The only way to preserve any of these 

 ancient and highly valuable rights to future generations is to 

 have them taken very soon under public control. All these 

 ponds, lakes, streams, hills, forests, or at least the best of them, 

 ought to be free for the public use forever; and it is the most 

 immediate and important work of rural civic art to secure these 

 reservations. Of course after the public has secured title to such 

 properties, their various beauties and utilities remain to be de- 

 veloped. Such development will be the natural field before long 

 of rural art. 



Aside from these park reservations to which the public should 

 hold a legal title there is a much larger sum total of beautiful 

 rural scenery which the public does not need to own, but which 

 everybody can enjoy. This scenery does not need to be neglected 

 simply because it is owned by private individuals and exploited 

 as farms or forests. Every wise community will appreciate its 

 resources of beautiful landscape and will make the most of them. 



The final test of rural art must be a love of rural beauty. If 

 people will not see the beauty of the country, especially those 

 people who live in it, it is useless to talk to them of art in any 

 other form. There are many ways in which this appreciation 

 of the country beautiful may be developed. It may even be 

 taught in the schools. It is quite as easy to convince one of the 

 beauty of native trees or of the neighborly hills or the local lake 

 as of the Sistine Madonna, or the Hermes of Praxiteles, which 

 most of us never saw. Genuine, thoroughly organized campaigns 

 for the appreciation of local scenery would do more for many 

 communities than organized efforts to produce more corn. 



