LURE OF THE CITY 



Hope of the Irrigated West as an Offset 



BY 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 



Chaplain of the United States Senate. 



(Copyrighted 1906 by the Associated Sunday Magazine). 



T HIS convenient phrase, "The Rush 

 * to the Cities," is used more or less 

 carelessly to describe one of the mis- 

 fortunes of the last century which no 

 one quite understands. 



People who have to deal with it in 

 the larger cities find themselves pow- 

 erless to arrest it. In the end they 

 come round to see that the causes of it 

 are not of their making and that they 

 have as much as they can do in healing 

 the sick, in clothing the naked, and in 

 providing homes for the homeless who 

 are the results of the congestion of 

 cities. As an academic phrase it means, 

 alas ! a question of no consequence to 

 anybody. It is discussed more or less, 

 but often among the writers on what is 

 called sociology where one does not 

 get much comfort. 



Just at this moment one or two 

 changes are taking place which seem 

 to give some little help in the matter. 

 A few years before his death the late 

 Lord Salisbury expressed his hope that 

 the transfer of power to considerable 

 distances by electric wires might create 

 a new civilization, or a new form of 

 civilized life, by enlarging very much 

 the number of small factory towns and 

 diminishing in the same proportion the 

 number of crowded "millionaire" 

 towns of to-day. I do not think that 

 this result has as yet followed ; still it 

 is to be looked for among the possi- 

 bilities of the near future. 



More effective has been the curious 

 change in social order brought about 

 by the trolley. The operative in the 

 factory town is now able to live two, 

 three or four miles from the engine 

 which is his partner in his daily work. 

 As one passes through the large man- 



ufacturing towns of New York, of 

 New Jersey and all New England, he 

 sees already an increased number of 

 comfortable dwelling-houses which are 

 in what you might call the suburbs of 

 factory towns. These give homes to 

 the working people in factories where 

 they can still see God's sky and feel. 

 His sunshine homes with cultivated 

 land by each of them for gardening, 

 or if you please, for feeding a pig, a 

 goat, a cow or a horse. This emanci- 

 pation such working people gain from 

 the trolley. 



Some years ago in walking in New 

 Hampshire I stopped to make a call 

 on an old woman, an old friend of 

 mine, in a comfortable house which 

 her husband had built a dozen years 

 before in the wilderness. I found to 

 my regret that he had died the winter 

 before. His widow was carrying on 

 the place with her own hands and with 

 no help besides but that of the good 

 God. She told me she could do every- 

 thing but plow, and that in the spring 

 she had to hire a plowman. She told 

 me that her husband had loaded his 

 gun a little before he died for an at- 

 tack on the hawks which troubled their 

 hen-yard, but he had had no chance 

 to fire off the gun and the hawks had 

 become more audacious. Only the day 

 before we talked together a hawk had 

 entered her kitchen while she was at 

 work and had seized a chicken which 

 had taken refuge there. Would I not 

 be good enough to go into the garden 

 and see if T could not arrest his ca- 

 reer ? 



This gave me a good text to speak 

 about, and I suggested to her that a 

 life so lonely as hers had great incon- 



