166 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



April 



veniences. I asked her why she would 

 not let her friends sell this comfortable 

 little farm which she and her husband 

 had created which would have brought, 

 I suppose, a thousand dollars. I said : 

 "Take your money and go back to 

 England, to your brothers and sisters 

 and your old home." 



She replied with a fine frenzy of 

 rage which would have sounded well 

 in a Greek tragedy: "I go back there? 

 Not I ! I go back to their bloody 

 Manchester where they have shut out 

 God's light by their bloody chimbleys ? 

 Not I !" Absolute solitude, without 

 a neighbor within two or three miles, 

 was better than the "bloody chimbleys" 

 of this "bloody Manchester." The wo- 

 man had been glad of the chance to 

 curse the home in which she was born. 



That is a side of the picture which 

 one does not see as he climbs to the 

 fifteenth story of a skyscraper in New 

 York to attend to two or three scarlet- 

 fever children who are in bed there. 

 If you ask the mother of those children 

 why she and her husband came to New 

 York, they will find it hard to tell you. 

 If you ask her whether she would like 

 to take up the Manchester woman's 

 empty house in New Hampshire, she 

 will not know what you mean. You 

 make your hurried visit and go across 

 the street to the fourteenth story of 

 another skyscraper there, and when 

 your day is over you are in no condi- 

 tion to work out the question of the 

 congestion of cities or the machinery 

 which will arrest it. 



It is easy to make faces as we meet 

 the young countryman with his wife 

 when they come from Podunk to New 

 York and to ask them what they have 

 come for; but it is foolish to suppose 

 that the congestion of cities results 

 from their inexperience or ignorance. 

 There are some important people who 

 are working with them in this matter 

 of crowding the towns. 



First of all, there is the large real 



estate interest in every city. It needs 



no organization ; it is an organization 



already. The man whose grandmoth- 



. er owned an orchard of old apple-trees 



in the heart of Boston or New York is 

 glad that his grandmother owned that 

 orchard. He is glad that he owns the 

 square feet or square inches of that 

 orchard to-day. He knows as well as 

 I know that those square inches are 

 worth a great deal more in money than 

 they were worth a hundred years ago. 

 Now that man does not mean to di- 

 minish the current of population which 

 falls into Boston or New York. He 

 means to keep up the price of real 

 estate in those cities if he can. And 

 you address him a civil note, asking 

 him if he will not attend a meeting of 

 gentlemen who wish to promote emi- 

 gration to Idaho it is almost certain 

 that that man will have another en- 

 gagement. 



Again, it is to be observed that the 

 great cities have of necessity their own 

 spokesmen shall one say their own 

 drummers ? at work for them even 

 unconsciously. Every issue of any 

 newspaper of the week-day or a Sun- 

 day has its announcements of the at- 

 tractions of a -great city. The anima- 

 tion of the streets, the entertainments 

 at the theater or the concerts, the ad- 

 dresses made at public meetings, all 

 are displayed, and certainly they pre- 

 sent wonderful attraction for people 

 whose hours pass slowly. I was talk- 

 ing once to an accomplished young 

 woman who is now living in the city 

 and will read these lines, and I con- 

 gratulated her that with the end of that 

 week of the college lectures she was 

 attending she would be able to go to 

 her home in North Brownwich some- 

 what earlier than she had expected. 



"I go to North Brownwich?" said 

 she. "Not I ! I shall stay in New 

 York till summer, if anyone will pay 

 me five dollars a week with which I 

 can pay my board." And when I ex- 

 pressed my surprise that she chose 

 exile from home for three months she 

 said : "If you had ever lived in North 

 Brownwich for three months you 

 would understand." 



Now the average reader who is liv- 

 ing in North Brownwich or New 

 Padua or South Podunk does know 

 that home life has many stupid sides. 



