ATTRACTIVENESS OF FARM LIFE 25 



increase of rural population will be a better organization 

 of agricultural work throughout the country, a better 

 adaptation of crops to soils, an increased efficiency, and a 

 higher order of manhood and womanhood on the farm. 1 



It is true, to be sure, that many individual boys have 

 left the farm for the city when it would have been better 

 for them and for the nation if they had stayed. Some 

 mistakes of this kind will always be made both in country 

 and city. Perhaps they have been particularly common 

 in the country because farm life has often been less attrac- 

 tive than it ought to have been, and far less attractive 

 than it is coming to be under 'our modern conditions. 



14. Natural Attractiveness of Farm Life: Influence on 

 Character. Says Washington Irving : " In rural occupa- 

 tion there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man 

 forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty ; it 

 leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated 

 upon by the purest and most elevating of external influ- 

 ences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he 

 cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement therefore finds 

 nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders 

 in rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the 

 lower orders of cities." 



Farming is one of the freest and most independent of 

 callings. The farmer is more or less detached from those 

 influences of society and politics that bend men against 

 their wishes and beliefs. He is the producer of the first 

 necessities of life ; and a consciousness of this tends to 

 give him a robust character. 



111 Better let the lands be 'abandoned'; and stay 'abandoned'; better 

 let the forest grow anew and untouched, where the fox may dig his hole 

 unscared and the traveler lose his way in the wilderness, than that New 

 England thought, New England culture, and New England statesmanship be 

 turned over to a peasant class." BREWER, The Farm and Farmer, the 

 Basis of National Strength. 



