42 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



belt has practically eliminated the labor problem, so that even 

 the limited supply of farm hands is no serious handicap upon 

 the corn-growing industry. 



As to the problem of domestic service, there is practically none. 

 Hired girls are almost non-existent. Every farmer's wife ex- 

 pects to do her own work, and if in time of sickness or of special 

 stress of work she can induce some girl from the neighborhood 

 to come in and help her, she considers herself fortunate. 



Like other parts of the West, the corn belt was settled by 

 people from a great variety of sources, and has not been without 

 its share of tough communities; but the land was too valuable, 

 and there was too high a premiun on thrift and industry for 

 such communities long to remain. 



Everywhere in the corn belt, and indeed wherever farming 

 is prosperous, one meets with the interesting phenomenon of the 

 retired farmer. In general, he is a man considerably past mid- 

 dle age, who has by hard work' and careful management become 

 the owner of a fair-sized farm, with perhaps a moderate bank 

 account besides, and who has either sold or rented his farm and 

 moved to town to spend his declining years in rest. From the 

 number of such cases one might almost conclude that the average 

 farmer's idea of paradise was a country town where he could 

 live comfortably, supplying his daily needs without denying 

 himself rest or sleep, and where he would be free from the wear 

 and tear of continually guessing at the weather, caring for his 

 live-stock, battling with weeds and the thousand-and-one other 

 relentless enemies of the farmer. But when he reaches this 

 paradise, unless he has retired on account of old age, he is almost 

 invariably disappointed, if not demoralized. The life soon grows 

 monotonous. Having always been accustomed to an active out- 

 door life, he becomes restive and discontented. Sometimes he 

 takes up some other line of business goes into a store, starts a 

 hotel or a livery stable, or goes into the real estate business ; and 

 again he sometimes degenerates into an ordinary town loafer. 

 He frequently makes a poor urbanite, for his ideas of living were 

 developed under rural conditions. He is somewhat slow to ap- 

 preciate the value of good sewage, generally opposes levying 

 taxes for street improvements, and is almost invariably disliked 

 by the merchants because of his parsimonious way of buying 



