92 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
All of US in one way or another know something of the 
monotonous grind which makes up the life-long experience of 
by far the larger number of our fellow men. On the farm, in 
the shop, in the mine, day after day, one unceasing round of 
toil, into which the idea of pleasure or freshness never enters. 
How many thousands of our fellow men, tens of thousands of 
our women see nothing but the revolving steps of labor’s tread- 
mill, day in, day out, winter and summer, year after year, for 
the whole span of mortal life. This is especially so here, in 
these western states, where the highest ideal is industry, the 
highest accomplishment, speed. Our rural population is wear- 
ing itself out in an effort to wear out “ labor-saving machinery.” 
If you do not believe it take a journey across the country, any- 
where through Iowa, and see how our people are actually living. 
They know no law but labor; their only recreation is their toil. 
Now, it is needless to say how abnormal all this is. We are as 
a people entrapped in our machines, and are by them ground to 
powder. The effect of it is apparent already in the public health, 
and will be the m.ost startling factor in the tables studied by the 
man of science in the generations following. Not to paint too 
darkly the picture, attention may be called to the fact that rural 
suicides are not uncommon, and that the wives of farmers are 
a conspicuous element in the population of some of our public 
institutions. There must be something done to remedy all this, 
to preserve for our people their physical and mental health, 
and to this end, as alt experience shows, there is nothing so 
good as direct contact with nature, the contemplation of her 
processes, the enjoyment of her peaceful splendor. If in every 
county, or even in every township, there were public grounds 
to which our people might resort in numbers during all the 
summer season, a great step would be taken, as it seems to me, 
for the perpetuation, not to say restoration, of the public health. 
We are proud to call ourselves the children of “hardy pio- 
neers,” but much of the hardiness of those pioneers was due to 
the fact that they spent much of their time, women, children 
and all, out of doors. All the land was a vast park, in which 
that first generation roamed and reveled. They breathed the 
air of the forest, they drank the water of springs, they ate the 
fruit of the hillsides while plum thickets were their orchards, 
and all accounts go to show that hardier, healthier or happier 
people never lived. Such conditions can never come again, but 
we may yet, by public grounds for common enjoyment, realize 
somewhat of the old advantage. 
