NOTES AND REVIEWS 
RETURNING TO THE COUNTRY. 
\\ 7 ”HAT appears to be a serious determin- 
* * ation to bring about a reflex move¬ 
ment from urban to rural life, is attracting 
public attention throughout the Eastern and 
Middle states, and in the more thickly settled 
regions west of the Appalachian range. 
This is manifesting itself in several ways. 
Immigration societies are devoting their 
energies to the persuasion of their wards not 
to stop in the large cities, hut to pass on at 
once to the country and there enter upon 
agricultural pursuits for their financial and 
moral gain. “Charities” in recent issues 
has shown the wisdom of this step, con¬ 
clusively. Quite as earnest an effort is 
also being made by American economic 
writers to induce those already settled in the 
city to live in the country, even though they 
must work in town; and the trolley makes 
this possible. The chief obstacle to be over¬ 
come, however, is not the physical possibility 
of the proposition, but the creation of a wil¬ 
lingness on the part of people of limited 
means to try the experiment. 
Heretofore it has been accepted as an 
economic axiom that the laborer and mechanic 
must live adjacent to their daily tasks, and 
the whole tenement house difficulty has been 
also accepted as a necessary consequence. 
It is difficult to question the moral and phy¬ 
sical advantages of a rural life for the city 
worker and his family once the possibility 
is conceded, and it is to bring about this con¬ 
cession that Mr. Powell has written his vigor¬ 
ous demonstration.* He points out that 
three factors have made this possible. These 
are: the trolleys, already referred to; the 
rural telephone, and rural free delivery, con¬ 
cerning which the Post Office Department 
has promised that in a very few years every 
square mile of our country shall be covered 
by their service. 
The entire subject of a self-supporting 
rural home is considered in detail, and a 
very reasonable argument is made by the 
*The Country Home. By E. P. Powell. New York; 
McClure, Phillips & Co. MCMIV. 383 pp. Illustrated. 
author for its entirely practicable application. 
The result is well summed up in the follow¬ 
ing quotation (p. 371): 
“A lawyer and his wife have become my 
neighbors. She is the refined daughter of a 
notable minister, all of whose youth had been 
spent in the city. I asked her if she would 
be willing to go back to her former method 
of life. ‘Not on any account whatever! 
Why, just think of it! Not one dollar for 
rent! We own our own house—built it our¬ 
selves—put our own notions into it. We 
are no longer eating and sleeping in other 
folks’ houses. Then we have our own eggs, 
chickens, and fruit. Why, down in that 
cellar are twenty-four barrels of our own 
apples—Northern Spys, Greenings, Gilli- 
flowers, Spitzenburgs. And there are splen¬ 
did fresh vegetables all summer long— peas, 
potatoes, and beans and cabbages, and 
bushels of them for winter. Dear me! the 
idea of ever again going around the corner 
to buy a half-peck of peas! Miserable, 
half-dried things! But we didn’t know any 
better then; we do now. Then there are 
little joe and Ned! It would be just positive 
cruelty to shut them up in city life—houses 
and streets! But here they go it all the day 
long, playing, helping, romping, happy and 
healthy, and out of bad influences. See 
there; just look in there!’ I saw a snug 
little room, dark but for a narrow window. 
‘Do you shut them in there when they are 
bad?’ I said. ‘What a question! No, sir 
just look again!’ Sure enough; the wall 
on one side held shelves literally full of tum¬ 
blers of jellies and jars of preserved fruits. 
‘All my own putting up, out of our own gar¬ 
den! Do you hear that? Nobody else’s 
stuff- except the pineapple and orange.’ 
The opposite shelves were filled with Hubbard 
squashes and golden pumpkins. At one end 
hung bunches of herbs. It was clear that 
my friend was in love with the country. ‘Oh, 
yes,’ she said, ‘the snow and cold weather 
can’t be kept out of the country, nor out of 
the city, either; but a country house can be 
made so comfortable that we rather enjoy a 
storm. 
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