16 
HO USE & GARDEN 
I 
N 1492 Columbus discov¬ 
ered America. About 400 
years later Americans dis¬ 
covered the country. It came about somewhat in this fashion: 
Groups of idealistic young men, many of them still sporting 
their senior honors, began to bum with a great zeal for social up¬ 
lift. They saw the crowded cities, and wept. They saw the shoddy 
output of American factories and American factory life, and set 
themselves to right matters. The road to salvation, they pointed 
out, led back to the land. Having found that road, they them¬ 
selves walked upon it, as an example to the nation. In various 
sections of the country sprang up communities, many of them co¬ 
operative and communistic, devoted to reclamation of farm lands, 
the revival of handicraft and the intensive simple life. 
The papers were full of it at the time. Likewise was the market 
flooded with all manner of handmade articles—rag rugs, bayberry 
dips, Colonial chairs and pottery. . . . Then, somehow, the 
movement petered out. 
BACK BY THE GASOLINE TRAIL 
I 
T HE town of M-in the Connecticut Valley was the center 
of just such a community. Now M- is no different 
from a dozen other New England villages. It consists of one 
main street and a sprouting of muddy side lanes. On the com¬ 
mon stand the two churches, the postofflce, the general store, the 
hotel and the town hall. The houses are all painted white with 
green shutters. The inhabitants are either very old or very young, 
for the youths seek the city as soon as they reach the earning age. 
The only organization, apart from the Dorcas Circle and the 
Grange, are a Thief Detecting Society, with a history as ancient 
and honorable as the Ancient and Honorable Artillery of Boston 
—and as useless; and a safe and sane Shakespeare Club which 
meets once a month to read aloud from a Bowlderized edition, the 
men of the class re-reading the passages out of an unexpurgated 
copy the next morning in the back room of Bart Simm’s general 
store. It goes without saying that life 
M- is truly rural—to the nth 
in 
degree of x. 
To this town came a band of zealous 
young men. They bore the torch of 
the great movement. And they were 
sincere, do not be mistaken, and hard¬ 
working and self-sacrificing. Land was 
bought, a co-operative mill erected and 
the community started in on its hand¬ 
made life. The natives viewed these 
newcomers with suspicion, but when re¬ 
porters began traveling all the way 
from the city to write up the movement, 
they were won over. M-, which 
had not been on the map since the In¬ 
dians held a massacring festival there 
several generations back, blossomed in 
this effulgence of newspaper publicity. 
Moreover, the movement showed prog¬ 
ress; newcomers joined the band; the 
natives lent their aid. It looked as 
though the world was going to be 
saved. America stood a good chance 
of having her cities depopulated and 
her factory problems solved. 
To-day the movement is rarely men¬ 
tioned in M-. The natives dis¬ 
miss it with few words. In a barn 
down the brook the hand looms are 
falling to bits and the hand presses and 
the bayberry dip moulds and the pot¬ 
ters' wheels are all rusting away. Some of the men are left; 
they have gotten their feet on the earth and they form the nucleus 
of a delightful intellectual circle. 
I he movement failed, failed as it did in a dozen such centers. 
And yet, despite the failure of these zealous backers to the land, 
America has seen a steady increase in country living and farm 
reclamation during the past decade. The problem the dreamers 
were helpless to solve is being gradually solved to-day. What 
they tried to do by hand is being accomplished by machine. 
Modernity triumphed over medievalism. 
Salvation still lies along the road that leads back to the land, 
but the men and women are being led there by the automobile. In 
short, it is the Gasoline Trail that leads back to the land, for 
the automobile has made country living possible for the city 
man, and he delights in his new-found existence. 
..1111111111111111111II11111111111111111111111^; 
N general, you can meas¬ 
ure the standard of a na¬ 
tion’s civilization by what its 
people will put up with on the road. And you can also trace the 
trend of a nation’s life by following traffic to its destination. The 
Korean ox team lumbering along through the slough of mud is 
as striking an epitome of Korea as a twin-six bowling down a 
macadam stretch is of America. The Korean team goes to a 
farmhouse that is about as tumbledown as the road and as out 
of date as the oxen; and the twin-six turns into a place that is 
relatively as modern as the macadam it has spun upon. 
The Gasoline Trail goes as far back to the land as the roads 
will allow, and every step of its way is marked with progress. 
At first it boomed the suburbs. To-day it is booming the country, 
the better roads stretching out farther and farther from the city. 
At present no less than 6,000,000 families live on farms in this 
country, and the number is increasing. 
There are to-day more gentlemen farmers than a decade ago, 
more old country places being renovated and rebuilt to suit modern 
living, more country villages taking a fresh lease on life because 
of the influx of up-to-date ambitions and wide-awake views brought 
them by new inhabitants from the city. 
No one dares prophesy what the end will be. Doubtless the 
price of cars will come down even lower than the reachable prices 
of to-day. Doubtless some modern magician will find a cheap sub¬ 
stitute for gasoline. In that day our 2,500,000 automobile owners 
will leap to 5,000,000. While this will not clear the slums or 
solve factory conditions, it will mean a greater migration country- 
ward. City folk will become convinced that fresh air is better 
to breathe than smoke and grime, silence better than racket, fresh 
vegetables better than canned, flowers from one’s own garden 
more pleasing than flowers from a corner florist. Once convinced 
of this, the joys of a handmade country life will seize them, and 
what the dreamers of the 90’s strove to do will be accomplished 
in good time. Already the light is upon 
the horizon; but it is the glow from 
electric headlights. Already the host is 
heard moving; but it is the hum from 
countless motors. The old order 
changes, yielding place to the new, and 
Ford reveals himself in many ways. 
B 
UT to return to M- 
HERMITAGE 
Oh, for a country place I know 
Where elms stand in a windy row 
Where larches frame the crimson sun 
And maples turn vermilion 
And branchy oaks stand wide and still 
Each like a green, inverted hill. 
There when I’d dreamed a day or two 
I’d have a room made neat for you — 
For trees, they are such lonesome things 
With all their leaves and whisperings! 
Harry Kemp. 
Tilliiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillliilllliiiiillili; 
The only benefit it derived from 
the invasion of the Back-to-the-Landers 
was the publicity, the tiny circle of in¬ 
tellectuals and a wealth of wisdom anent 
the inability of some folks to pay their 
bills. M- is scarcely any better 
to-day for the community having lived 
there. But M- is better for the 
men of the town who have bought auto¬ 
mobiles, for the farmers thereabouts 
who have aspired to flivvers and for the 
tides of automobile traffic that pour 
back and forth along the one long, 
house-lined Main Street. The automo¬ 
bile has made M- “loosen up,” 
live down the parsimonious reputation 
of its New England forefathers. It 
has made the county officials fix the 
roads and keep them fixed, and it has 
brought a host of people to the town 
who never before heard of the place. 
Ten years from now the youths will 
be content to remain in town. Already, 
when you talk to the natives, you do not hear them complaining 
about how hard it is to live up there away from all the city fun 
and convenience. For this the automobile does. For city folks 
it makes country living possible and for country folks its makes 
country living livable. 
Life in M- is beginning to look up with a vengeance. It 
broke out into a town masque last year, and Shakespeare is being 
played al fresco (from the unexpurgated) by otherwise staid and 
theatre-abhorring natives. This spring the Thief Detecting Society 
aspired to—and accomplished—a seven course dinner, served just 
the way banquets are at the Waldorf. The latest dispatch brings 
the news that the town fathers have clubbed together and pur¬ 
chased a fire engine—not one of yer old horse-drawn ve-hickles, 
by Heck, but a brand-new, sure-enough, honest-to-goodness auto- 
mo-bile fire in-gine! 
