APPENDICES

Appendix I

    THE DRIFT OF OUR RURAL POPULATION CITYWARD
    (An editorial)

To an individual who from whatever motives of personal advantage or mere curiosity has made himself an observer of current tendencies, the drift of our rural population cityward gives food for serious reflection.  This drift is one of the most pronounced of the social and economic phenomena of the day.  Its consequences upon the life, welfare, and future of the great nation to which we are proud to acknowledge our whole-hearted allegiance are matters of such paramount importance to all concerned that we should turn aside more often than we do from the distracting exactions of our ordinary activities to give them prolonged and earnest consideration.

A generation or so ago human beings were content to spend the full term of their earthly existence amid rural surroundings, or if in their declining days they longed for more of the comforts and associations which are among the cravings of mortality, it was an easy proposition to move to the nearest village or, if they were too high and mighty for this simple measure to satisfy them, they could indulge in the more grandiose performance of residing in the county seat.  But nowadays our people want more.  Rich or poor, tall or dumpy, tottering grandmothers or babies in swaddling-clothes, they long for ampler pastures.  Their brawny arms or hoary heads must bedeck nothing less than the metropolis itself, and perchance put shoulders to the wheel in the incessant grind of the urban treadmill.  Can you beat it?  Unquestioned profit does not attend the migration.  It stands to reason that some of the very advantages sought have been sacrificed on the altar of the drift cityward.  Let us say you have your individual domicile or the cramped and sunless apartment you dub your habitation within corporate limits.  Does that mean that the privileges of the city are at your disposal, so that you have merely to reach forth your hand and pluck them?  Well, hardly!  You certainly do not reside in the downtown section, or if you do, you wish to heaven you didn’t.  And you can reach this section only with delay and inconvenience, whether in the hours of business or in the subsequent period devoted to the glitter of nocturnal revelry and amusement.

But whatever the disadvantages of the city, the people who endure them are convinced that to go back to the vines and figtrees of their native heath would be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.  Why?  Well, for one thing, there is no such thing as leisure in the areas that lie beyond those vast aggregations of humanity which constitute our cities.  Not only are there innumerable and seemingly interminable chores that must follow the regular occupations of the day, but a thousand emergencies due to chance, weather, or the natural cussedness of things must be disposed