Читать книгу The Country-Life Movement in the United States - L. H. Bailey - Страница 19

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Some persons seem to think that the movement of city men out to the country offers a solution of country problems. It usually offers only a solution of a city problem—how a city man may find the most enjoyment for his leisure hours and his vacations. Much of the rising interest in country life on the part of certain people is only a demand for a new form of entertainment. These people strike the high places in the country, but they may contribute little or nothing to real country welfare. This form of entertainment will lose its novelty, as the sea-shore loses it for the mountains and the horse loses it for the motor-car or aëroplane. The farming of some city men is demoralizing to real country interests. I do not look for much permanent good to come to rural society from the moving out of some of the types of city men or from the farming in which they ordinarily engage.

I am glad of all movements to place persons on the land who ought to go there, and to direct country-minded immigrants away from the cities; but we must not expect too much from the process, and we must distinguish between the benefit that may accrue to these persons themselves and the need of reconstruction in the open country. It is one thing for a family to move to the land in order to raise its own supplies and to secure the benefits of country life; it is quite another thing to suppose that an exodus from city to country will relieve the economic situation or make any difference in the general cost of living, even assuming that the town folk would make good farmers. And we must be very careful not to confuse suburbanism and gardening with country life.

To have any continuing effect on the course of rural development, a person or an agency must become a real part and parcel of the country life.