Footnotes:
[1]This loss however was in the early half of the decade, as the state census shows.
[2]For the year ending March 31, 1910, 103,798 immigrants from the United States settled in western Canada, while only 59,790 came from Great Britain and Ireland. The wealth of the immigrants settling in western Canada during the five years previous to that date was estimated as follows. British, cash, $37,546,000; effects, $18,773,000. From United States, cash, $157,260,000; effects, $110,982,000.—The Toronto Globe, July 27, 1912.
[3]“The Country Town,” p. 76.
[4]Principles of Sociology, Giddings, p. 348.
[5]“The Church in the Open Country,” p. 9.
[6]The Survey, March 2, 1912. “The Nams; the Feeble-minded as Country Dwellers.” Charles B. Davenport. Ph.D.
[7]
[8]The writer wishes to make it quite clear that he is thinking, in this discussion, merely of the boys and girls whooughtto stay on the farm. Unquestionably many of them must and should go to the city. This book pleads merely for afair shareof the farm boys and girls to stay in the country,—those best fitted to maintain country life and rural institutions. Country life must be made so attractive and so worth-while that it will be to the advantage of more of the finest young people to invest their lives there. Every effort should be made to prevent a boy’s going from the farm to the city, provided he is likely to make only a meager success in the city or possibly a failure.
[9]Yet in a class of 115 college men at the Lake Geneva Student conference in June, 1912, a surprising number stated that they had suffered a similar experience as boys at home, though usually at times when the farm work was particularly pressing. One claimed that he had driven a riding cultivator by moonlight at 2A. M.
[10]Quoted by M. Jules Meline (Premier of France) in “The Return to the Land.”
[11]“The Rural Life Problem of the United States,” p. 47.
[12]By Edwin Osgood Grover, the son of a country minister.
[13]Some allowance should be made for the possibility of students enrolling from a small city who actually live on a suburban farm.
[14]“The Country Town,” p. 185.
[15]“Rural Christendom.” Roads. p. 84.
[16]H. W. Quaintance. in Cyc. of Am. Agric. IV; p. 109.
[17]Publication of the Amer. Econ. Assn. V; pp. 817-821.
[18]The financial results of these improvements in farm machinery will not at all surprise us. It follows as a matter of course that machinery has greatly reduced the cost of production. A leading agricultural engineer at Washington is authority for this comparison. In 1830 a bushel of wheat represented over three hours of labor; while in 1896 only ten minutes; making a saving in the labor cost of producing wheat equal to the difference between 17 3-4 and 33 1-2 cents. In 1850 it required 4 1-2 hours labor to produce a bushel of corn; while in 1894 it was reduced to 41 minutes. Likewise the labor represented in a ton of baled hay has been reduced from 35 1-2 hours in 1860 to 11 1-2 in 1894; reducing the labor cost of a ton of hay from $3 to $1.29.
It has been estimated that the use of agricultural machinery saved in human labor in this country alone, in the year 1899, the vast sum of about seven hundred million dollars, with doubtless a great increase the past decade. No wonder American farmers are spending a hundred million dollars a year for their implements, and for this very reason have outstripped the farmers of the world, not only in the vast amount of production, but also in the increased comforts and satisfactions of farm life.
[19]George Manikowske, Mooreton, N. D.
[20]See Genesis 3:17-19.
[21]Report of the U. S. Sec. of Agric. for 1910. p. 11.
[22]“Brains that Make Billions.” W. M. Hays, inSaturday Evening Post, Aug. 29, 1908.
[23]However, let us not jump to the conclusion that general farming to-day is highly profitable. Inflation of farm values in many sections has resulted in serious over-capitalization. The general farmers making big dividends bought their farms some years ago, or inherited them.
[24]Cyc. of Am. Agri., Vol. IV.
[25]Doubtless this single fact would account for the loss in population in many townships. There are just as many families as ever but a lower birthrate.
[26]“The Church of the Open Country,” p. 79.
[27]Rural Manhood, Vol. I, p. 22.
[28]“Rural Recreation, a Socializing Factor.” Annals of the Am. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci., March, 1912; p. 189.
[29]“Rural Recreation, a Socializing Factor,” p. 190.
[30]Annals of the Am. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci., March, 1912, p. 61.
[31]Of course country children should also be taught much about city life; city children should be taught about country life, and in the main the standard curriculum will be the same. The point to be made here is the exceedingly important one that rural schools must be made to fit the boys and girls for happy and efficient life in rural communities. This is the specific task of the country school.
[32]“The American Rural School,” p. 323.
[33]“The Country Town,” p. 299.
[34]In several of the stronger denominations, and, in general, east of the Allegheny Mountains, the proportion is much higher.
[35]Yet an earnest young college student in an Indiana college asked my advice recently on this significant personal problem. He is anxious to consecrate his life to the ministry of the country church, but his particular sect does not believe it right to pay salaries to their ministers; so he asked advice as to whether he should earn his living by farming or school teaching,—whilegivinghis services as pastor and preacher! Quite possibly in such a church a salary of $1000 might actually handicap a pastor’s influence; but mainly with the conservative older people.
[36]For an authoritative statement of the County Work program and principles written by International Secretaries Roberts and Israel, see “Annals of the Amer. Acad. of Polit. and Soc. Sci.” for March, 1912, pp. 140-8.
[37]“The Country Church and the Rural Problem,” p. 146.
[38]“The Annals of the Am. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci.,” March, 1912, p. 177.
[39]“Country Life,” p. 155.
[40]“The Country Church and the Rural Problem,” p. 131.
[41]Forty-six out of 166 medical colleges have been closed in very recent years and the entrance requirements of many others raised, with a strong tendency to make a college course prerequisite.
[42]Also a few of thethirdgeneration. For eighty years Oberlin has offered women, equally with men, its privileges of higher education; and in 1908 conferred the honorary degree of doctor of divinity upon a distinguished woman-minister, an alumna both in arts and theology a half century before.
[43]Disciples, Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, Unitarian, Baptist, Universalist, Free Baptist, Free Methodist, Evangelical Association, Christian Brethren, Methodist Protestant, Christian, Evangelical Lutheran, Seventh Day Baptist, Wesleyan Methodist, Dunkard, United Brethren, Methodist Episcopal South, Presbyterian and African Methodist Episcopal.
[44]Ninety-five and two-tenths per cent. of the 300,000 rural homes in Ohio last year had no bathtub.
[45]From “The Religion Worth Having,” Thomas Nixon Carver, p. 137.
[46]Issue of the “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” March, 1912.
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