The Real Blessings of Urban Life Have
Been Too Much Neglected By
the Apostles of the Country.
City life has been more or less maligned--unintentionally. Unhealthful
crowding, lack of the inspiration of outdoor life, and greater immorality
are the principal charges. Lately, however, people have begun to believe
that the city is little if any more immoral, proportionately to its
inhabitants, than the country; that the absence of outdoor life has
compensations, especially when one can spend part of the year in the
country; that most of the dangers of crowding can be averted by improved
sanitary methods and a greater number of parks. Edward S. Martin, writing
in _Appleton's Magazine_, states the case attractively:
After all, there is an unrivaled attraction about human
society, and it is considerably wholesome. It takes superior
people to thrive on solitude even with quiet thrown in.
Feebler folk have been known to regenerate even in the
blessed country. It is no more possible in these days to
stop the country people from coming to town than to stop the
rivers from flowing to the sea.
The cities offer the best opportunities to the people who
are qualified to improve them. The cities are the great
markets for talent and skill, as well as for commodities.
They would be badly off if the energy that makes them hum
were not perpetually re-enforced out of the great country
reservoirs. The country would be a worse place if the
superfluous vigor that is bred there had not the cities in
which to spend itself.
To get to some town is the natural and legitimate aspiration
of a considerable proportion of the sons and daughters of
American farmers. But as the waters that run to the sea are
carried back by the process of evaporation, so there must
be, as our cities grow greater, a return current out of them
countryward for the people for whom town life is no longer
profitable, and whose nerves and thews need nature's
medication.
There is such a current as it is. People who get rich in
town promptly provide themselves with country homes, and
spend more and more of the year in them as their years
increase and their strength declines. But for the people who
don't get rich, the combination, or the transition, is not
so easy. A due proportion of the people who are game to
stand more noise, canned food, and struggle in their lives,
and who ought to get to town, will get there.
The other process--to get back into the country the
families, and especially the children, who have had more
continuous city life than is good for them--needs a good
deal of outside assistance, and gets some, though not yet as
much as it requires.