Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/23

Rh idea that a decree of court absolves all responsibility. Broken homes, broken words, broken vows, broken contracts, broken lives,—how often these result somewhere in further dishonor and dishonesty!

The rapid growth of the cities with the restlessness and temptations of city life is a menace to the old-fashioned attraction of the home and faithfulness to it. To the children reared in the country home the big fireplace is the center around which they revolve. In the early evenings they listen to father's counsel and prognostication of national affairs; they grow under the affectionate virtue of mother. No centrifugal force is strong enough to attract them from that center. A safeguard for the West is the conversion of our great ranches and vast tracts of unoccupied land into small farms and then such a management of suburban schools and traveling libraries and the refinements of culture as to surround these country homes with the advantages of the city. Is it not a problem for sociology to work out? And surely never was a better opportunity than here with soil so productive; resources so varied. Cheap railway transportation sometimes means cheap immigration and overcrowded cities. Oregon is too choice and has too great a future to build to be encumbered with other than good raw material out of which to make a State. If the thoughtful sociologist and the beneficent railways will only combine to protect our cities from worthless migratory classes; to fill our verdant country lands with home-building immigrants there will be indeed, for altruistic women, an opportunity to aid in building a commonwealth.

In so far as the inner life of a home may be influenced by environments is it possible and practical to plan for the strengthening of the home life of a community and no phase of life, in country or city, is too unimportant to engage notice. So closely is physical health connected