Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/399

Rh flooded and fertilized the Northwest has had its source in the hamlets and farms. It would be easy to show that the quality of this output from the rural districts has been even more remarkable than the quantity. Hence came Webster, Choate, Chase, Greeley, Cushing, Bryant, Whittier, Beecher, Hopkins, and a long list of notables that will occur to every reader. It may therefore be fairly claimed that what New England has been and what it has done, at home and abroad, through its citizens or through its colonists, has come in large measure from the country districts.

Hence the prosperity of this region concerns not merely New England, but the country at large. The testimony of many reliable witnesses and my own observations, covering more than twenty years, convince me that the outlook for the future is very unsatisfactory.

1. Fifty years ago almost every farm was cultivated by the owner, who had every interest in its most careful tillage, in making permanent improvements, and in the care of buildings, fences, and woodland. Hired labor was the exception, for the large families were quite competent for all the farm-work, the indoor as well as the outdoor, with a surplus which went to the aid of less fortunate neighbors, and sent brains and muscle to the city or to the opening West. Not all farmers were equally industrious, frugal, and successful, but there was a large body of landed proprietors, homogeneous in race, substantially on an equality socially, and alike interested in the present and future welfare of the community. In this respect there has been a great change in the last twenty years, and one which is going on more rapidly every year. The land is passing into the hands of non-resident proprietors, by mortgage, by death of resident owner, by his removal to the village or manufacturing center, or his emigration to the West.

It is also held in fewer hands, not as a general thing to be managed and worked in large estates, but to be rented from year to year.

The new proprietor has bought the farm at a small price, as compared with its former valuation, and has no interest or pride in it or its management except as an investment. So in every township there is an increasing body of renters, as a class unreliable, unsuccessful, shifting, and shiftless. Their interest in the property and the community is temporary, their tillage such as they suppose will bring the largest immediate returns with the least care and labor. It goes without saying that such farms and all their appurtenances are in a state of chronic decline. These renters are often bankrupt farmers, or young men without the pluck and thrift to become farm-owners, the courage and push to