Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/260

 256 tendencies are developed and carried to an extreme; but sooner or later new forces appear which produce a reaction; and the pendulum swings backward. The flood tide of city migration is near; an ebb toward the rural districts may be anticipated. Indeed the stream of population flowing toward the cities is being, in a measure, diverted into suburban channels; and at the same time a counter current is setting in from the crowded tenement-ridden quarters toward the more healthful outskirts of the city, where grass and trees are not wholly unknown. Our modern cities, our great manufactories, our railroads and our enormous trade are the results of the extensive use of steam power. While factories and cities did exist before Watt made his famous invention, conditions were radically different from those of to-day. Steam has molded our present civilization. But in recent years a new distributor of power, electricity, has come into extensive use. As a result the economies and limitations which caused centralization and crowding during the century of steam are removed to some extent. Electricity is modifying the distribution of population.

The movement toward the suburbs can be noticed by even a casual observer. Manufactories and residences are being built in the suburbs. Factories and homes are no longer erected in close proximity to each other. Shops are now designed to occupy a larger ground area, and are located further from each other. The age of decentralization is just ahead; the suburb is absorbing more and more of our city population.

The suburban type is becoming characteristic; the commuter is a constantly increasing factor among our people. Improved methods of communication and of transportation, better roads, rural mail delivery and new methods of transmitting power are substituting decentralizing for centralizing forces. As the country is covered with a network of trolley and telephone wires, the area available for the residence of city workers is enlarged. The use of elevated roads, inside the city limits, for suburban electric lines will still further lengthen the radius of the circle. Country or suburban homes, equipped with many city conveniences and advantages, are now available for the man engaged in business in the city. Country life of the immediate future is not to be what it was in the 'good old times'; new forces and new influence are infusing new life into the rural communities. Rural isolation will soon be a thing of the past in nearly all sections of the eastern and north central states.

The American people are beginning to recognize vaguely that life in a crowded city is not the best and most wholesome for men and women. Many individuals are buying homes in the country for purely sentimental reasons. But behind this sentiment is an unerring instinct which leads us back to contact with the soil and to communion with