Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/373

Rh checking overcrowding in towns is by improving housing in the country. We are told that the flower of the agricultural class flock to the towns because they dislike the monotony of country life and long for excitement and variety. That is so, no doubt, to a large extent, and perhaps our present system of education is calculated to foster discontent with the peasant's lot, and engender vague ambition, restlessness, and a thirst for rousing stimulants, but I suspect that another contingent of country folk find their way into the towns, not so much attracted by their glamor as repelled by the dingy wretchedness they leave behind them. Agriculture is, after all, the most varied and least monotonous of employments, and could the cottages of the laborers be made wholesome and attractive, and the village life invested with some interest, many who now migrate to the towns would stay at home, and many who are in the towns and have tried them and failed, would be glad to be translated back to the land. I feel sure that many of the laboring class, under the goad of poverty, quit with reluctance the fields they have tilled and cast many a lingering bulging look behind at the dilapidated hut that sheltered their childhood. The Anglo-Saxon has always had a deep-rooted attachment to his 'ham' and his 'ton.' Home sickness is not, perhaps, as common as it used to be, but the homing instinct still exists amongst us and is to be diligently kept alive if our race is to avoid disintegration. Nothing has seemed to me to presage the pouring forth of the vial of the seventh angel more imminently than the proposal, seriously made, that all infants at birth should be taken away from their parents and brought up in public institutions, foundlings of the state, a system under which all virtue would forthwith go out of us leaving us mere dry husks of mankind. And nothing has seemed to me more minatory for the future of our empire than the decay—for there is some decay—of home life amongst us. The affluent classes in great numbers voluntarily resign its charms for the luxurious indulgence of the club and restaurant, and the round of pleasure, as it is called; and the poor, through no fault of their own, are in large numbers deprived of them, for it is impossible for the tender associations of the home to evolve in a temporary burrow in a town warren. They have a tenement or lodging, but no home; but a vestige of the old home sentiment is sometimes seen, as Mr. Bray assures us, in the fidelity with which the} r cling in poverty to some bit of furniture—a table, a chair or clock that has stood the wear and. tear of time. But if we are to rescue the submerged tenth and redeem the very poor, we must somehow see that decent homes are provided for them. The finest feelings, the firmest principles are nourished in the home; a genuine man's joys, hopes and ambitions should center in it. Truly did the great poet of my country—who was not only a poet but a deep-seeing social reformer—exclaim: