OCR Text |
Show THE HOME TOWN liy XKI.S DARLING President Wilson, in an article in the July number of World's Work, makes this statement "If America discourages the locality, the comuni-ty, comuni-ty, the self-contained towns, she will kill the nation," Many of the selfr contained towns are losing in population, popu-lation, are going backward, while the great cities are growing by leaps and bounds. In the article above referred to. President Wilson adds "You know what the vitality of America consists of. Its vitality does not lie in New York, nor in Chicago, it will never be snapped by anything that happens in Saint Louis. Nearly every city, great and small, every town, large and little, sprang into existence as a trading center, as a place for the exchange of commo- UiUCB eliiu Liiua uucuiuc, nui unij lug commercial, but the social center for the people of the cauntry tributary to it. When a town becomes a great city, it ceases to furnish to the people of the adjacent country the social side of their lives, for the art of being be-ing a good neighbor is a lost one with a majority of the people in the large commercial centers. The automobile, the interurban, the long distance telephone are all bringing the large cities nearer and nearer to an ever increasing number of people. These great centers have in them a lure for the folks of the smaller communities, of the less pretentious pre-tentious trading points. The great city is a vortex into which is being drawn the very life blood of our nation. People who cannot go to it to make their homes are wont to like to trade with its stores. Human nature is very much the same the world over. Distance lends enchantment. enchant-ment. Kansas City likes to shop in Chicago, while Chicago folks are inclined in-clined to buy more or less from the stores in New York, and many a woman purchases gowns in Paris which can be duplicated in staid old-Philadelphia old-Philadelphia for less money. Do you own property in this town? Have you a farm near this town? Is this your nearest trading point? In other words, when you are away do you call this your home town? If so, you are vitally and materially interested in-terested in its welfare. Will this town live, much less gain in wealth and population? Statistics show that a large precentage of the i towns of less than 10,000 are going backward. The future of this town is in the hands of its citizens. The towns that will live are the towns that give service. In twenty-two states the rural communities com-munities have actually lost or failed to gain, proportionally, in population. In Pennsylvania, 1,320 towns have gone backward in the last ten years. Draw a circle with a radius of ten miles around each of the forty-seven ' largest cities in the United States. Take a census of the population and you will find living within the confines con-fines of these circles approximately 2 ,500,000 people, or about one-third of all the people of continental UnitedStates. Uni-tedStates. They occupy one twenty-thousandth twenty-thousandth part of the entire area of the country. The town of one thousand or over, should be the social, spiritual and commercial center for the people within the radius of six to eight miles. Are you trying to make your town such a center? A spirit of pride engenders pride. A few citizens of any community who believe in clean streets, free from waste yapcr and empty tobacco tins, can, by precept and example, create a spirit of civic pride in all the people peo-ple that will make for a clean town. A spirit of town loyalty, egercised by the really patriotic men and wamen of this town will do wonders. Prac- tice what you preach. Each one doing his or her part every day can make this a town of grass instead of weeds, of flowers, of cleaner streets, more pretty door yards, a town of larger and better i ; stores, a town of loyal endeavor born of a knowledge of the independen- cies of all its people. We can make I this a still better place in which to live and a mighty hard place to leave, t . |