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Show COUNTRY IS REAL AMERICA. Great Cities Do Not Worthily Represent Repre-sent the Nation. One of those' 6ent to the couttry this summer by a New York fresh-air mission mis-sion was a 14-year-old Hungarian boy. His parents, when they came to America, had remained in the city where they landed. They lived in squalid poverty. The father, mother aud four children all slept in a small room lighted by a single window opening open-ing on a foul-smelliu? alley. The boy played in the streets, and had to dodge the club of tho policeman who stroTe to keep order In tho overcrowded over-crowded districL In the country he found tho open fields to play in, with no policeman to interfore. Ho saw the people friendly, helpful and sympathetic, living their lives in comfort and Independence "When I got home I'll tell them I'vo found the real America," he remarked I one day. He was not far from the truth. The America which has drawn hundreds of thousands from tho countries of Europe Eu-rope is not the America which they find In the densely populated cities. For the foreign-born poor, or the native na-tive poor, either, the large city, with Us fierce competition. Is a hard place In which to live. The real France is not Paris. One ha to go outside of London to find the real England. The Germany that Is growing rich and powerful Is a bigger big-ger thing than Berlin. And the real America is not discovered in her great cities. The ideals of the big city are not tho ideals toward which the ,nation is striving, and their standard of living Is not the standard which appeals to the people at large. America Amer-ica Is ruled from the homes and the firesides of the smaller communities and from the farmhouses on the hills and in th valleys of tho east and tho south and on the plains of the west. Most of the statesmen who control congress are country-born and coun- try-bred. Th issues on which elections elec-tions are decided art those which seem rltal to the plain, every-day roan, living tha natural life of the less populous pop-ulous districts. That Immigrant is to be congratulated' congratu-lated' who discovers whero the real America lies; and that rural American Amer-ican who knowg that he lives whero the destinies of the nation art? shaped is in no danger of losing his polBe or of growing discontented with his lot, Youth's Companion- |
