This
drift is one of the most pronounced of the social and economic phenomena
of the day. Its consequences upon the life, welfare, and future of the
great nation to which we are proud to acknowledge our whole-hearted
allegiance are matters of such paramount importance to all concerned that
we should turn aside more often than we do from the distracting exactions
of our ordinary activities to give them prolonged and earnest
consideration.
A generation or so ago human beings were content to spend the full term of
their earthly existence amid rural surroundings, or if in their declining
days they longed for more of the comforts and associations which are among
the cravings of mortality, it was an easy proposition to move to the
nearest village or, if they were too high and mighty for this simple
measure to satisfy them, they could indulge in the more grandiose
performance of residing in the county seat. But nowadays our people want
more. Rich or poor, tall or dumpy, tottering grandmothers or babies in
swaddling-clothes, they long for ampler pastures. Their brawny arms or
hoary heads must bedeck nothing less than the metropolis itself, and
perchance put shoulders to the wheel in the incessant grind of the urban
treadmill.
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