Life in the States

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 76, 30 December 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

Life in the States

Mr Grant Allen, who has been visiting America, was interviewed on his return to England, He considers country life in the States more barbarous than iv Europe, especially for the women, The farmers in the States (he says) are not capitalist farmers; The wife has to do all the cooking, housekeeping, and washing for her husband and her sons, by whom the farm is tilled, and also for the hired man if the holding is sufficiently large to justify his employment They have less leisure than the English laborer, and they dwell more apart. They have no books excepting religious publications of a low intellectual type and the newspaper. The result is that everyone who can live in towns flies from the country as from a pest-smitten city. The overcrowding of the great urban centres is one of the most difficult problems before American society. No one will remain 011 land longer than is necessary to enable him to get into the town. The unending monotony and heavy strain of the field labor have produced two ugly phenomena, of whi?h I heard a great deal during my sojurn in AmericaOne is the prevalence of brutal murders. On this side of the Atlantic brutal murders are usually committed in towns; in America it is the reverse. That is one phenomenon. The other is the fact that the women in a good number of cases become insane.