THE LURE OF THE TOWN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 158, 13 October 1910, Page 7

THE LURE OF THE TOWN.

TO KEEP YOUTH ON THE LAND. A WORLD-WIDE PROBLEM. Sir Carlaw Martin, chairman of the Scottish Agricultural Commission, which is visiting -stralia, referred in an interview rec< yto the modern drift of population f -m the country to town. "Wihen you have people on the land," he said, ''it is j,our business to keep them there. Here we touch a world-wide problem. There are observable two contrary streams of tendency—one making towards land settlement ,and one citywards. This is a matter of concern fo statesmen all over the world, to Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his Ministers at Ottawa, just as it is to Colonel Roosevelt, who lias initiated something like 3, national policy by way of counteracting the cityward tendency. That tendency is clearly observable in Scotland and Ireland. This ought not to be. The farmers' life is one of increasing and vital interest. The farmer keeps the keys of the granary of nature. The seasons come round for him; the chemistry of the air and soil work for him, research, improvements in transportation, improvements in mechanism, add to the interest and to the value of his industry. He is in touch with the markets of the world' —lie is not an isolated person; he stands in the centre of things. The rooting of, the people on the soil once you have them there is important, both to the rural parts and to the cities, because if the farmer requires large centres of population to purchase his products, the city requires for its welfare a great background of rural prospcritv. How the problem is to toe solved —or if it can be solved at all—is still a matter of perplexity. But it seems that we must oppose some more powerful attractions to the lure of the town. We must create some bias in the young person born on the land which will be strong enough to counteract the superficial glamors of the city. We must involve him in a mass of interests, social, economic, industrial and commercial, so that it shoul.l be difficult, if not impossible, for him to pull up his stakes and flee citywards. All this points to a well-devised system of education which takes the youth at a nearly age, and trains him in the elements and practice of agriculture along with a general education—nature study, school gardens, experimental stations all point that way."