Empty houses and crowded apartments. DEAR ATLANTIC, LEETONIA, OHIO I have read with interest 'The Missing Rooms' by Mr. John Carter, in the February Atlantic, and the subsequent comments, and it seems to me they have all missed the point. Mr. Carter attributes the housing shortage in cities to the fact that there are approximately one million marriages yearly in this country and only half that many new living quarters provided. The real explanation is to be found in the great number of abandoned farmhouses not only in New England but over all the states which are dotted with manufacturing towns. From our home in eastern Ohio we can see five empty farmhouses not shacks, but six-, eight-, and ten-room houses. Similar conditions prevail throughout the county, state, and the states to the east. In the city of Cleveland (sixty miles away) it is estimated that there are fifteen hundred former residents of Columbiana County. They have formed an association, which makes facts more easily obtainable. Few of them went directly to Cleveland from the farms, but a great many moved first to the small towns and thence to the city. Youngstown, Akron, Pittsburgh, and Detroit probably have as many each of this county's ex-residents. Many of the old families who were all with us twenty-five years ago have not one representative on our farms to-day, but are scattered from coast to coast, mostly in cities. For many years the returns from farming have been inadequate as compared with other industries. To those living near industrial towns the contrast has been too glaringly apparent and the alternative right at hand. They have gone where there is more money and less arduous work and most of them seem to be moderately prosperous. They dress better and have more of what the world calls luxuries and pleasures than their old neighbors who have continued to farm, but when they die their estates, on an average, do not foot up any better. A few have returned because they could not get the fondness for country life out of their systems. A very few who have been eminently successful - Mr. Firestone, of tire fame, for example - have made their old homesteads into show farms which are a credit to the community but add nothing to the contentment of the 'dirt farmers' who must make their money out of their farms. Everybody cannot have everything. If you prefer to live in cramped apartments in congested cities and push buttons, that is your privilege. I'd rather have a real home in the country with trees, flowers, friendly birds and animals and kindly folks for neighbors, and time for meditation, - the unappreciated luxuries, - though it means hard work, wearing last year's garments, and having no buttons to push - yet. Many farms hereabout now have electricity and all may have it when these empty houses are again inhabited. If any others feel like this about it, there are many places where farms, neglected but productive if cared for, can be bought for less than the buildings on them are worth. The West has been overdeveloped and overadvertised. The only place where one can get something for nothing to-day is in the forgotten agricultural East, where we have all the advantages of a longestablished civilization, are comparatively free from drouths, floods, devastating storms, and great extremes of temperature, can grow anything common to the temperate zone, and are at the very gates of the big Eastern markets always satisfactory markets, but always markets. We are more prosperous and on a firmer agricultural foundation than any other part of the United States at the present time, and some of these days the public will wake up to the fact. MARY CALDWELL * not We urge those who are still perplexed by Mr. Jensen's solution of the Spider and the Fly problem - as discussed in the April Contributors' Column to make for themselves a larger replica of the figure and to fold this into the shape of the room. In this wise the diagonal path of the spider can clearly be traced, and the distance traversed 40 feet will be proved rationally and geometrically the shortest distance between the two points. * Further proof that 'the heart of youth is Hellenic.' Mr. Lucien Price C/o Atlantic Monthly DEAR MR. PRICE: KUTIEN, FUKIEN, CHINA March 12, 1927 I want to thank you. The occasion for it is your 'Hardscrabble Hellas,' appearing in the February Atlantic, which reached me just last evening. It was a very great delight indeed. I should want to thank you if for no more than the insight revealed in those two short sentences about the interior of the hearts of boys. 'The heart of youth is not Hebraic. It is Hellenic.' The entire article has the tonic effect of an Oсtober day - either in my native Ohio or in my adopted New England. Perhaps one reason I appreciated it so much is because of the hardscrabble conditions of life emanate from a desire to save money on our two free city colleges, which financial reason, I rather imagine, moved educational authorities here to establish junior high schools. here. Plain living and high thinking are gloriously necessary under the present stage of development of China. And the boys with whom I work - there are just about eighty of them in the academy here in Kutien - also know the hardscrabble life. They live on three dollars a month, and once they learn how, under the Christian environment, they have a splendid time doing it. Once more, thank you. E. M. STOWE This letter gives a practical demonstration of the further encumbrance of the Junior College. It should be read as a postscript to the discussion introduced by Professor Palmer and continued in this issue. DEAR ATLANTIC, NEW YORK In the April number of the Atlantic Professor Palmer treated the evils of 'The Junior College' from the point of view of the student and graduate; may I add a few words in agreement with him from the point of view of a teacher in a high school of New York? I should look with apprehension upon any move of the New York Board of Education to add the junior college to our secondary schools. I know I am not wrong in saying that, if such an addition were made, the teachers of that part of the school would be compelled, as we are now, to punch a time clock at 8:40, teach five classes a day, spend any extra time at supervisory and clerical work which could be far more efficiently done by clerks at half our salary, and at 3 P.M., or later if there were outside curricular activities, again punch a time clock. After such a day, only persons with extraordinary vitality and a not too conscientious regard for their jobs as teachers could take graduate work. Most teachers would be compelled, if they wished that breadth coming from meeting minds of equal or greater maturity, to do as I feel I must do next year - take time off at their own expense. How many could afford to do this? As a junior-college teacher such as I should have to be under the 'system,' I should feel like a liar and a cheat, attempting to substitute my meagre outlook for the breadth of vision which comes from freedom from clerical detail, abundant leisure, and the privilege of spending that leisure in travel or valuable research. I should feel that I was superimposing upon an innocent group a goose step of scholarship instead of liberty of thought, especially as I realize that such an establishment of a junior college might No, I think that most of us do not wish to combine college and high school any more than we wish to see high school and elementary school one. Perhaps it might do college instructors a great deal of good to visit frequently our high schools, just as we, as high-school teachers, ought to visit elementary schools for a full realization of their problem. Perhaps, too, some of the difficult questions encountered in the freshman and sophomore years at college might be more readily solved did colleges welcome to their teaching staffs those of us with the broader outlook, whose teaching has been carefully supervised, and who, because of frequent visiting in other high schools, both public and private, and because of fortnightly di cussions of matters pedagogical, have kept abreast with the most modern methods of instruc tion of youth. As for adding to the high school that which belongs neither to the high school nor to the college, may a conscientious board of estimate, which now scrutinizes our every penny, keep us from it! * When Light meant Life. DEAR ATLANTIC, H. J. B. Professor Leuba's learned article on 'Invisible Presences' at first dismayed me, as I had for years cherished the memories of what I considered manifestations of a Spiritual 'Presence.' Twice before a most severe trial I was assured of support through what was to come, and the Light Jane Steger writes of was around me. The last 'appearance' was a few years ago when I had been specially anxious about fuel and finances. I was awakened in the early morning from a deep sleep with the overpowering con sciousness of a Presence, whether outside or in I cannot say. In a gently humorous, loving manner (as if a mother should assure an anxious child about something) I was made so sure that these matters would be cared for that I have never been overanxious since, though the coal strike tried to break my faith! The 'subconscious' has popped up for me many times, but surely this 'Presence' was dilferent! Like many folks 'convinced (almost) against their will,' I am 'of the same opinion still!' S. E. T. S. Gnats and Camels. The Newspaper's Dilemma The Lure of High Mountaineering The Jest of Hahalaba. A One-Act Play Punishing One in Ten Invisible Presences A Desert Owl. A Story The Moment. A Sonnet A Girl's Friendship with Ruskin. II New Letters from Brantwood Uneasy Business THE NEW WORLD Contributors' Club: In the Lee of the Woods - What kind of a Bore Are You? Contributors' Column Atlantic Bookshelf: Darwin - Preface to a Life - Translations and Tomfooleries - Joanna Godden Married and Other Stories - In Quest of the Perfect Book - The Dark Dawn Recommended Books 40 cents a copy $4.00 a year |