[6] The Survey, March 2, 1912. “The Nams; the Feeble-minded as Country Dwellers.” Charles B. Davenport. Ph.D.
| New England Towns Losing Population | 1890 | 1910 | Total towns (in 1910) | |||
| Maine | 348 | 291 | 523 | |||
| New Hampshire | 152 | 163 | 224 | |||
| Vermont | 187 | 156 | 229 | |||
| Massachusetts | 154 | 123 | 321 | |||
| Rhode Island | 12 | 8 | 32 | |||
| Connecticut | 79 | 48 | 152 | |||
| —— | —— | —— | ||||
| 932 | 789 | 1481 |
[8] The writer wishes to make it quite clear that he is thinking, in this discussion, merely of the boys and girls who ought to stay on the farm. Unquestionably many of them must and should go to the city. This book pleads merely for a fair share of the farm boys and girls to stay in the country,—those best fitted to maintain country life and rural institutions. Country life must be made so attractive and so worth-while that it will be to the advantage of more of the finest young people to invest their lives there. Every effort should be made to prevent a boy’s going from the farm to the city, provided he is likely to make only a meager success in the city or possibly a failure.
[9] Yet in a class of 115 college men at the Lake Geneva Student conference in June, 1912, a surprising number stated that they had suffered a similar experience as boys at home, though usually at times when the farm work was particularly pressing. One claimed that he had driven a riding cultivator by moonlight at 2 A. M.
[10] Quoted by M. Jules Meline (Premier of France) in “The Return to the Land.”
[11] “The Rural Life Problem of the United States,” p. 47.
[12] By Edwin Osgood Grover, the son of a country minister.
[13] Some allowance should be made for the possibility of students enrolling from a small city who actually live on a suburban farm.
[14] “The Country Town,” p. 185.