“LITTLE OLD NEW YORK,” FOLLIES OF 1923
DANCING AND COUNTRY LIFE
FOR more than a generation the problem of checking the steady drift of the young people from American farms into the cities has occupied the attention of statesmen, able editors, farm leaders and economists. It is universally agreed that agriculture is the basic industry upon which the prosperity of manufacturing and commerce depends. When the farmers are prosperous their demands for all kinds of manufactured goods sets in motion the wheels of industry, labor is fully employed and merchants find increased sales to the rural communities and factory workers. When, as happened five years ago, there is a widespread depression among the farmers, it is felt by manufacturers, railways, merchants and industrial workers in every field. Today, as one hundred years ago, when Thomas Jefferson wrote that agriculture was the most important of all industries, the welfare of the American people as a whole is indissolubly bound up with the existence of a large and prosperous agricultural interest.