The Constitutional [Alexandria, LA], December 22, 1860
Within the last forty years country life has quietly and almost imperceptibly undergone great changes, and, under the influence of modern discoveries and inventions, will, ere long, be wholly revolutionized. The pursuits and amusements of our parents are not our pursuits and amusements, nor has anything new come in to supply the place of what has passed away. The whole tenor and complexion of country life has changed, and that change consists in the country having become more and more dependent on the towns. Whether in pursuit of business, pleasure, or information, men leave the country and visit some neighboring city. Agriculture is the only rural avocation, and country is mere plantation life. The private social festive board is rarely spread; the barbecues, with its music and its dance, is obsolete and almost forgotten; the report of the following [sic—fowling]-piece disturbs not the slumber of the woods or fields; the huntsman’s horn is not heard, the cry of the hounds, and the clattering hoofs of pursuing steeds enliven but rarely the dreary monotony of country life. The boys, like men, look to visiting town for amusement, and neglect their traps and snares, their guns, and their boats, and their fishing tackles, their dogs and their riding horses. The anvil rings no more under the sturdy strokes of the stalwart smith, the shoemaker has ceased to ply his awl, the seamstress neglects her needle, and the sounds of the shuttle and the spinning-wheel are forgotten. Our fields are clothed in living drapery of black negroes, black mules, black birds, and black crows, and there and there a forlorn looking master or overseer. Our bodies are in the country, our souls are in town. There used to be far more variety, more leisure, more refinement, and more social enjoyment, in the country than in town. Each farm was a little community, producing within itself most of the necessaries and luxuries of life, and each neighborhood a little world within itself, with its store, its post-office, its church, its school-house, its carpenters, blacksmiths, tanners, tailors, doctors, lawyers and farmers. Men used to make fortunes in town and retire to the country to enjoy them. Hospitality was unbounded, and the guests always in attendance. Now the tables are sometimes spread, but the invited guests have gone to the city or the springs.
Men used to go to town to labor and to make money, and return to the country to enjoy it. How sadly is this changed. The country is the scene of mere monotonous agricultural labor—labor neither lightened by variety nor relieved by amusements. Men endure country life merely to make money, and go to town to spend it—to cease work and give themselves up to enjoyment. Steam, and other modern inventions and improvements, but principally steam, has effected these great changes, and will bring about, ere long, much greater. Towns are become the foci of all art, industry, education, wealth, amusement, and civilization. They will rob the country at a distance of its wealth and its civilization, and only shed their enlivening rays over little neighborhoods that encircle them. Countries with many and large towns will become enlightened, powerful, and wealthy; countries without them, dreary, poor, ignorant, weak, dependent, and tributary.
It has become cheaper to visit New York or Saratoga than to keep an equipage to visit our neighbors, and as every one goes now to cities and watering-places, ’tis there we are most likely to meet with our friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. Railroads and steamboats enable farmers to send daily to town for every article they need, and this breaks up country stores, villages, and mechanic shops. Men are wholly segregated in the country, and meet each other in the cities in pursuit of business or pleasure. Our daughters mope and pine at home, and desire to visit town for amusement, or for religious, social, moral, and intellectual association. Our little girls beg to be sent to school in town, in order that they may see something of the world. Our boys long for the holidays and hoard every cent they can get, in order that they may go to town and see the great world—the theatre, the legislature, the ships, the printing establishments, the factories, and the great stores. Our wives, too, wish to go to town because there is no society in the country, because there is nothing going on to improve the minds of their children, because there are no openings for business or any sort in the country, in which a talented or industrious child can get a living or attain reputation. The women all hate the country, and they are right, for in the country woman is now a mere fixture, with few occupations and no associations. The domestic manufacturing, sewing, knitting, weaving, cutting, and making the clothes for her children and the negroes, which she formerly superintended and took part in, gave some interest and variety to life. These occupations superseded and done away with, and visiting all tending downward, has left woman solitary and disconsolate. The negroes are the most social of all human beings, and after having hired in town, refuse to live again in the country.
No doubt the census will exhibit proofs of our theory. It will be found that population increases much more rapidly in all well located towns, than in the country. This tendency to aggregate population in the cities, will be of great advantage to the South, which has all along suffered much from the opposite tendency. Mr. Jefferson has taught us that cities were evils. So they are, great evils to distant country people that trade with, but great blessing to their neighbors. They afford variety of occupation, increase wealth, and improve civilization in their immediate vicinities, by robbing their distant customers. They hoard the wealth which their far-off customers make. The wealth of London, of New York, and of Paris, is not made in those cities, but transferred to them by trade, from a tributary world. Agriculture as the sole or common pursuit, impoverishes a people; and the larger their crops, the greater the draft on their land, and the more rapid the process of impoverishment.
We must have cities, towns, and watering-places, in the South for country life is daily becoming more unpopular; and unless we have cities at home, our rich people will spend half their time and all their money abroad. We must not leave trade, commerce, fashion, manufactures, taste, education, and public amusements, to take care of themselves, and to pursue their natural courses and direction. The great centers of fashion, trade, manufacturers, literature, and education, are all without the South, and all exploitate, tax, and fleece the South. If we let things alone, they will daily grow worse for us; and the great foreign centers will daily become more wealthy, enlightened, and attractive, while we daily become poorer, more ignorant, and dependent. We must make country life tolerable, nay, fashionable, by bringing the country nearer to the town. We must have many small towns, and in each State at least one city. We must have attractive centers at home, or become daily more and more the tributaries and dependents of centers abroad.
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Town life and country life are both required, in order for the full development of human character. He who has lived always in the country is a mere rustic or clown; but he who has spent his whole life in town, is a far more awkward, uncouth, and artificial character. His notions are narrower than the rustic’s, because there is more of the world in the country than in the city. A Londoner is proverbial for his narrow notions, his bad English, his vulgar conceit, and his uncouth deportment. But cockneys are not peculiar to London. Every town rears them; and the smaller the town the more intense the cockney. To mistake London for the world, makes a man ridiculous; to mistake a small town for the world, makes him absurd.
Country youths should spend some years of their lives in business or at school, in town. It not only varies and enlarges their experience but it teaches them orderly, systematic, and industrious habits. Every pursuit in life is carried on more systematically in town than in country; and men are more industrious, because they gain their daily bread by their daily work, while in the country, people, rich or poor, can idle away half their time, and get along tolerably well. Two years as clerk in a store in a city, is the proper education for a farmer. He learns to keep accounts, and becomes habituated to calculating and balances, expenses and profits, outgoings and incomings. Merchants always make the best farmers.—De Bow’s Review.