Open country

“ It is important that conditions be so improved for the open country that those who are born on the farms and who are farm-minded shall feel that opportunities are at least as good for them there as in the city, and thereby prevent the exodus to the city or to other business of persons who really ought to remain in the rural regions. ”

“ We are glad of all interchange of populations; the influx of country blood has thus far been invaluable to cities; the outgo of city people has set new aspirations into the country, and it [Pg 202] is still necessary to call on the cities for labor in times of pressure: but stated in its large terms, the open country will rise no higher than the aspirations of the people who live there, and the problems must be solved in such way that they will meet the conditions as they exist on the spot.
Profitable farming is not a sufficient object in life. ”

“ The better plan is to definitely discuss the problems of the open country under the term "agricultural" and retain the other term for all interests of groups of population in smaller communities, whether in the open country or in the villages. ”

“ The general tendency of our time is to dump everything into the cities, particularly into the large cities. It is there that we assemble our treasures of art, our libraries, our dramatic skill, our specimens of statuary and architecture; and it is there that the aspiring men also assemble to work out their destinies. And yet there have been events in the open country. Great men have lived there. Things have come to pass. We should be interested to record these events of the rural country, as well as the events that are associated with the congested city. ”

“ For all I knew there might be electrified wires, and on a dark night in the forest one was more likely than not to walk straight into them without ever seeing them at all. The rides would almost certainly be guarded, and the woods were so thick that it was impossible to crawl through them without making an awful noise. I know now that a forest is not only the most obvious place to try and cross the frontier, and for that reason the best guarded, but under any conditions, and for many reasons, the open country is the best place to try. ”

“ This increased culture among country people is a great factor in the new rural civilization which must be given due consideration. It is this which is overcoming rural narrowness and provincialism. Herein is great hope for the future of the open country as a worthy home for people of the finest tastes and of genuine culture. ”

“ Roads place the city and the town in connection with the village and the farm, open up markets for field produce, and provide outlets for manufactures. They enable the natural resources of a country to be developed, facilitate travelling and intercourse, break down local jealousies, and in all ways tend to bind together society and bring out fully that healthy spirit of industry which is the life and soul of every nation.
The road is so necessary an instrument of social wellbeing, that in every new colony it is one of the first things thought of. ”

“ Unquestionably, the open country is now making the greatest appeal as a place of residence that it has made at any time in the history of the nation. To list the conveniences which now exist in the country is to duplicate those which many people have considered as available only in cities. In most areas of the country, for example, there are daily mail delivery, telephone service, some measure of fire protection, and transportation by automobile, bus or train. ”

“ The movements are more rapid, more picturesque, have more color and more vivacity. It is not to be expected that we can overcome this fascination and safeguard the country boy and girl merely by introducing more showy or active enterprises into the open country. We must develop a new background for the country youth, establish new standards, and arouse a new point of view. The farmer will not need all the things that the city man thinks the farmer needs. ”

“ Country folks must learn to cooperate; to live harmoniously together in rural neighborhoods, to find real recreation in organized play, to work effectively at mutual tasks and to utilize more successfully all social organizations and means for community welfare. Interdependence must be made to take the place of boasted independence. Selfish individualism must yield to social cooperation. Only thus can life in the open country be made to survive. ”

“ It is not incumbent on cities, corporations, colleges, or other institutions to demonstrate, by going into general practical farming, that the farming business may be made to pay: thousands of farmers are demonstrating this every day.
If the city ever saves the open country, it will be by working out a real economic and social coördination between city and country, not by the city going into farming. ”

“ It is the foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the Overseas Club that keep it open. ”

“ How can a compelling desire to live on the farm be aroused in the children that are born on the farm? All these [Pg 53] questions are of vital importance, not only to the farmer but to the whole nation.”—Theodore Roosevelt.
Its Call for Rural Leadership
“We must picture to ourselves a new rural social structure, developed from the strong resident forces of the open country; and then we must set at work all the agencies that will tend to bring this about. ”

“ Janardan
What is?
First Man
That you are always having a fling at your country. How can you think that open highways may be good for a country? Look here, Kaundilya; here is a man who actually believes that open highways are the salvation of a country. ”

“ I am convinced that local [Pg 118] industries of one kind or another will find their way into the open country in the next generation, and greatly to the advantage of the country itself; but the most useful of them will be regular factories able to compete with other factories. Their largest results will come not in providing employment for persons who temporarily need it, but in developing a new community life in the places where they stand. ”

“ To connect villages and cities by stone roads is good. But what are we to do with all the back country, to make it contribute its needful part to feed the people in the days that are to come, and to open it to the persons who ought to go? ”

“ That any country claimed by either party on the northwest coast of America, together with its harbors, bays, and creeks, and the navigation of all rivers within the same, be free and open, for the term of ten years, to the subjects, citizens, and vessels of the two powers ”

“ All this working land was turned into exuberance by the light. The sunshine was dizzy on open stubble; shadows from immense cumulus clouds were forever sliding across low mounds; and the sky was wider and loftier and more resolutely blue than the sky of cities . . . she declared.
“It's a glorious country; a land to be big in,” she crooned. ”

“ Let them open the eyes of the country boys and girls not for fault finding and discontent, but to see the beauty of the country, the privilege of country freedom and the vast possibilities of scientific farming and soil productiveness. Before this can be done, normal schools for rural teachers must move out of the city, or import, straight from the country, enough country sense and sympathy to fit the teachers personally for their tasks. ”

“ This is the country freest, best,
This is the country that fulfills
Ancient hope and prophecy,
This is the age, this is the land,
The land, the age, the realm most free....{274}
Then in that hour we shall be dancing,
And feasting with new gods upon the hills;
And graving images of lovelier Beauty;
And building altars of a purer Duty;
And singing rituals of a deeper Faith.
And living life, and facing death
As fairer gods would have us. ”

“ If the country were open on its borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this would likewise seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. ”

“ To meet the economic, social, educational, religious, and other needs of these great open regions will require the very best efforts that our people can put forth; and our institutions are not now sufficiently developed to meet the situation adequately. ”

“ And in a rudderless confusion a multitude of men and women fled down the broad river-ways to that one last hope of men—the open sea.
Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible swiftness now. The tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with storm-tossed ships. ”

“ What is his answer?
Why, yes, he says, a territory can
Keep slavery out. Dred Scott still sends it there,
But then the people rule, and if the people
There in Nebraska make it hot for slavery
By local law and custom, frowns and blows,
It will not thrive. That satisfied the crowd;
Enough at least, elects him Senator,
But loses him the South, the golden prize,
Splits up the country, gives us war in time,
When argument is silenced cannon boom—
And when your Seward comes to Washington
The South secedes.
Now, listen for a moment!
What is Abe Lincoln’s genealogy
In faith political? ”

“ Every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider, and the details of town and field, of hill and valley, got more and more hazy and pale and indistinct, a luminous grey was mingled more and more with the blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows ”

“ In the Low Countries we find a wonderful combination of city air and the salt breezes of the ocean. It created a veritable atmosphere of liberty, and not only the liberty of political activity, but freedom of thought and independence in all the thousand and one different little things which go to make up the complicated machinery of human civilization. Wherever a man went in the country there was the high sky of the coastal region, and there were the canals which would carry his small vessel to the main roads of trade and ultimate prosperity. ”

“ Now, every convenience and luxury of life is carried with comparative ease, to every town and settlement throughout the Valley, and every species of produce is sent off in various directions, to every port on earth if necessary. And these facilities are multiplying and increasing every hour: Turnpike roads, rail roads, canals, and steamboat navigation have already provided such facilities for removing from the Atlantic to the Western States, that no family desirous of removing, need hesitate or make a single inquiry as to facilities of getting to this country. ”

“ Second Auditor
Why, a man as pale as snow
Or ivory, with hair black as a horse’s tail
Passed back of the seats there, and approached the entrance
To Lincoln’s box.
First Auditor
A secret officer,
With message of a battle. Oh, perhaps
Sherman has vanquished Johnston!
{149}
Scene IX. In the passageway leading to the Presidential box.
Booth
Right or wrong, God judge me—never man.
Liberty is dead—I would not live,
Beyond my country’s life. Oh, Liberty!
Brutus, sustain me!
Scene X. The Presidential box.
Major Rathbone
(Observing Lincoln rise.) ”

“ This lofty watch-tower on the Green Border-Land that divides the regions of coal and corn, is a favourite resort and breathing-ground of miners and forgers and the other sooty workers of The Black Country. On these bald and breezy heights they can quaff the luxury of the happiest and healthiest air that breathes, and disport themselves to their hearts' content in all the wild freedom of the place. ”

“ The rationale of the Open Sea being free and for ever excluded from occupation on the part of any State is that it is an international highway which connects distant lands and thereby secures freedom of communication, and especially of commerce, between such States as are separated by the sea. ”

“ We believe that all nations should have the freedom of the seas and equal rights to the navigation of boundary rivers and waterways and of rivers and waterways which pass through more than one country. ”

“ The rapid unfolding of the geographical horizon in a young land communicates to an expanding people new springs of mobility, new motives for movement out and beyond the old confines, new goals holding out new and undreamt of benefits. Life becomes fresh, young, hopeful. Old checks to natural increase of population are removed. Emigrant bands beat out new trails radiating from the old home. They go on individual initiative or state-directed enterprises; but no matter which, the manifold life in the far-away periphery reacts upon the center to vivify and rejuvenate it. ”

“ The franchises of those islands—their rivers, their ferries, their streets, their roads, the thousand and one privileges which are granted by public authority—are as important and as valuable to that people and as permanently associated with their happiness and their prosperity as are their fields or their mines or their fisheries or anything else which belongs to their country. ”

“ The two will advance, like a couple of boys playing at leap-frog, each by the aid of the other—and will advance, like those youngsters, ‘by leaps and bounds.’ As the settlers become more frequent the great waterways will be rendered navigable, and their banks, like the land abutting the railways that will make a trellis-work of the country, will be dotted with noble cities and with prosperous towns. ”