proportion in which it formerly stood
to that of the country. This has aroused the thoughts of many
long-headed people, and investigations are being made on every hand,
especially because some people are moved by fear that city life will
corrupt morality. They take it for granted that country people are
virtuous, and that vice finds its domicile only in the large centres
of population, and having established these premises, they argue that
the tendency of country people to move into cities shows a degeneracy
on their part, or that the abnormal growth of cities is a sure token
of the moral depravity which has taken hold of the people. This,
however, is not true. There is as much iniquity in proportion in small
communities as in large ones, and not unfrequently wickedness and
viciousness are attributed to actions which, after all, are neither
wicked nor vicious, but merely strange to one who is not accustomed to
them. The tide of inter-migration, which swells the population of the
cities, has its natural causes, of which moral corruption is the
least.

The philosophers of the individualistic school will take exception,
when I name as the first cause of the tendency to leave the village
for the city, the fact that the more society becomes organized, the
more each individual becomes a part of a system, the easier it is to
obtain comfort, and that, having found the proper place, one can more
easily excel in that sphere of life. True, a man living in a village
may be able to secure for himself, without excessive labor, food that
would keep him from starvation, and raiment and fuel to protect him
against the inclemency of the weather; but man needs more than bread
and meat, a coat and a pair of shoes. There are a thousand other
things which bring cheer to him and make his life worth living, that
he cannot obtain in rural solitude. He claims a right to these
comforts, and tries to obtain them by seeking them where they are to
be found. If simple support, which rustic life insures, was preferable
to the insecurity of earning a livelihood in the city; if plenty of
coarse food and the healthier habitation which the village offers,
were sufficient to induce the over-worked, half-starved, and
ill-tenanted city laborer to give up for them the other comforts which
city life offers him, we should soon behold an exodus from the city to
country places, instead of observing the growth of the centres of
population. It is the tendency to w