om. But there is no hope for the
person who will not stop and think. And the devil works day and night
shifts keeping the crowd moving on.

That is why the crowd is not furnishing the strong men and women.

We must have amusement and relaxation. Study your muscles. First they
contract, then they relax. But the muscle that goes on continually
relaxing is degenerating. And the individual, the community, the nation
that goes on relaxing without contracting--without struggling and
overcoming--is degenerating.

The more you study your muscles, the more you learn that while one
muscle is relaxing another is contracting. So you must learn that your
real relaxation, vacation and amusement, are merely changing over to
contracting another set of muscles.

Go to the bank president's office, go to the railroad magnate's office,
go to the great pulpit, to the college chair--go to any place of great
responsibility in a city and ask the one who fills the place, "Were you
born in this city?"

The reply is almost a monotony. "I born in this city? No, I was born in
Poseyville, Indiana, and I came to this city forty years ago and went
to work at the bottom."

He glows as he tells you of some log-cabin home, hillside or farmside
where he struggled as a boy. Personally, I think this log-cabin
ancestry has been over-confessed for campaign purposes. Give us steam
heat and push-buttons. There is no virtue in a log-cabin, save that
there the necessity for struggle that brings strength is most in
evidence. There the young person gets the struggle and service that
makes for strength and greatness. And as that young person comes to the
city and shakes in the barrel among the weaklings of the artificial
life, he rises above them like the eagle soars above a lot of
chattering sparrows.

The cities do not make their own steam. The little minority from the
farms controls the majority. The red blood of redemption flows from the
country year by year into the national arteries, else these cities
would drop off the map.

If it were not for Poseyville, Indiana, Chicago would disappear. If it
were not for Poseyville, New York would disintegrate for lack of
leaders.

"Hep" and "Pep" for the Home Town

But so many of the home towns of America are sick. Many are dying. Many
are dead.

It is the lure of the city--and the lure-lessness of the country. The
town the young people leave is the town the young people ought to
leave. Somebody sa