But the thing has not worked out that way.
However much the shops and offices of the cities may have benefited by the advent of the farmers' sons and daughters, and however much the real estate agents and provision merchants of the country may have benefited by the advent of the well-to-do towns-folk, the morale of the country town, the ideals of the country people and the amalgamation of the native men with their new neighbors into a better citizenship have not prospered. Nor have the city institutions been able to replace the men of affairs who, having ceased to use the city except as a means for carrying on their business, have transferred their family and their leisure interests into the country.
The city churches, the city philanthropies, and the civic improvement organizations all tell the same tale: the rich men, the special executive men, the professional men, once their actual business engagements are over, turn their backs on the city with a sigh of relief and depart country-wards for rest and enjoyment for the night, for the week-end, and for the summer vacation. The city loses them, and they gain the country. But it must not be supposed that the country in any vital sense gains them. A man who has professedly moved from the town to the country for rest and pleasure, and who observably needs both, feels as free as a debutante to enjoy what is set before him in the way of diversion, with no moral obligation toward his neighbors but that of paying with a wry grin the outrageous prices levied upon all outsiders by the genial natives.
Without quite meaning to, without indeed quite realizing it, the richer men and women of this country, especially in our eastern states, have so shifted the obligation of neighborliness that they have the air of being transients everywhere and neighbors nowhere. Even their country places are not theirs year in and year out for as long as a single generation. We Americans like to change our minds and there is no telling what kind of scenery or what style of architecture we may fancy next.
One hears a great deal about the unfaithfulness of the Irish cook who may "up and leave" any day that she hears of a chance of "bettering herself" elsewhere; but the mistress's unrest is nothing to the plight of the farmer when one considers the lottery of the city folks. The gamble of his crops and the weather is nothing to this other gamble. For the farmer knows that no power under heaven can keep the city man satisfied with his site, his house with five bathrooms, his fancy chicken run, and his concrete garage if the whim should take his wife that the environment was no longer a suitable one for the children. There is no romance, therefore, to the farmer about either his potato crop or his city neighbor. He knows it is not philanthropy that led the city man to buy five acres of poor farm land at the highest notch price, and that no desire for his company has urged the new comer to plant his house on the other side of the back pasture. Being a sensible farmer he makes what profit he can out of his potatoes and his city neighbor before either crop has time to depreciate in value.