populated by farmers retiring to
a nearby town and "renters" taking the place. "Renters" are very often
very poor, and sometimes shiftless--no money to spend on anything but
the real necessities; sometimes even too poor to send their children to
school.

One cause for this is that our whole attitude toward labor is wrong.
We look upon labor as an uncomfortable experience, which, if we endure
with patience, we may hope to outgrow and be able to get away from. We
practically say: "Let us work now, so that by and by we may be able to
live without working!" Many a farmer and his wife have denied
themselves everything for years, comforting themselves with the thought
that when they have enough money they will "retire." They will not
take the time or the money to go to a concert, or a lecture, or a
picnic, but tell themselves that when they retire they will just go to
everything. So just when they have everything in fine shape on the
farm, when the lilacs are beginning to bloom and the raspberry bushes
are bearing, they "retire." Father's rheumatism is bad, and mother
can't get help, so they rent the farm and retire.

The people to whom the farm is rented do not care anything about the
lilac or raspberry bushes--there is no money in them. All they care
about is wheat--they have to pay the rent and they want to make money.
They have the wheat lust, so the lilacs bloom or not as they feel
disposed, and the cattle trample down the raspberry bushes and the gate
falls off the top hinge. Meanwhile the farmer and his wife move into
town and buy a house. They get just a small house, for the wife says
she's tired of working. Every morning at 4.30 o'clock they waken.
They often thought about how nice it would be not to have to get up;
but now, someway it isn't nice. They can't sleep, everything is so
quiet. Not a rooster crowing. Nor a hen cackling! They get up and
look out. All down the street the blinds are drawn. Everybody is
asleep--and it all looks so blamed lazy.

They get up. But there is nothing to do. The woman is not so badly
off--a woman can always tease out linen and sew it up again, and she
can always crochet. Give her a crochet needle, and a spool of
"sil-cotton," and she will keep out of mischief. But the man is not so
easy to account for. He tries hard to get busy. He spades the garden
as if he were looking for diamonds. He cleans the horse until the poor
brute hates the sight of him. He piles