e unhappy, dissatisfied, and
therefore, oftentimes inefficient and unsuccessful. Even when they are
successful, they have fallen far below what they might have accomplished
had they been engaged in some vocation which would have given them not
only physical activity out of doors, but _some intense vital interest_ in
the _result_ of that activity. In other words, their vocation should
supply them with the necessary physical exercise as part of the day's
work. They should see themselves advancing, making money, achieving
something worth while, creating something beautiful or useful, making a
career for themselves, instead of merely playing or exercising for the
sake of exercise. Then they would be happier. Then they would be better
satisfied with their lot. They would be more efficient and far more
successful.

Current literature abounds in true stories of those who have gone forward
to the land and have found help, happiness, and success in the cultivation
of the soil. This one has redeemed an abandoned farm in New England. That
one has taken a small ten-acre farm in southern California. Another has
carved out health, happiness, and a fair degree of fortune for himself on
the plains of Washington or Idaho, or among the hills of Oregon. Old
southern plantations have been rehabilitated at the same time with their
new owners or tenants.

ONE MAN'S "WAY OUT"

Near Gardiner, Maine, is a little forty-five acre poultry and fruit farm
which pays its happy owner $3,800 a year clear of all expense. Seven years
ago this farm was abandoned by its former owners, who could not make it
pay. Five years ago it was purchased by its present owner for a song--and
only a half-line of the song was sung at the time. He was a clerk who had
lived the little-flat-dark-office-and-subway life until tuberculosis had
removed him from his job and threatened his life. Farm work--on his own
farm--proved to be a game at which he could play with zest and success.
The stakes were a life and a living--and he has won. We--and you, too, no
doubt--could multiply narratives from observation and experience, to say
nothing of reading.

A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY

All these experiences and the reports of them are both a part of and a
stimulus to the "back to the land movement." This movement has its
mainspring in two plain economic facts, namely: first, clerical and other
indoor vocations have become overcrowded; second, while crops grow bigger
year