rfect social and industrial
organization, I propose to confine myself to the simple question of the
best practical development of village life for farmers. The village or
its immediate vicinity seems to me to offer the urbanist the nearest
approach to the country that is available for his purposes; and in like
manner village life, so far as it can be made to fit his conditions,
offers to the farmer as much of the benefit of town life as the needs of
his work will allow him to obtain. If those who now seek the pleasures
of retirement in costly and soul-wearying country-seats would congregate
into spacious and well-kept villages, and if those who now live in the
solitary retirement of the mud-bound farmhouse would congregate into
villages, we should secure far more relief from the confinement of the
town and a wider-reaching attractiveness in agricultural life; this
latter leading to the improvement of our farming by a solution of that
long-mooted problem, "How to keep the boys on the farm."

Nearly everywhere on the Continent of Europe those who are engaged in
the cultivation of the land live in villages. An observation of the
modes of life and industry of these villages has led me to consider
whether some similar system might not tend to the improvement of the
conditions of our own farmers, and to the amelioration of some hardships
to which their families are subjected.

In Europe, as here, the methods of living have grown from natural
causes. There it was a necessary condition of agricultural industry,
that those who tilled the soil should be protected by the military
power of their lord or chief; and their houses were clustered under the
shadow of his castle wall. The castles have crumbled away, and the
protecting arm of the old baron has been replaced by the protecting arm
of the nation.

The community of living, which grew from necessity, having proved its
fitness by long trial, is still maintained; but there seems to have been
no general tendency toward the formation of such little communities
here. Save in a few exceptional cases,--as in the old villages of the
Connecticut Valley, where protection against Indians or safety from
inundation compelled the original settlers to gather into
communities,--the pioneer built his cabin in his new clearing, and, as
his circumstances improved, changed his cabin for a house, and his small
house for a larger one, and finally established his comfortable home in
connection wit