oads, where substantial prosperity will doubtless continue for many
years to come.

_A False and Misleading Comparison_

Unquestionably a false impression on this question has prevailed in the
cities for a generation past because of obviously unjust comparisons.
Families coming from decadent villages to prosperous cities have talked
much of rural decadence. Stories of murders and low morals in neglected
rural communities have made a great impression on people living in clean
city wards. Meanwhile, not five blocks away, congested city slums never
visited by the prosperous, concealed from popular view, festering social
corruption and indescribable poverty and vice. Let us be fair in our
sociological comparisons and no longer judge our rural worst by our urban
best. Let the rural slum be compared with the city slum and the city
avenues with the prosperous, self-respecting sections of the country; then
contrasts will not be so lurid and we shall see the facts in fair
perspective.

As soon as we learn to discriminate we find that country life as a whole
is wholesome, that country people as a rule are as happy as city people
and fully as jovial and light-hearted and that the fundamental prosperity
of most country districts has been gaining these past two decades. While
rural depletion is widespread, rural _decadence_ must be studied not as a
general condition at all, but as the abnormal, unusual state found in
special sections, such as regions handicapped by poor soil, sections
drained by neighboring industrial centers, isolated mountain districts
where life is bare and strenuous, and the open country away from railroads
and the great life currents. With this word of caution let us examine the
latest reports of rural depletion.

III. Rural Depletion and Rural Degeneracy.

_The Present Extent of Rural Depletion_

The thirteenth census (1910) shows that in spite of the steady gain in the
country districts of the United States as a whole, thousands of rural
townships have continued to lose population. These shrinking communities
are found everywhere except in the newest agricultural regions of the West
and in the black belt of the South. The older the communities the earlier
this tendency to rural depletion became serious. The trouble began in New
England, but now the rural problem is moving west. Until the last census
New England was the only section of the country to show this loss as a
whole; but the 1910 figures ju