s destined to experience
further losses, calls for patient study of social forces and requires a
reconstruction of the whole social outfit. But it should be remembered
that an increasing population gathers in rural towns thickly strewn
throughout the depleted tract, and that the cheer of their growth and
thrift is as much a part of the rural situation as the perplexity incident
to a diminishing body of people."[3]

Whereas the main trend in rural districts is toward better social and
moral conditions as well as material prosperity, we do not have to look
far to find local degeneracy in the isolated places among the hills or in
unfertile sections which have been deserted by the ambitious and
intelligent, leaving a pitiable residuum of "poor whites" behind. Such
localities furnish the facts for the startling disclosures which form the
basis of occasional newspaper and magazine articles such as Rollin Lynde
Hartt's in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 83, _The Forum_, June 1892, the
_St. Albans Messenger_ Jan. 2, 1904, et cetera.

_The Question of Degeneracy in City and Country_

The question has long been debated as to whether criminals and defectives
are more common in the city or the country. Dwellers in prosperous,
well-governed suburban cities, that know no slums, are positive that the
rural districts are degenerate. Country people in prosperous rural
sections of Kansas, for instance, where no poor-house or jail can be found
for many miles, insist that degeneracy is a city symptom! It is obvious
that discrimination is necessary. The great majority of folks in both city
and country are living a decent life; degeneracy is everywhere the
exception. It would be fully as reasonable to condemn the city as a whole
for the breeding places of vice, insanity and crime which we call the
slums, as it is to characterize rural life in general as degenerate.

In view of the evident fact that both urban and rural communities have
their defectives and delinquents, in varying ratio, depending on local
conditions, Professor Giddings suggests a clear line of discrimination.
"Degeneration manifests itself in the protean forms of suicide, insanity,
crime and vice, which abound in the highest civilization, where the
tension of life is extreme, and in those places from which civilization
has ebbed and from which population has been drained, leaving a
discouraged remnant to struggle against deteriorating conditions.... Like
insanity, crime oc