curs most frequently in densely populated towns on the
one hand, and on the other in partially deserted rural districts. Murder
is a phenomenon of both the frontier life of an advancing population and
of the declining civilization in its rear; it is preeminently the crime of
the new town and the decaying town.... Crimes of all kinds are less
frequent in prosperous agricultural communities and in thriving towns of
moderate size, where the relation of income to the standard of living is
such that the life struggle is not severe."[4]

[Illustration: Rural Schools in Daviess County, Indiana.]

_Stages and Symptoms of Rural Decadence_

In his discussion of the country problem, Dr. Josiah Strong reminds us
that rural decadence comes as an easy evolution passing through rather
distinct stages, when the rural community has really lost its best blood.
Roads deteriorate,--those all-important arteries of country life; then
property soon depreciates; schools and churches are weakened; often
foreign immigrants crowd out the native stock, sometimes infusing real
strength, but often introducing the continental system of rural peasantry,
with absentee landlords. Then isolation increases, with a strong tendency
toward degeneracy and demoralization.

Where this process is going on we are not surprised to find such
conditions as Rev. H. L. Hutchins described in 1906 in an address before
the annual meeting of the Connecticut Bible Society at New Haven. From a
very intimate experience of many years in the rural sections of
Connecticut, he gave a most disheartening report, dwelling upon the
increasing ignorance of the people, their growing vices, the open contempt
for and disregard of marriage, the alarming growth of idiocy, partly the
result of inbreeding and incest, some localities being cited where
practically all the residents were brothers and sisters or cousins, often
of the same name, so that surnames were wholly displaced by nicknames; the
omnipresence of cheap whiskey with its terrible effects, the resulting
frequency of crimes of violence; the feebleness and backwardness of the
schools and the neglect and decay of the churches, resulting in inevitable
lapse into virtual paganism and barbarism, in sections that two
generations ago were inhabited by stalwart Christian men and women of the
staunch old New England families.

Doubtless similar illustrations of degradation could be cited from the
neglected corners of all the olde