We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
424 S.
work, instead of the 60 it had taken Grandpa.
For the first time in history the farmer had enough time to think about his niche in this shadow-box called hfe. Time to get out a bit in the world and begin wanting for his own wife and kids something of what he saw.
Carbide Hghts appeared in place of smoky coal-oil lamps; a hand pump replaced the community-cup dipper and old wooden bucket in the kitchen. The kids now had the unheard-of advantage of attending high school, going to college — and they brought home such ideas as wind-chargers and farm-lighting plants.
It was a short step to rural electrification at a minimum charge of $10 a month — more money than Grandpa had ever seen in four weeks. Connecticut and Rhode Island are tied for top honors in electrified farms, with 99.9% each. The East has no corner on kilowats, though. Iowa ranks nineteenth on the electrification program with electric service reaching 95.5% of Iowa farms!
THERE is less and less of the yokel about today's farmer. Like as not, both he and his wife are graduates of their state agricultural college. This is why the number of white Americans attending college, in proportion to the total population, has nearly doubled in the past twenty years.
Who else but the farmer's kids have the money? The rule goes in post-war Japan; and in Ireland, too, where, until recently, the farm lass who tired of her drab existence might earn as much as $1.50 weekly working as a maid in the city. Of course, not every farmer has been equally
blest. Not everybody lives on the same scale in town, either. i
But looking at the over-all picture, these past few years have brought opportunity, a new dignity and a new self-respect to rural dwellers. This same state of affairs can be found in ■ any country around the globe where . the old gray mare has been retired to make room for a shiny red tractor.
Farm youth who have a yearning | J[ for the bright lights after graduation from ag college are now becoming our scientists and captains of industry, too. . ' The farm kid soon learns that the ' * more efficiently he can perform the chores assigned him, the sooner he can be done with them and play cowboy, Indian, or engage in other games. He needs no planned program to develop r his creative abilities, such as must be furnished his city cousin to keep him out of the hands of the police.
Today's dullard has no place on a modern farm. Therefore, he crowds into city tenements or housing projects. When he is old enough to work he takes his place on an assembly line producing something that makes no sense to him. He has small ability to • think for himself. The city, the Government and the social agencies have > done it for him. The thinking nowadays is done by the transplanted farmer who is straining every nerve to make his pile in industry; so he can retire to an acreage! M ti