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Chapter VII
Population
This nine square miles of territory contains two
hundred and fifty-two inhabitants, many more than it contained a few
years ago, and it will support many more. There
is enough land uncultivated to support as many more.
Then, by proper management, the farmer could produce more on one
acre than he
does on two, and population is what we need to make a country
neighborhood
lively. An increase of population, say
twofold,
would give us, instead of five months of free school, eight months. A three-fold increase would give us ten months
of
school, as they have in our cities. It
would
require more teachers is the reason the duration of the school would
not
increase in the same ration as the population. Give
us a more dense population and the church house pews will be filled on
the
Sabbath as country people have no where else to spend their evenings as
city people have. Our Sabbath schools,
instead
of being a drag, would be attractive to both old and young. It may be seen, our population being
twenty-seven
to the square mile, that we have already above what is an average
population
of the United States, or the State of Tennessee, or the County of
Bradley,
but still there is room for more. Some of
the
old countries have five hundred and seventeen to the square mile, and
some
have more. This being the garden spot of
the
world of course would support a large number. Then where a man owns six
hundred
and forty acres let him sell seven farms of eighty acres each and he
will
still have all the land he needs. These
ideas
may seem a little extravagant to some, but please think before you
criticize. I have no patience whatever
with the optimistic
doctrine that this is a chosen nation and that God will take care of
it,
neither do I wish to argue that this is a chosen neighborhood and that
God
will fee[d], clothe, and educate its inhabitants, but I do claim that
any
industrious, energetic man can do well here and there is no excuse for
pauperism
in a country settlement. There is a great
deal
of talk about hard times, and while the towns and cities are overrun
with
laborers, unemployed working men, the uncultivated fields and hillside
slopes
of east Tennessee smilingly invite them hither to work for a company
that
never fails, and whose banks never break. There
is never a drought nor flood, never a grasshopper panic, hailstorm or
cyclone,
no contagious diseases, nothing to create a panic in this neighborhood. Talk about class legislation, monopolies,
trusts
and corners, but there is no businessman any more certain of daily
bread
than the farmer of this little section. If
the
weather is cold, the farmer already has a large pile of wood prepared. If there happens to be a poor widow out of
wood the
neighbors go and haul it for her. Then
while
the cities are establishing their charitable institutions for feeding
the
poor, why not send some of the honest ones to the country to earn bread
by
the sweat of their brow. The farmers of
this
section talk of hard times ss they do everywhere, but they are
evidently
as independent a people that ever lived.