It was the privilege of the writer to publish in a magazine of wide influence during the past summer an article discussing in some detail the present status of the north-country states, for conditions are almost identical in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. This paper elicited many letters from persons in all three states as well as from other states in the Union. It was significant that from one of the three states in questionnot New Hampshire-the replies were largely along a fatalistic line. They indicated a willingness to let matters drift, and to be content with stagnation. They admitted completion and considered it an asset. One, for example, a distinguished citizen of New England, wrote by way of protest against stirring the subject up. A few sentences paraphrased from his letter are worth quoting:

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"My old home was in a small town in the heart of the mountains in the central part of the state. I think my town reached the maximum of its population about 1840, and since that time every decennial census has shown a reduced population, but in spite of that the town is a much livelier proposition and a far better place to live in than at any time in the past People live in greater comfort than in my boyhood days **** The children are brought, with few exceptions, to a central school in the village, where grades are maintained and where a four-year high school is operated that fits the children for the lower grade colleges. The number of acres tilled is less than it used to be. The number of animals owned is greater, and they are of a superior quality to that which was owned in the valley when I was a boy."

It seems as though it would be hard to ignore the fact that from this community there has been a steady drain of its best people; that while the schools must be maintained at a better standard than of old, there are

pathetically few scholars to attend them. Moreover, roads must be built in a fashion never dreamed of by our ancestors; and thus schools and roads make taxes unbearable because the population has become so small. It is becoming harder and harder in most of the small towns to find men who are capable of filling even the village offices. It is becoming harder and harder, also, in many communities to raise enough upon the farms, with markets uncertain and distant, to support the family, and in consequence the natural economic result follows of very few children. The farms are frequently manned by elderly people. A condition, therefore, which began fifty or more years ago and has slowly developed is now acquiring a much greater momentum, and the plain fact confronts us in rural New England that the north-country small towns, after long stagnation, are rapidly reaching a crisis in their history. The writer of the sentences quoted above is decidedly wrong in one particular. No small community can be pervaded by a cheerful, wholesome, progressive atmosphere which is continually shrinking in size over a long period, and thus ever losing a proportion of its best citizens.

Again, it is suggested that northcountry declines are the result of economic and racial changes which obey fixed laws and which can be influenced but slightly by human effort, however well directed; that increase of population can be secured only by importing the least desirable foreigners; and that it would be better to leave well-enough alone, avoid agitation and prolong the patient's life and, in particular, the "passing of a great race," as long as possible. Better might the writer have said: "Progress is impossible or, if possible, undesirable. We are completed. Let us stagnate." In this instance a half-truth is built into a large falsehood. Almost every noteworthy

achievement in human life is the direct result of deflecting economic laws. which otherwise would have effected fixed results. Races do not die or depart if the environment is favorable to their continuation. Stagnation will foster the operation of economic laws and the loss of the best elements of our naturally alert Anglo-Saxon stock.

Another says pertinently, too: "What has New England northcountry to offer, in the last analysis, even under the most favorable conditions, to make it really worth while for a young man to shut his eyes to the great out-of-doors of the nation and cast in his lot permanently at home?" That's a fair question. The answer is not to be found in mere confident assertion. Curiously enough, it is suggested by a striking picture revealed by the Fourteenth Census of the United States.

The forty-eight states of the union are divided into 3000 civic areas known as counties. Out of 1000 counties dotting the entire vast domain of the republic, to the eyes of the statistician who analyzed the figures of 1920, men and women were pouring hither and thither into the other 2000 counties in such numbers that they reduced the population of the county they left to a figure lower than that shown at the preceding census, so that one-third of all the counties-roughly one-third of all the nation's areashowed loss of population, while the remaining two thirds were called upon to make up the loss, and in addition to supply the national increase. This extraordinary picture is really a statistical prophecy.

The Anglo-Saxon race is at its best in the development of new lands and in confronting and overcoming great obstacles. In Professor Turner's noteworthy book on the influence of the frontier in American history he makes abundantly clear both the extraordinary effect upon our national prog

ress

of the slow, steady forward movement of the line of wildernessbreaking which has been advancing across the continent, and the revolutionary change in character, energy and point of view to be expected in the new period upon which we have now entered, and which, with the absorbing task of settlement over, we turn to the less strenuous tasks of consolidation and normal living.

To this new aspect of national affairs the nation as a whole is not yet accustomed. So long have the discontented in every state had the traditional outlet for ambition by taking up quarter sections, or by seeking the untrodden but inviting areas of California and Washington and Oregon, or by exploiting untouched mining resources, or, later, by settling on the irrigated lands of New Mexico or other far western states, that it is bewildering in our time to find it hard to know where to go.

Yet it is this same discontent with the old home that has made the United States. It began before the republic was thought of. It was first most clearly manifested in Connecticut. There the colonists, nearly all of whom were farmers, raised large families. Their sons and daughters quickly found-as early as 1760-that there was not room on the paternal farm for both parents and children. Dense population and farming do not mix. Therefore the younger generation, true to racial instinct to achieve and develop, packed their scanty belongings on horses and, with the wife on the pillion, trekked up the then only known path to new lands. That path led along the Connecticut River to New Hampshire and Vermont. The town names in Vermont today tell an eloquent story of that earliest migration movement.

But if it is the rush to break new country, to settle, to achieve, and if our present colossal national structure is the monument to this racial quality,

are we not facing a grave situation when we find our house about settled, when the painters and plumbers are almost ready to leave, when the carpets are all down, the chairs all arranged and dusted and the pictures hung? Then what about ourselveswhat are we going to do with ourselves? In our bewilderment, we are tumbling out of one thousand counties into two thousand others, with no real assurance of betterment. The new country is about all explored. In the large, this extraordinary irregular movement of population here and there is the logical aftermath of the ending of the frontier period.

It is obvious that from now on the newer states in which has been occurring the transformation from widerness to reasonably complete settlement, must confront a swarm of unfamiliar problems of their own. Some of these problems, especially as they bear on agriculture, are already of national concern. But the older states have their problems, and our three north-country states in particular face a distinct and very grave problem. It is completion. Is this condition permanent? Are we to consider reaching such a state of completion as an actual asset? Our race, with its instinct facing eagerly toward achievement and action, is singularly ill-adapted to sit still and merely participate mechanically in the workaday affairs of old settled communities. In consequence, in the northcountry states, long settled and with few natural or industrial advantages, there has been a tendency to swing to the other extreme, to a condition of extreme conservatism little more than lethargy. In some cases it is stagnation. Harshly defined, it is race deterioration. It is as though Nature said, "Achieve and be strong; rest and you die." From the rather inert mass of each community there struggle to the surface annually a considerable

number of the younger element, comprising a large proportion of the more alert and energetic, who desire and must have a wider field of action. These depart to other localities where they hope to secure more favorable environment. Thus it has worked out that in many particulars for the last half century or more in the three old, settled north-country states very little progress has been made. The population has either remained about stationary or has tended to decline in most of the communities. It has come to appear as though they were about completed.

But perhaps here in New Hampshire we are not completed. Perhaps there is awakening just ahead for us, and a large task to be performed yet, for a new and extraordinary factor has appeared. A condition plainly has arisen now in our American life. There is an economic law, if you will, now first becoming effective, and in some respects it is irresistible. It arises from the fact that the national area at last is practically settled, and the answer to the man who tries to think prosperity grows as population decreases; to the man who sees inability to meet competition and hence a dying race; and to the man who asks what the youth can find in northern New England to tempt him to stay as against trying his luck in the West or South, is contained in that statistical picture of men and women from a thousand counties all over this broad land, instead of moving in a well-defined west and still further west, as the censuses of '80 and '90 and 1900 revealed, now running confusedly hither and thither about the land. The scent for the working-out of the race instinct as manifested in this land for two hundred years is now lost forever. America is about settled. The corner lots are gone. Not New England alone but all America must find new

outlets for our racial activities and ambitions. Here is again is again New Hampshire's opportunity.

The Middle West, which has been contented with its farming possibilities, is crying aloud with discontent. over unfavorable agricultural conditions. The far West, notably California, is struggling with the problem of an attempt to assimilate more people than they actually need. A distinguished Californian recently wrote that he was delighted to observe an attempt to create opportunities in New England because they might lead to a return of some of the thousands who have come to California and are unassimilated and in reality a burden upon the community. New Hampshire's sister states in turn are falling into the grasp of the same problem of being completed that we have so long known. Let us awake ere they find themselves, and take our account of stock.

We are a small, compact area favorably situated at the door of the greatest urban markets in America. What are we capable of doing best and most profitably? Having decided that, let us go after markets and claim Our own. The future prosperity of many of the states of the union not specially favored by nature is likely to depend more and more on business management.

The vast population of the United States will tend to eddy and flow back to what in earlier days seemed less favored areas, as numbers and congestion increase. Men and women will cease to emigrate as freely as in the past, because the chances of successful change grow less as numbers increase. Thus racial instinct for achievement will find its outlet in taking advantage of opportunities for organization and development of enterprises made possible by the new conditions.

The north-country has come upon a period of new life and achievement if it will have it so. More than ever before, its destiny is within its own control. Shall we not bestir ourselves and turn the old racial longing to develop and to create into new and equally important activities within the old settled communities: the application of business ability, capital and energy to developing and marketing with skill exceeding that of our competitors all that New Hampshire can produce? Thus shall we arouse courage and increase strength; and from the long list of one thousand counties out of which in 1920 men and women were pouring forth, behold, the counties of New Hampshire will be withdrawn. New Hampshire is yet far from completed.

The GRANITE MONTHLY being New Hampshire's state magazine is naturally deeply interested in the efforts of the group of men and women who are devoting their energies to the project of bringing new life and vigor to our state. The magazine in its July number expressed its commendation and sympathy concerning the article "Three Sentinels of the North," the appearance of which in the Atlantic Monthly marked the beginning of this movement. In the September issue Captain Winant gave

an account of the conference at Durham. The article above by the author of the "Three Sentinels of the North" is a continuation of this same thought, and we are glad to announce that in the December GRANITE MONTHLY there will appear another article of the series entitled "A New Hampshire Program" by ExGovernor Robert P. Bass who has been identified with the work of rejuvenating our state, especially in respect to the development of its water power and other natural resources.