[HN Gopher] The Future of Rural New England (1897)
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The Future of Rural New England (1897)
Author : luu
Score : 30 points
Date : 2022-10-20 09:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| onecommentman wrote:
| Journal issue (July 1897) available from Internet Archive
|
| https://archive.org/details/sim_atlantic_1897-07_80_477/page...
| bell-cot wrote:
| From my dim recollections of a long-ago history book - back
| around that time, rural New England was a pretty dire
| "agricultural rust belt" - because none of the climate,
| geography, or typical size of farms there could compete with
| "newer" farms in parts of the country further west. And railroads
| were bringing the cheaper products of those farms east, to
| directly compete with New England's small, old, rocky farms.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Amazing how little attitudes change over the years. This reads
| just like a modern Bostonian complaining about the ways and
| inhabitants of places like Springfield or Fall River.
|
| That said, much to the credit of Mr. Sandborn, unlike many,
| perhaps most, of his modern counterparts he does not implicitly
| assume superiority to the people about who's plight he writes nor
| does he proclaim that fixing his favorite pet issues using his
| favorite pet solutions will suddenly fix everyone's problems.
| dont__panic wrote:
| As someone who frequently blames car-dependence for many of the
| USA's social problems, this passage really stood out:
| The large size of the townships and the long distances
| between dwellings have had much to do with making social
| coherence difficult. A single township may embrace four or
| five communities two or three miles apart, with no common
| rallying-point but the annual townmeeting. Not only do
| these detached sections get nothing socially from the
| township as a whole, but they are not, as a rule, populous
| or compact enough to have any appreciable social activity
| of their own. In this respect our farming communities are
| at a distinct disadvantage as compared with those of France
| and most of the other countries of the Old World. There the
| tillers of the soil live closely together, in almost
| crowded villages, from which they go forth to their work in
| the outlying fields.
|
| I wonder why even early in the USA's history, before cars, before
| railroads, we distributed housing so widely as to inhibit
| socialization? I guess it's because towns grew up around separate
| farmsteads, instead of a bunch of non-owners living in town,
| working fields around town for an estate owner? I usually assume
| that this USA-specific "missing middle" of dense housing is a
| result of car culture and the suburban nightmare we've created
| across the country. In fact, I specifically chose to live in a
| small, dense New England town because I like that kind of
| socialization and walkability. It is curious to hear someone
| complaining about the same issue, over 100 years ago, for
| entirely different reasons.
| ericmay wrote:
| > I usually assume that this USA-specific "missing middle" of
| dense housing is a result of car culture and the suburban
| nightmare we've created across the country.
|
| The rural areas are just that, rural. But cities are where the
| problem of the suburban nightmare take hold and they weren't an
| issue for most of American history because a city was a city
| and the countryside was the countryside.
|
| This changed with the highway infrastructure, gutting of city
| transit like existing streetcars, etc. and trying to sell the
| idyllic countryside at mass scale that was for a brief period
| "achievable" via personal automobile.
|
| Socialization doesn't have to be because of density. It can be
| between homesteaders who pass each other by once in awhile or
| meet up at the market place that exists in the town. The
| problem with suburbs is that they don't reproduce any of the
| benefits of city life or productive rural life.
| monknomo wrote:
| This article contrasts two different modes of rural areas.
|
| There is the US-style rural, where the homesteads are widely
| separated. The house is on the farm, and far from the
| neighbors.
|
| Then there is the European (and really most of the rest of
| the world) style of rural, where there is a dense little
| village and the farmers travel to their fields, rather than
| live in the middle of the fields.
|
| Why is that, even without cars?
| stevesearer wrote:
| It likely would have to do with how land was distributed to
| owners in the US compared to how it was distributed in
| Europe:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(United_States)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_township
| rhapsodic wrote:
| > _I usually assume that this USA-specific "missing middle" of
| dense housing is a result of car culture and the suburban
| nightmare we've created across the country_
|
| I suspect the layout of European farming communities is a
| holdover from feudalism, when serfs worked the land on behalf
| of the lord of the manor, who owned all the land.
|
| They probably found conditions in the New World much more
| desirable, where they could own their own farm. And when they
| owned their own farm, they probably found it much more
| convenient to live close to the fields and barns and livestock
| that they also owned.
| ghaff wrote:
| I live in an old New England farm town in a house from the
| early 1800s. (The town was founded in 1653.)
|
| Looking at maps from the 1800s, it was always pretty spread
| out. There is a small town green with a couple old churches,
| library, cemetery, and town hall. And there used to be some
| mills along the river. But it was mostly fairly spread out
| farming.
|
| As you suggest, in England and I assume other areas of Europe
| there would be a more distinct village with a place dating to
| that time.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I know double-commenting is frowned upon, but this quote also
| stood out to me as a bike nerd: The least
| important, perhaps, and yet to some of us the saddest
| thing about the decay of New England country life has
| been the disappearance of the hospitable wayside tavern.
| Something similar, it is hoped, may be brought in by the
| bicycle. It is much to be feared, however, that the new
| bicycle road-house will be nothing more hospitable than a
| mammoth stand-up lunch-counter.
|
| I wonder what these wayside taverns were like. Nowadays, I find
| myself happy enough with "stand-up lunch-counters" when I
| bicycle tour (ride self-supported long distances by bicycle). I
| also find myself greatly appreciating the dirt roads present in
| Vermont and much of New England, since they slow down car
| traffic and are honestly much more pleasant to bike on than
| poorly maintained pavement roads. Meanwhile, this author
| laments the poor state of (presumably dirt) carriage roads
| across rural New England. It's interesting how I seem to agree
| with the base thoughts and preferences of the author, but we
| have inverted preferences on these things (for similar
| reasons).
|
| I wonder what this author thought about the automobile.
| jollyllama wrote:
| It's relatively easier to have a pint or two and ride a horse
| or drive a wagon than it is to do the same and ride an old
| bicycle. I would assume you could also water, feed, and rest
| your horse at the tavern, which a bicycle did not require.
| baxtr wrote:
| What is double-commenting?
| waster wrote:
| Replying to one's own comment.
| chrsig wrote:
| It's much easier to appreciate the dirt roads when you're a
| tourist. Having grown up on a dirt road in New England, I can
| say that I'd much rather it were paved.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I may be wrong but I'm guessing it's because in europe the
| peasants didn't own the land. The hub and spoke design of old
| world villages was beneficial to the landlords, not the
| workers.
| neaden wrote:
| I think this is kind of true, but not fully. It's not that
| the peasants didn't own the land, though certainly many
| didn't, it's that they didn't farm contiguous rectangular
| fields like is common in America. In older farming there
| would be two or three fields for crop rotation, and then
| different parts of the field would be owned by different
| people. So you might have a bit over here, a bit over there,
| etc. You would grow different crops on different areas of the
| field, and then have a vegetable garden near your house. In
| America, relatively early on, instead we ended up with
| farmers who had a single contiguous piece of land where they
| primarily farmed a single crop.
| monknomo wrote:
| Seeing like a state covers this - it could be that in the
| interest of making ownership legible (while dispossessing
| the Native Americans), people could only buy contiguous
| land.
|
| In particular, I'm reminded of the piece on how the tsar
| and soviets both tried to get rid of the strip system that
| the peasants liked because it was easy to farm and manage
| from their level.
| kodah wrote:
| > I wonder why even early in the USA's history, before cars,
| before railroads, we distributed housing so widely as to
| inhibit socialization?
|
| It might seem strange but there's a lot of people out there who
| don't hate you but also don't want to hear from you unless it's
| on their own terms.
|
| > I usually assume that this USA-specific "missing middle" of
| dense housing is a result of car culture and the suburban
| nightmare we've created across the country.
|
| The south and Midwest were built before cars. I don't think
| this hypothesis tracks. It seems like it's just a popular topic
| on HN that exists among a younger, city-living crowd who are
| searching for answers. Answers which they'd like to use to
| influence national policy, whether it fits or not.
|
| Edit: that's not to say we can't have more spaces that have
| less or no cars, but folks here use "car-free" a lot, and not
| just with respect to their locality.
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