Vacant Farm Houses

1920

It is reported that more than 24,000 farm dwellings are without occupants in the State of New York alone. This is based on a careful survey. At the same time, not a city in New York but is confronted by a housing problem that can only be solved by a tremendous building campaign. In this condition may be noted one of the serious phases of our national problem. "How are you going to keep them down on the farm?"

That bright lights attract the youth is admitted. This is not all the story, but it is a considerable part of it, asserts the Omaha Bee. Boys and girls weary of the monotonous round of life on the farms and flit to the city. There they soon find themselves so immersed in the struggle for existence that they have little time to think of the farm. When the novelty of the city life has worn off, the ugly fact sticks out that underneath all its attractions is the specter of want, that its glittering exterior hides moral and material ugliness of a kind that is unknown to the country.


Old Clothes

Tailors say that they are doing quite as much business in making over old garments as in making new ones, says the Des Moines Register.

"I have a patron who wouldn't have appeared on the street three years ago in a suit that had a patch the size of a pea on the inside of the coat sleeve," says a local tailor. "Now he brings me his clothes to mend as long as they will stay together. He is reputed to be well to do, and I know that he lives on a fairly lavish scale, so I figure that it's a matter of principle with him. He doesn't want to buy while prices are where they are."

"Old clothes, old rags, old bottles." H.C.L. has disposed of the first part of the ragman's cry, and prohibition of the last. The old clothes man is passing out.