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3. "The Prizes of Life Lie Away from the Farm" When urban women and men felt twinges of envy as they looked at more affluent people on streets and in stores, they could try to assuage their envy through emulation. They could attempt to recast themselves into what they longed to be. America's rural population had little opportunity to do the same. While envy was at least as prevalent among country folk as city folk, country dwellers encountered a number of difficulties when they tried to actively address their sense of deprivation. Those rural Americans who envied and were eager to alter their circumstances faced a daunting task. The social environment of rural areas made it difficult for dissatisfied men and women to change their lives. In part, this was because individual identity was more anchored and less fluid on farms and in small towns. Who one was depended on where and to whom one was born. Neighbors and fellow townsmen often had a collective memory of each other's childhood days and deeds, finances, histories, and prospects. These memories frustrated the efforts of individuals intent on changing themselves and their circumstances. In consequence, a new wardrobe or car was ineffectual in altering long-standing perceptions of one's social status. In stark contrast to this social environment stood cities, where the accidents of birth and family history mattered less. In an anonymous bustling city, ambitious individuals could try to shake off their old identities and assume new ones by changing their clothes, their addresses, their acquaintances , and their work. In cities they could also avail themselves of the many stores and specialty shops that offered material goods which might serve to alter their identities. These fundamental differences between the urban and "THE PRIZES OF LIFE LIE AWAY FROM THE FARM" 97 rural environments shaped the emotional experiences of country people. Increasingly aware of the possibilities for self-transformation that the urban commercial culture touted, yet unable to effect these changes in their own lives, many rural dwellers became convinced that the modem world was passing them by. As Theodore Roosevelt noted in a 1908 letter, there was a widespread belief among rural people "that the prizes of life lie away from the farm."1 Rural people were discontented because their expectations and desires had changed but the daily reality of farm life had not. As Herbert Quick, an Iowa-born chronicler of the rural migration noted in 1913, the nation had shifted its priorities and interests away from rural life and toward urban life. He conjectured that the rural migration was "the outward evidence of something which has taken place inside the people." What had taken place "inside " the people was the dawning realization that their style of life and life chances in the isolated country, far from the economic opportunities, conveniences , pleasures, and excitement of the city, were inferior to those of city dwellers. Young men and young women growing up on the farm or in small country towns (here defined as having populations of fewer than 2,500 people ) were newly aware of the pleasures and possibilities of urban life and felt entitled to them. They manifested their envy and discontent in a number of ways. Some rural men and women merely felt inadequate, some tried to imitate city modes and lifestyles in the country, and others left the country for the city in late adolescence or young adulthood.z The number who chose to migrate was substantial. During this period there were great changes in both the profile and the prevailing conceptions of country life. The nation's population shifted from being primarily rural to increasingly urban. In 1880, country dwellers made up 71.4 percent of the nation's population, in 1890, 64.6 percent. By 1900 rural inhabitants constituted 60.0 percent of the population; by 1920, 48.6 percent, and by 1930, only 43.8 percent. Between 1920 and 1930 alone, rural migrants to cities numbered 5,734,200--11.1 percent of the total number of residents who had been living in the countryside at the beginning of the decade. A substantial portion of those who migrated to the city were members of the rural middle class. Sociologists and historians have argued that at the end of the nineteenth century, farm families represented a shrinking "old middle class," which was being challenged in numbers and in status by the "new middle class," employed in cities by large corporations, the government, and...

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