Description
Book SynopsisThe study of the problems of rural life that were thought to underlie eastern agrarian discontent in the first quarter of this century was published originally in 1913 under the auspices of the Board of Social Service and Evangelism of the Presbyterian Church of Canada. It has been republished in an attempt to counter the bias of social historians who tend to emphasize the industrial and urban problems of a changing society. Most Canadians lived in a rural environment not so many years ago and their problems -- depletion of the rural population and its economic and social causes and consequences -- are surveyed here in the special context of the work of the country church.
The 1911 census had shown Canada's rural life to be in peril. The lure of steadily rising wages in urban factories and mills was intensifying the movement away from the country. Political leaders took worried note: "There can be no health in the cities without corresponding health in the country," said the Minist
