A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B.Lafollette's ARECENT letter from our boy in the Philippines echoes an oft-repeated refrain, "I feel the revolt against mechanics growing more and more strongly within...
...Of course his prosaic ma inquired by return mail who was going to buy said guns, rods, and books and what was he going to use for money ? A lot of this is idle talk, of course, but the increasing number of people who want a place in the country, large or small according to their means, seems to me a testimonial to an increasing rebellion against the bee-hive life of the city...
...MANY people are going to learn the "hard way" that big wages or income are not the answer to happiness...
...The number of cars parked by the most ordinary pond of an evening or Sunday while their owners sit peacefully with rod in hand, bite or no bite, is another testimonial of this primitive urge...
...how fortunate it is that nature is so varied that all the boys don't fall for the same girl...
...Up near our farm there has been a huge powder plant employing thousands of workers...
...A letter a while back told of his yearning for the north woods, with guns, rods and books and the "free" life, and he took'his parents to task for their "conventional" existence...
...The millions of men and their families who have been torn apart and uprooted have been forced to dig deep within themselves and analyze their values, the things that are most important in life...
...Some of you may recall my comments from time to time on his interest in the out-of-doors, his hawks and owls and other wild life...
...As I say to the children when they remark "What in the world she sees in him is beyond me...
...As I have thought it over, it has seemed to me that many of the younger generation, despite the popular passion for airplanes, feel a definite yearning need for the basic satisfactions of nature...
...While the born airplane "bug" and a few others have found their deep passion satisfied in particular niches of the war machine, I sense that the vast majority of men deeply resent the restricted life of the armed services...
...CITY and industrial planners have concerned themselves for a long time about cities and factories of the future, how life can be made more efficient and at the same time satisfactory...
...Our boy and some of his friends talk about this kind of life...
...Many people have expressed surprise and interest that modern boys should take up the ancient hobby of falconry...
...Many of the young farmers from this area went into the powder plant attracted by its huge wages...
...To be a "free" man in the world of nature was what they wanted from life...
...The variation in humanity is wonderful...
...On the economic side, however, there is a very difficult adjustment to be made both individually and socially...
...It is closing down* with the resultant unemployment...
...I was pleased, for example, to learn of one powder plant worker, formerly a farmer, who is going back to farming...
...He has a family and wants the children to grow up in that environment rather than "having nothing to do in town...
...The serious harvest problem that has faced farmers all over the country is more than a temporary dislocation, it seems to me...
...I have a feeling that not only from a production point of view will this movement be accelerated by the war but by individuals themselves...
...Farmers ask, "How can you expect to get hired men if they are going to pay the unemployed $25 per week ?" I don't know how the experts are going to work this out, but I do think that the educators or psychologists should be called in to cooperate in attempting to get the individual to consider the values involved in choosing his and her life work...
...A considerable number of them tried the experiment for a while and then returned to farm life as containing the values they really wanted...
...The men who have been in the jungles, deserts, and trenches do not seem to be so concerned about money as about living values—a home, congenial work, satisfying recreation...
...As machines take over increasingly the drudgery of city and farm, we must take care not " to let them take over our spirit also...
...I am sure that the millions of boys who have been regimented for several years will say "amen...
...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B.Lafollette's ARECENT letter from our boy in the Philippines echoes an oft-repeated refrain, "I feel the revolt against mechanics growing more and more strongly within me...
...In various books I have read in the past four years I have noted references to men who, in rebellion to their experiences in World War I, went off into the wildernesses of the world and lived the life of a recluse...
...On the other hand, now that the draft has been lifted for the men over 26, many farmers are losing help who now admit they were there "for the duration" and now want "to drive a truck and make money...
...Phil wrote me when he himself was in the Pacific, "What do you suppose started that interest in Bob...
...I am observing this conflict in the surrounding countryside...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
