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Is saving small-town America worth the expenditure of more state and federal money? As U.S. cities face deeper problems, ranging from grime to gridlock, the rural option could become more important, or at least more appealing. In a recent USA Today poll, 39% of the people surveyed said they would prefer to live in a small town. (According to U.S. Census figures, less than 24% of the population dwells in rural areas, compared with 44% in 1950.) At the very least, says former Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland, "it would be unwise for U.S. public policy to force people to leave rural North Carolina and come to Washington, D.C."
Rather than trying to re-create the web of regulations and subsidies that once supported rural America, federal policy should concentrate on helping rural areas compete in the new global economy. Economist Robert Reich of Harvard University believes that rural America must shift its dependence from production of low-value, high-volume products like grain and simple manufactured goods to high-tech manufacturing and services. To make that transition, business and government would have to pump more money into rural schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure. Says Van Hook: "We have to make some investments in rural America."
Access to high-quality telephone service will be as important to a community in the coming century as the railroads were in the last. Clay Center, because of its inexpensive real estate and literate work force, might be an ideal spot for a credit-card processing center or other "electronic cottage." Unfortunately, Clay Center's phone service, provided by Southwestern Bell, is so antiquated that hookups with international computer networks are impossible.
Telemarketing would not be the complete answer for small towns, because it generally offers mostly minimum-wage jobs. Several studies have found that the full blossoming of a high-tech economy comes only after it receives a heavy dose of defense contracts. The bulk of that money currently goes to the country's heavily populated coastal regions, which have the most congressional representation. Says Tom Daniels, associate professor of regional and community planning at Kansas State: "Look where all the defense dollars are going, and you can see we are creating a bicoastal economy."
Investment in rural America would pay off, says Reich, who believes that small towns will offer opportunities in the next century as urban centers become more congested: "The new economy toward which we're evolving operates on a smaller scale and is far better suited to rural environments. But unless we remove the present barriers to rural America's economic transition, more and more of us will find ourselves packed ever more tightly together."