'Rural Modern': Where modernism and regionalism met

'How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" That was the musical question posed by a 1919 pop song immediately after the end of World War I. The truth is, of course, that we didn't keep them down on the farm. The song was, itself, an expression and an example of an American culture that was increasingly metropolitan, increasingly industrial, and increasingly shaped by interests that were far from the land.