Worth County - Missouri's future?

GRANT CITY, Mo. -- Most Missourians probably have never heard of Worth County, one of the state's 114 counties.

Those who know of the county's existence probably know it as Missouri's least populous county, which the U.S. Census Bureau says contains only 2,382 residents after losing 2.38 percent of its population over the past 10 years. The county has been losing population for decades, although not at the 12.23 percent rate of St. Louis.

The problem is that Worth County and its county seat of Grant City can't afford to lose many more residents or it will simply cease to exist. Some residents say that is virtually the case now.

A few months ago Worth County gained national notice when U.S. News & World Report dubbed it Widowville, U.S.A., a dubious honor due to the fact the county has the nation's highest proportion of widows. Nearly one in every six residents is a widow, making this small rural county in Northwest Missouri on the Iowa border a foreteller of what a nation of widows might look like.

In the only viable commercial center, Grant City, the view is hardly one to stir much faith in the future. Boarded-up buildings dot the town square. The drug store, hardware store, clothing store and baseball-cap factory that closed several months ago have all disappeared. Not to worry, says an officer with the Area Agency on Aging. Worth County receives more in government transfer payments -- mostly from Social Security and Medicare -- than its residents make in wages and salaries, even before the only factory closed.

Grant City's one source of economic development, if it can be called that, is the number of persons engaged in caring for the elderly widows who make up so much a part of the area. Grant City has two nursing homes, two funeral homes and a monument company, all designed to care for the dying.

New doctor in town

Until three years ago there were no doctors in Worth County. Now there are two, one a native of India who moved into the old doctor's office on the square, inheriting equipment that had been around since the 1950s. The new doctor from halfway around the world arrived in Northwest Missouri after a residency in New York City at a hospital that saw more patients in one day than Grant City has residents. One can speculate that he suffered more culture shock upon moving to Grant City than he experienced when he arrived in New York.

In less drastic form, the environment of Worth County is duplicated in much of Northwest Missouri as well as Northeast Missouri and portions of the Ozarks hill country, areas in which counties have lost as much as 14 percent of their population in the past 10 years alone despite an overall statewide population gain of 9.34 percent. Sixteen Missouri counties lost population from 1990 to 2000, while 36 gained at a rate below the state average.

It is relatively safe to say none of these areas is a full -- perhaps not even a partial -- participant in what has become the affluent technological age of our state's economy.

Perhaps more disturbing than what has become the accepted status quo in much of today's outstate Missouri is the fact that few if any of these conditions existed or were even predictable in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Fifty years ago outstate Missouri was a vibrant and integral part of the state's economy, with busy, thriving farms, bustling small towns which offered a full range of consumer services, and a population that was brimming with confidence in the future. Factories of all kinds producing everything from shoes to clothing to durable products sought out rural areas for their work ethic, their dependable workers and the social and economic stability that were considered a vital component of America's manufacturing sector.

There seems to be no logical reason why the dramatic slippage of small towns was so studiously ignored by Missouri's elected officials and so much of its economic development services.

The popular belief at the time was undoubtedly that the stability of rural Missouri, and sizable portions of the urban area, would retain forever their economic stability and viability. This assumption was clearly wrong, as the decline of Widowville, U.S.A., and many other communities with a similar fate make so perfectly clear in Year 2001.

An unresolved question, but not an inappropriate one in light of the problems, is what our state's political, economic and cultural leaders intend to do about these hardly positive effects. If the past means anything, they will make little, or no, effort to recognize the problem, much less be willing to work to devise development programs aimed to benefit declining rural areas and their many thousands of residents.

Fighting back

Missouri is not without weapons to fight rural decay and decline. For starters, we have the Department of Economic Development, a huge agency that embraces everything from promoting made-in-Missouri products in overseas markets to developing and financing tourism programs that will attract both domestic and foreign visitors to the state.

As for programs designed to enhance rural progress and development, they are literally few and far between, virtually unnoticed and unnoticeable when it comes to rural small town communities. A few plaques each year for individuals who have worked on local projects will not, over any period of time, guarantee any measure of progress in the forgotten towns and counties of Missouri. Missourians dare not let Grant City and Worth County become the predictors of their state in the future.

Missouri has more to save than downtown St. Louis.

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.