176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE RURAL OPPORTUNITY AND THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 



By JOSEPH WOODBURY STROUT 



EEHOBOTH, MASS. 



ff^HE rural community is the granary of the world. Civilization is 

 -*~- not possible without the farmer. The great city could not endure 

 without the country. This feature of the economic situation is just now 

 making itself prominent. The rapid increase of population in the 

 cities naturally means decrease of population in the rural districts, 

 which, in turn, means decrease in agricultural area, so that, while pro 

 rata, increased products of the soil are demanded, decreased products are 

 the facts. At least there is no marked increase of the food product of 

 the world. These conditions bring the rural district to the front as 

 holding the key to the situation. 



But the rural community is not only the granary of the world, it is 

 also the sanatorium of the world. In the fight against disease nothing 

 counts for more than pure air, wild storms of wind, and isolation. This 

 asset can not be measured in dollars and cents. Here also, the country 

 becomes indispensable to the city. Hospitals and homes of all kinds, 

 now, are pushing out into the country and gathering upon the hills. 

 God's great out-of-doors is with the farmer, and medical science is 

 making the largest possible use of it in that direction. The opportunity 

 here opened for the rural community to fill a large place in the world 

 is wide and deep. 



Still another and perhaps greater opening before the rural community 

 is its possibility to reform the boys and girls, stray waifs from the city, 

 that are now being colonized in the country. Massachusetts has about 

 abandoned her larger institutions for homeless boys and girls for the 

 purer atmosphere of the farm home. Children of such type can be 

 better managed in the country where they are isolated than in an insti- 

 tution where a hundred or more are segregated. Besides, the farmer, 

 usually in need of boys, seldom fails to greatly benefit these waifs, and 

 sometimes makes good citizens of them. I can point to a number of 

 instances where excellent results have been obtained, and boys on their 

 way to the penitentiary, and girls to the reformatory, have been lifted 

 to higher planes of moral energy, trained often to take the initiative in 

 large activities, meanwhile making for themselves homes of comfort and 

 love. The opportunity is before the rural district to lift a large part 

 of the world to new life, and to give new energy to that part of the 

 world which is left. 



