152 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



important problem before the nation today, barring none, is the 

 building up of rural life. 



The Illinois Farmers Institute has said that the greatest 

 problem in connection with this work is the farmer himself. 

 The farmer is the problem within the problem. And if that be 

 so, then the farmer on the farm — not the retired farmer, but the 

 farmer on the farm, following soil, conserving methods of agri- 

 culture and having his family's welfare and his community's 

 interests at heart — is the most important citizen in the nation 

 today. There is no question about that in my mind, and I 

 don't believe any one who has given it any thought feels dif- 

 ferently about it. 



The care of the soil and the care of its caretakers is the 

 problem of today. It is not the question of talking to people 

 and getting them to like the farm better, but it is a question of 

 making the farm and the country more likeable; building up the 

 farm from the social as well as the productive side, for we are all 

 too apt to forget that farming is a life as well as an industry.- 



We are talking a good deal in the cities nowadays, and it is 

 high time we should, about social and industrial welfare, of 

 making the housing conditions what they ought to be, the social 

 conditions what they should be, and yet all too little has been 

 said about the same thing in the country, and they wonder why 

 it is the people are getting away from the farm. We are getting 

 away from the farms for very many reasons, and one of the 

 reasons is these one-room schoolhouses. Getting away because 

 the schools are not doing for the children what they ought to do, 

 what Mrs. Harvey has shown us even a one-room school can do. 



Mrs. Harvey is an asset to this State; no similar address has 

 ever so impressed me as has hers. It represents a life's work 

 for the life of the country school. 



We are apt to say in connection with rural life that this or 

 that problem, whatever it may be — -schools, roads, churches, 

 production or marketing, any one of a number of problems — is 

 the problem, but fortunately we don't have to waste time deciding 

 which is the problem, because we may work on all of these 

 problems at the same time if we will. Yet after all, the school is 

 the most important and the vital problem. Now, it is perfectly 

 possible to make the one-room school what Mrs. Harvey has 

 made it, where men and women are willing to take the hard- 

 ships and undergo all the difficulties which Mrs. Harvey has 

 doubtless had to undergo to get the results she has obtained, but 



