204 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



his farm and his buildings, but he cannot borrow money at the 

 bank to build a church or to pay the minister. Social institu- 

 tions cannot be supported in a community except it be on an 

 income, and the farmers are very often asked to subscribe to cer- 

 tain things, the school, for instance, or good roads, and to the 

 church, and they are not asked as to whether or not they are 

 able to get it. We found by surveys in many communities there 

 is not enough of profit after the farmer has had his own living to 

 build the kind of school he ought to have, or to fix up his home 

 in the way it ought to be improved. And then have the com- 

 munity survey with reference to everything that touches the 

 community life. Now, the minister might make that, or a 

 group of ministers, if there is more than one minister in the 

 community. Let the ministers go together, and the school 

 might unite, also, and the business men, in making this survey. 

 I think it would be a very good idea to open up an office, if in 

 a village or in a town, not any one religion, but a general con- 

 ference of the community. Then let these ministers, this group 

 of ministers, get together and have all these statistics gotten 

 from the survey, and let them be filed away and indexed so 

 every minister may have access to them. Instead of every 

 minister and every church having its own little program and 

 pushing along individually and separately, have one great big 

 program for the whole community, for instance, a program of 

 evangelization that would be so complete that it would touch 

 every home and every life in that community, and then let all 

 the christian people go to work in earnest with a systematic cam- 

 paign to evangelize that community. Then they might have 

 another program, a church program, or a community program, 

 rather, for improving the educational equipment and conditions 

 in the community. Not that this community would direct the 

 educational work, but simply to co-operate with those which 

 have to do with education. Then have another program, for 

 instance, for directing the recreations of the community. I am 

 sure that the commercialized form of entertainment today is 

 continually counteracting the best influence of the church, the 

 home and the school. The people ought to be in their enter- 

 tainments largely. It is what they do for themselves that de- 

 velops them, and the christian people of a community ought to 

 see to it that there is no kind of entertainment permitted in the 

 community except what is good and wholesome and fit for any- 

 body's children to look at. That can be brought about only by 



