Missouri Country Life Conference. 265 



With the good road comes the better school. We are proud 

 of the little red schoolhouse. It was the nurturing place of our 

 democracy and universal American culture, but it taught us how 

 to be never contented with primitive vehicles of public good, 

 such as it was. The country could have as good schools as the 

 towns if they would pay as much, but when the town pays $1.00 

 school tax and the rural district only 40 cents as good cannot be 

 expected. With good roads comes the centralized and well- 

 graded school, and it actually costs less than the old-time, one- 

 room schoolhouse, while trebling the efficiency of education, 

 making it possible for the farmer's child to have a high school 

 course and also keeping the boy and girl in rural surroundings 

 and educating them in rural arts, instead of sending them away 

 from home at great expense to be educated in city arts and 

 thus be won away from the farm. The enterprise is not nearly so 

 formidable as it looks; indeed, it is made comparatively easy now 

 under our new law and the offer of State help; but it does require 

 initiative and public spirit and it will never be done so long as 

 the farmer is a "rampant individualist." 



The farmer needs to talk over community interests more. 

 When he comes to town on Saturday he talks with neighbors, in 

 groups of twos and threes, the things of common interest. But 

 it is usually things of less public and more private interest and 

 much of the talk is social and merely the exchange of opinion 

 and personal experience. Suppose he could have clubs and 

 societies where matters of public interest could be talked over 

 more. The schoolhouses and rural churches can furnish the 

 centers. The townfolk meet daily and their daily papers and 

 ever-open churches keep them close together. The farmer 

 lacks these opportunities of free exchange of ideas and oppor- 

 tunities for mutual action. The country woman is just as 

 sociable as the town woman, but she does not have the clubs 

 and societies that enable her to turn her sociability into com- 

 munity action. Yet she is generally more of a housekeeper 

 and has more things in common than the woman in town. She 

 would find great profit in mothers' meetings. She is usually a 

 superb economist and would profit by an exchange of experience 

 of a more formal nature than the telephone allows. Governor 

 Hughes told the people of Rochester, when he spoke in their 

 social centers, that he was more interested in what they were 

 doing than in anything else in the world, because in it he saw 

 the very buttress and foundations of democracy. These social 



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