230 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



near us who have civic improvement societies for beautifying 

 their cities. We felt that we wanted not only to plant trees 

 but to grow boys and girls worth while. So we organized this 

 Rural Improvement League, whose object, as stated in our 

 constitution, is "To promote education, sociability, sanitation 

 and provide attractive environment in our township." 



Along the line of education we went to work on the high 

 school. Helped with that just as much as we could and, in 

 order that we might get all the women interested, we subdivided 

 the league into clubs composed of the women in each school 

 district in the township. They are not yet all organized, but I 

 believe that we have a representative from each school district 

 in our league membership. These separate organizations are 

 to look after their own district needs. We felt it better to 

 undertake one thing at a time and do that well, so we put all of 

 our energies last year into helping the high school building com- 

 mittee. We installed a Waterbury heating system and acety- 

 lene lights. 



When we speak of raising this money the next question the 

 women always ask is "How did you do it?" Well, we had a 

 series of ice cream suppers, and we always tried to make our 

 plans in the work of raising this money help sociability along 

 with it. Of course most of you ladies know how the ladies' 

 aid societies go about this, and we went about it in much the 

 same way. 



In the matter of sanitation, we have been trying to look 

 just a little bit more closely to the conditions in our several 

 district schoolhouses. We are planning to do a little bit more 

 for the rural high school right away, and that is to put in an 

 agricultural laboratory. I believe it was Mr. Wright yester- 

 day evening who was talking about the biographical study we 

 get in the average high school. I think we will try to put in a 

 library in which will be found biographies of the men of whom 

 he spoke. 



