Missouri Country Life Conference. 245 



men and young women who will represent the very highest type 

 of American citizenship, young men who will consider it their 

 highest ideal and greatest service to their State to build a home 

 on Missouri soil, on a Missouri farm with a Missouri girl, who 

 holds American manhood above the mere titles of other lands 

 across the sea. 



THE HUDSON FARM AND HOME IMPROVEMENT CLUB. 



(C. F. Chapin, Appleton City, Mo.) 



Before telling you anything about what we have done to 

 bring our people together and make them of one aim and one 

 mind in our community, I must attempt to take you down there 

 among us for a short time. 



We are situated in the eastern edge of Bates county and 

 reach over into the corner of Henry. Appleton City, St. Clair 

 county, is our trading and shipping point, and is only a little 

 over four miles distant from our community center — the school- 

 house. It is not one of your old settled and rich sections of the 

 State, such as you have along the Missouri river. The people 

 are just the common, everyday kind. _We have few of the rich 

 farmers such as you have about here and in many other places. 

 We have but one university graduate in our community that I 

 know of. True, we have sent our boys and girls away to our 

 different colleges and universities, but few have come back to 

 help us in our work after they have completed their education. 



While the land of our section was entered before the Civil 

 war, there was not much of it settled until the late sixties and 

 early seventies. Then people came in from Virginia, Kentucky, 

 Ohio, Indiana, Illinois — places from which you trace your own 

 ancestry, and of course from that you can tell what kind of 

 people we are. 



The community had hardly been settled before a school- 

 house was built; a Sunday school was soon organized; even a 

 church was built, only to be moved away when the railroad 

 passed by on the other side. But the Sabbath school was 

 maintained in the schoolhouse until a little over twenty years 

 ago. A denominational church was built. But that did not 

 help matters. Though the Sunday school was kept up most 

 of the time, still there was not that unity of feeling which was 

 necessary to make any community ideal. Such was the con- 



