Home Makers' Conference. 361 



tant tasks. The faculty of four or five teachers can conduct a ten-year 

 course extending through the eight primary school years and two years 

 of the high school for the 150 children from as many farms in an area 

 of twenty-five square miles. The cottage of the principal ; the plantations 

 of timber, fruit, vegetable and ornamental plants ; the plats for field 

 crops; fertilizer demonstrations, and farm-management lessons; the 

 laboratory and practice rooms and the vital connection the teachers 

 can have by co-operating with parents in the work on the farms and 

 in the homes will ground the children in the elements of a true educa- 

 tion in country life. With the schools thus organized there is provided 

 in the country a far broader child life than has yet been conceived for 

 city youth. How can the nation better expend some of its wealth than 

 by thus making provision for well-nigh ideal conditions of fatherhood 

 and motherhood in our country homes? Two hundred of the needed 

 40,000 consolidated rural schools have been established, and practical 

 studies in agriculture and home economics are slowly but surely finding 

 their place in them." This is ''Uncle Sam's" ideal country school. 



* * * * 



Many examples of good centralized schools in Ohio, Massachusetts, 

 Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, etc., could be cited to show how general 

 is this movement, but those offered demonstrate the ideal, and the 

 feasibility of the plan for Missouri. Indiana has the leadership here 

 with many splendid township high schools and with prophetic emphasis 

 upon the things which will help country life. Statistics of 1906 give 

 9,421 children transported in 561 vans, 301 consolidated schools, at 

 a cost per day for transportation of $1,034.04. A movement is now on 

 foot to secure legislation to compel the closure of all schools with an 

 attendance of fifteen or fewer, the trustees to be compelled also to fur- 

 nish transportation of all children, to centralized schools. 



Rural school conditions will remain as they are until the farmers 

 themselves insist on the establishment of a rational system of school- 

 ing for country children, a system that may operate without breaking 

 up the family, or endangering the morals of children at tender ages. 

 And this, I firmly believe, they would be only too willing to do, if only 

 the campaign of publicity undertaken by the Agricultural College 

 would be taken up by all the educational forces of the state and waged 

 intelligently and tactfully. 



Our pressing need is a system of country elementary and secondary 

 schools suited to the needs of the people in which both agriculture and 

 home economics shall be freely taught. 



I am strongly opposed to the growing sentiment in favor of the 

 articulation of rural schools with the town and village schools, and for 



