Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 127 



ens; to help them destroy. They must be taught how to render 

 effective community service. Up to this time the farm has been 

 looked upon as merely a place for making a living. It is too much 

 of a factory and not enough of a home. The farmer has regarded 

 the town or the city as the place in which to spend his money and 

 his leisure. 



Institutions must be established in the country that will sat- 

 isfy the requirements of all the members of the family. There 

 must be community tasks if we are to interest and hold the best 

 people in the country. Unterammergau, without a community 

 task, is a decadent rural village. Oberammergau, with the Passion 

 Play as a community task, has held its best people, and has com- 

 manded the attention of the world. The annual rendering of the 

 "Messiah" at Lindsborg, Kan., has been a community task large 

 enough to hold the best stock of that community for more than 

 a third of a century. 



WORKERS OF THE SOIL. 



(Hon. W. L. Houser, Mondovi, Wisconsin. Address delivered during Missouri Farmers' 



Week.) 



There can be no argument on the proposition that the world 

 was created for all men — not a select few. It is the economy of 

 creation that no man can acquire perpetual title to the soil, that 

 source of all wealth and necessity. At the most, a man can only 

 occupy a portion of it for a brief space of time. How short is life. 

 Measured by the unnumbered years that have preceded one's ex- 

 istence, and by the limitless eternity that will follow, the space we 

 occupy in the world is, indeed, of extremely narrow proportions. 

 It follows therefore that we must make the most of our time. 

 To waste it is criminal. To use it to oppress or do injustice to 

 others is worse than waste. All mei; of intelligence and self- 

 respect want it said that the world is better because of their pres- 

 ence in it. After all, our selfishness is not so narrow that we 

 would voluntarily court the contempt of our fellows. But be our 

 personal inclination this way or that, the world as a world has a 

 right to insist that we all shall contribute in proportionate meas- 

 ure with our abilities and talents to the needs of society. And 

 society has a right to insist that our conduct shall be so coursed 



