Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 283 



seems to me, that the farmers were getting together and having 

 something to say about some of these profits that go so largely to 

 the middleman. The farmer has been like little David out there 

 in the fields, while his big brothers of the city passed in review 

 before the prophet. The city's growth is a thing that is world 

 wide in extent, and during all the time that these changes have 

 been going on in every institution and every department of life of 

 the great world's growth, your country church has remained the 

 same. It has not progressed. 



I have in mind how a church in Pike county where it was my 

 privilege to hold a meeting not many months ago. This old church 

 is sixteen miles southwest of Bowling Green. Fifty years ago when 

 it was built farmers perhaps harvested their wheat with a sickle, 

 cut their hay with a scythe, plowed the fields with an old-fashioned 

 plow with a wooden mold board and an iron point. Every imple- 

 ment about the farm was of the "armstrong" character. Every- 

 thing was as crude as it was when some of you, my friends, were 

 boys and girls, or your parents were young men and young women. 



Do you older men and women ever stop to think of the wonder- 

 ful advancement and tremendous progress that has been made 

 within the lifetime of some of your friends ? When you were boys 

 and girls, farming was conducted practically the same as it was 

 when Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz, hundreds and thousands of 

 years ago. During all of this marvelous advancement of the past 

 generation the old church stands there the same, and has not had 

 a bit of weatherboard changed all these years; the seats are the 

 same old straight-back seats; the pulpit is the same "cracker-box" 

 arrangement, and the old lamps are the same old coal oil lamps that 

 drip and smoke. When you enter that building you go back fifty or 

 seventy-five years. That is one of the things that is the matter 

 with the country church; it has not moved along and kept pace 

 with other great institutions and has not made the advancement 

 and progress they have made. In a few minutes I will tell you 

 why it has remained in the same condition. What is true of the 

 church is largely true of the rural school. 



Why is it that people who journey from across the sea to be- 

 come citizens here, those that come to America to find homes — 

 why is it they all go into the city? The larger portion of immi- 

 grants that come to this country are farmers. Why do they not 

 farm in this country? I will tell you why. Because farming in 

 this country has not been regarded in the same light that it is 



