300 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



do books and the things that are to be found in towns alone. We 

 must give scientific instruction in elementary things of farm life 

 and educate them to be farmers more, even if we have to give less 

 attention to preparing them for entrance to the town high school. 

 In the third place, and this is a point we have ignored all too mucli, 

 there must be more attention paid to recreation for the youth. This 

 is one of the greatest opportunities offered the whole rural life 

 movement today. Young people must associate and they must play. 

 It is denial of nature to deny it, and it is a loss of the most open 

 natural opportunity to fail to take advantage of it for moral and 

 community welfare work. The church I spoke of a few minutes 

 ago is always crowded with young people — there is no other place 

 to go. A community center would be a great factor in the lives of 

 those young people and I hope we are going to have one some day. 

 There we could use their recreational and social interests as a 

 means of education through entertainments, lectures, musicals and 

 good reading and we could utilize the most open opportunity offered 

 in the life of the youth for moral training. If it is not directed to 

 good it may run wild and to the bad. The fourth and last point I 

 have to make is that of co-operation. Co-operation is the thing to 

 live by in these days. The bread and butter problem is the funda- 

 mental problem to all of us, and nothwithstanding the great rise 

 in farm values and in the price of rural products, the average 

 farmer is not yet getting too much for his hard labor. But he 

 wastes a big annual profit through lack of co-operation. Every 

 business he trades with uses the co-operative interest, he must use 

 it for self-protection as well as self-advantage. When we get eco- 

 nomical co-operation in the country we will have an open highway 

 to every other kind of co-operation. The idea will leaven all rural 

 life if it is seen to pay. It will make for the co-operative school 

 and a combination of church interests. But even that must start 

 with an ideal, for the ideal always must come before the practical, 

 and I appeal to the churches in the country to furnish the ideal — 

 for it is the ideal of Christianity. 



