320 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



then for reasons of policy, the newspaper becomes an exalted in- 

 stitution and the editor a man of vast importance. Hence, the 

 utter novelty of the subject which I am to discuss is one of the 

 reasons I am glad to be here. 



Isolation is the greatest bane of country life. The fact that 

 farming requires a man and his family to live more or less apart 

 from other persons and deprives them of free social intercourse 

 with those who are congenial is the most valid objection to the 

 most important of all the occupations of men. Man is essentially 

 a social animal. He was created that way. We are told in Gene- 

 sis, "The Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone; 

 I will make him a helpmeet for him." It is the longing for social 

 life and social activity which causes our country girls to go to town 

 to work in homes, factories, stores and offices, and makes our farm 

 boys leave honorable, healthy, dignified labor in God's out-of-doors 

 to become cogs in the machines in the factories of our great cities. 



We are overcoming the isolation, however; and that fact of 

 itself encourages me to believe I can look through the dark glass 

 now before us and see the time when farm work and farm living 

 will be again what it was during the colonial period of our national 

 life, when, as our Virginia forbears used to say, "most of the 

 people who amount to anything live in the country." The auto- 

 mobile, the telephone, the parcel post, the daily mail and the 

 newspaper are eliminating the isolation of farm life. Presently 

 we shall have small farms, intensive agriculture, good roads and 

 country high schools, and then, I take it, there will be no necessity 

 for back-to-the-farm agitation. 



The country newspaper is doing much of the pioneer work 

 which must be done before this happy condition becomes an ac- 

 tuality ; and knowing the spirit of the modern, progressive, sincere 

 country newpspaper man, I feel I can tell you with absolute as- 

 surance that the country newspaper is going to be even a larger 

 factor in rural life development. The country newspaper man is in 

 elbow-to-elbow contact with the plain, substantial people of the 

 country, and understands their moods, responds to their impulses, 

 knows their needs, and though too often hated and too often dis- 

 trusted, represents them in his newspaper more honestly and more 

 effectively than any other agency. I am sure you will agree with 

 me, therefore, when I say that the responsibility of the country 

 newspaper in assisting to solve the country life problem is to be 

 compared in greatness only with its opportunity to render service. 



