708 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.41 



now a large, live, and many sided organization, and its joint sessions 

 with the Farm Economic Association, are further evidences of prog- 

 ress in that field. 



This second Annual Country Life Conference was devoted prin- 

 cipally to rural health, and developed the agencies which are now 

 engaged in studying rural health conditions and problems, rural 

 jDublic health, nursing, rural social w^elfare work, and housing, edu- 

 cation and recreation in relation to rural health. In his presidential 

 address before this conference. President Butterfield made some 

 practical suggestions for the work of the organization, stressing 

 especially an attempt to correlate the efforts of different groups 

 engaged in country life activities. Interest in various aspects of 

 country life, he reported, is steadily growing. Farmers are more 

 ready to recognize, for example, that tliere is a rural health problem ; 

 and this problem was defined as embracing three phases — public 

 health, rural sanitation, and body building. It was suggested that 

 there should be an effort to put rural health into the program of 

 agricultural extension work. 



President Butterfield declared that the farmers are thinking more 

 to-day in terms of economic problems than in those of teclinical 

 problems. He maintained that the program of agi'icultural educa- 

 tion has been too narrow to meet the needs of fanning people. He 

 urged the importance of training for leadership, and of developing 

 local initiative and leadership so that a movement once under way 

 will not die because a leader drops out. 



An important paper from the standpoint of investigation in rural 

 sociology Avas one by Dr. C. J. Galpin, one of the few in this country 

 who has specialized in this field. His paper on The Human Side of 

 Farm Economy dealt with the subject in its relations to the farmer, 

 the investigator, and the public. He explained the importance of the 

 human factor in the success of farming, and quoted Dr. H. C. 

 Taylor to the effect that " whatever affects man as an agent in agri- 

 cultural production seriously affects the results of this basic in- 

 dustry." 



The general absence of specialists in this particular field and the 

 scarcity of trustworthy information and data on which to base gen- 

 eralizations were cited as standing out with startling clarity, in 

 relation to both inquiry and teaching. Rural sociology lacks as a 

 working basis a classified census of the farm population as distin- 

 guished from the rural population, and until the farm population 

 is sorted out and classified with respect to its characteristics, attain- 

 ments and shortcomings, Dr. Galpin explained that progi-ess in a 

 National study will be greatly handicapped. 



One of the most suggestive features of the paper was the analysis 

 of the field and the setting forth of certain quite specific lines of 



