EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK-PART X. 511 



application to agricultural practices or to the rendering of country con- 

 ditions more easy and pleasant. But these countervailing forces are as 

 yet in their infancy. As compared with a few decades ago, the social 

 or community life of country people in the east compares less well than 

 it formerly did with that of the dwellers in cities. Many country com- 

 munities have lost their social coherence, their sense of community 

 interest. In such communities the country church, for instance, has 

 gone backward both as a social and a religious factor. Now, we can 

 not too strongly insist upon the fact that it is quite as unfortunate to 

 have any social as any economic falling off. It would be a calamity 

 to have our farms occupied by a lower type of people than the hard- 

 working, self-respecting, independent, and essentially manly men and 

 womanly women who have hitherto constituted the most typically Ameri- 

 can, and on the whole the most valuable, element in our entire nation. 

 Ambitious native-born young men and women who now tend away from 

 the farm must be brought back to it, and therefore they must have social 

 as well as economic opportunities. Everything should be done to encour- 

 age the growth in the open farming country of such institutional and 

 social movements as will meet the demand of the best type of farmers. 

 There should be libraries, assembly halls, social organizations of all kinds. 

 The school building, and the teacher in the school building should, through- 

 out the country districts, be of the very highest type, able to fit the boys 

 and girls not merely to live in, but thoroughly to enjoy and to make the 

 most of the country. The country church must be revived. All kinds 

 of agencies, from rural free delivery to the bicycle and the telephone, 

 should be utilized to the utmost; good roads should be favored; every- 

 thing should be done to make it easier for the farmer to lead the most 

 active and effective intellectual, political, and economic life. 



There are regions of large extent where all this, or most of this, has 

 already been realized; and while this is perhaps especially true of great 

 tracts of farming country west of the Mississippi, with some of which I 

 have a fairly intimate personal knowledge, it is no less true of other 

 great tracts of country east of the Mississippi. In these regions the 

 church and the school flourish as never before; there is a more success- 

 ful and more varied farming industry; the social advantages and oppor- 

 tunities are greater than ever before; life is fuller, happier, more useful; 

 and though the work is more effective than ever, and in a way quite as 

 hard, it is carried on so as to give more scope for well-used leisure. My 

 plea is that we shall all try to make more nearly universal the condi- 

 tions that now obtain in the most favored localities. 



■pBOGKESS IX AGEICULTXJRAL SCIEJ^^CE. 



Nothing in the way of scientific work can' ever take the place of 

 business management on a farm. We ought all of us to teach ourselves 

 as much as possible; but we can also all of us learn from others; and 

 the farmer can best learn how to manage his farm even better than he 

 now does by practice, under intelligent supervision, on his own soil in 

 such a way as to increase his income. This is the kind of teaching 

 which has been carried on in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas by Doctor 

 Knapp, of the national department of agriculture. But much has 



