SOCIAL SIDE OF COUNTRY LIFE 283 



had come when the country people must get together, 

 pooling their interests and doing their thinking and 

 their working in common. We must all get, he said, 

 our culture from the corn lot. There are languages 

 more ancient than those taught in our colleges, the 

 languages that are spoken and sung and whistled in 

 our fields and woods. So it was that in one way 

 and another country life was renewing its fellowship, 

 and coming into a new sort of associated complete- 

 ness. 



President Roosevelt appointed a Commission on 

 Rural Improvement. The time has come, he argued, 

 to abolish isolation and create again an effective com- 

 munity life. He outlined what he proposed as im- 

 provement of country schools, completing the 

 tendency toward unification that would give to 

 country children as good advantages as if they lived 

 in town. He would see country roads made as serv- 

 iceable as macadamized driveways. He hoped to 

 see the country church re-established as a vivifying 

 force. 



More libraries and farmers' institutes with wiser 

 lecturers might well be hoped for. Cooperative buy- 

 ing and marketing among farmers he especially de- 

 sired, which should free them from the impositions 

 of middlemen and transportation interests. Mutual 

 insurance companies, community dairying, and other 

 industrial enterprises in common met his approval. 

 A parcels post and a postal savings bank seemed es- 

 sential elements to the new country life. 



