CONCLUSIONS 



93 



The judgment of those competent to speak seems to differ on this 

 point. An authority in American education, reared as a boy on 

 the farm, educated in a common country school and in the State 

 University, a traveler, a sojourner in many great cities and finally 

 Dean of the School of Education in a State University, has given 

 us his conclusions in the book entitled "Rural Life and the Rural 

 School." In this book he points out all the shortcomings of country 

 life. Then, turning to the other side of the picture, he shows that 

 there are fewer hours of labor than forrnerlv on the farm, that the 



FIG. 12. A prosperous Icelandic farmer and son in North Dakota. 



mental factor is growing, that, so far as the boy is concerned, the 

 farm boys enjoy time to go fishing, hunting, skating, coasting, 

 trapping; that he learns the ways and habits of beasts, birds and 

 fishes; that the lessons now taught to the Boy Scouts with so much 

 effort and learned easily and early by the farm boy, that even his 

 daily and regular work under most strenuous conditions is of a 

 large and varied kind not like the making of one-tenth of a pin, 

 which has a tendency to reduce the worker to one-tenth of a man. 

 "On the farm" says this writer, "the worker begins and finishes a 

 piece of work. He sees it through. The whole of it receives 

 expression in him. It is his piece of work, and it faces him as he 

 has to face it. The tendency is for both to be honest." In view 

 of the circumstances and opportunities just mentioned, life in the 



