THE FARM COMMUNITY 397 



painted, the barns covered with patent-medicine adver- 

 tisements, the roadsides full of weeds, the fences down, it 

 indicates that the community is not prosperous. No matter 

 how well some one man's place may look, a buyer will be 

 afraid that there is some fundamental trouble with the 

 region. He will ask himself whether the farms are so poor 

 that their small returns have to be supplemented with an 

 income from signboards. He will fear that the land is so 

 poor that it takes all the farmer's energy to make a living 

 so that he has no time to clean up. 



The community affects one's happiness as well as his 

 profits. At the present time, the ideal in many farming 

 sections is to make enough money so that one can move 

 to town to live. One of the arguments that was presented 

 in the central West to the Commission on Country Life, 

 to show that farming was all right, was that the farmers 

 were so prosperous that they were selling or renting their 

 farms and moving to town. If the farm home and the 

 farm community are all right, then the farm will be a 

 place to live and die on, not merely a place to run away 

 from. It is interesting to note the increasing number of 

 city men who are retiring to farms at the same time that 

 farmers are retiring to the towns. 



It is the duty of every loyal citizen to take an active 

 part in improving his community. The best place to begin 

 such an improvement is by cleaning up the roadsides 

 and fence-rows, and keeping the farmyard neat and attrac- 

 tive. 



But the interest should not stop here. The obligations 

 to the grange, the school, the church, are as positive as 

 are the obligations to keep the corn-field clean. It makes 



