CHAPTER VI 

 PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 



The rural population. No other problem is even second in 

 importance to that of maintaining the native quality of the rural 

 population. The rural districts are the seed bed from which even 

 the cities are stocked with people. Upon the character of this 

 stock, more than upon anything else, does the greatness of a 

 nation and the quality of its civilization ultimately depend. If 

 the native vigor, physical and mental, of the people should de- 

 cline, nothing could save its civilization from decay. Not even 

 education itself can permanently arrest such decay when the in- 

 born capacity to be educated is disappearing. Every horseman 

 believes in careful training as a preparation for racing, but no 

 horseman, no matter how excellent his system of training might 

 be, would expect to maintain or improve the speed of his stable 

 if he bred mainly from scrub stock. Nor should any country, 

 however excellent its educational system, expect to maintain 

 the capacity and productive efficiency of its people if the most 

 capable and efficient of them multiply least rapidly, and the 

 least capable and efficient multiply most rapidly. 



But what is really meant by capacity and productive efficiency 

 in a people ? There is a story of an aged savage who, having lived 

 most of his life among civilized men, returned in his old age 

 to his native tribe, saying that he had tried civilization for forty 

 years, and that it was not worth the trouble. A great deal of the 

 philosophy of civilization 1 is epitomized in this story. To a savage 

 mind civilization is never worth the trouble, for the reason that 

 taking trouble is distasteful to the savage mind. Only those races 



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