PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 



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without waiting for a general public awakening. In the United 

 States, and other countries of small proprietors, these enterprises 

 have been carried on either by the state or by cooperative enter- 

 prises. These methods are excellent in themselves, but they are 

 necessarily slower than the English method, for the simple and 

 sufficient reason that the general public is always slower than a 

 few of its most intelligent individuals. At the present time, in the 

 United States, the federal Department of Agriculture, the state 

 agricultural colleges, and the experiment stations are carrying 

 on this kind of work on a more elaborate scale than is possible 

 for a group of individual proprietors, however large their estates, 

 though much pioneer work was done on great English estates. 

 Another advantage of the tenancy system, as it exists in Eng- 

 land, is that it furnishes a kind of organization of agricultural 

 interests, or at least a very good substitute for organization. 

 A great landowner living on his estate, and interested in its 

 prosperity, is a natural leader and organizer of the rural com- 

 munity consisting of his tenants. It is everywhere recognized 

 in the United States that the great difficulty in the way of or- 

 ganization of rural communities is the lack of leaders. If this 

 difficulty is still further accentuated by a feeling of jealousy, as 

 is too frequently the case, among the farmers of a neighborhood, 

 the problem of organization is well-nigh insoluble. Unless the 

 country church can remove this feeling of jealousy and suspicion 

 by the effective preaching of a gospel of brotherhood, it is diffi- 

 cult to see what can be done for such a neighborhood. With the 

 well-known efficiency of our agricultural colleges and experiment 

 stations, and of our national Department of Agriculture, we have 

 done a great deal to remove the one disadvantage of the system 

 of detached, one-family farming. If we can, in addition, bring 

 about an effective organization of our rural interests, we shall 

 have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of the 

 system of tenancy under large proprietors. 



