RURAL AMERICA 



of rural associations. The unit that has generally been 

 adopted is the county, since experience shows the futility of 

 attempting to carry on successful work with smaller rural 

 units. The thing that has proved to be the greatest handicap 

 in rural work has been securing men and women living in 

 villages and in the open country and widely separated from 

 one another to cooperate in an enterprise for the benefit of 

 a whole county. This requires a leadership of the very 

 highest type. The average county resident sees certain needs 

 right at home, but his vision does not always reach far. 

 His inclination is to let the other village or township or 

 section of the county take care of itself. So next in import- 

 ance to a competent leader is a county board that is broad 

 enough to see beyond the borders of its own community, to 

 pay liberally for the support of the whole work and to give 

 of its time in an effort to get others to contribute to the 

 work. 



The county Young Men's Christian Association has an 

 easier time in becoming established in rural counties than 

 the county Young Women's Christian Association, because 

 everybody recognizes that boys, whose work lies out in the 

 world, must receive attention or they will fail to develop into 

 men of character. But there is just as much reason why girls 

 should have the same opportunities to fit themselves for the 

 responsibilities and duties of life. The donor of the first 

 county Young Women's Christian Association building 

 (county work in the past has been done without the aid of 

 buildings) put a large sum in the building, equipment and 

 endowment chiefly because of his conviction that better girls 

 would make better boys. And there is a world of truth in 

 this statement. The one thing more than any other that is 

 safeguarding this nation today may be considered the collect- 

 ive influence and the high ideals of the finest womanhood of 

 the nation. Every man who stands for the common virtues 

 freely acknowledges the debt he owes to womanhood. The 

 greatest poet since Shakespeare, Goethe, closed his master- 

 piece " Faust " with these beautiful words : " Das Ewigweib- 



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