INTRODUCTION 



BISHOP WILLIAM F. ANDERSON, METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



HE Country Life movement is one of the most remark- 

 JL able and significant facts of our day. It seems hardly 

 credible that the first national commission was appointed in 

 1908. That any movement in so brief a time should have 

 gripped the thought of the leaders of American life and should 

 have created so extensive and high grade a literature upon the 

 subject, is itself as fine a tribute to the importance of the work 

 as could be imagined. 



The rural population of the United States includes over one- 

 half of the entire population. We include, in the term " rural," 

 villages and towns not exceeding twenty-five hundred in popu- 

 lation. The thirteenth census revealed the following facts : 

 That in only six of the forty-eight states was there a decrease 

 in the rural population; eight states increased over fifty per 

 cent; six between thirty and fifty per cent; twelve between 

 twenty and thirty per cent; ten between ten and twenty per 

 cent, and only sixteen of the entire number of states increased 

 less than ten per cent. The value of farm property for the 

 same period increased over one hundred per cent and aggre- 

 gates at the present time more than forty billions of dollars. 



By common consent, the church is at the very heart of the 

 rural life movement. If a body of men had been appointed to 

 exalt the relation of the church to rural community life, they 

 could not possibly have done it more effectively than it was 

 done by the report of the first national commission on the rural 

 life movement. That report is notable in the remarkable way 

 in which it magnifies the church in its relation to the better- 

 ment of rural community life. The movement has gripped 

 our educational and constructive leaders in a way scarcely 

 paralleled in so brief a period of time. It is the beginning of a 

 new and better day for the rural life of America. And it will 

 be seen at a glance that any effort to redeem American life 



