RURAL COOPERATION 



The chief problem of the country is economic, and all other 

 problems will yield to solution in proportion as this receives 

 attention. " Prof. F. H. Giddings has said that if all the 

 universities and all the pulpits and all the schools of this 

 country should unite in one idea they wish the people to 

 accept, it would not have the influence on them that the 

 experience of getting their living has : in the last analysis 

 the way we get our living shapes our characters and forms 

 our beliefs. For this reason it is essential that, in studying 

 the population, we should study first and with the greatest 

 care the economic conditions that prevail." x 



The tendency of the past has been to consider the problems 

 of the country separately, and one of the problems most 

 neglected has been the economic problem. Unless each one 

 is studied with special reference to the others, and particularly 

 with special reference to those that are intimately related 

 to it, little comparative progress can be made. Take the 

 problem of education : A school district seldom advances 

 more rapidly educationally than it does economically. The 

 writer once made a study of two townships, one of which 

 had a centralized school and the other of which did not have 

 such an institution. In the former the standards of agri- 

 culture were high, a majority of the farms presented a fine 

 appearance, the roads were good, social life was above the 

 average, the churches and Sunday-schools were well attended 

 and in a flourishing condition and a get-together and work- 

 together spirit seemed to characterize the fifteen hundred 

 people of the township. Before the vote was taken to 

 build the school, public sentiment favored a centralized 

 school: the vote simply registered the wishes of the people. 



The same thing holds true with reference to the problem 

 of the country church. A study of flourishing rural churches 

 reveals the fact that one never finds such churches in back- 

 ward districts. The best way to build up a flourishing church 

 is to build up the country where the church is located. In 



1 Anna B. Taft, " Community Study for Country Districts," p. 23. 

 141 



