180 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his experiences, 

 for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as he once 

 was. This constant daily stimulation from the world of business, 

 sports, and public affairs at times awakens his appetite for urban 

 life and makes him restless or encourages his removal to the city 

 or makes him demand as much as possible of the quantitative 

 pleasures and recreations of city life. In a greater degree, how- 

 ever, the paper contents his mental need for contact with life in 

 a more universal way than his particular community allows. 

 The automobile and other modern inventions also serve the 

 farmer, as does the newspaper, by providing mental suggestions 

 from an extended environment. 



A very important source of suggestion, as abnormal psychology 

 so clearly demonstrates, at present, . is the impressions of child- 

 hood. Rural life tends on the whole to intensify the significant 

 events of rural life because of the limited amount of exciting ex- 

 periences received as compared with city life. Parental influence 

 is more important because it suffers less competition. This fact 

 of the meaning of early suggestions appears, without doubt, in 

 various ways and forbids the scientist's assuming that rural 

 thinking is made uniform by universal and unvaried suggestions. 



The discontent of rural parents with reference to their environ- 

 ment or occupation, due either to their natural urban tendencies 

 or to their failure of success, has some influence in sending rural 

 people to the city. Accidental or incidental suggestion often re- 

 peated is especially penetrating in childhood, and no one who 

 knows rural people can fail to notice parents who are prone to 

 such suggestions expressing rural discontent. In the same way 

 suspiciousness or jealousy with reference to particular neighbors 

 or associates leads, when it is often expressed before children, to 

 general suspiciousness or trivial sensitiveness. The emotional 

 obstacles to the get-together spirit obstacles which vex the rural 

 worker in no small degree have their origin in suggestions given 

 in childhood. 



The country is concerned with another source of suggestion 

 which has more to do with the efficiency of the rural mind than its 

 content, and that is the matter of sex. Students of rural life 

 apparently give this element less attention than it deserves. As 

 Professor Ross has pointed out in South of Panama, for example, 



