THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 613 



and seeks to discover means of correcting them so that country 

 folk may live most contentedly and wholesomely. All the social 

 handicaps and whatever contributes in any way to social poverty 

 comes up for examination to see why it exists, on what it rests, 

 and how it is to be adjusted. The social deficiencies come up 

 prominently for attention. But the student of rural social 

 conditions is as much concerned with promoting the prevailing, 

 or normal, standards into progressively higher ones as he is in 

 calling attention to the maladjustments in the situation. 



The present widespread interest in rural conditions grew out 

 of the discovery that certain conditions were not as satisfactory 

 as they ought to be and that they were capable of being improved. 

 And so we find ourselves following the normal procedure in the 

 correction of social deficiencies, namely, by first calling attention 

 to them, stimulating discussion, creating public interest, and 

 crystallizing public sentiment into specific measures for ameliora- 

 tion. This was the great service which the Commission on Coun- 

 try Life, of which former Director Bailey was the chairman, ren- 

 dered to the country. It was the work of this Commission which 

 stimulated and energized the latent interest in the social welfare 

 of the American farm people. 



Most of our agricultural teaching is an application of the 

 physical and natural sciences to the practical problems of the 

 farm. In this newer field of thought having to do with social 

 and economic conditions, we find the application of the no less 

 important social sciences to the affairs of the farmer. And it can 

 be said with truth that farmers themselves are as much concerned 

 with the general social, economic, and political questions of the 

 day as they are in the application of physical and biological 

 science to the business of tilling the soil. 



It is only recently, however, that much attention has been 

 given to rural social science in our colleges of agriculture. But 

 the interest has arisen so rapidly since the Commission on 

 Country Life called attention to the importance of these ques- 

 tions that now sixty-four per cent, of the separate state uni- 

 versities teach the subject in some form and under one title or 

 another. This new attitude on the part of the agricultural col- 

 leges was well expressed by President Benjamin Ide Wheeler in 

 an address before the Association of American Agricultural 



