THE FIELD OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY 619 



two types of community, their advantages and disadvantages for 

 purposes of complete living, and their reactions upon each other 

 would constitute some of the germane and more important in- 

 quiries. 



Eleventh, it will probably be agreed that instruction in rural 

 sociology should include matters pertinent to making investiga- 

 tions and surveys. If any advance is to take place among agri- 

 cultural peoples there must first occur an adequate inventory of 

 conditions obtaining among such populations. It is quite un- 

 reasonable to expect development along right lines without ad- 

 equate knowledge. The training and equipment of a leadership 

 which is able to rise to the importance of its task is a part of 

 the function to be exercised by departments and courses which 

 deal with the social situation. In the preparation of such a 

 leadership what could prove more provocative of ultimate ad- 

 vance in rural life than a development of the ability to inves- 

 tigate, to survey, and to interpret the results with a view to 

 securing the introduction of an improved social system? 



THE TEACHING OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY: 

 PARTICULARLY IN THE LAND- 

 GRANT COLLEGES AND 

 UNIVERSITIES 1 



DWIGHT SANDERSON 



THE late professor C. R. Henderson seems to have been the 

 first to offer a course on rural social life in this country. In 

 the announcements of the Department of Sociology of the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago for 1894-95 there appeared : 



"31. Social Conditions in American Rural Life. Some problems of 

 amelioration, presented by life on American farms and in villages will be 

 considered. M. First Term. Winter Q. Associate Professor Henderson." 



The Quarterly Calendar (Vol. III. No. 4) shows that sixteen 

 students were registered in the first class. From that time 

 until two or three years before his death, Professor Henderson 



i Adapted from American Sociological Society Publications, Vol. XI, 181- 

 208, 19 10. 



