394 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



habits of life and thought. A great service remains to be done 

 through some sort of official mapping of these community groups. 

 Whether a closer legal relation, such as some form of municipal 

 government, will ever obtain between the territory of farm and 

 adjacent town, it is premature to surmise. The feud between 

 farmer and townsman, although of long standing, in fact dating 

 back as far as the independent stride of the one, and the suave 

 speech of the other, is not without its history of truce and honest 

 endeavor to come to terms of community understanding. 

 The endeavors of many commercial clubs, boards of commerce, 

 business men's associations, town and country clubs, to bridge 

 the gap between town business and farming furnish grounds for 

 the belief that some general and final agreement will prove 

 mutually satisfactory. 



Educational institutions. If real hope is to enter country life, 

 considerable reorganization of the rural channels of education 

 will be necessary. Some expansion in their ideals of education 

 will need to come to farmers. There will be required also on 

 the part of townsmen some recognition that education, high 

 as well as low, is a legitimate privilege of the country dweller. 

 Some further adaptation of educational curricula to the voca- 

 tion of farming will have to be made. In fact, if the farmer's 

 family is to be a candidate for a life of culture, refinement, and 

 skill, the doors to right training must be opened wide, and this 

 means schools, large schools, high schools, vocational schools. 



The problem of schools, — that is, the problem of leading 

 children into the world's experience before the child has had 

 his own experience, — is wrapped up in the whole problem of the 

 social side of farm life. Not until the farmer has some abate- 

 ment of his timidities and senses his ability to use large units, 

 will he rise to the ideals of education for his children. Not until 

 he gets over the feverish obsession for clearing the debt off 

 the farm, and substitutes life as a goal, will the farmer come into 

 the full fruition of this educational hope. When the household 

 regime is enriched by a neighborhood regime, and this is sup- 

 plemented by community organization, education will pre- 

 sumably receive a large impetus. 



