~~ 21 7~ 



(c) On the lower ridges, using trees distinctly for fuel, in 

 order to supply more and better fuel and to release land for 

 growing food. 



Irrigation and Drainage. These two are also problems 

 for the engineer and the government, but the need is apparent. 

 Irrigation in the drier areas, both by reservoirs and by wells 

 tapping underground water, would multiply several fold the pro- 

 ductivity of immense areas. Provision for drainage after exces- 

 sive rains and after floods is a matter of great consequence. 



Power Development. There are many uses of electric 

 power in agriculture, and especially for supplementing village 

 industries. But this can become available only as the great 

 streams of China are harnessed. 



F Social Life 



President Roosevelt, in his letter appointing the Country 

 Life Commission in 1908, emphasized these words: "Agricul- 

 ture is not the whole of country life. The great rural interests 

 are human interests, and good crops are of little value unless 

 they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm." Can 

 China's farmers look forward to a better "kind of life?" 



Family Life. Here we reach, of course, one of the funda- 

 mental social problems of China. Questions of the small unit 

 family, the age of marriage, care of the old, ancestral worship, 

 all must be worked out in the farm village and among these 

 farm people if they are to be worked out for China. There is in 

 the West a wonderful welding of home and farm life. Has the 

 West a contribution to make to Chinese farmers at this point? 



Education. The village school must serve as a social center, 

 as a real community school, and of course must be universal to 

 be fully effective. The theatre and the tea-house may be made 

 effective by means of education for the adults. 



Health. The field of personal hygiene and community 

 health must be studied first of all from the medical point of 

 view, supplemented by definite governmental activity; but 

 dissemination of information and stimulus to improvement can 

 be aided by school and local government. 



Recreation. There seems to be a relative lack of what 

 would be defined in the West as recreation; there are few 

 facilities for it. Perhaps the absence of music is one of the 

 most significant of these lacks. The development of play in 

 connection with the school would be a real contribution. 



