i 4 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



As a consequence it is probable that the great funda- 

 mental social institutions such as the rural school and 

 the country church are not merely relatively but ac- 

 tually less efficient than formerly in many parts of our 

 country, even in regions in which land owners are very 

 prosperous in a business way. In some cases these 

 changes for the worse are so marked that we find that 

 entire neighborhoods in the course of perhaps two dec- 

 ades become populated by a class clearly less effective, 

 less intelligent, and less ambitious than was formerly 

 the case. 



Now this way lies the extinction of the " American 

 farmer." If farm " prosperity " spells actual rural 

 decline, the yeoman type of soil tiller is doomed. The 

 new peasant will take the place of the old plowman. 

 One may still view the whole picture of American agri- 

 culture with pride, but only the blind optimist can fail 

 to see the menace of these and other similar tendencies 

 in our rural affairs. 



WHAT THE WAR HAS REVEALED 



And then came the war. How it intensified our 

 thought about the future welfare of our country! Ab- 

 sorbed as we were in our effort to win the war, down 

 underneath our activity we kept pondering the ques- 

 tion, What is the war to bring us as its great abiding 

 results? And so in agriculture we ask, What has the 

 war revealed? 



i. "Food will win the war" was an exaggerated 

 statement of a great fact. Never before in all our 

 history has our sheer dependence upon the soil and the 

 men who till the soil revealed itself to the multitudes 

 who have never had a curious question as to where food 

 comes from, much less as to the welfare or the people 



