No. 4.] RURAL PROGRESS. 141 



very flower of our American citizenship. And it is just as 

 significant to you wlio live in the cities that that shall be 

 done, as it is to the people who live in the country. 



Now, my subject is, "A campaign for rural progress.'" 

 What do we mean by this campaign for rural progress ? If 

 we are going to have such a campaign, we must have some- 

 thing definite as a goal. We must first of all seek to secure 

 such conditions, of such a character, that a young man can 

 hope to find a fairly satisfactory business career upon the 

 farm ; that is fundamental. But we want also a prosperous 

 industry as a whole. The two things may not go together. 

 It ma}' be perfectly possible that agriculture shall offer a 

 splendid opportunity for a few individuals, and still the in- 

 dustry as a whole lag. We must bring about, if we can, 

 such conditions that the mass of people who are tilling the 

 soil shall be fairly prosperous. But we must have also a 

 more satisfactory rural community, socially, educationally, 

 religiously, — a community that is a good place to settle in, 

 not merely a good place to be born in and to get away from. 

 And we must not forget, in all our discussions about dairy- 

 ing and fertilizers and about the business aspect of agricul- 

 ture, that on these as a foundation we must build up better 

 rural communities. In other words, we want to try to 

 maintain upon our farms, if it is possible to do so, a class 

 of typical American farmers, who are neither large land- 

 lords with a host of attendants, nor a mass of ill-educated, 

 ill-fed peasantry. If we could have our way, I think you 

 will agree with me that we would like to have on all our 

 New England farms just the same type of man, — who has 

 adapted himself, of course, to modern conditions, — but es- 

 sentially the same type of man as built up these Massachu- 

 setts farms years ago ; the same type of man who went out 

 from New Enoland and has made the trreat middle west what 

 it is to-day; the tj'pical rural citizen, land-owning, living 

 on a farm of moderate size, making enough from it to 

 give his family a fair education ; a man intelligent, broad- 

 minded, patriotic. It seems to me that is the goal, after 

 all, — that this sums up better than anything else the end 

 and aim of all our efforts for rural improvement. 



