Changes in Country Institutions 15 



ture; and herein is the one great aid that 

 society has rendered to the countryman. 



THE SHIFT IN RURAL INSTITUTIONS 



It requires no imagination to see that rural 

 life is, in some respects, in a state of arrested 

 development, as compared with the cities 

 and towns. The native institutions have been 

 copied in cities and greatly extended ; the 

 rural population now looks beyond its own 

 institutions to those of the city, to the city 

 school, the city church, the city library, the 

 city stores, the city amusements. The great 

 constructive movements of the day have passed 

 the country by. The nativeness of rural in- 

 stitutions has been allowed to die out, and 

 the country has been left socially sterilized. 

 Centers of interest are elsewhere. In many 

 regions, the farmer will talk politics, war and 

 city questions and anything else rather than 

 farming. I would not have my reader feel, 

 however, that this is peculiar to these later 

 days. I well remember vehement discussions 

 whether the pen is mightier than the sword, 



