242 KTJKAL LIFE IN CANADA 



ment in its crowning worth. Just as Kaiffeisen in Ger- 

 many discovered that co-operative societies formed upon 

 the principle of pure benevolence possessed no vitality, 

 but that when organized as essentially business concerns 

 upon a Christian and not a mercenary basis, they be- 

 come effective, so this movement is grounded upon scien- 

 tific agricultural education, while it confidently claims 

 the co-operation and leadership of the church in higher 

 tasks. The movement has its centre at the Massachu- 

 setts Agricultural College at Amherst. Kenyon L. 

 Butterfield, President of the College, is its foremost ex- 

 ponent. But the Amherst Movement is but an illus- 

 trative instance of a nation-wide impulse embracing 

 every agency engaged in agricultural research, organiza- 

 tion, and education, from the federal Department of 

 Education down through the State departments and 

 State colleges to the county societies, from the Farmers' 

 National Congress to the local meeting of the Farmers' 

 Institute, and embracing the Grange and the agricul- 

 tural press, through all of whose extent two salient fea- 

 tures emerge a call for co-operation of all agencies and 

 for the enlistment of the influence of the church. Dr. 

 Tallmadge Eoot of the Federal Council of the Churches 

 says in regard to the Amherst Movement, " It is a great 

 civic revival, deeply moral and religious in its essential 

 meaning, whose immediate field is the country com- 

 munity and whose natural leader is the church." 



The public school is contributing its quota, and a 

 large one, to the solution of the recreative and social 

 need. Twelve States have enacted laws authorizing the 

 appointment of recreative commissions and authorizing 

 school boards to spend funds for social and recreative 

 purposes. In Kentucky a league of citizens raised funds 



