SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 245 



we cannot insist too strongly upon the fact that it is quite as 

 unfortunate to have any social as any economic falling off. It 

 would be a calamity to have our farms occupied by a lower type 

 of people than the hard-working, self-respecting, independent, 

 and essentially manly men and womanly women who have hither- 

 to constituted the most typically American, and on the whole the 

 most valuable element in our entire nation. Ambitious native- 

 born young men and women who now tend away from the farm 

 must be brought back to it, and therefore they must have social 

 as well as economic opportunities. Everything should be done 

 to encourage the growth in the open farming country of such 

 institutional and social movements as will meet the demand of 

 the best type of farmers. There should be libraries, assembly 

 halls, social organizations of all kinds. The school building and 

 the teacher in the school building should, throughout the country 

 districts, be of the very highest type, able to fit the boys and 

 girls not merely to live but thoroughly to enjoy and to make 

 the most of the country. The country church must be revived. 

 All kinds of agencies, from rural free delivery to the bicycle and 

 the telephone, should be utilized to the utmost; good roads 

 should be favored; everything should be done to make it easier 

 for the farmer to lead the most active and effective intellectual, 

 political, and economic life. 



There are regions of large extent where all this, or most of this, 

 has already been realized ; and while this is perhaps especially 

 true of great tracts of farming country west of the Mississippi, 

 with some of which I have a fairly intimate personal knowledge, 

 it is no less true of other great tracts of country east of the Missis- 

 sippi. In these regions the church and the school flourish as 

 never before ; there is a more successful and more varied farming 

 industry; the social advantages and opportunities are greater 

 than ever before; life is fuller, happier, more useful; and though 

 the work is more effective than ever, and in a way quite as hard, 

 it is carried on so as to give more scope for weU-used leisure. 



