54 BULLETIN 984, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The States and the Nation can well afford to encourage and assist 

 farm communities to build up a satisfying institutional life. In fact, 

 no other course is reasonable. Lethargy on the part of statesmen at 

 this point is indefensible. The weak, helpless cry of "keep the boy 

 on the farm" can be transformed into a rallying cry: "Build great 

 community institutions for farm boys and girls." 



WHEN THE EYES OF THE NATION TURN TO FARM LIFE. 



Human life on the farm will get national attention comparable to 

 that given crop estimates and crop reports, food shortage, and farm- 

 labor shortage, when the eyes of the Nation at large once come to rest 

 upon the human side of farm life. It is hoped that the Belleville 

 community story will serve in some measure to direct the eyes of 

 Americans in general to our farm community life, and thus help start 

 a train of thought about the people of the farms, their daily life, their 

 capacity to utilize modern community institutions and about their 

 contributions to national growth. 



No more powerful stimulus can come to rural social development 

 than the rise in the national mind of optimism about human life in 

 farm communities. If once side-tracked, so that the right of way is 

 given to optimism for a decade, pessimism about the farmer and his 

 family will drop out of national thought. Such a change in the 

 realm of public attention alone would do much to turn the restless 

 farmers' thought back to the benefits of farm life. It is not a marvel, 

 when the whole agricultural brain power of the Nation has been 

 focussed for a generation upon the economics of farm life, that hi 

 some instances the farmer and his boy should come to think that 

 money benefits are the prime goals of life. This is the point at which 

 education of farm youth may well dwell upon the specifically human 

 ideals of life. 



RECOGNITION OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE. 



When the Nation sees the farm population in a true light, it will 

 accord a more generous recognition to the people who stand by the 

 farm community and keep the human seed plot of national life green. 

 Every State will come to honor the family which has maintained 

 itself on the old homestead or in the same farm community generation 

 after generation. A "Who's Who" of such families might conceiv- 

 ably come to be looked upon as a roll of honor in every State, match- 

 ing the "Who's Who" of the farm-bred who have achieved fame 

 in industry, in science, in professional life after migration from the 

 farm community. 



A FIELD OF SERVICE FOR THOSE WHO WOULD SEEK TO INVEST THEIR LIVES. 



The American college has always quietly held aloft before its men 

 and women "Service to humanity" as a motive of work. "Invest- 

 ment of life" where the dividends of influence were largest, has made 



