INFLUENCE OF A SINGLE FAEM COMMUNITY. 55 



its appeal to college men and women. But there has always been an 

 easy assumption that the largest dividends of social influence were 

 to be found in centers of the densest population. The results of this 

 study of the national influence of a single farm community distinctly 

 challenge that old assumption. To the highly trained professional 

 man or woman who hitherto has shunned country service these results 

 suggest alluring possibilities. To the teacher, to the physician, to the 

 minister, to the librarian, to the lyceum teacher, to the university 

 extension man and woman the spirit of the Belleville community 

 calls : 



You have feared that your influence would be lost if loosed among farmers. Look 

 at the rivulets, streams, and rivers of youth flowing from the farms into the sea of 

 national life. How could you more surely send your influence into every part of the 

 Nation than to lodge your life in the farm community? Come back into the hills or 

 out into the plains whence comes the strength of the Nation and sell your life on the 

 best terms to humanity at large. Let your life seep into national life through the 

 human carriers from the farms. 



If an argument for the richness of opportunity in a country leader's 

 life were wanted, nothing could serve the purpose better than the 

 example of the torch handed down from the hand of Joshua Bradley, 

 founder of Union Academy, to Jedediah Burchard, on to Charles 

 Finney, who in his turn sent out from Oberlin College hundreds of 

 inspired young leaders. 



RURAL COMMUNITY PROBLEMS ESSENTIALLY NATIONAL. 



The country-life movement and the habilitation of farm com- 

 munity institutions do not, it is evident, belong, as problems, ex- 

 clusively to farm people. The ordinary farm community is shown 

 by the foregoing analysis of one representative farm community to 

 be connected up with the life of the whole Nation. So far-reaching 

 is the influence of a typical, obscure farm community, that the states- 

 men and thinking citizenry of the Nation appear to be highly inter- 

 ested parties to all rural community problems. 



There are approximately 20,000 farm communities in the United 

 States surrounding our villages and small cities. If a close historical 

 study were to be made of each one of these communities, doubtless a 

 surprising set of powerful influences would be discovered flowing 

 outward to the Nation. Multiply the national influence of our single 

 farm community a thousandfold, and then multiply the result by ten, 

 then double that result, and one would get some idea of what the 

 farm population of America means to American national life. 



