688 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 540. 



ture of the future to be a business of fewer 

 and larger economic units ? If so, how will 

 this alfect the centers of population and 

 the social fabric? Will the lack of farm 

 labor force us more and more into 'nature 

 farming'— the hay and pasturage systems? 

 What is the farm labor problem? 



The country as well as the city must be 

 made attractive and habitable. It must 

 express and satisfy the highest human 

 ideals, else it will not attract the best men 

 and women. In area and in population, 

 the country is the larger part of the na- 

 tional domain ; the improving of the ideals 

 of the persons that live therein is one of 

 our greatest public questions. The farmer 

 is the conservative, not the dynamic, ele- 

 ment of society. We live in a dynamic 

 social age. 



The farmer always will be relatively con- 

 servative. His business is rooted in the 

 earth. In a thoroughly well developed 

 agriculture, the farmer does not move his 

 business rapidly from place to place. He 

 remains, while others move on. Therefore, 

 it is especially necessary that we extend to 

 him all the essential benefits of our civil- 

 ization. (I hope he will not care for the 

 unessential benefits.) He has the rural 

 free delivery of mails— although this was 

 thought to be impossible a few years ago. 

 Shall he not have a parcels post? Each 

 year the good roads movement, originating 

 at the cities, is extending itself farther into 

 the real country. Trolley lines are extend- 

 ing countrjnvard ; soon they will come ac- 

 tually to serve the farmer's needs. The 

 telephone, as a separate rural enterprise, is 

 extending itself. Extensional educational 

 enterprises are reaching farther and farther 

 into the open farming districts. Coopera- 

 tion and organization movements are at the 

 same time extending and concreting them- 

 selves. 



Farming stands for individualism as 

 distinguished from collectivism. Farming 



enterprises will be more and more amal- 

 gamated and capitalized, but they can 

 never be syndicated and monopolized to the 

 same extent as many other enterprises. 

 How best to preserve and direct this demo- 

 cratic individualism of the open country 

 is one of the greatest questions now con- 

 fronting us. 



The art impulse will soon take hold of 

 the country, as it has already laid hold on 

 the city. We have lived all these centuries 

 on the assumption that work of art is asso- 

 ciated with buildings and ' collections. ' As 

 nature is the source of all our art, so the 

 time is coming when we shall allow nature 

 herself to express her full beauty and 

 power. We shall go to nature oftener than 

 to art galleries. We shall first remove ob- 

 jectionable features from the landscape— 

 features for which man is responsible — such 

 as all untidiness and blemishes, all adver- 

 tizing signs, all unharmonious buildings. 

 Then we shall begin to work out our enlarg- 

 ing aspirations with the natural material 

 before us — make pictures with sw^ard and 

 trees and streams and hills, write our ideals 

 in the sweep of the landscape and the color 

 of the flowers. Our 'art' societies still 

 confine themselves to imitation art. The 

 great art societies will be those that give 

 first attention to nature as it is, not merely 

 as it its represented to be in plastic ma- 

 terials and in paints. 



Of all the forces that shall revitalize 

 and recrystallize the country, the school is 

 the chief. The schools make the opinions, 

 of the nation. The city school has been 

 developed, but the country school has 

 been relatively stationary; yet every farm 

 family is interested in the school. The 

 farmer believes in schooling, just as com- 

 pletely as the city man does; hut he may 

 not be convinced that the schools are really 

 touching the problems of life. Persons 

 make more sacrifices for their children 

 than for any other cause. Probably more 



