146 Social Service in Rural ^Vreas. [may. 



feelings and thoughts were only discoverable by a few who 

 combined insight with observation. One of the few — the 

 author of ''Folk of the Furrow" — who took peculiar trouble 

 to observe and has also the gift of insight, says : ' ' The people 

 on the land have not been easy to approach because their 

 qualities have been found difficult of interpretation by those 

 who have not had the opportunity to penetrate below the 

 surface/' It is true that from time to time there have arisen 

 from the ranks of agricultural labourers, spokesmen who have 

 voiced the aspirations of their class, but they were little heeded 

 and their right to be regarded as representative was challenged. 

 Now the farm workers are organised, and those who speak as 

 their representatives can do so with the confidence which the 

 authority of numbers gives. From them we know that the 

 outlook of the men who live by the land is not restiictedto 

 wages, but that they are also claiming better opportunities for 

 enjoying the amenities of life. They are before all a practical 

 race, and have a wholesome distrust of those who promise the 

 millennium. But they do insistently demand that life in the 

 villages shall comprise something more than toil, and that its 

 amenities shall extend beyond the limited resources of the ale- 

 house. 



This demand must be met, and met without delay, if EngHsh 

 rural life is to continue, and a countryside population, which 

 is so vital to the welfare of the nation, is to be maintained 

 The demand is universal. The organisers of the Village Clubs 

 Association have only been actively at work for a very few 

 months, but in all parts of the country they have visited — 

 from Lancashire to Sussex, from Norfolk to Devonshire, from 

 Hertfordshire to North Wales, from every county and district — 

 the demand is the same. The Women's Institutes, of which 

 there are some 1,500 throughout England and Wales, testify 

 to the same urgent need. All recent inquirers into the rural 

 problem are insistent on the subject. The case is well put in 

 the Report of the Adult Education Committee, of which the 

 Master of Balliol was Chairman : 



" The rural problem, from whatever point of view it is regarded — 

 economic, social or political — is essentiall}^ a problem of re-creating the 

 rural community, of developing new social traditions and a new culture. 

 The great need is for a living nucleus of communal activity in the village, 

 which will be a centre from which radiate the influences of different 

 forms of corporate effort, and to which the people are attracted to find 

 the satisfaction of their social and intellectual needs. We conceive 

 this nucleus to be a village institute, under full pubUc control. Its 

 size would vary with the number of people it was designed to serve. . . . 



