INFLUENCE OF A SINGLE FARM COMMUNITY. 53 
communities, that when the best things of the mind come on call 
to the door of the farms, the danger of losing the population in order 
to satisfy intellectual and social cravings is minimized. 
WHEN THE COMMUNITY POSSESSES INSTITUTIONS TO BE PROUD OF. 
The farmers in the Belleville community founded their academy 
themselves; sacrificed for it, lavished their lives. upon it. It became 
their pride. Before towns and cities in the county had similar in- 
stitutions, this farm community was pioneering in higher education 
while pioneering in farming. The farmers determined to have an 
academy without waiting until they could amply afford it. It would 
be an extraordinary inducement that would lure from his farm a 
Belleville farmer whose father had nobly built his life into the local 
institution. People leave communities when community ties have 
no holding power. The community institution is an investment of 
life and energy and is a bond hard to break. 
If one were to put this principle into the form of a recipe for a com- 
munity suffering from overmigration, he would say: "If you wish to 
hold your people to the farms, get them to establish institutions to be 
proud of and let them lavish themselves upon these institutions. 
And don't wait until you think you can afford it." 
TAKING THE FIRST STEP IN A COMMUNITY TO REMEDY A CONDITION OF 
OVERMIGRATION. 
A farm community which possesses the economic basis of good land 
but which finds itself losing its best people — its best farmers, its best 
young men and women — if it determines to safeguard itself from 
depletion, will at once set about the task of building up community 
institutions which will provide doors to the community for the goods 
of life from the world at large. The common school will be supple- 
mented by a local farmer-supported high school. This will become 
a great center of intellectual life, of community spirit, of agricultural 
enthusiam. Other institutions will naturally follow this first step 
in stemming the current of folk depletion. 
WHAT PUBLIC OPINION WILL DO ABOUT OVERMIGRATION. 
The universal cry of "keep the boy on the farm" can be expanded 
into a great public sentiment for establishing at the very door of the 
farms the institutions which all people crave. Neither exhortation 
nor force will keep people on farms, away from the best of the life of 
the world; but when the tide of the world flows up into the country 
and deposits its riches of thought on the institutional thresholds of 
farm life, the great social motive of youth and middle age for leaving 
the farms will be undermined. 
