It is not an organized movement proceeding from one center or even expressing one set of ideas. It is a world-motive to even up society as between country and city; for it is generally understood that country life has not reached as high development within its sphere as city life has reached within its sphere.

We call it a new subject. As a "movement," or a recognized set of problems needing attention, it may possibly be called new; but in reality it is new only to those who have recently discovered it.

It is not a back-to-the-land movement.

The country-life movement must be sharply distinguished from the present popular back-to-the-land agitation. The latter is primarily a city or town impulse, expressing the desire of townspeople to escape, or of cities to find relief, or of real estate dealers to sell land; and in part it is the result of the doubtful propaganda to decrease the cost of living by sending more persons to the land, on the mostly mistaken assumption that more products will thereby be secured for the world's markets.

The back-to-the-land agitation is not necessarily to be discouraged, yet we are not to expect more of it than it can accomplish; but whatever the outward movement to the land may be, the effort to effectualize rural society, for the people who now comprise this society, is one of the fundamental problems now before the people.

The country-life and back-to-the-land movements are not only little related, but in many ways they are distinctly antagonistic.

This book.

The foregoing paragraphs indicate the subject of this book. I mean only to express opinions on a few of the questions that are popularly under discussion, or that are specially important at this time. I shall present no studies, and I intend to follow no systematic course. Some of these subjects I have already discussed with the public, but they may now have new expression or relations.

The lack of adjustment between city and country must be remedied, but the remedies lie in fundamental processes and not in the treatment of symptoms. Undoubtedly very much can be done to even up the economic situation and the distribution of population; and this needs careful and continuous study by commissions or other agencies created for the purpose. We are scarcely in sight of the good that such agencies could accomplish. I hope that this book may suggest some of the things to be considered. The past century belonged to the city; the present century should belong also to agriculture and the open country.

THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT

The present revival of rural interest is immediately an effort to improve farming; but at bottom it is a desire to stimulate new activity in a more or less stationary phase of civilization. We may over-exploit the movement, but it is sound at the center. For the next twenty-five years we may expect it to have great influence on the course of events, for it will require this length of time to balance up society. Politicians will use it as a means of riding into power. Demagogues and fakirs will take advantage of it for personal gain. Tradesmen will make much of it. Writers are even now beginning to sensationalize it.

But there will also arise countrymen with statesmanship in them; if not so, then we cannot make the progress that we need. The movement will have its significant political aspect, and we may look for governors of states and perhaps more than one President of the United States to come out of it. In the end, the farmer controls the politics because he makes the crops on which the wealth of the country depends. There is probably a greater proportion of tax-payers among voting farmers than among city people.

Considered in total results, educational and political as well as social and economic, the country-life movement in North America is probably farther advanced than in any other part of the world. It may not have such striking manifestations in some special lines, and our people may not need so much as other peoples that these particular lines be first or most strongly attacked. The movement really has been under way for many years, but it has only recently found separate expression. Most of the progress has been fundamental, and will not need to be done over again. The movement is well afoot among the country people themselves, and they are doing some of the clearest thinking on the situation. Many of our own people do not know how far we have already come.

A transition period.

Such undercurrent movements are usually associated with transition epochs. In parts of the Old World the nexus in the social structure has been the landlord, and the change in land-tenure systems has made a social reorganization necessary. There is no political land-tenure problem in the United States, and therefore there is no need, on that score, of the coöperation of small owners or would-be owners to form a new social crystallization. But there is a land problem with us, nevertheless, and this is at the bottom of our present movement: it is the immanent problem of remaining more or less stationary on our present lands, rather than moving on to untouched lands, when the ready-to-use fertility is reduced. We have had a new-land society, with all the marks of expansion and shift. We are now coming to a new era; but, unlike new eras in some other countries, it is not complicated by hereditary social stratification. Our real agricultural development will now begin.

In the discussion of these rural interests, old foundations and old ideas in all probability will be torn up. We shall probably discard many of the notions that now are new and that promise well. We may face trying situations, but something better will come out of it. It is now a time to be conservative and careful, and to let the movement mature.

The commission on country life.

The first organized expression of the country-life movement in the United States was the appointment of the Commission on Country Life by President Roosevelt in August, 1908. It was a Commission of exploration and suggestion. It could make no scientific studies of its own within the time at its command, but it could put the situation before the people. President Roosevelt saw the country-life problem and attacked it.

The Commission made its Report to the President early in 1909. It found the general level of country life in the United States to be good as compared with that of any previous time, but yet "that agriculture is not commercially as profitable as it is entitled to be for the labor and energy that the farmer expends and the risks that he assumes, and that the social conditions in the open country are far short of their possibilities."

A dozen large reasons for this state of affairs, a state that directly curtails the efficiency of the nation, are given in the Report; and it suggests many remedies that can be set in motion by Congress, states, communities, and individuals. The three "great movements of the utmost consequence that should be set under way at the earliest possible time, because they are fundamental to the whole problem of ultimate permanent reconstruction" are: taking inventory of country life by means of "an exhaustive study or survey of all the conditions that surround the business of farming and the people who live in the country, in order to take stock of our resources and to supply the farmer with local knowledge"; the organizing of a nationalized extension work; the inauguration of a general campaign of rural progress.

It is suggested that Congress provide "some means or agency for the guidance of public opinion toward the development of a real rural society that shall rest directly on the land."

The Report of the Commission on Country Life makes no discussion of the city-to-country movement.

The Report recognizes the fundamental importance of the agricultural experiment stations and of the great chain of land-grant colleges and of government departments and of other agencies; and the work that it proposes is intended to be supplementary to them.

The three fundamental recommendations of the Commission.

The taking stock of the exact condition and materials of country life is immensely important, for we cannot apply remedies before we make a diagnosis, and an accurate diagnosis must rest on a multitude of facts that we do not now possess. This is the scientific rather than the doctrinaire, politics, and oracular method of approaching the subject. It is of the first importance that we do not set out on this new work with only general opinions and superficial and fragmentary knowledge. Every rural community needs to have a program of its own carefully worked out, and this program should rest on a physical valuation. It may be some time yet before the importance and magnitude of this undertaking will impress the minds of the people, but it is essential to the best permanent progress.

Agricultural extension work of a well-organized kind is now beginning to come out of the colleges of agriculture, and this must be extended and systematized so that, with other agencies, it may reach every last man on the land. A bill to set this work in motion is now before Congress.

The third recommendation of the Commission for immediate action is "the holding of local, state, and even national conferences on rural progress, designed to unite the interests of education, organization, and religion into one forward movement for the re-building of country life. Rural teachers, librarians, clergymen, editors, physicians, and others may well unite with farmers in studying and discussing the rural question in all its aspects. We must in some way unite all institutions, all organizations, all individuals having any interest in country life into one great campaign for rural progress."

Conferences are now being held in many parts of the Union by universities, colleges, state departments of agriculture, chambers of commerce, business organizations, and other bodies. This will make public opinion. Such conventions, discussing the larger social, political, and economic relations of country life, should now be held in every state and geographical region.

It is now time that states undertake country-life programs. There is still much attack of symptoms; but persons in political offices, for the most, are not yet well-enough informed to make the most of the rural situation as it exists, or to utilize to the best advantage the talent and the institutions that the country now possesses. One has only to read the recommendations to legislative bodies to recognize the relative lack as yet of constructive plans for the improvement of rural conditions.

A national conference on country life.

If there should be state and local conferences for country life, so also should there be a national conference, meeting yearly. Such a conference should not be an agricultural convention in the ordinary sense, nor is it necessary that it be held in commanding agricultural regions. It should deal with the larger affairs and relations in their applications to rural civilization.

A voluntary movement.

The interest in country life is gradually assuming shape as a voluntary movement outside of government, as it properly should do. It should be in the best sense a popular movement; for if it is not a really popular movement, it can have little vitality, and exert little effect on the mass of the people. As it gets under motion, certain things will crystallize out of it for government to do; and governments will do them.

As a pure matter of propagation, such a voluntary organized movement would have the greatest value; for, in these days, simple publicity often accomplishes more than legislative action.

The international phase.

If the interest in rural economics and sociology is world wide, then we should have international institutions to represent it. Several organizations now represent or include certain phases. We need such an institution not so much for propaganda as for research. A Country Life Institute has been proposed by Sir Horace Plunkett, who is so well known and admired by all students of rural situations through his far-seeing work in Ireland and his many fruitful suggestions for America. It would seem that here is an unusual opportunity for a great and productive foundation.

SOME INTER-RELATIONS OF CITY AND COUNTRY

Every one knows that city populations are increasing more rapidly than country populations. By some persons, this of itself is considered to be a cause for much alarm. But the relative size of the populations is not so disturbing as the economic and social relations existing between these two phases of civilization.

Some contrasts of town folk and country folk.

We know that farming is the primitive and underlying business of mankind. As human desires have arisen, other occupations have developed to satisfy the increasing needs and aspirations, the products of the earth have been assembled and changed by manufacture into a thousand forms, and these departures have resulted in more refined products, a more resourceful civilization, and a more sensitive people.

Complex developments have been taken out of and away from agriculture, and have left it with the simple and undifferentiated products and the elemental contact with nature. The farmer is largely a residuary force in society; this explains his conservatism.

If we have very highly developed persons in the city, we have very rugged persons in the country. If the sense of brotherhood is highly evolved in the city, individualism is strongly expressed in the country. If the world-movement appeals to men in the city, local attachments have great power with men in the country. If commercial consolidation and organization are characteristic of the city, the economic separateness of the man or family is highly marked in the country. The more marked progress of the city is due to its greater number of leaders and to its consolidated interests; country people are personally as progressive as city people of equal intellectual groups, but they have not been able to attract as much attention or perhaps to make as much headway.

Comparisons of town and country affairs.

Civilization oscillates between two poles. At the one extreme is the so-called laboring class, and at the other are the syndicated and corporate and monopolized interests. Both these elements or phases tend to go to extremes. Many efforts are being made to weld them into some sort of share-earning or commonness of interest, but without very great results. Between these two poles is the great agricultural class, which is the natural balance-force or the middle-wheel of society. These people are steady, conservative, abiding by the law, and are to a greater extent than we recognize a controlling element in our social structure.

The man on the farm has the opportunity to found a dynasty. City properties may come and go, rented houses may be removed, stocks and bonds may rise and fall, but the land still remains; and a man can remain on the land and subsist with it so long as he knows how to handle it properly. It is largely, therefore, a question of education as to how long any family can establish itself on a piece of land.

In the accelerating mobility of our civilization it is increasingly important that we have many anchoring places; and these anchoring places are the farms.

These two phases of society produce marked results in ways of doing business. The great centers invite combinations, and, because society has not kept pace with guiding and correcting measures, immense abuses have arisen and the few have tended to fatten on the many. There are two general modes of correcting, or at least of modifying, these abuses,—by doing what we can to make men personally honest and responsible, and by evening up society so that all men may have something like a natural opportunity.

The two minds.

There is a town mind and a country mind. I do not pretend to know what may be the psychological processes, but it is clear that the mode of approach to the problem of life is very different as between the real urbanite and the real ruralite. This factor is not sufficiently taken into account by city men who would remove to real farms and make a living there. It is the cause of most of the failure of well-intentioned social workers to accomplish much for country people.

All this is singularly reflected in our literature, and most of all, perhaps, in guide-books. These books—made to meet the demand—illustrate how completely the open country has been in eclipse. There is little rural country discoverable in these books, unless it is mere "sights" or "places,"—nothing of the people, of the lands, of the products, of the markets, of the country dorfs, of the way of life; but there is surfeit of cathedrals, of history of cities, of seats of famous personages, of bridges and streets, of galleries and works of art. We begin to see evidences of travel out into the farming regions, part of it, no doubt, merely a desire for new experiences and diversion, and we shall now look for guide-books that recognize the background on which the cities rest. But all this will call for a new intention in travel.

Will the American farmer hold his own?

What future lies before the American farmer? Will he hold something like a position of independence and individualism, or will he become submerged in the social order, and form only an underlying stratum? What ultimate hope is there for a farmer as a member of society?

It is strange that the producer of the raw material has thus far in the history of the world taken a subordinate place to the trader in this material and to the fabricator of it. The trader and fabricator live in centers that we call cities. One type of mind assembles; the other type remains more or less scattered. So there have arisen in human society two divergent streams,—the collective and coöperative, and the isolated and individualistic.

The fundamental weakness in our civilization is the fact that the city and the country represent antagonistic forces. Sympathetically, they have been and are opposed. The city lives on the country. It always tends to destroy its province.

The city sits like a parasite, running out its roots into the open country and draining it of its substance. The city takes everything to itself—materials, money, men—and gives back only what it does not want; it does not reconstruct or even maintain its contributory country. Many country places are already sucked dry.

The future state of the farmer, or real countryman, will depend directly on the kind of balance or relationship that exists between urban and rural forces; and in the end, the state of the city will rest on the same basis. Whatever the city does for the country, it does also for itself.

Mankind has not yet worked out this organic relation of town and country. City and country are gradually coming together fraternally, but this is due more to acquaintanceship than to any underlying coöperation between them as equal forces in society. Until such an organic relationship exists, civilization cannot be perfected or sustained, however high it may rise in its various parts.

The first two remedies.

Of course there are no two or even a dozen means that can bring about this fundamental adjustment, but the two most important means are at hand and can be immediately put into better operation.

The first necessity is to place broadly trained persons in the open country, for all progress depends on the ability and the outlook of men and women.

The second necessity is that city folk and country folk work together on all great public questions. Look over the directories of big undertakings, the memberships of commissions and councils, the committees that lay plans for great enterprises affecting all the people, and note how few are the names that really represent the ideas and affairs of the open country. Note also how many are the names that represent financial interests, as if such interests should have the right of way and should exert the largest influence in determining public policies. In all enterprises and movements in which social benefit is involved, the agricultural country should be as much represented as the city. There are men and women enough out in the open country who are qualified to serve on such commissions and directories; but even if there were not, it would now be our duty to raise them up by giving rural people a chance. Rural talent has not had adequate opportunity to express itself or to make its contribution to the welfare of the world.

I know it is said, in reply to these remarks, that many of the city persons on such organizations are country-born, but this does not change the point of my contention. Many country-born townsmen are widely out of knowledge of present rural conditions, even though their sympathies are still countryward. It is also said that many of them live in country villages, small cities, and in suburbs; but even so, their real relations may be with town rather than country, and they may have little of the farm-country mind; and the suburban mind is really a town mind.

Every broad public movement should have country people on its board of control. Both urban and rural forces must shape our civilization.

Movement from city to country as a remedy.

Some persons seem to think that the movement of city men out to the country offers a solution of country problems. It usually offers only a solution of a city problem,—how a city man may find the most enjoyment for his leisure hours and his vacations. Much of the rising interest in country life on the part of certain people is only a demand for a new form of entertainment. These people strike the high places in the country, but they may contribute little or nothing to real country welfare. This form of entertainment will lose its novelty, as the sea-shore loses it for the mountains and the horse loses it for the motor-car or aëroplane. The farming of some city men is demoralizing to real country interests. I do not look for much permanent good to come to rural society from the moving out of some of the types of city men or from the farming in which they ordinarily engage.

I am glad of all movements to place persons on the land who ought to go there, and to direct country-minded immigrants away from the cities; but we must not expect too much from the process, and we must distinguish between the benefit that may accrue to these persons themselves and the need of reconstruction in the open country. It is one thing for a family to move to the land in order to raise its own supplies and to secure the benefits of country life; it is quite another thing to suppose that an exodus from city to country will relieve the economic situation or make any difference in the general cost of living, even assuming that the town folk would make good farmers. And we must be very careful not to confuse suburbanism and gardening with country life.

To have any continuing effect on the course of rural development, a person or an agency must become a real part and parcel of the country life.

Sending the surplus population to the country.

It is also proposed to send to the country the poor-to-do and the dissatisfied and the unemployed. This is very doubtful policy. In the first place, the presumption is that a person who does not do well or is much dissatisfied in the town would not do well in the country. In the second place, the country does not need him. We may need more farm labor, as we need more of all kinds of labor, but in the long run this labor should be produced mostly in the country and kept there by a profitable and attractive rural life. The city should not be expected permanently to supply it. The labor that the city can supply with profit to country districts is the very labor that is good enough for the city to keep.

The relief of cities, if relief is to be secured, must lie in the evolution of the entire situation, and not merely in sending the surplus population into the country.

In my opinion, the present back-to-the-farm cry is for the most part unscientific and unsound, as a corrective of social ills. It rests largely on the assumption that one solution of city congestion is to send people away from itself to the open country, and on another assumption that "a little farm well tilled" will abundantly support a family. There is bound to be a strong reaction against much of the present agitation. We are to consider the welfare of the open country as well as that of the city itself. The open country needs more good farmers, whether they are country-bred or city-bred; but it cannot utilize or assimilate to any great extent the typical urban-minded man; and the farm is not a refuge.

Back-to-the-village.

It seems to me that what is really needed is a back-to-the-village movement. This should be more than a mere suburban movement. The suburban development enlarges the boundaries of the city. It is perfectly feasible, however, to establish manufacturing and other concentrated enterprises in villages in many parts of the country. Persons connected with these enterprises could own small pieces of land, and by working these areas could add something to their means of support, and also satisfy their desire for a nature-connection. In many of the villages there are vacant houses and comparatively unoccupied land in sufficient number and amount to house and establish many enterprises; and there would be room for growth. If the rural village, freed from urban influences, could then become a real integrating part of the open country surrounding it, all parties ought to be better served than now, and the social condition of both cities and country ought to be improved. We have over-built our cities at the expense of the hamlets and the towns. I look for a great development of the village and small community in the next generation; but this involves a re-study of freight rates.

Can a city man make a living on a farm?

Yes, if he is industrious and knows how. Many city persons have made good on the land, but they are the exceptions, unless they began young.

There is the most curious confusion of ideas on this question. We say that farming requires the highest kind of knowledge and at the same time think that any man may go on a farm, no matter how unsuccessful he may have been elsewhere. Even if he has been successful as a middleman or manufacturer or merchant, it does not at all follow that he would be successful as a farmer. Farming cannot be done at long range or by proxy any more than banking, or storekeeping, or railroading, and especially not by one who does not know how; and he cannot learn it out of books and bulletins. If a man can run a large factory without first learning the business, or a theater or a department store, then he might be able also to run a farm, although the running of a farm of equal investment would probably be the more difficult undertaking.

I am glad to see earnest city men go into farming when they are qualified to do so, but I warn my friends that many good people who go out from cities to farms with golden hopes will be sadly disappointed. Farming is a good business and it is getting better, but it is a business for farmers; and on the farmers as a group must rest the immediate responsibility of improving rural conditions in general.

The younger the man when he begins to consider being a farmer, the greater will be his chances of success; here the student has the great advantage.

City people must be on their guard against attractive land schemes. Now and then it is possible to pay for the land and make a living out of it at the same time, but these cases are so few that the intending purchaser would better not make his calculations on them. Farming is no longer a poor man's business. It requires capital to equip and run a farm as well as to buy it, the same as in other business. It is a common fault of land schemes to magnify the income, and to minimize both the risks and the amount of needed capital. Plans that read well may be wholly unsound or even impossible when translated into plain business practice. The exploiting of exceptional results in reporter's English and with charming pictures is having a very dangerous effect on the public mind; and even some of these results may not stand business analysis.

What the city may do.

It is not incumbent on cities, corporations, colleges, or other institutions to demonstrate, by going into general practical farming, that the farming business may be made to pay: thousands of farmers are demonstrating this every day.

If the city ever saves the open country, it will be by working out a real economic and social coördination between city and country, not by the city going into farming.

We need to correct the abnormal urban domination in political power, in control of the agencies of trade, in discriminatory practices, and in artificial stimulation, and at the same time to protect the evolution of a new rural welfare. The agrarian situation in the world is not to be met alone by increasing the technical efficiency of farming.

THE DECLINE IN RURAL POPULATION—ABANDONED FARMS

The decline in rural population grows out of economic conditions. Men move to the centers, where they can make the best living for themselves and families. It is difficult, however, for the farmer to "pull up stakes" and move. He is tied to his land. The result is that many men who really could do better in the town than on their farms are still remaining on the land. These persons will continue to remove to towns and cities as they are gradually forced off their lands; or if they are not forced off, their children will go, and the farm will eventually change hands.

Social reasons also have their influence in the movement of rural populations to towns. The social resources in the country in recent years have been very meager, because the social attractions of the towns have drawn away from the activities of the open country, and also more or less because the population itself is decreasing and does not allow, thereby, for so close social cohesion.

It is not to be expected that the counter-movement from the towns and cities to the open country will yet balance in numbers the movement of population from the country to the city.

It is important that conditions be so improved for the open country that those who are born on the farms and who are farm-minded shall feel that opportunities are at least as good for them there as in the city, and thereby prevent the exodus to the city or to other business of persons who really ought to remain in the rural regions.

Significance of the decline.

It is commonly assumed that a decline in rural population in any region is itself evidence of a real decline in agriculture. This conclusion, however, does not at all follow. The shift in population as between town and country is an expression of very many causes. In some cases it may mean a lessening in economic efficiency in the region, and in some cases an actual increase in such efficiency.

It must be remembered that we have been passing from the rural to the urban phase of civilization. The census of 1900 showed approximately one-third of our people on farms or closely connected with farms, as against something like nine-tenths a hundred years previous. It is doubtful whether we have yet struck bottom, although the rural exodus may have gone too far in some regions; and we may not permanently strike bottom for some time to come.

We think of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and other early patriots as countrymen, and we are likely to deplore the fact that countrymen no longer represent us in high places. The fact is that "the fathers" represented all society, because society in their day was not clearly differentiated between city and country. They were at the same time countrymen and city men, but the city was the incidental or secondary interest. To-day, the conditions are reversed. The city has come to be the preponderating force, and the country is largely incidental and secondary so far as the shaping of policies is concerned; but this does not prove that a greater ratio of country population is needed. The number of persons now living in the open country is probably sufficient, if the persons were all properly effective. The real problem before the American people is how to make the country population most effective, not how to increase this population; the increase will be governed by the operation of economic law.

The sorting of our people has not yet reached its limit of approximate stability. Many persons who live on the land really are not farmers, but are the remainders of the rural phase of society.

A decline in rural population in any region may be expressive of the general adjustment as between country and city; it may mean the passing out of active cultivation of large areas of land that ought to be in forest or in extensive systems of agriculture; it may mean the moving out of well-to-do farmers to cheaper lands, as an expression of the land-hunger of the American; it may be due in some cases to the retiring of well-to-do persons from the farms to the town; and other causes are at work in particular localities. The rural population of Iowa is decreasing, but the agricultural production and land valuation are increasing.

The lessened production of live-stock, of which we have recently heard so much, is probably not due to any great extent, if at all, to decreasing rural population. It is in part due to the shift in farming following the passing of the western ranges, and in part to the lack of a free market, and in part to a changing adjustment in farming practices. This situation will take care of itself if the markets are not manipulated or controlled.

Many publicists are alarmed at the lessened production of farm products in comparison with imports, and fear that the balance of trade will be seriously turned against us, with a rise in the rate of exchange. It is not to be expected that we shall maintain our former rate of export of raw crops, nor is it desirable from the point of view of maintaining the fertility of our lands that we should do so; but the maintenance of production is now to depend on farming every acre better, in larger farms as well as in smaller farms, rather than on taking up new acres.

The ultimate importance of agriculture to civilization, in other words, lies not in the number of persons it supports, but in the fact that it must continue to provide supplies for the populations of the earth when mining and exploitation are done, when there are no new lands, and when we shall have taken away all the first flush of the earth's bounty. The character of the farm man, therefore, becomes of supreme importance, and all the institutions of society must lend themselves to this personal problem.

We shall never again be a rural people. We want the cities to grow; and as they grow they should learn how to manage themselves. How they shall meet their questions of population is not my problem; and I have no suggestions to make on that subject.

The abandoned farms. [1]

If persons move from any part of the country until there is a marked absolute falling off in population, it must follow that certain lands shall be left unused, or shall be combined with adjacent lands into larger business units. It is no anomaly that there are "abandoned farms" (they are seldom really abandoned, but more or less unused), and it is natural that they should be in the remoter, hillier, and poorer regions. So are shop buildings abandoned on back streets, and likewise factories on lonely streams.

Some farms in the remote or difficult regions are still well utilized, because a skillful man has met the situation; others may be very nearly or quite disused; between the two extremes there is every shade of condition. Some farms are falling into disuse for one reason and some for another. In some cases, it is because the family is merely broken up and is moving off. In other cases, it is because the farm can no longer make a good living for a man and his family, giving him the things that a man of the twentieth century wants. A farm in the hill region that was large enough to support a man fifty or seventy-five years ago, may not support him at the present time with all his increase in desires [(page 106)].

It is no solution of any question merely to put other families back on disused farms. It is worse than no solution to place there a more ignorant family than was on the place originally; and yet there is a movement all over the country to place raw foreigners on such farms as owners or renters. Because these farms are cheap, they appeal to city people, and they become temptations to real estate dealers. Bargain-counter farms are rarely good investments.

What is to be done with these farms is, at bottom, a plain economic question. If they will not pay in ordinary farming, no one should be forced to occupy them. They might be well utilized, in many cases, for community or county forestry purposes. Every county in the East that has many remote and difficult hill lands could probably profit by a system of public forestry, organized on a comprehensive state plan.

I have said that farms are abandoned for all kinds of reasons. It does not follow because a family has given up a certain farm that the place has ever been really tested on its merits; the man may not have been a farmer at all, but only a resident. Misfortune in the family, or the lack of children, may be the reason for the desertion. So it happens that some so-called abandoned farms are first-class properties to purchase as ordinary farms.

The best lands will naturally be the first to be taken up by persons who know. And the value of land for farming will depend very much on its accessibility and nearness to market. Even though it is possible to raise two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes on a distant hilltop, it does not follow that it is profitable to raise them there. Many persons who are now living on difficult lands, would undoubtedly be much better off if they were in cities or towns; but as a rule, a man cannot safely enter a new business after forty years of age.

We must, of course, do the best we can to help the man who actually lives on one of these difficult farms, to enable him to make the very most of his opportunities. This is being done through many agencies. He has been taught in methods of soil handling, fertilizing, grass-growing, stock-raising, drainage, and many other particular features. But it is also important that we do not encourage others to enter the same condition.

So I have no fear of the abandoned farm, although I wish that we had a fundamental treatment of the whole situation,—like state programs,—so that lands in the process of returning to nature may be managed in a large and systematic way, that they might contribute the best results to the community and the country. We now know how to make these lands productive, but there is a larger question than this. Such lands—once farmed and now going fallow—may be found from California to Maine. In many cases they are not being abandoned rapidly enough, and this accounts for the human tragedy connected with some of the old homesteads. But they will all be used in good time, and we shall need them.

Little of the older country is worn out. Some of the best land values now lie in the old East and South. Movement to these lands from the Western lands is now beginning, and this is a sound tendency, as are most spontaneous movements inside the farming business itself; the railroads and real estate dealers may be expected to even up the situation.

The new farming.

Although the ratio of farmers to the whole population may still decrease, the actual number of farmers will increase. The rural districts will fill up. More young men and women will remain on farms and more persons will go from towns to farms as rapidly as the business becomes as lucrative as other businesses requiring equal investment, risks, and intelligence. The open country will probably fill up mostly with the natural increase of the country population, and there will be some to spare for the cities. We shall face the question of congestion of farm districts.

The general growth of population will make additional demands on the farm, not only because there will be more persons to supply, but also because desires increase with the increase of wealth. It may require no more food to sustain a well-to-do person than a poor-to-do person, but as one increases his income he greatly extends the range of his food and improves its quality. Luxuries increase.

But beyond his actual food, one's desires increase directly with his income; and, aside from the minerals and metals, most of the material that is used in the arts and manufactures, in clothing, shelter, and adornment, is raised from the land. The human-food products do not comprise one-half the output of the land.

We have covered in a way the "easy" farming regions. But in the end, all the country will be needed for productive uses; and the best civilization will come only when we conquer the difficult places as well as utilize the easy ones. We shall develop greater skill in farming than we have yet dreamed of. The raw and ragged open country that we see everywhere from trolley-lines and railway-trains is not at all a necessary condition; it is only a phase of a transition period between the original conquest of the country and the growing utilization of our resources. The more completely we conquer and utilize it, the more resourceful and hopeful our people should be. Country life will become more differentiated and complex. Speaking broadly, we are now in the rough and crude stage of our agricultural development; but the situation will develop only as it pays and satisfies persons to live in the country.

To meet the economic, social, educational, religious, and other needs of these great open regions will require the very best efforts that our people can put forth; and our institutions are not now sufficiently developed to meet the situation adequately.

RECLAMATION IN RELATION TO COUNTRY LIFE; AND THE RESERVE LANDS

All forms of reclamation, by which lands are made available for agricultural use, profoundly affect society and institutions; and any person who is interested in rural civilization must necessarily, therefore, be interested in these means and their results. Because reclamation by irrigation has progressed farther than other means, and has become a national policy, I shall confine my remarks to it chiefly.

The best rural civilization will develop out of native rural conditions rather than be imposed from without. Irrigation makes a rural condition: it provides the possibility for a community to develop; and it must, therefore, color the entire life of the community.

Irrigation communities are compact. As all the people depend on a single utility, so must the community life tend to be solidified and tense. Probably no other rural communities will be so unified and so intent on local social problems. We shall look, therefore, for a very distinct and definite welfare to arise in these communities; and they will make a peculiar contribution to rural civilization.

The life of the irrigation community will be expressed not only in institutions of its own, but in a literature of its own. Much of the world's literature does not have significance to country-life conditions, and very little of it has significance to an irrigation civilization. I look for poetry to come directly out of the irrigation ditch and to express the outlook of the people who depend for their existence on the canal and the flood-gate.

The interests of society in the work.

The people have made it possible for irrigation-reclamation to be developed; for whether the work is performed by government directly or by private enterprise, it nevertheless rests mostly on national legislation; and this legislation expresses the consent and the interest of society in the work. All the people have not only a right to an interest in irrigation-reclamation, but they carry an obligation to be interested in it, since it reclaims and utilizes the fundamental heritage of all the people. I take it that society's interest in the work is of two kinds: to see that the land is properly utilized and protected; to see that persons desiring homes shall have an opportunity to secure them. Society is not interested in speculation in land or in mere exploitation.

I hope that the irrigation people realize their obligation to the society that makes it possible for them to develop their irrigation systems. Not every person in the nation agrees to the policy of national reclamation, but society has given it a trial. The people in the West are interested in developing their localities and their commonwealths, and in securing settlers to them; and with this feeling we all must sympathize. The people in the East have a remoter interest, but it is none the less real. I have no fear that the irrigation-settlement of the West will set up disastrous competition in products with the East, as many Eastern people anticipate; the areas involved in the new irrigation projects are too small and the development too slow for that. But there is danger that the producing-power of the land may not be safeguarded, and all the people, East as well as West, must have concern for use of Western land. The very fact that irrigation-farming is intensive increases the danger. From an agricultural point of view, the greatest weakness in this farming is the fact that the animal, or live-stock, does not occupy a large place in the system. Other systems of maintaining fertility must be developed.

Society has a right to ask that we be careful of our irrigated valleys. They are abounding in riches. It is easy to harvest this wealth, by the simple magic of water. We will be tempted to waste these riches, and the time will come quickly when we will be conscious of their decline. This seems remote now, but the danger is real. Not even the fertility of the irrigation waters will maintain the land in the face of poor agricultural practice.

I am not contending that irrigation-farming is proceeding in a wasteful way, or that systems are not developing that will protect society; I am calling attention to the danger and to the interest of all the people in this danger; and I hope that we may profit by the errors of all new settlements thus far made in the history of the world.

It is the flat valleys of the great arid West that will be opened by irrigation. These valleys are small areas compared with the uplands, the hills, and the unirrigable regions. Society is interested also that we be careful of the uplands and hills, for in the arid regions they give small yield in forage and in timber; this forage and timber must be most thoughtfully protected. When the producing-power of the irrigated lands begins to decline, the West cannot fall back on its dry hills.

We are everywhere in need of better agriculture, not only that every agriculturist may do a better business, but also that agriculture may contribute its full share to the making of a better civilization. Here and there, as we learn how to adapt ourselves to the order of nature, we begin to see a really good agriculture in the process of making. A good agriculture is one that is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating, not only increasing its yields year after year from the same land, but leaving the land better and richer at each generation. This must come to pass from the land itself and from the animals and crops that one naturally brings to the land, and not merely by the addition of mined fertilizing materials brought from the ends of the earth. Thus far in history, it is only when the virgin fatness begins to be used up, speaking broadly, that we put our wits to work. Then the rebound comes. The best agriculture thus far has developed only after we have struck bottom, and we begin a constructive effort rather than an exploitative effort; and this comes in a mature country. This is why so great part of the European agriculture is so much better than our own, and why in old New England such expert and hopeful farming is now beginning to appear. The East is in the epoch of rebound. The East is in the process of becoming more fertile; the West is in the process of becoming less fertile.

In Western North America, the business systems have been developed to great perfection, and the people are possessed of much activity, and are so far escaped from tradition that they are able to do things in new ways and to work together. I hope that this great region also will apply at the outset all the resources of business and of science to develop an agriculture that will propagate itself.

A broad reclamation movement.

When all the lands are taken that can be developed or reclaimed by private resources, there remain vast areas that require the larger powers, and perhaps even the larger funds, of society (or the government) to bring into utilization. One class of lands can be utilized by means of irrigation. This form of land-reclamation is much in the public mind, and great progress has been made in it.

There remain, however, other lands to be reclaimed by other means. There is much more land to be reclaimed by the removal of water than by the addition of water. There are many more acres to be adapted to productive uses by forest planting and conservation than by irrigation. There are vastly larger areas waiting reclamation by the so-called "dry-farming" (that is, by moisture-saving farming completely adapted to dry regions). And all the land in all the states must be reclaimed by better farming. I am making these statements in no disparagement of irrigation, but in order to indicate the relation of irrigation to what should be a recognized national reclamation movement.

Supplemental irrigation.

Let me say further that irrigation is properly not a practice of arid countries alone. Irrigation is for two purposes: to reclaim land and make it usable; to mitigate the drought in rainfall regions. As yet the popular imagination runs only to reclamation-irrigation. This form of irrigation is properly regulated by the federal government.

Now and then a forehanded farmer in the humid region, growing high-class crops, installs an irrigation plant to carry him through the dry spells. As our agriculture becomes more developed, we shall greatly extend this practice. We shall find that even in humid countries we cannot afford to lose the rainfall from hills and in floods, and we shall hold at least some of it against the time of drought as well as for cities and for power. We have not yet learned how to irrigate in humid regions, but we certainly shall apply water as well as manures to supplement the usual agricultural practices.

We must learn to reckon with drought as completely as we reckon with winter or with lessening productiveness. We probably lose far more from dry spells than from all the bugs and pests.

We need reserves.

But even though we should recognize a national reclamation movement to include all these phases and others, it may not be necessary or advisable in the interest of all the people, that every last acre in the national domain be opened for exploitation or settlement in this decade or even in this century. The nation may well have untouched reserves. No one knows what our necessities will be a hundred years hence. Land that has never been despoiled will be immeasurably more valuable to society then than now; and society holds the larger interest.

When the pressure of population comes, we shall fall back on our reserves. The rain-belt states will fall back on their wet lands, their uplands, and their hills. These hills are much more usable than those of the arid and semi-arid West can ever be. The Eastern and old Southern states have immense reserves, even though the titles may be largely in private ownership. New York is still nearly half in woods and swamps and waste, but practically all of it is usable. New York is an undeveloped country, agriculturally. The same is true of New England and Pennsylvania and great regions southwards. Forests and sward grow profusely to the summits of the mountains and hills. Vast areas eastward are undeveloped and unexploited. Even the regions of the so-called "abandoned farms" are yet practically untouched of their potential wealth.

I have no regret that these countries are still unsettled. There is no need of haste. When the great arid West has brought every one of its available acres into irrigation, and when population increases, the Eastern quarter of the country will take up the slack. It is by no means inconceivable that at that time the Eastern lands, newly awakened from the sleep of a century, will be the fresh lands, and the older regions will again become the new.

We should be careful not to repeat, even on a small scale, the recklessness and haste with which we have disposed of our reserves before their time.

WHAT IS TO BE THE OUTCOME OF OUR INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION?

We know that the whole basis of civilization is changing. Industry of every kind is taking the place of the older order. Its most significant note is that it brings the people of the world together in consultation and in trade. We are escaping our localism, and we look on all problems in their relation to all mankind. Brotherhood has become a real power in the world.

But what does industry in itself, including all forms of land-culture, offer as an ultimate goal to civilized man? What are to be the man's ideals toward which he should lead his thoughts?

I am not one of those who consider a sordid and commercial end to be the necessary result of industrialism. We must develop the ideals in an industrial civilization, that they may lead us into the highest personal endeavor; and everywhere it should be possible for a man to make the most of himself. There must be something in every business beyond the financial gain if it is to make any final contribution to civilization. Finding this ultimate, industrial society will grow into perfect flower.

So far as agriculture is concerned, I see two points of high endeavor within the business, lying beyond the making of a good living, and toward which the coming countryman may set his imagination.

(1) The making of a new society.

A new social order must be evolved in the open country, and every farmer of the new time must lend a strong hand to produce it. We have been training our youth merely to be better farmers; this, of course, is the first thing to do, but the man is only half trained when this is done. What to do with the school, the church, the rural organizations, the combinations of trade, the highways, the architecture, the library, the beauty of the landscape, the country store, the rousing of a fine community helpfulness to take the place of the old selfish individualism, and a hundred other activities, is enough to fire the imagination and to strengthen the arm of any young man or woman.

The farmer is to contribute his share to the evolution of an industrial democracy.

(2) The fighting edge.

Theodore Roosevelt, with his power to discern essentials, has given us a good rallying phrase in "the fighting edge." When man ceases to be a conqueror, he will lose his virility and begin to retrograde. As localism gives way to brotherhood, militarism will pass out; but this does not mean that mankind will cease to contend.

The best example I have seen of the development of determination and fine social brotherhood is in the making of the Panama Canal. The making of the Canal is in every sense a conquest. It is a new civilization that the 40,000 or 50,000 folk are constructing down there, and every man, whether he is employed in the commissariat, the sanitary department, in an office, on a steam shovel, or with a construction gang, will tell you that he is building the Canal. All these people are giving a good account of themselves because they are doing the work under the flag and because they are contending with vast difficulties.

We have scarcely begun even the physical conquest of the earth. It is not yet all explored. The earth is an island, and it is only two years ago that we got to one end of it. There are mountains to pierce, sea-shores to reclaim, vast stretches of submerged land to drain, millions of acres to irrigate and many more millions to utilize by dry-farming, rivers to canalize, the whole open country to organize and subdue by means of local engineering work, and a thousand other great pieces of construction to accomplish, all calling for the finest spirit of conquest and all contributing to the training of men and women. There is no necessity that the race become flabby.

Now, my point is that the prime high endeavor laid before every farmer is to conquer his farm, and this means contest with storm and flood and frost, with blight and bug and pest, and with all the other barriers that nature has put against the man that tills the land. We have made a tremendous mistake, in my estimation, in trying to portray farming merely as an easy business. The sulky-plow has been too much emphasized. We are giving the young men more means and tools by which to wage the contest, but the contest can never stop. In the nature of things, farming cannot be an easy and simple business, and this is why it has produced a virile lot of men and women, and why it will continue to do so. It is a question whether, if our civilization is ever evened up, we shall not look again to the open country for strong working classes, for the course of much of our city industrialism is to make dependent men and managed men, and we need to exercise every precaution that it does not make clock-watchers and irresponsible gang-servers [(page 139)].

Farming will attract folk with the feeling of mastery in them, even more in the future than in the past, because the hopelessness, blind resignation, and fatalism will be taken out of it. Those who are not masterful cannot conquer a farm. The man weighing one hundred and fifty pounds who is afraid of a San José bug would better go to the city, where he can find some one to help him fight his battles. The farmer will learn how to adapt his scheme to nature, and how to conquer the things that are conquerable; and this should make it worth his while to be a farmer.

THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION IN AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE

How to make country life what it is capable of becoming is the question before us; and while we know that the means is not single or simple, we ought to be able to pick out the first and most fundamental thing that needs now to be done.

It is perfectly apparent that the fundamental need is to place effectively educated men and women into the open country. All else depends on this. No formal means can be of any permanent avail until men and women of vision and with trained minds are at hand to work out the plans in an orderly way.

And yet it is frequently said that the first necessity is to provide more income for the farmer; but this is the result of a process, not the beginning of it. And again it is said that organization is the first necessity, even to make it possible to use the education. If organization is necessary to make the best use of education, then it assumes education as its basis. Educated men will make organization possible and effective, but economic organization will not insure education except remotely, as it becomes a means of consolidating an unorganic society.

But there is no longer any need to emphasize the value of education. It would now be difficult to find an American farmer who requires convincing on this point. Yet I have desired to say that there is no other agency, using education in its broad sense, that can by any possibility be placed ahead of it.

Agriculture in the public schools.

Agriculture is now a school subject. It is recognized to be such by state syllabi, in the minds of the people, and in the minds of most school men. It is finding its way into high-schools and other schools here and there.

There is no longer much need to propagate the idea that agriculture is a school subject. It is now our part to define the subject, organize it, and actually to place it in the schools.

We must understand that the introduction of agriculture into the schools is not a concession to farming or to farmers. It is a school subject by right.

It is the obligation of a school to do more than merely to train the minds of its students. The school cannot escape its social responsibilities; it carries these obligations from the very fact that it is a school supported by public money.

The schools, if they are to be really effective, must represent the civilization of their time and place. This does not mean that every school is to introduce all the subjects that engage men's attention, or that are capable of being put into educational form; it means that it must express the main activities, progress, and outlook of its people. Agriculture is not a technical profession or merely an industry, but a civilization. It is concerned not only with the production of materials, but with the distribution and selling of them, and with the making of homes directly on the land that produces the material. There cannot be effective homes without the development of a social structure.

Agriculture therefore becomes naturally a part of a public-school system when the system meets its obligation. It is introduced into the schools for the good of the schools themselves. It needs no apology and no justification; but it may need explanation in order that the people may understand the situation.

If agriculture represents a civilization, then the home-making phase of country life is as important as the field farming phase [(page 93)]. As is the home, so is the farm; and as is the farm, so is the home. Some of the subjects that are usually included under the current name of home economics, therefore, are by right as much a part of school work as any other subjects; they will be a part of city schools as much as of country schools if the city schools meet their obligations. They are not to be introduced merely as concessions to women or only as a means of satisfying popular demand; they are not to be tolerated: they are essential to a public-school program.

The American contribution.

The American college-of-agriculture phase of education is now well established. It is the most highly developed agricultural education in the world. It is founded on the democratic principle that the man who actually tills the soil must be reached,—an idea that may not obtain in other countries.

We are now attempting to extend this democratic education by means of agriculture to all ages of our people, and there is promise that we shall go farther in this process than any people has yet gone; and this fact, together with the absence of a peasantry, with the right of personal land-holding, and with a voice in the affairs of government, should give to the people of the United States the best country life that has yet been produced.

America's contribution to the country-life situation is a new purpose and method in education, which is larger and freer than anything that has yet been developed elsewhere, and which it is difficult for the Old World fully to comprehend.

The founding of the great line of public-maintained colleges and experiment stations means the application of science to the reconstruction of a society; and it is probably destined to be the most extensive and important application of the scientific method to social problems that is now anywhere under way.

The dangers in the situation.

It is not to extol our education experiment that I am making this discussion, but to measure the situation; and I think that there are perils ahead of us, which we should now recognize.

There are two grave dangers in the organization of the present situation: (1) the danger that we shall not develop a harmonious plan, and thereby shall introduce competition rather than coöperation between agencies; (2) the danger that the newer agencies will not profit fully by our long experience in agriculture-teaching.

An internal danger is the giving of instruction in colleges of agriculture that is not founded on good preparation of the student or is not organized on a sound educational basis. Winter-course and special students may be admitted, and extension work must be done; but the first responsibility of a college of agriculture is to give a good educational course: it deals with education rather than with agriculture, and its success in the end will depend on the reputation it makes with school men.

There is also danger that new institutions will begin their extension work in advance of their academic educational work; whereas, extension and propaganda can really succeed only when there is a good background of real accomplishment at home.

There is necessity that we now reorganize much of our peripatetic teaching. It is no longer sufficient to call persons together and exhort them and talk to them. We have come about to the end of agricultural propaganda. All field and itinerant effort should have a follow-up system with the purpose to set every man to work on his own place with problems that will test him. We have been testing soils and crops and fertilizers and live-stock and machines: it is now time to test the man.

There is also danger that we consolidate too many rural schools in towns. If it is true that the best country life is developed when persons live actually on their farms, then we should be cautious of all movements that tend to centralize their interests too far from home, and particularly to centralize them in a town or in a village. The good things should come to the farm rather than that the farm should be obliged to go to the good things.

The present educational institutions.

We must first understand what our institutions of education are. The extension of agriculture-education in institutions in the United States (beyond the regular colleges of agriculture) is in four lines: as a part of the regular public-school work; in unattached schools of agriculture publicly maintained; in departments attached to other colleges or universities; in private schools. The last category (the private schools) may be eliminated from the present discussion.

The separate or special-school method is well worked out in Wisconsin (county plan), in Alabama and Georgia (congressional-district plan), Minnesota (regional plan), with other adaptations in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Michigan, Maryland, and elsewhere.

In New York, the movement for special schools has taken an entirely new direction. Two schools are connected with existing institutions of higher learning of long-established reputation (being the only schools of this kind, state-maintained, attached to liberal arts universities) and one is unattached; none of them has a defined region or territory. These institutions are established on a more liberal financial plan than the special schools of other states, standing somewhat between those schools and the agricultural college type.

While much publicity has been given to the unattached-school plan, the main movement is the adding of agriculture-education to the existing public-school systems. Only eight or ten of the states have entered into any regular development of separate or unattached schools, whereas in every state the movement for agriculture in the public schools is well under way. The public schools are of definite plan; the unattached schools are of several plans, or of no plan; and in some states an intermediate course is developing by the establishing of public high-schools (one to a county, a congressional district, or other region) in which instruction in agriculture and household subjects is highly perfected.

Aside from the foregoing particular institutions, many general colleges and universities are introducing agricultural work in order to meet the increasing demand and to keep up with educational progress.

Agricultural work is proceeding in nearly all the states under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture, some of it distinctly educational in character; and there is agitation for the passage of a national bill to further secondary or special agriculture-education in the states.

State departments of agriculture, the indispensable experiment stations, veterinary colleges, departments of public instruction, farmers' institutes, voluntary societies, are all attacking the country-life problem in their own ways; and the powerful work of the agricultural press, although not coming within the scope of this paper, should not be overlooked as an educational agency.

In the meantime, the colleges of agriculture are growing rapidly and are approaching the subject from every side, and are assuming natural and inevitable leadership.

The need of plans to coördinate this educational work.

There is no doubt that all these agencies are contributing greatly to the solution of the rural problem, and there is now probably very little inharmony and little duplication of effort. In the newness and enthusiasm of the effort, good fellowship holds the work together in all the states or at least keeps it from collision. But the situation is inherently weak, because there is no plan or system, and no united discussion of the grounds on which the work rests. I have been in correspondence on this question with public men in every state in the Union, and I find a general feeling that the present situation is fraught with danger, and that there is great need of organization or at least of federation of the forces within each state; and ultimately there must be federation on a national basis. The work should be coöperative rather than competitive.

What is to be the policy of the state in agriculture-education? Where is the headship to lie? What are to be the spheres of the different institutions and agencies? What board or agency is to correlate and unify all the parts, to insure a progressive and well-proportioned program?

Outline of a state plan.

A general law should define the state's policy in education by means of agriculture and in the development of rural affairs, and outline methods that it proposes to follow, so that the work may be coördinated throughout the state and that a definite plan may be projected. The duties of all the classes of institutions should be defined and relations should be established between them. The people should know to what they are committing themselves.

This law should not, of course, be designed to suppress the activities of any institution. It might not place any institution under the domination of any other institution. The schools, colleges, and other institutions for the betterment of agriculture should have their own autonomy and responsibility, and they should be developed to the highest point of efficiency in their respective spheres.

The fundamental consideration in such a law should be to develop the agriculture and advance the country life of the state by organizing the work of all the agencies on a systematic plan, so that an orderly development may be secured. Such a recognized general policy should do much to insure each institution in the system its proper state support.

It is probably too much to expect that a fundamental state law could be projected abstractly. Laws are gradually built up to meet urgent needs as they arise; but if the principles are kept in mind, the making of separate and special laws might be so guided as to produce a harmonious result.

Some of the particular points that I think should be desired in such a law or series of laws are these:

1. It should propound a policy in the development of country life;

2. It should name the classes of institutions that it proposes to utilize in the execution of this policy;

3. It should define the functions of the different classes of institutions;

4. It should state the organic relationships that ought to exist between them all;

5. It might provide an advisory council to guide agricultural education and advancement in the state. I think that the directors or responsible heads of such institutions established for the betterment of agriculture throughout the state should constitute such consulting body, to which questions of policy and procedure should be referred and which, of course, should serve without remuneration. This council might include also the commissioner of agriculture and the superintendent of public instruction. It might be well to have one, two, or three other persons appointed by the governor. The council would constitute a natural conference of the parties that are immediately responsible for this work, without taking the management of any institution out of the hands of an existing board. The idea of such a body is to further the coördination by conference, rather than to have plenary power. Its moral influence ought to be all the greater because of its lack of conferred power.

A state extension program.

As soon as a state has produced strong institutions for research and education in agriculture, it will need to provide an agency for utilizing the results. A state extension program, on a coördinating plan between all the institutions but proceeding from one educational center, and which all the institutions would have a right to use for the spread of their work among the people, could accomplish vast benefits. It should comprise institutes, utilize the state system of fairs educationally, afford an organ for the making of agricultural surveys and demonstrations, spread an educational propaganda on the agricultural law, collect and collate the experience of the farmers of the state. It could assort and apply the information that the state, at great expense, accumulates through its various separate agencies. It could utilize the students, whom the state provides with free tuition. The germ of such an enterprise already exists in most of the states.

Special local schools for agriculture.[2]

I am committed to the idea that there should be strong local centers of interest in rural communities, for thereby we develop local pride and incentive. There are several ways, on the educational side, of developing local institutions and interest.

The first way is to make it possible and practicable for the existing public schools to introduce agriculture and domestic economy. I suggest that many or most localities would do better to develop the country-life work in the existing schools than to ask the legislature for a separate special school. We have only begun to understand what such redirected and expanded schools may accomplish.

Another means of securing local knowledge and developing local interest is by the establishing of demonstration farms and field-laboratories. It is doubtful whether a permanent demonstration farm in a community is desirable; in general, the demonstration may be temporary, depending on the presence in the community of some special difficulty. In some circumstances, the enterprise may amount to a local testing station. Enterprises of this sort are bound to take on great importance in the redirection of country life.

Local societies and organizations may be encouraged to take up educational and experiment work.

Departments of agriculture will probably be added by colleges or other educational institutions, and these will serve as local centers at the same time that they reach the larger field.

Again, a winter school or short-course of, say, a month's or two months' duration may be held in different parts of the state. The localities should coöperate in the expenses, thereby becoming partakers in the enterprise.

Eventually there should be an agricultural agent resident in every county, and perhaps even for smaller regions, whose office should be to give advice, to keep track of animal and plant diseases and pests and secure the services of experts in their control, to organize conferences, winter-courses, and the like, and otherwise to be to the agricultural affairs what the pastor is to religious affairs and the teacher to educational affairs. (See "The Training of Farmers," p. 257.)

Finally, we may ask the state to place a special school of agriculture in the locality, but only after it is clear that other means cannot produce the desired results. An unattached school of agriculture is not an easy thing to administer successfully, even at the best; and the difficulty would be all the greater if its care were to be confined to local boards, which would probably have small understanding of the peculiar educational requirements. It is probable that a state may wisely establish a very few special schools, but an educational program needs first to be worked out, a competent system of control must be found, and the people should know in advance what is involved. It is not enough merely that a locality desires a school: the larger question is the state's interest. In all local enterprises of this kind in which state aid is asked for, it ought to be understood that the locality itself is to coöperate in the securing of equipment and funds.

THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENTIN THE UNITED STATES

CONTENTS