for bread is satisfied. The problem of amusement exhibits these
principles clearly. Farming is austere, and few farming communities have
recreation adequate to the demand of the young people and the working
people who live on the farms. Agriculture is becoming more systematic
and more exacting in its demands: and systematic work creates a demand
for organized play. As this demand is not satisfied in the
country--indeed it is less generally satisfied now than in former
times--the youth and workingman from farming communities go to the towns
and larger villages for amusement. These centers of population have a
disproportionate burden therefore of cheap vaudeville shows, saloons,
professional baseball games, and moving-pictures.

These amusements are, to a degree, abnormal in character because those
who enjoy them are away from their home community, and are suffering a
reaction from pent-up desires. Just as the lumberman or cowboy or sailor
when he comes to town "tears loose and paints the town red," so, in a
milder degree, the farmer's son or hired man, because he has at home no
recreations supplied by his church or school, patronizes in the town or
small city a cheaper and nastier theatre than one would expect to find
either in that town, or in his home community. The remedy is to make the
country community adequate to the wants of those who live there. The
church should promote recreation. The public school should supply
entertainment of a high standard, both to satisfy the play instinct and
to elevate the youth's ideals of amusement. The community which works
should be dependent on no other community for play.

Common-school education is a function which country communities have
surrendered to the centers of population. The one-room country school
has long been inadequate; but the farmer has not improved it, preferring
to rely upon the town schools to which he will remove his family after
he has made enough money on the farm. I am told that about Crete,
Nebraska, a recent census revealed that half the normal child population
is missing from the country districts; and double the normal child
population is found in Crete. The quest of adequate schooling explains
the condition, which speaks ill for the country community of Nebraska.

In all these cases religious service consists in completing the
community. The supply of wants, which are widely and keenly felt, is a
religious act. This has been the reason for the success