he school,
located near the manse and the church which had most influenced the
change, forms now a strong community center for a wide region.

The result is all that could be desired. The retirement from the farms
has been checked; the neighborhood has become specially desirable for
residence. Farmers who had gone to the town find now that as good or
better schools are to be had in the community where their property lies
and where they pay their taxes. The rental price of land has increased
and it is difficult for tenants to come into the community unless they
are willing to pay an added rental in return for better school
privileges. The whole countryside has received an impetus and the
depression of country life has for this community departed. Mr. R. E.
Bone, "the fourth red-headed Presbyterian elder Bone in the Rock Creek
Church," takes great pride in the building up of the community which has
been effected through the consolidated school.

A more mature example is the John Swaney Consolidated School in
Illinois. Here the leadership and generosity of John Swaney, a member of
the Society of Friends, have effected the consolidation of four school
districts at a point two miles from the village of McNab. This purely
rural consolidation was not effected without a contest. Indeed the McNab
school has had to fight for the gains it has made from the very
beginning. The school-house stands by the roadside, not even surrounded
by a group of residences. The grounds are peculiarly beautiful, being
shaded by great trees and extending in ample lawn about the building. In
the rear are stables for the horses which transport the children daily
from the outer bounds of the consolidated district.

The school building contains four class-rooms with physical and chemical
laboratories. In one room are apparatus for cooking and sewing. In the
basement is a well-lighted shop where benches for manual training are
placed at the use of the boys. In the third story is an auditorium so
ample as to accommodate a basket-ball game and about two hundred
spectators. Frequent gatherings occur here in a simple spontaneous way.
This common school has all the social and intellectual power of the
old-fashioned country academy which once was so useful in the Eastern
States. A principal and four women teachers form the faculty of the John
Swaney school. The number of scholars in 1910 was one hundred and five,
the number of boys slightly exceeding that of