Its leaders have shown no conspicuous sympathy with the play-ground
movement, which is an essential part of the same ethical process. If the
saloon is expelled something must be put in its place, but the
temperance reformers have not been wise enough for substitution: they
have only been skilful in expulsion. Country life, in its representative
communities, suffers today from monotony and emptiness.

The ministers, teachers and other rural leaders need the training which
will equip them in positive and aggressive social construction. As the
economy of the exploiter comes in to transform the country community it
is necessary for the preacher and the teacher to train the population in
the ethical standards of the new time. Naturally new contractual
relations will prevail in business, and trusts will be committed to the
leading men in the farming community, for which they need definite moral
preparation. There is many a farmer in the United States who may be
safely entrusted with the honor of a woman, but cannot be entrusted with
a million dollars to spend in the interest of the community. In many a
country community it is perfectly safe to leave the door unlocked, but
it is not safe to purchase a quart of milk for a child. There is many a
farmer from whom it is morally safe to purchase an acre of ground, but
one cannot be sure in purchasing a cow from him that she will not be
tuberculous. These are new standards not required by the old economy and
not taught in the old meeting-house.

One defect of the country church at the present time is that it has for
the countryman no message appropriate to the struggle in which he is
actually attempting to do right. Many churches in the country teach only
the standards of right and wrong to which the farmers already conform.
For a short time a new minister is popular with them because his new
voice and his fresh elocution contain a subtle flattery. He denounces
the sins to which they are not inclined and praises the virtues which
they have learned to practise from their fathers. But after about six
months of such preaching the farmer wearies of a preacher with no new
message. Indeed the countryman is puzzled and perplexed by modern
situations about which the minister has no knowledge. The farmer is
forced to be an economist, but the minister has never studied economics.
The farmer is face to face with problems of exploitation. The values
not merely of land but of money are in his