ods on credit. Judgment of men and
of properties is so essential to his business that if he can not
judiciously loan and give credit he cannot maintain a country store.
Around his warm stove in the winter and at his door in summer gather the
men of the community for discussion of politics, religion and social
affairs. In addition to all else, he has been usually the postmaster of
the community.

The one-room rural school which is the prevailing type throughout the
country is a product of the land-farmer period. Its prevalence shows
that we are still in land-farmer conditions: and the criticism to which
it is now subjected indicates that we are conscious of a new epoch in
rural life.

It fits well into the life of the land farmer because it gives obviously
a mere hint of learning. It has been the boast of its advocates that it
taught only the "three Rs." Its training for life is rudimentary only:
it gives but an alphabet. The land farmer expected to live in his group.
Secure in his own acres and believing himself "as good as anybody," he
relied for his son and daughter not upon trained skill, but upon native
abilities, sterling character, independence and industry. Of all these
the household, not the school, is the source. So that the one-room
country school was satisfactory to those who created it.

In another chapter the common schools are more fully discussed. Here it
may be said only that the creation of such a system was an honor to any
people. The farmers who out of a splendid idealism placed a schoolhouse
at every cross roads, on every hilltop and in every mountain valley,
exact a tribute of praise from their successors. The unit of measurement
of the school district, on which this system was based, was the day's
journey of a child six years of age. Two miles must be its longest
radius. The generation who spanned this continent with the measure of an
infant's pace, mapped the land into districts, erected houses at the
centers, and employed teachers as the masters of learning for these
little states, were men of statesmanlike power. The country school is a
nobler monument of the land farmer than anything else he has done.

The rural "academy" was the most influential school of the land farmer's
time. Situated at the center of leading communities, in New England,
Pennsylvania and the older Eastern States, it was often under the
control or the influence of the parish minister. It generally exerted a
great influen