time.

We want governments to be economical and efficient with funds and in the
control of affairs; this also is assumed: but we must not overlook the
larger issues. In all this new rural effort, we should maintain the
spirit of team-work and of co-action, and not make the mistake of
depending too much on the routine of centralized control.

In this country we are much criticised for the cost of government and
for the supposed control of affairs by monopoly. The cost is undoubtedly
too great, but it is the price we pay for the satisfaction of using
democratic forms. As to the other disability, let us consider that
society lies between two dangers,--the danger of monopoly and the danger
of bureaucracy. On the one side is the control of the necessities of
life by commercial organization. On the other side is the control of the
necessities of life, and even of life itself, by intrenched groups that
ostensibly represent the people and which it may be impossible to
dislodge. Here are the Scylla and the Charybdis between which human
society must pick its devious way.

Both are evil. Of the two, monopoly may be the lesser: it may be more
easily brought under control; it tends to be more progressive; it
extends less far; it may be the less hateful. They are only two
expressions of one thing, one possibly worse than the other. Probably
there are peoples who pride themselves on more or less complete escape
from monopoly who are nevertheless suffering from the most deadening
bureaucracy.

Agriculture is in the foundation of the political, economic, and social
structure. If we cannot develop starting-power in the background people,
we cannot maintain it elsewhere. The greatness of all this rural work is
to lie in the results and not in the methods that absorb so much of our
energy. If agriculture cannot be democratic, then there is no
democracy.

_The background spaces.--The forest_

"This is the forest primeval." These are the significant words of the
poet in Evangeline. Perhaps more than any single utterance they have set
the American youth against the background of the forest.

The backgrounds are important. The life of every one of us is relative.
We miss our destiny when we miss or forget our backgrounds. We lose
ourselves. Men go off in vague heresies when they forget the conditions
against which they live. Judgments become too refined and men tend to
become merely disputatious and subtle.

The backgrounds