the improvement of social conditions--"to help make what
little leisure there is clean and refreshing." Hence on return from
college he played baseball and football with local teams and helped out
at every opportunity at dances, musicales and other social
entertainments.]

This committee should be composed of representatives of the churches,
the schools, farmers' clubs, granges, fair associations, farmers'
institutes; and other organizations which are striving to increase the
educational advantages, the social opportunities and the moral
aspirations of the people.

Oftentimes the object of these rural forces is confused with efforts
to increase the financial prosperity of the farmer. It goes without
saying that the maintenance of the fertility of the soil is essential
to the food supply of the nation. The problems of the economic
production of plants and animals are of great importance to the
prosperity of the farmer. The idea, however, that the proper solution
of these economic problems is to be the means of solving the
educational, social and religious problems is simply putting the cart
before the horse. Economic questions can only be satisfactorily
adjusted through the application of intelligence and right ideas.

Let it be supposed that when a young man decides to pay attention to a
young woman that instead of meeting her at the church door, or it may
be at the railway station, it is considered better form for him to get
permission of the mother to call upon the young woman in her own home.
This is the most fundamental question in every neighborhood. What has
it to do with the price of wheat?

This illustration has been used to emphasize two points. First, there
are many problems in every community that are in no way related to the
material prosperity of the neighborhood. Second, there is, at present,
no single force in the community with sufficient influence to cope
properly with many of these problems.

A young college graduate who is now managing eight hundred acres of land
recently wrote: "I firmly believe that one of the best opportunities to
be of help to a rural community lies in the work that is to be done for
the improvement of social conditions--to help make what little leisure
there is clean and refreshing." Hence on return from college this young
man has found time to play football and baseball with local teams and to
help whenever opportunity offered at dances, musicales and similar
entertainment