1, 1918.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE vii

I. THE RURAL WORKER AND THE COUNTRY HOME 1

II. THE FAMILY IN OUR COUNTRY LIFE 15

III. THE RURAL WORKER AND THE COUNTRY SCHOOLS 41

IV. THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND THE RURAL WORKER 53

V. MENTAL HYGIENE IN RURAL DISTRICTS 71

VI. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF RURAL EXPERIENCE 89

VII. RURAL VS. URBAN ENVIRONMENT 103

VIII. THE MIND OF THE FARMER 117

IX. PSYCHIC CAUSES OF RURAL MIGRATION 135

X. RURAL SOCIALIZING AGENCIES 149

XI. THE WORLD-WAR AND RURAL LIFE 169

THE RURAL WORKER AND THE COUNTRY HOME

I

THE RURAL WORKER AND THE COUNTRY HOME

With reference to the care of children, faulty homes may be divided into
two classes. There are homes that give the children too little care and
there are homes that give them too much. The failure of the first type
of home is obvious. Children need a great deal of wise, patient, and
kindly care. Even the lower animals require, when domesticated,
considerable care from their owners, if they are to be successfully
brought from infancy to maturity. Of course children need greater care.
No one doubts this. And yet it is certainly true that there are, even in
these days of widespread intelligence, many homes where the children
obtain too little care and in one way or another are seriously
neglected.

The harmfulness of the homes that give their children too much care is
not so generally realized as is the danger of the careless and selfish
home, although, in a general way, everyone acknowledges that children
may be given too much attention. The difficulty is to determine when a
particular child is being given too much adult supervision and too
little freedom. No one would question the fact that a child can become
an adult only by a decrease of adult control and an increase of personal
responsibility. Nevertheless, in spite of a general belief that a child
needs an opportunity to win self-government, there are parents not a few
who, from love and anxiety, run into the danger of protecting and
controlling their children too much. The father or mother spends too
much time with the children. The children are pampered. Too many
indulgences are pe