are
generally valued in the rural home. This is, at times, for the supposed
economic help the children are expected to be to the parents, rather
than because of an unselfish regard for the children, as a moral
opportunity. It is true that the home generally counts for more in the
life of the country child than in that of the city child. This by no
means proves that the greater home influence is always a social asset.
The home may penetrate the child's life deeply and yet affect it badly.
If the home means more, the character of the home comes to have a larger
meaning; what the significance of the home influence may be, is
determined by the type of the home. A greater opportunity for family
fellowship is naturally offered by the rural home, but this fellowship
opportunity works both ways. The closer contact of all the members of
the family often results in bringing all of them down to a low level of
culture. The base attitude of one or of both parents toward life may
poison each child's aspiration as he advances into maturity. The
neighborhood relation, which brings several families into close contact,
often permits a vicious child of one family to initiate many children
from various homes into sex experiences in such an unwholesome way that
purity of mind becomes very difficult later on, whether the illicit
intercourse comes to an end or not.

Rural people are too likely to be content with their superior family
conditions. There is real need for an emphasis upon the proper use of
these opportunities. The conscientious urban parent is stimulated to his
best by the rivalry of other attractions that attempt to exploit his
child. The rural parent has no security in the greater natural
advantages of the country home. Everything depends upon the way the
rural home makes use of its opportunity. The rural church, especially,
should take to heart this remarkably significant fact.

No institution in the country has the importance of the family. Good
moral strategy requires, therefore, that effort be made to make the
rural home happy and wholesome. The needs of rural people are indeed
many, but there is no need greater than the fullest development of the
opportunities for moral progress provided by the conditions of family
life in the country. It would seem as if one principle should always be
observed--no effort is wholly good that looks toward a substitution for
family responsibility. It is also true that the family will not a