s, and
his own words will best describe the development of the movement:

This association meets Thursday night and continues in session
until Saturday night. Some of the best speakers in America have
addressed the association. Dr. Arnold Tompkins, in speaking before
the association, said it was a wonderful association and the only
one of its character in the United States.

What was my ideal in organizing such associations?

1. To unite the farmers who pay the taxes that support the schools,
the home-makers, the teachers, the pupils, into a co-operative work
for better rural-school education.

2. To give wholesome entertainment in the rural districts, which
from necessity are more or less isolated.

3. To create a taste for good American literature in home and
school, and higher ideals of citizenship.

4. Summed up in all, to make the rural schools character-builders,
to rid the districts of surroundings which destroy character, such
as unkept school yards, foul, nasty outhouses, poor, unfit
teachers. These reforms, you understand, come only through a
healthy educational sentiment which is aroused by a sympathetic
co-operation of farm, home, and school.

What results have I been able to discover growing out of this work?
Ideals grow so slowly that one cannot measure much progress in a
few years. We are slaves to conditions, no matter how hard, and we
suffer them to exist rather than arouse ourselves and shake them
off. The immediate results are better schools, yards,
out-buildings, schoolrooms, teachers, literature for rural people
to read.

Many a father and mother whose lives have been broken upon the
wheel of labor have heard some of America's orators, have read some
of the world's best books, because of this movement, and their
lives have been made happier, more influential, more hopeful.

Thousands of people have been inspired, made better, at the
Hesperia meetings.

In western Michigan the annual gathering at Hesperia is known far and
wide as "the big meeting." The following extract from the Michigan
_Moderator-Topics_ indicates in the editor's breezy way the impression
the meeting for 1906 made upon an observer:

Hesperia scores another success. Riding over the fourteen miles
from the railroad to Hesperia with Governor Warner