e improved technical skill of
our farmers, better business management of the farm, and wiser study and
control of market conditions. Indeed, we would call attention to the
fact that social institutions are absolutely necessary means of securing
these essential factors of industrial success. In the solution of the
farm problem we must deliberately invoke the influence of quickened
means of communication, of co-operation among farmers, of various means
of education, and possibly even of religious institutions, to stimulate
and direct industrial activity. What needs present emphasis is the fact
that there is a definite, real, social end to be held in view as the
goal of rural endeavor. The highest possible social status for the
farming class is that end.

We may now, as briefly as possible, describe some of the difficulties
that lie in the path of the farmers in their ambition to attain greater
class efficiency and larger class influence, and some of the means at
hand for minimizing the difficulties. A complete discussion of the farm
problem should, of course, include thorough consideration of the
technical, the business, and the economic questions implied by the
struggle for industrial success; for industrial success is prerequisite
to the achievement of the greatest social power of the farming class.
But we shall consider only the social aspects of the problem.

RURAL ISOLATION

Perhaps the one great underlying social difficulty among American
farmers is their comparatively isolated mode of life. The farmer's
family is isolated from other families. A small city of perhaps twenty
thousand population will contain from four hundred to six hundred
families per square mile, whereas a typical agricultural community in a
prosperous agricultural state will hardly average more than ten families
per square mile. The farming class is isolated from other classes.
Farmers, of course, mingle considerably in a business and political way
with the men of their trading town and county seat; but, broadly
speaking, farmers do not associate freely with people living under urban
conditions and possessing other than the rural point of view. It would
be venturesome to suggest very definite generalizations with respect to
the precise influence of these conditions, because, so far as the writer
is aware, the psychology of isolation has not been worked out. But two
or three conclusions seem to be admissible, and for that matter rather
general