eaders among farmers.

With the advent of better highways, electric car lines, rural free
delivery, and the rural telephone, each of which is looming on the
horizon as an important feature of American farm life; with the Grange
or similar organization in every school district; with the development
of courses for women at all our colleges of agriculture, and the logical
complement of such courses in the form of college extension--farmers'
institutes, reading-courses, traveling libraries, lecture and
correspondence courses--we shall find farm life taking on a new dress,
and perhaps farmers' wives may come to enjoy the envy of those women who
are unfortunate enough not to have married farmers.

CHAPTER XII

THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND PROGRESS

The only way to an understanding of the relation of the church to rural
progress is through an appreciation of the place which the church as a
social institution may have among other social institutions affecting
rural life. Moreover, to know the value of these institutions one must
first know the rural social needs. May we not then, even at the risk of
repetition, take a brief survey of these needs and institutions, in
order that we may more clearly attain the proper point of view?

At the outset let us be sure that we have sympathy with the countryman
as such. It is often argued that the rural question, or any phase of it,
as for instance the question of the rural church, is important because
the country supplies the best blood to the city--and a roll-call of the
famous country-born is read to prove the point. This may be all true.
But it is only a partial view, for it places the emphasis upon the
leaving of the farm, whereas the emphasis should be placed upon the farm
and those who stay there. We may praise the country because it
furnishes brain and brawn for the world's work; we may argue for country
life because it possesses a good environment in which to rear a family;
we may demand a school system that shall give the country child as good
a chance as the city child has. In all this we do well. But we do not
yet stand face to face with the rural problem.

For the rural problem is the problem of those who farm. It is the
problem of the man behind the plow. It is he that is the center of
interest. His business, his success, his manhood, his family, his
environment, his education, his future--these constitute the problem of
the farm. Half our people make their living fro