es for common ends, and in its individual members
are bred the qualities of industry, patience, and perseverance. The
manual work of the schools is but a makeshift for the old-fashioned
training of the country-grown boy. Country life is an admirable
preparation for the modern industrial and professional career.

Nevertheless, rural isolation is a real evil. Present-day living is so
distinctively social, progress is so dependent upon social agencies,
social development is so rapid, that if the farmer is to keep his status
he must be fully in step with the rest of the army. He must secure the
social view-point. The disadvantages of rural isolation are largely in
the realm of the social relations, its advantages mostly on the
individual and moral side. Farm life makes a strong individual; it is a
serious menace to the achievement of class power.

A cure for isolation sometimes suggested is the gathering of the farmers
into villages. This remedy, however, is of doubtful value. In the first
place, the scheme is not immediately practicable. About three and
one-half billions of dollars are now invested in farm buildings, and it
will require some motive more powerful than that inspired by academic
logic to transfer, even gradually, this investment to village groups.
Moreover, it is possible to dispute the desirability of the remedy. The
farm village at best must be a mere hamlet. It can secure for the farmer
very few of the urban advantages he may want, except that of permitting
closer daily intercourse between families. And it is questionable if the
petty society of such a village can compensate for the freedom and
purity of rural family life now existing. It may even be asserted with
some degree of positiveness that the small village, on the moral and
intellectual sides, is distinctly inferior to the isolated farm home.

At the present time rural isolation in America is being overcome by the
development of better means of communication among farmers who still
live on their farms. So successful are these means of communication
proving that we cannot avoid the conclusion that herein lies the remedy.
Improved wagon roads, the rural free mail delivery, the farm telephone,
trolley lines through country districts, are bringing about a positive
revolution in country living. They are curing the evils of isolation,
without in the slightest degree robbing the farm of its manifest
advantages for family life. The farmers are being welde