to a strong farmers' organization. (2)
All these institutions are awakening to the situation. Progress during
the last decade has been especially gratifying. Co-operative efforts
among farmers are more cautious, but more successful. The Grange has
nearly doubled its membership since 1890; and it, as well as other farm
organizations, has more real power than ever before. The rural-school
question is one of the liveliest topics today among farmers as well as
educators. Opportunities for agricultural education have had a marvelous
development within a decade. Discussion about rural church federation,
the rural institutional church, rural social settlements, and even
experiments in these lines are becoming noticeably frequent. The Young
Men's Christian Association has, its officers think, found the way to
reach the country young man.

The institutions which we have just discussed, together with the
improvement that comes from such physical agencies as assist quicker
communication (good wagon roads, telephones, rural mail delivery,
electric roads), constitute the social forces that are to be depended
upon in rural betterment. None can be spared or ignored. The function of
each must be understood and its importance recognized. To imagine that
substantial progress can result from the emphasis of any one agency to
the exclusion of any other is a mistake. To assert this is not to
quarrel with the statement we frequently hear nowadays that "the
_church_ should be the social and intellectual center of the
neighborhood;" or that "the _school_ should be the social and
intellectual center of the neighborhood;" or that "the _Grange_ should
be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood." It is
fortunate that these statements have been made. They show an
appreciation of a function of these agencies that has been neglected.
The first item in rural social progress is that the country preacher,
the rural teacher, the country doctor, the country editor, the
agricultural editor, the agricultural college professor, and especially
the farmer himself, shall see the social need of the farm community. But
to assert, for instance, that the church shall be _the_ social center of
that community may lead to a partial and even to a fanatical view of
things. I would not restrain in the slightest the enthusiasm of any
pastor who wants to make his church occupy a central position in
community life, nor of the teacher who wants to bring her s