been
interested in politics; there is no reason to think that their interest
is declining. The Grange and other organizations keep their attention on
current problems. Traveling libraries, school libraries, and Grange
libraries are giving new opportunities for general reading, and the
farmer's family is not slow to accept the chance. Low prices for
magazines and family papers bring to these periodicals an increasing
list from the rural offices. Rural free mail delivery promises, among
many other results of vast importance, to enlarge the circulation of
daily papers among farmers not less than tenfold.

The really great lesson that farmers are rapidly learning is to work
together. They have been the last class to organize, and jealousy,
distrust, and isolation have made such organizations as they have had
comparatively ineffective. But gradually they are learning to
compromise, to work in harmony, to sink merely personal views, to trust
their own leaders, to keep troth in financially co-operative projects.
There will be no Farmers' Party organized; but the higher politics is
gaining among farmers, and more and more independent voting may be
expected from the rural precincts. Farmers are learning to pool such of
their interests as can be furthered by legislation.

It is also true that the whole aspect of social life in the country is
undergoing a profound evolutionary movement. Farmers are meeting one
another more frequently than they used to. They have more picnics and
holidays. They travel more. They go sight-seeing. They take advantage of
excursions. Their social life is more mobile than formerly. Farmers
have more comforts and luxuries than ever before. They dress better
than they did. More of them ride in carriages than formerly. They buy
neater and better furniture. The newer houses are prettier and more
comfortable than their predecessors. Bicycles and cameras are not
uncommon in the rural home. Rural telephone exchanges are relatively a
new thing, but the near future will see the telephone a part of the
ordinary furniture of the rural household; while electric car lines
promise to be the final link in the chain of advantages that is rapidly
transforming rural life--robbing it of its isolation, giving it balance
and poise, softening its hard outlines, and in general achieving its
thorough regeneration.

This sketch is no fancy tale. The movement described is genuine and
powerful. The busy city world may not note