our states are
agricultural states. The majority of our counties are agricultural
counties. The agricultural vote is the determining factor in a large
proportion of our elections. It follows inevitably that honest, strong
farmers with the talent for leadership and the ability to handle
themselves in competition with other political leaders have a
marvelously fine chance for useful service.

So is it in educational questions. Nowhere may the citizen come into
closer contact with the educational problems of the day than through
service on the rural school board. If he brings to this position trained
intelligence, some acquaintance with educational questions, and a desire
to keep in touch with the advancement of the times, he can do for his
community a service that can hardly be imagined.

Take another field--that of organization for farmers, constituting a
problem of great significance. As yet this class of people is relatively
unorganized, but the movement is growing and the need of well-trained
leadership is vital. I cannot speak too strongly of the chance here
offered for active, intelligent, masterful men and women in being of use
as leaders and officials in the Grange and other farmers' organizations.

So with the church question. One of the reasons for the slow progress of
the country church is the conservatism in the pews as well as in the
pulpit. The ardent member of the Young Men's Christian Association in
college may feel that, in the country, there will be no outlet for his
ambition to be of religious use to his fellow-men. This is a mistake.
The work of the Young Men's Christian Association itself in the country
districts is just beginning, and promises large growth. Wider service in
the church, a community federation or union of different churches, the
work of young people's societies and of the Sunday schools--all these
afford abundant opportunity for the man or the woman qualified and
willing.

There are other lines of usefulness. Although I have stated that on the
farm the opportunities for personal culture are great, it must be
confessed that these opportunities are not fully utilized by the average
farmer's family. Here then is a very wide field, especially for the
farmer's wife. For if she is a cultivated college woman, she can through
the woman's club, the Grange, the school, the nature-study club, the
traveling library, and in scores of ways exercise an influence for good
on the community that may