s community and on community
values, we must not lose sight of the fact that the family must ever be
recognized as the primary social institution of rural life. Indeed, it
may not be too much to claim that the largest value in the agricultural
industry is in the possibility of the most satisfactory type of home
life. The millionaire farmer is so rare as to be negligible, and
although farmers as a class doubtless have as wholesome and satisfactory
a living as they would in other pursuits, yet no one engages in farming
as a means of easily acquiring large wealth. The highest rural values
cannot be bought or sold.

The mere fact that farming is practically the only remaining industry
conducted on a family basis--which seems likely to continue--and that
all members of the family have more or less of a share in the conduct
and success of the farm, creates a family bond which does not ordinarily
exist where the business or employment of the father and of other
members of the family is dissociated from the home. Although the burden
of the farm business on the home is often decried and there is obvious
need of lightening the mother's work for the farm as much as possible,
yet under the best of conditions there is on the farm a constant and
intimate contact between the father and mother and children which is
rarely found under other conditions.

Primitive woman discovered the art of agriculture. At first, the men
assisted the women in what time they could spare from hunting; but as
game became scarce and the food supply grown from the soil was found to
be more certain, agriculture became man's vocation. Permanent home life
commenced with the development of agriculture. As he became a farmer,
primitive man stayed at home with his wife and shared with her the
nurture of the children. Before then the family had been _hers_, now it
was _theirs_. The mere fact that the home and the business are both on
the farm, that father is in the house several times a day and that the
whole family are acquainted with his farm operations, will always give
the farm home a superior solidarity, so long as the family lives on the
farm. Though but few farm homes are ideal and some of them have but
little that is attractive, yet nowhere are conditions so favorable for
the enjoyment of all that is most precious in family life as in the
better American farm homes.

If this be true, that the chief value in agriculture is in the
possibility of the most s