he group spirit strengthens each of them
in the pursuit of the common ideals. It is such a desire for mutual
support--even though they are not conscious of it--which has drawn farm
women together into clubs and which has given such an impetus to the
Home Bureaus, or women's departments of the county Farm Bureaus. Not
only in women's organizations, but finally in community organizations of
men and women, such as the Grange and the church, the social standards
of the community receive the sanction of public opinion, than which
there is no more powerful means of influencing family usages. The
community as such, must give recognition to a new and better status of
its farm women.

If the rural home remains the primary social institution, it will be due
to its intelligent effort at self-defense, and not to any inherent right
which it has to such a position. Originally the family was but a
biological group. Until modern times the agricultural family was chiefly
an economic unit. Only with the isolation of the American farm, did the
individual family assume the primary social position known to our
fathers and grandfathers. Physical isolation and large families made the
farm home the only possible social center. Isolation is largely passing,
families are smaller, and organizations of all sorts and commercial
amusements compete with the family. It is the use of leisure time which
reveals the true loyalty of the family group. If there be nothing to
attract them to the fireside, they will inevitably go elsewhere whenever
possible. Hence, if it would have its foundations strong, the community
must encourage the enrichment of home life, particularly, in the hours
of leisure when life is most real. The family games after supper, the
group around the piano singing old and modern songs, the reading aloud
by one member of the circle, the cracking of nuts and the popping of
corn, the picnic supper on the lawn, the tennis court or croquet ground,
the home parties, the guests ever-welcome at meals, these are but items
in a possible scorecard of the sociability of the home. We are giving
much thought to all sorts of group activities, but how much attention
have we given to systematically encouraging the social unit which has
the largest possibilities, the family? Last summer my friend, Professor
E. C. Lindeman, of the North Carolina College for Women, spent several
weeks in becoming acquainted with rural Denmark under peculiarly
favorable co