nization hitherto impossible. Meetings are called, committees are
assembled, or their business is done over the phone, so that both social
and economic life are greatly stimulated.

The farmer is sometimes chided for not having organized rural life more
effectively. The simple reason is that he has not had the mechanisms
whereby he could do so. With only mud roads and horses people could get
together but infrequently, and arrangements had to be made when they
were together. City life was better organized because people could get
together more easily. To-day both time and space have been so largely
overcome that communication in the country is almost as rapid as in the
city and more effective organization is possible.

Better transportation, mail, and telephone service have made available
agencies for the communication of ideas, previously accessible only to
the few or patronized so infrequently by those further away as to
furnish too small a constituency for their successful maintenance. The
free public library is a powerful educational agency, but many a
community has been too small for its support. Now county library systems
are being organized--thanks to automobiles--which give branch stations
to every community (see p. 102). Lyceum courses of lectures and
entertainments, chautauqua courses, public forums for the discussion of
current problems, and last, but not least, the moving picture shows with
their pictures of important events from all parts of the world and
showing life from Central Africa to the Antipodes, all of these are
agencies for bringing new ideas to the rural community, and are becoming
increasingly common as better transportation makes it possible for the
people to utilize them. The fact that these agencies must be located
where they can serve the largest number of people, determines their
location at the community centers and they are thus a large factor in
unifying the community.

Modern transportation has abolished the isolation of the farm and new
means of communication have freed the spirit of the farmer and brought
the world to his doors. Together they make possible so many
satisfactions heretofore only available to the cities, as to quite
revolutionize the whole aspect of rural life. They give a new position
to the rural community and to the farmer's status in it.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Community is derived from the Old English word _commonty_ which
came to mean "the body of the common people,