r.

It will be noted that the minister was pastor of all the churches in the
community and so encountered none of the difficulties which come from
interchurch competition.

The kind of community service which is illustrated at Ashley, Ontario, Old
Fort, White Cottage, and Lakeville offers abundant opportunity to a young
man of good equipment for using his knowledge and native ability, and
should therefore attract a better type of man to the rural ministry. The
church as a whole should be active in presenting it to young men, for the
purpose of getting the best of them to enlist in it. The conservation of
the high character of our rural population depends on just such work.

CHAPTER IX

AGRICULTURAL COOPERATION A MUCH NEEDED SECULAR ORGANIZATION

No program for the conservation and improvement of rural life will succeed
unless it provides for the successful promotion of cooperative
agricultural business organization. Even if all the reforms we have
suggested are made, the need to stimulate, assist, and guide the business
organization of farmers will still remain. Strong modern country churches
will not flourish in unprogressive communities whose business is not
successful.

Rural business must be effectively organized to enable the farmers to get
a just money return for the service they give. A sound economic basis for
a more attractive rural life can be provided in no other way. Through
training and experience in successful cooperative enterprises, farmers may
achieve a greater degree of solidarity, and acquire a larger share in the
direction and control of industrial, political, and economic life of the
Nation. With it will come larger respect for rural occupations, an added
prestige and attractiveness to agricultural life, and the chance of real
success for the modern country church.

The field of agricultural cooperation cannot be filled by any government
agency. However excellent the provisions of the Smith-Lever bill, under
which an agricultural adviser will be placed in every county in the United
States, however valuable the instruction and advice of the State
Agricultural Colleges, when the Government and the churches have done all
that can reasonably be expected of them, the task of organizing rural
business will remain undone until it is accomplished by the farmers
themselves, acting through associations of their own which are formally
allied with neither church nor government.

Conclusive evid