mer who knows most about
the fundamental principles of property and property rights in society is
most likely to best serve his community, as well as himself.

Still it is equally clear that the chief elements of Rural Welfare are not
mere wealth. Wealth is but the material out of which the external
machinery of welfare is formed. Every way essential to progress in any
degree, it does not give the chief test of progress. No one is gaining the
full use of his wealth until it is well spent for the welfare that is
strictly personal,--health, wisdom and virtue. No society, however wealthy,
has reached true welfare till all its members appreciate the higher
welfare, and make wealth-seeking a means for securing it.

Rural communities can take advantage of many inexpensive ways of adding to
their welfare without great wealth. The natural surroundings of the
country home give development to ability and courage in children that are
better than wealth. The same principles of thrift that are to be
cultivated for the sake of material comforts apply to the larger welfare
that a wise enjoyment of nature's gifts and nature's lessons may bring.
The thrifty farmer comes nearest of all men to the ideal condition of the
wise man, expressed in the wish, "Give me neither poverty nor riches." He
can have enough to comfortably house, clothe and feed his family in the
midst of surroundings as wholesome as the world affords. He can give his
children, by the aid of their healthy bodies and strong hearts, as good
opportunities for education as any can use. He has a natural leisure for
self-culture in the use of papers and books, if he tries to use it, and
his relations with neighbors of similar abilities are more human, more
true, than those found in any other circumstances. If farmers live as they
ought, their homes are centers of true hospitality, true sympathy for
human rights; and with a little more constant care for neighborly spirit
would come nearest to giving the true foundation for manly and womanly
character in children, and so in their parents.

A family of eight children grew up on a farm of little more than one
hundred acres, chopped out of the wilderness. Father and mother worked
hard and strove thriftily to make their children useful. A school was the
first requisite, even though it must be taught in the one room that was
kitchen, library and parlor, if not the bedroom, too. The church was
equally important, though it took the cho