his industry should supply a variety
of sources of income; that is, wages, profits and interest. If the
community can retain in its own bounds the owners of its industries, at
least in some numbers, and the capitalists whose wealth is invested in
these industries, it is of great service. If it can make life
attractive for wage-earners in these industries, the completeness of
that community has its testimonial in this variety and wealth of
attraction. The weakness of many American communities is shown in their
inability to retain within their bounds the owners of the businesses and
the employers of labor. The ideal character of some communities in
Massachusetts is due to the fact that in the same streets there daily
meet capitalists, superintendents, foremen and wage-earners who are
alike interested in the local industries.

This power of the community to attract and hold individual lives,
supplying them with the vital necessities for which the individual
craves, is dependent in America upon educational institutions more than
upon any other factor. The French philosopher Desmoulin has said that
the Anglo-Saxon supremacy is due to the Anglo-Saxon love of the land and
of education. The American represents these two passions, and of the two
the love of education is at present, the stronger. The community which
is weak in its schools will not hold its people. The generation who at
present are the largest owners of American wealth are eager for
educational advantage: and the incoming stream of immigration promises
that in the days to come this craving for education will not diminish,
but will increase.

The country community has been peculiarly weak in its educational
facilities, by a strange dullness and inertia due to the economic
prostration of the farming industry. For the two decades following 1880
the country schools have failed to keep pace with the city schools.
Prof. Foght says, "While the public attention has been centered on work
and plans for the improvement of the city schools a great factor for or
against the public weal has been sadly neglected. This is the rural
school. One-half of our entire school population attend the rural
schools, which are still in the formative stage. The country youth is
entitled to just as thorough a preparation for thoughtful and
intelligent membership in the body politic as is the city youth. The
State, if it is wise, will not discriminate in favor of the one as
against the other,