MPANY
1911
_All rights reserved_

Copyright 1911
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1911

INTRODUCTION

BY THE GENERAL EDITOR

This is the day of the small book. There is much to be done. Time is
short. Information is earnestly desired, but it is wanted in compact
form, confined directly to the subject in view, authenticated by real
knowledge, and, withal, gracefully delivered. It is to fulfill these
conditions that the present series has been projected--to lend real
assistance to those who are looking about for new tools and fresh ideas.

It is addressed especially to the man and woman at a distance from the
libraries, exhibitions, and daily notes of progress, which are the main
advantage, to a studious mind, of living in or near a large city. The
editor has had in view, especially, the farmer and villager who is
striving to make the life of himself and his family broader and brighter,
as well as to increase his bank account; and it is therefore in the
humane, rather than in a commercial direction, that the Library has been
planned.

The average American little needs advice on the conduct of his farm or
business; or, if he thinks he does, a large supply of such help in
farming and trading as books and periodicals can give, is available to
him. But many a man who is well to do and knows how to continue to make
money, is ignorant how to spend it in a way to bring to himself, and
confer upon his wife and children, those conveniences, comforts and
niceties which alone make money worth acquiring and life worth living. He
hardly realizes that they are within his reach.

For suggestion and guidance in this direction there is a real call, to
which this series is an answer. It proposes to tell its readers how they
can make work easier, health more secure, and the home more enjoyable and
tenacious of the whole family. No evil in American rural life is so great
as the tendency of the young people to leave the farm and the village.
The only way to overcome this evil is to make rural life less hard and
sordid; more comfortable and attractive. It is to the solving of that
problem that these books are addressed. Their central idea is to show how
country life may be made richer in interest, broader in its activities
and its outlook, and sweeter to the taste.

To this end men and women who have given each a lifetime of stud