agriculture.

With regard to the future, it seems to me that, on the social side, the
progress of the next few years is to be along the lines, indicated
above, which have characterized the past ten or a dozen years. Still
further improved means of communication will tend to banish isolation
and its drawbacks. Realization of the benefits of organization and
ability to co-operate will vastly strengthen class power. The means of
agricultural education will be developed very rapidly, with the ideal in
mind of being able to furnish some sort of agricultural training for
every individual who lives upon the farm. The country question, as a
whole, will attract increasing attention. Gradually it will be seen that
the rural problem is one of the greatest interest to all our citizens.
The spirit of co-operation will grow until not only the farmers
themselves unite for their own class interests but the various social
agencies--industrial, religious, educational--ministering to rural
betterment will find themselves also co-operating. Thus, it seems to me,
the outlook for the future is full of hope. A genuine forward movement
for rural betterment has had its beginning, is now gathering volume, and
will soon attain very large proportions.

FORWARD STEPS

CHAPTER XIV

THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE FARM QUESTION

There is a proverb in Grange circles which expresses also the
fundamental aim of all agricultural education--"The farmer is of more
consequence than the farm and should be first improved." The first term
in all agricultural prosperity is the man behind the plow. Improved
agriculture is a matter of fertile brain rather than of fertile field.
Mind culture must precede soil culture.

But if the improved man is the first term in improved agriculture, if he
is the effective cause of rural progress, he is also the last term and
the choice product of genuine agricultural advancement. We may
paraphrase the sordid, "raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more
land to raise more corn, etc.," into the divine, "train better farmers
to make better farming to grow better farmers, etc." We want trained men
that we may have an advancing agricultural art, that we may make every
agricultural acre render its maximum. The improved acre, however, must
yield not only corn but civilization, not only potatoes but culture,
not only wheat but effective manhood.

But we may carry the point a step farther. The individual farmer is the
st