rrespondence and home study courses
along these lines would be fully as popular as those treating of soils
and crops. (2) Agricultural educators. The soil physicist or the
agricultural chemist will not be a less valuable specialist in his own
line, and he certainly will be a more useful member of the faculty of an
agricultural college, if he has an appreciative knowledge of the
farmer's social and economic status. This is even more true of men
called to administer agricultural education in any of its phases. (3)
Rural school administrators and the more progressive rural teachers. The
country school can never become truly a social and intellectual center
of the community until the rural educators understand the social
environment of the farmer. (4)Country clergymen. The vision of a
social-service church in the country will remain but a dream unless,
added to the possession of a heart for such work, the clergyman knows
the farm problem sufficiently to appreciate the broader phases of the
industrial and social life of his people. (5) Editors of farm papers,
and of the so-called "country" papers. Probably the editors of the
better class of agricultural papers are less in need of instruction such
as that suggested than is almost anyone else. Yet the same arguments
that now lead many young men aspiring to this class of journalism to
regard a course in scientific agriculture as a vestibule to their work
may well be used in urging a study of rural social science, especially
at a time when social and economic problems are pressing upon the
farmer. As for the country papers, the work of purveying local gossip
and stirring the party kettle too often obscures the tremendous
possibilities for a high-class service to the rural community which such
papers may render. No men, in the agricultural states at least, have
more real influence in their community than the trained, clean, manly,
country editors--and there is a multitude of such men. If as a class
they possessed also a wider appreciation of the farmer's industrial
difficulties and needs, hardly anyone could give better service to the
solution of the farm problem than could they. (6) Everybody else! That
is to say, the agricultural question is big enough and important enough
to be understood by educated people. The farmers are half our people.
Farming is our largest single industrial interest. The capital invested
in agriculture is four-fifths the capital invested in manufacturing