and
railway transportation combined. Whether an individual has a special
interest in business, in economics, in education, or in religious
institutions, he ought to know the place of the farm and the farmer in
that question. No one can have a full appreciation of the social and
industrial life of the American people who is ignorant of the
agricultural status.

The natural place to begin work in rural social science is the
agricultural college. Future farmers and teachers of farmers are
supposed to be there. The subjects embraced are as important in solving
the farm problem as are biology, physics, or chemistry. No skilled
farmer or leader of farmers should be without some reasonably correct
notions of the principles that determine the position of agriculture in
the industrial world. A brief study of the elements of political
economy, of sociology, of civics, is not enough; no more than the study
of the elements of botany, of chemistry and of zoology is enough. The
specific problems of the farmer that are economic need elucidation
alongside the study of soils and crops, of plant-and stock-breeding. And
these economic topics should be thoroughly treated by men trained in
social science, and not incidentally by men whose chief interest is
technical agriculture.

The normal schools may well discuss the propriety of adding one or two
courses which bear on the social and economic situation of the rural
classes. While these schools do not now send out many teachers into
rural schools, they may do so under the system of centralized schools;
and in any event they furnish rural school administrators, as well as
instructors of rural teachers. There seems to be a growing sentiment
which demands of the school and of the teacher a closer touch with life
as it is actually lived. How can rural teachers learn to appreciate the
social function of the rural school, except they be taught?

Nor is there any reason why the theological seminaries, or at least the
institutions that prepare the men who become country clergymen, should
not cover some of the subjects suggested. If the ambition of some people
to see the country church a social and intellectual center is to be
realized, the minister must know the rural problem broadly. The same
arguments that impel the city pastor to become somewhat familiar with
the economic, social, and civic questions of the day hold with equal
force when applied to the necessary preparation for the rural min