A. in the country.
6. The rural Sunday school.
7. The rural social settlement.

CHAPTER VI

The Social Ideal for Agriculture

1. The importance of social agencies.
2. The preservation of the "American farmer" essential.
3. Relation of this ideal to our American civilization.
4. The federation or co-operation of rural social agencies.

CHAPTER XVII

FEDERATION FOR RURAL PROGRESS

It is almost trite to assert the need of the "socialization"--to use a
much-worked phrase--of the country. It is possible that this need is not
greater than in the cities, but it is different. Among no class of
people is individualism so rampant as among farmers. For more than a
century the American farmer led the freest possible social life. His
independence was his glory. But, when the day of co-operation dawned, he
found himself out of tune with the movement, was disinclined to join the
ranks of organized effort, and he prefers even yet his personal and
local independence to the truer freedom which can be secured only
through co-operative endeavor. Moreover, the social aspect of the rural
problem is important not merely because the farmer is slow to
co-operate. The farm problem is to be met by the activities of social
institutions.

We may say (assuming the home life, of course) that the church, the
school, and the farmers' organization are the great rural social
institutions. They are the forces now most efficient, and the ones that
promise to abide. This classification may appear to be a mere truism,
when we suggest that under the church should be placed all those
movements that have a distinctively religious motive, under the school
all those agencies that are primarily educational in design, and under
farmers' organizations those associations whose chief function is to
settle questions which concern the farmer as a business man and a
citizen. But the classification answers fairly well. It includes
practically every device that has been suggested for rural betterment.

There are two interesting facts about these rural institutions: (1) None
of them is doing a tithe of what it ought to be doing to help solve the
farm problem. The church is apparently just about holding its own,
though that is doubted by some observers. Rural schools are not, as a
rule, keeping pace with the demands being made upon them; comparatively
few students in the whole country are studying scientific agriculture.
Not one farmer in twenty belongs