uld take the
initiative in rural reform. Neither the thought nor the influence which
can set in motion what in agricultural communities is no less than an
economic revolution are to be found in the open country. To the townsmen
I now address my appeal and submit a plan.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress (1903).

CHAPTER VII

THE TWO THINGS NEEDFUL

In my earlier chapters I traced to the Industrial Revolution in England
the origin of that subordination, in the English-speaking countries, of
rural to urban interests which finds its expression to-day in the
problem of rural life. I have shown that the continuance of the tendency
in America was natural if not inevitable, and have urged that, for
economic, social and political reasons, its further progress should now
be stayed. If my view as to the origin, present effects and probable
consequences of the evil be accepted, any serious proposals for a remedy
will be welcomed by all who realise that national well-being cannot
endure if urban prosperity is accompanied by rural decay. In this belief
I offer the scheme for a Country Life movement which has slowly matured
in my own mind as the result of the experience described in the
preceding pages.

The first aim of the movement should be to cooerdinate, and guide towards
a common end, the efforts of a large number of agencies--educational,
religious, social and philanthropic--which, in their several ways, are
already engaged upon some part of the work to be done. For such a
movement the United States offers advantages not to be found elsewhere
in the area for which we are concerned. For here public-spirited
individuals and associations of the kind required exist in larger
numbers than can be known to any one who has not watched what is going
on in this field of social service. If I had not already devoted too
much space to personal experiences, I could of my own knowledge testify
to the remarkable growth of organised effort in American rural
communities. Sometimes this is the outcome of a growing spirit of
neighbourliness, sometimes it emanates from young Universities and
Colleges emulating the extension work with which nearly every big city
is familiar. I have been much struck with the way in which, at
gatherings of school teachers, pedagogic detail and questions affecting
their status and emoluments have become less popular subjects for
discussion than schemes of social progress.[9] Similarl