e due to the fact that my countrymen elected to devote their
genius for organisation to the problems of city government. And in the
sphere of private action they are, as will be seen when I discuss the
need for a reorganisation of their business, even less effective than in
public affairs.

It will be conceded that any hopeful plan to put things right will have
to rely upon the organised efforts of those immediately concerned. Both
in the sphere of governmental action, and in the vastly more important
field of voluntary effort, the moving force will have to be public
opinion. But the thought of the farming communities has long ago joined
the rural exodus; and before the country life idea can find expression
in an effective country life movement, those who are thinking out the
problem will have to commend their arguments to the thought of the
towns. Therefore I address these pages, not to farmers only, but to the
general reader--who, I may observe, does not generally read if he
happens to live in the open country.

In the course of my own studies of American rural life I have found it
convenient to divide the United States into four sections, each of them
more or less homogeneous. As this method of treatment may help my
readers, I will give them a look at my map of American rural life. The
four sections may be called the North Eastern, the Middle Western, the
Southern, and the Far Western. The division has no pretensions to be
scientific; the boundaries can be adjusted to fit in with the experience
of each reader.

In my North Eastern section I include the New England States, New York,
New Jersey, and most of Pennsylvania. This is a section where
manufacturing communities have long been established, where migration
from country to town has been most marked, and where the competition of
the newly settled Western farm lands has been followed by effects upon
agricultural society very similar to those produced by the same causes
in many a rural community on the Continent of Europe. Second comes the
Middle Western section, consisting mainly of the Mississippi Valley,
with its vast area of high average fertility, the greatest
food-producing tract on the continent. Third, I place the Southern
section, where the governing factors in rural economy are the climate,
the numerical strength of the colored population, the two staple
industrial crops--cotton and tobacco--the comparatively recent abolition
of slavery, and the long-dr