o you think about the proposal to establish a parcels post?

17.--In what special ways do the farmers' interests need safeguarding?

18.--Make a list of improvements which you consider necessary in the
country sections you know the best.

19.--Name as many agencies as you can which are making a better rural
life.

20.--On what do you base your faith in the new rural civilization?

CHAPTER III

THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER III

THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION

_Introductory: Rural Self-Respect and Progress_

I. _The Triumph Over Isolation_

Conquering the great enemy of rural contentment.
The social value of the telephone.
Good roads, the index of civilization.
Railroads, steam and electric.
The rural postal service.
The automobile, a western farm necessity.

II. _The Emancipation from Drudgery_

The social revolution wrought by machinery.
The evolution of farm machinery.
Power machinery on the modern farm.
The social effects of lessened drudgery.

III. _Increased Popular Intelligence_

New agencies for popular education among the farms.

IV. _The New Social Consciousness_

Group loyalty and a true social spirit.

V. _The Effect of the New Order on Rural Institutions_

New efficiency in the modern school, church and farm.
Rural progress and the providence of God.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION

FACTORS THAT ARE MAKING A NEW WORLD IN THE COUNTRY

_Introductory: Rural Self-Respect and Progress_

The faith of the country life movement is justified by the remarkable
rural progress of the past generation. City life has been revolutionized
by inventive skill, modern machinery, new forms of wealth and higher
standards of efficiency and comfort; but meanwhile this marvelous progress
has not been confined to cities. To be sure depleted rural districts,
drained of their best blood, have not kept pace. But suburban sections in
close partnership with cities have shared the speed and the privileges of
urban progress, and meanwhile healthy, self-sustaining rural counties,
scorning any dependence upon cities except for market, have developed
great prosperity of their own and a remarkably efficient and satisfying
life, even though population may have somewhat declined.

This is so radically different from the life of the past, we may justly
call it a new