is country is destined to
become the great playground of the world. The American people are
above all else cheerful and optimistic. They know what they can do
because they know what has been done, ever since their brave pioneer
forefathers cleared the forests, subdued the wilderness, spread out
across the wide prairies, and established the mightiest empire of the
earth. The present and all coming generations that enjoy the fruits of
pioneer labor and sacrifices have a right to be joyous. They are
free, prosperous and filled with vitality, vim, pep and go. They want
more from life than any other people. There are among them no country
peasants, or city proletariat, no class distinctions, no artificial
aristocracy. Strong, confident, fearless, they work not merely, as the
masses in other lands, for a bare existence, but as a means for
providing the comforts and pleasures to which they feel they are
entitled.

Whether people are cheerful because they dance, or dance because they
are cheerful, may not easily be decided. One thing is certain, that if
from an assemblage of men and women there should be selected those
with smiling, happy faces, by far the greater percentage would be
found to be dancers. "For the good are always the merry," the
lighthearted, free from care and worry, who sing, or dance, or play
because of their superabundance of vital energy, and because in so
doing they are in harmony with the primal laws of being.

[Illustration: NW]

[Illustration: "LITTLE OLD NEW YORK," FOLLIES OF 1923]

DANCING AND COUNTRY LIFE

[Illustration]

For more than a generation the problem of checking the steady drift of
the young people from American farms into the cities has occupied the
attention of statesmen, able editors, farm leaders and economists. It
is universally agreed that agriculture is the basic industry upon
which the prosperity of manufacturing and commerce depends. When the
farmers are prosperous their demands for all kinds of manufactured
goods sets in motion the wheels of industry, labor is fully employed
and merchants find increased sales to the rural communities and
factory workers. When, as happened five years ago, there is a
widespread depression among the farmers, it is felt by manufacturers,
railways, merchants and industrial workers in every field. Today, as
one hundred years ago, when Thomas Jefferson wrote that agriculture
was the most important of all industries, the welfare of the Ame