rican
people as a whole is indissolubly bound up with the existence of a
large and prosperous agricultural interest.

President Roosevelt twenty years ago recognized the importance of
keeping on the farms the young and vigorous American men and women who
are needed to maintain the enormous food supplies required by the vast
populations of the great cities and industrial centers, and appointed
a Country Life Commission to investigate and report on the conditions
that were making life on the farms unattractive as compared with the
cities. One of the reasons found by the Commission for the increasing
flow of country youth cityward was the lack of social activities and
amusements in the rural districts, and the consequent desire to
migrate to localities where a denser population brought wide
opportunities for social diversions. Curiously enough, the dance as a
means of promoting sociability among the farm population was not
discussed, possibly because of an old-fashioned prejudice against
dancing that still prevails in many rural regions. Why certain good
people should object to the dance, innocent, joyous and beneficial as
it is in practically all its manifestations and associations, can only
be explained on the grounds given by Lord Macaulay from the British
Puritan's objection to the sport of bear-baiting. "The Puritan
condemned bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but
because it gave pleasure to the spectators." There was a time when it
was considered frivolous and wicked to be happy, and dancing and many
other innocent amusements were put under the ban. This narrow view of
life is, fortunately, becoming outgrown, and no power is now invoked
to prevent pleasure-seekers finding diversion in sports, games, or the
dance.

With the gradual disappearance of the ancient view of pleasure as akin
to sinfulness, there is no good reason why dancing should not become
as popular in the rural districts as it is in the cities. The
automobile and good rural roads have combined to make possible social
gatherings in central localities that would have been impossible
twenty years ago. Improved farm machinery and implements have
shortened working hours on the farm, so that the evenings are no
longer devoted to finishing up the day's work. Then there are the
long winter evenings when the heart of youth calls to youth, and when
in every village or country hamlet there should be assembled joyous
groups, finding in the dance