arable acres could be purchased; neither
was it necessary to turn from one occupation to another to satisfy
personal or household needs, for division of labor provided
specialists. Hardship gave way to comfort, for the land was fertile
and experience had taught its values for the cultivation of particular
crops. Loneliness and isolation were felt less severely as neighbors
became more frequent and travelled roads made communication easier.
Group life expanded and institutions became fixed. Every neighborhood
had its school-teacher, and even the academy and college began to dot
the land. Churches of various denominations found root in rural soil,
and a settled minister became more common. A general store and
post-office found place at the cross-roads, and the permanent
machinery of local government was set up. Out of the forest clearings
and prairie settlements evolved the prosperous farm life that has been
so characteristic of the Middle West.

But the prosperous life of these rural communities has not remained
unchanged. Speculation in land has been creating a class of
non-resident agricultural capitalists and tenant cultivators, and has
been transforming the type of agricultural population over large
sections of country. Soil exhaustion is leading to abandonment of the
poorest land and is compelling methods of scientific agriculture on
the remainder. These conditions are producing their own social
problems for the rural community.

READING REFERENCES

SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages
112-126.

CHEYNEY: _Industrial and Social History of England_, pages 31-56.

CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 1-62.

WILSON: _Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 1-61.

CARVER: _Principles of Rural Economics_, pages 74-116.

ROSS: "The Agrarian Revolution in the Middle West," _North
American Review_, September, 1909.

GILLETTE: "The Drift to the City in Relation to the Rural
Problem," _American Journal of Sociology_, March, 1911.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

104. =Physical Types.=--To understand the continually changing rural
life of the present, it is necessary to examine into the physical
characteristics of the country districts, the elements of the
population, the functions of the rural community, and its social
institutions.

The physical characteristics have a large part in determining
occupations and in fashioning