21.79 per cent of the population while in 1900 they were but 13.64 per cent. On the other hand those in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits increased from 4.12 per cent in 1850 to 9.28 per cent in 1900. These changes occurred in spite of the fact that our government gave away an empire in farms during that time. It becomes evident that the scientific and technological principles in their application fundamentally tend to lessen the relative number of agriculturists and to multiply that in industrial and commercial lines. Being a constituent and intrinsic part of the social process we may not expect the tendency to cease. Rather we must expect the continued growth of science in its principles and applications and that of inventions of machines operating in all ranges of life, the multiplication of the forms of goods to be manufactured, the increased specialization in vocations, the development of scientific and intensive agriculture."

The more casual and incidental forces moving inhabitants to cities are social, cultural, recreational, and vocational. Country life is isolated. Social intercourse is restricted. The moving throng and kaleidoscopic life of cities fascinates and allures. Cities are centers of information, of thought, of art, of music. The achievements of the ages are condensed and packed in their structures, machines, museums, libraries, institutes, and marts; and the frequent and immediately accessible newspapers effervesce with news of the current cosmos. The productions of the masters in painting, sculpture, and architecture may be seen, and the present masters of voice, interpretation, and instrument are to be seen and heard. Modes and kinds of recreation and amusement abound to match the tastes of every class of devotees, no small inducement to those used to isolation and a monotonous round of labor. Occupations and pursuits of multitudinous forms to suit the whims, the tastes, and the inclinations of every type of individuality exert their glamor and provide a satisfaction often actually more seeming than real, yet nevertheless seductive in the extreme. All of these influences combined constitute a powerful attraction and suffice to sweep the retired farmer, the ambitious youth seeking to get established, the occasional worker, and the adventurer into the whirl of urban life.

The influences which move the educated leadership out of "Strong, op. cit., 21-35.

"Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota, October, 1910, pp. 80, 81.

rural into urban life have largely been included in the preceding. Yet they are somewhat special. In Dean Bailey's classified replies to his questionnaire to Cornell students as to why they leave the farm, the most repeated reasons given are, "farming does not pay," "difficult to acquire a farm without a start," "too much hard work," "hours too long," "work too monotonous," "no social advantages or activities," "more opportunity for advancement elsewhere," "natural bent elsewhere," "parental influence against farming."25 Dean M. A. Brannon in a similar questionnaire to the students of the University of North Dakota obtained quite similar replies.

In several of the replies received in answer to my own questionnaire mentioned previously the preference of teachers for city schools appeared. One writer says: "They prefer town schools where they save nothing to country schools where they can save $35.00 a month." As teacher in a western normal school a few years ago I became familiar with the point of views of the prospective teachers. They took country positions only as a last resort. The hardships, the isolation, and the monotony of life as compared with even that of villages turned them away from rural work.

But there is a special cause which hardly any students of rural matters have noticed, namely, the away-from-the-farm influence of rural education. A reply from Maine says: "Practically the whole elementary and secondary-school system of this section educates away from the farm." Our higher institutions may not be doing much to educate for farm life, but they are not educating away from the farms because the youth who enter as students have already decided the matter. They enter the higher institution and deliberately select the training courses which will equip them for urban pursuits.

In my estimation pretty much the whole force of the rural schools determines and cultivates the minds of children in nonrural directions. The matter of the texts used hardly ever has been connected up with local rural life. Inspect the geographies, the readers, the histories, the grammars, the arithmetics "L. H. Bailey, The Training of Farmers, 94-96.

currently used, with a view to ascertaining how far the subjectmatter, the heroes and great men, and the import and spirit of the teaching equip and inspire, build up and foreordain toward the great, important, and fascinating occupation and life surrounding the country school, and you will be surprised at the exceedingly small amount discovered. The child is the outcome of his training. His mind is bent in the direction of the influence brought to bear on him. When the informational matter of his books, the heroes and leaders of his histories and readers, the great events of life, the ideals which are held up to him by his teacher and often by parents are selected almost exclusively from urban quarters, how could it happen otherwise than that the things to be appreciated and striven for are in the cities and the matters of rural life are unworthy, to be spurned?

If we have succeeded in locating the more important influences which impel men cityward, and if it is worth while to seek to deter the stream of life flowing out of rural places, in so far as our analysis is correct we have a clue to the remedial agencies to be adopted. I shall pointedly and somewhat dogmatically treat them.

First, since the great population movement takes place in response to the profound forces which are essential and intrinsic to this age, we might as well expect to dam the Mississippi River to keep back the flow from the gulf as to avert the bulk of population from the cities. Farm colonies and "back-to-thefarm" movements have very small possibilities as solvents. Possibly some day, as in Belgium, now, cheap transportation and other inducements may enable urban workers to live far out in country regions. But they will not be farmers. Industrial and commercial aggregations are inevitable. We must expect their increase. Our social efforts must be turned to things which may be accomplished.

Second, the second set of causes inducing persons cityward, namely, the social, cultural, vocational, and recreational, in so far as they are not dependent on the first, may be checked by regulation. This may be accomplished by setting up counter

attractions in the country. Country life can be and ought to be improved. Country homes should have the comforts and conveniences of city homes. Farm life can be made more cultural and social. Amusements and recreation can be made a part of child life as well as of adult. Improvements and mechanical devices can lessen the hardships and drudgery of outside and inside work.

Third, rural school life can be reorganized and filled with new content, aims, and ideals so that the youth in training shall come to look upon agriculture as an honored, useful, and · desirable line of life. To make the rural school over is to make over the next generation of country people and to furnish them with a well-equipped leadership of their own. When the schools teach the things of the farm, when they study its problems to understand them and solve them, when they reflect the idea that farming is among the greatest and most fundamental pursuits, when they become social centers, where the currents and interests of the community meet and mingle for harmonizing and expansion, when growing boys and girls are sympathetically shown the advantages of leading a life in close contact with nature and of the joy of country quiet, as against city conflict, the great flux of population cityward may not have been checked greatly, but a choice leadership will have been saved to the country, and all who live there will have been greatly bettered and benefited.

THE CHURCH AND THE RURAL COMMUNITY

WARREN H. WILSON

Superintendent Department of Church and Country Life of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions

The country church is responsive to every stimulus which affects the country community. It is a sensitive register of the economic experience and of the social welfare of the country population. Three phases of economic experience in America have recorded themselves in the country churches. Each of them has created a social type. The pioneer has been followed by the exploiter of the land. The exploiter is giving way to the husbandman, or agricultural economist. Each of these has had his church, following one another in the order of the development of American farming; and the faithfulness of the church to the American economy would require that in no other order should the church in the rural community develop. Her changes are those of the population which she serves.

The pioneer type was a lonely man. In the woods his ax alone sounded. From his cabin no other was reached with the eye, or by even a far cry of the voice. He lived and thought and battled alone. His theology was therefore a doctrine of personal salvation. It was the dogma of freedom and responsibility. He was moreover a man of impulse, emotional; for he practiced all the trades, from shoemaking to cutting grass. Adam Smith made clear the dependence of the worker at varied trades upon impulse. The pioneer used rum as a stimulant for his great feats. His religion was the experience of emotion. Yearly or periodic revivals were his only or his primary method of church work. Finney and Nettleton made a fine art of the pioneer religion; but neither of them could so revive rural people today, because the pioneer economy is gone forever.

The second type of economic life was that of the exploiter. He was a man who saw the value of wealth for man's use. He 'Professor J. B. Ross in the Political Science Quarterly for December, 1910, traces the successive changes for the Middle West.