formation is to be found all over the Christian world, and is multiplied and repeated as Christianity gains fresh territory in the heathen world. Men begin suddenly to erect great spiritual standards over the little personal standards which they heretofore professed, and will walk smiling to the stake in order that their soul may be true to themselves. There isn't anything else that does that.

There is something that is analogous to it, and that is patriotism. Men will go into the fire of battle and freely give their lives for something greater than themselves — their duty to their country — and there is a pretty fine analogy between patriotism and Christianity. It is the devotion of the spirit to something greater and nobler than itself.

These are the transforming influences. All the transforming influences of the world are unselfish. There isn't a single selfish force in the world that isn't touched with sinister power, and the church is the only embodiment of the things that are entirely unselfish, the principles of self-sacrifice and devotion.

Surely this is the instrumentality by which rural communities may be transformed and led to the things that are great; and surely there is nothing in the rural community in which the rural church ought not to be the leader and in which it ought not to be the vital actual center.

That is the simple message that I came to utter to-night, and as I began by saying, I dare say it is no message; I dare say it has been repeatedly said in this conference. I merely wanted to add my testimony to the validity and fire of that conception, because we are in the world to do something more than look out for ourselves.

The reason that I am proud to be an American is because America was given birth to by such conceptions as these; that its object in the world, its only reason for existence as a government, was to show men the paths of liberty and of mutual serviceability, to lift the common man out of the paths, out of the slough of discouragement, even despair, and set his

feet upon firm ground; tell him here is the high road upon which you are as much entitled to walk as we are, and we will see that there is a free field and no favor, and that as your moral qualities and your physical powers are, so will your success be. We won't let any man make you afraid, and we won't let any man do you an injustice.

Those are the ideals of America. We have not always lived up to them, no community has always lived up to them; but we are dignified by the fact that those are the things that we live by and swear by.

And America is great in the world, not as she is a successful government merely, but as she is a successful embodiment of a great ideal of unselfish citizenship.

That is what makes the world feel America draw it like a lodestone; that is the reason that the ships that cross the sea have so many hopeful eyes lifted from their humbler quarters toward the shores of the new world; that is the reason why men, after they have been for a little while in America and go back for a visit to the old country, have a new light in their faces, the light that is kindled there in the country where they have seen some of their hopes fulfilled that is the light that

shines from America.

God grant that it may always shine and that in many a humble heart in quiet country churches the flames may be lighted by which this great light is kept alive.

FARM COÖPERATION FOR BETTER BUSINESS,

SCHOOLS, AND CHURCHES 1

WARREN H. WILSON

THE need of better business management is at the root of the troubles of the country church and school. Social surveys made in the past three years have all led the investigator back of small salaries for ministers and poor pay for teachers to the meager income of the farmer. The reason for the farmer's poor return for his labor is a very simple one. He does not manage his

business well.

As a result of serious study of the rural problem in the past five years, the dictum of the Country Life Commission that better "business" is needed in the country has been confirmed. The farmer's occupation is the only one now pursued in all rural regions. Workers in other economic processes have deserted the open country and assembled themselves in the big towns and the cities. Even in the villages there are very few factories.

The Ohio rural life survey discovered in the villages of less than 2500 population so few factories or other industrial organizations as to confirm the census definition of these villages as "rural." Workers in iron, workers in wood, manufacturers of farm products, of farm machinery, and the workers in nearly all the trades that once were distributed throughout the open country are now at work away from the farm in the cities big and little. So that the tiller of the soil who works with land, vegetables, and animals is the only economic type to be discovered everywhere in the open country.

1 Copyright. Reprinted from The Survey by permission of the publishers and of the author.

The general impression is that farmers in the Middle West are prospering. If social institutions are signs of prosperity, this impression is a mistake. The general aspect of the Middle West is that of universal improvement of the means of agricultural production, along with general neglect of social improvement. Productive improvements which may be purchased with borrowed money, such as machinery, drainage of land, pure-bred cattle, are everywhere, and the automobile stands in the farmer's garage; but churches and schools, which may be paid for only out of income, are unimproved.

In such states as Illinois and Iowa, according to high authority, the farmers are not getting an income equal to 5 per cent of their invested capital. For their labor they have no pay. In newer states of the Middle West, if depreciation of the producing power of the soil is reckoned, it is evident that the income of the farmer is secured by waste of the soil. Spurious prosperity in the country which will not support social institutions is of this sort; the price of the land is rising while its value as a producing property is falling. It will sell for more, but it produces less. Social institutions in the country are undermined by such a condition. Churches and schools and other social institutions are built of bushels and tons rather than of dollars. They can be purchased only out of income, and the income that guarantees social institutions in the country is pay for labor. Wherever the farmer gets no pay for his work, even though as a capitalist he gets interest on his investment, social institutions in the country are weak, and this is the general condition throughout the Middle West.

Farming is a coöperative occupation. The poet Hesiod, centuries before Christ, so described it. For this purpose men are dependent upon one another. Its markets are one. The prices paid to the farmer and demanded of the farmer are uniform. But the business of farming has in America been individualized. This is partly due to the cabin and the homestead, which made men lonely, self-reliant, and suspicious,

but the effect of it has been to impoverish and weaken the farmer.

His methods of tilling the soil are old-fashioned, yet he buys and sells in the open market as a competitor of vast corporate enterprises. His head, with which he thinks, is in a cabin; his hands are the hands of a homesteader; but his feet stand in the open market among the trusts and corporations. Obviously, coöperative organization of farmers is a needed reform.

The desire for coöperation is not merely economic. School men in the country are urging the consolidation of schools and their centralization at convenient foci of larger districts. Church men, on behalf of the country church, are pleading for federation. The movement is one; but the serious student of country conditions realizes that at bottom the trouble in the country is economic. Until the farmer coöperates in getting a daily living he will never coöperate in the higher life. Educational union is forbidden by economic competition and disunion. Men could not sincerely federate in the quest of food for the soul, who are competitors in the quest of daily bread. While no one believes that economic coöperation will result automatically in the consolidation of schools or the federation of churches, it is pretty plain that the organization of the schools and the churches cannot come until economic coöperation trains the people in the ways of collective action.

This need is illustrated and enforced in a startling manner by studies made in New York state under the direction of Cornell University by Professors Warren and Livermore. The book on Farm Management recently published by Prof. F. G. Warren presents in its first chapter all we know about the income of the American farmer. In a favored county in New York the average income of farmers is $423. An income of corresponding size in the industrial centers of New York state would be about $700, or less than the standard of living needed by a mechanic in those cities. Similar studies are being made in other states, but the result is such as to show that the average farmer has less than