swine, the Rhode Island Red chickens, the Polled Hereford cattle, the Kentucky trotting horse, and numerous other new breeds and sub-breeds have come into prominence.

Instead of settling down to conditions not easily changed, as in other countries, the American people retain the progressive spirit. In fact, such radical changes as those introduced by the sewing machine, the self-binding reaper, the wire fence, the railroad, the telephone, the automobile, the gasoline motor on the farm, and low priced printed matter seem sufficient to prevent stagnation and to prepare the people for any changes which modern science and modern leadership may make possible. Futhermore, influences from without constantly react upon our rural communities. The presence in our cities of wonderful high schools and technical schools is forcing our country people to realize that the farmers must have educational facilities such as large technical agricultural high schoolsquite as good as those provided for education in the professions and in the trades.

selves for the most part with general organizations, such as the Farmer's Alliance, the Grange, and the Farmers' Congress. They experimented with coöperative buying, selling, dairying, insurance, ownership of machinery, and the breeding of animals; and have learned, through many failures, which classes of coöperation. were most successful. During the last decade or two the farmers having proven the value and practicability of these coöperative efforts, have greatly increased their activities along these lines. Coöperative insurance, especially of farm property, has been extended to very many townships and counties. Thousands of coöperative cheese factories and creameries are being successfully operated. Tens of millions of dollars' worth of fruit and vegetables are annually marketed by coöperative growers' societies. One coöperative organization in Southern California handles more than half the citrus fruits of that State. Much information and inspiration has been gained from farmers' coöperative organizations in other countries.

The United States Government and the State governments employ officers to assist in working out the technical and business methods of these organizations; and, in some lines of rural coöperation, the States assist by furnishing public officers to audit, annually or semi-annually, the accounts of such coöperative organizations as farmers' banks and insurance companies.

Coöperation in the breeding of dairy

cattle and in the breeding of other animals has been taken up, and the farmers of the United States are associated in many coöperative associations (State, National, and local in scope) such as horticultural societies, agricultural societies, live stock societies, and dairymen's societies. Much advance in the irrigation of large areas of land and in the drainage of swampy areas has been accomplished through coöperative organizations, through voluntary effort, or under laws which specify legalized forms of coöperation.

In 1865 the men who had done the larger part of the work of deforesting the territory east of the Mississippi river were yet living. With axe, mattock, and fire, one of the world's most wonderful forest areas had been transformed into a region of productive farms. But, with the rapid growth of population, the Nation began to sense the fact that, instead of having so much wood that timber must be destroyed, we should soon be under the necessity of conserving our existing tree-growth and of planting forests for the future. The so-called theorists began to get an audience and, finally, during the last several years, the entire country has become thoroughly aroused to the importance of no longer depending upon the private grower to produce the lumber for the next generation. Only the Nation has the welfare of its future people so strongly at heart as to be willing to wait 50 to 100 years for the newly planted tree

to grow into useful timber. The Nation suddenly reserved all its remaining public forest lands, partly in order to grow forest products and partly in order that the headwaters of our navigable streams may be preserved. The States, following the example of the Nation, are also reserving and administering forest lands. It has even been proposed that some plan of coöperation be instituted between the National and State governments under which very much larger acreages may be brought under public forest management.

In addition to its great work of conserving the wealth of our National forests, the Department of Agriculture has put forward also numerous projects for reclaiming the arid lands of the West. Here, where Nature provided the richest of soils, but, in a moment of haste, as it were, forgot to make suitable provision for rainfall, man has set to work and has, in a favored spot here and there, met the need with artificial rain; that is, with a great system of dams in the mountains to store up the melting snows and with miles of irrigating ditches to carry the waters down to the thirsty crops in the valleys below so that the desert may indeed "blossom as the rose." By this means the Nation has added to its tillable domain hundreds of thousands of fertile alfalfa, fruit and general farm land.

In 1865 the one-room rural school had penetrated every settled portion of the United States. This system of

country-life education continued unchanged almost to the close of the Nineteenth century. These schools had ignored the accumulating new knowledge of agriculture, home-making, and rural economics. They adhered almost absolutely to the traditional subjects of the schools. To the "three R's ", some schools added mathematics, history, and languages, which were recognized as preparatory studies for college entrance. These schools, like the city and village schools, by giving only studies unrelated to agriculture, home-making, and other industries, tended to discredit all manual lines of effort. Our school system, including these rural schools, magnified the professions and even such non-manual vocations as bookkeeping, clerking, and the lighter forms of transportation service. Thus the schools, acting in unison with the increasing wages of non-agricultural pursuits, helped to lead the people away from the farm and farm home, and even away from many of the mechanical industries. Our schools have thus been partially responsible for our young men's preference of the $12 per week salary of the clerk or street-car conductor to the $20 a week wage of the skilled artisan or the responsibility of the rented farm, with the chance of some time becoming its

owner.

On the other hand, it is only fair to say in passing, that the one-room rural school gave to the American country people the elements of an

English education, served as a common bond of the people to the Government, formed the great medium through which has been built up a unified Americanism, and gave the whole people a respect for and yearning after knowledge. It has served as the basis of a most wonderful market for a varied and abundant literature in books, periodicals, and public bulletins and reports. In a word, our common schools have, in a most potent. way, brought us up to a position wherein reasonable education and economic and social development through reorganization is not only possible but practical and imminent.

Thus it came gradually to be recognized among those who studied public questions, among business men who employed young graduates of our school system, and among parents and teachers themselves, that our school system was too narrowly directed along the line of the specialist in literary scholarship, and not sufficiently brought into relation to the things which more than 90 per cent. of the pupils would be called upon to do on leaving school; that the studies of the schools were strictly arranged to prepare the pupils for the grade above, and too little calculated to fit graduates for the work of the farm, the shop, or the home, where most people must become efficient or fail to carry their share of the social burden.

Our schools have been slow to accept the fact that modern research and experience have added a new body of