Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/849

 PROBLEM OF RURAL COMMUNITY 829

arisen among the farmers, far outreaching in its influence all other movements.

The primary mission of the institute is the improvement of methods in agricultural work. This is gained through lectures and by practical demonstration wherever possible. For instance, the county institutes in Minnesota are schools, the superintend- ent and his corps of assistants going together and remaining at each institute through the entire session. But agricultural tech- nique and business methods do not occupy the entire attention of the sessions. To the departments of live stock, dairy, and farming have been added domestic science and home culture. And today, practically all the sixfold interests of social welfare are represented in each county and state meeting of the farmers' institute. This is confirmed by the following subjects, drawn at random from the annual report of the farmers' institutes of Michigan and Illinois.

Wealth : restoration of soil fertility ; cash vs. credit ; woman's share in economics. Health : sanitation in town and country ; the importance of bacteria in everyday life ; the pre- vention and restriction of communicable disease. Knowledge : agriculture and the public schools ; circulating libraries ; the relation of the mother to the country school. Sociability : influ- ence of good roads on farm life; the relation of the farmer's wife to society ; art of living with others. Beauty : farm-house architecture ; influence of flowers on rural life ; the surroundings of the farm-house. Rightness : consecrated parentage ; social purity ; influence of the country home.

No one can measure the power for good exerted by the farm- ers' institute on the rural community. A keen observer has said : " Many of the American farmers do not belong to Amer- ica's laboring people. They take as much scientific interest in their work and do as much serious reading as most city physicians and editors." Prince Kropotin has spoken glowingly of the intellectual superiority of Iowa farmers over those of the old world, shown by the attendance and discussion at farmers' institutes ; and Tolstoi, with his keen insight into social condi- tions, has recommended that the same system be instituted in Russia for the elevation of the Slavic peasant.