tests of a good rural school, on the other hand. Now these are the tests. I shall suggest; first, five tests of good farming, and then four tests of a good rural school; then I shall let you make the application as to the matter of the interdependence of the farm and the school.

My first test of a good farm may surprise you. The first test of good farming is: Is it profitable? It is not true that if the farmers make money all these other things, the real things of life-better churches, better schools, and a better rural civilization, will come of themselves. They do not do it. It is a sad mistake to say that they will. On the other hand, it is equally true that you cannot build a permanent rural life, you cannot have, in the long run, good churches, adequate schools of the right sort, and the best type of farmhouse, the highest rural civilization, unless you build them upon a reasonably profitable farm life. I have just returned from China, where I went as a member of a commission whose purpose it was to make a study of education in China carried on under mission auspices. My particular task was the study of agricultural conditions. In connection with that work I studied government schools of agriculture, finally making a report to the government on agricultural education. The very heart of my recommendations was the idea of building up the rural communities; and the first item in that reconstruction program for the bettering of the Chinese farming villages was: Make farming more profitable for them. There are millions of farmers in China today whose income, above what they eat and what they use themselves of what they grow, is not over three dollars a month of their money, which is only half as valuable as our money. The reason why there are today fifteen millions of people in China who are on the edge of starvation is that the great masses of them constantly live so near the edge of starvation that when drouth, or flood, or pestilence come, they go over the edge. It is just as true of Iowa or Massachusetts as it is of China, that the first test of farming is: Is it profitable? Does it give a reasonable standard of living? There are many things that enter into this questionI could talk for an hour of the factors of this problem. We must

not forget that it is not a question of rich farmers; the question is whether the great majority of farmers can actually make, under existing conditions and with reasonable attention to their business, a fairly decent sort of living. Is farming profitable?

The second test of good farming is: Does it increase soil fertility, or does it diminish it? You may think that is a long way from the rural school and from this school, but it is a matter of tremendous importance to our civilization. I cannot help again referring to China. One of the strongest impressions I got of China was its age. The people in New England are proud of the fact that their history began two or three hundred years ago. I was in a village in China that was situated near a city which was on the king's tax rolls four thousand years ago. Since the beginning of the development of China, Greece and Rome have risen and flourished and fallen. The Chinese people have been doing business as a civilization for four thousand years, and they are doing business today, stronger than ever before, in spite of bad government, famine, flood, and pestilence, and there are more of them and they are more virile, probably, than ever before in their history. One of the reasons for this is the Chinese farmer, who, in spite of his ignorance and illiteracy, and because of his great care of the soil, has been able to maintain its fertility undiminished in large sections of China-not everywhere so that today I suppose he gets more yield per acre than any other farmer in the world; and the reason why China is going strong today is because of the fact that the fertility of the soil has been maintained to a very large extent. When you have counted the blessings the Creator has vouchsafed to mankind, when you have catalogued the material resources of the world, have you ever stopped to think that the largest blessing, the greatest single resource, is the fertility of the soil? It seems more dramatic, more interesting, to speak of the mines of gold, and the diamonds, the copper, and all that, but such things sink into insignificance in comparison with the power for human good, for human welfare, that lies in the top foot of the soil of the world. It is a resource that in its actual and in its potential value exceeds hundreds of times all the other

material resources of the world together that man can use. That is not an exaggerated statement. It is not good farming when that fertility is diminished; it is good farming only when the land is used to its full capacity and yet in such a way that the fertility increases, rather than decreases. It is a moral obligation of the present generation to pass on to future generations, the generations that will be living here three thousand or four thousand years hence, we hope, a soil as fertile as it is today; and people cannot live here thousands of years from now unless the soil fertility is kept up. It is our moral obligation to pass on this fertility undiminished.

A third test of good farming is: Does it maintain high-grade homes, and high-grade churches, and high-grade schools and the other social agencies and organizations that modern civilization seems to need in order to get to its best estate? If it does not, then there is something wrong, and it is not good farming. It may not always be the fault of the farmer where these things do not exist, where the homes are bare and unpleasant. It may not be the fault of the farmer that the church of the community is run down, ineffective, impotent, or that the school is barely maintaining itself as an excuse for a school. It may not always be the farmer's fault that these things happen, but nevertheless it is not good farming when they do happen. It is not good farming merely that it should be profitable, merely that the soil fertility should be maintained, unless that profit finds itself working out in terms of the right sort of American home, of the right sort of American school: and in my judgment an aggressive church takes the lead in the virile things of the community. I think one of the most searching tests of American agriculture in the next generation is going to be there. Is the profit that we hope the farmer will have, is the good farming that results in the undiminished. fertility also going to result in communities that are up to the standards of our American life in their homes, in their schools, in their church leadership, and in their social or community institutions? And if our American agriculture cannot meet that test, then it is not good farming.

The fourth test is this: Does it produce good citizens of the towns, and of the state, and of the nation? Just now, through the great movement headed by the Farm Bureau Federation, backed by the Grange and many other organizations, we have a great agricultural movement. It had to come. It had to come simply because our American farmers had been experiencing that which farmers in all ages have experienced, which our own farmers have experienced from time to time; and it is this: Perhaps it has not been meant that way, but the facts are that all through history, all through our American history, the tendency has been for the city either to exploit or to neglect the farmer, and sometimes both; and the real reason why we have this great agrarian movement today is because the farmers have felt that they have been both exploited and neglected. I sympathize completely with their desire to see that these things are remedied. But it would be a great misfortune if we should have, in this or in any country, a movement among farmers that would make them so class-conscious and so interested in their own special concerns and problems that they should forget that there are other problems, that there are other people, to the extent that they should be out of sympathy with the laboring classes, or with the professional classes, so that there should be a sharp class cleavage making a sort of caste system. No; good farming ought to result in the building of a true American citizenship in the country that is just as intelligent, just as broad, just as interested in everything that pertains to American welfare, as any other movement; and it is the great glory of the American farmer that he has been this kind of citizen, and it is the great problem of American life to keep him that kind of a farmer. I think that in no country in the world in any time of history has it been so true that the farmer was a typical citizen as in America and of the American farmer. But a test of pre-eminently good farming is that the farmers themselves shall be typical, intelligent American citizens.

And, finally, does this farming result in the farmers' ability to organize and handle their affairs collectively? You may think that is rather a strange test of a good farmer. Here is Farmer

Green or Farmer Jones out here. Now, if he meets these other tests, and if all the farmers together meet these tests, we have good farmers. I do not think we have. For this reason: the civilization of this century is one based on the idea of organization. If you stop to think about it, you will see that almost everything we do is organized. People must co-operate in order to get things done. They co-operate to have the school, the church, in business, and in labor. The power of organization is the ruling power of our 20th century civilization, and it is simply impossible for the farmer to reach his full effectiveness unless he, too, can co-operate with his fellow farmers; and I put down as the final test of good farming the ability of those farmers, growing out of their experience together, to manage their affairs collectively. I predict that the time will come when this group movement will result in wellorganized local communities-towns, if you please managing all their affairs in common. I do not mean that they shall own things in common. I am not advocating the doctrine of communism. I mean that the idea of organization and collective action will prove so effective and so important to the farmers themselves that after a while they are going to learn to do almost everything of common interest (and there is a very little that is not of common interest) together.

Now let us turn over the sheet and see what is on the other side some tests of a good rural school. I will name four; and in thinking of this now, please keep in mind the tests of good farming. I am going to leave it to you to bring these things together. I will simply outline the tests, and you must make the application.

My first test of a good rural school is this: Does it give country boys and girls as good an education as they would get in the city schools? I know that many will say at once: "That is too severe a test. Of course not. How can you expect it. Here is a little school with one, two, or four teachers. Can you expect that that school can give as good an education to those boys and girls as they would receive if they lived in Boston, or Brookline, or Newton?" Well, I have to admit that it is a sad fact that oftentimes the small