DOWN ON THE FARM

Although modern inventions have succeeded in uniting rural and urban communities into much closer relations than formerly, they have not quite removed the problem of the isolation of the country boy and girl. A discussion of this eternal problem is to be found in the New Republic, and the result is more superficial than the subject merits. The writer has evidently based his judgements on the rural youth of yesterday, not that of today, or even more to the point, of tomorrow. His analysis amounts to nothing more than a compromise. "They seem healthier than the urban youths--probably because they have not learned how to affect boredom--but they also seem less vital and less interesting." Which decision, on dissection, proves to le merely a commonplace.

If country youth is less interesting--and that in itself is doubtful--it is certainly not less vital. No class in America today is receiving as great benefits from the present spread of higher education. Hitherto farmers have had immense resources but they were handicapped by a complete ignorance of how to use them. And pratical agricultural training as it is being taught in numerous institutions does give the future farmer a better idea of his problems, if it does nothing else. Economically neither the urban nor rural class can exist without the other; intrinsically, neither is the more important. The press, the chief factor in forming opinion, unfortunately emphasizes the sins of the younger and metropolitan generation and gives little regard to the boys and girls from the farm who will make in tomorrow's producers. The New Republic states that "rurality has degenerated into dependency on urban life." Like the writer's other theories, this is not a face political events have demonstrated that the middle western and southern agrarian portions of the country are capable of exercising enormous power--and this is one of the less important of the farming phases. Again-less interesting perhaps, but less vital-no.