The Challenge of the Country Part 30

[24] Cyc. of Am. Agri., Vol. IV.

[25] Doubtless this single fact would account for the loss in population in many towns.h.i.+ps. There are just as many families as ever but a lower birthrate.

[26] "The Church of the Open Country," p. 79.

[27] Rural Manhood, Vol. I, p. 22.

[28] "Rural Recreation, a Socializing Factor." Annals of the Am. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci., March, 1912; p. 189.

[29] "Rural Recreation, a Socializing Factor," p. 190.

[30] Annals of the Am. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci., March, 1912, p. 61.

[31] Of course country children should also be taught much about city life; city children should be taught about country life, and in the main the standard curriculum will be the same. The point to be made here is the exceedingly important one that rural schools must be made to fit the boys and girls for happy and efficient life in rural communities. This is the specific task of the country school.

[32] "The American Rural School," p. 323.

[33] "The Country Town," p. 299.

[34] In several of the stronger denominations, and, in general, east of the Allegheny Mountains, the proportion is much higher.

[35] Yet an earnest young college student in an Indiana college asked my advice recently on this significant personal problem. He is anxious to consecrate his life to the ministry of the country church, but his particular sect does not believe it right to pay salaries to their ministers; so he asked advice as to whether he should earn his living by farming or school teaching,--while _giving_ his services as pastor and preacher! Quite possibly in such a church a salary of $1000 might actually handicap a pastor's influence; but mainly with the conservative older people.

[36] For an authoritative statement of the County Work program and principles written by International Secretaries Roberts and Israel, see "Annals of the Amer. Acad. of Polit. and Soc. Sci." for March, 1912, pp.

140-8.

[37] "The Country Church and the Rural Problem," p. 146.

[38] "The Annals of the Am. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci.," March, 1912, p.

177.

[39] "Country Life," p. 155.

[40] "The Country Church and the Rural Problem," p. 131.

[41] Forty-six out of 166 medical colleges have been closed in very recent years and the entrance requirements of many others raised, with a strong tendency to make a college course prerequisite.

[42] Also a few of the _third_ generation. For eighty years Oberlin has offered women, equally with men, its privileges of higher education; and in 1908 conferred the honorary degree of doctor of divinity upon a distinguished woman-minister, an alumna both in arts and theology a half century before.

[43] Disciples, Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, Unitarian, Baptist, Universalist, Free Baptist, Free Methodist, Evangelical a.s.sociation, Christian Brethren, Methodist Protestant, Christian, Evangelical Lutheran, Seventh Day Baptist, Wesleyan Methodist, Dunkard, United Brethren, Methodist Episcopal South, Presbyterian and African Methodist Episcopal.

[44] Ninety-five and two-tenths per cent. of the 300,000 rural homes in Ohio last year had no bathtub.

[45] From "The Religion Worth Having," Thomas Nixon Carver, p. 137.

[46] Issue of the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," March, 1912.