The institutions which we have just discussed, together with the improvement that comes from such physical agencies as assist quicker communication (good wagon roads, telephones, rural mail delivery, electric roads), constitute the social forces that are to be depended upon in rural betterment. None can be spared or ignored. The function of each must be understood and its importance recognized. To imagine that substantial progress can result from the emphasis of any one agency to the exclusion of any other is a mistake. To assert this is not to quarrel with the statement we frequently hear nowadays that "the _church_ should be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood;" or that "the _school_ should be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood;" or that "the _Grange_ should be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood." It is fortunate that these statements have been made. They show an appreciation of a function of these agencies that has been neglected. The first item in rural social progress is that the country preacher, the rural teacher, the country doctor, the country editor, the agricultural editor, the agricultural college professor, and especially the farmer himself, shall see the social need of the farm community. But to assert, for instance, that the church shall be _the_ social center of that community may lead to a partial and even to a fanatical view of things. I would not restrain in the slightest the enthusiasm of any pastor who wants to make his church occupy a central position in community life, nor of the teacher who wants to bring her school into relation with all the economic and social life of the farm, nor of the leader of the farmers' organization who sees the good that may be done through the social and intellectual training which his organization can give. But if there is danger that the preacher in the pursuit of this ideal, shall ignore the social function of the school and of the farmers' organization, or that the teacher, or the farmer, or anybody else who is interested, shall fail to see that there is a logical division of labor among rural social forces, and that it is only the intelligent and efficient and harmonious co-operation of all these forces that will insure the best progress, then to such I appeal with all the power at my command to recognize not only the breadth of the whole movement, but to appreciate the limitations of their own special interests. There are things that the church cannot do and should not attempt to do. There are things the school cannot do and should not attempt to do. Accepting our conventional division of social agencies, we may say that efficient rural progress stands upon a tripod of forces, and that balance can be maintained only when each is used in its proper measure.