So, too, the rural telephone. Recent investigation in the states of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana showed that out of 200,000 subscribers to the independent telephone companies of those states about one-sixth were in farm homes. A few years ago, hardly a telephone could be found in a farmer's family. This business is constantly increasing. The established telephone companies are pushing their work into the country districts, small local exchanges are being formed, and soon the farmers, in the North at least, will be almost as well served by the telephone as are people of the smaller cities. Interurban electric railways are being built very rapidly and their advantage to the farmer is obvious. It is doubtful if their effect has been quite so far-reaching as some have suggested. At present they very largely parallel existing steam railways, and while they give better freight and passenger service and assist materially in diminishing rural isolation in the areas which they traverse, their influence does not extend very far from the line itself, and they reach relatively small areas of the country. However, their value to the farmer is very large, and, as they increase in number and in efficiency of service, they will become a powerful factor in rural progress. The good-roads movement is beginning to take on large proportions. It is, however, a complicated question. To make first-class roads is a costly business, and while a few such roads are of great value in a general social way, they do not quite make general country conditions ideal. To accomplish this, every road in the country should be a good road the year through, and this is an ideal very difficult of realization. However, in general, the roads are improving and as rapidly as the wealth of the country will permit the road system of the United States will be developed. Of course, good roads are a prime requisite for rural betterment. In general, it may be said that during the past decade the improvement of means of communication in rural districts has gone forward at a marvelously rapid pace. Nor is it exaggerating to say that the movements named are re-creating farm life.