With regard to the future, it seems to me that, on the social side, the progress of the next few years is to be along the lines, indicated above, which have characterized the past ten or a dozen years. Still further improved means of communication will tend to banish isolation and its drawbacks. Realization of the benefits of organization and ability to co-operate will vastly strengthen class power. The means of agricultural education will be developed very rapidly, with the ideal in mind of being able to furnish some sort of agricultural training for every individual who lives upon the farm. The country question, as a whole, will attract increasing attention. Gradually it will be seen that the rural problem is one of the greatest interest to all our citizens. The spirit of co-operation will grow until not only the farmers themselves unite for their own class interests but the various social agencies--industrial, religious, educational--ministering to rural betterment will find themselves also co-operating. Thus, it seems to me, the outlook for the future is full of hope. A genuine forward movement for rural betterment has had its beginning, is now gathering volume, and will soon attain very large proportions. FORWARD STEPS CHAPTER XIV THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE FARM QUESTION There is a proverb in Grange circles which expresses also the fundamental aim of all agricultural education--"The farmer is of more consequence than the farm and should be first improved." The first term in all agricultural prosperity is the man behind the plow. Improved agriculture is a matter of fertile brain rather than of fertile field. Mind culture must precede soil culture. But if the improved man is the first term in improved agriculture, if he is the effective cause of rural progress, he is also the last term and the choice product of genuine agricultural advancement. We may paraphrase the sordid, "raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to raise more corn, etc.," into the divine, "train better farmers to make better farming to grow better farmers, etc." We want trained men that we may have an advancing agricultural art, that we may make every agricultural acre render its maximum. The improved acre, however, must yield not only corn but civilization, not only potatoes but culture, not only wheat but effective manhood. But we may carry the point a step farther. The individual farmer is the starting-point and the end of agriculture, it is true. But the lone farmer is an anomaly, either as a cause or as a product, as the lone man is everywhere. As an effective cause we must have co-operating individuals, and as an end we desire an improved community and a higher-grade _class_ of farmers.