Among the movements of first importance looking toward the uplift of young men is that named at the head of this chapter. Parallel with the intensive and systematic effort to build up the commercial life of the city and allow the country district to take care of itself, has been a like effort to provide for the care and development of the city boy and the uniform neglect of the needs and interests of the country boy. Now, here at last is a movement that is proving a real means of salvation of the rural youth, mind, body, and soul. President Henry J. Waters, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, struck the keynote of this young country-life movement most effectively in a recent address when he said: "We believe in the existence of a social renaissance. One needs only to read the daily and weekly papers printed in hundreds of prosperous villages and cross roads corners, the faithful chroniclers of the community's activities, to find buoyant hope of the future of farm life. "The dignity of labor; the close connection between heads and hands; the monthly or weekly meetings of farmers' institutes in hundreds of counties; the special lectures provided by agricultural colleges; the movable schools; the farmers' winter short courses, in which thousands of men and women and boys and girls participate; corn contests; bread contests; sewing contests; play carnivals; poultry-raising contests; stock-raising contests; conferences on the country church, country school, good roads--all these activities denote the growth of a new and mighty spirit in the country life of America. "We need further demonstrations, together with concrete thinking, a lot of constructive programs, and a deal of hard work and self-sacrifice, in which the county work department of the Young Men's Christian Association can have no little share, to speed on the great epoch of rural social renaissance." BOYS LEAVE THE FARM TOO YOUNG It is a tragic story when the whole truth is known, that of the young boy running off to town in search of some employment that will bring him a little ready cash for spending money, and also in search of the sociability so woefully lacking in the rural home environment. Too long have the country parents attempted to argue and scold and force their boys to remain at home where they are confronted only with the monotony of hard work and a very dim prospect of a possible land or other property inheritance. So at last there is being raised the very important questions, What is the matter with the country boy? and What can be done to help him? Knowledge of the fact that more than one-half of the boys of the United States are living in farm homes makes the problem of their individual salvation assume momentous proportions.