=The Farmer in Politics.=--Add to all the foregoing considerations the fact that, in every state legislature and in Congress, the number of rural representatives is constantly increasing, and we see clearly that the country districts are awakening to a realization not only of their needs but of their rights. All of these conditions have helped to turn the eyes of the whole people, in state and nation, to long neglected problems. =The National Commission.=--So the various agencies and factors enumerated above and others besides, all working more or less consciously and all conspiring together, finally resulted in the appointment of a National Commission on Rural Life, the results and findings of which were made the subject of a special message from the president to Congress in 1909. The report of the commission was issued from the Government Printing Office in Washington as Document Number 705, and should be read by every farmer in the country. This commission was the resultant of many forces exerted around family firesides, in the schoolroom, in the press, on the platform, in conventions, in legislatures, and in the halls of Congress. For the first time in this country, the conditions and possibilities of rural life were made the subjects of investigation and report to a national body. Thus the Commission became thenceforth a potent cause of the attention and impetus since given to the problems we are discussing. =Mixed Farming.=--In recent years, too, what may be called "scientific farming" has become a decided "movement" and is now very extensively practiced. This includes diversified farming, rotation of crops, stock raising, the breeding of improved stock, better plowing, and a host of matters connected with the farmer's occupation. Thus farming is becoming neither a job nor an avocation, but a genuine vocation, or profession. It requires for its success all the brains, all the ingenuity, all the attention and push that an intelligent man can give it; and, withal, it promises all the variety, the interest, the happiness, and the success that any profession can offer. =Now Before the Country.=--The movement in behalf of a richer rural life and of better rural schools is now before the country. It is the subject of discussion everywhere. It is in the limelight; the literature on the subject is voluminous; books without number, on all phases of the subject, are coming from the press. Educational papers and magazines, and even the lay press, are devoting unstinted space to discussions on country life and the rural school. The country has the whole question "on the run," with a fair prospect of an early capture. On pages 182-186 we give a bibliography of a small portion of the literature on these questions which has come out recently.