The individualism of rural thinking has been universally recognized. It is this attitude of mind that has produced much of the strength of rural character and much of the weakness of rural society. That the closer contact of town and country and the rapidly developing urban mind require more social thinking upon the part of country people few can doubt. There are some people, however, who fear this socializing influence of urban thought in the country, because they believe that it will antagonize rural individualism in such a way as to destroy the fundamental distinction between rural and urban ethics. As a matter of fact, however, people in these days obtain their sense of personal responsibility from their confidence in their social function, and this confidence is not developed by an excessive individualism. The farmer, like men in other occupations, needs to make realization of his social service the corner stone of his moral life. This world war has made every thinking person realize the unrivaled function that the farmer performs socially, and it is fortunate for the future of rural welfare that what has always been true is at last finding adequate appreciation. It is the farmer himself who has most suffered in the recent past from not realizing the value of his social contribution. The widespread thoughtless indifference to his social service has, at least in the oldest portions of the nation, given him an irritating social skepticism and driven him into a dissatisfying industrial isolation. We naturally antagonize what we do not share and the farmer when he has thought himself little recognized as a social agent has had his doubts about the justice and sanity of public opinion. It was doubly unfortunate that this situation developed at a time when religion was called upon to make heroic changes in order to adapt itself to the needs of modern life. Formerly religion gave rural thinking a larger outlook than individual experience by providing an outstretching theological environment. Rather lately this environment has ceased to satisfy the needs of rural people. Religion has in the city become social in a way of which our fathers did not dream, and in the country it must find its vigor also by introducing the believer to his social environment in such a way as to emphasize social function, as much as personal inward obligations formerly were emphasized by theology. We need, therefore, for the best interests of the country that the native sense of personal importance characteristic of rural thinking should be brought into contact with social need, so that it may function socially. Out of this movement will issue most happily a great social optimism in the country and individualism will lose nothing by being adjusted to modern social needs. The chief agencies that socialize rural thinking are the church, the school, the press, secret societies and clubs, and the industry of farming itself.