The day of the moss-back who went for his mail once every week, the same day he got shaved and sold his butter, is gone forever, so far as most of our country is concerned. To-day about 20,000,000 of our rural neighbors receive their mail at their own farms, delivered by Uncle Sam's messengers; and this great change has occurred in a decade and a half. In 1897 $40,000 was the appropriation by Congress for the experiment in rural free delivery. In 1909 the expense was about $36,000,000, and on June 1 of that year there were 40,637 rural routes, nearly all of them daily service. This rural army of the civil service is almost as large as the whole military force of the country and possibly quite as useful. It is rapidly driving from our rural homes the specters of ignorance, superstition, provincialism and prejudice, and the positive good accomplished cannot be estimated. Letter writing makes and keeps friends. Thousands of farmers' families have joined The League of the Golden Pen in recent years. Their mail collected and distributed doubles in four or five years after the local R. F. D. is started. Among the new civilizing factors is the metropolitan daily, bringing to millions of farmers the daily stimulus to thought and action which the continued story of the throbbing life of the struggling world unfailingly brings. On one rural route the number of daily papers delivered increased in three years from thirteen to 113. The great interests of humanity are now intelligently discussed by the farmer and his boys as they go about their work, and the broadening of interests is what prevents stagnation and enriches life. We are not surprised to find a wonderful increase of magazines and other periodical literature in the country, especially the farm journals which have attained such influence and excellence. R. F. D. did it. Likewise the remarkable increase of shopping by mail is due to the same cause. Though many such purchases are doubtless foolishly made, it is undoubtedly true that even the great catalogs of mail-order houses with their description of many of the comforts of modern civilization have been of great educative value and have stimulated the ambition of countless country homes for an improved scale of living. A recent rural survey of Ohio revealed the fact that pianos or organs were found in 25.9% of the 300,000 rural homes of the state, though only 4.8% had bath tubs! We venture to guess that many of these musical instruments were bought by mail, after the family had for many days studied the alluring catalogs of Chicago mail-order houses. Incidentally, it would be well for Chicago to sell more bath tubs! The new rural civilization is rapidly requiring them. _The Automobile, a Western Farm Necessity_