This power of the community to attract and hold individual lives, supplying them with the vital necessities for which the individual craves, is dependent in America upon educational institutions more than upon any other factor. The French philosopher Desmoulin has said that the Anglo-Saxon supremacy is due to the Anglo-Saxon love of the land and of education. The American represents these two passions, and of the two the love of education is at present, the stronger. The community which is weak in its schools will not hold its people. The generation who at present are the largest owners of American wealth are eager for educational advantage: and the incoming stream of immigration promises that in the days to come this craving for education will not diminish, but will increase. The country community has been peculiarly weak in its educational facilities, by a strange dullness and inertia due to the economic prostration of the farming industry. For the two decades following 1880 the country schools have failed to keep pace with the city schools. Prof. Foght says, "While the public attention has been centered on work and plans for the improvement of the city schools a great factor for or against the public weal has been sadly neglected. This is the rural school. One-half of our entire school population attend the rural schools, which are still in the formative stage. The country youth is entitled to just as thorough a preparation for thoughtful and intelligent membership in the body politic as is the city youth. The State, if it is wise, will not discriminate in favor of the one as against the other, but will adjust its bounties in a manner equitable to the needs of both. Heretofore the rural schools have received very little attention from organized educational authority."[27] The effect of this neglect of the country school in the face of the constructive statesmanship which has led in perfecting the city school is seen in the exodus from the country community of very large numbers of the most successful farmers. Evidences are abundant that this exodus from the country community is primarily a quest of educational advantage. Not in every case would the departing family confess that they were seeking better schools: but it is probable that the majority of them while giving a variety of primary reasons for moving would assign the desire for education as the uniform secondary reason for departing from the country community. It is impossible for the country church to retain its best ministers. Many reasons enter into this, but always at the top of the list is the desire for better educational opportunities for the ministers' children. The advice has become proverbial in theological seminaries, "Go to the country for five years." It is said that in New England there are three classes of country ministers and the first of them is the bright young man who will not long be in the country.