Better transportation, mail, and telephone service have made available agencies for the communication of ideas, previously accessible only to the few or patronized so infrequently by those further away as to furnish too small a constituency for their successful maintenance. The free public library is a powerful educational agency, but many a community has been too small for its support. Now county library systems are being organized--thanks to automobiles--which give branch stations to every community (see p. 102). Lyceum courses of lectures and entertainments, chautauqua courses, public forums for the discussion of current problems, and last, but not least, the moving picture shows with their pictures of important events from all parts of the world and showing life from Central Africa to the Antipodes, all of these are agencies for bringing new ideas to the rural community, and are becoming increasingly common as better transportation makes it possible for the people to utilize them. The fact that these agencies must be located where they can serve the largest number of people, determines their location at the community centers and they are thus a large factor in unifying the community. Modern transportation has abolished the isolation of the farm and new means of communication have freed the spirit of the farmer and brought the world to his doors. Together they make possible so many satisfactions heretofore only available to the cities, as to quite revolutionize the whole aspect of rural life. They give a new position to the rural community and to the farmer's status in it. FOOTNOTES: [13] Community is derived from the Old English word _commonty_ which came to mean "the body of the common people, commons." Communication is from the Latin _communicare_, also derived from _communis_--common, and _ic_ (the formative of factitive verbs)--to make, or to make common. [14] "The Country Town," p. 20. CHAPTER V THE FARM AND THE VILLAGE