It is a natural condition for people to crave self-expression. In years gone by men who have been born and reared on the farm have left it and gone to the city, in order to find a place for the expression of their talents. This migration has done more to hinder than to set forward the cause of civilization. People who live in the country must find their true expression in their respective neighborhoods, just as much as do people who live in the city. You cannot continually take everything out of the country and cease to put anything back into it. The city has always meant expression—the country, repression. Talent usually goes to the congested centers of population to express itself. For generations when a young man or woman has had superior ability along some particular line and lived in the country, their friends have always advised them to move to a large center of population where their talents would find a ready expression. You and I, for instance, who have encouraged them to go hither, have never thought that we were sacrificing the country to build the city. This has been a mistake. We all know it. Over fifty years ago a country doctor became the father of two boys. In age they were five years apart. The doctor brought them up well and sent them away to a medical school. Unlike most country-bred boys who go to large cities, when they finished their courses they went back to the old home town and began their practice. By using their creative instincts, organizing power, imagination, and initiative, it was not long before they became nationally known. People call their establishment “the clinic in the cornfields.” To-day these “country doctors” treat over fifty thousand patients. Their names are known wherever medical science is known. Railroads run special sleepers hundreds of miles to their old home town in Olmstead County, Minnesota, which, by the way, is one of the richest agricultural counties in America. The great big thing about these two men is that they found an opportunity for the expression of their talents in a typical country community. They didn’t go to a large city, they made thousands of city people come to them. Conservatively speaking, there are over ten thousand small towns in America to-day. More than ten million people live in them. These communities are often meeting places for the millions whose homes are in the open country. Rural folks still think of a community as that territory with its people which lies within the team haul of a given center. It is out in these places where the silent common people dwell. It is in these neighborhood laboratories that a new vision of country life is being developed. They are the cradles of democracy. It is here that a force is necessary to democratize art so the common people can appreciate it, science so they can use it, government so they can take a part in it, and recreation so they can enjoy it.