While the conference was concerned with the smaller secondary schools of the South, delegates were present from Hampton and Tuskegee. The conference closed with the formation of a temporary organization consisting of W. D. Holtzclaw, president; Emma Wilson, vice-president, Leslie Pinckney Hill, secretary and treasurer, and four other board members W. A. Hunt, W. J. Edwards, W. T. B. Williams and O. L. Coleman. These officers are to hold a meeting in Atlanta on June 17, and will submit their conclusions to the larger body of school principals in November. It was the hope of the meeting that a practical plan of co-operation might be presented. THE RURAL CHURCH In some great day The Country Church Will find its voice And it will say: “I stand in the fields Where the wide earth yields Her bounties of fruit and grain; Where the furrows turn Till the plowshares burn As they come round and round again; Where the workers pray With their tools all day In sunshine and shadow and rain. “And I bid them tell Of the crops they sell And speak of the work they have done; I speed every man In his hope and plan And follow his day with the sun; And grasses and trees, The birds and the bees I know and feel ev’ry one. “And out of it all As the seasons fall I build my great temple alway; I point to the skies, But my footstone lies In commonplace work of the day; For I preach the worth Of the native earth— To love and to work is to pray.” LIBERTY H. BAILEY in _Rural Manhood_. FARMER SMITH AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH FRED EASTMAN Secretary Matinecock Neighborhood Association, Locust Valley, N. Y. Farmer Smith needs help. He needs it here and now. He is trying to keep his family supplied with food and clothes. He is struggling to give his children an education and at the same time to pay off the mortgage on the farm and to save enough to keep his wife and himself from want in their old age. All around him are those who are waging the same battle, but they give him little help. Each one fights alone, as his father did before him. Twelve years ago Farmer Smith had a $5,000 farm. It yielded him an income of about $500. That was a return of 10 per cent. Today, because of the general rise in land values, that farm is worth $10,000. It yields him about $700. It is now only a 7 per cent investment. His profits have decreased. Moreover, his land is poorer than it was twelve years ago. Smith never learned how to farm intensively. He knows only the crude methods used by his father in the days of virgin soil. The years ahead give him no promise that he will be able to make even as much from his farm as he is making now.