Among the multitude of advantages the individual would have in these communities, social, educational, and economic, health and physical development appear as not the least. The farm, as it is, still furnishes a horde of recruits for insane asylums; its isolation and monotony of everyday life, with its lack of social intercourse and educational advantages, nearly counterbalance the strain and poverty of the cities. But the greatest difficulty is the growing inability of the farmers' sons to secure land and the means to cultivate it when they arrive at a marriageable age. Those who have seen for threescore years the ever-increasing flow of boys and girls from the farms to the cities, greater in proportion to the rural population than in any other age, realize the necessity for aid in this direction. While it is true that the farm has contributed largely to the numbers of our successful city men, the fact remains that the mass of boys who come to the cities as well as the city born, lack the faculty to grab or save, and fail, while the healthy girls swell the ranks of prostitution, where an average of eight years lands them in a pauper's grave. Our soldiers, as well as those of other countries, are not up to former physical standards. Degeneracy, disintegration is apparent in every direction. The power of a nation depends on the physical and mental condition of the great mass of people, and to leave the people in ignorance that they may be controlled by the intelligent few who understand their needs and may have their welfare at heart, is a mistake that other nations than Russia have made. The law of the survival of the fittest has wiped out races and nations who have ignored this fundamental law, that all men must progress together. A race or civilization with such a basis of farmers as this plan would create would be enduring. The nation or race, like the individual, must have intelligent organization and live in harmony with the laws of nature in order to survive. Opposition to them means destruction Cooperation is constructive. If we are to profit by this lesson, it is necessary that we improve the conditions surrounding our lower classes. That this is recognized by a large number of leading minds is proved by the efforts of the many who are engaged in educational and other social movements, most of which result in little net good to the wage-earners. Obstacles to small farming near large cities are that farms of three to ten acres with buildings are not plentiful, and that mortgage loans are hard to get in the East and loans to help in building are hardly to be had at all. Land is either held intact as large farms or is sold entire to speculators who hold it until it can be divided into city lots. Here, it would seem, is an opportunity for those who are interested in bettering the condition of their fellow men by wholesale, and can invest large capital, but little time, in the work.