It is at least as important that the farmer should get the largest possible return in money, comfort, and social advantages from the crops he grows, as that he should get the largest possible return in crops from the land he farms.

Agriculture is not the whole of country life.

The great rural interests are human interests, and good crops are of little value to the farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm." The Commission on Country Life did work of capital importance.

By means of a widely circulated set of questions the Commission informed itself upon the status of country life throughout the Nation.

Its trip through the East, South, and West brought it into contact with large numbers of practical farmers and their wives, secured for the Commissioners a most valuable body of first-hand information, and laid the foundation for the remarkable awakening of interest in country life which has since taken place throughout the Nation.
One of the most illuminating--and incidentally one of the most interesting and amusing--series of answers sent to the Commission was from a farmer in Missouri.