To the question, "Are the sanitary conditions on the farms in your neighborhood satisfactory ?" he answers: "No; too careless about chicken yards, and the like, and poorly covered wells.

In one well on neighbor's farm I counted seven snakes in the wall of the well, and they used the water daily: his wife dead now and he is looking for another." He ends by stating that the most important single thing to be done for the betterment of country life is "good roads"; but in his answers he shows very clearly that most important of all is the individual equation of the man or woman.
Like the rest of the Commissions described in this chapter, the Country Life Commission cost the Government not one cent, but laid before the President and the country a mass of information so accurate and so vitally important as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things as they are; and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the reactionaries.

The report of the Country Life Commission was transmitted to Congress by me on February 9, 1909.

In the accompanying message I asked for $25,000 to print and circulate the report and to prepare for publication the immense amount of valuable material collected by the Commission but still unpublished.

The reply made by Congress was not only a refusal to appropriate the money, but a positive prohibition against continuing the work.