I suggest that an institution--which, as I have said, will be scientific, philosophic, research-making--should be founded. It would be, in effect, a Bureau of research in rural social economy. Personally I know that, in my own experience as an administrator and organiser, I have been constantly brought face to face with problems where we could turn to no guide--no patient band of investigators who had been measuring, analysing, determining the data. Yet in some directions much excellent work is being done. Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems of the rural population have entered into the studies of economists and sociologists. At leading Universities I have sought in vain for light. At a recent anniversary in New York, which brought together the foremost economists of the Old and New World, there was an almost complete omission of the country side of things from a programme which I am sure was generally held to be almost exhaustive. The fact is, the subject must be treated as a new one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country Life movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to make good the deficiency of information which has resulted from the general lack of interest in the subject under review. An Institute is wanted to survey the field, to collect, classify and coördinate information and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to carry exact statistical method into his work so that he may no longer have to depend on general statements, but may have at his command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while its significance can be measured. I may mention a few typical questions on which useful light would be shed by the Institute's researches:--
1. The influence of coöperative methods (_a_) on the productive and distributive efficiency of rural communities, and (_b_) on the development of a social country life.
2. The systems of rural education, both general and technical, in different countries, and the administrative and financial basis of each system.
3. The relation between agricultural economy and the cost of food.
