Part 12 (2/2)
All the people of the community need to think seriously about their economic and social interests, and to be drawn out to express themselves on such subjects. The old-fas.h.i.+oned town meeting provided a channel for such discussion once a year. What is needed is a town-meeting extension through eight or nine months of the year. The community house offers an opportunity for such an extension. Under the initiative and guidance of one or two energetic local leaders, inspired by an occasional outside lecturer, such as can be obtained at small expense from agricultural colleges and other public agencies, almost any American community ought to carry on a forum of public discussion for weeks, taking up first the most urgent questions of community interest and pa.s.sing on gradually to matters of broader concern.
172. =Social Satisfaction.=--As the adults of the community need intellectual stimulus, so the young people need social satisfactions.
The salvation of the American rural community lies largely in the contentment of the young people, for without that quality of mind they leave the country for the town, or settle back in an unprogressive, unsocial state of sullen resignation. There must be opportunity for recreation. The community house should function for the entertainment of its const.i.tuency in ways that approve themselves to the a.s.sociates in charge. But it is not so much entertainment that is wanted as an opportunity for sociability, occasions when all the youth of the community can meet for mutual acquaintance and the beginnings of courts.h.i.+p, and for the stimulus that comes from human a.s.sociation. If a.s.sociation and activity are characteristic of normal social life, it is unreasonable to suppose that rural young people will be contented to vegetate. If they cannot have legitimate opportunities to realize their impulse to a.s.sociated activity, they will provide less satisfactory unconventional opportunities. One of the best means for promoting sociability and providing an outlet for youthful energy in concert has been found in the use of music. The old-fas.h.i.+oned singing-school filled a real need and its pa.s.sing has left a distinct gap. Where musical gatherings have been revived experience has shown that they are a most effective stimulus to a new community consciousness. The country church choir has long been regarded as a useful social as well as religious inst.i.tution, but the community chorus is far more effective. It is possible to uncover latent talent and to cultivate it so that it will furnish more attractive entertainment for the people than that which is imported at far greater expense from outside. Among the foreigners who are finding their way into rural localities, there is sometimes discovered a musical ability that outranks the native, and no other method of approach to the immigrant is so easy as by giving his young people a place in the social activities of the community.
173. =Continuation Schooling.=--A further use for the community house is educational. The older education of the district school was defective, and the new education is not enjoyed by many a farmer's boy or girl, because they cannot be spared in the later years of youth for long schooling. An adaptation of the idea of continuation schools for rural young people so that they may apply the new sciences to country life is greatly to be desired. The local school princ.i.p.al or county superintendent or an extension teacher from a State inst.i.tution may be found available as director, and it belongs to the community to provide the necessary funds. For older people some of the same courses are suitable, but they should be supplemented with lectures of all sorts. It has been demonstrated many times that popular lecturers can be secured at small expense in different parts of the country, especially in these days when there are so many agencies to push the new agricultural science, and other subjects over a wide range of interests will not fail to find exponents if a demand for them can be created.
174. =Community Leaders.h.i.+p.=--In the last a.n.a.lysis the prime factor in the rural situation is the community leader. Inst.i.tutions can do little for the enrichment of rural life if personality is wanting. It is the leader's energy that keeps the wheels of the machinery turning, his wisdom that gears their action to the needs of the community. It is desirable that the leader should spring from the community itself, acquainted with its needs and voicing its aspirations. But more communities get their leaders from outside and are often more willing to accept such a leader than if he came up out of their midst, for the proverb is often true that a prophet is without honor in his own country.
175. =Qualities of Leaders.h.i.+p.=--Social leaders.h.i.+p is dependent upon certain qualities in the person who leads and in those who are led.
The att.i.tude of the people of the community is fundamental. The stimulus that the leader applies must find response in their inner natures if his energy is to become socially effective. If there is not a latent capacity to action, no amount of stimulus will avail. It is safe to a.s.sume that there are few local communities in America that will fail to respond to the right kind of leaders.h.i.+p, but certain qualities in the leader are essential for inspiration. It is not necessary that he should be country born, but it is essential that he love the country, appreciate its opportunities, and be conscious of its needs. He cannot hope to call out these qualities in the people if he does not himself possess them. And it must be a genuine love and appreciation that is in him, for only sincerity and perfect honesty can win men for long. It is essential that he have breadth of sympathy for all the interests of the people that he seeks for his own; he may not think lightly of farming or storekeeping, of education or recreation, of morals or religion. He must be devoted to the community, its servant as well as its leader, content to build himself into its life. It is not necessary that the leader should be a trained expert, a finished product of the schools, desirable as such equipment is, but it is essential that he know how to call out the best that is in others, to play upon their emotions, to appeal to their intellects, to energize their wills. He must not only understand their present mental processes, but he must have a vision of them when they have become transformed with new impulses and ambitions, and converted to new and n.o.bler purposes. He needs an unquenchable enthusiasm, a gentle patience, an invincible, aggressive persistency, a contagious optimism that will carry him over every obstacle to ultimate victory. It is essential that he possess fertility of resource to adapt himself to circ.u.mstances, that he have power to call out action and executive ability to direct it. Most important of all is a magnetic personality such as belonged to the great chieftains of history who in war or peace have been able to attract followers and to mould them in obedience to their own will.
176. =Broad Opportunities.=--A leader such as that described has an almost unlimited field of opportunity to mould social life. In the city the opportunity for leaders.h.i.+p may seem to be larger, but few can dominate more than a small group. In the country the start may be slower and more discouraging, but the goal reaches out ahead. From better agriculture the leader may draw on the people to better social ideals, to a new appreciation of education and broad culture, to a truer understanding of ethics and religion. He may refas.h.i.+on inst.i.tutions that may express the new in modern terms. But when this is accomplished his work is not done. He may reach out over the countryside and make his village a nucleus for wider progress through a whole county. Even then his influence is not spent. The rural communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger circles of business and professional life, in journalism and literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl, incarnating for them the n.o.blest ideals and stimulating them to achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect to wield. The avenues of opportunity are becoming more numerous. The teacher and the minister have advantages of leaders.h.i.+p over the county Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation secretary and the village nurse, but since personal qualities are the determining factors, no man or woman, whatever their position, can make good the claim without proving ability by actual achievement. Any man or woman who enters a particular community for the first time, or returns to it from college, may become a dynamo of blessing to it. There waits for such a leader the loyalty of the boys who may be won for n.o.ble manhood, of the girls who may become worthy mothers of a better generation of future citizens, of men and women for whom the glamour of youth has pa.s.sed into the sober reality of maturer years, but who are still capable of seeing visions of a richer life that they and their children may yet enjoy. There are ready to his hand the inst.i.tutions that have played an important part, however inefficiently in rural life, the heritage of social custom and community character that have come down from the past, and the material environment that helps or hinders but does not control human relations and human deeds. These const.i.tute the measure of his world; these are clay for the potter and instruments for his working; upon him is laid the responsibility of the product.
READING REFERENCES
CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country_, pages 195-259.
FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 225-266.
COOLEY: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pages 283-325.
Mc.n.u.tT: ”Ten Years in a Country Church,” _World's Work_, December, 1910.
MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 129-145.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 1-17, 302-327.
PART IV--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY
CHAPTER XXV
FROM COUNTRY TO CITY
177. =Enlarging the Social Environment.=--In the story of the family and the rural community it has become clear that the normal individual as he grows to maturity lives in an expanding circle of social relations. The primary unit of his social life is the family in the home. There the elemental human instincts are satisfied. There while a child he learns the first lessons of social conduct. From the home he enters into the larger life of the community. He takes his place in the school, where he touches the lives of other children and learns that he is a part of a larger social order. He gets into the current of community life and finds out the importance of local inst.i.tutions like the country store and the meeting-house. He becomes accustomed to the ways that are characteristic of country people, and finds a place for himself in the industry and social activity of the countryside.
When the boy who has grown up in a rural community comes to manhood, his natural tendency is to accept the occupation of farming with which he has become acquainted in boyhood, to woo a country maid for a mate, and to make for himself a rural home after the pattern of his ancestors. In that case his social environment remains restricted. His relations are with nature rather than with men. His horizon is narrow, his interests limited. The inst.i.tutions that mould him are few, the forces that stimulate to progress are likely to be lacking altogether.
He need not, but he usually does, cease to grow.
178. =Characteristics of the City.=--Certain individuals find the static life of the country unbearable. Their nature demands larger scope in an expanding environment. To them the stirring town beckons, and they are restless until they escape. The city is a centre of social life where the individual feels a greater stimulus than in the home or the rural community. It resembles the family and the village in providing social relations and an interchange of ideas, but it surpa.s.ses them in the large scale of its activities. It presents many of the same social characteristics that they do, but geared in each case for higher speed. Its activities are swifter and more varied. Its a.s.sociations are more numerous and kaleidoscopic. Its people are less independent than in the country; control, economic and political, is more pervasive, even though crude in method. Change is more rapid in the city, because the forces that are at work are charged with dynamic energy. Weakness in social structure and functioning is conspicuous.
In the large cities all these are intensified, but they are everywhere apparent whenever a community pa.s.ses beyond the village stage. The line that separates the village or small town from the city is an arbitrary one. The United States calls those communities rural that have a population not exceeding twenty-five hundred, but it is less a question of population than of interests and activities. When agriculture gives place to trade or manufacturing as the leading economic interest; when the community takes on the social characteristics that belong to urban life; and when places of business and amus.e.m.e.nt a.s.sume a place of importance rather than the home, the school, and the church, the community pa.s.ses into the urban cla.s.s.
Names and forms of government are of small consequence in cla.s.sification compared with the spirit and ways of the community.
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