Part 4 (1/2)

Dunn, Arthur W., The Community and the Citizen, Chapters i, v.

Tufts, James H., The Real Business of Living, Chapter x.x.xi (Problems of country life).

Earle, Alice Morse, Home Life in Colonial Days (Macmillan).

Finley, John H., ”Paths of the Pioneers,” in Long's American Patriotic Prose, pp. 1-4.

Pioneer stories from any available source, especially local history stories.

CHAPTER III

THE NEED FOR COOPERATION IN COMMUNITY LIFE

THE NEED FOR TEAMWORK

When people have common purposes and are dependent upon one another in accomplis.h.i.+ng them, there must be COOPERATION, which is another name for ”teamwork.” A team of horses that does not pull together can not haul a heavy load. A baseball team, though composed of good players, will seldom win games unless its teamwork is good. A few soldiers may easily disperse a large mob because they have teamwork, while a mob usually does not. This principle of ”pulling together,” ”teamwork,” or ”cooperation,” is of the greatest importance in community life. There can be no real community life without it.

SIMPLE TYPES OF COOPERATION

In the early days there were ”barn raisings,” when neighbors came together to help one of their number to ”raise” his barn; and all the men of a pioneer community contributed their labor in building the community church or schoolhouse. This was a simple form of cooperation. It may be seen now at thres.h.i.+ng time, when neighboring farmers combine to thresh the grain of each, the same group of men and the same thres.h.i.+ng machine doing the work for all. The United States Department of Agriculture reports that:

In a group of 14 farmers situated in a community in one of the best farming regions in the corn belt, ... it was found that 5 men out of the 14 failed to get all their corn planted by the last week in May. They had worked as hard and as steadily at that operation as had their neighbors, but they were delayed by one cause or another, such as lack of labor or teams, or were handling a larger acreage than their equipment would allow them to handle satisfactorily. In this same community were 3 men who completed all their planting operations before the 20th of May, and 5 others who completed their work by the 25th of May. ... If all these men had considered that corn planting was a national necessity and had pooled their efforts, all of the corn on all the farms could have been planted within the most favorable time. [Footnote: The Farm Labor Problem, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary, Circular No. 112, p. 5.]

Give other ill.u.s.trations of this sort of cooperation from the farm or community life of your neighborhood.

Give ill.u.s.trations of such teamwork among boys and girls.

Give ill.u.s.trations of the failure of enterprises in which you have been interested because of a lack of teamwork.

Why is it an advantage for the farmers to use one thres.h.i.+ng machine for all the thres.h.i.+ng of the neighborhood instead of each farmer having his own machine?

ORGANIZED COOPERATION AND LEADERs.h.i.+P

As communities grow and the people become more dependent upon one another, and especially when it becomes hard to see how one thing that happens may affect others, as shown in Chapter II, cooperation becomes more difficult, but it becomes even more necessary. It needs to be ORGANIZED, and it needs LEADERs.h.i.+P. The experience of fruit growers in California affords a good ill.u.s.tration of this. When they acted independently of one another, they often had difficulty in disposing of their product to advantage. Sometimes it rotted on the ground. As individuals they did not have the means of learning where the best markets were. They had to make their own terms separately with the railroads for transportation and since they s.h.i.+pped in small quant.i.ties, they paid high freight rates. They had no adequate means of storing fruit while it was awaiting s.h.i.+pment. They were dependent upon commission merchants in the cities for such prices as they could get, which were often practically nothing at all.

These and other difficulties that made fruit growing unprofitable were overcome by the organization of fruit growers' a.s.sociations, in which each grower may become a member by purchasing shares of stock. The members elect from their number a BOARD OF DIRECTORS, who in turn appoint a BUSINESS MANAGER who gives his entire attention to the a.s.sociation's business. The a.s.sociation has central offices and storage and packing houses.

The manager keeps in close touch with market conditions,--where the demand for fruit is greatest, the kinds of fruit wanted, the best prices paid. He contracts for the sale of fruit at fair prices. s.h.i.+pping in large quant.i.ties, he gets the advantage of low rates on fast freight trains with refrigerator cars. Uniform methods of packing fruit are adopted, sometimes the fruit being packed at the central packing house. Information is distributed as to the best methods of growing fruit, the best varieties to grow, and so on. On the other hand, supplies and provisions are bought in large quant.i.ties, securing the best quality at the lowest prices.

VOLUNTARY COOPERATION IN CITIES

In cities there are almost innumerable organizations by which groups of people cooperate for one purpose or another. Men in the same line of business or in the same profession organize to promote their common interests. There are boards of trade, chambers of commerce, merchants' and manufacturers' a.s.sociations.

Lawyers have their bar a.s.sociations, physicians their medical a.s.sociations. There are a.s.sociations of teachers, and work men in the various trades have their unions. Besides such business and professional organizations, there are clubs and a.s.sociations of all sorts for men, for women, and even for children, some of them educational, some social or recreational, some philanthropic, some religious. Where there are so many people interested in the same thing, where it is easy for them to meet together, and where competent leaders.h.i.+p is forthcoming, it is quite the usual thing to organize for united action.

COOPERATION IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

In agricultural communities cooperation has developed more slowly.

Farmers have been too isolated from one another to make organization easy, they have not fully realized its advantages, and they have lacked leaders.h.i.+p. This has been an obstacle to the fullest development of community life. The most backward communities are those where there is the least cooperation. In such communities ”the farmer works single-handed, getting no strength from joint action or combined effort.”