Community Civics and Rural Life

by Arthur William Dunn

Is your home a community? What are some of its common interests?
Are there laws in your family?

What are some of the things in which your family and your nearest neighbors have a common interest because of living close together? Do your family and your neighbors work together to provide for these interests?

What are some of the things in which all the people of your city or village (or the one nearest to you) have a common interest, and which the city, or village, government helps to provide for?

INTERDEPENDENCE OF RURAL AND CITY COMMUNITIES

A community of farmers has interests of its own, largely centering around farming activities, or the social life of the local neighborhood. A few miles away is a village or city whose people also have their own peculiar interests, such as the lighting of the streets at night, or the building of a new high school, or the election of a mayor. Yet there are interests common to both the farming community and the city community. The city is dependent upon the country for its food supply, and the farmers are dependent upon the city for their market. Probably some of the farmers send their children to the city schools. Thus city and rural communities are bound together into a larger community with interests common to both.

In the early days of western settlement a community was founded in Illinois. It was an agricultural community, but in the midst of it a village grew, which in the course of time became a small city. One of the first settlers was a young farmer with a mechanical turn of mind. He began experimenting to improve the methods of planting grain. The result was the invention of a corn planter, the manufacture of which became one of the chief industries of the growing city, employing hundreds of men and sending machines to all parts of the world. Another young farmer invented a better plow than those which had been in use, the manufacture of which became another of the city's industries. In those pioneer days each family usually made its own brooms, but one young man in this community earned his way through the local college by making brooms from corn raised on the college farm. The college cornfield disappeared in the course of time, but on one part of it there grew up a broom factory employing a large number of workmen. These city industries were thus literally "children of the soil," and the city's prosperity depended upon the agriculture of the surrounding region. On the other hand, the city provided the farmers with improved plows and corn planters, furnished them an immediate market for their products, supplied them with goods through its shops and stores, and gave education to hundreds of farmers' children in its schools and college.

NEED FOR RURAL AND CITY TEAMWORK

Sometimes jealousies and antagonisms arise between small neighboring communities, and especially between rural and city communities. This interferes with the progress of both communities, and of the larger community of which each is a part. It may be proposed to build a township high school. It is natural that the several communities that comprise the township should each want it. But the interest of the entire township should be considered in determining the location of the school, and not merely the advantage of one local district as against others. It sometimes happens that the people of a city are exempted from taxation for county purposes outside of the city, although the benefits would be almost, if not quite as great, for the city as for the country. This sort of thing serves to set off city and country against each other instead of binding them together to their mutual advantage. The case of Christian County, Kentucky, described in Chapter III, is an excellent illustration of teamwork between city and country in the interest of the entire county, and of the results achieved by it.

SMALL COMMUNITIES UNITE IN LARGE ONES

In this chapter there are three maps of Dane County, Wisconsin, which show how small communities, both rural and urban, are united into a large community, the county. Map I shows the school districts and the townships which comprise the county. The city of Madison occupies the center, and small towns and villages are scattered here and there. The country school is the chief center of interest in each school district. Here and there through the county are high schools. Each of these is a center of a larger irregular area, including a number of school districts and parts of several townships as shown in map 2. Map 3 shows TRADE AREAS. Trade and education are two of the chief interests that bind people into communities. But where these interests exist, there are likely to be other interests; the high school is likely to be a meeting place for social and recreational purposes.