The area and boundaries of a "farming" or "rural neighborhood" community are usually rather indefinite and changeable, depending upon surface features and upon transportation conditions, or the length of the "day's haul." With improved roads and better means of transportation, larger areas and more people are included. A "neighborhood" or "trade area" with automobiles is much larger than one where horses or ox carts are used exclusively. The consolidated school with transportation provided for pupils expands the rural neighborhood community.
COMMON INTERESTS OF THE LARGER COMMUNITY
Each of the small dots on map 3 represents a farm home. If we select one of these dots and imagine ourselves members of the family that lives there, we shall see that we are members of a certain school district, of a certain township, of a community that has grown up around a trade center and a high school, and of course of the county as a whole. No matter in what school district we live, we have an interest in some matters in common with the people of all other school districts in the county. For example, there is a state university at Madison, and connected with it is a training school for teachers. The work done here influences the teaching in all the schools of the county, and indeed of the whole state. There is also an agricultural college at the state university which serves the farmers throughout the entire county and state. If we look closely at map 3, we shall see how highways and railroads center at Madison, which is the county seat of Dane County and the capital of the state of Wisconsin.
Just as the many small communities that make up a county are dependent upon one another, requiring organized cooperation for the county welfare, so all the counties of a state, and all the people who live in all the counties, are interdependent in many ways. The people of the city of Madison, for example, depend for their food supply upon the farmers not only of Dane County but of the entire state. The university at Madison serves not Dane County alone, but the people of all the counties of the state. The public schools of the state should be equally good in all counties and managed by a uniform plan. Roads and other means of transportation are a matter of concern to the entire state. And so the state is a community, organized with a government, to secure cooperation among all the people and all the smaller communities that compose it. In fact, a large part of the business of the governments of the local communities, such as city and county and township, is to administer the laws of the central state government.
In a similar manner, the forty-eight states of the Union, with all the counties and smaller communities of which they consist, comprise our great national community, of which we are all members.
COMMUNITIES IN THE LARGER COMMUNITIES
When we speak of "our community" we are likely to think at once of the small community immediately around us—our neighborhood, village, or city. Our citizenship in these local communities is extremely important, and will demand no small part of our attention. But it is equally important to be fully alive to our citizenship in the larger communities. This is true wherever we live; but there is a sense in which our national community is peculiarly important to those of us who live in rural communities. The wants of people in cities are, as a rule, looked after more completely by their local governments than is the case in rural communities.
The people of rural communities, and especially farmers themselves, are directly served by the national government in a great variety of ways. In the next chapter we shall consider our nation as a community.
Show how the different classes of your school are bound together by interests common to the entire school. Compare this union of classes with the union of states into a nation. What constitutes the government of your school?
Mention some things in which all the people of your county have a special interest. Are these things of equal interest to farmers and townspeople?