THE FARMER AND HIS COMMUNITY
The core of the community idea, then—as applied to rural life—is that we must make the community, as a unit, an entity, a thing, the point of departure of all our thinking about the rural problem, and, in its local application, the direct aim of all organized efforts for improvement or redirection. The building of real, local farm communities is perhaps the main task in erecting an adequate rural civilization. Here is the real goal of all rural effort, the inner kernel of a sane country-life movement, the moving slogan of the new campaign for rural progress that must be waged by the present generation."—Kenyon L. Butterfield, in "The Farmer and the New Day."
CHAPTER I
THE RURAL COMMUNITY
No phase of the social progress of the Twentieth Century is more significant or promises a more far-reaching influence than the rediscovery of the community as a fundamental social unit, and the beginnings of community consciousness throughout the United States. I say the "rediscovery" of the community, for ever since men forsook hunting and grazing as the chief means of subsistence and settled down to a permanent agriculture they have lived in communities.
In ancient and medieval Europe, in China and India, and among primitive agricultural peoples throughout the world, the village community is recognized as the primary local unit of society. In medieval France the rural "communaute" was the local unit of government and social administration. Its people met from time to time at the village church in regular assemblies at which they elected their local officers, approved their accounts, arranged for the support of the church, the school, and local improvements. In most of France and throughout much of Europe the farm homes are still clustered in villages, from which the farm lands radiate. There the village is primarily a place of residence, and with the lands belonging to it forms the community.