The Farmer and His Community

by Dwight Sanderson

"Thus the early settlers of New England came to live in townships. A township would consist of about as many farms as could be disposed within convenient distance from the meeting-house, where all the inhabitants, young and old, gathered every Sunday, coming on horseback or afoot.... Around the meeting-house and common the dwellings gradually clustered into a village, and after a while the tavern, store and town-house made their appearance."

When the Mormons settled Utah they established a very similar form of community government centering around the church. Elsewhere, with rare exceptions, throughout the North and West the township is the primary unit of local government, save for school administration, but it is by no means identical with a community. When the lands west of the Alleghanies were surveyed for settlement they were laid off in blocks six miles square, which were known as congressional townships, for Congress gave each township a square mile of land the proceeds of which should form a permanent school fund. In discussing the development of the township in Illinois, Dr. Albert Shaw writes:

"To give effect to this liberal provision, the state enacted a law making the township a body corporate and politic for school purposes and authorizing the inhabitants to elect school officers and maintain free schools. Here, then, was a rudiment of local government. As New England township life grew up around the church, so western localism finds its nucleus in the school system. What more natural than that the county election district should be made to coincide with the school township, with a school-house for the voting place? or that justices of the peace, constables and road supervisors and overseers of the poor, should have their jurisdiction determined by the same township lines?"[76]

Thus in many of the North-central States the township came to be the local unit of government for certain minor purposes, though in other states it is little more than an election district, and in none of them is there preserved the old town meeting which gave the New England township its fundamental democracy.

Owing to the large plantations and the economic and social conditions prevailing throughout the South, it has had practically no units of government smaller than the county, other than incorporated villages.

Until very recently our conception of society has been mostly in terms of political units, largely on account of the lack of any local unit which had social significance to rural people. In recent years, however, students of rural government have become aware of the artificiality and the anti-social character of the township unit. There may be two rival villages within a township, each competing for trade and the support of its associations, and striving for the political domination of the township, while some of the farmers in a far corner of the township may trade in a village in the next township. Or a village may be on a township line, which must be observed in all matters of government although there is no real division of interests between its people.

Outside of New England villages were located at points of geographical advantage, or along through roads or railroads, primarily as business centers. There was no particular relation between the village and the farming area surrounding it. But as the village grew it often desired modern improvements such as water systems, pavements, street lights, etc., for which the farmers were unwilling to be taxed and which were thus prevented as long as the village was controlled by the township. This has led to most of the larger villages becoming incorporated, so that they may administer their own local government and tax themselves for such improvements as they desire. This separation of the village from the township has been inevitable where the farmers take no pride or interest in it, and has often been necessitated by their parsimony or conservatism. This is well illustrated by an incident related by Professor Herbert B. Adams:

"In my native town, Amherst, Mass., the villagers struggled for years in town-meeting to secure some system of sewerage for 'the center,' but the 'ends of the town' always voted 'no'. On one occasion, in order to allay suspicion of extravagance, a leading villager moved that, whatever system of sewerage be adopted, the surface water and rainfall be allowed to take their natural course down-hill in the ordinary gutters. The farmers sniffed danger in this wily proposition and voted an overwhelming 'No.' Accordingly by the local law of Amherst, water had to run uphill until the next town-meeting! Such is the power of Democracy."[77]

This separate incorporation of the village has been a large factor in making a distinction between villagers and farmers and preventing their recognition of their community interests. Not infrequently, however, it will be found that some of the more progressive villages are not incorporated and that they have the loyalty of the farmers. Numerous examples of unincorporated villages might be cited to show that where a spirit of pride in local village institutions has been developed among the farmers of the territory tributary to it, that village improvements not only are not impeded, but the community is much strengthened. This is more likely to be true, however, where the township boundary and the natural community area are practically the same.

On the other hand, the progress of a rural community, i.e., a village and the territory tributary to it, often is prevented if it cannot command a majority of the votes in a township. In a nearby village is a town hall which might be used as a community house and be a social center for the whole community. But the borders of the township belong to other communities and do not come to the township center, and these people on the edge of the township very naturally take the position that if the village and neighboring people wish to use the town hall, let them rent it of the town, but why should the whole township be taxed for advantages which only half of it can enjoy. The same line of argument arises with regard to the location of schools, roads, libraries, and the districts for public health nurses. Unless the whole township can be equally well served, a community which forms but part of the township is unable to secure these advantages unless it can command a majority of the votes, or except as the village incorporates, and then it loses the support of the taxes from the farms of the community which share the benefits.