CHAPTER XVII[ToC]

RURAL INSTITUTIONS

121. The Complexity of Social Life.—Closely allied to the agencies of recreation are the institutions that promote sociability and incidentally provide means of culture. It is not possible to separate social life into compartments and designate an institution as purely recreational or cultural or religious. There is a blending of interests and of functions in such an organization as the grange or the church, as there is in one individual or group a variety of interests and activities. The whole social system is complex, interwoven with a multitude of separate strands of personal desires and prejudices, group clannishness and conservatism, rival institutions developing friction and continually compelled to find new adjustments. Society in constantly in motion like the sea, its units continually striking against one another in perpetual conflict, and as continually melting into the harmony of a mighty wave breaking against the shore and forming anew to repeat the process. The difference is that social life is on an upward plane, its activities are not mere repetitions of a process, but they result in definite achievement, which in the process of centuries becomes an accumulated asset for the race. The most lasting achievements are the social institutions.

122. The Village and the Country Store.—Of all the social institutions of the rural community, the most important is the village itself. There scattered homesteads find their common centre of attraction; there houses are located nearer together and the spirit of neighborliness develops; there tradesmen and professional persons make their homes and at the same time diversify interests and provide for the wants of the community. The school and the church are often located in the open country, but the village forms the nucleus of social intercourse and there are most of the institutions of the community.

The most primitive among these institutions is the country store. It has economic, social, and educational functions. It supplies goods that cannot be produced in the community, it serves as a mercantile exchange for local produce. It helps to remove the necessity of home manufacture of many articles. On occasion it may include an agency for insurance or real estate; it is frequently the village post-office; it contains the public bulletin-board; often the proprietor undertakes to perform the banking function to the extent of cashing checks. Socially the store serves a useful purpose, for it is the centre to which all the inhabitants come, and from which radiate lines of communication all over the neighborhood. It is a clearing-house for news and gossip, and takes the place of a local press. It was formerly, and to some extent is still, the social club of the men of the community during the long winter evenings. As such it performed in the past an educational function. Boxes, firkins, bales of goods, superannuated chairs, and the end of a counter constituted the sittings, and men of all ages occupied them, as they listened to harangues and joined in the discussions. The group constituted the forum of democracy, where politics were frequently on debate, where public opinion was formed, where conservatism and progressivism fought their battles before they tested conclusions at the ballot-box, where science and religion entered the lists, where local interests were threshed out in the absence of more general excitement and crops and agricultural methods filled in the pauses. In recent years the store circle has degenerated. The better class of habitual members has organized its lodges or found satisfaction in the grange, while the hangers-on at the store, barber-shop, or other loafing-place indulge in small talk on matters of no real concern.

123. The Sewing Circle.—What the country store has done for the men as a means of communication and stimulus, the ladies' aid society or church sewing circle has done for the women. Its opportunities are less frequent, but it provides an outlet for ideas and opinions that without it cannot easily find expression. At the same time it provides active occupation for a good cause, which is more than can be said of the men's forum. When it adds to its exercises a supper to which the other sex is admitted, it performs a yet wider social service.

124. The Grange.—The grange is an institution that includes both sexes and combines the interests of young people with those of their elders. Its primary purpose was to consolidate the common interests of a farming community and to stimulate economic prosperity, but it has included several social features, and in many localities exists merely for social purposes. It is an institution that is well adapted to become a social and educational centre for the rural community. When the child has advanced from the home to the school and, graduating from school, has entered into the adult life of the community, the grange serves as a training-school for civic service. In the grange-room, in company with his like-minded parents and friends in the community, he learns how to hold his own in debate in parliamentary fashion, he discusses improved agriculture and listens to lectures from masters of the science, he gains literary and historical knowledge, and from time to time he participates in the social diversions that take place under grange auspices. Music enlivens the meetings, and occasionally a feast is spread or an entertainment elaborated. The Farmers' Union is a similar organization, originating in the South in 1902.

Such rural interests as these have come into existence spontaneously and continue to provide social centres of community life because other institutions do not satisfy. The home, the school, and the church are often spoken of as the essential institutions of the American community, but they do not at best perform all the functions of neighborhood life. The boys' gang, the circle of men about the stove at the corner grocery, the women's sewing circle or club, and the grange, each in its own way performs a necessary part of the group activities, and deserves recognition among the institutions that are worth while. It is scarcely necessary to note that they have their evils, but these are not of the nature of the institution. As the gang can be guided to worthy ends, so the energies of the store club and the sewing circle can be turned into channels of usefulness and low talk and scandal-mongering abolished. As for the grange, it is capable of becoming the most valuable social centre of the community, if it maintains the ideals of its existence and co-operates heartily with other social institutions of worth, like the church.