Sometimes such bodies, founded with the idea of promoting a common material advantage, as, for instance, by enhancing the value of local real estate or attracting capital to local industries, discover by a gradual process that the government is an indispensable leverage to achieving the particular ends in view and that existing government is a decidedly ineffectual instrument. It was through such a metamorphosis that the Chamber of Commerce in Westchester County, N. Y., progressed in its program of county planning, to a study of and attack upon the faulty system of taxation, to plans for a revision of county government and finally to an active interest in county home rule through constitutional revision. County chambers of commerce are also doing much to beat down the barriers of distrust that have existed between the farmer and the business man. By a commingling of the two in a common organization both have often come to an understanding of their mutual interest in good roads, good schools and all the other appurtenances of a developed community.
COUNTY STUDY CLUBS
An interesting effort to stimulate a healthy county consciousness through a different intellectual means is being undertaken in North Carolina. Under the auspices of the University of North Carolina “home-county clubs” have been established in many counties and, according to the prospectus, the members “are bent upon intimate, thoughtful acquaintance with the forces, agencies, tendencies, drifts and movements that have made the history we study to-day, and that are making the history our children will study to-morrow.” The club studies are mainly concerned with rural problems. Each county is compared with itself during the last census period, “in order to learn in what particulars it has moved forward, marking time or lagging to the rearward.” But also it is compared with other counties of the state, in every phase of the study, in order to show its rank and standing.... “Meanwhile the state as a whole is being set against the big background of world endeavor and achievement.”
Such are just a few of the signs of the broadening of rural community life. To plan, to put before the public for discussion and approval, and to execute just such projects as these is the constructive opportunity of the county of the future. It is a program which will tax the county’s citizenship and statesmanship. It is the county’s real “politics.”
[27] Dr. I. J. Murphy of the Minnesota Public Health Association.
[28] See Winthrop D. Lane, “A Rich Man in the Poor House,” Survey, Nov. 4, 1916. Reprinted in pamphlet form by the County Government Association, White Plains, N. Y.
APPENDIX A
CONSTITUTIONAL COUNTY HOME RULE IN CALIFORNIA
[In response to a considerable demand for a reorganization of certain counties the Legislature of California in 1911 submitted to the people the amendment to Art. XI. of the constitution which appears herewith. It was adopted October 10, 1911. For summary and comments see pp. 145-147 of the text.]