[82]. See Appendix, [The Training for the New Democracy].
[83]. That it is also in many instances leading the way to real community organization makes it one of the most valuable movements of our time.
[84]. Public opinion in a true democracy is a potential will. Therefore for practical purposes they are identical and I use them synonymously.
[85]. Our federal system of checks and balances thwarted the will of the people. The party system thwarted the will of the people. Our state governments were never designed to get at the will of the people.
[86]. The war has shown us that our national agricultural program can best be done on a coöperative neighborhood basis: through the establishment of community agricultural conferences, community labor, seed and implement exchanges, community canning centres, community markets, etc.
[87]. I do not mean to imply that I think it is easy to learn how to identify ourselves with our city, especially for those who live in large cities. The men of a small town know that if they have a new town-hall they will have to pay for it. In a large city men ask for a ward building because they will not have to pay for it, they think. It is all this which neighborhood organization and the integration of neighborhoods, of which I shall speak later, must remedy.
[88]. The plan of Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Phillips for community organization and for the connection with it of expert service is too comprehensive to describe here, but based as it is on their actual experience, and planning as it does for the training of whole neighborhoods and the arousing of them to responsibility and action, it should be studied by every one, for such plans are, I believe, the best signs we have that democracy is yet possible for America.
[89]. How much we are all indebted to the settlements as the pioneer neighborhood movement I do not stop to consider here.
[90]. This point will be taken up in [ch. XXXIII].
[91]. Or perhaps the Senate might represent the occupational group (see [ch. XXXIII]). Or perhaps the experts mentioned above might be representatives from occupational groups.