Community development

Dedication

To one woman who has made her home town a better and happier place by her interest in public affairs; toa woman who recognizes the principle that a community develops only through the willingness of its citizens to make the public good their private in-

terest; to my wife.

HOW TO MAKE USE OF THIS BOOK

Contents

Wuat Your Town AND MINE ARE |S UG RRNA A oe Pell hss

GENERAL OPPORTUNITIES AND ADVAN- TAGES OF THE SMALL TOWN

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AND ADVAN- TAGES OF THE SMALL [TOWN

CHAPTER I WHat Your Town AND MINE ARE LIKE

OUR town has its peculiarities and so have

other towns, but even so, all have the same general characteristics and are subject to the same rules. Human nature in your community is like human nature in mine and in all others. It is high of average and worthy of greater confidence than it receives.

The chief and most easily discovered peculiarities of the town are those of its physical nature. Your town may be high up among the hills with surrounding, overtopping mountains, while mine may be in the lowlands beside an inland sea or a sluggish river. Your town may be built on seven hills while mine may be on a plain as level as a ballroom floor. Your town may be composed of century-old buildings, with narrow, crooked streets, while mine may be new

I and still glistening with its first coat of paint. But in your town and mine are people with the same aspirations, the same hopes and desires, the same willingness to help, and the same disposition to hang back.

As a corporation, the town exists to better the condition of its inhabitants, to make life safer, pleasanter, ‘and ‘easier for then) a business is to improve itself, to better its facilities, to increase its attractiveness, and to protect its citizens and their property.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, but a community may be as strong as its strongest inhabitant. The success of the town is dependent on the unselfishness of its citizens; upon the willingness of at least a few to make the public good their private interest. ‘The traits of the individual in the small town have a much greater bearing upon the welfare of the community than those of the individual in the large city.

In the small town where every man and every family occupies a known position and has a known influence on the community life, a single selfish man or a single self-centered family may serve to block the wheels of progress quite effectually unless there is a counteracting influence of equal force. A single rock in the road may

YOUR TOWN AND MINE 3 block one wheel of one wagon and thus stop the whole procession, but one energetic man can move the rock and set the whole line in motion again. In the large city the individual family or man indisposed toward the common good may be lost to sight among the multitude, and the individual influence may be unimportant; but the less the number of people, the more 1mportant the attitude of each one.

The small town is no place for the selfish man and his family.

There was a time when the small town was a long way from the world. It was out of touch with progress and its manners and customs were the butt of the professional funny man. ‘Transportation facilities have changed all that and now the latest song hit from Broadway is whistled on the streets of the country village while it is still popular in New York, and when a man comes home from the city puzzled by the willingness of women to wear the latest styles in garments, he is met at the station by his wife dressed in just that style of suit, purchased from the local merchant.

In your town and mine we watch the posting of the returns from the championship baseball games at the local newspaper office just as the scoreboard is watched in any great city while the games are in progress. We hear of the death of a prominent national official, or of a declaration of war, as soon as do our friends in the metropolis. There is scarcely such a thing as a backwoods locality any more.

The villager who never gets to the city knows as well as he who goes annually what Broadway or Wall Street looks like. “Though he has never heard Grand Opera, he may be familiar with the names and reputations of all the Grand Opera stars — more familiar than the man with a box at the opera which his family uses once a week. The city has few surprises now for the villager.

If, as we sometimes think, there are deprivations connected with living in a small town, there are also many compensating advantages. If God made the country and man made the city, the country has the advantages given by God, and the city has the advantages given by man. ‘The small town has many of both.

There is more fresh air and more room to breathe it in your village than in the city, and there are more automobiles per thousand people. There are many of your fellow citizens who have cars, who, if engaged in the city in the same occupation and at the same salary,

YOUR TOWN AND MINE 5 could no more afford them than they could afford a private yacht.

If the town is what its inhabitants make it, the inhabitants are apt to be what the town makes them. A community, itself bankrupt, with run-down buildings and dilapidated morals, will exert a tendency to develop bankrupt citizens with run-down property and morals. That man or woman who can be satisfied to live in a community which exhibits no tendency to improve will be willing to live a life with no upward inclination.

By no means is all the evil in the city or all the good in the small town. ‘There are decadent villages which may be worse than city slums, but these are the very rare exception and they have usually been caused by the constant drain of the best toward the larger towns. When a community starts down hill it begins to lose an ever increasing proportion of the best of its young blood. No one with any ambition wants to remain. ‘This condition can mean but. one thing in the end, when the “‘ leavings ’’ have bred a generation or two of their own kind, while from even these, successive generations have given their best.

The way to make and to keep the town a desirable place to live in is to keep the young people there, especially the best of the young people. Some of the possible methods of accomplishing this are detailed later.

Patriotism begins at home — with the home town — and who can feel patriotic toward a community which possesses nothing of which one can justly feel proud? ‘The man who does not feel like boasting about something in his home town is a man from whom has been omitted one of the greatest of all human passions. The man who is patriotic but whose town possesses no merits of which he can boast, will set about evolving such merits. ‘The patriotic man, the good citizen, will not be content to let well enough or bad enough alone. He will try to get the community moving upward.

While no town is likely to become the perfect ideal, still in town building as in character building, the tendency must be toward the ideal. The small town possesses an opportunity not possessed by the city for developing ideal conditions. A high average of citizenship is more nearly possible in the small town than in the city, because there is less tendency toward the extremes of society. There is not the opportunity to become superlatively rich, and there is not the opportunity to live a superlatively de-

‘YOUR TOWN AND MINE iy praved life without being known to do so. Every one in the small town knows who are the very poor and help can go straight to the mark. Every one knows who are those of the lowest moral stratum and there too help can be directed aright. Work to develop a high community average of character is simple and direct in the small town, while in the city it is more likely to be complicated and roundabout. Just as a small business can more easily be handled so as to produce a proper profit than a large business with many ramifications, so the smaller town can more easily than the city be made to develop upward tendencies.

The smallest village is no more to be chosen as ideal than the largest city. No definite size of community can be given as the size that will develop the most desirable living conditions. The town that might be nearest to an ideal in size and conditions in one section of the country under conditions locally typical, might be too small or too large to be ideal elsewhere. It may not be difficult to strike an average, but it is difficult to find a case where that average may be exactly applied. Consider, for instance, the matter of schools. It is a safe rule that a community ought to have about 1,000 families of average means in order to support adequately a really efficient school system. Yet your town may have the best of schools with much less population, or the worst with a greater population.

Neither your town nor mine can be developed into the ideal by following any general set of rules made to fit all cases. Every community is amenable to certain general rules, but every community needs many specific rules of its own.

There ought to be beautiful natural surroundings for the town, but if there are none, the lack must be offset by every possible effort to develop outdoor. beauty. ‘There ought to be orderly arrangement of streets, and where the founders of the place failed to look far enough ahead to consider this, what can be done to correct their error should be done. ‘There ought to be attractive public buildings. ‘There ought to be parks and playgrounds in the village as well as in the city, though they need not be as formal where they are a part of natural conditions.

One writer on ideal village conditions has said the conditions for the ideal community should be: (1)' a’ rich ‘social ‘life+))(2) wirale civic and moral life; (3) school and college life; (4) modern mercantile life; (5) beautiful landscape; (6) a labor market. All this is well said

YOUR TOWN AND MINE 9 and to it should be added: (7) organized community spirit.

Individual effort to make the town a better place is good. It may accomplish much if prope1ly directed. But if all the units of individual effort are harnessed together and set to work for the good of the community, the total of the results will be the sum of the squares of the individual efforts.

You as an individual have power to accomplish almost anything you set out to accomplish. What a man wills to do, that he can do. Just so, your town, as a town, can accomplish anything it sets out to accomplish. Organized effort in your community or mine can bring about practically any conditions we set out to develop, if the effort is backed by organized determination, by the combined persistence of a body of loyal and public spirited workers.

Your town or mine is climbing up toward the ideal or sliding back into the rut, according as it possesses or lacks organized community spirit.

The town that does not have the support of its citizens in development cannot develop. That which is certain to happen to a retail store which has not the support of its employees is certain to happen to a community. When the

IO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT employees of a store are not loyal to the store; when they do not boast of its advantages and commend it to their acquaintances outside; when they do their own buying elsewhere, that store cannot hope to become a financial success. When the citizens of a community find nothing about it of which to be proud; when they laugh at it to outsiders; when they refuse to patronize home industries, that community will become the joke of its neighbors and will decline in every desirable quality.

If your town is not worth boosting, it is not worth living in. If you are not interested in boosting it, it will be better off without you.

The man who does not boost his town does not always realize the fact, but it is nevertheless true that people know of his lack of patriotism and catalogue him accordingly as a “knocker.”” Fé“ smay: (rarely) say) “amythiue against the town, but if he never says anything for it, he will be placed by his fellow citizens in the “‘ knocker ” class and that is where he belongs, for the man who is not outspokenly FoR his home town is AGAINST it.

One town known to me has the misfortune to have one citizen who advertises the private and public misfortunes of the community wherever he goes. He publishes abroad the civic

YOUR TOWN AND MINE II errors, the family jars between different community organizations, the faults and the disadvantages of the town (and all towns possess some) until he leaves behind him through the county a wake of belief that his home community is a seething cauldron of trouble. One man can do much in this way to give his town a bad name. But one man can also do much to give his town a good name.

What attitude you or I take toward the home town has much to do with the reputation of that town among our outside friends, and it also has much to do with our own reputations and characters. We curry no favor with outsiders by joining them in jeering at the home town weaknesses, or in acknowledging a humiliation at living in a small community when they proclaim the greatness of the city. Let us be for our town, seeking to make it a better town if possible, but for it anyway! We may well remember what Plutarch says, ‘‘ As for myself, I live in a little town and I choose to live there lest it should become still less.”’

And since we are to work for the home town, in addition to doing all we can individually, let us work with our fellow citizens in the development and operation of a suitable organization, since organization is what is most needed to bring the town into its own. Whatever the home town is, whatever it lacks, whatever may be its possibilities, its greatest, its crying need for development along the right lines, is organized effort.

Chapter II General Opportunities And Advantages Of The Small Town

T is commonly said that the city offers more

opportunities to a young man than the country; and that is used as an excuse or as a reason for the young men leaving the village for the city.

It is not entirely because the city offers more opportunities that it gets so many of the country young folks. It must have country young blood. It is the country young man who goes highest in city affairs. The same young man will go far at his home in the country and he is needed there. If the small town is to progress it must be made hard for the city to get its young people. Emerson said, ‘‘ The city would have died out, rotted and exploded long ago but that it was re-enforced from the fields.”’

It is true that there are more opportunities in the city, more kinds of opportunities, too; but that fact is relatively unimportant. What we are interested in finding is the place where

I4 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT there are the most opportunities per capita. That place is the small town, not the city.

Of course the city will grow, but even the growth of the city means added opportunity. Its growth means such an increased demand for the products of the country as must develop an increasing prosperity in adjoining rural districts. The more money there is made in the city, the more can be made in the country around it, and hence the more prosperous the small towns around it will be. And a prosperous agricultural community represents the highest moral and mental type of citizenship.

Success, however, lies less in the opportunities than in the individual, and the man or the woman who is determined to achieve success will not fail anywhere for lack of opportunities. Such people make their own opportunities.

Opportunity is the chance to do something for the world better than it is at present being done, or to do something that is not at present being done at all.

This being true, there is, of course, more opportunity to improve upon some form of service in the small town than in the city where there are experts. in, all. lines. » And. there are mete kinds of work, more forms of service being left undone in the small town or village than in the city. The village has more business and professional gaps waiting to be filled.

There is opportunity in the village for a physician of pronounced surgical ability to acquire a reputation that will bring to him all the best surgical work in his county. There is opportunity for a preacher to develop a reputation that will secure for him a call to an important city church if he desires to move in that direction. There is opportunity for a lawyer to gain experience that will be invaluable to him wherever opportunity may lead him later; and the man desiring general practice or political preferment may secure it with the least delay through the opportunities offered him in the village. There is opportunity for the editor to gain a state-wide reputation through the village paper if he has the ability. The professional man who can develop sufficient power can make his light shine brightly enough to be seen by the world from the village. But all this is elaborated upon in later chapters.

The professional or business man who lives in the small town must not neglect to keep in touch with the world, since it is only in that way that he can improve and develop profitably. When a man thinks he can leave college and de-

1 Chapters XVI-XIX.

pend on his college education and his own personal experience to make himself a high-class business or professional man, he is paving the way to failure. He must continue to study. New methods are being constantly discovered by the professional men of the country. The village professional man who waits to learn of such things by hearsay from his fellow workers, or perhaps from the general public, is not entitled to our confidence.

The country professional man, no less than the city professional man, must take time to study the progress of his profession in all the good publications devoted to it, and he should take time to go often to headquarters where the best new methods are being practiced and see how the work is done. He must make it his business to keep informed not only on what is new, but also on how it is done.

The professional man of the small town or village has the same opportunities to read and study for his continued advancement that his city prototype possesses. The unfortunate thing is that the village man usually does not make good use of such opportunities. ‘This is unfortunate not only for the professional man himself, but for his community as well. In order that the small town shall be a good place for you and me to live, it should receive a high class of service from its business and professional men.

Social opportunity in the small town extends to practically all the inhabitants. Good family is appreciated, but good family alone will not give us entrance into the best local society. Money is not the great desideratum, though there is no place where money has not its effect. The individual’s worth is of more account here than the individual’s possessions. “The man or the woman who has any real claim to a place in the best society of the village can secure that place.

Good society in the village welcomes the individual who accomplishes and _ achieves. Humble origin only accentuates the ability of the man or the woman who makes good in spite of the handicap.

Private life is somewhat open to public inspection in the small town. ‘This has its disadvantages, and proverbial village gossip is a thing to be feared; but gossip is not exclusively a village institution. It is not a thing that can be escaped anywhere where there are eyes to see and tongues to talk. The only way to be safe from gossip’s effect in the small town or anywhere else, is to live a life of which there is no need to be ashamed. Meanwhile it is pertinent to suggest that only he who has never gossiped may justly complain of the gossip of others.

Such things as starvation and the bread-line have no place in the small town. Any man who is really anxious to work can find work there. He is in close touch with the market for labor and with the farmers’ constant demand for honest men willing to work.

The lazy or the shiftless will not find life easy in the small town or anywhere else, though they will fare better where it is comparatively easy to secure a little work when they have to have it, and where the humanity of fellow citizens will not let the family starve even if the head of it will not earn his salt. Any man who can work will find his niche in the small town and be sure of a living as long as he does his best. The world does not owe a living to the man who will not work, no matter where he lives.

There is always opportunity for the boy or girl to take up some honest work in the small town where the character of the young folks is known almost as well as that of their elders. The ambitious boy can always find somebody who will give him a chance to work part time or full time, and if he has some particular bent he desires to follow, if he will get in touch with the men in the community who do that sort of work, they will sooner or later give him a chance.

One great advantage of the small town as a place for young people to begin work is that they can do so there without being lost to their parents’ sight. Going to work does not mean going away from home in the morning, not be heard of again until night, with no knowledge on the part of the home folks of how or in what kind of company the intervening time has been spent. The small town is in some respects like a big family, and little that is done by any member is hid from the rest.

This constant oversight of one’s movements is an aggravation to many restless souls who resent it as some kind of an infringement of liberty, but it does possess its advantages.

When a man makes up his mind that the petty envies and jealousies of the community are not small town peculiarities, but common to humanity in general, he finds the village a much better place to live. When he finds that he is criticized by others for neglecting his store, his profession, or his church, and feels that it is because he lives in a place where everybody knows everybody else’s business, he forgets that in the city, too, there is criticism and often of a more unjust sort than that where his affairs are more accurately known.

In the city a man may go to church or not and very likely few of his acquaintances of every-day life will know. In the small town there are two classes of people, the church-goers and the non-church-goers. Unfortunately the church-goers are often more deeply interested in raising money for a new church organ than in bringing into the church those who take little interest in such matters; but this again is not exclusively a village propensity. Church advantages are greater in the country than in the city. There is a more general recognition of the fact that church-going is synonymous with respectability, and there are many less influences to attract people away from church services.

If we of the small town remain away from church many Sundays, the fact is noted and commented upon; and if we think of dropping all church affiliations we find that we are not expected to do it; that in doing so we are in some way showing a lack of stability of character. And we are all grouped together in so limited a space that the people who miss us from church on Sunday see us during the week and want to know the reason.

We are not even allowed to change churches at will, though why it makes any difference whether one goes to Heaven by the Baptist or the Episcopal route is not exactly apparent. Still, no doubt, loyalty to some one branch of the church is important as insuring greater loyalty to the church in general.

The opportunities and advantages of any community may be greatly enhanced by the people if they will make the effort. ‘The small town business man has the opportunity of getting out and enjoying outdoor sports as his city cousin cannot. He is only five minutes from baseball, tennis, and other recreations. ‘The open country is right at his hand, to be reached immediately in a walk or a bicycle ride. ‘The city business man must waste perhaps an hour on the way to and from his outdoor pleasures; and if an hour is all he has to spare, the opportunity of getting out at that time is eliminated. The small town business man can take half a day off and enjoy a hunting expedition that calls for a full day or a week-end on the part of the city man. The village man has these opportunities at his door and he can take advantage of them when conditions permit a short absence from business. If an unexpectedly quiet day comes his way, he can use it. ‘The city man must make his plans farther in advance and this leaves him little chance to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity.

A city business man who can afford a country club and has time at his disposal may get all the outdoors he wants. ‘The village man may not be able to afford the luxury of a country club and probably none is available, but he does not need such a club. He has the whole countryside at his command.

For the man who loves the outdoors, who needs and who is benefited by outdoor sports and exercises, there is no comparison between village and city. Only a diminutive proportion of city business men, merchants, professional men, and others of middle age, have any opportunity to get enough of outdoor life to do them any real good. Practically all village men of the same class can have plenty of outdoor life if they will take it. That more of them do not seize their opportunities of this sort, is to their great physical disadvantage and to their mental detriment.

Outdoor living makes men better physically, mentally, and morally. Ex-President Roosevelt said in a special message to Congress on the report of the Country Life Commission, ‘“We need the development of men in the open country, who will be, in the future, as in the past, the stay and strength of the nation in time of war, and its guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace.”

The village people can afford to spend more time outdoors because it costs them nothing. It is productive of amusement without expense. Little trips out of the town to picnic suppers and dinners, over-Sunday camping parties, or even extended camping with the head of the family “‘ commuting” on a bicycle, are not only practical but economical.

Sir James Sawyer, an eminent British physician, in giving eighteen rules for living to be a hundred years old, has said in one rule, “‘ Live in the country if you can.” If health does not average better in the country, at least it ought to because there is less need for overwork and more chance to play. It requires less income to live comfortably in the village and to keep up with the “best families.” There isa) less strenuous social struggle. ‘There is less effort among the average families to appear something they are not.

There is more tendency in the small town to accept a man for what he is, and more tendency in the city to accept him for what he has. ‘The top in the city may be higher than it is in the small town, but fewer people reach it. Many a man can be on top in the small town who would never be heard of in the city. It is better for mankind to be able to amount to something and to reach a point where they will have the respect of the community. ‘There is opportunity for but comparatively few men to become known in the city to any appreciable percentage of the public. Inthe country everybody knows everybody, and a man receives general credit for making good. He also receives general encouragement in trying to get ahead, and this goes far in helping some men up who would never get up if there were no boost behind them other than their own will and their family’s need.