Community organization

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Preface

HIS book is the outgrowth of ten years of work

in educational and social lines in Western States, together with six months’ experience with the War Camp Community Service in intensive study of the problems of community life and organization under reconstruction conditions. The backgrounds of the discussion may be found in the educational and sociological literature of the recent past and present; in the actual work of social construction and reconstruction now going on in the world; and in the community programs of many individuals, groups, associations, and communities.

It is an effort to approach our social problems from the standpoint of the community as a whole. We are attempting to discover some of the laws, biological, psychological, and social, within which human association goes on and in terms of which more or less satisfactory communities have been built up. We are attempting to develop means by which community thinking of a higher order may be brought to bear on the problems of the community in order that our democracy may have the fullest possible use of all its latent resources of enthusiasm, intelligence, and good will. We are attempting to point out the larger community ways in which volunteer energy and co-operation may be made to bear fruit in programs of health,

PREFACE happiness, and social understanding. We are attempting to work out natural social motivations that will bring the common masses of people together in firmer bonds of mutual understanding and helpfulness in order that our democracy may become real, substantial, and humane.

The field here outlined is still largely open country. This is not a final guide book, it is a sketch of certain high points from which the whole country has been more or less dimly descried. May it stimulate many others to exploration in the same field! |

I am greatly indebted to a host of friends and students for inspiration to undertake this task, and particularly to the members of the “Social Service Publishing Company,” for providing the leisure that has made the work possible.

I am indebted to innumerable individuals and groups who have enabled me to come into intimate and concrete contact with the realities of community life in many parts of the country.

I am indebted to Mr. Ray F. Carter and Mr. Tam Deering of Seattle for many helpful suggestions; and to my secretary, Miss Adelaide Morey, for continuous helpfulness in the selection of materials and for stimulating criticism.

My thanks are also due to the editor of the series, Dr. Devine, and to Miss Lilian Brandt and Mr. H. S. Braucher, for illuminating criticisms upon the completed manuscript. |

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INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR

Durinc the past ten years social workers have been at school in technique. Processes of diagnosis and of specialized treatment have been persistently pressed upon their attention: Such broad facts of our common economic life as had been effectively presented in Professor Patten’s New Basis of Civilization have been allowed to sink into a secondary place, when not altogether ignored. The training schools for social workers have not unnaturally emphasized the technical aspects of investigation and treatment; and special periodicals devoted to one or another department of social practice have further favored this tendency.

Within limits this is a necessary and_ beneficial development. Knowledge of procedure which has proved to be successful, mastery of technique, critical analysis of experience, familiarity with case records, are essential in social work as in every vocation. The danger is that we may become so absorbed in the particular manner in which a group of chosen individuals are to be treated—in their reactions, favorable and unfavorable—as to lose altogether the larger view of the conditions under which they live, the social forces which are operating upon them independently of our intervention, the motives which do in reality determine their general course of action. Similar over-specialization may occur in those forms of social

INTRODUCTION | work which are concerned with group interests ot the common welfare as distinct from family case work. Community organization, for example, may develop a technique in which selected problems are followed to their most intricate ramifications in calm disregard of entire lack of interest in those problems by any existing community of human beings.

In either case this tendency may be fostered by excessive sensitiveness to the good opinion of those individuals who at the time are regarded as authorities in the field in question. An actual dread of general popularity, coupled with an intense desire for the approval of one or more “experts,” a mutual admiration guild based on proficiency in a special form of service, an intellectual aristocracy which substitutes inner satisfaction for objective tests of social utility, are the logical outcome of an over-elaboration of “technique,” when not controlled by the observations and criticisms of economists, by the dicta of common sense, by the facts of our common social life as plain people see and interpret them. |

A social agency created, let us say, to care for neglected children, or to furnish facilities for wholesome recreation, has constantly to ask, not only, What are the most approved methods of child care? What rare and interesting obstacle has a playground leader uncovered? but also, Are children on the whole less neglected as a result of the activities of the agency? Is the leisure time of the community more profitably

INTRODUCTION employed, and by what test of profit? Are the problems on which attention is so minutely concentrated the fundamental, the urgently pressing ones? Case records are useful for instruction, but they may contain little information about the deeper needs even of those with whom they deal, and none at all about the needs of their neighbors.

The Social Welfare Library, of which this is the initial volume, will attempt to contribute to the interests of those who are engaged in what is broadly called “social work,” including not only that directed toward the relief and rehabilitation of individuals and families but that which is undertaken for the community as a whole. The Editor’s desire is that the studies which appear in this Library shall do something to supply the deficiency to which attention has been called; that they shall contribute to social thinking rather than to technique, while not undervaluing the latter; that they shall add to the general knowledge of the social conditions in the midst of which social work is done rather than re-analyze processes already sufficiently established; that they shall aid in a human appreciation of the difficulties caused by sickness, poverty, and maladjustment, rather than make converts to some one way of meeting these difficulties.

With this aim in view, the present discussion of community organization by Professor Hart is confidently recommended to the favorable attention of all

INTRODUCTION social workers and of the general public. It is not propaganda, open or covert. It is not designed to inflame the emotions over some one aspect of the problem. It is a thoughtful and sincere presentation of the larger problem itselfi—a demonstration of the importance of a sense of community, a sympathetic examination of the current plans for deepening and giving expression to that sense, a suggestion as to how current experience and thinking may be audited and applied in a democratic spirit. It is written for those who are directly engaged in community service in any form, and for the larger number who have become uneasy over the absence of community spirit and who know that without it all devices for promoting she common welfare are worse than useless. Epwarp T. DEvINE.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE GAG RGROU ADS iol ah Veg engin ED Veet) ORESENT (OITUATION 2 oki ts Soh a2 III Tue INpIvipuaAL AS THE Basis oF Com- ) POU Ue eC a ihe Gon ‘IV THe FuNcTION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 62 MV Tae Democeatic Ines. | ,, 76 ma OME ImporTANnT Tasks) cen Oh VII TyYprs OF PRELIMINARY Errort . . . 104 Pere Cesieuceione ee 120 * IX DeEvetopinc Community DELIBERATION 141 wok “eo INCLUSIVE. PROGRAM. 2g) 2... 158 XI From DELiperATION TO AcTION. . . 179 XII Kerepinc THE ProcrAM Human. .. . 194 XIII Tue Proptem oF LEADERSHIP . . . 206 PENS aa io heck ee i ee See NO a 226

Chapter I Backgrounds

Human beings are not separate and independent grains in the midst of drifting social sands. They are complex centers of instincts, impulses, appetites and desires, which impel to all sorts of entangling contacts. They are not simple and_distinct atoms in the neighborhood ‘of other simple and distinct atoms, but centers of complicated and ever-changing (not always growing) relationships. The “individual” as such does not exist. We live and move and have our actual being, _

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_whether wé "will or'no, in the 1 “mazes of social contacts “and relationships with. our. fellows.

~ Human beings are, therefore, centers of a variety of needs. Five of these may be considered major, and out of these have grown our five major social institutions. First, as infants and children, we need nurture and care, and this need has given rise to the institution of the family. Second, as centers of ideal aspirations and unsatisfied longings, we need some broad outlook upon the meanings of life and destiny, and this has given rise to the institutions of teligion, Third, we need provision for our physical wants and the chance to impress ourselves upon the world of things in constructive fashion, and this has given rise to the institutions of industry. Fourth, we need the opportunity of sharing and enjoying, in some more or less just fashion, the various goods of the world, and since this calls for order and restraint it has given rise to the institution of the state. And, finally, we need to know, and to extend our capacity to know, continuously, and this has given rise to the institution of the schoo]. (Of course we have many minor needs which have given rise to many sorts of minor instrumentalities besides. )

But specialized institutions, although they have developed out of common human needs, divide the community among themselves, each attempting to satisfy the needs of individuals and the community in its own particularized way. The great modern city community is not an undifferentiated family or industry or government or religion or school. These distinctive institutions tend to divide the community. They develop their own particular partisanships and champions; and they compete more or less openly for the attention and loyalties of the people. The result is that individuals live by fragments and human life becomes a. sort. of mosaic ‘patchwork - ‘instead of a unified experience. More than ‘this: our ‘large cities tend to break up into ’ segregated districts—industrial quarters, residential | sections, church neighborhoods, etc. The government i is centralized at the city hall-and police station. And } education is shut up from the world inside school !

— Backgrounds _. — 5 buildings whose windows are so high that the chil- | dren cannot see what is going on out in the city. 4 ~ Children are born into the complications of this _ social world, this world wrought of many aspiring —sometimes co-operative, often antagonistic—fragments. Some of these fragments are native to the - community soil, the products of long development. Some of them are of later growth, the contributions of immigrant peoples or other innovating influences.

Some of these children early lose themselves or are; lost in one of these struggling groups, and grow up. without ever making institutional contacts of a wider! and more effective sort. They never learn any real\ sort of partisanship, except perhaps a sort of primi-) tive, wolfish following of the clan. They never become aware that there is anything ideal in the world that) is big enough to be worth fighting for. They fall into) a groove of the city’s life and spend their years irre-| sponsibly. They never achieve a share in the complex life that goes on all about them. They are not criminals; they are simply the city’s ignorant undertow.

Others, in large numbers, grow up to become completely institutionalized in the conventional industrial, political, social, and religious fashions, and to spend their lives in a round of group relationships, privileges, _ and in a narrow way, responsibilities. These make up the great bulk of the city’s population—respectable, - unimaginative people with no large interest in anything save the welfare of the group with which their own welfare is identified.

A very few, under contemporary conditions, having keen imaginations and vigorous sympathies, grow up through all levels of institutional relationships and achieve a more-or less vivid and true conception of the physical and human conditions in the midst of which they live. These few grasp something of their own intimate relationship to these conditions; they see something of the significance of their local groups to the larger life of the nation; and they may even be able to envisage the nation as a member of an eventual world-league of communities} Many are called to this ~ vision, but few there be that find it

Now the existence of these many fragmentary ele- , ments, with their many varying objections and interests, and their many narrow and often exclusive loyalties, leaves many crevices in the life of the city into which unattached individuals may easily fall, or through which they may drop out of sight. Some of these crevices are disease, crime, poverty, isolation, defeated hopes, and the like. The number of those who do fall into them is socially appalling.

How can we account for this unsatisfying character of community life, if institutions were developed to serve human needs? And how explain this carelessness of individuals and groups, if the individual is really a center of social relationships? The answer is found in the story of the development of our communities.

The colonists who poured from the Atlantic seaboard into the wilderness of the West, after the

Backgrounds 7 so-called “French and Indian War,” and especially after the Revolutionary War, carried with them an intense pride in their individual independence and self-sufficiency—a pride which was the lineal descendant of the “separatist” and “non-conformist” convictions of their European forbears. They carried their individualistic tendencies often to the extreme; they wanted neighbors, but they did not want their neighbors to be too near. The story of the frontiersman who “had to move on” when he heard that a neighbor had settled five miles down the trail illustrates the point.

This pioneering life selected these qualities of individualistic self-sufficiency and wrought them into the blood of succeeding generations and into the doctrines and traditions of the nation; until the picture that we have of the early pioneer is of one standing on his own farm and saying to all comers: “This is a free country. This is my farm, and I can do as I please with my property. I can run my business as | please!” And because he stood on his own rights and met his prob- ~ lems in his own independent way, the continent was rapidly conquered and developed.

But recent decades have seen multitudes of people trained in this pioneering way moving into the cities, where they must live in close touch with one another. Under these city conditions some of the old pioneering lessons must be unlearned. In the farm days if the farmer wanted to keep a pig in his back yard, or even in the “parlor,” that was his own business—his and the _pig’s. His neighbors were so far away that, though eect Commumty Organization they might talk, they had no real ground on which to object, even had they been inclined to interfere. But if as a city resident, cherishing his old pioneer customs, he wants to keep a pig in his back yard, his neighbor claims the right to have something to say about the matter. The doctrine, “this is my own property and I can do as I please with it” narrows down until it disappears, at least in certain directions. That which was good old American doctrine in the pioneer days on the farm turns out to be no longer good doctrine in the city. Health authorities, pone authorities, moral squads, and many other sorts of “impertinent _interferers” insist on calling around to help the independent pioneer adjust his old habits to the new conditions of city life.

In fact, just as the Anglo-Saxon pioneer in America showed himself to be the true descendant of the older European pioneers not by doing the things he had previously done in Europe, but by doing the things that needed to be done under the changed conditions of living in the wilderness, so the modern city dweller will show himself to be the true descendant of the American pioneers by doing what needs to be done in the city. And the thing that needs to be done is not to stand on the ‘inviolability. of ‘traditional. individual. rights, but. so to readjust habit and custom as to..make-possible.a.good life for all in the city. But this.is-a-hardtesson, and few there be that learn it.

There is another phase of histaee development which demands a word. The life of the race began in

Backgrounds 9 small communities which lay perhaps at the crossing of two primitive trails. In such small communities, living was very simple and modern social institutions were as yet undifferentiated. The community was everything. There was no separate government or industry or religion or education. Even separate families did not exist. The whole community was the family, the government, the industry, the religious order, the

school. The community was just a large family which governed itself, fed and clothed itself, worshipped in its own way, and educated its children by giving them the chance to grow up in the midst of the common life. (Of course, there were complications a-plenty in all this, but the community group was simple and all could know each other. )

Now in the course of some thousands of years, the little community at the crossing of the trails has become the great city at the crossing of many trails. In the city people do not know one another. Frequently they even make efforts to keep from knowing one another. The city has become too unwieldy to go on as one common group, and the people are too ignorant of one another. The needs of the people, stimulated by all sorts of contacts, have developed in many, directions, and special instrumentalities for answering those needs have grown up and become differentiated and distinct. These are our social institutions.

These illustrations from history show us two. definite types of defect_in our modern communities : the over-individualistic, somewhat boastful sort of perrire, Rr EAH ISAreneronanntatees son, who insists upon standing upon certain ancient

“rights,” even though multitudes may thereby be ~ crowded below the levels of decent living; and the re

» \stagnant, over-developed institution, which, though it is the direct product of natural historic processes, has largely become dislocated from its original function of service to the community along some useful social line, and devotes far too much of its time to the building up of its own prestige, and so comes either to be an obstruction to community development or, passing up the whole task, turns the welfare of the community over to chance or accident,—to laissez faire. So the old-time integrity of the primitive community has been destroyed by competitions among institutions and among their over-individualistic champions; some fragmentary group and some lesser loyalty have taken the place of this community. Both good and evil have grown out of these changes.

Yet in spite of the competition of these institutions and their champions among themselves and with the original community, always there emerges the need of a community background for our living. We really have a sixth major need, the need of community. Men cannot live forever in fragments of the world; we need a whole..world,..a.fatherland,.however_shadowy it may be. Hence, in every age, in the absence of real community, some particular phase of the community has undertaken to make itself the central organizing factor in providing for this need. Always these efforts have spent themselves in attempting to make the part do

Backgrounds aT the work of the whole. Always some other part has been excluded. The larger task of bringing all human beings into the community life has remained to the coming of democracy.

In the course of history this sense of the need of community has gathered around at least three different elements. One of these is property. Under this tendency, the real community is supposed to be made up of those individuals who have had sufficient force to. make themselves possessors of property. At times, this has been one of the qualifications of the voter. Anyone who could not accumulate a little property did not count, and therefore should not be counted. In the Middle Ages members of the community held their property in a future world,—and that fact seriously interfered with any program of community development in this world. At present, over-emphasis upon this element constitutes one of the main obstacles to the humanizing of our community life. Property is indeed fundamental to the full sense of personality for most of us, as the individual who can impress himself upon the world through his sheer personality is very rare. But the struggle for the possession of property or power has taken upon itself the form of an old group warfare, and by interpreting itself as a “war of the lasses” largely denies the possibility of community.

The working out of this concept and its organization into political forms would result in an utter individualism. Some hold that this is the true and final “order of nature” and that, by and large, under such a pro-

PAs Community Organization gram every individual would achieve the measure of success to which he was rightly entitled, measuring success of course by the property accumulated. The successful individual would prove his right to survive; the unsuccessful would prove his unfitness. However tragic the case might be for the individual; and however much society might in its kindliness, by charity, palliate his sufferings, his ultimate elimination would make for the real good of the race.

This is sometimes called the “American-doctrine.” Obviously, it is/ related to that extreme pioneering individualism of the nineteenth century, which did indeed make for the quick conquest of the wilderness, and which had much to commend it in the days when free land was plentiful; but we may well question whether it is still good American doctrine now that free land is no more.

A second of these organizing community concepts is that of the political state, whose symbol of strength is the military. This concept is all too easily identified with property rights; and democracy seems increasingly suspicious of the ultimate value of the concept . and increasingly critical of the form and character of

‘the state. In the midst of the great war, the political state, at any rate in America, experienced a considerable increase in prestige, becoming, after a fashion of feeling, our real community. Property rights seemed for a moment less blatant; labor unions subordinated themselves to the common welfare; and all except a few racial and social irreconcilables out on the fringe

Back grounds vie | 13 of things seemed to be able to achieve a sort of mermbership.

But the state as the community began to fade into the background as soon as the war was over. The interests and attentions of the people have for the most part turned to more immediate objectives. Property “rights” have become oppressively obnoxious, until as “profiteering” they are threatened with utter elimination. ‘Government by injunction,” revived again, has alienated the affections of millions of workers. In recent industrial conferences, the elected representatives of the people, i. e., Congress, have been completely — ignored and extra-legal bodies have attempted to do what the state is obviously unable to do. All this raises the question as to the place of the political state in the future of our democratic civilization. As an institution depending upon force for its existence, it must face the very practical question whether it can force the loyalties of all the people. Certainly no community can ever hope to build itself If permanently on_or by>~

‘means_of -force....If. the state is to become the community of our needs, it must learn other means of winning the loyalties of the people.

The third of these organizing concepts has had a shorter history than either of the others; but in recent

4 times it has developed a peculiar strength. The eco-

‘nomic union, the “labor union,” under some one of its several forms, claims now to be the true representative of humanity, and therefore the proper center around which to organize the future community. If numbers ae 3 Fe are to count, or the larger humanness of the motive, then this conception comes very much closer to the needs of the world. But insofar as the program of the labor union necessarily works out in terms of a “class struggle” into intolerance of all other interests and groups, it denies community, and is undoubtedly not the ultimate center of community organization.

It is apparent, then, that no one of these three is fully satisfactory to-day as the ultimate expression of human need. All will continue to exist, but the world needs something more. There are too many people who do not belong to any one of them! The world holds many men and women to-day who are without property or a country or a union or a community. The spectacle of boat-loads of irreconcilables ranging the high seas seeking in all directions for landing places is tragic evidence of the partial failure of our past efforts at community building. Not only is this—as in the primitive case of Cain—a punishment greater than these individuals can bear, but it is rapidly becoming a burden greater than the established community can bear.

These discontented ones, whether individuals, groups, or nations, cannot be summarily excluded from humanity. We may legislate them out, and declare them. “beyond the pale,” but nature will be slow to

: » accept our decree. Carlyle’s story of the beggar woman ~ | of medieval England may become our story. This woman went from door to door through the village begging for food, but everywhere the superior beines

Backgrounds hae turned from her in disgust as if she were not of their race. But she had. the final word, for for, _ though she died in the ditch outside the village, ‘she gave e an epidemic of smallpox’ to the wholé’¢ommunity.°THey “wo yuld have nothing to do with her, but she had much to do &~ with them!

And so, because ean life is very real, and grows as all other organic things grow—in response to the stimulations that nourish and support it, we need to make sure that we are developing round about our growing individuals and in the midst of our whole civilization adequate wholeness of environment—i. e.,

a healthful community organization. Human life’ _needs 2. a surrounded by something more. inclusive | mic self-interest. (though the si Saran ey is not fo “6 prsenets Tt needs the wholeness of Jifen. of a. a varied hurr ng active, ‘rich in healthful J tions, intelli lligent.. De er rcp environments inevitably Search fragmentary individuals; and while there may be occasional exceptions, wholeness of life can be assured only in wholeness of community. And why? Because at the center of individual and group. character and personality is habit; and habit grows by what it feeds upon—that is to say, it is developed by the accidents of the world round about. But we do not do well to leave the destiny of the individual and the group to the mercy of environmental accidents; individual and group growth may not safely be left to the play of circumstance.

The human nervous system is infinitely complicated, and it hungers inexpressibly for the widest ranges of stimulation. The average environment for most of us in the larger cities is unsatisfying. The range of socially -healthful stimulations is narrow, and traditionally determined, if determined at all; and multitudes of young people are driven out to the precarious search for additional excitements, good or bad. The cry “Nothing interesting ever goes on in our community!” is the cry of the hungry nervous system everywhere. In former times these unsatisfied desires were set down to the credit of the total depravity of the individual; but modern psychology sees them in a truer light, recognizing in them the pledge of what-— ever may be new in the true and the beautiful and the good of the civilization of the future. Hence modern social work turns ever more and more to the task of making a healthful community life that shall afford adequate stimulation to all this struggling, hungry__ desire of the individual. In. the normal.and. healthful expression of this desire. lie.the-hopes ofthe nobler — civilization of the future. In its suppression, or in ie perverted manifestations, lie promises of endless' misery, vice, crime, insanity, disease, and all the long catalogue of human social evils. The healthful growth - of our democratic civilization is dependent upon the development of this more completely healthful social -environment,—the organized community.

There is, however, a subtle danger here. The coma ee munity is not a definite and concrete group which all’

Backgrounds 17 may see and immediately apprehend. It is rather an informing concept, a social ideal. Hence it exists at present mainly in the social imagination of individuals. Outside the individual it may be little more than a phrase,—easily mouthed and easily lost. Hence, if anyone should give up his loyalty to some concrete institution of the community for the sake of this ideal, and then should lose the sense of the reality of this community (as easily he might), he would be lost indeed. He would be thus a man without a country, without objective for his loyalties. It is bettér to be an ardent churchman of the narrowest sort than to be a milk and water sort of non-religionist; better to be a narrow nationalist than a pallid, ghostly mouther of words about an internationalism that takes no hold tionalist, a real_internationali t Boe that treason we need not wonder that strong institutionalists usually regard the advocates of community as being, to use Graham Wallas’s phrase, ‘bloodless traitors’; or that strong nationalists think of internationalists as the. worst enemies of mankind. If a phrase should release men from a loyalty, however small, that has some significance, into a reputed larger loyalty that turns out to be nothingness, that phrase may well be regarded as a menace to civilization.