TEAM WORK 1 r THROUGH GOVERNMENT BY ARTHUR W. DUNN ill Special Edition of chapters from the author’s forthcoming book on Community Civics Prepared for Army Educational Commission — Department of Citizenship, Bureau of Governmental Organization and Management D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT NOTE The Department of Citizenship, Army- Educational Commission, presents in its pamplets the points of view of eminent publicists and leaders of public opinion of various groups without committing the Army Educational Commission to any par¬ ticular views on subjects of possible con¬ troversy. Its main object is to present fundamental principles and stimulate intel¬ ligent study of the problems of citizenship by the members of the American Expedi¬ tionary Forces. 11 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT BY ARTHUR W. DUNN Special Edition of chapters from the author’s forthcoming book on Community Civics Prepared for Army Educational Commission — Department of Citizenship, Bureau of Governmental Organization and Management D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO Citz. No. 4. 5-10-19-25M Copyright, 1919, By D. C. Heath & Co. j Li I (U CO g? CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Our Common Purposes in Community Life .... i II. How We Depend upon One Another in Commun¬ ity Life. 7 III. The Need for Cooperation.15 IV. Why We Have Government.23 V. What is Citizenship?.32 VI. What is Our Community?. 35 VII. Our National Government.40 VIII. The Home.58 IX. Why the Government Helps in Home-making . . 66 X. Earning a Living.73 v Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/teamworkthroughgOOdunn TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT CHAPTER I OUR COMMON PURPOSES IN COMMUNITY LIFE The most important element of success in community life, as in a ball game, a family, or a school, is team work; and team work depends, first of all, upon a common purpose . Our nation gave an example of team work during the recent war such as is seldom seen; and this was because every mem¬ ber of the nation was keenly intent on winning. We see the same thing in our school when a Christmas entertainment is being planned, when an athletic tournament is approach¬ ing, or when some other school activity is under way in which all are deeply interested. It is often illustrated in our town, or rural neighborhood, when some important enterprise is on foot, such as the building of a new railroad into town, a Red Cross “drive,” a county fair, or the construction of a much needed new schoolhouse. All communities have common purposes, although they are not always as clearly defined as when our nation was at war, or as in the other cases mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Sometimes the people of a community, or a large portion of them, seem to be wholly unconscious that a common purpose exists. This may even be true in a family or in a school. And when this happens, the effect is the same as if there were no common purpose. No club or athletic team can be successful unless its members have a common 2 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT purpose and understand it . The same thing is true of the communities we live in. In so far as our communities are imperfect — and none of them is perfect — it is largely be¬ cause their members fail to recognize or understand their common purpose. People in communities have common purposes because they have the same wants. This may not at first seem to be true. If we visit a large city, we see throngs of people hurrying hither and thither, jostling one another, appar¬ ently in the greatest confusion. We wonder where they are all going, what they are doing, what they are seeking. In rural communities or in small towns there is less apparent confusion than in the bustling life of the city. Yet even here it is not always easy to see common purposes and com¬ mon interests. From morning to night, from one week’s end to the other, we engage in all sorts of activities to satisfy wants of various kinds. Man has been called “a bundle of wants.” Whether in large or small communities, we are likely to be impressed by the variety of man’s wants and even by the conflict of their purposes. But no matter how numerous and conflicting our wants may seem, they may all be grouped in a very few important kinds, which are common to all of us alike. It will be worth while to test the truth of this, because it will help us to see our community life in some kind of order, and will throw a flood of light upon the common purposes that control it. For example, we all want food, drink, and sleep. We want clothing, to protect our bodies, and houses to shelter us. But all these things supply our physical wants; that is, they relate to life and health. Many of the things that we do every day are important because of their relation to our physical well-being. One reason why out-of-door sports give pleasure is that they make our blood tingle and give a sense of physical pleasure. Unless our physical wants are COMMON PURPOSES IN COMMUNITY LIFE 3 provided for, the other wants of life cannot well be satisfied. Good health is a priceless possession. Another reason why sports and games give pleasure is because of the association they afford with other people. Association with others is a second great want which explains many of the things we do. Whatever may be our other reasons for going to school, it affords us the opportunity to meet and work and play with other boys and girls to our pleasure and profit. One of the objections often raised against life in the country is the lack of opportunity for association with other people. But life in the. country is not so isolated as it once was; and one may be very much alone in a city crowd, where nearly all are strangers to one another, and where there is very little real association among individuals. City families often live in the same apartment house without knowing or having anything to do with one another. While going to school enables us to associate with others, the principal reason for going is to gain knowledge. Whether we always like our studies or not, we certainly want knowl¬ edge, and seek it in many ways. We read the newspaper or the magazine that comes to the home. We ask questions of parents and others who have had more experience than we. We may travel to see new sights. We examine with curiosity a new machine for the farm. The discoveries and inventions that mark man’s progress in civilization are the result of his eager desire for knowledge. Besides health and knowledge and association with other .people, we want surroundings that are pleasant and beautiful. The want for beauty is sometimes more neglected than other wants, but it is important, and we all have it and seek to satisfy it in some way or other. It may be at one time by a walk in the woods or fields, or at other times by cultivating flowers, by keeping our room tidy, by looking at pictures, or 4 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT by exercising good taste in clothing. We also enjoy beauty in sound, as in the song of birds or music in the home or school. Very likely we go to church on Sunday. It affords oppor¬ tunity to enjoy association with others, to add to our knowl¬ edge, and to hear beautiful music. But the church service is one of the chief means by which people satisfy another of the great wants of life — the religious want. Individuals differ in their religious ideas and in the depth of their religious feeling, but in every community there are certain things that men do because of it. When going to school, perhaps after hours, or on Satur¬ days, or in vacation time, we have worked at tasks to earn money, or at least have helped in occupations that contribute to the “ living” of the family. Doubtless we have thought more or less about what we are going to do for a living after we leave school. We all have a desire to own things, to have property, to accumulate wealth. This also is one of the great wants of life. We have perhaps already experienced the satis¬ faction of raising our own first crop of com or potatoes, of acquiring our first livestock, of putting away or selling our first supply of canned fmits or vegetables, or buying a set of tools, a bicycle, or some books, or starting a bank account. But after all, the chief reason why we want wealth, or to “make money,” is because of what we can do with it. It enables us to satisfy our wants. Earning a living simply means earning the things that satisfy our wants in life. The six kinds of wants that we have indicated clearly account for many of the things that we do. In fact, all of our wants are of one or other of these kinds, and everything we do is important because of its relation to them. We may not be ready, yet, to accept this statement. We may think of desires that seem at first not to fall under any of these six kinds. It will do no harm to add other kinds to the list if we COMMON PURPOSES IN COMMUNITY LIFE S think it necessary. But, at all events, the six kinds of wants mentioned are common to all of us. We live in communities in order to provide for them, and a community is good to live in in proportion as it provides for all of them adequately. It is these wants that give common purpose to our commu¬ nity life. We may often hear our common purposes as communities or as a nation stated in different terms from those suggested in the paragraphs above. For example, the Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane, said during the war, “Our na¬ tional purpose is to transmute days of dreary work into happier lives — for ourselves first and for all others in their time. ,, Again, President Wilson said that our purpose in entering the world war was to help '‘make the world safe for democracy.’’ Although these two statements read differ¬ ently, they mean very much the same thing; and they both refer in general terms to the things this chapter discusses in more familiar and express terms. For “happier lives” can only result from a more complete satisfaction of our common wants. Our own happiness comes from the satisfaction of our own wants and from helping to satisfy the wants of others . And “democracy” means, in part, that the common wants of all shall be properly provided for. In the Declaration of Independence we read: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The statement that “all men are created equal” has troubled many people when they have thought of the obvious in¬ equalities that exist in natural ability and opportunity. But whatever inequalities may exist, people are absolutely equal in their right' to satisfy the wants described in this chapter. These are the “unalienable rights” which the Declaration of 6 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT Independence merely sums up in the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That community is best to live in that most nearly provides equal opportunity for all its citizens to enjoy these rights. From the Declaration of Independence to the present day our great national purpose has been to increase this opportunity, even though at times we have apparently not been conscious of it, and even though we have fallen short of its fulfilment. CHAPTER II HOW WE DEPEND UPON ONE ANOTHER IN COMMUNITY LIFE Nothing could be freer than air. But even as we sit in our schoolroom, whether or not we get all the pure air we need depends upon how the schoolhouse was built for ven¬ tilation, the number of people who occupy the room, the care that is taken by others to keep the room free from dust, the health and cleanliness of those who sit in the room with us. If this dependence upon others is true in the case of the very air we breathe, how much more true it must be of other necessaries of life that are not so abundant. This dependence of people upon one another for the satis¬ faction of their wants is one of the most important facts about community life. It is what makes our wants “common wants.” That is, it is not merely that A and B have the same wants, but that A is dependent upon B, and B upon A, for the satisfaction of their wants, that makes their wants common. A and B both want health. They both know this. But it is only when A feels his dependence upon B for his health, and B feels his dependence upon A, in the same way, that they have a sense of a common want. The farmer’s life is often spoken of as an independent life. His independence was certainly much more complete in pioneer days than it is now. In regard to the early days of Indiana it has been said: Give the pioneer farmer an ax and an auger, or in place of the last a burning iron, and he could make almost any machine that he was wont to work with. With his sharp ax he could not only cut the logs for his cabin and notch them down, but he could make a close-fitting 8 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT door and supply it with wooden hinges and a neat latch. From the roots of an oak or ash he could fashion his hames and sled runners; he could make an axle-tree for his wagon, a rake, a flax brake, a barrow, a scythe-snath, a grain cradle, a pitchfork, a loom, a reel, a washboard, a stool, a chair, a table, a bedstead, a dresser, and a cradle in which to rock the baby. If he was more than ordinarily clever he repaired his own cooperage, and adding a drawing knife to his kit of tools, he even went so far as to make his own casks, tubs, and buckets. He made and mended his own shoes. 1 We also read that in early New England Every farmhouse was a manufactory, not of one kind of goods, but of many. All day long in the chamber or attic the sound of the spin¬ ning-wheel and loom could be heard. Carpets, shawls, bedspreads, table-covers, towels, and cloth for garments were made from materials made on the farm. The kitchen of the house was a baker’s shop, a con¬ fectioner’s establishment, and a chemist’s laboratory. Every kind of food for immediate use was prepared there daily; and on special occasions sausages, head cheese, pickles, apple butter, and preserves were made. It was also the place where soap, candles, and vinegar were manufac¬ tured. Agricultural implements were then few and simple, and farmers made as many of them as they could. Every farmhouse was a creamery and cheese factory. As there were no sewing machines, the farmer’s wife and daughters had to ply the hand needle most of the time when they were not engaged in more laborious pursuits. During the long evenings they generally knit socks and mittens or made rag carpets. 2 But even under such conditions as those described, the farmer and his family were not wholly independent. Even Robinson Crusoe on his lonely island was dependent upon the tools and equipment that he saved from shipwreck and that were the product of other men’s labor. So, also, the pioneer farmer had to maintain some kind of relation, however in¬ frequent and slight, with the outside world. Moreover, he had to pay for his comparative independence by many pri- 1 Pioneer Indianapolis, by Ida Steams Stickney (Bobbs-Merrill Co.). 2 Nourse, Agricultural Economics , p. 64, from “ The Farmer’s Changed Conditions,” by Rodney Welsh, in the Forum , x, 689-92 (Feb. 1891). HOW WE DEPEND UPON ONE ANOTHER 9 vations. He had all the wants described in the preceding chapter, but he had to provide for them in the simplest way possible, and often they were hardly provided for at all. As soon as a number of people come to live together, even in a pioneer community, it is likely that some members will have a knack for doing certain things of use to the com¬ munity better than others can do them. Thus one man may be especially skillful in making ax handles. In time, the entire community comes to depend upon him for its ax handles. In addition, he probably makes other tools and does repair work of all kinds. This requires so much of his time that he does little or no farming, and depends upon others for his food supply. So, in the course of time, the com¬ munity has its blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, teachers, storekeepers, doctors, upon whom it depends for their special kinds of service, while each of them depends upon others to supply the wants that he has neither the time nor the skill to supply for himself. Thus interdependence develops in the simplest communities. The farmer still does many things on the farm that in the city would be done by special workers, such as repairing houses, bams, and tools. But he has become vastly more dependent upon others than formerly. This is due partly to the great improvement in farming methods, requiring the use of complicated machines and greater technical knowledge; and partly to improved means of transportation and com¬ munication which bring him into touch with trade centers. If a farmer needs a new ax handle, he can get a better one with less expenditure of time and effort by going to town in his automobile, than if he made it himself. His farm ma¬ chinery is too complicated for him to repair except in small matters, and even then he must go or send to town for the necessary parts, which may be sent to him by parcel post. Not only does he get better tools and better service generally IO TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT through this reliance upon others who are specialists in their lines, but he also on account of it has more time to give to the actual business of farming, and leisure for thoughtful study of his problem, for social life, and for recreation. It must be acknowledged, however, that reliance upon others may be carried so far as to result in loss or disadvan¬ tage. “Self-reliance” is one of the most admirable traits of character. The pioneer farmer possessed it from necessity to a remarkable extent. A habit of depending upon others may quickly cause a person to lose the “knack” of doing things for himself, to become less 44 handy about the place,” and less 4 "thrifty” about keeping things in repair or installing small improvements — the casting of a cement trough, mending the harness or the fence, or painting the bam. The interdependence of people in community life to-day may be illustrated by starting with some one of our own needs. For example, if we need a pair of shoes, we must buy them. In order to do this we must have money, which we will suppose that we earn by farming. In order to farm successfully we must have machinery. This we also buy in town; but it is manufactured for us in distant city fac¬ tories from metals procured from mines and from wood from the forest. The shoes bought at the store were also made in a factory employing hundreds of men and women, perhaps in Massachusetts. They were made from leather from the hides of cattle raised in the far West, or perhaps even in the Argentine Republic. The leather is tanned by another in¬ dustry, and tanning requires the use of an acid from the bark of certain trees from the forest. The making of the shoes also requires machinery which is made by still other machines, the necessary metals coming from mines. To smelt the metals and to run the factories there must be fuel from other mines. Meanwhile the workers in all the in¬ dustries involved must be fed and clothed and housed. HOW WE DEPEND UPON ONE ANOTHER n This means the work of farmers, food packers, millers and bakers, carpenters, cotton and woolen mills, clothing fac¬ tories, and many others. At every stage transportation enters in, transportation by team and automobile truck, by railway, by water. These are only a part of the activi¬ ties necessary in order that we may have a pair of shoes. It would seem that practically every kind of worker and industry in the world had something to do with it. People in communities to-day are indeed very interdependent. The following item appeared in a newspaper: HELD BACK BY NEIGHBORS Farmer is Limited by Conditions in Community The average farmer is limited in the changes he can make in his farm business by the farm practices of the community in which he is living. There are farmers in every community who would like to change their systems of agriculture but are restrained from doing so by the fact that their neighbors will not change. Many farmers have tried to change from one type of farming to another better suited to the region, but failed because the cost of running such an entirely independent business was too great. A man owning an orchard in a locality where there are no other orchards has trouble in getting rid of his crop. Even when the farmer finds buyers, he generally receives a lower price for the same grade of fruit than would be received in a general apple-growing region. If a man wants to buy several pure-bred Holstein cows, he generally goes to a locality where a large number of farmers keep that kind of stock. Often there is a man in his own community who has for sale Holsteins that are just as highly bred as those in other districts, but he either has no market for them or must sell them at a greatly reduced price. The farmer ought not to think on account of these facts that he should not change his system of farming just because his neighbors do not do likewise. Probably the best way for a farmer to start such a move¬ ment is to arouse the interest of his neighbors in his farming operations. As soon as this has been accomplished he can gradually bring about the change that he advocates. Farmers in a community profit from the experiences of other individuals. 12 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The value of a man's property is dependent not upon his own efforts alone, but upon what his neighbors do. The land occupied by a pioneer increases in value as other people settle in the neighborhood, and because they settle there. Men often buy land and then simply wait for it to increase in value because of improvements in the neighborhood. The property that we own may increase or decrease in value according to the care that neighbors take of their property. Even if we take good care of our property, it will be less valuable if the neighbors let their fences and buildings run down and the weeds grow, than it will be if they keep their fences and buildings in good repair, and their weeds cut. Another illustration may be taken from the field of health protection. We know that malaria is carried from one person to others by mosquitoes, and we know that mos¬ quitoes breed in standing water, as in swamps and in receptacles, such as old barrels or tin cans, that hold rain¬ water until it becomes stagnant. Now we may endeavor to get rid of mosquitoes, and thus the malaria, by removing all open receptacles of water about our premises and by draining the marshes on our land; but unless our neighbors do the same, we are not much better off than we were before. In cities and towns, and sometimes even in rural com¬ munities, merchants deliver goods to their customers by wagons or automobiles. Customers often come to depend so completely upon this delivery system that they never think of carrying anything home themselves. They telephone orders to the grocer several times a day and expect him to deliver even very small packages. In such cases they forget that the merchant and all of his other customers are de¬ pendent upon the thoughtfulness of each customer for prompt service and low prices. Every unnecessary trip made by the delivery wagon delays service elsewhere and adds to the merchant's expenses. The additional expense results either HOW WE DEPEND UPON ONE ANOTHER 13 in smaller profits for the merchant or in higher prices for all his customers. We do not always realize how dependent we are upon one another until something happens to disturb our accustomed relations. We best realize our dependence upon the tele¬ phone when it is out of order. The great world war produced conditions that made us conscious of our interdependence in unexpected ways. For example, if we had gone into a store to buy underwear in the early part of the war, we would have found that the price had greatly increased, and we might have been told, if the salesman were well informed, that the high price was due to the manufacture of airplanes! The explanation is that the wire stays used in the manu¬ facture of airplanes are made of steel wire from which machine knitting needles are also made. In the early part of the war all of the available wire of this kind was taken for airplanes, thus limiting the supply of knitting needles and consequently of knit goods. The manufacture of airplanes is also said to have affected the price of fish! The nets used for catching certain deep- sea fish, such as cod, must be made of linen, which is in¬ visible in water. The linen which had been used for this purpose suddenly came into great demand for the manu¬ facture of airplane wings. Since airplanes were necessary, linen fishing nets were sacrificed and the price of deep-sea fish went up. This of course increased the demand for other kinds of fish, and the price of these also went up. These are somewhat unusual cases due to war conditions; but they serve to illustrate how very complex our com¬ munity life is to-day, and how we may be affected by people and events far removed from us. When people are so closely dependent upon one another, conflicts are likely to occur. In a city the keeping of a cow or pig by one citizen may be an annoyance to his neighbors. 14 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT If one family fails to keep its premises clean, it may not only be unpleasant to the neighbors, but it may even endanger their health and cause their property to become less valu¬ able. Our comfort and well-being depend upon what our neighbors do, just as their comfort and well-being depend upon what we do; and if either of us acts without regard to the welfare of the other, there is a conflict of interest, even though we are both trying to satisfy the same wants. Sometimes conflicts occur in community life because of selfish disregard by some persons of the rights and interests of others, as when a man takes a mean advantage of another in a business transaction. More often they are due simply to failure to see what the real results of a particular act may be and how they may affect other people. It was not dreamed that the building of airplanes would affect the price of underwear and fish, and it was only after careful investi¬ gation that the relation between these things was discovered. A family that is careless in the disposal of refuse from the household and stables may be poisoning the wells of neigh¬ bors half a mile away, and still be wholly unconscious of it. Sometimes men oppose public improvements, such as better roads, or a new schoolhouse, because they see only the direct money cost of the improvements, and fail to see more im¬ portant losses to themselves and to the community that will occur if the improvements are not made. One thing that we may learn from such facts as these is the danger of forming hasty judgments about things that happen, or conditions that exist, or proposals that are made, in our community life. Even those conditions or events that are apparently most simple may be related to other conditions and events that are not at first apparent. Wise judgment and wise action are dependent upon the most complete knowledge obtainable. CHAPTER III THE NEED FOR COOPERATION When people have common purposes and are dependent upon one another in providing for them, there must be cooperation , which is another name for “team work.” A team of horses that does not pull together cannot haul a heavy load. A baseball or basketball team, though composed of good players, will seldom win games unless its team work is good. A few soldiers may easily disperse a large mob, because they are organized and trained to work together as one man, while a mob is unorganized and each man in it acts without much regard for the others. This principle of “pulling together,” “team work,” or “cooperation,” is of the greatest importance in community life. In fact, there can be no real community life without it. Perhaps some of the older people of our acquaintance can tell of “barn raisings” in the early days, when all the neigh¬ bors came together to help one of their number to “raise” his bam. All the men of a pioneer community might join forces in building a church, or a schoolhouse, for community use. This represents a very simple kind of cooperation, which may also be seen at threshing time, when the farmers of a neighborhood combine to thresh the grain of each, the same group of men and the same threshing machine doing the work for all. The United States Department of Agri¬ culture reports that In a group of 14 farmers situated in a community in one of the best farming regions in the corn belt, . . . one year it was found that 5 men out of the 14 failed to get all their corn planted by the last week in 16 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT May. They had worked as hard and as steadily at that operation as had their neighbors, but they were delayed by one cause or another, such as lack of labor or teams, or were handling a larger acreage than their equipment would allow them to handle satisfactorily. In this same community were 3 men who completed all their planting operations before the 20th of May, and 5 others who completed their work by the 25th of May. ... If all these men had considered that com planting was a national necessity and had pooled their efforts, all of the com on all the farms could have been planted within the most favorable time. 1 As communities grow, and the people become more de¬ pendent upon one another, and especially when it becomes hard to see how one thing that happens may affect others, as shown in Chapter II (page 14), cooperation becomes more difficult. It also becomes more necessary. It needs to be organized, and it needs leadership. The experience of fruit growers in California affords a good illustration of organized cooperation. When they acted independently of one another, they often had difficulty in disposing of their product to ad¬ vantage. Sometimes it rotted on the ground. As indi¬ viduals they did not have the means of learning where the best markets were. They had to make their own terms separately with the railroads for transportation and, since they shipped in small quantities, they paid high freight rates. They had no adequate means of storing fruit while it was awaiting shipment. They were dependent upon commission merchants in the cities for such prices as they could get, which were often practically nothing at all. These and other difficulties that made fruit growing un¬ profitable were overcome by the organization of fruit growers’ associations. Each grower becomes a member by pur¬ chasing shares of stock. The members elect from their number a board of directors , who in turn appoint a business 1 The Farm Labor Problem , U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary, Circular No. 112, p. 5. THE NEED FOR COOPERATION 17 manager who gives his entire attention to the association's business. The association has central offices and storage and packing houses. The manager keeps in close touch with market condi¬ tions, by telegraph if need be, — where the demand for fruit is greatest, the kinds of fruit wanted, the best prices paid. He contracts for the sale of fruit at fair prices. Ship¬ ping in large quantities, he gets the advantage of low rates on fast freight trains with refrigerator cars. Uniform methods of packing fruit are adopted, and in some cases all the fruit is packed for shipment at the central packing house. Information is distributed among the members as to the best methods of growing fruit, the best varieties to grow, and so on. On the other hand, supplies and provisions are bought in large quantities, securing the best quality and the lowest prices. In cities there are almost innumerable organizations by which groups of people cooperate for one purpose or another. For example, men in the same line of business or in the same profession organize to promote their common interests. There are boards of trade, chambers of commerce, mer¬ chants' and manufacturers' associations. Lawyers have their bar associations, physicians their medical associations. There are associations of teachers, and workmen in the various trades have their unions. Besides such business and professional organizations, there are clubs and asso¬ ciations of all sorts for men, for women, and even for chil¬ dren, some of them educational, some social or recreational, some philanthropic, some religions. Where there are so many people interested in the same thing, as in cities, and where it is so easy for them to meet together, it is quite the usual thing for them to organize for united action. In agricultural communities cooperation has developed more slowly. Farmers have been too isolated from one 18 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT another to make organization easy, they have not fully realized the advantages of cooperation, and they have lacked leadership. This has been an obstacle to the fullest development of community life. The most backward com¬ munities are those where there is the least cooperation. In such communities “the farmer works single handed, getting no strength from joint action or combined effort.” But all this is changing. Organizations like the fruit growers' associations are becoming common and are prov¬ ing their value. These include cooperative grain ele¬ vators and warehouses, creameries and cheese factories, cooperative stores, fruit and grain growers’ associations, live stock associations, cotton and tobacco associations, and many others. The “farm bureau” is a good example of organized co¬ operation. At the close of 1916 there were nearly three hundred such organizations in the northern and western states with a membership of nearly 100,000, and the num¬ ber was rapidly increasing. A farm bureau is an organiza¬ tion to secure cooperation throughout an entire county in behalf of all agricultural interests. The members elect an executive committee to manage the affairs of the bureau. In each of the small communities of which the county is made up there is a “community committee.” The chairmen of the several community committees constitute a county agricultural council. The chairmen and members of the various committees are chosen because of their special interest in important lines of work and their fitness to direct such work. Various other organizations in the county, such as the fair association, breeders’ associations, the Grange, the schools, and others, are represented in the com¬ mittees of the bureau, the purpose being to secure team work among these various organizations, as well as among the different communities of the county and among the THE NEED FOR COOPERATION 19 individual farmers. The bureau also cooperates with the state and national governments in employing a county agricultural agent , who is the bureau’s adviser and is sup¬ ported by it in his work. In short, the farm bureau repre¬ sents the county working together in an organized way for the improvement of community life. In the Year Book of the Department of Agriculture for the year 1915 the story is told of Christian County, Ken¬ tucky. 1 This county is almost wholly agricultural, but the county seat is a small city of 10,000 population. According to the story, there had formerly been more or less jealousy between the city and the county, as not infrequently hap¬ pens. But a business men’s association was organized in the city, which interested itself in bettering the agricultural conditions of the county, because the business of the city was dependent upon the neighboring agriculture. Among" the things started by this business men’s association was a '‘crop improvement association,” which included farmers in its membership. A county agricultural agent was em¬ ployed, and local community clubs were organized in dif¬ ferent parts of the county, which held meetings attended by the farmers and their families. Business men from the city often took part in these meetings. A good roads asso¬ ciation was organized, and a “good roads day” was held on which business men turned out with the farmers, stores of the city were closed, and on one of the principal roads at least 90 per cent of the workmen were city men. Stone was contributed by contractors, concrete firms furnished men gratis to repair bridges, one company supplied outfits for trimming trees, and a large amount of work was done by the county and town working side by side. . . . Such results could only be. ac¬ complished through unity of purpose and cooperation of all the people. 1 “How the Whole County Demonstrated," 1915 Year Book , U. S. Department of Agriculture, pp. 225-248. 20 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT Among other things accomplished in this county, A fair association has been formed; medical instruction has been introduced into the schools; a public library and hospital have been built; the school system of the county has cooperated in all educational work; both town and country merchants have offered prizes to members of the boys’ clubs; also for cooking in the schools, and have put women’s rest rooms in the stores for the use of the public. There is now an active girls’ canning club in every community in the county, attended by the girls and also by their mothers. There are 12 social clubs which meet regularly, 15 parent-teacher s’ and mothers’ clubs, and there is not a school in the county which does not have some form of community meeting. The schoolhouses are generally used for the meetings of the community clubs. In some instances farmers have given sufficient ground for amusement purposes at the schoolhouses. Here may be found the ball diamond, tennis court, and basket-ball courts. It is said of this county that it “ stands as a demonstration of the effect of education and organization under the proper leadership. The town and the county are one. The result is better agriculture, better business, and better living.” Cooperation is as necessary for the fullest satisfaction of our other wants as it is in the business of making a living. For example, in one pioneer community there were few “books and papers and they were handed about from house to house.” There may be comparatively few people in a community who can afford to buy a hundred books each year; but there might easily be a hundred persons who could buy one book each, and by some arrangement ex¬ change with one another, so that each could in the course of a year have the use of a hundred books. A public library provides an arrangement by which a great variety of the very best reading matter can be enjoyed by the entire community at trifling cost to each member. In fact, we may be able to draw books from such a library without any cost to ourselves; but it is well to remember that the books THE NEED FOR COOPERATION 21 which we thus enjoy do cost the community a large sum of money, and that our free enjoyment of them is one of the advantages of community cooperation. Our part in the cooperation is in using the books carefully and in return¬ ing them promptly, so that as many people as possible may have the use of them. The necessity for cooperation is by no means limited to our neighborhood or county or city. People with the same interests organize for cooperation on a state-wide or nation¬ wide scale. There are state teachers' associations and a National Education Association. Labor organizations are national, or even international, in their extent. There are national scientific associations, and a national chamber of commerce. There are also national organizations of farmers, examples of which are the National Grange, which is espe¬ cially strong in the northeastern part of the country; the Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union, strong in the South and in large sections of the West; the Farm Women’s National Congress; the American Society of Equity, found principally in the Northwest; the National Council of Farmers' Cooperative Associations. One thing further should be said. Cooperation is largely a matter of habit. People will not cooperate unless they feci their dependence upon one another. They must also know how to organize in order to cooperate effectively. This requires education and leadership. But more important than all else is a habit of cooperation. Habits can be formed only by practice; and opportunity to practice cooperation is'abundant if we are only on the lookout for it. We shall find that it not only secures better results in whatever we are doing, but that it also adds greatly to the enjoyment of life. Let us not forget that cooperation merely means “team work," working together for the common good. “They who can not or will not work together are always 22 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT in a weak position when brought into competition with those who can and do.” 1 Farmers’ Organizations American Cooperative Association (Cooperative League of America). American Dairy Farmers’ Association. American Federation of Organized Farmers. American National Live Stock Association. American Pomological Society. American Poultry Association. American Society of Equity. Corn Belt Meat Producers’ Association. Dairy Cattle Congress. Farm Women's National Congress. Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union of America (The Farmers’ Union). Farmers' Equity Union. Farmers' National Congress. Farmers' Society of Equity. Federation of Jewish Farmers of America. Gleaners, The Ancient Order of. Grange , National (Patrons of Husbandry). National Agricultural Organization Society. National Board of Farm Organizations. National Council of Farmers' Cooperative Associations. National Dairy Council. National Dairy Union. National Farmers’ Associations. National Farmers’ Cooperative Grain and Live Stock Associations. National Nut Growers’ Association. National Society of Record Associations. National Swine Growers’ Association. National Women’s Farm and Garden Association. National Wool Growers’ Association. Southern Rice Growers’ Association. 1 Carver, The Organization of a Rural Community , page 5. CHAPTER IV WHY WE HAVE GOVERNMENT Government is a means by which to secure coopera¬ tion, or team work. A few illustrations will help to make this clear. When a schoolhouse is built to-day, it is not done as the pioneers built theirs; yet there is cooperation of a highly organized kind in the production and assembling of the materials and in the construction of the building by work¬ men of different kinds. Moreover, since the schoolhouse is a public building , the community cooperates in paying for it. This is done by means of taxes. The people pay taxes not only for the building of the schoolhouse, but also to meet the cost of operating the school, as in paying the teachers, buying equipment, and heating the building. The community must know how much money is needed for the school, the taxes must be fairly apportioned and collected, and the school must be properly managed to per¬ form the community’s work of education. In small com¬ munities the people may meet together to provide for the taxes and to decide on other matters relating to education, as in New England towns. But there must be leadership, and there must be agencies for performing the work which the community wants done. Every community therefore has its board of education, or school committee or trustees, a superintendent, and other officials. Such organization corresponds to the board of directors and business manager of the fruit growers’ association, only it represents the entire community and attends to the community’s business of 24 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT education. It is part of the community’s governing ma¬ chinery. When a building takes fire in the country the neighbors gather as quickly as possible to fight the flames by such means as may be at hand, but seldom very effectively. In a small city or town, there may be a volunteer fire company composed of men who, when a fire breaks out, leave their usual occupations to save the property. They may be assisted by the neighbors. In large cities, fully equipped and costly fire departments are maintained, with paid fire¬ men who are always on duty. The police usually keep the crowd away from the burning building, not only for their own safety, but because they would hinder rather than help the trained and organized firemen. In each of these cases we see cooperation for fire protection; and the greater the common danger, the more perfect the organization and the more complete the control by government. It was once the usual practice, as it still is in many locali¬ ties, for each farmer to give a certain number of days each year to work on the roads. Some did their work better than others, but few were skilled in the art of road making. Now, in the most progressive communities, the roads are better and more uniformly built and kept in better repair because they are placed by the community in charge of skilled road- makers paid for by taxation. But whether the farmer con¬ tributes money or labor, or both, cooperation is planned and directed by the government. In Benjamin Franklin’s time, each householder in Phil¬ adelphia swept the pavement in front of his home if he wanted it kept clean. Franklin, who was a splendid example of good citizenship in that he was always looking for oppor¬ tunities to improve his community, tells what happened: One day I found a poor industrious man, who was willing to under¬ take keeping the pavement clean by sweeping it twice a week, carrying WHY WE HAVE GOVERNMENT 25 off the dirt from before all the neighbors’ doors, for the sum of six¬ pence per month to be paid by each house. I then wrote and printed a paper setting forth the advantages to the neighborhood that might be obtained by this small expense. ... I sent one of these papers to each house, and in a day or two went around to see who would subscribe to an agreement to pay these sixpences; it was unanimously signed, and for a time well executed. This raised a general desire to have all the streets paved, and made the people more willing to submit to a tax for that purpose. This is a good illustration of community cooperation under simple conditions. A hundred years later, the one and a half million people living in Philadelphia were just as truly cooperating to keep their city clean by means of more than 1200 miles of sewers for which they had paid nearly thirty- five million dollars, and by means of a department of high¬ ways and street cleaning which employed a contractor to clean the streets and to remove all ashes and garbage at an annual cost of more than a million and a half dollars. This is all under the direction of the city government. What is true of our local boards of education, road super¬ visors, fire and street-cleaning departments, and other de¬ partments of our local governments, is also true of state and national governments. For example, there are state de¬ partments of education and a United States bureau of edu¬ cation to secure cooperation in educational matters in each state and throughout the nation. A number of boys whose lives were spent mostly in the city streets were once asked what the word ‘‘government” suggested to them. Some of them at once answered, “The policeman!” And when they were asked “Why?” they replied, “He arrests people,” “He makes us keep off the grass in the parks,” “He drives us off when we play ball in vacant lots.” These answers represent a common idea about government, as something that stands apart from us, or above us, and restricts our freedom. Government does 26 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT restrict the freedom of individuals at times, sometimes perhaps unwisely, or even unjustly; but one of the best illustrations of its real purpose is the traffic policeman in cities. He stands at the crossing of busy streets, regulating the movement of people and vehicles in such a way as to insure the safety of all and to keep the intersecting streams of traffic moving smoothly and with as little interruption as possible. Now and then he leaves his post to help a child or an aged person or a cripple across the street; or answers the inquiries of a stranger. If now and then he arrests a driver, it is because the latter is disregardful of the equal interests of others. In small or thinly settled communities there may be no traffic policeman; but there may be signs at the intersection of highways to guide travelers, or warnings such as “Danger¬ ous Curve!” or “School: Drive Slowly!” Such signs are usually posted by state or local authorities in accordance with law . And even where there are no signs, the laws themselves are supposed to regulate traffic. Some one has compared the laws in our country to the signals given to a football team by the quarterback. These signals are agreed upon in advance by the team, and when they are given each player knows not only what he himself, but also what every other player, is to do, and thus team work is secured. And so our laws are said to be “signals of cooperation,” just as much as the sign “Drive Slowly,” or as when the traffic policeman holds up his hand or blows his whistle. Laws, however, are more than “signals of cooperation”; they are also rules by which cooperation is secured — “rules of the game.” Wherever people are dependent upon one another and work together there must be rules of conduct. One kind of rules consists of what we call “etiquette” or “good manners.” We have doubtless all observed how much better an athletic contest moves along, or even the WHY WE HAVE GOVERNMENT 27 ordinary sports of the playground, where good manners prevail. The best sportsmen are almost always extremely courteous to their opponents, and treat them with every respect, and with thoughtfulness for their comfort and con¬ venience, as well as for their rights. The little marks of courtesy and good manners go far to make the game move smoothly. “Good manners” include more than the “party manners” that we put on and take off on special occasions, like “party clothes.” They consist of the accepted rules of behavior toward those with whom we associate. In the home, in school, in business, in public places, there are “good manners” that are recognized by custom and that make the wheels move smoothly and without jar. We do not need a law or a policeman to require a man to give way to a woman, or even to another man, in passing through a doorway; good manners provide for this. Even on the public street much confusion is avoided by the observance of good manners, or custom. Polite people instinctively turn to the right in passing others (in England and Canada the custom is to turn to the left) without thinking whether there is a law on the subject or not. Now most of our laws that regulate the conduct of indi¬ viduals are simply rules that experience has proved to be of the greatest advantage to the greatest number, and that are necessary because some people have not “good manners.” Most people observe them, not because they are laws, but because they are reasonable and helpful in avoiding friction and in securing cooperation. If they are good laws, it is only the “ill-mannered” who are really conscious of their existence. Just laws restrict the freedom only of the “ill- mannered,” while they give freedom to those who have “good manners.” The following story illustrates the difference between law and custom, or “manners,” and how the former may de- 28 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT velop out of the latter. 1 There was once a boys' school located in an 8oo-acre tract of land, in the fields and woods of which the boys, when free from their studies, gathered nuts, trapped small animals, and otherwise lived much like primitive hunters. Just after midnight one morning early in October, when the first frosts of the season had loosened the grasp of the nuts upon the limbs, parties of two or three boys might be seen rushing at full speed over the wet fields. When the swiftest party reached a walnut tree, one of the number climbed up rapidly, shook off half a bushel of nuts and scrambled down again. Then off the boys went to the next tree, where the process was repeated unless the tree was occupied by other boys doing likewise. Nut hunters coming to the tree after the first party had been there, and wishing to shake the tree some more, were required by custom to pile up all the nuts that lay under the tree. Until this was done, the unwritten law did not permit their shaking any more nuts on the ground. So far this was a custom accepted by the boys because of its reasonableness. But after awhile, some members of this boy community planned to get ahead of the other members. One night before frost came they secretly went to the woods and took possession of most of the nut trees by shaking them according to custom. When this was discovered, some of the leaders of the community called a meeting of all the boys. After discussing the matter thoroughly, they provided against a repetition of the trick by making a rule (passing a law) that thereafter the harvesting of nuts should not begin before a fixed date in October. These boys acted very much as men have often acted under simple conditions of community life. The New England '‘town meeting," for example, is precisely the same 1 “Rudimentary Society among Boys,” by John Johnson, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science , vol. ii (1884). The story as here given is reproduced from Community Leaflet No. 15, Feb. 1, 1918, U. S. Bureau of Education (Lesson C-18, “Cooperation through Law,” by Arthur W. Dunn). WHY WE HAVE GOVERNMENT 29 thing as the boys’ meeting. In large communities, such as cities, states, and the nation, such popular meetings for law¬ making are not practicable; therefore the people elect rep¬ resentatives for the purpose. We shall study the organization and methods of law¬ making in later chapters. At present we are merely noting why we have laws, and the fact that they are supposed to be made, directly or indirectly, by the people themselves. And right here we see the second thing necessary to make a democracy. On page 5 we saw that in a democracy all people have certain equal and ‘‘unalienable” rights, and that that community is most democratic that affords its mem¬ bers most nearly equal opportunity to enjoy these rights. Now we see further that in a democracy the people make their own laws. Moreover, the laws of a democracy control not only the conduct of the people, but also the government itself. The government of a democracy may do only those things, and use only those methods, for which the people give the authority. There are other ways than by laws in which the people retain control over their government; but such control is essential in a democracy. No matter how much power a government exercises, it is only when it ex¬ ercises this power without control by the people that it becomes autocratic. The purpose of our government is clearly stated in two historic documents. One of these is the Declaration of Independence, which has already been quoted in Chapter I. The same quotation is given here with an additional sentence in italics: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights , governments are instituted among men , deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . 30 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The second great document is the Constitution of the United States, the Preamble to which reads: We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. It is not to be supposed, however, that our government and our laws are perfect. They can not be perfect as long as they are made and operated by imperfect people. It is possible, for example, that the boys of the city (page 25) had a just complaint against the government for not permitting them to play ball in vacant lots, unless the community at the same time provided them with another suitable place for the game —- for every community should protect the right of its boys and girls to play. We are far from having attained complete democracy. Democracy is a goal toward which men are struggling, and have been struggling for centuries — since long before our Revolutionary War, and in other countries as well as in our own. The great world war, which began in 1914, and which the United States entered in 1917, was a war to establish more firmly in the world the principles of democratic government. Whether these prin¬ ciples shall be carried out in practice, and whether our govern¬ ments — local, state, and national — shall fulfill the purposes so clearly stated in the Preamble to the Constitution, de¬ pends upon the extent to which each citizen understands these purposes, and cooperates with his fellow-citizens and with his governments in support of them It is said that in one of the training camps during the war an officer addressed a squad of new recruits as follows: Boys, I want you to get the right idea of the salute. I do not want you to think that you are being compelled to salute me as an individual. WHY WE HAVE GOVERNMENT 3i No! When you salute me, you are simply rendering respect to the power I represent; and the power I represent is you. Now let me explain. You elect the President of the United States, and the President of the United States grants me a commission to represent his authority in this army. His only authority is the authority that you vest in him when you elect him President. Now, when you salute an officer, you salute not the man, but the representative of your own authority. The salute is going to be rigidly enforced in this army, and I want you boys to get the right idea of it. I want you to know what you salute and why. It is very important that we should “get the right idea” of what our government is. It is very much the idea that the officer gave his soldiers about the salute. It is the idea contained in this chapter: that government is our own organization by which we try to secure team work in our community life. CHAPTER V WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP? Before we go further, let us get a definite idea of what it means to be a citizen. We have frequently referred to the fact that we are “members” of various communities. Our bodies have members, such as hands and arms. The tongue has been called an “unruly” member. “It is a little member and boasteth great things.” 1 There are two important facts about members of the body. One is that they get their life from the body . If the hand is cut off, it quickly ceases to be a hand because it is severed from the source of its life. If the body is seriously ill, its members are unable to perform their proper work. The second important fact is that the body is dependent upon its members for its life. If the hand is cut off, or an eye put out, the body does not necessarily die, but it is seriously handicapped. If a member is paralyzed or dis¬ eased it may be a positive hindrance to the body, and the disease may spread to other members. The body may suffer merely because its members are poorly trained. Now that is what it means to be a member of the body; and membership in a family, or a school, or a club, or a com¬ munity, is just the same. The apostle Paul wrote to the Church at Rome, “We, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Romans xir.5). We have already seen, and we shall'see more fully as we go 1 James iii: 5. WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP? 33 on with our study, how completely we are dependent upon our communities for food, for the protection of life, for edu¬ cation, and for all else that makes up our life. The com¬ munity that does not provide for its members in these things is like a sick body. On the other hand, as members of a community we are always contributing something to its life — either to its advantage or disadvantage. Of course, each of us is only one of a great many members in a large community; and we may seem to be very unimportant. But each performs his part, whether it be great or small, and whether he does it well or poorly. There are many members of communities who are like the diseased or paralyzed hand, or like the hand that is untrained. They are a handicap to their communi¬ ties and interfere with community progress. The part that a member plays in community life may be more important than he realizes. Even in small things, '‘the falling short of one may mean disaster to many.” It is necessary that each member of a community, like each member of the body, be not only in a healthy condition but also well trained. Now we often speak of members of a community as citizens of that community. Citizenship means practically the same thing as membership in the community. As a good community is one that provides well for its members, so the good citizen is the member who does well his part in the life of the community. A bad citizen is the member who hinders the progress of the community when he might be helping. A citizen has certain rights and certain duties. His rights are what the community owes him; his duties are what he owes the community. Let us not make the mistake of thinking that we are not yet citizens because we are children. The Constitution of the United States says that “all persons bom or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ” 34 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT (that is, subject to its laws) "are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” This of course in¬ cludes children. Even persons bom in foreign countries and who have not yet been naturalized 1 enjoy almost all the rights of native-born Americans, and therefore have much of the responsibility of citizenship. Until they are naturalized they are still considered as members of the country from which they came, and therefore as owing cer¬ tain duties to that country which would be inconsistent with their duties as members of our nation. Therefore they are denied certain political rights, such as voting and holding office . 2 These same political rights are denied to native- born citizens until they have reached maturity. But we must not confuse this right to vote with citizenship. 1 “Naturalization" is the legal process by which persons of foreign birth renounce their allegiance to the land of their birth and pledge their allegiance to our government. It will be discussed more fully later. 2 In a few states even unnaturalized persons are allowed to vote after they have declared their intention of becoming citizens. CHAPTER VI WHAT IS OUR COMMUNITY? In the preceding chapters we have often spoken of “our community.” In fact each of us is a member of a number of communities. It is time to consider just what they are. Every community of course consists of a group of people who occupy a more or less definite locality . In community life much depends upon the character of both the people and the locality they occupy, as we shall see. But the es¬ sential thing about a community is that the people who comprise it are working together (cooperating) under an or¬ ganization (government) for the common good (common purposes). There are both large and small communities. A neigh¬ borhood of farmers with their families may constitute a community. In this case the area occupied may be extensive while the people are few in number. Or the community may be a city with a population very large in proportion to the area it occupies. There are also villages, towns, and small cities of varying sizes, both as to population and area. Each state in our Union is a community, and so is the nation itself, because each is composed of a group of people (very large in these cases), occupying a definite territory (also large), and having a government through which the people are working for common ends. There is a world com¬ munity, but it is, as yet, very imperfect. The nations and peoples that comprise it have been slow to recognize their common purposes and have so far failed to develop adequate means of cooperation. 36 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT A community of farmers has interests of its own, largely centering around farming activities or the social life of the local neighborhood. A few miles away is a village or city whose people also have their own peculiar interests, such as the lighting of the streets at night, or the building of a new high school, or the election of a mayor. The interests of the people of the city seem in a large measure to be distinct from those of the farmers, and yet there are interests common to both. The city is dependent upon the country for its food supply, and the farmers are dependent upon the city for their market. Probably some of the farmers send their children to the city schools. Thus city and rural communities are bound together into a larger community with interests common to both. In the early days of western settlement a community was founded in Illinois. It was an agricultural community, but in the midst of it a village grew up, which in the course of time became a small city. One of the first settlers was a young farmer with a mechanical turn of mind. He began experimenting to improve the methods of planting grain. The result was the invention of a combination corn-planter and cultivator, the manufacture of which became one of the chief industries of the growing city, employing hundreds of men and sending machines to all parts of the world. Another young farmer invented a better plow than those which had been in use, the manufacture of which became another of the city’s industries. In those pioneer days each family usually made its own brooms, but one young man in this community earned his way through the local college by making brooms from com raised on the college farm. The j college corn field disappeared in the course of time, but on one part of it there grew up a broom factory employing a large number of workmen. These city industries were thus literally “children of the soil,” and the city’s prosperity WHAT IS OUR COMMUNITY? 37 depended upon the agriculture of the surrounding region. On the other hand, the city provided the farmers with im¬ proved plows and corn-planters, furnished them an imme¬ diate market for their products, supplied them with goods through its shops and stores, and gave education to hundreds! of farmers’ children in its schools and college. A strong sense of local interests and a failure to see the larger interests of the larger community sometimes give rise to jealousies and antagonisms between small neighbor¬ ing communities, and especially between rural and city communities. Such misunderstandings are an obstacle to the progress, not only of the large community, but of each local community. It may, for example, be proposed to build a township high school. It is natural that the several communities that comprise the township should each want it. But this is a case where the interest of the entire town¬ ship should be considered and the location of the school determined from this point of view, and not to the advan¬ tage of one local district as against other's. It often happens that the people of a city are exempted from taxation for county purposes outside of the city, although the benefits would be almost, if not quite, as great for the city as for the country. This sort of thing serves to set off city and country against each other instead of binding them together to their mutual advantage. The case of Christian County, Kentucky, described in Chapter III, page 19, is an excellent illustration of team work between city and country in the interest of the entire county, and of the results achieved by it. Trade and education are two of the chief interests that bind people into communities. But where these interests exist, there are likely to be other interests; for example, the high school is likely to be a meeting place for social and recreational purposes. 38 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The area and boundaries of a “farming” or ‘‘rural neigh¬ borhood” community are usually rather indefinite and changeable, depending upon surface features and upon transportation conditions, or the length of the ‘‘day’s haul.” With improved roads and better means of transportation larger areas and more people are included. A “neighbor¬ hood” or “trade area” with automobiles is much larger than one that uses horses or ox carts exclusively. The consoli¬ dated school with transportation provided for pupils expands the rural neighborhood community. If we imagine ourselves members of the family that lives in a farm home, we shall see that we are members of a certain school district, of a certain township, of a commu¬ nity that has grown up around a trade center and a high school, and of course of the county as a whole. No matter in what school district we live, we have an interest in some matters in common with the people of all other school dis¬ tricts in the county. For example, there is a state university at Madison, and connected with it is a training school for teachers. The work done at the university has an influence upon the teaching in all the schools of the county, and indeed of the whole state. There is also an agricultural college at the state university which serves the farmers throughout the entire county and state. Just as the many small communities that make up a county are dependent upon one another, requiring organ¬ ized cooperation for the county welfare, so all the counties of a state, and all the people who live in all the counties, are interdependent in many ways. The people of the city of Madison, for example, depend for their food supply not only upon the farmers of Dane County, but also upon those of the entire state. The university at Madison serves not Dane County alone, but the people of all the counties of the state. It is important that the public schools should WHAT IS OUR COMMUNITY? 39 be equally good in all counties of the state and that they should be managed by a uniform plan. Roads and other means of transportation are a matter of concern to the entire state. And so the state is a community, organized with a government to secure cooperation among all the people and all the smaller communities that compose it. In fact, a large part of the business of the governments of the local communities, such as city and county and town¬ ship, is to administer the laws of the central state govern¬ ment. In a similar manner, the 48 states of the Union, with all the counties and smaller communities of which they consist, comprise our great national community. It is not always easy to think of our nation as a community because of its great size and complexity; but it is quite important that we should think of it in this way if we are to have a proper understanding of our national government and of our national citizenship. When we speak of '‘our community” we are likely to think at once of the small community immediately around us — our neighborhood, village, or city. Our membership in these local communities is extremely important, and will demand no small part of our attention. But it is equally important to be fully alive to our membership in the larger communities. This is true wherever we live; but there is a sense in which our national community is peculiarly im¬ portant to those of us who live in rural communities. The wants of people in cities are, as a rule, looked after more completely by their local governments than is the case in rural communities. The people of rural communities, and especially farmers themselves, are directly served by the national government in a great variety of ways. In the next chapter, therefore, we shall consider our nation as a community. CHAPTER VII OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY It is important to get the habit of thinking of our nation as a community, just as we think of our school or town or rural neighborhood as one. This is not always easy to do because of its huge size and complicated character. It would be wrong, too, to get the idea that it is a perfect community — none of our communities is perfect. Conflicts of interest are often more apparent than community of interest. Team work among the different parts and groups that make up our nation is often very poor. Although our government is a wonderfully good one, it is still only an imperfect means of cooperation. We are far from being a complete democracy, for there are many people in our nation who do not have the full enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and large numbers of our “ self-governing” people really have little or no part in government. It need not give us an unpatriotic feeling to acknowledge the imperfections of our nation or of our government; for communities grow, not only in size, but also in ability to perform their proper work, just as individuals do. We call a person conceited who thinks that he is perfect, es¬ pecially if he boasts of his supposed perfection. But his conceit is itself an imperfection and a hindrance to growth. That person gives the greatest promise for the future who sets a high mark, but who recognizes his imperfections and tries to correct them in order to grow to the mark. As he OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 4i grows he will find that he is constantly setting his mark still higher. So the patriotic citizen is not one who is unable to see defects in his community, or refuses to acknowledge them, but one who has high civic ideals and is loyal to them, who understands in what respects these ideals have not been reached, and who, as a member of the community (see page 32), contributes everything he can to keep it grow¬ ing in the right direction. Our nation was formed in the beginning by the union of thirteen states. During their existence as English colonies these thirteen communities had been very largely inde¬ pendent of one another, though all had common ties with England. Attempts on the part of groups of the colonies to unite had never been very successful. In fact, colonial history affords a good illustration of how people may con¬ flict in their attempt to carry out similar purposes. For example, a religious interest was strong in all of the colonies; but the forms of religious belief differed to such an extent as to lead, at various times, to actual persecution of one sect by another. The Puritans of New England, who had left England to secure religious freedom, now in turn per¬ secuted the Quakers. Those who founded Rhode Island had left Massachusetts largely because of religious differ¬ ences. Maryland alone among the colonies was founded by Catholics and Protestants together, with an agreement to live side by side in peace. Religious toleration in the other colonies was very rare. The people of all the colonies were of course interested in material prosperity and the production of wealth; but this interest frequently brought them into conflict. There were disputes over boundaries between the colonies, and much rivalry and jealousy in trade. One great difference that had serious consequences in later years resulted from 42 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT the use of slave labor in the agriculture of the South. There were differences even in the attitude toward education. Massachusetts began early to organize schools which later developed into our public school system; while a governor of Virginia wrote to England, “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years.” It was difficult to overcome such differences as these and to secure united action among the colonies because of the lack of easy means of communication. Six days were re¬ quired for the trip from New York to Boston, and at a later time a traveler tells of spending a month in going from New York to Washington. The government in England managed the affairs of the colonies more for its own benefit than for theirs. It wanted the products of America sent to England, and not ex¬ changed among the colonies; and it did not want Ameri¬ can manufactures to grow up to compete with those of England. So it placed restrictions upon American trade and industry. It was this policy of the English government, however, that finally united the colonies into a free nation. Since that government disregarded what all the colonies considered to be their rights, especially their property rights, they declared and won their independence. Each of the colonies became an independent state with its own constitution and government. Although they all united in carrying on the war for independence, they experienced great difficulty in securing team work. The Continental Congress had little power beyond that of giving advice to the states, which the latter followed or not as they pleased, j When the war was almost over, the thirteen states agreed to the Articles of Confederation which provided for the continuance of a central government consisting of dele¬ gates from the several states. OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 43 The government under the Articles of Confederation, how¬ ever, was unsuccessful in securing anything like real na¬ tional cooperation. Very little law-making power was given to the Congress, no power to enforce such laws as it made, and no power to levy and collect taxes, which, as we have seen, is one method of securing cooperation for the common good (see page 23). The result was several years of unutterable confusion which have been called ‘‘the critical period of American history,” for the question at stake was whether a number of self-governing state communities with a multitude of apparently conflicting interests could really become a nation. The confusion of this period showed how dependent each state was upon all the others for its safety and future prog¬ ress. During the war Benjamin Franklin had said, “We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.” Even without a strong central government, the states had “hung together” sufficiently to win the war; but what the wise men of the time now saw was the need for a govern¬ ment so organized and with such powers as to secure effec¬ tive cooperation among all the states and all the people at all times for the welfare of the entire Union, while it left each state free to manage its own local affairs. Therefore a convention of delegates from all the states was called together at Philadelphia to suggest changes in the government of the Confederation that would accomplish the purpose. The result was the framing of the Constitu¬ tion of the United States which provided for a government that has in a most remarkable way met the needs of our rapidly growing nation. It would be well to read again the preamble to the Constitution in the light of the experi¬ ences of the states here described. The creation of a national government under the Con¬ stitution did not completely put an end to rivalries and 44 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT jealousies and conflicts within the Union. The several sections had interests of their own that sometimes seemed to outweigh the interests of the nation as a whole, and to set one section off against the others. As our country grew, these sectional differences tended to become greater and sometimes threatened the unity of the nation. If it had not been for the invention of the steam railroad, the telegraph, and other means of rapid transportation and communication, it is possible that our great territory of more than three million square miles and its population of more than one hundred millions could not have been held together under the form of government established by the Constitution. The most serious of these sectional differences was that between the North and South, which grew out of the slavery question. It required four years of civil war to decide whether we should remain a united nation or not. Although the war settled the question in favor of continued union under one government, the feeling of sectional difference did not at once disappear. The real question over which the North and the South fought was whether the existence of slavery within a state was a matter for the state or for the nation to determine, and whether a state had the right to withdraw from the Union or not. The war settled the question against "state rights” in these matters; but many questions are constantly arising to-day in regard to which it is difficult to determine where state authority ends and national authority begins. For example, the national Con¬ gress recently passed a law with the intention of preventing the employment of children in factories anywhere in the United States; but the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that Congress went beyond its power in doing so. Education has always been considered a duty of the state, and recent proposals to give the national government OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 45 larger control of education throughout the United States have met with some opposition. In due time we shall learn more about the relation between the states and the nation. Both are necessary. But while the importance of the state community has in no wise decreased with the growth of the nation, our national community of interests and the need for national cooperation have been constantly increasing. It is easier now than formerly to think of our nation as a community, because the war with Germany served to arouse our “national spirit,” and showed very clearly the importance in our national life of those elements which characterize all community life — common purpose, inter¬ dependence, and organized cooperation (see Chapters II-V). The creation of a national army did much to bring this about. When the benefits which come to the nation through the creation of the national army are catalogued, the fact that it has welded the country into a homogeneous society 1 seeking the same national ends and animated by the same national ideals, will overtop all other advantages. The organization of the selected army fuses the thousand separate elements making up the United States into one steel-hard mass. Men of the North, South, East, and West meet and mingle, and on the anvil of war become citizens worthy of the liberty won by the first American armies. 2 How this welding of the parts of the nation together was brought about by the war is suggested by the words of an old Confederate soldier who wrote to a friend in the North: “During the war between the states I was a rebel, and con¬ tinued one in heart until this great war. But now I am a devoted follower of Uncle Sam and endorse him in every respect.” 1 “Homogeneous society” — a society or community all of whose parts and members have like purposes and interests. 2 Major Fortesque, in National Geographic Magazine , Dec., 1917. ' 46 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The fact that our nation contained in its population large numbers of people from practically every country of Europe caused no little anxiety when we entered the Euro¬ pean war. Our population embraces a hundred different races and nationalities. Of these ten million are negroes and 336,000 Indians. Thirty-three million are of foreign parentage, and of these thirteen million are foreign-born. Five million do not speak English, and there are 1500 news¬ papers in the United States printed in foreign languages. Five and one-half million above the age of ten years, includ¬ ing both foreign and native, can not read nor write in any language. New York City has a larger Hebrew population than any other city in the world, contains more Italians than Rome, and its German population is the fourth largest among the cities of the world. Pittsburgh has more Serbs than the capital of Serbia. It is said that there were more Greeks subject to draft in the American army than there were in the entire army of Greece. Would all these people be loyal to our nation, or would they divide it against itself? The war in fact showed us that there were some among us who had never really become members of our nation, and who were dangerous to our peace and safety. It also showed us the danger that comes from the presence of so many illiterates, or of those who can not use the English language; for such people, even though loyal in spirit to the United States, can not understand instructions either in the army or in industry, and otherwise prevent effec¬ tive cooperation. And yet the most striking thing that the war showed us in regard to this mixed population is that the great mass of it, regardless of color or place of birth, is really American and loyal to our flag and the ideas which it represents. Another weakness within our nation that the war em- OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 47 phasized is the lack of harmony between wage-earners and their employers. There were many sharp conflicts be¬ tween them. Strikes occurred, or were threatened, in fac¬ tories, shipyards, mines, and railroads, that blocked the wheels of industry at a time when the nation needed to strain every nerve to provide the materials of war. This lack of harmony between workmen and employers, which in war threatened our national safety, has existed for many years and has always been an obstacle to national progress. But the common purpose of winning the war, in most cases, caused employers and wage-earners to adjust their differ¬ ences. In nearly every case one side or the other, or both sides, yielded certain points and agreed not to dispute over others, at least for the period of the war. The national government did much to bring this about by the creation of labor adjustment boards to hear complaints from either side and to settle disputes. If our national community life is to develop in a wholesome way, complete cooperation between workmen and employers must be secured and made permanent on the basis of interests that are common to both. Such facts as these show how easy it is, in a huge, com¬ plex community like our nation, for conflicts to arise among different sections and groups of the population; and how difficult it is always to see the common interests that exist. But they also show how such conflicts tend to disappear when a situation arises which forces us to think of the common interests instead of the differences. All else was forgotten in the common purpose to ‘‘win the war.” No sacrifice was too great on the part of any individual in order that this national purpose might be served. Everywhere throughout the country, in cities and in remote rural dis¬ tricts, service flags in the windows testified that the homes of the land were offering members that the nation and its 48 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT ideals might live. And where families could not send mem¬ bers, there were at least Red Cross emblems and liberty bond and war savings stamp posters to indicate that men, women, and even children were contributing from their savings to help win the war. In every city and hamlet the women and children were knitting and making bandages and otherwise working for the support and comfort of their army of defenders. In every household people were saving food and fuel and clothing, and denying themselves familiar comforts in order to win the war. The entire nation was working together for a common purpose. We have said that this common purpose was to 4 ‘win the war.” But there were purposes that lie much deeper than this, without which it would not have been worth while to enter the war at all. As we saw in Chapter I (page 5), our nation is founded on a belief in the right of every one to life and physical well-being; to be secure in one’s rightful possession; to freedom of thought — education, free speech, a free press; to freedom of religion; to happiness in pleas¬ ant surroundings and a wholesome social life; and, above all, to a voice in the government which exists to protect these rights. The war has made us feel a growing national purpose to secure for all men an ever increasing measure of enjoyment of these blessings of liberty. It was to secure a larger freedom to enjoy these rights, “for ourselves first and for all others in their time,” that our nation was solidly united against the enemy that threat¬ ened it from without. But it was with this same purpose that the War of Independence was fought, that our Con¬ stitution was adopted, that slavery was abolished, that millions of people from foreign lands have come to our shores. It is this common purpose that makes the great mass of foreigners in our country Americans, ready to fight for America, if necessary even against the land of their OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 49 birth. It is that for which the American flag stands at all times, whether in peace or in war. The attempt to work together in the war made it very apparent how dependent the nation is upon all its parts, and how dependent each part is upon all the others. It was often said that “the farmers would win the war.” At other times it was said to be ships, or fuel, or airplanes, or rail¬ road transportation, or trained scientists and technical workers. The truth is, of course, that all these things and many more were absolutely necessary, and that no one of them would have been of much value without all the others. It was true that the winning of the war depended upon the farmers, because they are the producers of the food and of the raw materials for textiles without which the nation and every group and person in it would have been helpless. But the farmer could not supply food to the nation with¬ out machinery for its production, and without city markets and railroads and ships for its distribution. Machinery could not be made, nor ships and locomotives built, with¬ out steel. For the manufacture of steel there must be iron and fuel and tungsten and other materials. And for all these things there must be inventors and skilled mechanics, and to produce these there must be schools. And so we could go on indefinitely to show how the war made us feel our interdependence. What we need to understand, how¬ ever, is that this interdependence is characteristic of our national life at all times; the war only made us feel it more keenly. During the war, strange as it may seem, while we were devoting our national energies to the work of destruction incident to war, we as a nation made astonishing progress in many ways other than in the art of war — in what we might call nation-building. In some ways we made prog¬ ress in a year or two that under ordinary circumstances So TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT might have required a generation. A striking illustration of this is in the development of a great fleet of merchant ships at a rate that would have been impossible before the war. Beginning with almost nothing when the war began, we had in less than two years a merchant fleet larger than that of any other nation, and that in spite of the constant destruction of ships by the enemy. The chairman of the shipping board of the United States government says that this is because the necessities of the war made the whole nation see how much it depends upon ships, and caused not only shipbuilders, but also engineers and manufac¬ turers and business men and the navy department of the government, and many others, to concentrate upon this problem, with the result that we discovered methods of shipbuilding, and of loading and unloading and operating ships when they were built, that will probably enable us to maintain permanently a merchant marine, the lack of which we have deplored for many years, but which we have been unsuccessful in acquiring. In a similar way we discovered and brought into use valuable natural resources of whose existence we had largely been ignorant and for which we had been dependent upon other nations. We made astonishing progress in scientific knowledge, and especially in the application of this knowl¬ edge to invention and to industrial enterprises. We de¬ veloped a new interest in agriculture, and learned the food values of many products that had formally been neglected. We discovered the food values of many unfamiliar varie¬ ties of fish produced in our waters, and learned to make leather of the finest quality from the skins of whales and sharks and other marine animals. We were led to attack seriously the great problem of suitable housing for work¬ men, and had an important lesson in the relation between wholesome home life and industrial efficiency (see Chapter OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 51 IX, pages 67-68). Foundations were laid for the adjust¬ ment of the unfortunate differences that have long existed between workmen and their employers. The war sug¬ gested changes in our educational methods, some of which will doubtless become effective, to the great improvement of our public schools, colleges, and technical schools. These things illustrate how our national progress 'was stimulated when the war forced us to see the relation of all these things to one another and to the accomplishment of our national purpose . On the other hand, failure to recognize this national interdependence means slow progress as a national community. When the war began our nation was said to be “unprepared.” In so far as this was true — and it was true in many particulars — it was because in the times of peace before the war we had not thought enough about the dependence of our national strength and safety upon all these factors in our national life working together. And so, in the times of peace after the war y if the purposes for which our nation fought are to be fulfilled, we must continue to profit by this lesson which the war has taught us. The 4 ‘working together’’ of all these interdependent parts is the important thing. “The supreme test of the nation has come,” said President Wilson. “We must all speak, act, and serve together.” 1 “It is not an army that we must shape and train for war ... it is a Nation. To this end our people must draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this can not be if each man pursues a private purpose. The Nation needs all men, but it needs each man, not in the field that will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will best serve the common good. . . . The whole Nation 1 Message to the American People, April 15, 1917. 52 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT must be a team, in which each man must play the part for which he is best fitted.” 1 We had some suggestion on page 47 of how such na¬ tional team work became a fact. “Do your bit!” was the watchword. It was splendid to see how personal interests gave way before the desire to serve the nation. It is a thrilling story how the racial elements in our population forgot their differences of race and language and re¬ membered only that they were Americans; how employers and employees laid aside their differences; how farmers and business men, manufacturers and mechanics, miners and woodsmen, inventors and teachers, women in the home and children in the schools, doctors and nurses, and every other class and group subordinated their personal interests to the one national purpose of winning the war in order that “the world might become a decent place in which to live.” As soon as the United States entered the war Washington, the nation’s capital, became filled with people from all parts of the country who wanted to help in some way. Some were called there by the government; others came to volunteer their services and to offer ideas that they thought useful. Many came as representatives of organ¬ izations — business and industrial organizations, scientific associations, civic societies. New committees and associa¬ tions were formed, until the number of voluntary citizen organizations eager to do “war work” became almost too numerous to remember. They were all an indication of the desire of the people to do their part in the national enterprise. But there followed a period of confusion. All these organizations and the people which they represented wanted to help, but they did not always know just what to do nor how to do it. Each organization had its own ideas which it often magnified above all others. Different organizations 1 Conscription Proclamation, May 18, 1917. OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 53 wanted to accomplish the same purpose, but wanted to do it in different ways. Often they duplicated one another’s efforts. A war could not be won under such conditions. But out of all this confusion there finally developed order, and this was because the various organizations of people realized that if they were to accomplish anything they must work in cooperation with the national government, whose business it was, after all, to organize the nation for united action. In fact, it was for this reason that they came to Washington. Many of them sought to influence the government to adopt this or that plan, and sometimes succeeded; but it was the government that finally decided what plans were to be adopted, and all of the effort of the numerous organizations and of individuals must be brought into harmony with these. The period of the war affords many striking examples of national cooperation secured by the government. It may have seemed sometimes that our government interfered with personal freedom to an unreasonable extent, as when it limited the amount of coal we could buy, fixed the prices of many articles, determined the wages that should be paid for labor, took over the management of the railroads and of the telegraph and telephone lines, and did many other things that it never had done in time of peace. We expect government to exercise powers in war time that it would not be permitted to exercise in time of peace. We are even willing to be ruled by government , as in an autocracy, instead of ruling through government according to democratic ideas, if it is necessary to win the war. But it can be shown that even during the war the government, with all its unusual powers, did not '‘ride rough-shod” over the people, but sought to “make them partners in an enterprise which after all was their own.” The nation was fighting for its life and for the very principles upon which it was founded. 54 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT and it was necessary that cooperation should be complete and effective. This was what the government sought, and it exercised its powers by inviting and obtaining national cooperation to a remarkable extent. Our national army was created by a “selective’’ draft, or conscription. Conscription had formerly been looked upon with disfavor as a form of forced military service. A volunteer army was thought to be more in harmony with a democratic form of government. But the draft is now seen to be far more democratic than a volunteer army be¬ cause it treats all able-bodied men alike, instead of leaving the fighting to those who are most courageous and most patriotic while those who are inclined to shirk may easily do so. Moreover, the selective draft means the selection of men to serve in the capacity for which they are best fitted. In Great Britain, under a volunteer system, and in France, under a system of compulsory military service for all men, thousands of brave men went to the trenches in the early days of the war who, because of their training, should have been kept at home to perform the vast amount of skilled labor and scientific work which this war demanded. War industry, without which there could be no fighting, was thus greatly hampered. By our selective draft, on the other hand, while every man was expected to do his share, each was selected as far as possible to do the thing which he could do best and therefore which would best serve the country. It also sought to prevent those who had families dependent upon them from going to war until they were absolutely needed. Thus the selective draft is an example of government organizing our national man power for more effective team work and with less hardship than if it had been left to voluntary action. The United States Food Administration was created by OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 55 the President to carry out the provisions of a law passed by Congress “to provide further for the national security and defense by encouraging the production, conserving the supply, and controlling the distribution of food products and fuel.” The President placed at its head a man in whom the people of the country had great confidence because of his experience and success in organizing and managing the Belgian relief work, Mr. Herbert Hoover. He gathered around him men familiar with the problems relating to the food supply of the nation, and then proceeded to enlighten the country in regard to the nature of these problems and to seek for the cooperation of the people in solving them. As soon as he was appointed, Mr. Hoover issued a state¬ ment containing the following facts: Whereas we exported before the war but 80,000,000 bushels of wheat per annum, this year we must find for all our allies 225,000,000 bushels, and this in the face of a short crop. . . . France and Italy formerly produced their own sugar, while England and Ireland imported largely from Germany. Owing to the inability of the first-named to produce more than one third of their needs, and the necessity for the others to import from other markets, they must all come to the West Indies for their very large supplies, and therefore deplete our resources. If we can reduce our consumption of wheat flour by 1 pound, our meat by 7 ounces, our sugar by 7 ounces, our fat by 7 ounces per person per week , these quantities multiplied by 100,000,000 (the population of the United States) will immeasurably aid and encourage our allies, help our own growing armies, and so effectively serve the great and noble cause of humanity in which our nation has embarked. This illustrates how the Food Administration sought cooperation. It “made partners” of the people, explained to them the situation, and asked them to help as individuals. It showed the nation what it must do if it were to be success¬ ful in its undertaking. It is true that the President had large powers to enforce observance of the rules outlined by the Food Administration, but it was only in the exceptional 5 ^ TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT case of the individual consumer and producer who refused to cooperate for the common good that it became necessary to use the power. The method of democracy is to point out clearly how the desired result may be obtained and leave it to the people to govern themselves accordingly. After a year of the war a member of the Food Adminis¬ tration is quoted as saying: 1 “There’s never been anything like it in history. ... We asked the American people to do voluntarily more than any other people has ever been asked to do under compulsion. And the American people made good!” It is our idea of democracy that the largest possible meas¬ ure of freedom for self-government be left to the individ¬ ual citizen and to the local community. The illustrations given are only a few of many that might be given to show how our national government respected this idea even in the time of war when the people were more than usually ready to sacrifice their individual rights in order that the principles upon which our nation is founded might live. But it is true to even a greater extent in time of peace. Doubtless much of the unusual government machinery created for the war emergency will cease to exist with the return of peace. And yet one of the most important lessons that the war should teach us is that we have little to fear from our national gov¬ ernment as long as we and those to whom we entrust its management always keep in mind its real purpose, which is to show us how to work together effectively as a nation and to help us to do it. All through this study we are going to observe how in the ordinary affairs of life our national government serves us in this respect. One thing we shall try especially to learn is that we have a great national purpose all the time , in peace 1 In an article of “ Your Wheatless Days,” by W. A. Wolff, in Collier's Weekly , Aug. 17, 1918. OUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY 57 as well as in war. In fact, peace is a part of that purpose. We went to war because without it there could be no as¬ surance of a lasting peace. While we fought to defend our national purpose and our national ideals against a powerful foe from without, this purpose and these ideals can not be fully achieved by the war alone. They can be finally achieved only by ourselves as we develop, day by day, our national community life. To do this we must always keep in mind our great national purpose, we must realize our dependence upon one another in achieving this purpose, and we must make our national team work as perfect as it can be made. Above all, we must realize that, in peace as in war, every man counts in our national community life. As President Wilson said, “ The Nation needs all men , but it needs each man . . . . “ The whole Nation must be a team , in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted.” CHAPTER VIII THE HOME “No nation can be destroyed while it possesses a good home life . 11 The home is the smallest, the simplest, and the most familiar community of which we are members. In many respects it is also the most important. The quotation with which this chapter opens suggests this. The home is important (i) because of what it does for its own members, and (2) because of what it does for the larger community of which it is a part. We shall consider first what it does for its own members. Under the conditions of pioneer life the wants of the mem¬ bers of the family were provided for almost entirely by their own united efforts. They built their own dwelling from materials which they themselves procured from the forest. They made their living from the land which they occupied, with tools which were largely homemade. They provided their own defense against attack from without and against sickness within. Such education as the children obtained was of the most practical kind, and was obtained by actual experience in their daily work supplemented by such in¬ struction as parents and older brothers and sisters could give. There was little social life except within the family circle. When other homes were built in the neighborhood a larger community life began. The neighboring homes came to depend upon one another and to cooperate in many ways. The store at the crossroads provided for many wants that THE HOME 59 each home had formerly provided for itself. The doctor who came to live in the community relieved the home of much anxiety in case of sickness. The education of the children was in part, at least, turned over to the community school. And so, as a community grows, the home shifts much of the responsibility for providing for the wants of its members upon the community agencies. This shifting of responsibility for the welfare of citizens from the home to the larger community is carried furthest in cities. Almost everything wanted in the home may be bought in the city shops, and work that is done in the home for the family, such as repair work, dressmaking, laundry work, and cooking is likely to be done by people brought in from outside. Water is piped in from a public water supply and sewage is piped out through public sewers. Gas and electricity for lighting and heating are furnished by city plants. Since many city homes have not a spot of ground for a garden or for outdoor play, they depend upon public parks and playgrounds provided by the city. These are among the many so-called advantages of city life. When so much is done for the citizens by the larger com¬ munity agencies, there is danger that the family may forget that it still has a great responsibility for the welfare of its members in connection with every want of life. For no matter how.good the community's arrangements for health protection may be, the health of every citizen depends more upon the home than upon any other agency. No matter how good the schools, the home always has great respon¬ sibility for the education of the children, both within the home itself and through cooperation with the schools. No matter how many social organizations and places of amuse¬ ment the community may afford, the social recreational life of the home is the most important of all and the most far- reaching in its influence. No matter how excellent the 6o TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT form of government in a community may be, its results will be very imperfect unless the government in each home is good. The home has especial importance in the rural com¬ munity of to-day. The rural home is no longer so isolated and self-dependent as the pioneer home, but the life of the rural citizen is much more dependent upon efforts within the home itself than the life of the city resident. For ex¬ ample, the business of farming by which the family living is secured is carried on at home, and, as a rule, all the members of the family have some part in it. It is a cooperative family enterprise to a much greater extent than any other modern business. In cities, in the great majority of cases, the work by which the family living is earned is done away from home, and very often no member of the family except the father has any direct part in it. There are numerous cases, however, where the mother and even the children go out to work, and in such cases the home life is seriously interfered with. It would be hard to find a rural home in the United States to-day that is not near enough to a schoolhouse to enable the children to attend it, at least for an elementary educa¬ tion. Unfortunately high schools are not yet easily access¬ ible in all rural communities. But whether the education afforded by the rural school is of the best or not, the boy or girl on the farm gets in addition a kind of education through the varied occupations of the farm life that the city boy or girl does not get, and for which the city schools have tried in vain to find an adequate substitute. It is remarkable how many of the successful men and women of our country j were raised on farms; and they almost always bear witness to the value of the training received there. So in matters of health, of social life and recreation, of pleasant and beautiful surroundings, the rural home must depend very largely upon itself. The strength and happiness THE HOME 61 of the community, of our nation itself, depend largely upon the extent to which the homes perform their proper work in providing for the wants of their members. We have read in an earlier chapter (page 5) that “our national purpose is to transmute days of dreary work into happier lives — for ourselves first and for all others in their time.” This purpose can not be fully achieved if it is not first of all achieved in the home. One of the objections often raised to life on the farm is that it is a life of drudgery, of few conveniences and comforts, of long hours, hard work, and little recreation. Happily this is not so true as it once was. Labor-saving machinery, better methods of trans¬ portation and communication, better schools, have done much to improve conditions of rural home life. But oc¬ casionally there still come statements like the following from some of the women in the farm homes: In many homes life on the farm is a somewhat one-sided affair. Many times the spare money above living expenses is expended on costly machinery and farm implements to make the farmer’s work lighter; on more land where there is already a sufficiency; on expensive horses and cattle and new out-buildings; while little or nothing is done for home improvement and no provision made for the comfort and con¬ venience of the women of the family. If a silo will help to reduce the man’s labor, a vacuum cleaner will do likewise for his wife. If the stock at the barn needs a good water system to help it grow, the stock in the house needs it too, and needs it warm for baths. You see many a farm where there is a cement floor in the bam, while the cellar in the house is awful; a sheep dip, but no bathtub; a fine buggy and a poor baby carriage. On many farms a hundred dollars in cash are not spent in the home in a year. These are not meant as complaints about the purchase of labor-saving farm machinery. Such complaints would be shortsighted, for it is only by improved methods of farming that the means and the leisure can be found to enrich the home life in every way. But the advantages gained by im- 62 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT provements that increase the farmer’s returns are largely lost if they do not at the same time bring ‘‘happier lives” to the family as a whole. Cooperation is not real if it is one¬ sided. It is necessary on most farms that the entire family cooperate in the business of farming, which is after all the business of the man; but it is equally important that there be cooperation in every phase of the household work and home life. The farm home is not only the place where the family living is earned; it is also the place where the family life is lived. Democracy aims at equal opportunity to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; “days of dreary work” must be transmuted into “happier lives” for the women and children as well as for the men. Unless this is done in the home there is little chance of its being done at all. The following story is told of a housekeeper in a farm home in one of the sections of the West which have been irrigated by our government: This little woman saw in the sacred rite of old-school housekeepers something more than scrubbing and polishing. . . . When her house- cleaning was over she knew just what linen she would need during the coming year, just how much fruit and vegetables she would need to can or preserve or dry, just what clothing must be replaced or repaired, and what dishes would be needed to keep her set complete. She not only made changes to improve the appearance of her house, but planned and made the changes in her workshop which would save steps and make her work as easy as possible. When her mind got to work, housekeeping became a game, the object being to eliminate all unnecessary labor. Her benches and tables and sinks were raised to the proper height and she became ashamed of the back-breaking energy she had wasted bend¬ ing over them. A high stool, made by removing the back and arms from the baby’s outgrown high chair, made dishwashing and ironing much easier. She has been housekeeping intelligently a dozen years, yet at each housecleaning or stock-taking period she installs some new labor saver. THE HOME 63 She not only makes her head save her heels, but she takes another kind of inventory which is as well worth while. It is the inventory which we all need to take of ourselves to be sure that we are making the best of our opportunities instead of drifting along day by day in a rut. She searches out the hidden places in her soul to see if she is just as patient, as thoughtful, as cheerful as she might be. 1 . . . In some rural communities the home has been relieved of much of the household drudgery by the development of co¬ operative creameries, cooperative laundries, and other com¬ munity institutions to do work that was formerly done entirely in the home. In such cooperative enterprises citizens of the community buy shares of stock as in the case of the Fruit Growers' Association (page 16). In one com¬ munity in Michigan “a vote was taken, the women voting as well as the men, to determine the sentiment of the com¬ munity on the establishment of such a laundry, and the vote was so overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition that the Farmers' Club promptly called a meeting to promote the enterprise. ” An addition was built to the cooperative creamery which the community already possessed, so that the same steam plant could be used for both. The farmers brought their laundry when they brought their cream, and carried it back on the next trip. 4 'The laundry has been successful in relieving the hard life of a farmer's wife, and in addition has been not only self-sustaining but a profitable institution." One of the women of the community says: It has lightened the work in the home to such an extent that one can manage the work without keeping help, which is very scarce and high priced, when it would be impossible to do so if the washing was included with our other duties. And another writes: 1 Reclamation Record , Feb. 1918, p. 55, “Project Women and their Materials” by Mrs. Louella Littlepage. 64 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT This change gives me two days of recreation that I can call my own every week and also gives me more time in which to accomplish the household duties. 1 A great deal of help is now being given to the home by the government, and this is especially true in the case of the rural home. The public schools, both in city and country, now consider home-making and “home economics” as worthy of a place in the course of study as geography and mathematics. State agricultural colleges are beginning to give as much attention to these subjects as they do to soils and fertilizers and stock-breeding. Moreover, the colleges conduct “extension courses,” sending teachers trained in the art of home-making to give instruction to women and girls in every part of the state. They assist in organizing clubs of girls and women to study various aspects of home¬ making and housekeeping, and give demonstrations of the most successful methods of cooking, of canning, and of other activities connected with home life on the farm, as well as Of labor-saving devices in the household. The state agricultural colleges have the cooperation of the Department of Agriculture of the national government in all this work. In the Year Book of the Department of Agriculture for 1916, there is an account of results derived from home demonstration work in the southern states. The following story of what Ruth Anderson accomplished is a good illus¬ tration of the possibilities of this work: Ruth Anderson, of Etowah County, Ala., in her second year of club work, had an excellent plat of one tenth of an acre of beans and toma¬ toes. She is the second girl in a family of eleven, and takes a great interest in her club work. The family home was small, dark, and crowded, and somewhat unattractive. One day a carpenter friend of her father saw her one tenth of an acre and said he wished he had time to plant a garden. She told him she would furnish vegetables in ex- 1 “A Successful Rural Cooperative Laundry," in the Year Book , Department of Agriculture, 1915, pp. 189-194. THE HOME 65 change for some of his time.... After awhile a bargain was made by which the carpenter agreed to begin work on the remodeling of the house if Ruth would furnish him with fresh and canned vegetables for the season. The other members of the family were soon interested in this under¬ taking and worked willingly to contribute their share to. its success. When the house was partly finished Ruth won a canning-club prize given by a hardware merchant in Gadsden, the county seat. Silverware was offered her, but, intent upon completing the new house, she asked the merchant how much a front door of glass would cost, and learned that she could get the door, side lights, and windows for the price of the silverware. In this way Ruth brought light and joy to her family with her windows and door. To-day they live in a pretty bungalow that she helped to build with her gardening and canning work. At the age of 14, in the second year of her work, Ruth put up 700 cans of tomatoes and 750 cans of beans. 1 Ruth's dwelling before and after she began her work is shown in the accompanying illustrations. The national government is helping in the work of home* making in other ways than those suggested above, and through other departments than that of agriculture. In the Department of the Interior the General Land Office, the Bureau of Education, the Reclamation Service, the Office of Indian Affairs, are all doing work to improve the homes of the land. So, also, is the Public Health Service of the Treasury Department; the Bureau of Standards in the De¬ partment of Commerce; the Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor. Why does our government take such an active interest in home-making? This question brings us to the second part of our study of the home: what the home does for the com¬ munity of which it is a part. For it is because of what the home does for the community as a whole that the govern¬ ment takes such interest in it. 1 “Effect of Home Demonstration Work in the South,” in 1916 Year Book of the Department of Agriculture, p. 254. CHAPTER IX WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME-MAKING • Our nation requires healthy citizens, intelligent citizens, prosperous and happy citizens. The home can do more to produce such citizens than any other community agency. Therefore the nation is wise to look after its homes. People can not do their work well if they live in unwhole¬ some or unpleasant homes. This was made clear during the great war. The lack of suitable living places for work¬ men and their families was one of the chief obstacles to ship¬ building and munitions manufacture during the early part of the war. England found this out as well as the United States, and one of the first things both countries had to do was to take measures to provide proper home conditions for those who were engaged in supplying the nation’s needs. During the first year of the war our Congress appropriated $200,000,000 to build houses for industrial workers. The problem of securing good physical conditions of home life has naturally been greatest in crowded industrial centers, but it is by no means absent in small communities, or even in the open country. One writer describes a certain farm house where five people were accustomed to sleep in one not very large bedroom, which had only one small window, and even that was nailed shut; one of these five had incipient tuberculosis. These people were well-to-do farmers, living in a large twelve room, stone house and simply crowded into one room for the sake of mistaken economy — presumably to save coal arid wood. Many such cases could be described, not only in the more remote and backward regions, but even in prosperous farm¬ ing communities. WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME-MAKING 67 What is the result of this overcrowding and lack of proper housing in the country? Just exactly the same as in the great cities — lack of efficiency, disease, and premature death to many. . . . While the great majority of people subjected to overcrowding and bad housing conditions do not prematurely die, yet they have a lessened physical and mental vigor, are less able to do properly their daily work, and not only become a loss to themselves and their families, but to the state. 1 Some of our states and many of our cities have laws to regulate housing conditions, but such laws seldom apply to small communities. In cities where people live crowded together in closely built city blocks, unsanitary conditions in one home endanger the health of the entire community. There is also danger from fire, and vice and crime may breed and spread quickly and unseen. The community is driven, therefore, in its own defense, to regulate the people's housing. In small communities, and especially in rural communities, where homes are more widely separated and in some cases quite isolated, it has seemed of little concern to others how one citizen builds his home and what he does in it. Thought¬ ful consideration of such cases as that described above, how¬ ever, must convince us that what happens even in remote homes is a matter of national concern. Both the physical and the economic strength of the nation is undermined by un¬ wholesome conditions in the separate homes of the land. Economic loss to the community may result not merely from unwholesome home conditions, but also from incon¬ venience of location and arrangement of the homes. A good deal of attention is being given to “community planning” in the United States and especially in England and other European countries. Community planning includes not only provision for the proper location and construction of public buildings and streets, for water supply, lights, parks, etc., but 1 Bashore, “Overcrowding and Defective Housing in the Rural Dis¬ tricts,” quoted in Nourse, Agricultural Economics , pp. 118, 119, 121. 68 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT also for the convenient, as well as wholesome and pleasant, location of homes. Large cities, like London, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, have spent enormous sums of money in city planning after they have already grown up without plan. It has necessitated destroying old structures and widening streets. Villages and small towns are in a position to introduce a plan for future growth without this needless expense. Our beautiful capital city of Washington has grown according to a plan that was carefully laid out before a building was erected. But even in Washington one of the greatest problems the city had to face during the war was that of providing homes for the enormous number of workers who came to the city to do the work of the gov¬ ernment. “The need of careful arrangement in country homes is much more urgent than in city homes for the reason that country people use their homes as the business center of their profession/’ says Prof. R. J. Pearce, of Iowa State College. “The farmer in his business center must not only produce enough raw material to provide for himself and family, but he must needs produce enough to feed and clothe the entire human race.” “Conservation of space must be taken into consideration to obtain the greatest results from our high priced land; convenience must be a prime factor when expensive labor is at a premium; and attractiveness must be one of the chief motives not only to make farm property more salable but to give greater enjoyment to the owner and his family. ...” “A farmstead is but a unit in a farming community, yet travelers form an impression of the entire community by individual farm homes which they see in passing. Therefore, not only financial considera¬ tion but personal pride and a feeling of community spirit and enterprise should urge the farm owner to develop his farmstead according to the best of modern methods.” WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME-MAKING 69 Home ownership is one of the strongest influences that give permanence and stability to the community. The census taken by the United States government every ten years shows that home ownership has been decreasing throughout the country as a whole. The decrease has been greatest in the cities, but it is true also of farm-home owner¬ ship. In 1880 only 25% of the farms of the United States were occupied by tenants (renters); in 1910, 37% were so occupied. It is true that in the ten years from 1900 to 1910 there was a slight increase in the proportion of farms owned by their occupants in the New England and Middle At¬ lantic states, and in a large part of the West; but the in¬ crease in these parts was more than overbalanced by the decrease in the South Atlantic and Gulf states and in the Mississippi valley. The smallest proportion of farm ten¬ ancy is found in New England (8 %), and the largest in the southern states (45.9% in the South Atlantic states, and more than 50% in the South Central states). A large part of the farming in the South is done by Negroes, most of whom are either laborers on the farms of the white population or tenants on small farms which they usually work on shares. And yet the number of Negro farm owners in the South has been rapidly increasing in the last few years, though not so rapidly as the number of tenants. In 1910 Negro farm owners cultivated nearly 16,000,000 acres of land in the South, all of which they have acquired since the Civil War. The decline in home ownership both in the cities and in the rural districts of the United States has been observed with considerable anxiety because of the effect upon our national welfare and upon the citizenship of the country. One writer says: Farming is a permanent business; it is no “fly by night” occupa¬ tion. ... No man can pull up stakes and leave a farm at the close of the year without sacrificing the results of labor which he has done. . . . 70 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The renter who ends harvest knowing that he will move in the spring, will not do as good a job of hauling manure and fall plowing as he would were he to stay; nor does he take as good care of the buildings and other improvements. . . . The cost to the farming business of the country each year for this annual farm moving-week mounts into the millions of dollars. And the pity of it all is that practically no one is the winner thereby. . . . The renter loses, the landlord loses, the general community and the nation at large lose. 1 Tenant farming also places obstacles in the way of com¬ munity progress in other ways. The tenant takes little interest in community affairs. The questions of schools, churches, or roads, are of little moment to him. He does not wish to invest in enterprises which will of necessity be left wholly . . . to his successor. In short, he is in the community, but hardly of it. 2 A family that owns its home feels a sense of proprietorship in a part of the community land. The money value of a home increases in proportion to the prosperity of the com¬ munity as a whole; its owner will therefore be inclined to do all he can to promote the welfare of a community. A community that is made up largely of homes owned by their occupants is likely to be more prosperous and more progressive, and its citizens more loyal to it, than a com¬ munity whose families are tenants. While all that has been said in the preceding paragraph is true, it must not be thought that tenancy is necessarily a bad thing in all cases, nor that a man who does not own his home can not be a thoroughly good citizen. There are circumstances that make it necessary for many families to live in dwellings that they do not own. Tenancy may be 1 W. D. Boyce, in an editorial in The Farming Business , February 26, 1916, and quoted in Nourse, Agricultural Economics , p. 651. 2 B. H. Hibbard, “Farm Tenancy in the United States,” in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1912, P- 39 - WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME-MAKING 71 a step toward home ownership. A citizen may have in¬ sufficient money to buy a farm, but enough to enable him to rent one. By industry, economy, and intelligence, he may soon accumulate means with which to buy the farm he occupies or some other. It is as much the duty of the home renter as it is of the home owner to take an interest in the community life in which he and his family share, and to cooperate with his neighbors for the common good. While he lives in the community he is largely dependent upon it, like any other citizen, for the satisfaction of his wants. Its markets and its roads are his for the transportation and disposal of his produce and stock. He gets the benefit of its schools for the education of his children. He may share in its social life if he cares to do so. His property is protected by the same agencies that protect that of his neighbors. He can not, therefore, escape the responsibility of contributing to the progress of his community to the extent of his ability. It is as much the duty of the man who rents a farm as it is of the man who owns one to make his farm produce to its full capacity, to protect the soil from exhaustion and the buildings and fences from destruction. But on the other hand, it is the duty of the landlord, both as a good business man and as a good citizen, to make such terms with his tenant that the latter will take an interest in the farm and will find it profitable to farm properly. The landlord must be interested not only in his land but in his tenant. The tenant must be interested not only in himself but in his landlord and his land. A system that favors the tenant to the injury of the land is bad. A system that favors the land to the injury of the tenant is equally harmful. Either system will result in the poverty of both the landlord and the tenant. 1 1 Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, quoted by Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones in “ Negroes and the Census of 1910,” p. 16. (Reprint from The Southern Workman for August, 1912.) 72 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The fact remains, however, that home ownership con¬ tributes to the permanence, the stability, and the progress of a community. It is also a fact that conditions have developed in our country, both in cities and in rural com¬ munities, which make home ownership increasingly difficult. We should not leave the study of this chapter without noting that one of the most important services performed for the community by the home is that of training its mem¬ bers for citizenship. The family has been called ‘‘a school of all the virtues” that go to make good citizenship. It is a school in which not only the children, but also the parents, not only the boys and men, but also the girls and women, receive training by practice. In the home are developed thoughtfulness for others, a spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good, loyalty to the group of which the individual is a member, respect for the opinions of others of longer experience, a spirit of team work, and obedience to rules which exist for the welfare of all. If these and other qualities of good citizenship are not cultivated in the home, it is not in a healthy condition nor performing its proper service to the community. Moreover, the exercise of these virtues in the home is not only training for good citizenship; it is good citizenship. If the home is as important a factor in our national life as this chapter has indicated, then one of the greatest op¬ portunities for good citizenship, and one of the greatest duties of good citizenship, is that of making the home what it should be; and in this each member of the family has his or her share. CHAPTER X EARNING A LIVING While young people are spending most of their time in school or at play, their fathers and other grown people are usually chiefly occupied in the business of making a living or '‘earning money.” Children are, as a rule, wholly de¬ pendent upon their parents for their living. But during their period of dependence they are gaining skill and ex¬ perience, in school and otherwise, that will later enable them to earn their own living and that of other people who may, in turn, become dependent upon them. As adult life approaches, there comes an increasing de¬ sire for independence of others, to have possessions, own property, or accumulate wealth . 1 Our vocations, or means of earning a livelihood, come to occupy a prominent place in our thought, and to a large extent control our activity. An inquiry in a large, first-year high school class disclosed the fact that the girls of the class, quite as much as the boys, were thinking of their choice of vocation. More avenues are open to girls to-day than formerly by which 1 The activities by which we earn a living are also the activities by which wealth is produced. It is important to understand that when we speak of “wealth” we do not necessarily mean great wealth. A boy who has a fifty-cent knife, or a girl who has a twenty-five-cent purse, has wealth as truly as the man who owns a well-stocked farm. The difference is merely in kind and amount. Food, clothing, houses, books, tools, cattle, are all forms of wealth. Any material thing, for which we are willing to work and make sacrifices because it satisfies our wants, is wealth. Earning a living is merely earning or producing wealth to satisfy our wants and those of others. 74 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT to earn their living outside of the family; but even the management of a home is a business as truly as the man¬ agement of a farm or a factory, and is an exceedingly important factor in the earning of the family living. No matter what varied interests the people in our com¬ munities may have, the most conspicuous activities that we see going on are usually those that have to do with earning a living or the production of wealth. Indeed, some people become so absorbed in the business of earning a living that they seem to be living to earn rather than earning to live. It does not do to forget that not earning , but living is the real end in view. Unless we know how to use what we earn to provide properly for all of our normal wants, the effort we spend in earning is very largely wasted. Nevertheless, before we can enjoy a living it has to be earned, by ourselves or by some one else; and the activities by which it is earned occupy so important a place in our lives, are so closely dependent upon the community, have so much to do with our citizenship, and receive so much attention from government, that we must give them some consideration. Our dependence upon others for a living by no means ends with childhood. There is no such thing as an entirely “self- made man,” by which is meant a man who has been success¬ ful entirely by his own efforts. It is true that the primitive hunter and the pioneer farmer were independent of others to an unusual extent (see pages 7-8). They extracted their living directly from nature with little help from others. But their living was a meager one, and they could not ac¬ cumulate much wealth. The very land that a pioneer occupies, even though it is extensive and fertile, has little value as long as it is remote from centers of population. Even if a pioneer laid claim to a large tract of land, he could produce little wealth from it in crops if he could get no help to cultivate it, or if he had no improved machinery EARNING A LIVING 75 (made by others); and whatever he produced, he and his family could eat but little of the product. He could feed some to his few animals, and he would save some for seed; but anything that he raised above what he could actually use would have no value unless he could get it to other people who wanted it. If he could not sell what he produced, neither could he buy from others what they produced to satisfy other wants than that for food. So the kind of living a person enjoys, and the amount of wealth he accumulates, depend largely upon other people, and upon the community in which he lives. Under present-day conditions, a farmer who raises wheat probably uses none of it himself. He sells his entire crop for the use of others, while to supply himself and his family with bread he goes to the store and buys flour that may have been milled in Minnesota from wheat raised by other farmers, perhaps in North or South Dakota. In exchange for his wheat he also gets clothing manufactured in New York or New England from cotton raised in Georgia or Texas, or from wool grown in Montana. He buys a wagon made in Indiana from lumber cut in the South and iron mined in Minnesota and smelted in Ohio. Thus he earns his living by producing food for other people, while the things he uses in living are the product of labor expended by other people in the effort to earn their living. We noticed in Chapter II how many people and occupations were concerned in pro¬ ducing a pair of shoes (page io). This again emphasizes our interdependence in community life. But what we now want to notice particularly is that while the farmer or other worker may be interested pri¬ marily in providing for his own wants and those of his family he can do this only by producing something or performing service for others; and that while each worker may be most concerned about what he receives for his work, the community 76 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT is most concerned about what he produces. Earning a living has two sides to it, rendering service to others and being paid for the service rendered. It is as if the. community entered into a sort of agreement with him to the effect that it will provide him with a living in return for definite service to the community, or for the product of his labor. What we call “business” is selling a service. It may be personal service, such as teaching, or prescribing medicine, or nursing, or giving legal advice, or cutting hair, or driving a team, or running an automobile. Or it may be merchandising — purchasing, transporting, storing, retailing, and delivering things which have been produced perhaps many hundreds or thousands of miles away. Or it may be raising foodstuffs on the farm, or mining fuel and metals from the earth, or cutting timber from the forest. Or it may be manufacturing — buying materials and labor and converting them into serviceable products. Every man's business is also the com¬ munity's business. The community has a right to expect in¬ dustry and honest, efficient work from every worker. Good or bad citizenship shows itself in the work that a citizen does for a living more, perhaps, than in any other way. There are exceptional cases where people receive a living without earning it. One class of such people is represented by thieves, gamblers, swindlers, and persons engaged in occupations that are positively harmful to the community. Such people may be very skillful, and they may work hard enough, but they take what others have earned without producing anything of value to the community. Then there are those who are incapable of productive work because of physical defects, or through the feebleness of old age. It is the duty of every citizen to provide, as far as possible, during his productive years, for the '‘rainy day" of misfortune or advancing age; but for those who can not do so, the community must provide. EARNING A LIVING 77 Very young children are users of wealth produced by others, while they produce nothing for the use of others. It is expected, however, that children will in later years make return to the community for what they have received from their parents and from the community as a whole during their period of helplessness. Some people inherit wealth, or otherwise come into possession of it without effort on their part. The wealth so received, however, has been earned by some one, or has come from the community in some way. If the person who so receives it uses it in a way that is highly useful to the community, he may in a sense earn it even after he receives it; but if he uses it solely for his own enjoyment, without effort to make it highly useful to the community, he does not in any sense earn it, and places himself in the class of those who are wholly dependent upon the community. On the other hand, there are people who do not get for their work a living that fairly compensates them for the service they render by it to the community. This is one of the particulars in which our community life is still very imperfect. Where so many different kinds of workers are engaged in producing shoes, for example, it is extremely difficult to determine how much each should be paid for his share of the work. What wages should be given to the different classes of workers who care for the cattle, make the leather, manufacture the machines with which the shoes are made, operate the machines, mine the coal and iron for the production of the machines, and so on? What profits shall be allowed to the men who raise the cattle, to the tanners of the leather, to the merchants who sell the shoes and the machines, and to the transportation companies that carry them from the factories to the dealers? What interest shall be received by the men who furnish the capital necessary to run the factories and the farms? These ques- 7 8 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT tions relating to the distribution of wealth 1 that men pro¬ duce have proved very difficult to answer satisfactorily. While some doubtless receive too much in proportion to their service to the community, others as truly receive too little. If our community life were perfectly adjusted in all its parts; if all the people clearly recognized their common interests and their interdependence; if they had the spirit of cooperation and were wise enough to devise smoothly working machinery of cooperation — then the returns that a worker received for his work would be closely proportion¬ ate to the service rendered by his work. That is, he would get what he earned , so far as wages or profits were concerned. But if, under the existing imperfect conditions of com¬ munity life, some seem to get more, and others less, than their service warrants, the remedy is not for the wronged worker or producer to become a “slacker’’ in his work, but rather to show by his industry and efficiency that he is worthy of the community’s recognition. For if he tries to “get even” by withholding from the community the service it has a right to expect from him, he only makes matters worse, for himself as well as for the community, because he helps in that way to keep the community in an unhealthy condition. An injury suffered from an imperfect com¬ munity can not be cured by doing an injury to the commu¬ nity, but only by doing everything possible to make the 1 A very useful and interesting, but rather difficult, science has grown up to explain the production , distribution , and use of wealth . It is called the science of economics. Of all the divisions of this science, that relating to the distribution of wealth is the most perplexing. It is the inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the sense of injustice produced by these inequalities, and sometimes a failure to understand what a fair distribu¬ tion is, that have caused all of the labor disputes referred to in Chapter VII, and the discontent sometimes felt by farmers and other producers in regard to the prices of their products. EARNING A LIVING 79 community strong and wholesome. (Compare the discus¬ sion of “membership” in Chapter V, pages 32-33.) The government has a great deal to do with the activi¬ ties by which people earn their living. The reason for this may be clearly seen. Each citizen has a right to feel that the government is interested in his individual prosperity and happiness; and it is, for unhappy and discontented citizens are seldom good citizens. But the government represents the community as a whole, and it is supposed to have the interest of the community as a whole in its keep¬ ing rather than the interest of particular individuals. Its interest is primarily in what each citizen produces , for it is upon this that the strength of the nation, and of the smaller communities of which the nation consists, depends. A few days after war was declared against Germany, the President made an appeal to his fellow-countrymen in which he said: It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever and that they must be more economi¬ cally managed and better adapted to the particular requirements of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men and women who devote their thought and their energy to these things will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and free¬ dom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international, Service Army, — a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world. . . . Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right and necessity be excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire. He then appealed directly to every kind of worker in the country, and to the farmers he said: 8o TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are cooperating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of food¬ stuffs. . . . Without abundant food . . . the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. . . . Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. . . Let me suggest, also, that every one who creates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every house¬ wife who practices strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. And then he added: The government of the United States and the governments of the several states stand ready to cooperate. . . . This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great democracy and we shall not fall short of it. The importance of industry as an element of our national strength is by no means limited to wartime. The history of our country has been largely a story of the clearing of forests, of the reclaiming of the soil for agriculture, of the opening of mines, and of the growth of commerce and manufacture. It has been a story of the building of rail¬ roads and steamships, of telegraphs and telephones. The men who have done these things are as truly the builders of our nation as the men who made our constitutions and organized our governments. The people who, in times of peace as well as in times of war, work on the farms or in the mines, in factories and shops, in stores and offices, or in other businesses and occupations, are as truly doing their country a service as those who make our laws and administer our government. The nation needs the productive work of each citizen in time of peace as truly as in time of war, although when it is not fighting for its very life it is more tolerant of those who do not contribute effectually by their work to the common good. It carries them along somehow. But such EARNING A LIVING 81 members of the community are a burden and a source of weakness at all times. Therefore, for example, there are in most of our communities laws against vagrancy; that is, against willful and habitual idleness as in the case of beggars and tramps. The community is always suspicious of persons “without visible means of support.” There are usually many men “out of work” in different parts of our country. In times of business depression the number may become very great, while in prosperous times the number dwindles; but always there are some. It is often through no fault of their own; it is another result of the imperfect adjustment of our community life. It often happens that while large numbers of men are unable to find work in industrial centers, the farmers in many parts of the country may be suffering for want of help. This may be merely because there is no way by which to let workmen know where they are needed, or of distributing them to meet the need. Or, many of the unemployed may be unskilled, while the demand is for skilled workmen; or they may be skilled in one line, while the demand is in another line. Whatever the causes, the “problem of the unemployed” is one of the most serious that the community has to deal with. During the war the national government sought to overcome these difficulties by the organization of an employment division in the Department of Labor. It is of the greatest importance both to the individual and to the community that every citizen (i) should be continuously employed in a useful occupation, (2) should be free to choose that occupation for which he is best fitted and in which he will be happiest, .and (3) should be thor¬ oughly efficient in his work, whatever it is. (1) The community has a right to expect every citizen to be industrious and productive, for only in this way can he be self-sustaining and at the same time contribute his 82 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT share to the well-being of the community. Probably all who read this chapter are desirous of doing useful work. At the same time, it is easy for any of us to fall into the habit of thinking more about what we can get than about what we can give. There are people who seek habitually to do as little as possible for what they get, or to get all they can for the least possible service. This applies not only to idlers who live entirely off the community without any service on their part, but also to those who have em¬ ployment, but who seek to evade, by time-serving and otherwise “slacking,” the full responsibility of service. We sometimes hear complaint in regard to public officials who draw good salaries without rendering adequate or honest public service in return, and to such we frequently apply the term “grafter.” But the principle is exactly the same when any person who has undertaken to do a piece of work fritters away his time or “loafs on the job.” The citizen owes it to his community, and to himself as well, to think constantly of his work in terms of service rendered. After all, the chief return that we get for our work is not the wages or the profits, important as they are to us, but the satisfaction of doing something that is worth while. If this pleasure is absent from the work we do, no amount of money returns can compensate us for it. The happy man is a busy man, an industrious man; and his happiness is more in the doing, than in the mere fact of money returns. (2) The value of our work to the community and the pleasure that we derive from it both depend to a large extent upon our fitness for it. It is important to choose our work carefully. There are four important considerations in choosing a vocation: (a) its usefulness to the commu¬ nity, (6) one’s own fitness for it, (c) one’s happiness in it, and (d) whether it offers an adequate living to one’s self EARNING A LIVING 83 and dependents. The last of these is, of course, a most important consideration. What a person receives for his work ought to be determined by the first two considerations, i.e., the usefulness of the work to the community and one’s fitness for it. We have seen that this is not always true. In such cases it often becomes necessary to make a further choice — a choice between working primarily for one’s own profit and working primarily for the satisfaction that comes from important service well rendered. It is not always easy to make this choice; but there are many people who have sacrificed large incomes for the sake of doing work that the community needs and for which they consider themselves well fitted. The opportunity to choose one’s calling, to decide what service one will fit himself for, the right of “self-determina¬ tion” in regard to what one’s work shall be — this is the thing for which men have left Old World conditions and come to America more often than for anything else. This is what freedom means. If a person can do what he likes to do best, he gets pleasure out of his work. To fit himself for this work, he is willing to spend years in preparation, until he is able to offer a service of the kind he likes to render, and for which others are glad to pay well. This is why men are happier when they are free. They enjoy their work for its own sake; they enjoy the “living” which they have “earned.” But the ability to make a living under conditions of freedom depends on the common wants or needs of the community and its willingness to pay for the satisfaction of these wants enough to enable those who render the service also to satisfy theirs. The “equality” and “justice” that all men want mean equality of oppor¬ tunity to choose that which they like to do and an equal chance to obtain compensation or to make a living in return for their labor or enterprise. 8 4 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT Many people seem to have little choice in the matter of vocation. The farmer’s boy has to work on the farm whether he wants to or not; and many a man is a farmer apparently for no other reason than that he was raised on the farm and has seen no opportunity to do anything else. Other people seem to be forced into other occupations by circumstances, or drift into them by chance. But even in these cases there is something of a choice. The farmer’s boy “chooses” to remain on the farm rather than to take the chances involved in running away, or because he would rather be at home than in a strange city. The discontented farmer might have chosen to be a lawyer if he had been willing to make enough sacrifices to get ready for it; and even now he '‘chooses” to remain on the farm in spite of his dislike for it because to do otherwise would mean sacrifice of some kind or other that he is unwilling to make. The pleasure and effectiveness of any work, however, are increased if its importance to the community or to the world is clearly understood; for all productive work is im¬ portant. There is no more terrible work than that of the soldier in the trenches. No man would voluntarily choose it for his own pleasure. But millions of men have gone into it joyfully because of the results to be attained for their country and for the world. Other millions of men and women, and even children, on the farms, in the mines, in the shops, and in the homes, worked and sacrificed during the war with Germany as they had never worked and sacri¬ ficed before, produced results such as had never been pro¬ duced before, and doubtless experienced a satisfaction in their toil that they had never experienced before, because each one saw more definitely than before the relation of his work to the great national and world purpose. An under¬ standing of the meaning of our work in its relation to com- EARNING A LIVING 85 munity welfare goes a long way toward “transmuting days of dreary work into happier lives. ,, We are living, however, in a day of specialists. The jack- of-all-trades no longer thrives. The very nature of our interdependent life makes it necessary for each worker to do one thing and to do it exceedingly well. Even farming has been broken up to a considerable extent into special kinds of farming. Moreover, since the worker must be a specialist, requiring long, special training, it is more diffi¬ cult than it used to be for him to change from one occupa¬ tion to another after he has once started. Each individual, therefore, owes it both to the community and to himself to choose his vocation carefully, so far as he has opportunity to make a choice. The schools are more and more making it their business to give to boys and girls the knowledge and the experience which will enable them to choose wisely their mode of earning a living. (3) Whether a citizen follows a vocation of his own volun¬ tary choice, or one into which he has fallen by chance or by the force of circumstances, he is under obligation to the community as well as to himself to do his work well. In these days of specialization this inevitably means prepa¬ ration , training. In this matter the community is under obligation to the individual; for if it expects him to per¬ form efficient service, it must afford him a fair opportunity for preparation. During the war the government had to take special measures to provide training, not only for service in the army, but also for the industrial occupations that the nation needed. Vocational training is receiving much more attention than it used to receive, both in city and rural schools. But, as in the choice of a vocation, the individual and the family have large responsibility for preparation for vocational life. There is always the natural temptation 86 TEAM WORK THROUGH GOVERNMENT for young people to get out into the active work of the world at the earliest possible moment. The desire to be inde¬ pendent, to earn one’s own living, to '‘make money,” is strong. It leads many boys and girls to leave school even before they have finished their elementary education. In the great majority of cases this results in serious economic loss both to the boy or girl and to the community. We call it patriotism when a man gives all that he has, even his life if necessary, for the good of his country, without stopping to consider whether he will receive an equal bene¬ fit in return. There is no higher type of patriotism than that which prompts a citizen to perform his best service for the community in his daily calling, not for what he can get for it, but for what he can give. This patriotism is shared by the young citizen who is willing to defer an apparent immediate gain to himself in order to prepare himself thoroughly for more effective service later.