UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 BULLETIN 
 
 COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 Prepared by 
 
 JOSEPH ERNEST McAFEE 
 Community Counselor 
 EXTENSION DIVISION, 
 Department of Public Information and Welfare, 
 
 J. W. SCROGGS. 
 
 Director. 
 
 "» waar a? m 
 
 APS 12 ,523 
 
 WiV&tojy 
 
 ILLJNO I 
 
 Issued Semi-Monthly By 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 Norman, Oklahoma 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This pamphlet seeks to serve several purposes. 
 
 It emphasizes the aim and ideals of the University of Oklahoma 
 in its outreach to the whole community life of the state. 
 
 It will be useful as a manual for those who are conscious of 
 the new and rapidly unfolding obligations of citizenship, and who 
 wish some gui^e and stimulus to their thought. 
 
 It will be suggestive to members of newly formd community 
 councils, or other civic organizations aiming at comprehending 
 under one program the multiform and now too often unrelated 
 activities, upon whose harmony and efficiency the health and pros- 
 perity of the community depend. 
 
 It will lay a basis for much more worthy publications in the 
 future, covering the same and related topics more intelligently. 
 
 Each reader is askt to help in revising this pamphlet. It is 
 intended only as a ground-breaker. It omits more than it contains. 
 It approaches many an important question from a single point of 
 view where there prevail .among thoughtful citizens many points of 
 view. It fails of its purpose where it may even seem to be dogmatic. 
 Your point of view is just as much entitld to consideration as is 
 that to a different effect presented anywhere in the bulletin. 
 
 Its best service will be thus renderd in furnishing a basis 
 of common counsel. Here on the first page is set forth the request 
 constantly repeated on later pages, that you write to the Extension 
 Division of the University about any phase or problem of your com- 
 munity life where your experience may be helpful to other com- 
 munities, or where the experience of others may prove helpful to 
 you. Make the University a clearing-house of information, and use 
 it in the fulfilment of its ideal of universal service. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 t 
 
 1 
 
 •*' The University 
 
 The University of Oklahoma aspires to be true to its name, 
 and render a universal service, to the population of the state, espec- 
 ially thru the Extension Division; it is quite as deeply interested 
 in adult education as in the more conventional methods providing 
 for the training of the young. 
 
 Ideally, education is to be conceivd as a process beginning with 
 the cradle and ending only with the grave. Our minds must con- 
 tinue to expand or they will certainly contract. The mental health 
 of each individual requires that his education shall be uninterrupted 
 to the. end of his life. Tho the methods may be radically alterd 
 f when he passes from the tutelage of the formal schools, there 
 
 should be no break in the program by which he advances to ever- 
 deepening satisfaction- in his personal acquirements and ever-widen- 
 ing usefulness in society. 
 
 ) This demand is enormously emphasized by the present-day de- 
 mands of our American democracy. One of the most vital move- 
 ments of our history is now concentrating attention upon the 
 community as the source of our democratic inspirations, and the 
 c Q test of our democracy’s success. We must win here or lose all 
 . along the l’ne. An intelligent citizenship is an absolute condition 
 ° precedent to the fulfillment of the destinies which our history and 
 - recent enlarged responsibilities for world destiny have markt out 
 for us. 
 
 Our educational program must be more thoro and reach farther 
 than we have heretofore conceived it. It must indeed be universal 
 and un’nterrupted. Youth alone is not the season of learning. He 
 • who does not keep pace with our rapid’y-moving civilization by new 
 ■{^learning every day and every year, falls hopelessly behind, and re- 
 « tards rather than advances the progress of the whole. 
 
 COMMUNITY INSTITUTES 
 , Special Bulletin 
 
 A separate bulletin is publish! by the Extension Division of the 
 - University, setting forth this program. The Institutes have met 
 
 with success surpassing expectations. While the resources now 
 t , . available seriously limit the development of the plan, yet no com- 
 
 >> w munity in the state should fail to investigate, read carefully the 
 
 ri 
 
 XL ' 
 
 < t 
 
 <s 
 
4 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 literature, and, if possible, avail itself of the benefits of an Institute. 
 
 The Institutes are under the management of a staff of ten or 
 more specialists. The actual sessions cover three evenings and 
 two full days. Certain members of the staff visit the community 
 where an Institute is to be held, in advance of the date set, and 
 assist local committees in arranging details. The remaining mem- 
 bers of the staff join in the leadership of the Institute proper. 
 
 Range of Subjects Considered 
 
 The program covers, by suggestion and implication, every phase 
 of social life, and deals directly with those practical problems which 
 the community may be at the time best prepared to solve. 
 
 The departments of the Institute include the following: 
 
 Public Health, with special emphasis upon the physical condi- 
 tion of the school 'pupils ; 
 
 Domestic Relations, especially the status of husband and wife 
 and the rearing of children in the home; 
 
 Organized Recreation and Community Music, seeking to im- 
 part practical methods and to inspire a comprehensive program for 
 the whole community; 
 
 Educational Aims and Policies, with emphasis upon the respon- 
 sibilities of the whole citizenship for the schools, as well as those 
 of school boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers ; 
 
 Business Relations, dealing with the personal and practical prob- 
 lems of the individual merchant, manufacturer, employer and em- 
 ploye, and also with the stake of the whole community in its eco- 
 nomic program ; 
 
 Community Organization, embracing all kinds of public, semi- 
 public and voluntary institutions thru which the common life is 
 exprest ; 
 
 Relations of town and country and problems of rural sociology 
 and economies. 
 
 The principles underlying this plan are vital and apply to every 
 community. They should be studied by all, however difficult or im- 
 possible it may be actually to set up a formal Community Institute. 
 The limited force and resources at the command of the University 
 will be made to go as far as they will, and yours may be one of 
 the communities in a position most to profit by an Institute. Send 
 to the Extension Division of the University for the literature. 
 
 Aim of Institutes 
 
 These Institutes are designed to serve as ground-breakers. 
 They arouse communities to the sense of citizenship. They start 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 things. They bring order out of the confusion which has often pre- 
 vaild even in communities zealous to move forward. They reveal 
 the next step. They break the deadlock which often exists between 
 equal and opposing factions. They reconcile conflicting interests and 
 contending leaders. They oil the machinery of progress, and fill 
 discouraged communities with hope. 
 
 But they also reveal the largeness and delicacy of the community 
 problems. The show that what the community hopes to achieve 
 requires new methods, sometimes new types of organization, and 
 not infrequently the setting aside of methods and organizations 
 which have outlived their usefulness. 
 
 In short, the Institutes are the first step. No community can 
 afford to stop with the Institute, and none in which the Institute 
 has fulfild its design will be content to stop with it. 
 
 After and Beyond the Institute 
 
 Furthermore, numerous communities are, due to other influ- 
 ences, thoroly arousd to community needs, and are struggling with 
 one or another of the manifold problems upon whose solution suc- 
 cessful democracy depends. Every consideration conspires to com- 
 pel the University to expand its extension work, and aim at a more 
 comprehensive community service. This bulletin is issued in pur- 
 suance of this call. 
 
 EACH COMMUNITY UNIQUE 
 
 The ideal plan for each community is that immediately suited 
 to its needs. There are no rigid models which can be universally 
 followd in detail. A move of manifest timeliness in one com- 
 munity may be altogether ill-advised in a neighboring community. 
 An institution or organization which is a veritable life-saver in one 
 instance may be useless and a positive detriment to the well-being 
 of a society differently situated. 
 
 Of all this the University is thoroly conscious. Actual experi- 
 ence in community work has safeguarded the University staff 
 against sure-cure nostrums and infallible programs, if reason and 
 ordinary good sense have not been effectual. It is not absolutely 
 certain that any community needs just the kind of organization 
 which the others find essential, even tho it be designed to meet a 
 universal need. There are several different kinds of public library, 
 for example, and numerous plans of operating a library. Every 
 community needs a library of some sort, but there are no absolutely 
 universal methods of securing one and conducting it with effici- 
 ency. 
 
6 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA’ 
 
 Every community should have some program of mobilizing in 
 the common service the entire citizenship, but various methods and 
 organizations thru which this is accomplisht have been found suc- 
 cessful, and again and again the successful method of one com- 
 munity has broken down utterly in another. 
 
 Keep the great universal needs clearly in view, therefore, and 
 in the devising of means and measures, practice that God-given 
 ingenuity without which any community must finally despair. 
 
 COMMUNITY COUNCIL 
 
 Following each Institute conducted by the University staff, a 
 Community Council of a certain type is recommended, and has been 
 uniformly organized. There are already several different kinds 
 of organizations going by this name in different sections of the 
 United States. Some of them are purely and confessed’y oppor- 
 tunistic. An emergency arose, somebody believed he saw a way of 
 meeting it, a group of citizens formd themselves into an organiza- 
 tion to achieve this purpose, and have calld themselves a community 
 council by way of emphasizing the unselfish aim of their activities. 
 
 Results not Theories 
 
 Back of such moves there is what many believe to be a sound 
 social philosophy. They believe that the only effective way to 
 make social progress is simply to meet the emergency when it 
 arises, devising the machinery for the purpose, and making other 
 machinery for the next task when the next emergency arises. They 
 show by much revealing experience that the mind of many com- 
 munities works in a manner to make this the only practical method. 
 The common run of people are not social philosophers. The abstract 
 principles of community building do not appeal to them at all. 
 They only know what they want when they want it. 
 
 When taxes are too 'high, they wish to reduce them. When 
 a public officer is not accomplishing what they wish to have 
 accomplisht, they want to have him out and another in his place. 
 They want good water and clear light and well-paved streets and 
 security in going about their business and pleasures, and they do not 
 care udder . what type of civil organization these results may be 
 attaind. What they want is results. 
 
 This philosophy appeals strongly to large numbers of the 
 people in all our communities. They los'e patience with those who 
 are so zealous to do everything just right that they never get any- 
 thing done. They are ready to accept any method or instrument 
 as the best which does the business and does it right away. 
 

 COMMUNITY EXTENSION 7 
 
 Limitations and Perils 
 
 Yet much painful experience is awakening many citizens to 
 the embarrassments of a purely opportunistic social philosophy. 
 This program has loaded our communities with vast accumula- 
 \ k tions of out-of-date machinery and affords means of scandalous 
 
 corruption. 
 
 While disinterested citizens 'leap -from one enthusiasm to anoth- 
 er those who have sinister motives seize upon the machinery origin- 
 ally set up with such commendable purpose, and pervert it to their 
 own ends. It has been abundantly demonstrated that the more 
 complicated the social mechanism becomes the more readily it lends 
 itself to the manipulation of tricksters and self-seekers. Our politi- 
 cal machinery is almost everywhere thus complicated, and the 
 ease with which the ingenious political boss gains and maintains 
 control fills the honest and simple-minded citizen with despair. 
 
 Our society is scandalously clutterd with useless and worse than 
 use’ess organizations and institutions. We create new ones at a furi- 
 ous rate, and few or none of the old die. Once brought into being 
 and given a degree of life they appear to believe themselves en- 
 ,dowd with a sort of divine right. Having existed for a time 
 they feel commissiond to live for all time. They point with great 
 pride to achievements of a dist’nguisht past, and thus justify 
 themselves in scorning the profane hand lifted to remove them as 
 now a useless encumbrance. And, true to its disposition, an oppor- 
 tunistic public supports them in their protests. 
 
 A Sounder Philosophy 
 
 A cure for these compounded evils is the devising of social ma- 
 chinery more adaptable to varied and changing- needs. Instead of 
 forming a brand new organization to meet each emergency which 
 arises, we ought to be able to set in operation a vital program capa- 
 ble of meeting promptly each and all ordinary demands, old and 
 new. 
 
 This is difficult under the best of conditions, and it is quite 
 impossible in the case of an unintelligent, time-serving citizen- 
 ship. Such a method requires a great deal of thinking ahead. And 
 where the citizens are unwilling or unable to think, of course, such 
 a plan will fail. 
 
 The type of Community Council advocated by the Institutes 
 is born of the disposition to think ahead, and provide an organiza- 
 tion which will not need to be abandond with the passing of each 
 emergency, and supplanted with an entirely new organization at 
 once a new emergency arises. Where any community is not pre- 
 pared for such an organization it will manifestly not succeed, and 
 
8 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 all will agree that it is unwise to force it upon any unwilling popula- 
 tion. By all means, let us seek eagerly the “best possible” where 
 the “impossible best” is out of the question. 
 
 Eternal Vigilance and Progress 
 
 For those communities whose citizens are disposed and able 
 to think ahead, to keep their plans forming in advance of the dire 
 necessities of today, the type, of Community Council projected by 
 . the Institute staff is commended.. It aims to provide the media thru 
 which every new idea will be tested and, if found of value, will be 
 promptly incorporated in the community program. No community 
 which operates the plan will be caught napping. It will not awaken 
 some morning to find its water and light system broken down, the 
 householder defenceless against fire and drought, its streets dark 
 and its treasury looted or empty thru default of an inefficient finan- 
 cial system. It will not be overwhelmd by a scourge of disease or 
 a scandal of immorality among its young people. It will be alert, 
 keen to discern the evil before it grows to unmanageable propor- 
 tions, intelligent to promote positive movements for the physical 
 and spiritual health before insidious evils can get their start, and, 
 in, short, always on the job. 
 
 Outstanding Features 
 
 Distinctive features of our Community Council should be clear- 
 ly set forth. In the appendix of this bulletin the reader will find a 
 suggested constitution. Details may be greatly varied to suit local 
 conditions. But the principles on which the organization is based 
 should be clearly apprehended. 
 
 All Elements Represented 
 
 The numbers included in the membership of the Council vary. 
 They have ranged so far from twelve to thirty. Perhaps there 
 should never be less and never more than these, tho there should 
 always be a complete representation of the social factors constituting 
 the community. Wherever there is a recognizable social group 
 somebody shouM be on the Council who can intelligently think with 
 and speak for them. And whenever a new group forms, the Council 
 should be prompt to add some one to reflect their ideas and ideals 
 in the common counsels. 
 
 Yet this representation should not be official. It would violate 
 every sanction of this type of Council to pack it with attorneys 
 for the various organizations and social groups of the community, 
 each eager to get all he can for his particular “set” or interest. The 
 central and single aim of the Council is to see the interests of the 
 community whole, and inspire measures designd to serve these whole 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 9 
 
 interests. Partisanship is the very frustration of all that the Coun- 
 cil stands for, and to convert the Council into a battle-ground of 
 irreconcilable or sly partisans is completely to destroy its usefulness. 
 
 Its purpose will nevertheless be sacrificed if some one capable 
 of taking the view-point of each social element is not included in 
 the membership. A select group of kindly intentiond, mild-mannerd, 
 colorless individuals, will not serve. To seek to forestall violent 
 clashes of opinions by choosing as members of the Council those 
 who have no opinions at all would be a fatal mistake. The com- 
 munity needs the counsels of those of pronounced convictions. Dif- 
 ferences are vital to its health and progress. Placid, unruffled 
 acquiescence of all in all things is the surest evidence of stagnation 
 and social decay. 
 
 Differences should be encouraged which will yield fruitful 
 service to the common good. And the more surely the Council re- 
 flects all the possible differences of this nature which the com- 
 munity affords, the more surely will real and stable progress be 
 made. The community interests are everybody’s. A few or even 
 a majority do themselves and all concernd a great wrong by arbi- 
 trarily suppressing the opinions of any. The best community is 
 one where all gain an opportunity to contribute to the common 
 counsels. 
 
 Inspiration, not Administration 
 
 All may not see at once the reason for the insistance that our 
 Council shall not undertake to do things itself. It should not. It 
 should only advise. Its source of power is its moral influence 
 and its detacht and disinterested concern for the whole community 
 life. If it undertakes to do things, to command funds and a force 
 of employes, it finds itself soon in competition, if not in open con- 
 flict, with some other agency or organization. Its central purpose is 
 thus inevitably lost. 
 
 Not undertaking to do things itself, never permitting itself to 
 come into direct conflict in its own administrative field with any 
 other agency or institution, it is always in a position to inspire re- 
 newd or alterd activity on the part of the administrative agencies 
 of the community. There can be no direct clash with these agencies 
 because it does not assume authority to compel, nor the power to 
 usurp. There cannot persist any feeling of jealousy on the part of 
 administrative agencies, because there can be no permanent grounds 
 for them. The Council enters into no rivalries, and incurs no enmi- 
 ties except thru its scorn of and resistance to selfishness. Agencies 
 and organizations which open themselves to this scorn must sooner 
 
10 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 or later be recognized by the whole community as foes of the com- 
 mon good, and will be supprest by the common sense. 
 
 Avoid Factionalism 
 
 Here is the serious weakness of the opportunistic philosophy 
 to which reference is made above. Any organization forrnd to meet 
 an emergency, and which vigorously sets about doing things in 
 its own right and might, is sure to run afoul of some rival agency. 
 Then there only remains for the two to fight it out to the bitter 
 extinction of the one or the other, or else the two must settle down 
 to an armd truce, dividing forces and resources between them, and 
 often deepening the factional spirit which is blighting the most of 
 our American communities.' 
 
 Can there be 'a more manifest need in our American life than 
 an influence able to rise above these petty factional contentions in 
 which our whole citizenship seems now involvd, and which can lead 
 citizens in seeing the common interests bigger and nobler than the 
 partisan and selfish concerns of each faction? This it may be 
 difficult to gain, but is it not work seeking? The easy way to destroy 
 the power of one self-seeking faction is to organize another and 
 a stronger to overthrow it. But in the long run bitter experience 
 has shown that to be only a compounding of the mischief. A 
 third faction is then demanded to oppose the domineering second, 
 and so on ad infinitum. After the third or fourth contestant enters 
 the field, two or more of the oM tend to unite temporily in defense 
 of their factional rights, guaranteeing the perpetuity of both, and 
 thus it comes about, as already remarkt, that new organizations are 
 perpetually demanded to meet new emergencies while the old 
 rarely disappear, tho the emergency which created them has past. 
 A Council such as we are striving to achieve will keep ahead of the 
 necessities, see the emergency before it overwhelms, and inspire 
 some old organization to meet it, or see that a new organization 
 arises suited to the need. Thus the unregulated conflict between 
 administrative agencies is reduced or disappears, each is protected 
 by public sentiment, made intelligent thru the Community Council 
 in activities which render a genuine community service, and the 
 same intelligent public opinion is enabld to suppress agencies and 
 organizations which have manifestly outlivd their usefulness. 
 
 Quick Action 
 
 Rarely can haste be made thru a Council such as we propose. 
 But the necessity for quick action is forestalld. Quick action is 
 dangerous. To make democracy safe, sufficient time must be allowd 
 for the seasoning of public sentiment. More often than not, hasty 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 11 
 
 decisions and quick action necessitated by unforeseen emergencies 
 result in mistakes and loss. Much the better way is to see the issue 
 far enough in advance to prepare for it thru deliberate public dis- 
 cussion. Then when decisions are reacht, they are trustworthy and 
 sure. Leaping in the dark, or before the eyes are thoroly opend 
 from a preceding slumber, is constantly involving us in pains and 
 wounds over which our society lives to groan. 
 
 Where the issue is clear upon its first presentation, and public 
 sentiment immediately crystalizes, this type of Council can act as 
 quickly as need be. In other cases quick action is very likely to 
 be mistaken action, and the Council therefore renders a worthy 
 service in delay. This results in no loss, but altogether in gain, if 
 the Council is true to its mission, and is always alert to foresee and 
 forestall emergencies well before they break. 
 
 Members, How Elected 
 
 This ceases to be a question of great moment, provided the 
 principles upon which the organization of the Council is based 
 are adhered to. If any element in the community finds itself with- 
 out a voice on the Community Council, they need only say so, and 
 the Council promptly sees that some one capable of reflecting this 
 neglected element is included. 
 
 If the selection of the Council fails to satisfy this element or 
 satisfies only a portion, the portion satisfied will fall away, and 
 a new group will form demanding recognition, if the dissatisfied 
 portion is of sufficient size and coherence to be recognizable. 
 
 A Council of our type will thus keep going of its own momen- 
 tum once it is well started, and provided it remains true to its 
 genius. If the whole community appreciates its purpose, public senti- 
 ment will prevent its ever falling under the domination of an opin- 
 ionated few who will destroy its character. Any member who grows 
 so lukewarm that he fails to attend meetings, or ceases to be the 
 spokesman of a conscious sentiment in the community, will almost 
 automatically drop out, and his place will be taken by some one who 
 does display an interest in community affairs, and reflects the senti- 
 ments of an interested group. 
 
 A fatal mistake, as already pointed out, would be to pack the 
 Council with persons whose single aim is to work the community 
 in the interests of particular organizations or institutions. To avoid 
 this it should not be the custom to seek the official designation of 
 persons by interested organizations. 
 
 Nor will anything be gaind by an elaborate system of popular 
 election. This will open all the floodgates of partisanship, as it 
 commonly does in political elections. Public sentiments creates its 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 own simple machinery for filling the membership of the Council. 
 The element which feels itself unrepresented need only lift its voice 
 and it forthwith becomes the duty of the Council to choose to its 
 membership a person of that group who at once reflects their com- 
 mon sentiments and displays a disposition to recognize the supreme 
 interests of the whole community. Under this system members 
 will enter and retire from the membership on the Council almost 
 automatically, the changes controld by the constantly shifting pub- 
 lic sentiment. 
 
 Is a Community Council Necessary? 
 
 Let each community decide for itself. Nothing is necessary 
 whose need is not evident. Council or no council, each community 
 must be up and doing. Otherwise it wi 1 decay. 
 
 The discussion above speaks for itself. The experience of 
 each community furnishes instructive lessons. The University’s 
 program lays no absolute insistence upon any particular measures 
 or methods. Its facilities are at the command of any community 
 however organized. If any community believes the proposed Com- 
 munity Council is not suited to its needs, there remains to find 
 some other method which will su't. All the energies and good-will 
 of the University staff will be cheerfully devoted to co-operation in 
 finding that method or measure. 
 
 The remainder of this bulletin discusses a large number of 
 measures deserving attention. They can be undertaken in the in- 
 terests of the community by agencies sufficiently commanding the 
 respect and support of their citizenship. The staff of the Univer- 
 sity will heartily co-operate as may be desired and needful with any 
 such agency in any community where any of these measures are 
 found to be desirable. 
 
 COMMUNITY FORUM 
 
 Each community owes it to its citizenship to provide some 
 medium for the systematic discussion of questions of public interest. 
 A good newspaper goes far, but the ordinary newspaper affords only 
 meager opportunity to “talk back.” if it affords any at all. Further- 
 more, “writing back” is, for most persons, artificial and too labori- 
 ous a method to be freely utilized. The average citizen will talk 
 free*y, when he must be driven to the last extremity before he will 
 presume to express himself in writing. 
 
 Undoubtedly writing to the editor of the local pa^er should be 
 greatly encouraged, but never will that be so ready an expression 
 of sentiment as is speaking up to put a pointed question at a com- 
 munity forum. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 13 
 
 Protracted experiment has now demonstrated the most effec- 
 tive methods and rules under which a forum may be conducted. We 
 do not attempt here to enter far into the discussion of this exceed- 
 ingly promising social device. The war and the after-war re- 
 actions have undoubtedly set back this movement. It is not a 
 “radical” device, but it is essentially liberal. And in the widespread 
 reaction against radicalism since the war, liberal ideas and liberal 
 methods of expressing democracy have sufferd severely. 
 
 No community which fears to face the truth fancies a forum. 
 None which fears the excesses of radicalism can afford to be with- 
 out a forum. It is the surest cure for such excesses. Where the 
 truth has a free course among an intelligent citizenship no one, 
 however sincerely conservative, has anything to fear. Where the 
 truth is supprest, free speech is persistently stifled and public senti- 
 ment has no opportunity to form and season, the sincere liberal 
 and the sincere conservative alike have everything to fear. The end 
 of that system is violence and the frustration of aims which democ- 
 racy most values. 
 
 How to Organize 
 
 A successful forum must “play the game according to the rules.” 
 Yet the rules are flexible. The aim is to furnish a medium thru 
 which public sentiment may form and grow in health. A forum, is 
 not a debating society. There are no votes taken. No official 
 judgment is past upon disputants. Indeed disputes are avoided. 
 It is not a free-for-all, a paradise of opportunity for the voluble’ 
 citizen who has a fixt opinion on every subject and seizes every op- 
 portunity to let his fellow-citizens know what that opinion is. 
 
 It is an educational force of the highest order and offers a 
 welcome to the citizen who really wishes to know. Properly con- 
 ducted, it discourages the forensic rounder who is never happy un- 
 less he is talking. 
 
 Interested persons should secure the literature of the Na- 
 tional Open Forum Bureau, and profit by the experience of hundreds 
 of communities in all parts of the country. Mr. George W. Cole- 
 man is the chief apostle of this movement, having with eminent suc- 
 cess conducted the Ford Hall Forum in Boston for thirteen or 
 fourteen years. So thoroly devoted to this method of public serv- 
 ice has he become, that he has relinquisht other business and at his 
 own charges is devoting himself to the advancement of this cause. 
 
 A number of cities and towns in a given region could serve 
 their own interests no better than to arrange jointly to bear the 
 expense of a visit from Mr. Coleman, when, in one after another he 
 might explain the origin, genius, and aims of the forum. 
 
14 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Where this is not feasible, correspondence with Mr. Coleman, 
 who is President of the National Forum Counci 1 , will .be very re- 
 warding. He is to be reacht at 1244 Little Building, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Community Forum and Community Council 
 
 A community council of the type discust above is a kind- of 
 forum. It is a medium of free discussion of community affairs. 
 But it does not answer the full purpose. It cannot serve the ends 
 for which it is ultimately designd and at the same time furnish the 
 entire citizenship the opportunity it needs and deserves for partici- 
 pating in public discussion. 
 
 In most cases the community forum should be organized under 
 the direction of a committee or board whose special business is its 
 proper conduct. ' The choice of topics and speakers, and the conduct 
 of sessions, require careful preparation and a high order of ability. 
 Citizens in large numbers will not come regularly to hear rounders 
 harangue, or to flounder through a sloppy, carelessly prepared 
 program. 
 
 Speakers of recognized ability should be secured. They should 
 be chosen for their known mastery of the subjects they assume to 
 discuss. About half of the session is occupied with a formal ad- 
 dress by the speaker, and the other half is devoted to the question 
 hour, when the speaker is further drawn out by inquiries from 
 the audience. This should not be turnd into a series of extempora- 
 neous speeches from the floor. No remarks should be permitted 
 except those designed to draw out from the speaker of the evening 
 the information which he is assumed to have upon the subject be- 
 ing discust. 
 
 The forum stands by itself, and can be successfully conducted, 
 whether the community maintains a council of the type proposed 
 above or not. A council, alive to its responsibilities, will likely 
 discover the need of a forum to help develop the public sentiment 
 upon which it must depend, and will see that a forum is conducted 
 under proper auspices. 
 
 Nor shou’d it be overlookt that a forum covers a much- wider 
 range of subjects than does a community council. The latter is di- 
 rectly concernd with matters which bear upon the immediate con- 
 cerns of the local community. The forum treats questions of the 
 widest interest to the citizens as members of the nation and as in- 
 habitants of the world. In the long run, of course, a first class 
 community can be composed o^y of those whose interests range 
 thus to the farthest bounds of human concern. It is therefore im- 
 portant from the point of view of the community council that the 
 forum should render this larger service which it cannot supply itself. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 15 
 
 but which it requires for the type of citizenship necessary to its 
 success. 
 
 COMMUNITY LIBRARY 
 
 No household can keep itself stockt with all the books and 
 periodicals needed to cultivate the highest order of citizenship. A 
 community library is now a prime necessity. The matter is of such 
 vital and far-reaching significance that we cannot pretend to treat 
 it adequately in this bulletin. Separate bulletins are devoted to 
 details. 
 
 A state-wide movement should be prest with vigor under the 
 slogan, “Books for Every Citizen.” Nothing short of this ideal 
 should be considerd satisfactory. Every mile of countryside should 
 be insured of ready access to a library. If that cannot be thru 
 the equipment of its trade town, then it should be thru a library 
 establisht in the open country in connection with a school house 
 or independently, or else thru a traveling library bringing regularly 
 roomy chests of the best standard and new literature. A country 
 library system eminently successful in other states, should prevail 
 in Oklahoma. 
 
 There is no national organization now for the promotion of 
 libraries, .except the American Library Association, a fellowship of 
 professional librarians, and, since Mr. Carnegie’s death, no indi- 
 vidual philanthropist is giving himself concern for the national need. 
 There is thus all the more imperative demand for a vigorous press- 
 ing of the campaign locally and by states. 
 
 Every community is urged to write to the State Library Com- 
 mission, Oklahoma City, for a loan library, or for assistance in 
 organization. 
 
 Means and Measures 
 
 No community need be satisfied with small beginnings and 
 meager measures. ' One community, starting from nothing, readily 
 organized a hundred-book club of ten members which insured a 
 thousand books at once. A relatively large association might be 
 formd in almost any community each 'of whose members would 
 engage to supply one book a month for an indefinite period. A 
 steady inflow of several score or even hundreds of books a month 
 might thus be insured. 
 
 Similarly a simple organization might insure the annual con- 
 tribution of standard periodical publications in such numbers as 
 to cover a wide range of interests. Resources for building up a 
 library are rarely lacking anywhere. Their organization is in de- 
 fault. A few devoted and resourceful citizens can supply this lack. 
 There are few community needs so widespread which it would be 
 
16 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 so easy to supply if even a few public-spirited individuals would 
 set themselves to the task. 
 
 Housing 
 
 Proper housing is important, tho not the chief condition of suc- 
 cess with a community library. The indifferent will not go far out 
 of their way to get books. 
 
 Mr. Carnegie no longer lives to lay the foundation of the new 
 library building. But his soul goes marching on. Individual citizens 
 can honor themselves and their town in no better manner than by 
 providing the building. There is no more legitimate use for public 
 bonds than for this purpose, where citizens appreciate its importance. 
 Popular subscriptions for the purpose furnish an admirable .method 
 of tying the interest of all to the project. 
 
 Tho all measures fail for securing a separate building for 
 the library, there always remaihs the upper room over a store or 
 a chamber in the school building. 
 
 A tasty, separate and roomy library building is usually prefer- 
 able to all other resorts, unless the community is prepared to do 
 what all our communities must eventually do, erect a grand cen- 
 tral community building to house all the cultural features of the 
 common life. In that case, the library serves its purpose best by 
 being made an integral part of that unified program. 
 
 The library should be a community institution, designd and 
 operated to serve all phases and grades of the community life. Its 
 too close identification with the schools which are designd to serve 
 directly only the child life, is therefore a mistake, or when nec- 
 essary, should be accepted as temporary. For this reason it is also 
 a mistake to commit the project to the promotion or operation of 
 a single agency devoted primarily to another purpose. A library 
 playing second fiddle to some other enterprise usually makes poor 
 music. 
 
 Administration 
 
 In many older communities the library is conducted by a board 
 elected or appointed under the same authority as any other de- 
 partment or government. The start must usually be made by a 
 group of volunteers, and the project often remains under the di- 
 rection of a separate library association, with few or many members. 
 In any case a sense of community service is essential to succcess. 
 
 A paid librarian is about as essential as the books themselves. 
 Indeed, a clutter of uncatalogd books is sometimes worse than no 
 library at all. One visit often fills the inquirer with such despair 
 as permanently to put him in antagonism to the whole idea. 
 
 Nor can a good-intentiond volunteer often supply this lack. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 17 
 
 Perhaps it is best to start a library under the charge of a devoted 
 man or woman willing to contribute his or her services as librarian, 
 but that lame method should be set aside as soon as possible. Rarely 
 does the volunteer have the requisite training or skill for large suc- 
 cess, however commendable may be his devotion and persistence in 
 good works. The country plan, when adopted in this state, will 
 open the way for the smallest villages and the rural population to 
 avail themselves of the trained librarian's services. 
 
 The duties of librarian are no longer confined to the security 
 of the books. It is not enough to deal them out to those who come 
 after them, and provide that they are returnd without injury in due 
 time. A librarian is an educator, a community force of the highest 
 va’ue, if he or she measures up to present-day demands. The 
 books are not a dead weight to be carryd by those with the requisite 
 native zeal and strength. They are live agents of thrifty and effi- 
 cient citizenship. A librarian properly honoring the profession gives 
 the books this value, and makes them the instruments of culture 
 and power in the whole personal and community life of the popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Librarians with this insight and capacity are not pickt up any- 
 where and everywhere. But they are to be had, and the investment, 
 for a salary adequate to secure such a one, is usually quite as 
 well placed as expenditures for books and building. 
 
 Museums 
 
 It is now well understood that the printed page is not the only 
 book out of which the lessons of life may be read. With advanc- 
 ing. age every community gains a rich legacy of history and tradi- 
 tion. This should not merely be recorded in books. It should be 
 made vivid to the present and oncoming generation by other remem- 
 brancers. Curios, relics of eminent individuals and of outstanding 
 events, can be readily collected in any community. They accummulate 
 in private homes, any way, and they often serve their private pur- 
 poses as well or better by being shared with all. 
 
 Material for a museum can be gathered by any community 
 from all parts of the world. Former residents wander everywhere, 
 to remain or to return. In either case they can easily be interested 
 to contribute curios, and objects of all sorts, revealing the customs 
 and manners of other lands, for the instruction of those at home. 
 Only a few years of reasonably active propaganda in the interests of 
 the community museum will be required to provide a valuable col- 
 lection. 
 
 Of course it is important that adequate provision shall be made 
 for the care and display of the material collected. Nothing will dis- 
 
IS THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 courage contributions more effectually than allowing what is already 
 contributed to pile up under a covering of dust and in vexatious 
 confusion. 
 
 Usually the museum should be a department of the library. In 
 most cases it should remain such permanently. Only in the largest 
 cities does the museum properly take on an institutional life of its 
 own. 
 
 INTELLIGENT CITIZENSHIP 
 
 Each citizen stands under a twofold oM'sation. He should make 
 the most and best possible of his chosen vocation, his profession or 
 business. And, second, he should take a share in the common en- 
 terprises, aside from his business or profession, on which the com- 
 mon life subsistsl 
 
 Both are obligations of citizenship. The first is not to be 
 minimized from this point of view. Citizenship does not consist 
 merely in voting when the time comes or in taking part in some 
 political movement. There is no holier pr more useful act of citi- 
 zenship than that of prosecuting to the fullest possible efficiency 
 one’s business or profession. Of course a purely selfish motive 
 should not control this service. Every business or profession has a di- 
 rect bearing upon the common good, and that is most efficiently 
 prosecuted which is driven by considerations of the general good, 
 with private gain subordinated to the larger motive. 
 
 On the other hand, no community can prosper which is made 
 up of persons who are entirely absorbd, each in his own profession 
 or business. That would be no community at all. Individual en- 
 terprises must be tied together, linkt in a common program, else 
 the community fails utterly. 
 
 To do his part properly in either particular each citizen should 
 be intelligent, and constantly freshen his mind. He must study 
 his business and not less zealously study some phase or phases of 
 the common life biftding the community together. 
 
 No movement is more vital to the community life than that of 
 adult education. Properly conceivd as already remarkt, education 
 begins with the cradle, and ends only with the grave. Manifestly 
 the conventional methods of the schools for the youngsters are not 
 suitable for grown-ups, those devoting their energies to their pro- 
 fessions or various lines of business. But study and learning should 
 never cease. 
 
 Correspondence Courses 
 
 The marvelous recent spread of correspondence methods of 
 instruction is evidence that our adult life is awakening to the truth 
 of all this. Literally millions of Americans are now following cor- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 19 
 
 respondence study,. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being 
 voluntarily expended annually by these adult students in this type 
 of education. The average age of the sixty thousand students now 
 enrold with one of the highest grade of these correspondence 
 schools is 32 years. Many business and professional men are pur- 
 suing one or another of these courses all the time. As soon as 
 they have completed one course, they enrol for another, often in 
 a different school, and covering the widest variety of interests. 
 
 The University of Oklahoma offers a great variety of courses by 
 correspondence, and at points where its service is limited, students 
 are referd to sources where each inquirer may secure satisfactory 
 direction in his studies. Expert guidance is now available in any 
 field of study where any citizen may conceivably desire to inform 
 himself. With a reasonable degree of application and at reasonable 
 cost any may find out what he wants to know when he wants to 
 know it. Thus no lack of opportunity in youth need deter any 
 one from preparation to do his full part either in his chosen voca- 
 tion or in the common service. Not even neglect of early opportuni- 
 ties need leave any repining thru the remainder of his life. Con- 
 stantly improving methods of adult education open the way for 
 any to “redeem the time” he may have lost thru neglect or thought- 
 lessness or involuntary deprivations. 
 
 Self-directed Education 
 
 General libraries, technical and other specialized periodical pub- 
 lications, a veritable flood of literature on every conceivable subject 
 within reach of all, enable any so disposed to direct his own educa- 
 tion. Any one who will go systematically about the business can pick 
 up information necessary to keep his mind fresh and growing. 
 Some system is necessary. Sloppily gaind, unclassified information 
 has very limited value. But each can cultivate system, and pursue 
 definite aims in his independent study, and gain much strength of 
 mind and character in the process. 
 
 A definite purpose is of the greatest importance. One of our 
 most thoughtful public men has declared that he doubts the value 
 of any “general reading,” aside from recreative poetry and fic- 
 tion. That is, he maintains that all fruitful reading aims at a 
 definite purpose. The student designs to inform himself in a partic- 
 ular line for a particular purpose. To set one’s self upon a course 
 of reading simply to cultivate the mind is, to say the least, a ques- 
 tionable procedure. Immeasurably larger gains in every direction 
 may be insured by shaping a definite, indeed, a severely practical 
 purpose, and reading to it. 
 
 These definite purposes may properly bear upon one’s voca- 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 20 
 
 tion. Each business and professional man should form the habit 
 of using the community library to help him in the day’s work. This 
 is what libraries are for in the conception of the best librarians, and 
 some of them are exceedingly ingenious and successful in making 
 the library serve this purpose. 
 
 Studying for Citizenship 
 
 Citizenship embraces the twofold obligation already referred 
 to. A rapid'y increasing number of business and professional men 
 realize the need of continuous and systematic study of their voca- 
 tion. Much fewer realize the equally important duty to study their 
 share of the common task. 
 
 Every conscientious citizen is already a member of from 
 two to twenty different committees or boards of societies engaged 
 in the public*servi'ce. And, being necessarily a jack of all these 
 trades, since they are so many, he is really capable in none. Would 
 it not be better both for the individual and for his community, if 
 he would concentrate his attention upon fewer public enterprises, 
 and make thoro work of them? Most of these deal with problems 
 of great intricacy. They cannot be mastered by sitting in an indif- 
 ferently conducted committee meeting, with watch in hand guarding 
 the time for the next appointment. 
 
 Much of the public business, that of school boards, -of health 
 boards, of political committees, of welfare organizations of all 
 kinds, is now under the control of tyros, men and women who labor 
 seriously to look wise and support the dignity of their office, but 
 who know precious little about the enterprise they are attempting 
 to manage. We need men and women in every community who will 
 seriously specialize in phases of the common service, and will really 
 know what they are about. Is there anything, indeed, which our 
 American community life needs more? 
 
 If we could make it unfashionable to be a “joiner” and to be 
 listed on all the public committees at once, and honor rather the 
 man or woman who undertakes one or two phases of the public 
 service at a time, and does that one or those two things thoroly 
 well, out of a comprehensive and ripe knowledge, we should have 
 citizens a great deal more worthy of honor, and a community life 
 far more efficient and progressive. 
 
 No one need narrow himself permanently to a single specialty. 
 That might not be good either for him or for the public service. He 
 wou’d likely become a crank. He might ride his hobby to death, 
 and hinder rather than advance the cause he espousd. Each might 
 serve with all his mind and vigor for a time in one field, and then 
 transfer his enthusiasm to some other needy field. 
 
21 
 
 % 
 
 COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 A highly capable member of a prominent organization makes 
 it a rule to serve a certain length of time on one committee, and 
 then ask for appointment upon some other, and so on around the 
 list of committees, wherever his capacities guide. And to each he 
 gives an eminence and efficiency, which it altogether lacks without 
 him. He does one thing at a time and does each thoroly well. 
 
 Could there be a more useful citizen than one who keeps an 
 eye open for the neglected zone of the public service, the essential 
 committees and boards and community interests, and throws his 
 whole energies into bringing the most neglected to its proper 
 recognition and popular support? As soon as he has put a partic- 
 ular enterprise on its feet and enhst adequate support from those 
 with less initiative and vision, he may well transfer his energies 
 to a similar service for the next needful but neglected enterprise. 
 
 We need an order of citizens who will not clamor for positions 
 on committees in the public eye, but who will seek out worthy en- 
 terprises suffering from neglect, and thru their concentrated study 
 and labor, force them to the public recognition they deserve. There 
 shouM be more honor in such service than in nomine membership 
 on a hundred committees already conspicious and demanding only 
 dignity and a big name to support the office. 
 
 Enrolment for Intelligent Citizenship 
 
 So important is the recognition of. this twofold obligation of 
 the citizen, that in each community, under the Community Council 
 or the Community Library or some other appropriate auspices, there 
 might well be a persistent canvass to enrol adult citizens under the 
 two classifications. A modified plan to the same effect might be 
 employd among the children in the high school, and even among the 
 grades. Every child is the better pupil for some enthusiasm in- 
 dependent of or collateral with h : s routine school work. One com- 
 munity has so far enlisted its school pupils in the public service, and 
 has cultivated such a high order of intelligence among them, that 
 their concerted efforts are effecting one public reform after another. 
 
 The Extension D’vLion of the University is prepared to supply 
 copies of a simple blank on which this enrolment may be taken. 
 The form is reproduced in the Appendix of this bulletin, and can 
 be copied or adapted by any community or community organiza- 
 tion desiring to pursue this plan. 
 
 Try it. Do not nag. Do not push offensively. Make each 
 citizen want to. be intehigent. Put means in his way by which he 
 can at once become proficient in his vocation and efficient in his 
 citizenship. Do not insist that oldsters shall re-enter “school.” 
 They will not do it, and no one ought to try to make them. But 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 create such an atmosphere of intelligence that each will wish to 
 join, to help along the line of his own enthusiasms, and in pursuance 
 of the studies which he likes the best. 
 
 CIVIC CLUBS 
 
 Common enterprises require concerted action. When citizens 
 become intelligent as to the community needs, two, ten, a hundred 
 of them will speedi'y agree upon some particular move as impera- 
 tive. They will wish to put the full measure of their combined 
 energies behind the needful project. 
 
 They will inevitably form a committee, or more strictly speak- 
 ing, a club. A committee is appointed ; a club appoints itself. Every 
 live community is rich in such organizations. 
 
 Sneers have been vented upon the numerous civic clubs which 
 have recently sprung up. They are said to be ephemeral, short-livd. 
 Many of them are, and they ought to be. That is their beauty 
 and high virtue. Some of them set out to accomplish a particu- 
 lar purpose, and having achievd it, they go out of existence. There- 
 in they show their good sense, and render a second royal public 
 service. Few evils so sorely afflict our American communities as 
 the clutter of useless organizations, societies which have forgotten 
 what they came into existence for, and whose energies are exhausted 
 in seeking an excuse for continued being. Any one of these which 
 deliberately commits suicide is to be honored. 
 
 On the other hand, there is another type of Civic Club which 
 goes far to supply the lack of a Community Council. These may 
 not be doing all which a more comprehensive and representative 
 Council could accomplish, but practicady all of the recent progres- 
 sive measures put thru in some communities have come about 
 thru the patient and persistent agitation of the local Civic Club. 
 
 Where there is no community council, one live, wide-visiond 
 Civic Club may be better than two or ten. But under the wise 
 leadership of- a Community Council a number of such clubs, organ- 
 ized for a specific purpose, and passing promptly out of existence 
 when that purpose is achievd, may well be kept going all the time. 
 Some kind of group organization is bound to develop on a large 
 sca^e where every citizen is alert to do his full share in studying 
 the community interests and pushing for their development. 
 
 There have been recent movements among the women’.s clubs 
 to substitute strong civic programs for the desultory literary and 
 ‘ ‘cultural” entertainments which once were the vogue. Among men 
 various types of civic clubs are multiplying, and nothing is more 
 suggestive than the general tendency of the fraternal organizations 
 to develop wide civic enthusiasms. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 23 
 
 If, thru a Community Council, or under other regulative 
 auspices these organizations can be kept from wasteful competition 
 and vexatious conflict of purpose, the more of them there are, 
 within reason, the better. If there is no central clearing-house, no 
 co-ordinating influence, their presence in numbers may split the com- 
 munity into petty factions, each of them forgetting the task in 
 the common service which inspired it originally, and expending all 
 its energies in the fight against its competitors for its selfish exist- 
 ence. With all a community’s getting let it get a community coun- 
 cil, under that name, or some other. Some organization, sufficiently 
 comprehensive to co-ordinate the varied volunteer activities con- 
 stantly developing in a live community, is essential. Otherwise, its 
 very liveliness is likely to be the community’s undoing. 
 
 MANUAL OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
 A publication for several of the larger cities is now proving 
 of great value. There is no reason why the suggestion may not 
 be appropriated by even small towns and homogenuous rural com- 
 munities. 
 
 This is a text-book for citizens, a volume well-written, his- 
 torically accurate and logically arranged, presenting the facts which 
 every citizen should know about his town or community. It can 
 be publisht in a form attractive for general reading, and serviceable 
 also as a manual for study clubs, both of men and of women, and 
 for high school classes in civics. 
 
 Any community supplying a thousand prospective buyers can 
 almost or quite cover the expense of producing such a volume from 
 the sales. A larger sale will permit reducing the selling price or 
 improving the contents thru better writing and more painstaking 
 research in preparation for the writing. 
 
 Character and Content 
 
 The volume may assume any dimensions desired. It should 
 not be so small as to lack seriousness, nor so large as to balk the 
 reader by its very appearance. It should be cheap enough to be 
 popular, yet substantial enough to do credit to the community. A 
 12-mo, bound in light boards makes the handiest volume. 
 
 The contents may vary widely with the ideals and history and 
 aspirations of the community, and with the taste of the authors. A 
 commendable standard form would include four parts or sections 
 or chapters : 
 
 I. A sketch of community life, its roots in the life of Europe, 
 whence our civilization sprang, its development in this country 
 
24 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 from colonial conditions thru the spread of the population, in its 
 varied racial elements, thru our vast territory. 
 
 II. A sketch of the economic and other physical history of 
 our particular community, its traditions, the character and ambi- 
 tions of individuals having most to do with shaping its history; its 
 present economic program, industries, public improvements realized 
 and projected, form of government and political tendencies. 
 
 III. A sketch of the cultural history and present day life of the 
 community, including education and educational institutions, religion 
 and the churches, deficiencies and excellencies, hopes and ideals; 
 clubs, fraternal and welfare organizations, and the varied official 
 and volunteer media of expressing the cultural life of the people. 
 
 IV. Principles and tendencies of community building, as reveald 
 in the life of the whole country, accompanied by illustrations, dia- 
 grams, outline maps, reproduction of charts used in social exhibits, 
 and discussion which will serve to c’arify the ideas of the citizenship, 
 as it faces the future of this particular community. 
 
 It will be noted that sections I and IV are general and include 
 material drawn largely from abroad. Sections II and III are local, 
 and unique for the particular community studied. Thus the volume 
 becomes, as the name suggests, a manual of citizenship for the people 
 immediately concernd. It is their handbook. Only they, and the 
 scatterd former residents of the town, will be interested, and the 
 sales will be limited to them. 
 
 Authorship and Publication 
 
 The Extension Division of the University will co-operate to 
 the limit of its resources with any community desiring to carry out 
 this plan. Estimates will be made of the probable expense, and 
 the text will be prepared, if desired, by members of the University 
 staff, subject to the approval of the proper representatives of the 
 community. 
 
 The expense and value of the volume must be regulated by the 
 ambitions and resources of the community concernd. If there is 
 a local printer who can put the business thru in creditable fashion, 
 it may be locally printed. Since book work is a distinct branch of 
 the printer’s art, it is more likely that a community will be best 
 served by publishers at a distance whose work is standard. 
 
 In the making of surveys and in the collection of .material, the 
 University staff will be in the best position to serve. Local assist- 
 ance will be necessary, and the contents of sections II and III, in the 
 outline above, will be a purely local product, tho the text may be 
 prepard by an experienced writer supplied by the University. The 
 material used in sections I and IV is manifestly most available thru 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 25 
 
 die University staff, whose researches in this field are wide and 
 constant. 
 
 Uses of the Book 
 
 These are apparent or have been suggested by what has already 
 been stated. Does your community wish to build up a fund of 
 assured fact and commonly accepted principles, and to develop a 
 citizenship accustomd to thinking and acting in concert? The 
 preparation and general use of such a manual as this will be a 
 powerful instrument to that end. 
 
 Its possible use as a text-book for a brief course in the high 
 school would alone justify the expense of its preparation. Four 
 or five classes taught to think thus in concrete terms relative to 
 their own' community will at once show effects in an intelligent and 
 conscientious citizenship. And there is no limit to the uses to 
 which the volume may be put in the programs of adult clubs and 
 societies, and in the readings of individual citizens. A simple, but 
 vigorously prest propaganda would insure the sale of the book to 
 practically every member of the community. 
 
 The first edition would, of course, speedily fall out of date. 
 It must be revised and reprinted frequently, and, from time to time, 
 the form and content can be radically changed, and improvd. Even 
 tho the project should lapse with the issue of the first edition, the 
 effort wouM be amply repaid. Foundations would be laid, which 
 other schemes of community building might utilize for an indefinite 
 period. 
 
 CITY AND TOWN PLANNING 
 
 The Topsy program of letting the community grow any old 
 way, in any old direction and to any old purpose, is now being dis- 
 carded everywhere. There is still too little constructive effort being 
 put into planning the smaller towns, but the awakening has begun. 
 
 This movement has gone farthest in the large cities, where the 
 difficulties are greatest and the progress must be slower than it 
 need be in the smaller and more manageable centers. This ought 
 not to be. The large cities should show all their present zeal, and 
 a deal more. But the new towns, or the older towns which are 
 growing more slowly, and whose difficulties are therefore much 
 reduced, should act while there is still time to avoid the evils of 
 negligence and aimlessness, from which the great unwieldy cities 
 now so severely suffer. 
 
 Standard and Unique Plans 
 
 Strictly speaking there are no standard plans for community 
 building. Each community is unique. The physical layout of no 
 
26 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 two towns is exactly the same. The history and traditions are quite 
 as diverse. They diverge more and more as they grow older, and 
 develop each its own industrial and cultural life. 
 
 The term here employd has most directly to do with the physic- 
 al aspects of the community. It should not be overlookt that these 
 physical aspects are largely shaped by the community’s cultural life 
 and its ideais, including its economic ambitions. 
 
 There is a wide-spread “City Beautiful” movement. It is culti- 
 vating new and better taste in countless communities, inspiring gen- 
 eral clean-ups, promoting gardening, on public and private premises, 
 raising standards of architecture both in homes and in public 
 buildings. 
 
 But this movement serves a worthy end only as it helps 
 communities the more effectively to express their soul, their inner 
 and higher life. A veneer or a superficial sheen, however gaudy, 
 cannot make a city truly beautiful, any more than a doll or putty 
 face can be beautiful when displayd by the human individual who 
 lacks character, no matter how regular or comely the features or 
 facial lines may be. The truly beautiful city will show character. 
 Its physical lay-out will be such as to serve and reveal its inner life. 
 
 This further emphasizes the truth that the plan of each 
 town must be unique. It is work for the artist and not merely the 
 mechanic. No plan is good which does not express the ideas and 
 purposes for which that particular community and none other stands. 
 
 Expert Designing 
 
 This does not preclude the calling of outside, expert city archi- 
 tects in town p’anning. It rather emphasizes the need. The best 
 architects will catch the spirit of the town as one of the prime 
 requisites in preparing a plan. 
 
 There are now several groups of highly traind architects who 
 specialize in the field. They do not stop with drawing designs 
 * for single houses, but plan whole towns, and put the same high 
 order of brains, and attend with the same precision to detail, in the 
 larger project, as the architect of the single building applies to his 
 task. 
 
 A community employing these highly qualified experts must be 
 prepared to spend money, tho in the long run no program can be 
 more economical. The really wasteful, expensive method is to 
 allow the town to grow hit-or-miss, planless, compounding mistakes 
 which must be paid for at a high price in later years. Any thought- 
 ful citizen of this state need only look about him to see evidences 
 of frightful blunders in building his town, which might have been 
 avoided with a reasonable degree of forethought. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 27 
 
 Real Estate Promotions 
 
 To the shame of the real estate fraternity it must be pointed 
 out that some of the most grotesque effects of our aimless town 
 town building in the past is chargeable to their overreaching and 
 uncoordinated efforts. They have plunged, and, by zealous adver- 
 tizing, they have induced many communities to plunge, without 
 intelligent regard to the ultimate effects. Speculation in land, and 
 greed for immediate returns, have dominated much real estate 
 development in all our cities or towns. 
 
 It is, therefore, gratifying to lay to the credit of the real estate 
 fraternity much of the reform which is now prevalent. Real 
 estate agents and agencies have combined, — too often to win in- 
 flated gains from the public, it must be confest, — but, in some in- 
 stances out of sincere desire to serve the public interests, and to 
 build for the long future rather than for the passing present. 
 
 It is not good for these powerful real estate combinations to re- 
 main unregulated. It is not good for them, and it certainly is not 
 good for the community. Neither reckless, cut-throat competition 
 in real estate dealings, nor arbitrary, despotic combination, is ideal. 
 Real estate development should not be permitted under any auspices 
 which disregard the stake of the community as a whole in each 
 development. 
 
 Intelligent and public-spirited real estate dealers themselves ap- 
 preciate this now. and they are prepared for reasonable and con- 
 structive regulation. They would rather work to a plan, than to 
 plunge aimlessly. They would rather help to carry out a far-reach- 
 ing scheme where results will be a permanent monument to their 
 labors, than to fret and frivol their professional lives away, making 
 money by wild specu’ation, but finding their labors, even before 
 their death, largely to be undone. 
 
 A town plan will look far into the future, and give every one 
 who sells land, or builds a house, who buys a home or projects an 
 industrial enterprise, something definite and comprehensive to work 
 toward. It will make each citizen feel that in buiMing.for him- 
 self and his immediate dependants and associates he is at the same 
 time building for the convenience and enrichment of his whole 
 town and its oncoming generations. 
 
 Checker-board vs. Nature’s Symmetry 
 
 Most of our towns are laid out on the checker-board plan. The 
 streets run inexorably at right angles with each other, whatever may 
 have been the provisions of nature. On many townsites of marvel- 
 
28 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 ous natural beauty streets cut thru according to this plan leave 
 ghastly scars which can never be effaced* 
 
 This is supposed to insure ease and directness in getting about. 
 On the contrary, it often creates costly grades, and condemns all 
 coming generations to wasteful locomotion. The easy grade, fol- 
 lowing the natural contour of the landscape, not only insures vastly 
 more beautiful streets, but it increases their economy, and efficiency. 
 
 The haphazard running of streets along o’d cow-paths 
 is objectionable of course, tho an old cow-path is likely to be 
 the easiest and most direct course between the two objectives 
 -which the cow had in view, but intelligent planning will take all 
 considerations, of beauty and utility into account. Boston, which 
 is said to have been laid out by the cows cutting paths in the 
 homeward journey' from the “Commons” on which they all 
 pastured, is certainly very vexing to the visitor. Even a life- 
 time of residence there does not always supp’y the citizens 
 with a ready knowledge of localities in that city. 
 
 On the other hand, such vio’ence upon nature’s purposes 
 and endowments as that practiced in Seattle, located on the 
 majestic bluffs overlooking the Puget Sound, must seem to the 
 artist soul immeasurably more terrible. When the main portion 
 of that city was laid out, the checker-board plan was all the 
 vogue, and the streets plowd thru the steepest precipices 
 and filled the deepest ravines where absolutely necessary, until 
 some sidewalks must be builded in steps, and the roadway is next 
 to imposs'ble for any but a car hitcht to a cable. Short of this 
 extreme, there are all degrees of violence done to natural advan- 
 tages in the town "sites of our western cities. This rigid uni- 
 formity is poor economy and worse artistry. A town plan even 
 now will correct some of these blunders, and wi'l forestall 
 their repetition in new" additions” being developt on the out- 
 skirts of every growing town. 
 
 Sources of Information 
 
 These are now so numerous that no ambitious town need 
 blunder further. There are numerous books already publisht, 
 and others are frequently appearing, in which the whole ques- 
 tion is treated in detail. There are periodicals, like the National 
 Municipal Review, and the American City, which scarcely allow 
 a number to be issued without one or more illuminating articles 
 on this subject. 
 
 While the University has no department devoted exclus- 
 ivly to tins service, yet members of the staff will gladly corres- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 29 
 
 pond or confer with those interested, and will supply references 
 for the best and fullest information obtainable. 
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 Inhabitants of cities and towns must eat. And their main 
 source of food is the farm. Long ago it was found unsatis- 
 factory to depend upon slave labor to guarantee this absolute 
 necessity of existence. This is true from the point of view of 
 the townsman, not less than in consideration of the rights and 
 sentiments of the farmer himself. 
 
 Especially under a democracy the only feasible relationship 
 between the producer of food and the consumer is one of 
 partnership. If either assumes the upper hand, and lords it 
 over the other, the interests of both ultimate’y suffer. 
 
 Many of the more intimate food demands of a town or city 
 attach to the region immediately contiguous. This is less true 
 than it was once. Occasionally cities are now built in regions 
 which supply little or none of their food. But this method is 
 wasteful, or at least expensive. Where it is unnecessary that 
 food should be hauld long distances, there is of course great 
 waste in going afield. 
 
 Every consideration of economy prompts a city or town for 
 its own sake to cultivate the fields immediately adjoining for all 
 the food supply which it is capable of producing. This no 
 town or city can have done by a gang of slaves, in these demo- 
 cratic days, nor can it afford even remotely to approximate that 
 program by arbitrary methods of controling markets and ex- 
 change, if it would build a stable civilization. 
 
 Yet all over the United States there have developt deep 
 seated resentments among the agricultural classes, in the belief 
 that they are being ground down and preyd upon by arbitrary 
 methods practist by the towns and cities. 
 
 Our civilization is sorely torn by class differences. The 
 worst are generally assumed to be those which divide capital 
 and labor in the manufacturing field. But the future holds no 
 more serious disagreements than those between the agricultural 
 population and the town and city dwellers, if sentiments are 
 permitted to run on in their present tendencies and swell to the 
 volume they threaten. 
 
 In community building no detail is, taking wide sections of 
 the country thru, more vital than the establishment of just and 
 cordial relations between the town and its adjoining agricultural 
 
30 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 population. There are thousands of towns whose only visible 
 means of support is their service as middlemen between the far- 
 mer and his market. The support of these towns in their present 
 re’ative affluence is believed by an increasing proportion of the 
 agricultural population to be a wasteful draft upon agricultural 
 production. 
 
 Such movements as the Non-Partisan League in the North- 
 west are symptomatic. The rights and wrongs of the contro- 
 versy between the farmers and those whom they esteem their 
 oppressors are too large a question for discussion here. The 
 fact that the controversy has become so bitter, and the agricul- 
 tural unrest is so widespread, is the outstanding consideration. 
 The community builder is not so eager to fix blame and exact 
 punishment, as to discover fundamental causes, and remove 
 those which are poisoning social life. There is poison getting 
 into the body social at this point. Better relations must be 
 maintained between town and country, if our society is to be in 
 health. 
 
 Partnership in Institutions 
 
 Life is growing more and more complicated. Residence in 
 the open country more and more conspicuously fails to afford 
 all the necessities of- social intercourse. The farmer is becoming 
 more rather than less dependent upon the town. The Ameri- 
 can farmer, indeed, is almost a’one in attempting to live in the 
 open upon his fields. In modern times this has never been the 
 order in the older countrr’es of Europe and Asia. 
 
 More and more the vital institutions of the farmer’s social 
 life are in the town and city. His markets are there, and there 
 are the media of exchange. Most of the cultural institutions are 
 there, also. 
 
 He must have his full rights and assume his full duties in 
 the control of these institutions, if our democracy is to be real. 
 The banks must be his in a more real sense than that their 
 windows are lettered “Farmer” or “Agricultural.” In large 
 part the farmer is in the grip of financial powers whose pro- 
 cesses he only vaguely understands and over whose policies 
 and methods he has no control whatever. 
 
 He is crowded out of the business and social life even more 
 effectually, as a rule, except as he is claimd as customer in stores 
 which are arbitrarily conducted to profiteer upon his trade. And 
 when he rebels against the prices charged and the treatment 
 accorded, yielding to the seductions of the mail order house, he 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 31 
 
 finds his defection from the local merchant bitterly resented, 
 and the local paper filld with lectures rebuking him for his 
 dis’oyalty. 
 
 Other of the town institutions patronize or snub him, but 
 rarely include him on a basis of common citizenship. In civil 
 affairs the close town corporation shuts him out. He resides 
 beyond the “city limits.” 
 
 Aga'n, we are not attempting to fix the blame. Perhaps 
 this is partly the farmer’s fault, and partly the townsman’s. Per- 
 haps it is that of one more than that of the other. The important 
 consideration here is that this condition must be corrected. 
 Since the control of social, financial and business institutions 
 is now so largely in the hands of the townsman, it is manifestly 
 his prime responsibility to correct the conditions. This he can- 
 not do simply by cajoling the farmer, patronizing him more 
 effusively, advertising the goods in his stores more aggressively, 
 throwing out here and there sops to the farmer’s pride, pulling 
 the wool further down over his eyes, while all the time con- 
 firming more surely an arbitrary control over the institutions 
 upon which the agricultural population depends. 
 
 This policy will provd successful only in the short run, and 
 the run is likely to be very short indeed. The situation demands 
 the establishment of a partnership. How far this can be ac- 
 complish! under present methods of administration is a question 
 to be tested. Perhaps radica 1 re-adjustment must be made in 
 the town’s method of doing things, in the conduct of business, 
 in the building and conduct of its social institutions. Almost 
 any degree of adjustment to cure the evil would be wise. Pres- 
 ent conditions and tendencies cannot be continued; that is plain. 
 
 Merchandizing 
 
 The farmer, his wife and children, are entitld to the best 
 going in both the substance and methods of trade. They are not 
 getting it now, and they know they are not getting it. Nor 
 will they ever get that to which they are entitld so long as they 
 are servd by two, ten, twenty, forty, narrow-minded, spitefully 
 compet'ng tradesmen, with meager stocks of goods, uncouthly 
 displayed, and loaded down with the enormous and entirely 
 overhead costs of this short-sighted program. Most towns have 
 far too many stores, and the entire lack of harmony and co- 
 operation in the conduct of their businesses worse than suicidal. 
 
 Numerous towns of this and neighboring states still lack any 
 
32 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 formal rn cyans of systematic cooperation. A new man comes to 
 town and adds a new business where it is already overdone. He 
 hopes by new methods and attractions to win support. The old 
 merchants have no protection but to vie with the newcomer and 
 if possib’e beat him at his own game. This is sometimes a good 
 thing for a town, especially when the old merchants have got 
 into the ruts. But the inevitable tendency of overdoing busi- 
 ness in a town is to raise the prices to where all can live and 
 profit and the buying must carry the unecessary burden. 
 
 Under the stress of competition merchants are tempted to 
 resort to methods which are unethical and anti-social; and thus 
 competition becomes a species of war, from which all the highest 
 interests of the community suffer. Either by voluntary action 
 of the competitors or by community pressure the sel’ing of the 
 necessities of life should be taken out of the category of warfare, 
 and be conceivd and operated as a community affair. 
 
 Varied Town Industries 
 
 Quite as essential to the solution of this problem is the 
 cultivation in most towns of more and more varied industries. 
 The town population is feeding off the farmer to far too large an 
 extent. The townsman is not contributing his share to the com- 
 mon enterprise. The banking and merchandizing and exchange 
 service he is rendering as a middleman is not worth all it costs 
 to the farmer. Too large a popu’ation is being supported in the 
 towns on the proceeds of the idlers on the street corners, and 
 many other idlers who are too dignified to spend their useless 
 hours in such open profligacy. 
 
 To say that most of these towns preying off the farmer are 
 largely made up of retired farmers and their familr’es is simply 
 to state a fact. It does not help to solve the problem or build 
 up a more efficient and se’f-respecting community. 
 
 The permanent cure is the building up of industries in the 
 towns. Many villages, and even towns whose populations run 
 far into the hundreds or early thousands, embrace no industrial 
 enterprises whatever except those which depend absolutely upon 
 the farmer’s activities. The town industries should naturally 
 grow out of the resources closest at hand. They should begin 
 with converting the farmer’s raw produce into manufactures. But 
 the town energies should be employd. The population of the 
 town should not be content to receive the farmer’s produce, load 
 it on railroad cars in bulk and raw, and then go home to snooze. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 •33 
 
 Much manufacturing has been so highly standardized and 
 centralized in enormous plants, that small factories for the pro- 
 duction of those particular commodities are doomd to failure 
 on an open market. But there are other industries which are 
 incapable of such standardization and centralization. In these 
 the sma’l town can permanently hold its own, with its advantages 
 of proxim'ty to the raw materials. 
 
 Furthermore, even in the industries now centralized, a partic- 
 ular town can successfully meet all competition by concentrat- 
 ing upon a particular industry. Occasionally the investigator 
 stumbles upon a town which boasts the “largest factory in the 
 world” of its particular type and devoted to its particular 
 manufacture. That speciality has become the community’s pas- 
 sion, and every citizen more or less directly contributes a share 
 to the labor, and shares in the pride of the common achievement. 
 
 The will will find the way, in any case. And the way must 
 be found. The town populations astride the back of the farmer 
 must get off, and produce in their own behalf and in the upbuild- 
 ing of the common life. 
 
 School and Church 
 
 It may seem odd to many observers that the rapid strides 
 made of late in the improvements of transportation, the coming 
 of the automobile and the building of good roads, should have 
 rooted the school more deeply in the rural soil and, at the same 
 time, have uprooted and led to the decay of the rural church. In 
 certain of the states of the older mr'ddle west hundreds of rural 
 church buildings have been abandond, and the organizations 
 have disappeard or remain largely on paper. In those same 
 states the rural one-room schoolhouse has likewise largely dis- 
 appeared, but the centralized rural elementary school has taken 
 the place, and the school system has developt the rural high 
 school, fully equipt secondary institutions being frequently 
 located on the rural highway, mi’es from any town. 
 
 The reasons for this are beside the present point. There 
 may be sharp differences of opinion as to the more determina- 
 tive causes. The fact is clear that improved transportation facili- 
 ties are profoundly affecting the cultural institutions of the 
 town and country. 
 
 Centralized schools, designd to serve wide areas of farming 
 territory are often located in the towns. But unless they lay 
 out their curriculum so as to give the proper prominence to 
 
34 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 agriculture, they will only aggravate the present estrangement. 
 The farmer has for long been in the way of resenting the man- 
 ner in which town schools alienate the young from the farm. 
 He does not fancy sending his sons and daughters to schools 
 which teach them either by precept or by implications to despise 
 the parents’ calling, — unless he is that type of farmer who de- 
 spises his own calling, and strives at the earliest date possible 
 to retire from its rigors and shake its dust from his feet. That 
 sort of farmer has done the most to make the town the parasite 
 it now too often is. 
 
 The movement to get the schools designd to serve the rural 
 population out into the country will doubtless gain stronger 
 head still. Unless the town is rural-minded, and wishes to con- 
 tinue rural-minded, it must fail to furnish the kind of education 
 which the whole-sould farmer demands for his children. He 
 will more and more insist that the open country shall furnish 
 the atmosphere for both elementary and secondary education. 
 
 The farmer’s church apparently introduces another problem. 
 The fact seems clear that the rural church is in decay. All will 
 agree that only a great amount of centralization will save it. 
 Whether this tendency will locate the church in the town or in 
 the country is perhaps not clear. Perhaps the farmer and the 
 townsman do not need separate institutions for the expression 
 of their religion, as they apparently do for the elementary and 
 secondary education of their children, and the automobile speed- 
 ing along good roads may render its best service to religion by 
 carrying the farmer and his family to town for church. So far 
 it does not appear that the decay of the church in the open 
 country has strengthend the town church. It also has weakend 
 in numerous cases. There are manifestly causes at work here 
 beyond the range of the present discussion. It only remains to 
 say that if the town church is to serve the rural population it 
 must be, as in the case of all other institutions, on a partnership 
 basis. The church must be as much the farmer’s as the towns- 
 man’s. The former must not be led to feel that he is welcomed 
 as a guest, no matter how obsequiously or genuinely; he must 
 be included as a proprietor, a member in full standing and with 
 full powers. 
 
 Community Housekeeping in Towns 
 
 The alienation of the farmer, his defection from the local mer- 
 chant, and his general resentment of his treatment by the town 
 has stird many towns to “do something about it.” They have 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 35 
 
 grown very effusive in their welcome to these “Guests in our 
 midst." They have established rest-rooms for the farmer’s 
 wife and children when they come shopping. They have pro- 
 vided hitching racks for the farmer’s team and parking grounds 
 for his auto. They set up signs on the streets and at the en- 
 trance of the town with a welcome as noisy as flaming bill 
 boards can make. 
 
 This is believed to be all to the good, and much of it is 
 gratifying as betokening a chastend sense of remissness on the 
 part of the town in the past. But the impression conveyd by 
 much of this activity is like that of an effusively hospitable 
 housewife, who as much as says, “I am very proud of my good 
 housekeeping, and I would dearly love to have you come and visit 
 me, so that you can flatter my pride by seeing for yourself.” 
 It is doubtful if this attitude and this particular line of activity 
 on the part of a town can go far toward solving the serious 
 problem with which we are here dealing. 
 
 By some means the relations of farmer and townsman must 
 be got off the basis of patronage, if the community of interest 
 inherent in their economic relations is to be genuinely exprest 
 socially. Perhaps it is too much to expect or to hope that the 
 civil organization shall be so reshaped as to establish a common 
 basis of citizenship. Perhaps the farmer is quite as little pre- 
 pared for that as is the townsman. But in the numerous other 
 relations a more genuine partnership can be establisht, than pre- 
 vails in mbst regions. 
 
 Whatever approach is agreed upon will involve mutual obli- 
 gations. Our discussion has implied that the initiative must 
 come largely from the town. It must, for the reason that the 
 town is now so largely in control of the social forces and 
 institutions involved. But if the farmer wishes to cease to be 
 a guest or an object of prey in the town, and to belong as a part 
 of the community, he must be prepared to do his part, assume 
 his share of the burdens, and make the common institutions 
 his own in every sense of the word. 
 
 Every community which is addressing itself intelligently and 
 with conscientious devotion to this problem is rendering a great 
 service to bur whole American civilization. Now that the 
 population is about evenly divided between city and country, it 
 must not be lined up in two equally powerful, equally selfish, 
 equally unsympathetic hosts, bent upon “fighting it out,” each 
 in its own interests, in disregard of the sentiments and interests 
 
36 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 of the other. That spells defeat and disaster for both hosts, and 
 the retardation or wreck of their common civilization. 
 
 THE CIVIL ORGANIZATION— CITY MANAGER 
 
 City government has for a long time been in a bad way in 
 the United States. Our most conservative publicists have not 
 hesitated to say that it is the worst in the civilized world. There 
 has been improvement in late years, especially in certain spots. 
 There is large room for more everywhere. 
 
 A vast new library is accumulating, devoted to this subject. 
 There are valuable periodical whose editorial and contributing 
 staff are giving the subject exhaustive and expert study. Experi- 
 ments in the various parts of the country are being made and 
 reported with great faithfulness to the facts and to the public 
 serv’ce. There is thus little excuse for any community to flounder 
 in ignorance and inefficiency because proper guidance cannot 
 easily be had. 
 
 The twin evils which hold our communities back are the 
 indifference of the citizenship, and zeal for the present order on 
 the part of those to whose personal interest the present methods 
 work. 
 
 Aside from these interested politicians, there Are many con- 
 servative and high-minded citizens who believe on genera 1 prin- 
 ciples that the- surest cure for social evils is to utilize more con- 
 scientiously the existing machinery of administration. The 
 f athers bu It up our prevai ing mayor-council plan,’* and we can 
 do no better than to make it work, acknowledge its incidental 
 weaknesses, but making the most of what must be its high vir- 
 tues in deference to the fathers’ high wisdom. 
 
 On the other hand, an increasing proportion of thoughtful 
 citizens are convinced with an American publicist of a generation 
 or two ago, that “new occasions teach new duties”, and that 
 “t'me makes ancient good uncouth”. There would- certauily 
 seem much which is “uncouth” and lumbering in the prevailing 
 mayor-council method of administering city and town affairs. 
 
 The break came first with the Commission Form of city 
 government, inaugurated almost by accident- in Galveston at 
 the beginning of the present century. Few political reforms have 
 swept so rapidly and widely thru this country. Hundreds of 
 cities, large and small, soon adopted the new plan. 
 
 But, like most such hastily conceived schemes, serious de- 
 fects quickly developt. No authorities now recommend the orig- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 37 
 
 inal commission form. It has abolisht certain of the evils in- 
 herent in the old form, with its confusing long ballot, its cor- 
 ruption-breeding checks and ba’ances, and its tendency to make 
 public office the plum of popular favorites and professional poli- 
 t'cians. But the commission plan in its original form has not 
 supplied that unity of administration which efficiency impera- 
 tively demands. 
 
 Oklahoma has itself had distressing demonstrations of the 
 deadlock which may at any time occur between members of 
 the commission, when each may be guided by self-interest or a 
 desire to make political capita 1 . The plan prov’des for no um- 
 pire or unifying authority in the case of such a deadlock. 
 
 Commission Plan Modified 
 
 The commission plan is now being transformd as rapidly 
 as possible by the addition of an officer known as the City Mana- 
 ger, and by the radical alteration of the status and the duties of 
 the members of the commission. The former insures uir’ty of 
 administration; the latter avoids interference from the members 
 of the commission, and encourages the choice of the commission 
 on political grounds. 
 
 The offginal commission form as much as announced that 
 politics are permanently adjournd in the town or city adopting 
 the plan. But in a democracy politics decline to accept perma- 
 nent or even protracted adjournment. Citizens cannot demit their 
 polit'cal responsibilities. Towns and cities and states and na- 
 tions cannot be run without politics. Business men, a while back, 
 were inclined to scorn politics as an inherently pernicious and 
 'entirely unnccesary resort. It was largely under .then- leader- 
 ship that the original commission form gaind such speedy and 
 wide vogue. They have learnd several things since, and have 
 been the means of teaching our communities several things. 
 Business is itself learning that even its own affairs cannot be 
 divorced from the will of the whole community and from the 
 media by which that will is exprest. 
 
 Originally the members of the commission were elected to 
 "attend to business”, and were expected to “let politics alone”. 
 In the more recent plan the members of the commission are 
 elected for political purposes and are expected to let the business 
 of administering the city’s affairs alone. At first the commis- 
 sioners were heads of departments of administration. Now they 
 are forbidden to meddle in the details of administration. Formerly 
 
38 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 each commissioner was supposed to be chosen because of his 
 special ability as a business administrator. As a matter of actual 
 experience, the electorate did not show itself wise enough and 
 free enough from political considerations to select that type of 
 commissioner. In the new form he is chosen because of his 
 capacity to reflect the sentiments and desired policies of the 
 citizens who elect him. 
 
 In the new form as in the old the persistent attempt is 
 wisely made to divorce local from national politics. 
 
 The Place of the City Manager 
 
 This new officer takes over all responsibility and authority 
 for the day-by-day administration of the city’s or town’s busi- 
 ness. The commission elects him, and has the right to remove 
 him at any time. Eut they do not have the right to take details 
 or any department of the administration out of his hands. The 
 only way to interfere with his conduct of affairs is to remove 
 him. Thus recognition is made of the twofo’d character of civil 
 administration. In the formation of policies and programs the 
 commission is supreme, and the manager has no authority what- 
 ever. In administering the details of policies and programs al- 
 ready establisht the manager is supreme, and the commission is 
 not permitted to interfere in any detail. 
 
 Usually certain departments, like the schools and the courts, 
 are not included in the city manager’s field of administration. 
 His province is that of the public utilities and the routine busi- 
 ness of the town or city, including police and fire departments, 
 and all measures for public health and public safety. 
 
 The City Manager and Small Centers 
 
 It is still generally believed that the overhead expense of 
 the city manager, office expenditures and a salary adequate to 
 secure a capable man, would be excessive for a town or small 
 city. This impression is now being dissipated by the experience 
 of centers of two thousand and less, where the plan is demon- 
 strating its economy. This demonstration is likely to be far 
 more complete during the next few years. A population of as 
 few as one thousand would seem to have numerous enough and 
 important enough joint interests to justify them in paying a 
 very creditable salary to one traind and capable of administering 
 these affairs. 
 
 There is no limit to the business which such a community 
 may conduct in common, short of their desires to economize by 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 39 
 
 joint activity. A common light and water supply are now con- 
 sidered essential in a progressive community. A central, heat- 
 ing plant is becoming common, and is proving a great, economy 
 where the homes are not too widely scattered The care of street 
 and roadways, protection of life and property, and even the close 
 regulation or operation of supply stores under community aus- 
 pices, are essential or are open questions in many communities. 
 Communities are growing larger under the consciousness that 
 these benefits can be best insured by larger groups. And these 
 common activities are so multiplying that smaller communities 
 are finding a more highly organized administration beneficial. 
 To do all which has been suggested above, and do it well, for 
 even a thousand people, would tax the abilities of a high class 
 man and corps of assistants. It would be a real economy tb 
 employ such a man as manager. 
 
 The City Manager and Democracy 
 
 The impression has gaind considerable currency that the 
 city manager is a little czar or autocrat, that a town turns itself 
 over to him to be ruled by his arbitrary will. Nothing could 
 be farther from the principle designd to control his office or 
 from the facts of experience under this plan. The highest com- 
 mendation of the Commission-Manager plan of town or city 
 government is its democracy, and its strict responsibility to the 
 community. 
 
 The manager is appointed by the commission, and may be 
 at any time removed by the commission. Ordinarily this power 
 is unlimited, the commission not being required to “serve notice” 
 nor to “show cause.” Yet the freedom of the manager in detail 
 is not sacrificed, for the commission has no power to interfere in 
 details. Only when his administration is on the whole of such 
 a character as to jeopardize the interests of the community is 
 he removed. He must be responsive to the needs and desires of 
 the citizens all the time, yet he is not pulled and hauld this way 
 and that, compeld to trim and sacrifice the good of the whole to 
 the whim of an influential individual citizen or a powerful po'i- 
 tician. 
 
 The commission is expressly chosen to represent sentiment, 
 opinion, policies and laws. The kind of persons capable of doing 
 this can be safely chosen, for skill in administration is not ex- 
 pected of them. They need not be citizens of independent for- 
 tune, for the duties are such as any citizen may perform in con- 
 
40 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 ncction with his business or other employment. They make 
 the laws; the manager has no power whatever to do that. His 
 business is efficiently and in even justice to administer the laws 
 and prosecute the policies laid down for him thru this medium 
 which directly expresses the will of the community. 
 
 The Manager and Politics 
 
 The theory of the manager’s office and the limited experi- 
 ence so far avai’able has been already set forth. It is often pre- 
 dicted that as the plan is more fully establisht city and town 
 elections will be made to turn on the personality of a manager. 
 Candidates for the commission will run on a platform of support 
 or non-support of a manager at the time in office, just as school 
 board elections have sometimes turned upon the continuance 
 or non-continuance in office of a particular school superintendent. 
 
 Predictions are predictions, and have value only as likeli- 
 hood is establisht by known facts and tendencies. Perhaps this 
 will happen in certain cases. Even if it does, the method 
 would not therefore be conclusively discounted. Nobody 
 thinks of taking the election of the school superintendent out of 
 the hands of the school board, because the superintendent some- 
 times domineers and p’ays politics. We should certainly be in 
 a worse muddle if the office of school superintendent were thrown 
 into the political scramble and made the prey of a designing 
 politician, irrespective of his technical qualifications. 
 
 But in the case of the city manager there would seem much 
 less cause to fear this result than in that of the school superin- 
 tendent. The very intimacy and comprehensiveness of the con- 
 tacts of the city manager with all the people is a safeguard. 
 Once haveing tasted the fruits of a highly efficient administra- 
 tion of the public utilities under a well-trained and thoroly com- 
 petent administrator, the citizens will think a thousand times be- 
 fore they will make the office the football or the grab-bag of 
 the po'itical scramble. The effects strike too close home. 
 
 On the other hand, lamentable as the fact is, citizens have 
 not uniformly felt the same concern over school interests. 
 Voters do not go to school; they send their children. Voters and 
 especially active politicians often have no children of school age, 
 and it becomes easier for them to use school perquisites to reward 
 favorites, without serious regard to educational values. The City 
 manager and his administration touch every citizen all the time. 
 Every body cares, or rough experience will make him care. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 41 
 
 Studying the Problem 
 
 The City-Manager plan is not the last word. There is some- 
 thing better to follow. It seems to be the best so far, at least 
 for certain types of communities. 
 
 It would be a great mistake for any community to adopt 
 this plan or any other without knowing thoroly we’l what it is 
 about. The city manager will certainly not succeed in a com- 
 munity which has gone blindly into the plan, and has supposed 
 that a device has been discovered to cure all the evils and avoid 
 all the perils of civil government. Every community owes it to 
 itself to go into the business thoroly, and study the commission- 
 manager plan, not committed in advance to its adoption, but 
 to find out whether it wishes to adopt it. Such study will have 
 to begin with a group of citizens, a community council, or the 
 chamber of commerce, or the Rotary Club, or a civic club. After 
 this group has thoroly educated itself, its more difficult busi- 
 ness is to educate the entire community. 
 
 New methods are deve’oping all the time. At least three 
 American cities have adopted and are operating the plan of 
 proportional representation in elections. This deserves the study 
 of all progressive communities. 
 
 How far should public utilities be administerd by private 
 corporations under public regulation, and how far should they 
 be publicly ownd and administerd? This question has to be set- 
 tled by each community for itself. The experience of no other 
 will be an infallible guide. Each plan succeeds and each plan 
 fails, under certain conditions. 
 
 What should be esteemd public utilities? Where does the 
 zone permanently reservd for uncontrold private initiative stop, 
 and where shou'd public ownership and operation begin? How 
 wide should be the zone of public regulation and private owner- 
 ship lying between the two extremes of private and public in- 
 terests? 
 
 Practical questions are too numerous even to state here. 
 Any one can see that they are too many and too important to be 
 left to chance decisions or the blundering of ignorant citizenship. 
 The need for adult education recommended under other sections 
 of this bulletin is enormously emphasized here. The reason so 
 many of our communities flounder hope’essly in corrupt and 
 inefficient administration of their affairs is because even the most 
 enlightened citizens are so profoundly ignorant, and those who 
 
42 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 do know have not the patience and public spirit to see that their 
 fellow-citizens find out. 
 
 The literature to furnish a liberal education in any of the 
 fields here toucht upon or suggested is available for any who will 
 seek. While the University has not research departments cover- 
 ing all, inquiries can always be referd to the best sources for 
 information. Correspondence is invited, and the utmost service 
 possible will be renderd in helping communities to “get wise” 
 in matters and methods of civil administration, and to realize 
 upon their learning practical results. 
 
 PUBLIC HEALTH 
 
 The public health is as much an affair of the engineer as 
 of the physician. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of 
 cure.” The physician realize this thoroly well, and is prepared to 
 act upon it when our conventions will permit him to do so. 
 The, business of keeping people in health is still very much upon 
 an individualistic basis, and the. rank and file of the citizenship 
 are perhaps even more disposed to keep it on that basis than 
 are the professional medical men. People would much rather 
 run to a doctor to patch them up after they are injured by dis- 
 ease or' neglect, paying a large fee for the service, than to spend 
 much smaller sums in taxes to advance measures of public sani- 
 tation and popular education in preventive medicine. 
 
 But this short-sighted policy must pass. It is far toward 
 the way of being laid aside by numerous progressive communi- 
 ties. 
 
 In the Schools 
 
 . Where a community has already begun a program of public 
 health the best way is to go on from where it has arrived. 
 Where a community must begin de novo, the place to start is in 
 the schools. A regular system of inspection should be inau- 
 gurated, and a traind nurse should be employd for full time ser- 
 vice. It has now been clearly demonstrated that most ca§es of 
 backwardness among school pupils are due to preventable phys- 
 ical ailments. Often these are readily corrected. Sometimes 
 they are directly caused by poorly ventilated, incorrectly lighted, 
 or improperly located school buildings. 
 
 The step is not revolutionary, and will not seem so to the 
 most conservative or reactionary citizens. Those more ambitious 
 may be assured that under proper management it will lead on 
 to other and longer steps. Causes of physical disability dis- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 43 
 
 covered in the school are often directly traced to the home, and 
 the nurfee’s business is to find them, wherever they are, when their 
 results appear in the school children. An active, wide-awake 
 nurse, even in a relatively small town, will soon demonstrate that 
 her hands are too full, and other steps by way of safeguarding 
 the public health will follow. 
 
 The initial expense is that of her salary and meager equip- 
 ment. If funds cannot be secured at first for the employment of 
 a physician for medical inspection, the work can be shared at a 
 reduced expense by the regular practitioners of the community. 
 Their interest and support of the plan is most desirable, if not 
 essential, in any case. They can “block the game” if they are so 
 disposed. Rarely are they disposed. On the contrary, self-in- 
 terest as well as public spirit enlists their support to a plan which 
 induces parents to look to their children’s incipient ailments. 
 Any self-respecting physician would rather devote his expert 
 knowledge to a bringing on a new generation, straight and sound, 
 than to wear himself out upon the old wrecks of early neglects 
 and excesses. 
 
 Volunteer Support 
 
 Public health measures almost invariably begin in volunteer 
 effort. A small organization is formd, a little money is contributed, 
 practical measures are adopted to meet glaring needs, and the com- 
 munity as a whole is ere long so convincingly “shown”, that the 
 inauguration of an official public health service inevitably follows. 
 
 New communities can make greater haste than have the older 
 regions. It is often conceivd necessary nowadays to provide a board 
 of public health, or establish a health department of the civil gov- 
 ernment, in the setting up of a town corporation, like any other 
 essential feature of a municipality. 
 
 This is not so nearly universal, even with new towns, as it ought 
 to be. New. towns, even in the new states like Oklahoma, usually 
 grow out of hamlets or villages, and rural “freedom” in things 
 sanitary is allowd to persist until long after the congestion of 
 houses and people should have forced the introduction of approvd 
 city or town sanitation. It is hard for the wisest to determine just 
 when the dug well should be abandond or sewers should be laid. 
 It is often like pulling eye-teeth to draw out from the ignorant and 
 easy-going the taxes necessary to install a common water supply 
 and a sewage disposal system. 
 
 Thus, in most towns, a group of public-spirited volunteers must 
 take the lead. If none do so of their own accord, a community 
 council, if there is one, should not delay to lay the burden upon 
 
44 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 the consciences of a group, however unwilling the community as 
 a whole may be to go the lengths in public health service, The 
 sma'lest community should begin right away, or press on from 
 the point which it has attaind. No feature of community buildmg 
 calls more importunately for concerted and persistent attention in 
 all parts of the country than this of programing for public health. 
 
 Standardized Plans 
 
 There are certain standard measures which every community 
 must eventually adopt: inspection of buildings or industries likely 
 to prove a menace to health, suppression of nuisances of all sorts, 
 check n of cent • ion and the enforced removal of the causes, tho 
 they may be in private homes and within the zone where the free- 
 born American citizen is supposed to be sovereign absolute. There 
 is no sovereignty which permits the individual or the family to put 
 in jeopardy the health and lives of fellow-citizens. The zone of 
 public interest and therefore social sovereignty has greatly widend 
 since the nature of diseases and the habits of its carriers have been 
 accurately ascertaind. 
 
 But pubi c health is a very intimate interest, and each com- 
 munity should show enough ingenuity and insight to adapt its pro- 
 gram to all the local conditions. These vary greatly as between com- 
 munities, and hea th measures should vary correspondingly. 
 
 In other words, this is a sc’ence ^enlisting the community’s 
 best brains, a holy office demanding the community’s sincerest con- 
 science, the test of the community’s individual and social efficiency 
 and therefore second to none in importance. We are only begin- 
 ning, in American communities, to take the* measures necessary to 
 insure the highest efficiency of our physical life, and, as spiritual 
 values are so indissolubly bound up with the physical, all our 
 hopes and our destiny are here involvd. The most flagrant, most 
 criminal waste in our terribly wasteful civihzation is the reckless 
 throwing away of the human values, the painful rearing of the 
 masses to rot away in perpetual inefficiency before they have livd 
 out half of their years. 
 
 Public Hospitals 
 
 The hazards of the smaller community are magnified in the 
 passing of the country doctor. The point has been reacht in older 
 sections of the country where communities advertize for physicians, 
 offering a guarantee of a certain minimum income to any compe- 
 tent practitioner who will take up permanent residence in the com- 
 munity. WhiT there does not seem to be a pronounct shortage in 
 the medical profession, — certainly the shortage is not apparent in 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 45 
 
 the cities and larger towns where only a meager living can be 
 secured by a certain proportion of the too numerous practitioners — 
 yet the distribution is manifest’y faulty. 
 
 There are profound changes taking place. They reach farther 
 than the layman, or even most of the medical profession, realize. 
 The hospital is partly cause and partly effect of this tendency. 
 Most physicians now prefer specialized and hospital practice to 
 the “old-fashiond” general home visitation. They wish the patient 
 to come to the physician, rather than that the physician should go 
 to him, and when his malady puts the patient to bed, they much 
 prefer that that bed shall be of the modern hospital construction 
 and in surroundings approvd by modern asepsis. 
 
 Nurses, likewise, soon wear out under a regimen of home 
 nursing, and gravitate to public and semi-public institutions. The 
 pressure is on from every quarter in the direction of the hospital. 
 Even tho the public were not alive to its own best interests, the 
 medical profession is demanding the hospital. No considerable 
 community can afford to be without one. It cannot permanently 
 retain competent medical attendance without one. 
 
 Studying the Business 
 
 A few physicians or a group of public-spirited citizens cannot 
 inform themselves or act vicariously for an entire community. No- 
 where is universal education more imperative. 
 
 Nor will the formal teaching of physiology and hygiene in the 
 scho mnortrrt as this r . suffice. Universa' and unending popu- 
 lar education is the only recourse. This requires concerted effort 
 on the part of a'l media of public information. It requires a de- 
 voted, intelligent and constant propaganda. And propaganda does 
 not conduct itself. 
 
 No board of health takes itself seriously enough which -s con- 
 tent to follow its rounds of inspection and of haul ng lawbreak- 
 ers into court. It is properly conceived as a vital educational force 
 in the community.' It should enlist-the finest ingenuity of the citi- 
 zenship in compelling even him who runs to read what is good for 
 him, and for the rest of his fe'low-citizens, in the care of his physi- 
 cal being and of the community’s physical surroundings. Eternal 
 vigilance on the part of all is the price we must pay for good 
 health. 
 
 Information is now available to all. Laymen may render a 
 signal service by studying principles and methods of public hygiene. 
 As remarkt at the opening of this section, the community’s prob- 
 lem. in health is quite as much a matter of engineering as of medi- 
 cine. The business man, and every man and woman of affairs, are 
 
46 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 calld upon to know what will make for the general health. A 
 systematic course of reading will repay any one, both in its indi- 
 vidual culture and it is preparation of the citizen for social useful- 
 ness. 
 
 The School of Medicine of the University has stores of knowl- 
 edge and experience which are already at the service of the public, 
 and citizens in all parts of the state should avail themselves of these 
 resources more largely than at present. The Extension Division will 
 welcome correspondence, thru which inquirers may be put in touch 
 with sources of information covering any particular phase of the 
 subject which may be designated. 
 
 RECREATION AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 
 
 The poet found in his old age that soul helps flesh no more 
 than flesh helps soul. The physical part of the individual and 
 society is quite as essential to well-being as any other part. 
 
 Our modern and better pedagogy is finding that the play spirit 
 of the child is not an evil to be supprest, nor merely to be tolerated 
 as that whose limited expression will keep Jack from being a dull 
 boy in his studies. Play and the play spirit are, on the contrary, the 
 most normal element of the child nature and their expression 
 a most vital feature of education. The progressive educator is con- 
 scious that we are still very backward in methods for the intelli- 
 gent culture of this phase of child nature. 
 
 But the child is father of the man in this department as in 
 most others. All need play. Recreation is next in importance to 
 creation. The latter indeed must stop very shortly after the form- 
 er begins to suffer from neglect. A program of physical education 
 and organized play is not alone necessary in schools, but a compre- 
 hensive program for those of all ages is now being more and more 
 widely recognized as an essential feature of community building. 
 
 The Peril of Drudgery 
 
 A population made up of drudges is no community at all, and 
 cannot be converted into one. The establishment of the eight-hour 
 day in industry is not demanded simply by. justice to the individual 
 worn out by excessive hours of labor. It is a supreme social de- 
 mand. Neither the physical nor the spiritual health of a com- 
 munity can be maintaind against a regimen of unrelievd grinding 
 labor. 
 
 Eight hours need not be the daily limit of care-free, inspiriting, 
 joyful labor. Work of sufficient variety and into which one can 
 put his 'liveliest interest all the time may wholesomely occupy most 
 of one’s waking hours. The healthiest both in body and in mind 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 47 
 
 are often those whose only recreation is gaincl by a change of 
 work. But a community whose industry is so organized as to con- 
 demn a considerable proportion of its citizens to drudging or dis- 
 tasteful labor, is blind to its own best interests when it permits the 
 daily stint to run beyond eight hours. Intelligent students, in- 
 cluding employers themselves, are beginning to find that for cer- 
 tain industries eight hours are too many. Several employers have 
 demonstrated that the industry itself prospers best under a program 
 of not more than six hours of continuous labor. 
 
 Just as society has organized industrially to involve the perils 
 of drudging labor, so it is incumbent upon the community to organ- 
 ize to furnish the antidote. Organized recreation must be more 
 and more clearly recognized as a feature of the community’s pro- 
 gram of production. It is a means of insuring larger economic re- 
 turns. It is a conservation of the common store of vital energies. 
 
 The Peril of Unoccupied Leisure 
 
 The most conclusive argument against the eight-hour day of 
 labor, for those who do not believe in it, is the profligate use of 
 their leisure by working people. The first effect upon those who 
 suddenly acquire leisure is, usually the cultivation of dissolute habits. 
 Idleness and dissipation are notorious companions. 
 
 But the cure for these evils, is not reaction to. the old round of 
 drudgery from which society is being so happily emancipated. It is 
 rather the intelligent organization of the leisure time of the masses 
 of people who have not the individual initiative to enable them to 
 utilize this new resource to the best advantage. Leisure must be 
 turnd into a social asset. 
 
 The saloon has gone. Most Americans are glad of it. Forms 
 of commercialized amusements spring up from time to time which 
 soon show themselves to be obnoxious. Nature ahbors a vacuum, 
 and this is as true of social nature as of physical. Leisure un- 
 occupied with employment of a wholesome and elevating character 
 will speedily be occupied by employment degenerating to the indi- 
 vidual and menaceful to society. 
 
 Commercialized Sports and Amusements 
 
 Those who stand to make big money out of the leisure of the 
 people need to be watcht all the time. The love of money is the 
 root of a lot of the social evils, if not of all of them. The biggest 
 quick money is to be got from pandering to vice, and those who 
 are eager above all else to make money . will not scruple to get it 
 at the sacrifice of their neighbors’ virtues. 
 
 But the peril of commercialized amusement is more subtle than 
 
48 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 this. The tendency to professionalism which it cultivates weakens 
 the social fiber even where open vice is not encouraged. The com- 
 mercialization of the national sport, for example, baseball, has 
 recently reveald its most baleful effects in the corruption expose 
 in the courts of Chicago. The whole nation has been outraged by 
 these revelations and the “magnates” have themselves been fore- 
 most to recognize the peril to which gamblers and dishonest players 
 have subjected the whole baseball system. 
 
 But no matter how successful may be the effort of these “mag- 
 nates” to keep the game “straight,” the subtler evils of profession- 
 alism have not been eliminated. Much is gaind by setting high 
 standards of excellence in sport. Perhaps these can be attaind only 
 by a high order of brains and skill, professionally employd. But 
 that program tends to limit the numbers who derive personal bene- 
 fit. Some of the most ardent baseball fans could not throw a 
 ball from second base to the home plate. The keenest critics of 
 professional baseball tactics are often entirely guiltless themselves 
 of the slightest baseball skill. 
 
 Sitting cn the bleachers for two hours in the open air, while 
 cheering on the professionals at their daily labor, or jawing the 
 umpires also serving for a wage, — this has a certain value. The fan 
 might employ his leisure less satisfactorily. But it is a low social 
 ideal which is thus reacht. 
 
 Our national sport may be, on the whole worth all that it 
 costs. Professional baseball indirectly fills the sand-lot diamonds 
 with p’ayers as well as crowds the major league bleachers with 
 idlers, but every good sportsman as well as every social philosopher 
 wishes that the game could be so organized as to get more of the 
 spectators into the players’ uniforms. The best sport is the kind 
 which sets all to playing the game at least a part of the time. Spec- 
 tators add enormously to the zest of a sport, but there is now far 
 too rigid division of labor between the players and the spectators, 
 it would be better if our major sports could be so organized that 
 players and spectators take turn about. 
 
 The best recreation program for a community will see that this 
 is achievd. To be fully effective such a program must set all the 
 citizens to playing. It is not required that all shall become skillful 
 at every sport, nor even that what are now styled sports shall 
 absorb all of the leisure of any. Many can make sport of what 
 others call work, and can thus gain all the recreation which they 
 need. But by some means recreation should become universal, and 
 none should be permitted to lead a joyless, drudging life, certainly 
 not thru the will of others. And those who wilfully make them- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 4J 
 
 selves drudges should at least feel the pressure against them of 
 the whole community spirit. 
 
 However necessary, therefore, may be the supply of certain 
 sports and amusements which require large gate-fees for their 
 maintenance, a complete recreation program for any community will 
 the en ii s tment of great masses among the players, and 
 players Wik, are engaged for the love of the sport rather than for 
 the money rewards to be got out of it. 
 
 Recreation and Education 
 
 The best recreation is not of dissipation of time and energy. 
 Leisure time occupations need not be sheer waste. The best play is 
 always educative. 
 
 Thus a community program of recreation should cover a wide 
 range of interests, and is closely linkt with the program of formal 
 education. Its proper and ultimate aim is to put joy into the whole 
 of life. It is the foe of idleness, not its encouragement. It hates 
 loafing and loafers, and seeks to banish them absolutely and totally 
 from the community. 
 
 As a matter of experience, most community programs of recrea- 
 tion have been inaugurated by or in connection with the schools. 
 So far as the schools are confined to the service of the young, they 
 must fail to supply the full and final direction of the program, for, 
 as already pointed out, recreation is important for the adult as the 
 child, tho it may take different forms for the two. But the drama., 
 music, and all branches of art are properly fosterd in connection 
 with the recreational or joy life. 
 
 Thus an immense field is opend. It is apparent that no clear 
 lines of demarcation can be drawn between recreation and the 
 serious interests of the individual or of society. Play has-been so 
 sorely neglected that few of us realize how serious is its need. 
 All our work will become more wholesome and efficient when it 
 is more charged with the play spirit. 
 
 Leadership 
 
 No community can afford to leave this department to chance. 
 Wholesome recreation will not develop itself nor will clean play go 
 straight without guidance. Not only will an effective program cost 
 money, but the best results will be got from the expenditure only 
 as the program is carefully pland and the expenditure budgeted. 
 
 The sources whence the money conies may vary. Some com- 
 munities see so clearly and agree so unanimously that recreational 
 guidance is public service, that they naturally make provision thru 
 taxes, either in connection with the school system or otherwise 
 under the civil government. In others even larger sums are avail- 
 
50 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 able thru popular subscription. Individual philanthropists cannot 
 honor themselves and serve their community better than by intelli- 
 gent provision of buildings and other equipment for this departure. 
 
 A play supervisor is coming to be a prime requirement. That 
 means a salary, and it should be a liberal salary, for the efficient 
 guidance of the varied elements of a community in their play life, 
 calls for a high order of skill and thoro training. In communities 
 where great difficulty has been experienct or is anticipated in 
 getting started, the wisest expenditure of all is likely to he the salary 
 of a capable supervisor. Leaders properly traind do not ask for 
 or expect perfect conditions and a constituency wholly intelligent 
 and committed to the program. They expect to do a lot of mission- 
 ary work in the interests of their cause. They delight to convince 
 the doubtful by demonstrating the value of their profession. 
 
 Thus a whole community does not need to be committed before 
 a start may be made. Collect a committee large and intelligent 
 enough to insure a reasonable backing, and funds sufficient to 
 finance a supervisor, and the cause is as good as won. It is the 
 business b‘f 'a propefly traind supervisor to win the support of the 
 community. The program will win its own way, like every good 
 cause. ' : ; 
 
 Information and Standards 
 
 * ComrtiUnity Service, Inc., is only one of the national agencies 
 now devoted to the promotion of community recreational programs, 
 irhese help with literature and thru salaryd specialists. They help 
 to standardize the methods employd in organized communities, and 
 By serving as a clearing-house of information, enable each com- 
 munity to profit by both the successes and the failures of other 
 towns and cities. 
 
 Community Service, Inc., grew out of the war camp service, 
 grafted upon the stock of the earlier play-ground association. It is 
 devoted solely to direction of leisure time. Its address is 1, Madi- 
 son Avenue, New York. 
 
 The Extension Division of the University is equipt to furnish 
 counsel in this field, and correspondence is invited from all. Ref- 
 erences can probably be given which will enable any inquirer to 
 pursue intelligent study of any phase of this service. 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 “Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast.” This is partic- 
 ularly true: when the, savagery lies in the human breast. Singing 
 communities do not fight. ; Petty factions do not run riot in towns 
 where community and club singing is constant and enthusiastic. 
 
 Thus music becomes a community builder of peculiar signifi- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 51 
 
 cance. It has long been noted that ardent patriotism and social 
 vigor has been accompanyd by popular musical movements among the 
 older populations of Europe. Folk songs are among the most 
 permanent and characteristic bonds which give a race or a nation 
 stability and consistency. They are not wholly cause; they are 
 often quite as much effect. A people bound together by tribulations 
 or great common joy burst forth in song; song is the expression 
 of sentiments of fellow feeling born of either common joy or com- 
 mon anxieties. 
 
 We in the United States scarcely know what all this means. We 
 are accummu’ating folk music, but we are not fully conscious of 
 it. Oddly enough, our most characteristic and original folk music 
 has been supplied by the negro. Yet this is not so odd as it seems. 
 The negroes have been given a peculiar solidarity by the vicissi- 
 tudes they have sufferd, and stronger common sentiments have 
 prevaild among them than among any other single element in the 
 population. 
 
 While it is true that racial or national vicissitudes have gen- 
 erated the most lasting and vital folk music among all people in all 
 lands, yet other causes may just as effectively serve if they are 
 turnd to account in cementing a common social life. The Ameri- 
 can people need not and should not wait until they are trodden 
 under the heel of a brutal oppressor or suffer some terrible calam- 
 ity before their soul bursts forth in song. We need a great na- 
 tional movement to cultivate and express the common soul in 
 music. 
 
 And this movement would seem to be coming, if it has not 
 already been inaugurated. It began before the war, and has been 
 accelerated by the war, tho the war diverted it into different chan- 
 nels. It seems likely, in due time, to sweep back into the channel 
 in which it was earlier started. Every consideration prompts every 
 community to swing into line and join this movement. 
 
 The Individual Artist and the Community 
 
 The musical artist is notoriously tempermental, not to say 
 cranky. He or she often expresses anything but the social spirit. 
 Musical genius sometimes seems individualism run to seed. 
 
 But this popular impression of the musician is in the way of 
 being corrected. No more outspoken and aggressive leaders of 
 the community movement are to be found than among the musical 
 profession. 
 
 The great majority of our national artists have been foreners 
 for reasons which are for the most part quite clear and natural. 
 
 Many have been charged with being mercenary; Americans 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 ha\e the fattest pocketbooks, and therefore the foren musicians 
 flock to our opera and concert halls, yet he is doing more to develop 
 an indigenous musical life in America than some of our foren 
 citizens. 
 
 Caruso, whose recent death has stird the whole world to tri- 
 butes to his spirit and art, made an immense fortune from his 
 American service, but he set standards of liberality which will 
 abide, and will go far to remove the stigma of selfishness which 
 has been attacht to the musical artist. He was always cheery and 
 ready to give his best for the pub'ic. 
 
 The Damrosches, father and two brothers, have been a power- 
 ful, influence in the movement for popular education in music. 
 Edward Bok tells, in his widely read biography, how he was instru- 
 mental in transforming the old close corporation in control of the 
 symphony orchestra of Philadelphia into a genuinely popular in- 
 stitution. 
 
 Music is too vital and precious a social force to leave it 
 cloisterd in studios and the drawing-rooms of the wealthy. The 
 larger cities are all ambitious to establish on a firm basis their 
 symphony orchestras or. opera companies, and no town is too small 
 to maintain a healthy community musical organization of some 
 sort. 
 
 Community Backing for Musical Prganizations 
 
 Desire of self-improvement is sufficiently strong to keep alive 
 some musical organizations, but where this continues an only in- 
 centive the community shows itself selfish, wiring- to receive the 
 benefits of arduous labors on the part of its musicians without giv- 
 ing anything. Chance admission fees for musical concerts furnish 
 poor support, and must fail to build up a high-grade and self- 
 respe'cting musical life in a community/ 
 
 In music as in sports, a community must beware lest it derive its 
 culture from “sitting on the bleachers.” Every one cannot be a 
 musical artist, but a plain duty is /lard upon each, and each should 
 rejoice in the opportunity, to back up an intelligent musical program 
 which shall encourage and support the leadership of its artists. 
 
 Rarely is this backing other than volunteer among American 
 communities, but it should be made popular, and as many as possi- 
 ble of the citizens be enlisted as workers and financial supporters. 
 Developing a strong musical department in connection with the 
 schools is a good “next step.” This tends to establish the program 
 in the official life of the community. 
 
 The movement should certain’y not stop there. The conven- 
 tional identification of the schools with the children and youth 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 33 
 
 cramps the musical program far too much. It should have much 
 of its richest and most intelligent support from the adult life By 
 municipal hand stanm- regmnr m:;. ■ • m; r • m- ; . vl; er 
 
 municipal auspices, several American cities arc advancing farther. 
 We have nowhere reacht the standards of many cities of the old 
 world, and even of certain mum • r -Am- r; re- 
 
 publics, where the national or municipa” opera house and concert 
 halls are maintaind at the public expense. 
 
 All Taking Part 
 
 There are signs that our American movement will become far 
 more essentially popular than even the mantf nance of mpn cipal 
 concerts and orchestras and bands. Numerous communities are 
 now being organized in a manner to get the people “off the 
 bleachers.” They themselves furnish the musi Hundreds er- 
 
 sons, even in relatively small communities, are now organized in 
 singing clubs, or instrumental organizat'ons, pra~tic’ng re gularly, 
 and deriving much personal benefit, and these pr|anization' are 
 affiliated under a central leadership whch on festival occasions 
 enables the community to bring together impressive assemblages 
 of its own citizen musicians traind to a common purpose, and pre- 
 pared to co-operate r arraf erc! p- tr ot T ‘ • rv’be 
 
 Look up this movement, even tho your commun’ty may now be 
 very backward musically, or even tho it may be so small that only 
 limited musical organizations of any type would seem ever possi- 
 ble. Whatever steps are taken in your' community might well 
 be taken with a worthy goa 1 in view. Community Service, Inc., 1 
 Madison Avenue, New York, is giving strong encouragement to 
 comprehensive community organization in music, and has workt 
 out plans whereby leaders of. small, local musical organizations 
 can themselves be organized by cities and counties, to unify and 
 standardize the movement for large areas. 
 
 Providing Ccrnoetent Teachers 
 
 Certain Oklahoma communities of considerable size are now 
 entirely without professional musical leadership. Even tho one 
 may be disposed to give himself a musical training, he is helpless 
 before these conditions. In no department of education is a live 
 and speaking teacher more essential. One cannot “p : ck up” his 
 music, and do it welb A community does its whole life a serious 
 hurt by allowing such conditions to continue. 
 
 Once an atmosphere is created, and musical ambitions are stird, 
 teachers are usually able to hold their own. They make their own 
 way. But a competent teacher may not be disposed to enter a 
 
54 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 musically dead community and starve while he stirs its ambitions. 
 A start can always be made by underwriting a good teacher’s 
 support for a term of years, and the underwriters not only render a 
 most valuable public service, but they rarely lose money in the 
 end. Happily music is a branch of education which has proved 
 vital enough largely to make its own way, and it will continue to 
 make big return in cash, if a little brains are put into organizing its 
 promotion. 
 
 Information and Encouragement 
 
 No feature of the spring meet at the University is more im- 
 pressive than the competition among musical clubs from the high 
 schools of the state. The Extension Division is eager to see this 
 movement extend to every community and to every element of 
 the population. Write of your hopes and perplexities, and refer- 
 ences can be given to sources of information which may be of 
 assistance to you. The whole school system of the state from the 
 musical department of the University down to the humblest teacher 
 of music in the school grades, is eager to set Oklahoma to sing- 
 ing, and otherwise to sweeten and deepen and unify the life of 
 the state thru music. 
 
 CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL AND LOCAL 
 FESTIVALS 
 
 We have one great national holiday in America on which citizens 
 everywhere are supposed to unite, tho it falls on a date when 
 millions of the population are sweltering in extreme heat, and 
 many others are absent from their homes seeking respite. There 
 are two or three religious festivals which are variously celebrated 
 by our religious bodies, but which are sufficiently well establisht to 
 bring about a fairly concerted observance. 
 
 Of old and for the most part in most countries still, festivals 
 are celebrated under religious auspices. The radical divisions in 
 American religious leadership have deprivd our society of this 
 normal guidance in national and community celebrations. But as 
 the community movement spreads we are in a fair way to overcome 
 this handicap, and utilize our holidays for more wholesome and 
 constructive purposes than to encourage general dissipation and 
 loafing. 
 
 There is no more convenient and important point where com- 
 munity councils can take hold than here. For years the Fourth 
 of July has been a day of slaughter, carrying off in dead and 
 seriously wounded more persons than furnisht the causualities of 
 some of the important battles in the wars we celebate. This is 
 less true today than it has been in recent years. A persistent move- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 55 
 
 ment to win a “safe and sane Fourth” has been notably success- 
 ful in reducing this frightful list of deaths and injuries from care- 
 lessly used fireworks. 
 
 Fireworks displayd under proper safeguards and organized for 
 the benefit of the whole community are far more enjoyable for 
 each participant than are the crack-crack and spit-spit of the same 
 material “shot off” at any old time and in any old way by individ- 
 uals. If this has not been tried in your community, you and your 
 neighbors have a most satisfing experience yet in store. 
 
 Community Leadership 
 
 Our festivals are almost universally sacrificed by the lack of 
 real community leadership. Nowhere has our sectarian religious 
 order more conspicuously fallen down than at this point. Our 
 religious officials are incapable of assuming proper leadership in 
 the name of religion, because our religious factions destroy the 
 only kind of religious spirit which fits this case. The term religion 
 is derived from a Latin root which means bind. Religion, histori- 
 cally known, has been a bond, uniting members of a nation, of a 
 race, and latterly wider fellowships of men in common aspirations 
 and purposes. Our great festivals are the occasions, of all others, 
 when these bonds should be reveald and strengthend. 
 
 By. intelligent organization of the whole community for the 
 observance of these great occasions the true religious spirit will be 
 revived and enlarged. But the leadership must come from the 
 whole community for the whole community, and not from factions, 
 whether going under religious names or not. The backwardness 
 of these festival celebrations in all parts of our country is attrib- 
 utable to lack of a leadership capable of representing the whole 
 community. 
 
 And what a powerful force for better citizenship these celebra- 
 tions might be made ! National and local holidays have been carryd 
 to an extreme in many old countries. They have become so numer- 
 ous that they hopelessly break up the industrial and commercial 
 life of the people. They are already sufficiently numerous in some 
 parts of the United States to raise a question of their value. 
 
 But here is all the more reason why they should be taken hold 
 of by and in the interests of the who^ community. To turn them 
 over to boredom or dissipation is precisely the way not to cure 
 any evils which may be developing in the system. 
 
 Pageants 
 
 These have been prepared in great profusion of recent years. 
 Some are standardized for the use of any community in the coun- 
 try in connection with a standard holiday. The best, in the sense 
 
50 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 of appealing most vividly to the community consciousness, are those 
 loc' J 1 y nsp red, locally prepared and presented thruout by the citi- 
 zens themselves. 
 
 The history of the town is thus visualized and its traditions kept 
 alive. Already many communities in Oklahoma are old enough to 
 provide material of effective pageants. The oM “sooner” days are 
 full of incidents which our coming generations will wish to 
 commemorate. 
 
 As communities grow older, and their sons and daughters 
 scatter over the earth, “home weeks,” with pageant accompaniments, 
 prove very effective in cementing the attachments of both those 
 who have gone and those who remain. These occasions now tend 
 to be commercialized until there is a reaction against them, and 
 they are sometimes overdone by being repeated at too short inter- 
 vals. When they degenerate into a device by which the folks who 
 remain bleed the “home-comers,” it is time they were discounten- 
 anced. But, preserved as a means of cultivating loyalty to the com- 
 mon life and common ideals of the town, they are worth perpetuat- 
 ing. 
 
 MOTION PICTURES 
 
 The marvel of the movie must continue to amaze those who 
 can remember when there were no movies. There are persons still 
 in the vigor of comparative youth who can remember a world in 
 which there was no telephone, no automobile, no motion picture 
 theater. That our civilization has been able to take on these three 
 enormously expensive far-reaching developments, not to speak of 
 others scarcely less notable, all in the space of a short life-time, 
 is one of the marvels of human history. 
 
 The billions of dollars already invested in the motion picture 
 industry, the conversion of thousands of the old type of theater 
 and the erections of other thousands of new structures speciaTy 
 designd for film exposure, some of them among the outstanding 
 landmarks of our large cities, the employment of a veritable army 
 of artists and skild artisans, some of them the highest paid who 
 have ever livd, — all this is a tale with which the public prints make 
 us familiar. 
 
 Commercial Significance 
 
 The movies are a business. Some of the best business brains 
 and much of the country’s capital have gone into it. Whole cities 
 are exclusively devoted to the art and its industry. In each con- 
 siderable community the theater is largely remunerative. For many 
 of the “high-ups” the financial returns have made the tales of 
 bonanza gold mines seem tame. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 57 
 
 There is evidence that the business is now entering upon a new 
 stage. Its methods are more highly standardized than during the 
 first wild-cat-days. More conservative capital and higher orders of 
 artistry are being employd. The movie is with us to stay, and to 
 grow as a commercial asset 
 
 It thus will come under many of the same laws as any other 
 commercial enterprise. It is developing a science of its own. It is 
 training its artisans and artists and executives. The rewards of 
 skill and efficiency in its particular demands are being standard zed. 
 Thus the community knows what it may expect, and can shape its 
 policies to control and direct the business to the common good. 
 
 Community Control 
 
 No business needs more intelligent and constant control by 
 the community, and in none will the community be more fully justi- 
 fied in exercising its right. Conservative citizens are greatly con- 
 cernd over the growing commercial and spiritual influence of the 
 movie. This has so far exprest itself largely in harsh criticism or 
 crabbed despair. 
 
 Yet there is no cause for despair. No enterprise is more readily 
 controld, when the community once makes up its mind upon what 
 it wants. Each can have just what it wants, so far as the producers 
 are prepared to supply it. and the producers will in the end supply 
 just what communities indicate they desire. Not even the press 
 is so responsive to pub’ic sentiment as is the movie. Public senti- 
 ment can drive any film out of town, and can draw in and retain 
 for a protracted run any other film wh ; ch it may desire. 
 
 Much of the prevalent harsh criticism of movie managements 
 is exhausted in the carping despair of helpless minorities. The 
 same amount of energy employd in organizing public sentiment, 
 and providing means for its prompt expression, would produce 
 vastly more result, and would forestall the development of the 
 confirmd ill-will against which the movie still successfully contends 
 in many communities. 
 
 Censorship of the films exposed in its theaters is the right of 
 every community. Some censor committees are very foolish. Others 
 are arbitrary and domineering. When the movie management can 
 successfully appeal over the heads of the censors to public senti- 
 ment, the management demonstrates its ability to read the public 
 will and serve the public interests better than the officials them- 
 selves. There ought to be no conflict between censors and movie 
 management. The censors have no right to an opinion or to make 
 decisions which do not accord with the common desires of the 
 citizens. It is to the interests of the movie management constantly 
 
58 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 to discover and serve these same common desires. Censors who set 
 up their private judgment, or the judgment of a select and domi- 
 neering group, in approving or disapproving films, will be per- 
 petually in hot water. 
 
 Educational Value 
 
 Those who see most in the movies magnify the service they 
 are already rendering, and are vastly more capable still of render- 
 ing, in popular education. 
 
 This includes their use in the schools. Here is a science and 
 an art, taken in and of itself. School managements are studying the 
 art, and schoolhouses, and school equipment, wi'l be rapidly re- 
 ordered to allow; for a general use of both still and motion pictures 
 on the screen in classroom instruction. 
 
 But the farthest reaching educational significance of the movie 
 lies in the methods and policies of the general theaters. Censors 
 make a serious mistake when they assume their office to be one 
 of suppression solely or mainly. The time has now v come for the 
 working out of a comprehensive plan of popular education, not di- 
 vorced from the entertainment features of the movie. 
 
 The movie censor committee is thus best conceivd and organ- 
 ized as a department of public education. In many communities this 
 committee is closely identified, thru interlocking membership or 
 otherwise, with the school board. This is too often a contrivance 
 whose purpose is exhausted with the “protection” of the school 
 children against improper films. Any purely negative conception 
 of the censor’s office is unfortunate. No other single institution 
 reaches so many of the citizens so constantly as does the movie in 
 the average community. Policies of control which are purely 
 negative, or extend only to suppression of what is conqeivd to be 
 evil, fall lamentably short of what the situation demands. 
 
 A Field of Study and Public Service 
 
 So imprest is the University with the place which the movie 
 and its art must take in the social order, that a department of 
 Visual Education has been establisht under the Extension Division. 
 No community, nor its censorship committee shcTuld fail to keep 
 in touch with this department. Much preliminary work has already 
 been done. The department is prepared to offer counsel and guid- 
 ance. Send for literature and put up your specific problems to this 
 force of experts. 
 
 Thru this department or otherwise every censorship commit- 
 tee, or community council, or other organization directly interested 
 in this impartant phase of community life, should put itself in 
 touch with state and national agencies for the promotion and 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 59 
 
 regulation of the movie. The best brains and the cleanest con- 
 science of every community should be enlisted in this service. 
 
 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
 
 There have been organizations, going by the name of chamber 
 of commerce, or board of trade, or commercial club, ostensibly rep- 
 resenting and serving the community, which were in reality private 
 institutions designd to serve the private interests of a very limited 
 group of citizens. Happily these are now fewer than formerly. 
 
 But the name has not altogther recoverd from the repute in 
 which these practices brought it. Some labor organizations see 
 red when the chamber of commerce is mentiond. Often these two 
 have been in irreconcilable conflict. A community suffers under 
 such conditions, and its interests can at best be but indifferently 
 servd by either of them. Sometimes the activity of either is a 
 distinct disservice to the whole. 
 
 A new type of chamber of commerce has been developing of 
 late, determinedly kept on a democratic basis, and open to every 
 citizen or organization. Labor organizations as well as banks and 
 business houses are urged to enrol and pay for seats of representa- 
 tives. The annual fee is put as low as is consistent with efficiency, 
 and constant effort is made to keep hundreds and even thousands 
 in the membership, instead of the select few opulent men of affairs 
 who often made up the exclusive membership of the older type of 
 organization. From the community point of view this is a long 
 step forward. 
 
 Backing the Community with Community Resources 
 
 The strength of the leadership of the Chamber of Commerce 
 is its marshaling of the community’s economic resources. Money 
 talks. Money must be got back of practically every project which 
 promises large benefit to the community. This fact is so apparent 
 that many believe the Chamber of Commerce is the natural social 
 leader, and should be accepted as making unnecessary a community 
 council or any similar body. 
 
 In some cases this point may be well taken. Perhaps this new 
 type of Chamber of Commerce is the most successful agency for 
 community advance now in the field. It has a strength which few 
 or no other types of organization can ever attain. It frankly aims 
 at the mobilization of the financial and business forces, and they 
 are determinative in most enterprises, if not omnipotent. 
 
 Organizing Spiritual Resources 
 
 Yet the material forces of any community fall down when they 
 assume arbitrarily to dominate. There is no reason why a Cham- 
 
60 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 ber of Commerce should neglect the spiritual realities. But as a 
 matter of fact it often does, and even antagonizes the agencies 
 which represent them. 
 
 It is not enough that the agency which leads the community 
 shall be deferential to the churches and thrust the ministers for- 
 ward on public occasions to lead in prayer. It is not enough that the 
 school board should be scheduled for periodic compliments in the 
 literature and important meetings of the chamber. An organization 
 which efficiently leads the community should enter critically and 
 constructively into each area of the community life. It should be 
 at home in each, and embrace in its membership intelligent leader- 
 ship in each and all. 
 
 A Chamber of Commerce is thus handicapt so long as it identi- 
 fies itself, or is identified by the public, with purely financial and 
 industrial and other economic interests. 
 
 Impartial Leadership 
 
 A further handicap of the chamber as the outstanding com- 
 munity leader is its greatest strength : it does things. It commands 
 the financial resources, and it acts promptly and vigorously when 
 it sees anything needing to be done. Some communities like that. 
 They want precisely that kind of leadership. For a while. 
 
 If the chamber comes short of embracing all the social groups 
 in its membership, or assumes to act in disregard of the will of 
 any of them, there is sooner or later the devil or at least one of 
 his imps to pay. By its very vigor in action, the chamber forces 
 itself into rivalry with other agencies which are in the field to do 
 things. Thus conflict is always imminent, and has become actually 
 so sharp in some cases that almost every move of the chamber is 
 resented by a large enough element to cause embarrassment if not 
 hopeless deadlock. 
 
 This evil is reduced in the degree in which the chamber in- 
 cludes all elements in its leadership, and to the extent that it moves 
 intelligents and sympathetically with other agencies in every field 
 of common interest. Even then the suspicion of “commercialism” 
 forever dogs its way, in the minds of many. 
 
 The Field of the Chamber 
 
 The American City Bureau has been a powerful and wholesome 
 force in redeeming the chamber of commerce from its old nar- 
 rowness. The type of chamber which is now in so many sections 
 furnishing broad-gage and efficient leadership is largely the in- 
 spiration of this Bureau. 
 
 The Chicago office was in charge of the institute for secre- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 61 
 
 taries of Chambers of Commerce, held at the University during 
 the summer of 1921, and the Bureau has been active in promoting 
 the organization of its type of chamber of commerce in various cen- 
 ters in the state. There should be many more of these. It is for- 
 tunate for Ok'ahoma’s whole commercial and social life that this 
 connection has been formd. The American City Bureau should be 
 freely consulted and the services of its expert agents utilized. 
 
 Following the lead of the Bureau, the field of the chamber 
 will be markt broad, and its work will be thoro. Nothing vital 
 to the life of the community will be esteemd alien to its interests. 
 Numerous organizations now operating in a limited field will be ab- 
 sorbed by the chamber or will be co-ordinated with its main pur- 
 pose. In the larger cities these specialized organizations, such as 
 those of retail dealers, of dealers in single commodities, of credit 
 men, of superintendents of factories, of manufacturers, — each of 
 these will maintain its own organization, but will be co-ordinated 
 with all the other commercial interests of the community thru the 
 chamber. 
 
 in smaller centers the chamber will be a more highly centralized 
 body, and will render unnecessary the separate organization of 
 groups, as in the cities. 
 
 In any case, it is now recognized to be a short-sighted policy 
 which organizes the economic interests of the community and pro- 
 motes them in disregard of the other agencies at work in other 
 fields. Life is not capable of rigid division into mutually exclusive 
 departments. The individual lives his whole life all the time, and 
 the same is finally true also of the community. No one can say 
 arbitrari'y where the spiritual leaves off and the economic be- 
 gins, nor vice versa.- No agency can supply a complete and bal- 
 anced leadership which does not keep all these interests in view, and 
 does not give each its place in the warp and woof of the one fabric 
 the community is weaving. 
 
 The Community’s Economic Base 
 
 Yet none should blind his eyes, — not even the most spiritually- 
 minded nor the individual professionally committed to advancing 
 the spiritual interests of the community, — to the essential character 
 of the community’s economic interests. Good business, efficient indus- 
 tries, thoroly developt resources, able and aggressive leadership in all 
 financial and commercial affairs, are vital to the life of any com- 
 munity. Beautiful sentiments and lofty ideals cannot atone for 
 the lack. 
 
 And all these good things will not come of the wishing. Some- 
 body must be on the job. Indeed, everybody must be on the job. A 
 
62 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 community’s business cannot be turnd over to a few experts, and 
 the citizenship wash its hands of further responsibility. If there 
 is any one phase of life in which each individual is everlastingly 
 interested, and to which each should contribute his share unfail- 
 ingly, it is the economic. For food and clothing and shelter are 
 absolutely universal needs. Inefficiency and negligence in their 
 supply demoralize a community soonest because they are primary 
 requirements. Every other phase of life must suffer if these are 
 in default. 
 
 A chamber of commerce does well to stand upon this platform, 
 and assert its prerogative. It has a gospel to preach as well as a 
 work to perform. It should neither practice a “gross materialism” 
 nor allow partisans of other causes or agencies to minimize its 
 service to the community by sneers about “materialism.” It should 
 frankly glory in its calling, and by the efficiency and lofty motives 
 put into its task reveal the essentially spiritual significance of its 
 mission among the “material” interests of life. 
 
 Methods and Programs 
 
 Ingenuity and enterprise are the prime requisites of a success- 
 ful chamber of commerce and an economic program. No com- 
 munity can succeed merely by aping some other successful town. 
 But it is always possible for the intelligent to learn by the successes 
 and failures of others. So, keep eyes and ears open for what your 
 neighbors, far and near, are doing. Then go them one better. 
 There is no bitterness in this kind of rivalry. Competition be- 
 comes objectionable only when it prevails between those operating 
 in the same area and in the service of the same people. 
 
 There are numerous helpful periodicals in this field, one of the 
 most adaptable to the needs of all kinds of communities being The 
 American City, publisht monthly by the corporation in close affilia- 
 tion with the American City Bureau. Helpful book literature fills 
 shelf after shelf of the libraries. 
 
 The University Extension Division feels a keen interest in the 
 needs of the smaller communities, and will be increasingly well 
 equipt to offer helpful counsel and give suggestive references to 
 those who may inquire. Write of your specific problems and see 
 how far we can get in common counsels. 
 
 THE COMMUNITY CENTER 
 
 This movement has taken such various forms and run out in 
 so many directions that it will be impossible to treat the subject 
 exhaustively here. But enough can be said to warm ambitious 
 communities against hit-or-miss, haphazard methods in promoting 
 and housing their community projects. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION ^ . v . 63. 
 
 The School Center 
 
 The community’s attitude towards its schools, th<L School pro- 
 gram, the use of its school buildings, is undergoing prdfouhd’ change! 
 Schools are not for the young alone. We are awakening to the fact 
 that the school is almost the' only institution belonging to the whole 
 community and capable of expressing its higher life. Thus the 
 school is becoming the community center, especially in towns and 
 rural communities which have but one school building. 
 
 The movement is quite as strong also in the largest cities; 
 where the school system is highly developt, and each neighborhood 
 has a large and well-equipt building centrally located! It is very 
 poor economy to allow this expensive property to stand idle dur- 
 ing the evenings and on days not filld with the conventional school 
 program. A hundred additional uses are how suggested. Indeed,; 
 any use to which the buildings are adapted or can be adapted, and 
 where the interests of the whole community are servd, has become 
 legitimate in the minds of progressive school boards. 
 
 Some school buildings are used in almost every part seven* 
 days in the week and most of the waking hours of the popula- 
 tion. This is the truest kind of economy. It means that a radically 
 new conception of education is beginning to prevail, and the com- 
 mon life is enormously enricht. 
 
 Any club or society not devoted to commercial purposes, and 
 not meant to serve selfishly a particular group, should be welcomd 
 in the school building. ' A schedule can be readily arranged so that 
 one will not interfere with another. The community can afford to 
 go far in bearing the expense of maintaining facilities for these 
 organizations. Perhaps a small rental fee to cover expenses of light 
 and heat is justified,, but it should be kept small. The community 
 realizes large dividends upon its investment in this service. 
 
 Memorial Buildings 
 
 To commemorate the services of the soldiers and sailors in the 
 recent war, or that of individual citizens in whose name the funds 
 are supp’ied, community center buildings are now being erected in 
 many localities. Some of these do not fall directly within the 
 scope of our discussion, because their uses are limited to the activi- 
 ties of the American Legion or other specifically designated organ- 
 izations. The true community center is as broad in its uses as is 
 the life of the community, and all groups having a service to render 
 are encouraged to claim accommodations. 
 
 Dedicating the buildings as memorials is a means of appealing' 
 for contributions. The appeal is popular, and enlists the support of 
 large numbers of citizens when the memorial commemorates the 
 
54 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 services of soldiers and sailors. This has its advantages, aside from 
 the honor accorded the brave men who servd in the war. Here 
 and there towns and cities use imposing memorial buildings erected 
 by individual citizens of wealth or by single families. 
 
 Equipment thru Public Funds 
 
 Another way is to vote bonds, and thus throw the burden di- 
 rectly upon the whole community. This requires a general con- 
 viction that the community center is a good thing, and a corres- 
 ponding appreciation of its uses. As the movement grows, and the 
 public intelligence with it, this will undoubtedly be the common 
 means of providing the center. 
 
 And this method will help to determine the character of the 
 center. When the building is secured thru taxation, it will be pland 
 Lo accommodate branches of the civil government, if not all of 
 them. This would be real economy in small communities, and the 
 moral effect should be wholesome. Government is now too com- 
 monly “unclean" in the conception of the citizenship generally, and 
 is housd where professional loafers are free to decorate the premises 
 with tobacco spittle, and convert the public sanctuary, if not into 
 a den of thieves, still into a rendezvous for characters and transac- 
 tions which fall short of the loftiest ideals of citizenship. 
 
 By identifying more of the citizens and more of their interests 
 with the seat of government, government will be ennobled and a 
 livelier sense of responsibility for their civic affairs will be gen- 
 erated among all classes. 
 
 Civic Center — Grouping of Public Buildings 
 
 As the common life becomes more complicated and broad, and 
 the demand for public buildings increases, it is found economical, 
 and desirable in every way, to concentrate these buildings in one 
 locality. 
 
 The Federal Government long ago issued a bulletin presenting 
 an ideal center for a rural community. At a crossroads, on grounds 
 accurately and tastefully laid out for the purpose, there are lo- 
 cated the school with its gardens and agricu'tural experiment plot, 
 the church, the Grange hall, the creamery, and such other public 
 buildings as a particular rural community may require. 
 
 Towns and smaller cities are taking affairs in time, and are 
 concentrating public institutions, working thru the years to a well- 
 conceived plan. One town of ten thousand in an eastern state, has 
 already located at one center the Public Library, the church hav- 
 ing the largest membership, the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., 
 a half-million dollar high school building is now being erected, 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 65 
 
 which is to be enlargd later by the expenditure of at least as 
 much again, and a plot is publicly ownd for which a city hall to 
 house the public offices could be appropriately used. 
 
 One Oklahoma town, sure to grow to considerable importance, 
 now owns forty acres on the highest point of the town site and 
 which the town is now enveloping. A school building is now lo- 
 cated on the plot, and another is contemplated to supplement or 
 take the place of the old. Many of the citizens believe it will 
 be an all but fatal mistake if this tract is not held inviolate for 
 public buildings, surrounded, as the extent of tract permits, by 
 attractive parking. The visitor heartily agrees with them. 
 
 Large cities all over the country are redeeming the short-sight- 
 edness of the past by tearing down old buildings, and providing 
 great civic centers, with ample open spaces. This can now be ac- 
 complisht on’y at prodigious expense. But enlightend citizens are 
 not begrudging such expense. Be wise in time, in your town, and 
 add each public improvement with an eye to the long future as well 
 as present utility. 
 
 Plan of Community Center 
 
 This should be thoroly characteristic of the town or city. It 
 is one of the most important features of the “city or town plan- 
 ning” which is strongly urged in another connection in this pamph- 
 let. 
 
 Whether all facilities should be under one roof, or in a group 
 of buildings, is a question which the size of the community, its 
 traditions, and the lay of the land must determine. 
 
 The largest liberality should guide in the erection of the build- 
 ing or buildings, and in the conduct of the center. Citizens ought to 
 be encouraged to house their clubs and societies and other organiza- 
 tions at the community center. Purely commercial and selfishly 
 money-making enterprises should be relegated to other accommoda- 
 tions, but any organization which has a purpose of common serv- 
 ice, or which provides for the improvement of any considerable 
 number of the citizens should be made to feel at home. 
 
 The more intimate the contact of these organizations the more 
 certain is their development cf a common purpose, and the fuller 
 will be the economy of effort in carrying them on. Kept far apart, 
 and working in ignorance of what each is doing or stands for, the 
 more likely will they work at cro%s purposes. At a common center, 
 the more promptly also will they get together when the time comes 
 for all to unite in some great community celebration or public 
 service. 
 
 There is already a voluminous literature, outlining ideal com- 
 
66 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 munity center plans, and reporting what certain communities have 
 accomplisht. This is being added to constantly. Write to the Ex- 
 tension Division explaining just how far your plans and aspirations 
 have gone, and references can be given which will guide in taking 
 the next step. 
 
 GARDENS AND PARKS 
 
 Playgrounds and recreation facilities are essential features of 
 the program already discusst under another section in this pamphlet. 
 Public parks are essential to community building, and cities which 
 neglected to provide them at the first are now supplying them at 
 large expense. Every growing town should take a leaf out of the 
 book of experience, and provide amply for a system of parks while 
 land is cheap. No considerate real estate addition should be ad- 
 mitted to the corporation without the cession to the city of a 
 creditable open park. 
 
 But the plan should not stop with this elementary provision. 
 A city may maintain a succession of very comely public parks, and 
 yet present a very unattractive appearance as a whole, the very 
 beauty of the parks setting off glaringly the carelessness and lack 
 of co-operation among the citizens in the ordering of their home 
 grounds. The “garden city’’ is the latest word in community build- 
 ing, as it was a very early word in certain of the older countries 
 of Europe. 
 
 This enlists all citizens to fit their homes into and maintain 
 their home grounds as a part of a comprehensive scheme. Thus 
 the whole town becomes one symmetrically conceivd park. This 
 ideal is discust under the stction of this pamphlet dealing with 
 city or town planning. 
 
 Mention has also been made of the vacant lot, and the discredit 
 of allowing vacant spaces privately ownd to run to weeds and rub- 
 bish. City ordinances can be enacted, in justice to all .which will 
 require property owners speculating in unimproved land to recon- 
 sider their ways. 
 
 An Agricultural and Horticultural Community Program 
 
 As a result of the shock of the war, and under the strain of 
 meeting the acute housing situation, there are numerous projects 
 in Europe for new towns. They take all past experiences and 
 demonstrated needs into account. It is noteworthy that they make 
 a definite place for farm and garden lands which will supply the 
 community’s immediate needs for fresh vegetables and fruits as 
 near at hand as possible and in as great a variety as the soil and 
 climate of the particular locality will permit. 
 
 How far most of otir American towns and cities are from such 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 67 
 
 a program ! Even rural communities often go without supplies, or 
 ship them at great expense from a distance, which might be supplied 
 in abundance immediately from their own soil. 
 
 The chief attraction of the village or small town is the chance 
 to have a garden at the door-step and to be near the source of food 
 supply. Yet a few communities capitalize this advantage with any 
 markt intelligence. Those living nearest these sources of supply 
 have the greatest difficulty in securing what they want, and at the 
 same time enough food goes to waste in our American home 
 gardens to feed the entire population of many of the over-crowded 
 European countries.. 
 
 Almost nowhere is there any comprehensive plan on a com- 
 munity scale. Each family raises a little bit of this vegetable and 
 a little bit of the other, or twice or thrice the quantity of another as 
 it can possibly use. One family goes without and its neighbor 
 recklessly tramples under foot an excess. 
 
 A community budget of agricultural and horticultural supplies 
 for each season would be a relatively simple matter to arrange. It 
 would not be desirable to restrict the liberty of any householder 
 to provide what and how much he might choose of each pro- 
 duct in his own grounds, but if he knew what the total demand 
 of the community was likely to be, and what his neighbors are 
 preparing to supply, he could plan his own gardening much more 
 intelligently, all would save a prodigious amount of effort now 
 wasted, and the needs of all would be adequately met. 
 
 Enlisting the Children and the Idle 
 
 It has never been found very difficult to arouse enthusiasm 
 among school children in home gardening. Nor has it been found 
 impossible to bestir adult idlers out of their lethargy for a season 
 or two. But it is the common experience that the enthusiasm 
 speedily dissipates. This is ordinarly accounted for by the innate 
 laziness of human nature ; which is a very superficial and there- 
 fore erroneous diagnosis. The deeper cause runs into this planless- 
 ness of home gardening. 
 
 Few know how to raise everything, or can maintain their 
 enthusiasm in trying to learn how. A community garden budget 
 would enable those with special enthusiasm to follow their bent 
 with assurance that their surplus would be taken off their hands. 
 They would also have assurance that what they do not like to raise 
 but do like to eat would be forthcoming from some other source 
 than their own garden. 
 
 It is certain that the enthusiasm of school children could be 
 
68 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 maintained more constantly if there were such an organization of 
 the community’s supply and demand that a group of youngsters 
 could specialize on a particular product with assurance of a market. 
 When a boy or girl, or a group of them, work hard all of one sea- 
 son raising a quantity of certain vegetables, only to find them 
 worthless on a glutted market, naturally their enthusiasms are 
 dampend. 
 
 Nor without a plan can any but the exceptional youngster 
 gain the mastery of a particular culture without that experience; 
 he suffers the fate of the “Jack of all trades.” An intelligent sys- 
 tem of specialization in community gardening would go far toward 
 curing the tendency to throw up the job and quit, which has been 
 the bane of most effort among school children. 
 
 THE SCHOOL 
 
 The school is or should be a community force of the first im- 
 portance. As the discussion in other sections of this pamphlet 
 has brought out, the school is the outstanding institution of the 
 American democracy. This is due partly to the inherent quality and 
 purpose of schools, and partly to peculiarities in our traditions which 
 grow out of chance as much as fundamental considerations. 
 
 Other institutions are quite as essential to a full-rounded demo- 
 cratic society, but we have so far faild to democratize them to the 
 extent of the schools. Happily the school is far on the way, and 
 promises rapid progress still in the same direction. 
 
 Expanding the school program until it shall include the adult 
 life is a markd advance. Another is the broadening of the school 
 curriculum untn it shall furnish more than academic learning, and 
 shall prepare for vocations and lay the foundations generally for 
 efficient citizenship. 
 
 Every one recognizes that perils attend such development. 
 Methods and aims of academic culture are establisht by long years 
 of experiment, and the traditions of many generations furnish a 
 guide. The new and expanded school program invades fields never 
 before explord. There must be much wandering here and there 
 before the best course shall be hit upon. But the new aims 
 are true. It is the business of the schools to prepare for a com- 
 plete citizenship. 
 
 Great and Varied Problems 
 
 It is not at all the intention of this pamphlet to enter the field 
 of school method, even for the detaild definition of the community 
 features of the approvd school program. Well-traind educators 
 are already in touch with the wonderfully inspiring new literature 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 69 
 
 which covers this field. Leadership is not so backward as is the 
 public intelligence and aspiration. Almost any school management 
 is eager to make the school program better, and shape it to serve 
 community interests more largely than it is permitted to do by 
 reactionary, school boards and indifferent citizens. For all our 
 communities we must devise means of dispelling this indifference, 
 and regenerating school boards either in the present personnel 
 or by substituting new. 
 
 Perhaps the first and best step in the average community is 
 the gathering of a considerable group of citizens who will patiently 
 and systematically study school problems, independently of official 
 positions which they may or may not hold. Since we have demo- 
 cratized our schools, they are safe only in the control of a citizen- 
 ship made intelligent thru and thru. A few cannot elect capable 
 school boards. A few cannot make the schools what they should 
 be. A few cannot vote bonds. A few cannot successfully back 
 progressive school policies against ignorant and short-sighted op- 
 position. Many must take hold, must make themselves wise about 
 approved methods, must appreciate the place of the school in a 
 progressive democracy. 
 
 Convincing the Public 
 
 After the many students of school problems are enlightend, 
 there remains the mass of the citizenship. They must be “brought 
 along” also. They must be convinced. To do this, let the schools 
 render them service, practical, unmistakeable service, within the 
 range of their experience and aspirations. They have a right to 
 expect and demand this. The schools cannot remain high-brow and 
 dull if their appeal is to reach the low-brow and alert. 
 
 After all, the most serious barriers to school progress are 
 those erected by the intellectual traditionalists. If the schools give 
 the people what the people want, they will not fail of support. 
 Academic minds are still in such general control of school policy 
 that the plain people have not come to appreciate the school’s 
 significance for them in their daily and personal affairs. Adults 
 remember how commonly they were bored by their schooling, and 
 they retain a vague consciousness that they ought to have done 
 better. They are thus too often content to have their children traind 
 after a similar fashion, and to add their arbitrary compulsion to 
 that of the school discipline in the hope that these combined rigors 
 will do .better by their children than the school was able to do by 
 them in their childhood. 
 
 Schools which aid adults as well as their children, and render 
 a service to both which each and both are at the time conscious 
 
70 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 of needing and can daily evaluate, will have the enthusiastic back- 
 ing of their communities all the time. Bonds will be voted freely, 
 school taxes will be paid cheerfully and progressive management 
 will be supported at every turn. Schools which insist upon giving 
 what neither parents nor children are persuaded they need will be 
 forever in the dumps, leading struggling existences, and dragging 
 their community down with them. 
 
 Parents’ and Teachers’ Associations 
 
 These are often immense value. In other cases they putter 
 and languish, or even foment trouble. All depends upon the spirit 
 of good-will and degree of intelligence put into them. Of course 
 parents and the teachers of their children should be on good terms. 
 Any kind of organization which helps to this end is all to the good. 
 Training the child is a partnership between these two classes, and 
 the child sorely suffers if they are in disagreement, or ignorantly 
 work at cross purposes. 
 
 There is almost universal comp’aint among teachers of the 
 social indifference of parents. The teacher is rarely invited to 
 homes to share the social life of his pup. is. Some commun.ties 
 regularly lose the most of their teachers every year or two, the 
 good with the bad, because of the social ostracism they suffer. 
 
 The Association is sometimes maintaind to attempt to atone 
 wholesale for this neglect. Parents’ consciences have grown sensi- 
 tive, and they suppose that by herding the teachers into occasional 
 general gatherings they can meet them near enough to avoid the 
 more intimate contacts involvd in an equal social status. Of 
 course they in the end discover the deception in this move, as the 
 teachers are likely very soon to discover it. 
 
 To win a dignified social status, the teacher must herself be 
 worthy of it. The problem is a mutual affair, and cannot be suc- 
 cessfully solvd by one party alone. The management carries the 
 primary and graver responsibility, for dignified salaries and care- 
 ful selection will insure a higher order of teaching personnel, and 
 then no home will fail to welcome the worthy teacher. But, on 
 the other hand, if the social circles of the community crowd the 
 teaching profession out on general principles, the worthy will be 
 far less inclined to brave the ostracism to which teachers are now 
 much too commonly subjected. 
 
 The University and the Schools 
 
 At no point is the University so directly concernd in our com- 
 munity task as here. The public institutions of higher learning are 
 the heads of the public school system, and the University is held 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 71 
 
 responsible for leadership in educational standards and methods. 
 Thru its department of Education and thru every branch of the 
 Extension Division it is at the service of all the people of the state. 
 
 No inquiry which promises improvement to your schools should 
 be withheld, where the University in any department can be of 
 service. The University’s highest ambition is to help develop a 
 school system which will make Oklahoma second to none in the 
 American Union in the matter of thoro, practical, community-build- 
 ing schools. 
 
 THE CHURCHES. 
 
 Religion is the soul of the community life. Between the realiza- 
 tion of this ideal and the program of our official religious organi- 
 zations there is a hiatus which must give us all more and more 
 deep concern as long as present conditions prevail. 
 
 Religion, historically and accurately conceivd, is the bond which 
 holds communities together. The term itself is derived from a 
 Latin root which signifies “bind.” Yet our institutions which offi- 
 cially mediate religion are often the most fruitful and fatal breed- 
 ers of faction. This is not only the observation of lay students of 
 our community problems, and of the common citizen, but it is the 
 testimony of numerous pastors and ministers of religion. 
 
 Manifestly these conditions cannot continue indefinitely. If 
 they are not cured thru activities and policies of the churches them- 
 selves, they will be thru community forces working independently 
 of the present official religious organizations. 
 
 The Federation of Churches 
 
 Much has been hoped from a movement which has for some 
 time sought to bring the churches of a given community into work- 
 ing agreements thru federation, while preserving for each its 
 denominational or sectarian autonomy. This movement has been 
 successful in a limited number of cases. But the movement as a 
 whole has fallen far short of what its promoters hoped for. 
 
 And the difficulties would seem to be inherent. To remain 
 sector denomination-minded and at the same time to become com- 
 munity-minded is difficult under the most favorable conditions, 
 and often it is quite impossible even to maintain the pretense. To 
 live by the cultivation of the factional spirit, and at the same time 
 to serve efficiently the commun'ty life, involve logical embarrass- 
 ments which no church can wholly overcome. 
 
 As a consequence the so-called federation of churches remain weak 
 and more or less fanciful, or else the federated group tend to merge 
 into a unity, and thus lose their denominational identity. This the 
 
72 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 national organizations of the several denominations as a rule de- 
 plore and resist, and thus the federations dissolve or remain only 
 nominal. The churches therefore remain a factional influence and 
 weaken rather than strengthen the community movement. 
 
 The same consideration affect associations of ministers. In 
 addition the rapidly changing personnel of the pastors is a great 
 discouragement. Often a vigorous ministers’ organization is no 
 more than formd and undertakes aggressive measures of co-opera- 
 tion in the service of the whole community, when the pastor of one 
 of the key churches removes from the town, and his successor 
 proves uncongenial to the co-operative movement. Since the 
 churches are so largely controld by the policies and leadership 
 of the ordained ministry, this becomes a serious handicap to the 
 community service of denominational churches. 
 
 Community Churches 
 
 These are a recent development. They have sprung up spon- 
 taneously. There is no national or state agency promoting them. 
 There are said to be more than five hundred churches using this 
 name in the United States. The name, however, carries with it little 
 significance. A large proportion of those using the term are in 
 no vital respect different from the conventional sectarian or de- 
 nominational organization, but employ the name to win, if possible, 
 a wider support from the community. They, no more than others, 
 yield to the organized control of the community as a whole. 
 
 In many other cases these community churches are simply 
 somewhat more liberal in their creeds than are the more conserva- 
 tive denominations. This sometimes leaves them weak; the mem- 
 bers, not being expected to believe much of anything, fall short 
 also of doing much of anything. On the other hand, their creeds 
 are sometimes so rigid as to admit a majority of the citizens only 
 because the residents of the region chance to come of the same or 
 similar religious traditions; the church can offer no congenial 
 religious home to newcomers with different traditions. 
 
 In short, there are few or no community churches, organized 
 democraticaky, capable of expressing the changing aspirations of 
 the population. Perhaps the movement will develop a type ere 
 long capable of serving this purpose, and adaptable to the whole 
 religious life of the community. 
 
 Religion and the Community 
 
 It has for so long been held as a sacred American tradition that 
 the public, as such, should let religion alone, that there is little com- 
 mon intelligence on which a thoro discussion of this subject can be 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 73 
 
 based. Religious freedom is the priceless boon bequeatht by the 
 fathers of the Republic. We cannot value it too highly or honor 
 them too much for their service. 
 
 It is a question whether we are not in the way of losing this 
 boon by a let-alone policy. Many communities are now far from 
 enjoying religious liberty. The bondage is sometimes the more try- 
 ing that it is imposed by bitterly competing sects, who seem the 
 more arbitrary in that they cannot agree among themselves, either 
 as to what is of the highest benefit for the individual or for society 
 as a whole. 
 
 All this is keenly appreciated by numerous leaders of the pres- 
 ent religious system, and no subject is more vigorously discust in 
 religious and certain secular journals than the principles and prac- 
 tical methods by which these serious conditions can be met. The 
 public must see more and more clearly that the problem is not one 
 alone for the professional religious leader. It is one in which the 
 public is directly and vitally concernd. Some of the most intimate 
 and precious values of the community life are at stake. 
 
 Our traditions largely debar the public educational system from 
 entering this field. The University, as such, has no solution to 
 offer. It must suffice here to point out the serious handicap under 
 which the community movement must work so long as religion is 
 mediated by organizations whose traditions and present existence 
 seem to their leaders so plainly to commit them to policies and 
 activities- which breed faction rather than inspire unity in the 
 community life. 
 
 The community movement must languish without the support 
 of the religious spirit, and if the spirit which is required to sup- 
 port the community purposes cannot be cultivated by the official 
 agencies of religion, it must be generated otherwise The religious 
 impulse, universal in men, must be enlisted in the cause of demo- 
 cracy. Otherwise our community life must continue to limp and 
 fail, and our whole program of democracy with it. 
 
 FRATERNAL ORDERS, MUTUAL BENEFIT ASSOCIA- 
 TIONS AND CLUBS 
 
 These are too numerous and of too varied purpose to admit 
 of detaild discussion here. The activities of some have little direct 
 bearing upon our problems, any way. Yet it is heartening and 
 exceedingly suggestive to observe how generally they are taking 
 on a community purpose. 
 
 Orders of hcary traditions, long devoted exclusively to the 
 welfare of their immediate membership, are now adopting pro- 
 
74 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 grams of community service, and are even revising their creeds or 
 constitutions to inspire such outreach. New types of clubs and 
 fraternities are springing up in, whose constitutions the community 
 obligation is writ large and compelling. 
 
 In no group are these signs more markt than among the wom- 
 en’s clubs. The academic, literary and “cultural” programs of a 
 while ago have very largely given place to civic discussions and 
 activities. In the propaganda and policies of the national organiza- 
 tions. and in the national pub’ications serving the women’s clubs, 
 this change is reveald. 
 
 New organizations, such as the Rotary, Kiwanis and Lion clubs, 
 have inscribed the civic purpose cenfral in their constitutions. The 
 good fellowship among their own immediate members is often de- 
 clared to be subordinate to, or a means to the larger end, of serv- 
 ice to the common good. These organizations have in many in- 
 stances signally renderd this service to which they aspire. Their 
 future is in the minds of some of their most enthusiastic supporters 
 problematic. Much will depend upon their demonstrated capacity 
 to co-operate with each other, and. in the sharp rivalry which their 
 growing numbers and mutual independence tend to induce, it re- 
 mains to be d’scoverd how far their energies will be absorbd in 
 destructive or at . least unf ru tful competition, and how far in zeal 
 for the whole interests of the whole community. 
 
 The Ku Kjux Klan has been revived. During the trying years 
 of carpet-bag domination and social chaos in the south, that sec- 
 tion believd that the Klan renderd a needful if not altogether nec- 
 essary service. Its reputation became very unsavory as its activi- 
 ties were reported to other sections of the country, and the na- 
 tional sentiment thus arousd doubtless had much to do with its 
 suppression or subsidence for a number of years. It is noteworthy 
 that the revived plan is very sensitive and its highest officials feel 
 it incumbent upon them to defend the patriotic and disinterested 
 social purpose of the organization. They even propose to strip away 
 its historic secrecy of oath and obligations of membership, so 
 as to demonstrate its al’eged constructive social aims. 
 
 No sweeping movement w r ll probably ever gain head without 
 avowing such aims, and its vitality and permanence will be directly 
 determined by the sincerity of the profession. Not less determina- 
 tive of the future of establisht clubs and associations and social 
 orders will be this same purpose. As already remarkt, the oldest 
 of them are finding it necessary to direct their energies to the com- 
 mon service. The community movement is the dominant charac- 
 teristic of our age, and all the forces and tendencies of the future, 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 75 
 
 as long as the future may now be predicted, would seem to be 
 making for its support. 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY 
 
 The discussion thruout the preceding paragraphs has constantly 
 emphasized the logical fulfilment of the individual in a construc- 
 tive and intelligent service to society. The greatest are those who 
 serve most largely and efficiently. Even the selfish must seem to 
 serve the common good, to “get away with” their self-seeking. 
 
 The politician, scheming for his own interests, must learn a 
 lingo of “public service” and boast loudly of his devotion to the 
 “peepul.” The “pub T ic-be-damned” industrial corporation has either 
 disappeard, or those remaining must put on servile manners to cover 
 their real intentions. The merchant who receives his barter as a 
 device thru which he may enrich himself at the expense of his 
 victims is going to the wall. Where the whole business interests of 
 a community are concentrated in the hands of merchants of this 
 type, competitors are destroying each other, and in utter despair 
 of salvation at home, the people of the community are going far 
 afield to the mail-order house, or neighboring trade centers, where 
 the ideals of common service are the law of trade. 
 
 No individual can live with satisfaction to himself or with 
 the approval of his fellows who lives in and for himself. The 
 surest claim to front page eminence in the newspapers is eminent 
 public service on the part of those who have amast great fortunes 
 from the common stores. Even those whom the laws of the land 
 and the prevailing social conventions permit to accummulate these 
 large holdings in their individual right, are not permitted to have 
 and hold them purely for their own pleasure and diversion. There 
 is no surer means of gaining the reproach and scorn of their 
 fellows than by such a mis-conceivd policy. 
 
 Parallel with the screaming headlines which proclaim in the 
 newspapers the public benefactions of the wealthy are those which 
 even more loudly denounce the excesses and extravagances of the 
 rich. Such publicity the individuals concernd and the public gen- 
 erally accept as a rebuke. Tho reported without editorial or moral- 
 izing comment, the facts speak for themselves, and constitute an 
 indictment from which the most reckless rich cringes as from 
 a scourge. 
 
 The furtherance of this movement depends more than upon 
 anything else, on the persistent accummulation of just this kind of 
 sentiment. If citizens will continue vividly to think in the terms 
 of the common interest, will talk of its ideals, will weigh the pro- 
 fessions of those who lay the loudest claims to its devotion, will 
 
76 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 throw their fullest energies into the organizations which keep these 
 ideals purest and practice their precepts with the greatest sincerity, 
 will define success in the terms not of selfish acquisition but of 
 skilful and undaunted labors for the common good, — if these senti- 
 ments may be made to prevail, they will win the day. Methods and 
 program must bend to their demands. 
 
 In the operations of these impalpable forces all have their 
 part. Whether he will or no, each contributes a share in the crea- 
 tion of public sentiment. Silence is often more potent than boister- 
 ous speech, or sledge-hammer blows. None is so powerful or self- 
 containd as to endure permanently the scorn or grievd disappoint- 
 ment of the society of which he is a part. The humblest, daily prac- 
 ticing good-will, can bring the proudest self-seeker to his knees or 
 flat in the dust of contrition and self-reproach. 
 
 Thus the common good is finally in the hands of the common 
 citizen. His mind finally controls. His good-will and his ill-will 
 make or destroy the society on whose health high and low alike 
 depend. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARK 
 
 Here must be stated again what was remarkt at the start, and 
 which has been repeated frequently thruout the foregoing discussion: 
 this pamph'et aims only to raise questions and suggest subject for 
 thought and discussion. Every one of the topics treated is capable 
 of expansion into a volume. Almost every one has been so treated, 
 some in many a volume. The topics are here assembled so as 
 to encourage readers to pursue the study further, and in the at- 
 tempt to show by bringing them together how all are related to the 
 one task of community-building. 
 
 Even more frequently has this pamphlet repeated the aim and 
 desire of the University to render a wide community service espec- 
 ially in its own state. For this it exists, for this it bears its name, 
 and for this the financial and moral support of the entire citizen- 
 ship ordains and endows it. Use your University. Take counsel 
 with its force of workers, and put them in the way of taking 
 counsel with you. Let it be the highest ambition of every citizen 
 and every public servant to fulfill in a wholesome and high-minded 
 and one-sould life the marvelous promise which abounding resources 
 of nature below the soil, on the surface and in the brilliant air 
 above, have beneficiently vouchsafed in this great state of the 
 American Union. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 77 
 
 COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 
 
 Fo’lowing are numerous topics for study, and to suggest 
 activities wh:'ch may be undertaken by clubs, societies and indi- 
 viduals in each community, either under the inspiration of the 
 Community Council, or upon their own init : ative. The perils of 
 unrelated activities on the part of volunteer groups have been 
 pointed out in this pamphlet. Each project should have back 
 of it the sympathy and reasonable inte’ligence of the community. 
 But none of these desirable enterprises will put itself thru, and 
 none will even be started until citizens individually interest them- 
 selves . 
 
 These suggestions are^offerd, therefore, for study on the part 
 of all. Each citizen shou’d select one or more, and master his 
 selection in the interests of the common good. The community 
 council or other organizations responsible for community pro- 
 gress should be constantly at work selecting those most de- 
 sirable and feasible for their particular community, and should 
 push for their realization . 
 
 The classilcation is rough, and only catchwords are used, 
 allow’ng the reader’s imagination to fill out the suggestion in- 
 tended. 
 
 Town and Country 
 
 Improved agricultural methods. Discussions by agricul- 
 tural experts. Study Clubs. Increased production. Soil anal- 
 ysis and fertilizers. Improved machinery. Grading of stock. 
 Utilizing serv’ces of state and national agricultural institutions 
 and departments. 
 
 Co-operative enterprises. Public improvements. Bridges. 
 Promotion of creameries and factories for farm products, 
 brooms, canneries, banks, supply stores, mass buying and sell- 
 ing. 
 
 Public Health. County nurses. Red Cros^ and relief work 
 in cases of fire and flood. Domestic conveniences. Household 
 and farm sanitation. Town rest rooms for farmers’ wives and 
 children. 
 
 Markets. Better prices for farm products. Organizing sales. 
 Opening new markets. Developing new products to meet new 
 market demands. 
 
 Recreation. Entertainments. Lectures and lantern slides. 
 
78 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Concerts, Games, meets and athletic contests. Picnics, joint 
 celebrations. 
 
 The young on the farm. Encourage interest in country life. 
 Organization of pig, corn, chicken, canning, and other clubs. 
 Exchange visits. Junior chamber of commerce activities. 
 
 Transportation. Good roads. Trucking routes to crea- 
 meries and to vegetable and grain markets. Vigorous propa- 
 ganda on relation of good transportation to high-grade com- 
 munity life. 
 
 Fairs and Exhibits. Premiums and honors for notable 
 achievement in production or pub’ic service. Fair treatment in 
 prices. Rebuke to exploitation and profiteering. Employment 
 bureaus for farm help. Committee rooms and other accommo- 
 dations for farmers in town. 
 
 BUSINESS 
 
 Advertising. Signs, bill-boards, light signs, displays on 
 envelopes, newspaper campaign. Reaching the public and 
 avoiding offense to public taste. Post card days: all send post 
 cards advertising the town. Poster advertising: get school 
 children to write, offering honors and prizes for the best. 
 
 Co-operaticn. In buying, in advertising, in extending cred- 
 its, in establishing efficiency standards. Outlook committees 
 to seek business opportunities, prevent overproduction and all 
 kinds of overreaching, to discover needs and insure their supply, 
 regulate number of stores, reduce overhead expense and cut 
 out waste. 
 
 Business surveys. Marking out trade .territory, in square 
 miles, in assest values and resources, in volume of trade, at 
 home and in distant markets. Needs and problems, supply and 
 demand, sources of wealth, undeveloped fields. 
 
 Business promotion. Offers of free or favorable sites for 
 factories. Intelligent planning of business section, retail area, 
 wholesale and factory areas. Co-operative factory projects for 
 small industries, with central power, light, heat, and transporta- 
 tion. Assembling of community products in permanent displays; 
 seasonal fairs and exhibits at home and at state or national 
 centers. Municipal photograph galleries, with permanent collec- 
 tions showing buildings, building sites, scenes of historic signi- 
 ficance, business facts and records; co-operation with museum in 
 preserving business history. Provision of prizes and honors 
 for home products. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 79 
 
 City Beautiful 
 
 Parks and gardens, public and private, as features of com- 
 prehensive city planning. City beautiful campaigns to arouse 
 *■ community pride. Lectures, and motion and still pictures, to 
 
 promote popular interest. Prizes and honors in reward of pri- 
 vate and public effort. 
 
 Flowers. Organization of garden clubs. Study of native 
 flora. Wild flower exhibits. Rare flower exhibitions. Endless 
 flower chains: give seeds to those who will pass them on next 
 year Seasqnal Power shows: chrysanthemum, roses, peonies, 
 dahlias, and various native and exotic flowers. Plant exchange 
 days: vegetables and flowers exchanged among neighbors. 
 Prizes for best window boxes and down-town flower plots. 
 
 Trees. Plott’ng the town to insure desirable harmony, and 
 variety in tree culture. Tree planting days. Children’s trees, with re- 
 cord of dates, names of planters, significance of occasion. Save-the- 
 trees campaigns, tree surgery, fighting pests, intelligent and 
 seasonal pruning. Organizing experts, official and private, as per- 
 manent commission, to maintain commuity policy for planting, 
 cutting out excessive growth, adaptation of trees to regional de- 
 mands. instruction of public in value of shade and sun-light, 
 harmony of parking program. Extensions along country roads. 
 
 B'rds and animals. Encourage study and protection among 
 children and adults of native birds and harmless or useful ani- 
 mals. Prizes for birdboxes, for essays on bird and animal life, 
 for skill in car'ng for tame and wild life. 
 
 Anti d:'rt campaigns. Mud-hole days. C’ean-up days. In- 
 struction in best methods of preparing garbage for scavengers. 
 Public sentiment against unsightly prem’ses and vacant lots. 
 Removal of public nuisances on public or private premises, en- 
 forcement of ordinances, cu’tivation of public sentiment. 
 
 Ugliness Surveys. Cultivation of public taste. Lectures on 
 art and landscaping. Co'lection of opinions from influential 
 citizens. Discrimination against ugly architecture in public and 
 private budding. 
 
 Garbage Disposal. Methods of public scavengers. Effective 
 town ordinances. Waste paper receptacles on street corners, 
 neat, kept pa’nted, enough to meet all needs, regulation of adver- 
 tisements thereon. Anti-litter campaigns among children with 
 •prizes for work. 
 
 Paint. Campaigns at proper season. Cultivation of taste in 
 
8u 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 colors. Avoidance of offensive combinations on neighboring 
 houses. Regular painting of public property, telephone poles, 
 guide posts, band stands. Arousing public sentiment against 
 owners of dilapidated buildings and fences. 
 
 Fences. Taste in construction. Cultivation of sentiment in 
 matter of material, quality and style. Comparative merits of 
 stone, metal, wood terraces. Observance of stock laws. 
 
 Impressing the visitor. First view from the railway, from 
 the auto roads, welcome signs. 
 
 Lawns. Prizes for best. Instruction in best methods. Or- 
 dinances providing free water. Anti-weed campaigns. Compell- 
 ing owners to cleafi up and mow vacant lots. 
 
 Public Health 
 
 Cleanliness campaigns. Clean food exhibits. House clean- 
 ing devices. Clean desks at school. Clean-up days. Clean 
 streets and alleys. Public baths. Personal cleanliness urged as 
 a public duty. 
 
 Health measures. Instruction of children and adults in hy- 
 giene. Systematic exercise for old and young. Health “weeks”, 
 health parades, health exhibits, health scores and prizes. 
 
 Contagion and epidemics. Typhoid prevention. Repeated 
 analysis of public water supply. Instruction of public charts 
 and posters in causes and prevention of all contagious or epi- 
 demic disease. Prophylaxis campaigns. Clinics for treatment. 
 Segregation or isolation of all infectious diseases. Fighting the 
 white plague, the red plague. 
 
 Pests and disease carriers. Suppressing the mosquito, drain- 
 ing pools, oiling stagnant water, removing tin cans and rubbish 
 heaps, cutting away weed patches and swamps. Swatting the fly, 
 prizes for children who swat most. Inspection of breeding 
 grounds of all pests. 
 
 Sanitation. Strict ordinances. Ample public facilities for re- 
 moving garbage and waste. Drainage. Suppression or regula- 
 tion of privies. Inspection of sewage appliances. 
 
 The child. Regular medical inspection in schools. School 
 nurse. Dental examinations. Free clinics for children of school 
 and pre-school age. Public nurse for instruction of mothers. 
 Anti-cigaret campaigns, with instruction of young in evils of 
 early addiction. Regular and strict milk inspection, regulation 
 of supply and prices. Hot lunches supplied by schools, pro- 
 vision for poor children. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 81 
 
 Sex Instruction. Talks to young mothers. Prophylaxis 
 clinics. Systematic instruction of adolescents in the schools. 
 Public lectures for men and women. Cultivation of athletics and 
 organized recreation for old and young. 
 
 Medical Organization. Encourage physicians to leadership 
 in public health. Invite specialists and urge specialization among 
 physicians. Promote public hospital, or free service under 
 philanthropic auspices. Efficient public health board. Public 
 nurse or nurses for schools and district. Compulsory medical 
 examination of citizens under private or public auspices. Free 
 clinics and dispensaries. 
 
 Charities and Corrections 
 
 Charity organizations. Unification of charity agencies. 
 Thoro and constant survey. Discovery of causes of poverty and 
 indigence. 
 
 Distress and emergency committees. Red Cross for local 
 and distant needs. Sympathetic investigation of all cases of need. 
 Persistent effort to remove causes and prevent accidents. 
 
 Poverty and unemployment. Employment Bureau. Con- 
 structive measures to prevent all unemployment. Vigorous sup- 
 pression of loafing. Cultivation of industries suited to local 
 needs. Workmen’s compensation measures. Adjustment of 
 wages to living costs and standards. Vocational guidance of 
 adults and young. 
 
 Crime. Thoro investigation of causes. Positive measures, 
 versus harsh and vindictive suppression. Sympathetic reforma- 
 tion measures with the fallen. Sanitary prisons and jails. Help 
 for paroled or discharged prisoners. Vacations and relief for 
 poor mothers and overburdend working people. 
 
 Public Safety 
 
 Fire prevention. _Fire drills at schools. Drills of citizens for 
 fighting fires. Ordinances providing for fire escapes. House in- 
 spection. Cooperation with insurance companies. Fire hydrants 
 conveniently located. Instructions to citizens in use of fire 
 alarms. Safety devices in motion picture theaters. 
 
 First aid. Education of citizens in meeting emergencies. 
 A community pulmotor with general announcement of its loca- 
 tion. 
 
 Safety first. Educational campaign. Organization of safety 
 first brigades. Popular instruction in purposes. 
 
 Public dangers. Pollution of streams. Pollution of wells or 
 
82 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 public water supply. Playing in unguarded streets. Reckless 
 use of fire alarms. Spitting in public places. Inadequate pro- 
 vision for teams and parking autos. Comprehensive community 
 preventive measures. Saftey-first educational films to be had 
 by addressing Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, Akron, 
 Ohio, and National Fire Protection Association, 87 Milk Street, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Public Service 
 
 Water. Adequate supply. Restriction upon use of private 
 wells or cisterns. Public inspection of all sources. Prompt 
 checking of incipient typhoid and other epidemics. Public drink- 
 ing fountains, sanitary and artistic. 
 
 Light. Public ownership and operation. Private owner- 
 ship and public regulation. Efficient and economical administra- 
 tion. Location of street lights. 
 
 Streets. Legible and tasty street sign plates. Unbroken 
 pavements and wide walks. Adequate parkings for autos and 
 teams. Regulation of electric signs. Street lighting. . 
 
 City Hall. Creditable architecture of public buildings. 
 Economy and efficiency in arrangement of offices. Combina- 
 tion of city hall and community house. Public ownership of 
 opera house or public auditorium. 
 
 Numbering houses. Public conveniences. Observing rules 
 of post office department. 
 
 Public Services. City ownership and regulation of river or 
 creek banks, of vacant lots or unused lots within city limits. 
 Prevention of nuisances. Prevention of irresponsible monopolies 
 and exploitation. Cooperation with health service. Free legal 
 advice for observance of city ordinances. Public rest rooms for 
 farmers’ wives and children. Public checking depositories. 
 Public toilets. Provision for care of children of mothers shop- 
 ping. Hitching posts and racks. Auto parking spaces. Pre- 
 vention of auto stealing. 
 
 Municipal enterprizes. Green-house or botanical gardens 
 in connection with pub’ic parks. Education of the public taste 
 in flowers and landscaping. Municipal piggery for disposal of 
 garbage. 
 
 Social Justice. Equalization of taxes, protection of weak 
 and incompetent. Investigation of “raw deals” and other ex- 
 ploitation. Provision thru city attorney’s office and otherwise 
 for free legal advice. Free employment business. Constant at- 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 83 
 
 tention to labor conditions. Announcement of openings and op- 
 portunities. 
 
 Civic promotion. Organization of Booster clubs or other 
 provision for advertising and advancing general interests of com- 
 munity. 
 
 Public Information 
 
 Library. Vigorous promotion of library movement. Or- 
 • ganization of official library board. Formation of library com- 
 mittees. Educating the public to back up liberal support by 
 taxes. Enlisting public subscriptions in money and books. 
 Expert salaried leadership in library staff. Book clubs: each 
 member buys a book — finally given to library. Book entertain- 
 ments: admission ticket a book to be given to the library. 
 Literary clubs for book reviews and general literary information. 
 Magazine clubs, organized under library auspices or otherwise, 
 Participation in county library organization, with wagon for 
 rural delivery, or parcels post system. 
 
 Extension courses and classes. Extension division of the 
 University, Teachers’ Colleges, the A. & M. College and its agen- 
 cies. Correspondence study through state institutions or other 
 standard correspondence schools. Organization of local ex- 
 tension classes. Use of package libraries. Women’s club ser- 
 vice. Visual Education program promoted by Extension Divi- 
 sion of University. A. & M. College program for gardens, trees, 
 shrubs, home economics. 
 
 Lecture and lyceum courses. High-grade entertainments. 
 Educative effects. Systematic provision. 
 
 Debating and discussion clubs, in literary societies, in high 
 schools, in adult groups. 
 
 Public forum. Discussion of local, state, national and world 
 questions. Systematic organization for best results. Secure 
 literature from the National Open Forum Bureau, 1244 Little 
 Building, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Community surveys. Blue-printing, community needs and 
 projects. Constant study of all public movements in their 
 interrelations. Stimulating improvements. Competition by 
 blocks and wards and social groups. General survey under ex- 
 pert leadership. 
 
 The Schools 
 
 Buildings. Modern school architecture, providing for con- 
 venience, health, beauty, efficiency, growth of plant. 
 
84 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 School equipment. Apparatus for kindergarten and scien- 
 tific study. Sanitary toilets and drinking fountains. Play ground 
 facilities, articulated with community recreational program. 
 
 School administration. Representative and efficient school 
 board. Highly qualified superintendent, principals, and teachers. 
 
 Constant introduction of new ideals. Raising of teachers’ 
 standards. Improvement of curriculum. Efficient discipline thru 
 self-development of pupils and worthy leadership. Keeping 
 ahead of the community growth with additional buildings and 
 equipment. 
 
 The needy student. Helps for earning his way._ Coopera- 
 tion thru homes and business establishments. Remunerative em- 
 ployment. Wholesome and healthful surroundings. 
 
 Vocational guidance. Introduction of modern methods in 
 Junior High School. “Find yourself” campaigns. Lectures on 
 vocations. Vocational films in schools and at public theaters. 
 Essay contests and public discussions on different vocations. 
 
 School health. Efficiency in ventilation and lighting. Effi- 
 cient school nurse. Watchfulness against wet feet, exposure, 
 and contagious diseases. School house conveniences. School 
 entertainments. Cultivation of public interests, in debates, con- 
 certs, dramatics. Public sentiment in favor of thoro work and 
 high standards. 
 
 School propaganda. Public sentiment against truancy. Com- 
 plete enrolment of school age population. Keeping public in- 
 formd of school needs in support of liberal taxation. Public 
 sentiment against leaving school premature’y to enter vocations. 
 Finding work for graduates. Public interest in starting the 
 young in life. 
 
 Social Propaganda in schools. Cultivation of thrift thru 
 savings banks, of good habits thru self-improvement club, of 
 health thru supervised play, of practical use of school studies 
 such as geography, history, mathematical branches, penmanship, 
 stenography, and typewriting. 
 
 Recreation 
 
 Community Program. Salaried superintendent, and other 
 expert leadership. System of public play-grounds for children 
 and adults. Community organization of entertainments, cele- 
 brations, lectures, pageants, ath’etic meets and athletic leagues. 
 
 Athletics. A community stadium. Numerous play grounds. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 85 
 
 Systematic training. A community program. Play grounds. 
 Provision for baseball, volley ball, tennis, basket ball, foot-ball, 
 and varied track exercises. Intercommunity play. Field meets, 
 games, tournaments, regatta in conjunction with neighboring 
 communities. 
 
 Community play days. Hallowe’en and other popular cele- 
 brations, carnivals, holidays, community romps, and outings. 
 Seasonal picnics. “Go a-fishing” days. 
 
 Amusements. Cement skating rinks. Wading pools. Swim- 
 ming pools. Motion pictures. Boating races. Swimming races. 
 Masquerades and burlesques. 
 
 Community Celebrations. Fourth-of-July. Thanksgiving. 
 Christmas pageant and . Christmas trees. Easter, Naturaliza- 
 tion ceremonies. Monthly birthday ceremonies. Local anni- 
 versaries. 
 
 Community music. Band-stand. Band instruction. Chorus 
 organization. Orchestra. Concerts with public backing. Ex- 
 pert salaried trainers^ and conductors. Public or subscription 
 support for musical organizations. Organizations for community 
 singing, by blocks or wards or other areas. Encouragement of 
 professional musicians to establish studios in the community. 
 
 Leisure time. Guarantee of eight-hour day in industry. Con- 
 stant study of community responsibility for use of leisure. 
 Socia’izing and making educative the recreational program. 
 
 Old and young. Old folks’s play. Father-and-son contests 
 and games. Mother-and-daughter contests and games. Keep- 
 ing young with the young. 
 
 Child Welfare. See Schools and Recreation. 
 
 Children’s clubs. Squirrel (thrift) clubs to train in accu- 
 mulating property, bank accounts, proper care of home and 
 school furniture and equipment and personal possessions. Story 
 hours and reading groups. “Do better” clubs in kindness, cour- 
 tesy, cleanliness, neatness, energy, industry, self-control. Boy 
 scouts, girl scouts, camp fire girls’ organization. Enlisting 
 qualified leadership. Financial support. 
 
 Hikes and excursions. Provision thru club organization or 
 otherwise with qualified leaders for study of plants, birds, in- 
 sects, and enjoyment of rural scenery. Campus and outings. 
 Conserving child health. 
 
 Children’s fairs. Formation of habits of industry. En- 
 couragement of production. 
 
86 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Children’s clothing. Mothers’ organizations to insure chaste 
 style, health, taste, convenience, and beauty in children’s apparel. 
 
 CITIZENSHIP 
 
 Enrolment for study and proficient vocational and com- 
 munity service. Organized classes. Cultivation of industrial 
 initiative. 
 
 Civil responsibilly. Faithful exercise or franchise. Train- 
 ing. for intelligent voting. Cultivating lofty public ideals. 
 Resistance to partisan politics. 
 
 Civil administration. Business management of city affairs. 
 City management. Publicity. Corruption among public offi- 
 cials. Honor for efficiency and probity. 
 
 Patriotism. A flag at every school. In the school rooms. 
 On the grounds. A civic flag or emblem. Town display of 
 national emblem. Town loyalty. Popular instruction. Popular 
 discussion of town needs and ideals. 
 
 Civic intelligence. Know where the taxes go. Prevent 
 waste. Encourage wise expenditure. Win support for good 
 policies. Organize public opinion. Promote use of citizenship 
 manual (if one is publisht.) Make knockers unpopular. Meet 
 criticisms squarely. 
 
 Enlistment of young. Boys’ and girls’ civic clubs. Systema- 
 tic training for citizenship. Thoro courses in economics and 
 civics in high school. Look after school graduates, making them 
 efficient producers and intelligent contributers to the common 
 life. 
 
 Strangers. Organized welcome. Public Sentiment for 
 courteous treatment. Promote efficient hotel accomodations. 
 Insist on clean amusements and high grade theaters for their 
 entertainment. 
 
 Law and order. Teach respect for law by example of citi- 
 zens and intehigent legislation. Prompt removal of ineffective 
 laws from statute books. 
 
 Appreciation of public service. Ready accord of public 
 honors. Community banquet. Celebration of notable achieve- 
 ments of influential citizens in history and recent times. 
 
 Town maps. Insure acquaintance of all with their own town. 
 Enlist school children to draw maps and make models, insuring 
 artistic effect. Location of public institutions and homes. En- 
 courage ownership of homes by marking lots as ownd, rented, 
 clear or mortgaged. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 
 
 87 
 
 Social surveys. Secure expert leadership. Apply to Ex- 
 tension Division of University for plans and information. Catch 
 evils when they start. Keep ahead of the game. 
 
 Taxation. Efficient public administration. Sympathetic and 
 intelligent citizenship committees. Thoro study of assessment 
 bases and methods. “Pitiless publicity.” Publication of values, 
 tax assessments, and payments. 
 
 Community spirit. Civic conferences on public needs. 
 Cultivation of public opinion. Formation of committees on com- 
 munity aims, new policies, inter-community relations. Invite 
 speakers from other towns making notable successes. Be al- 
 ways willing to learn from others. Town pageants, depicting 
 town history, town characters, and rendering honor to whom 
 honor is due. Arbitration and conciliation committees providing 
 official peace-makers. Public sentiment against feuds, factions, 
 and embitterd competition. Concerted emphasis upon common 
 interests, common needs and common joys. 
 
 HOME IMPROVEMENTS 
 
 Home life. High ideals of parenthood. Cordial relations be- 
 tween parent and child. Reduction of outside affairs and diver- 
 sions. Attractive evening at home. 
 
 Protection of hemes. Concerted effort to withstand foes of 
 home life. Resistance to competition drawing child and parent 
 from home. Study of home games, entertainments and other 
 amusements. 
 
 Adjustments to changed conditions. Meeting high cost of 
 living comradery as against arbitrary authority. 
 
 Social Life. Intelligent backing for great social movements. 
 Coordination of social agencies, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., Boy 
 scouts, Camp Fire Girls. King’s Daughters. 
 
 Religion. Interchurch relations. Interchurch cooperative 
 movements. Interchurch social programs. Reduction of waste 
 and duplication in church organizations. The religious spirit and 
 motive in community life. 
 
 Community questions. Mass meetings. Organizing public 
 sentiment. Arousing interest in worthy causes. Communiy 
 backing for projects in service of common good. 
 
 Organizing good will. Care of the poor. Public coal yards. 
 Defense against pawn-shop and loan sharks. Efficient loan 
 policies. Care of the aged. Old Folks’ homes. Mothers’ day 
 celebrations. Care of defectives. Christmas time celebrations. 
 
38 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Merry Christmas banners in all languages spoken in community. 
 Good will celebations. Community greetings. Community festi- 
 vals. Camping parties. Singings. Festivities. 
 
 Social restraints. Organized public opinion against social 
 abuses. Good example of influential citizens in obeying laws. 
 Organized methods of expressing disapproval. Support of law 
 against private vindictiveness. Quelling feuds. Volunteer or- 
 ganizations such as golf clubs, country clubs, singing clubs, spe- 
 cial object clubs, sunshine clubs. 
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION FOR A COMMUNITY 
 COUNCIL 
 
 ARTICLE I. 
 
 Object and Procedure 
 
 The Council is not a legislative nor an administrative, but 
 an advisory body. Its sole aim is to harmonize, to persuade, to 
 find common ground, and to bring about effective cooperation 
 in the community. To this end, it should, so far as possible, 
 secure the unanimous agreement of its members so that it may 
 go before the community as a unit. 
 
 ARTICLE II. 
 
 Membership 
 
 Sec. 1. The first members of the Council shall be nominated 
 by the Director of the Community Institute under the auspices 
 of the University of Oklahoma and they shall nominate for the 
 remainder of the Council such number as they may deem best 
 at the time. These nominations shall be submitted to the audi- 
 ence at a meeting of the Institute above named, for their ap- 
 proval. 
 
 Sec. 2. These members shall hold their office continuously, 
 subject to section 3. 
 
 Sec. 3. Vacancies:- Members may automatically forfeit 
 membership in the Council by (1) absence or lack of interest in 
 its work; (2) By resignation; (3) By continued refusal to work 
 in harmony with the majority of the Council; (4) By removal 
 from the community. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 89 
 
 ARTICLE IIL 
 
 Officers and Their Duties 
 
 Sec. 1. The officers of the Council shall be a President, 
 Vice-President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Executive Committee. 
 They shall be elected at the annual meeting. 
 
 Sec. 2. The duties of these officers shall be such as usually 
 appertain to these offices. 
 
 ARTICLE IV. 
 
 Amendments 
 
 At least two weeks’ notice must be given before a proposed 
 amendment may be voted upon. This provision may be sus- 
 pended by unanimous vote of those present. 
 
 BY-LAWS 
 
 1. The annual meeting of this Council shall be held on the 
 
 second of Regular meetings shall be held on 
 
 m of each at P. M. Special meet- 
 ings may be ca’led at any time by the president (or, in his ab- 
 sence by the vice-president) or by a majority of the Executive 
 Committee. 
 
 2. The standing committees of the Council shall be the 
 Executive Committee of five, and committees on Public Health, 
 Recreation, Public Improvements, Finance, and Domestic Rela- 
 tions and such special committees as may be deemed necessary 
 for special service, all appointed by the President unless other- 
 wise voted. 
 
 3. Absence from three-fourths of the meetings for six 
 months sha’l be deemd a resignation, but such a member may 
 be reinstated by 3-4 vote before the vacancy is filld, on recom- 
 mendation of the Executive Committee. 
 
 4. Controversies threatening the division of the Council 
 shall be submitted to arbitration by members of councils of other 
 communities and the Institute staff of the University of Okla- 
 homa. Refusal to accept such decision shall automatically re- 
 move a member, under Art. II, Sect. 3, Statement 3. 
 
 5. These By-Laws may be amended at any meeting by a 
 three-fourths vote of the members present. 
 
90 
 
 THEiUNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 Enrollment Blank for Two-Fold Citizenship 
 
 COMMUNITY INSTITUTE— EXTENSION DIVISION 
 UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 For Better Citizenship 
 
 Name 
 
 Address 
 
 Date i_l 
 
 I. To make me more proficient in my business, profession, 
 home-making or other vocation, I intend systematically to study 
 
 For this purpose I intend to seek information as follows: 
 
 Magazines or papers specializing on 
 
 Books and pamphlets on 
 
 Correspondence courses of instruction in ^ 
 
 II. To make me more efficient in community service I in- 
 tend to study, and, as I have opportunity, to unite with fellow- 
 citizens in furthering. 
 
 For this purpose I intend to seek information as follows: 
 
 Magazines or papers specializing on 
 
 Books and pamphlets on 
 
 Correspondence courses of instruction in 
 
 APPENDIX D 
 
 COPY OF AGREEMENT FOR COMMUNITY INSTITUTE 
 
 THIS AGREEMENT, entered into between the University 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 91 
 
 of Oklahoma, through its Division of Extension and Department 
 
 of Community Institutes, and, 
 
 parties of the second part. 
 
 Ik WITNESSETH: That the party of the first part, and its 
 
 cooperating agencies, agrees to co-operate with the parties of 
 the second part to conduct a Community Institute, for a period of 
 ^ two to three days, furnishing the various speakers, director and 
 
 advertising matter, necessary to conduct said institute. 
 
 The parties of the second part agree to furnish the building 
 or buildings necessary for the conduct of the institute, secure 
 local publicity, distribute and post advertising matter and pro- 
 vide heat and janitor service, establish a temporary committee 
 to be known as the Community Council, consisting of at least ten 
 persons from representative groups, so far as possible. 
 
 The parties of the second part also agree to pay as part of 
 
 the expense of said institute the sum of , as an 
 
 evidence of their interest and good faith in the movement and 
 
 that said shall be paid to the director, or his 
 
 duly authorized representative, before the close of said institute. 
 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the University of Oklahoma, 
 
 and parties of second part have this, the day of 19__ 
 
 subscribed. University of Oklahoma. 
 
 By 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FOREWORD 2 
 
 COMMUNITY EXTENSION _ 3 
 
 Introduction. The University. 
 
 COMMUNITY INSTITUTES 3 
 
 Special bulletin. Range of Subjects Considered. 
 
 Aim of Institutes. After and Beyond the Institute. 
 
 EACH COMMUNITY UNIQUE 5 
 
 COMMUNITY COUNCIL _ 6 
 
 Results not Theories. Limitations and Perils. 
 
 A Sounder Philosophy. Eternal Vigilance and Progress. 
 Outstanding Features. All Elements represented. 
 Inspiration, not Administration. Avoid Factionalism. 
 Quick Action. Members, how Elected. Is a Community 
 Council Necessary? 
 
 COMMUNITY FORUM 12 
 
 How to Organize. Community Forum and Community 
 Council. 
 
 COMMUNITY LIBRARY 15 
 
 Means and Measures. ’ Housing. Administration. 
 Museum. 
 
 INTELLIGENT CITIZENSHIP 18 
 
 Correspondence Courses. Self-directed Education. 
 Studying for Citizenship. Enrolment for Intelligent 
 Citizenship. 
 
 CIVIC CLUBS 22 
 
 MANUAL OF CITIZENSHIP 23 
 
 Character and Content. Authorship and Publication. 
 Uses of the Book. 
 
 CITY AND TOWN PLANNING 25 
 
 Standard and Unique Plans. Expert Designing. Real 
 Estate Promotions. Checker-board vs. Nature’s Sym- 
 metry. Sources of Information. 
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY 29 
 
 Partnership in Institutions. Merchandizing. Varied 
 Town Industries. School and Church. Community 
 Housekeeping in Towns. 
 
COMMUNITY EXTENSION 93 
 
 THE CIVIL ORGANIZATION— CITY MANAGER 36 
 
 Commission Plan Modified. The Place of the City 
 Manager. The City Manager and Small Centers. The 
 City Manager and Democracy. The Manager and Poli- 
 tics. Studying the Problem. 
 
 PUBLIC HEALTH 42 
 
 In the Schools. Volunteer Support. Standardized Plans. 
 Public Hospitals. Studying the Business. 
 
 RECREATION AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 46 
 
 The Peril of Drudgery. The Peril of Unoccupied Crea- 
 tion and Education. Information and Standards. 
 
 MUSIC — 50 
 
 The Individual Artist and the Community. Community 
 
 Backing for Musical Organizations. All Taking Part. 
 Providing Competent Teachers. Information and En- 
 couragement. 
 
 CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL AND LOCAL 
 
 FESTIVALS 54 
 
 Community Leadership. Pageants. 
 
 MOTION PICTURES 56 
 
 Commercial Significance. Community Control. Educa- 
 tional Value. A Field of Study and Public Service. 
 
 THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 59 
 
 Backing the Community with Community Resources. 
 Impartial Leadership. The Field of the Chamber. The 
 Community’s Economic Base. Methods and Programs. 
 
 THE COMMUNITY CENTER 62 
 
 Memorial Buildings. Equipment thru Public Funds. 
 Civic Center — Grouping of Public Buildings. Plan of 
 Community Center. 
 
 GARDENS AND PARKS- 66 
 
 An. Agricultural and Horticultural Community Pro- 
 gram. Enlisting the Children and the Idle. 
 
 THE SCHOOL 68 
 
 Great and Varied Problems. Convincing the Public. 
 Parents’ and Teachers’ Associations. The University 
 and the Schools. 
 
 THE CHURCHES -71 
 
 The Federation of Churches. Community Churches. 
 Religion and the Community. 
 
 FRATERNAL ORDERS, MUTUAL BENEFIT ASSO- 
 
94 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 CIATIONS AND CLUBS 73 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY 75 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARK 76 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 APPENDIX A. COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES. 77 
 
 Town and Country. Business. City Beautiful. Public 
 Health, Charities and Correction. Public Safety. Public 
 Service. Public Information. The Schools. Recrea- 
 tion. Child Welfare. Citizenship. Home Improvements. 
 Social Life. 
 
 APPENDIX B. SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION FOR A 
 
 COMMUNITY COUNCIL 88 
 
 APPENDIX C. ENROLMENT BLANK FOR TWO- 
 FOLD CITIZENSHIP 90 
 
 APPENDIX D. COPY OF AGREEMENT FOR COM- 
 MUNITY INSTITUTE 90