ce
of the rural community as the local unit for its work. The County Farm
Bureaus, working in cooperation with the state colleges of agriculture
and the United States Department of Agriculture, very soon discovered
the value of the community as the local unit of their organization, and
carry on their work through community committees or community clubs.
Possibly no other one movement has done so much to bring about the
definite location of rural communities and their appreciation by rural
people. A conference of national organizations engaged in social work in
rural communities held in 1919 summed up the experience of a group of
representative rural leaders in the statement: "In rural organization it
is recognized that the local community constitutes the functional unit
and the county or district the supervisory unit." In other words, it is
the rural community which really "carries on," whatever the executive
organization of the county or district may be.

The strength of the rural community as a social group lies in two facts.
First, it is not so large but that most of its people know each other.
The size of the community in this regard does not depend so much upon
the actual number of square miles involved as upon the number of its
population. People may all be acquainted in a sparsely settled community
covering a ten-mile radius, and there may be less acquaintance in a
small community with a dense population. Secondly, the great majority of
the people in the average rural community are dependent upon agriculture
for their income, either directly or once-removed. These two facts make
possible common interests and a social control through public opinion
which is not possible in larger social units such as the county or city.
Sir Horace Plunkett appreciates this when he says:

"Our ancient Irish records show little clans with a common
ownership of land hardly larger than a parish, but with all
the patriotic feeling of larger nations held with an
intensity rare in modern states. The history of these clans
and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states
shows that the _social feeling assumes its most binding and
powerful character where the community is large enough to
allow free play to the various interests of human life, but
is not so large that it becomes an abstraction to the
imagination_."[4]

This inherent social strength of the rural community,