ization of administration, whether in the
county or the state, the local community loses the very ties which have
bound it together. The adjustment of the desires for efficiency and for
local democracy is one of the unsolved problems of government.
Experience shows clearly that the local community or township is too
small a unit to secure efficient administration; but it is also evident
that without some degree of local responsibility and control,
centralized administration tends to become bureaucratic and the people
are deprived of that participation in government which is essential for
the life of a democracy.

Thus the need for the local self-government of rural communities has
become apparent to rural leaders. It is interesting to note that this is
becoming appreciated in the South, where on account of social and
economic conditions local government has been almost entirely lacking in
the past, but where new conditions give rise to new desires which cannot
be realized except through some means whereby a locality can be free to
work out its own salvation. This point of view has been vigorously
expressed by Dr. Clarence Poe, editor of the Progressive Farmer and a
recognized leader of rural life in the South:

"The chief task of the man who would help develop a rich and
puissant rural civilization here in the South--the chief
task perhaps of the man who would make an agricultural
State like North Carolina the great commonwealth it ought to
be--is to develop the rural community."...

"Consider the fact that the country community is the only
social unit known to our civilization that is without
definite boundaries and without machinery for
self-expression and development--without form, and void, as
was chaos before creation."...

"But for the country community there is no organic means of
expression whatever. There is, of course, that shadowy and
futile geographical division known as the Township--but it
is laid off utterly without regard to human consideration,
and serves no purpose save as a means of defining voting
boundaries and limiting the spheres of constables and
sheriff's deputies--a mere ghostly phantom of a social
entity that we need not consider at all."[79]

And he then goes on to show the advantages of the New England township.

_Community School Districts._--The most significant beginning towa