nted merely to
investigate suggested projects and to report their findings for further
consideration. Where the council is large, and it is not practicable to
have it meet more than once a quarter, it may be well to have its work
carried on in the interims by an executive committee consisting of the
officers and the chairmen of the committees.

There can be no one best type of community organization adapted to the
widely varying conditions of all sorts and sizes of rural communities;
each community must have a form of organization adapted to its needs.
The important thing is not the creation of another new organization in
the community, but to afford the means for the better team play of those
which already exist. The mechanism must therefore depend upon the
character and stage of development of the community and will be modified
from time to time as its experience, or that of similar community
organizations, warrants.

Finally let us remember that community organization is not an end in
itself, but that it is merely a means whereby conditions in the
community may be made such that every individual in it may have the best
possible chance to develop his personality and to enjoy the fellowship
of service in the common good. The aim of all social organization is
personality, but personality is achieved and can find its own
satisfaction only through fellowship. The ideal community but furnishes
the social environment in which the human spirit realizes its highest
values.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Much of this chapter is a revision of parts of an article by the
author entitled "Some Fundamentals of Rural Community Organization."
Proceedings Third Natl. Country Life Conference, pp. 66-77.

[85] See Elliott Dunlap Smith, Proceedings first National Country Life
Conference, pp. 36-46 and Appendix C.

[86] In this connection, Dr. N. L. Sims in his "The Rural Community" (p.
640. New York. Scribners, 1920), has propounded a most interesting "Law
of Rural Socialization":--"Cooperation in rural neighborhoods has its
genesis in and development through those forms of association which,
beginning on the basis of least cost, gradually rise through planes of
increasing cost to the stage of greatest cost in effort demanded, and
which give at the same time ever increasing and more enduring benefits
and satisfactions to the group."

[87] See pp. 74-5, "Some Fundamentals of Rural Community Organization."
Proc. 3d National Country Life Confer