ssociation, the family, the community, the state, have been built
up very slowly through centuries of human strife and suffering; they
represent the experience of the race as to the best means of adjusting
human relationships. Break down an essential feature of the structure of
human society, as was done when American settlers abandoned community
life, and men are compelled to find new methods of meeting their common
needs and of maintaining standards of conduct essential for their common
welfare. Had it not been for the influence of the school and the church,
rural life over most of the United States would have inevitably
degenerated, for wherever there is no form of associated control there
humanity reverts to the level of the brute. Human life is what it is
because for countless generations mankind has been learning how to
adjust itself through association so that larger opportunity for the
individual is secured through a larger measure of well being for all.

The devotion of the American settler to his family eventually
necessitated his association for advantages which could be secured only
through collective action. When he had subdued the land and established
his home, when he commenced to raise farm products for market rather
than primarily for support of the family, when better communication gave
more contacts with the town and city, the farm family developed new
wants and interests which could only be satisfied through association
with others. We have already indicated the processes whereby the
economic situation, religious life, public education, the need of local
government, and the desire for recreational facilities, are inevitably
drawing the people of the countryside together at the natural centers
into communities. The locality group is again recognized as essential
for the best organization of rural life. But the new rural community is
a voluntary group, it is not determined by common control of the land or
by common subjection to a feudal lord as was the village community of
the old world; its people are free to come and go where and when they
will. The community can compel only through the power of public opinion
and its success must depend upon the voluntary loyalty of its people.

Thus the strength and the weakness of the community lies in the loyalty
of its people. No community can permanently succeed whose people
associate in it merely for the advantages which they may gain. There
must be a genuine