ountry School_, pages 336-340.

DAVIS: _Agricultural Education in the Public Schools._

EGGLESTON AND BRUERE: _The Work of the Rural School_, pages
193-223.

HOWE: _Wisconsin: an Experiment in Democracy_, pages 140-182.

_Country Life_, pages 200-210.

FOGHT: _The American Rural School_, pages 254-281.

CHAPTER XX

RURAL GOVERNMENT

142. =The Necessity of Government.=--Institutions of recreation and
culture are in most cases the voluntary creation of local groups of
individuals, except as the state has adopted a system of compulsory
education. Government may be self-imposed or fixed by external
authority, in any case it cannot be escaped. It can be changed in form
and efficiency; it depends for its worth upon standards of public
opinion; but it cannot cease to exist. As the activity of the child
needs to be regulated by parental control in the home and by the
discipline of the teacher in the school, so the activity of the people
in the community needs to be regulated by the authority of government.
Self-control on the part of each individual or the existence of custom
or public opinion without an executive agency for the enforcement of
the social will, is not sufficient to safeguard and promote the
interests of all. Government has everywhere been necessary.

143. =The Reign of Law.=--The existence of regulation in the community
is continually evident. The child comes into relation to law when he
is sent to school to conform to the law of compulsory education. He
goes to school along a road built and maintained by law, takes his
place in a school building provided by a board of education or school
committee that executes the law, and accepts the instruction of a
teacher who is employed and paid according to the law. His hours of
schooling and the length of terms and vacations are determined by the
same authority. During his periods of recreation he is still under the
reign of law, for game laws regulate the times when he may or may not
hunt and fish. When he grows older and assumes the rights of
citizenship he must bear his part of the burdens of society. He has
the right to vote as one of the lawmakers of the land, but he is not
thereby free to cast off the restraints of law. He must pay his
proportion of the taxes that sustain the government that binds him,
local, State, and federal taxes. He must perform the public duty of
sitting on a jury or administering civic office if he is summ