r the proper training of boys and girls to
understand their social relations and civic responsibilities, and if
the meeting-house is an efficient centre for the discussion of social
ethics and a religion that moves on the plane of earth as well as
heaven, then the town house will give a good account of itself in
intelligent voting and clean political methods. If the school-teacher
and the minister have won for themselves positions of community
leadership, and are educators of a forceful public opinion, and if the
community is sufficiently in touch with the best constructive forces
in the national political arena to feel their stimulus, the political
type locally is not likely to be very low. A self-governing people
will always have as good a government as it wants, and if the
government is not what it should be, the will of the people has not
been well educated.

READING REFERENCES

FAIRLIE: _Local Government in Counties, Towns, and Villages._

FISKE: _Civil Government in the United States_, pages 34-95.

HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 292-317.

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 92-105.

COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 402-410.

CHAPTER XXI

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

151. =Health and Beauty in the Community.=--Rural government formerly
limited its range of activity to political and economic concerns. The
individualism of Americans resented the interference of government in
other matters. If property was made secure and taxed judiciously for
the maintenance of public institutions, the duty of government was
accomplished. The individual man was prepared to assume all further
responsibility for himself and family. Such matters as the health of a
rural community and its aesthetic appearance were left to individual
initiative and generally were neglected. On many occasions the
housewife showed her sympathy and kindliness by nursing a sick
neighbor, but the members of the community had little appreciation of
the seriousness of contagion and infection, no knowledge of germs, and
small thought of preventive measures. The appearance of their
buildings and grounds was nobody's business but their own. They had no
conception of the social obligation of each for all and of all for
each. The result was an unnecessary amount of illness, especially of
tuberculosis and typhoid fever, because of insanitary buildings and
grounds, and a general air of shabbiness a