PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 369 



all old rural civilizations. In former days, however, as the writer 

 car testify, threshing was such prodigiously hard work, and a 

 great deal of it was so dusty and disagreeable, as to stifle any 

 spirit of jollification which might otherwise have arisen. But 

 with the more powerful engines and more highly improved ma- 

 chinery of the present, the hardest and most disagreeable part 

 of the work of threshing has been eliminated. Under such 

 conditions it is at least a theoretical possibility that the thresh- 

 ing season in any neighborhood might be made a festival occa- 

 sion, to be participated in by women as' well as by men by 

 priest, parson, and schoolma'am as well as by the farmers them- 

 selves. This, however, is only by way of suggestion. 



The grange. Of all the organizations which are now contrib- 

 uting on a large scale to the social life of rural America, the 

 grange is, at the present time, one of the most effective, partly, 

 perhaps, because it is organized for the purpose. It is, however, 

 somewhat exclusive, in that it serves the social needs of its own 

 membership rather than those of the whole community. Even 

 more exclusive in character are the lodges of the various secret 

 and fraternal orders, which also serve the social needs of their 

 own members. This brings us face to face with one of the most 

 dijficult problems in the whole field of rural social economy, Is 

 it possible to maintain a social life except through some agency 

 of selection and exclusion ? In aristocratic countries, where class 

 distinctions are of ancient and historic standing, the social life 

 runs pretty definitely within class lines, but within those bound- 

 aries it runs freely. In democratic America, where caste and 

 hereditary class distinctions are not allowed, we have not yet 

 become adjusted to the new situation, especially in the rural dis- 

 tricts ; and there is a strong tendency toward the formation of 

 groups on the basis of likes and dislikes, and for the social life 

 to run within these groups. This is clearly a long step in ad- 

 vance of the caste system, or of the stratification of society 



