community. There is a constant awakening of the memory of former 

 days; and a consequent cherishing of community ideals and standards; 

 promoting, in turn, the persistence of all neighborhood interests. As 

 long as a community is unable to forget its own history, especially 

 when that history is a distinctively worthy and inspiring one, it is 

 impossible for it to sink far below the level of its past. 



The various forms of neighborhood activity, past and present, which 

 ha\'e found outward expression in such institutions as the school, the 

 Lyceum Hall, the banks, the insurance company, and the library, all 

 serve to increase the homogeneity of the social group. These are the 

 monuments of cooperation and community endeavor. Of course the 

 stability of the population and the great degree of inter-marriage help 

 to weld the community together, so that within the neighborhood itself 

 there are practically no divisive forces. 



But the most potent form of social control expresses itself in what 

 we may call the community conscience. The clubs and the Grange 

 share with the Monthly Meeting the function of providing this con- 

 science. In the program which we cited of the Meeting of the Home 

 Interest Society, it will be recalled that among the questions brought 

 up for discussion, was one which was properly an ethical problem. This 

 is very frequent. Many personal problems whose significance is social 

 are solved by the club or the Meeting. In many ways, not always easy 

 to trace, standards of conduct are created, which determine for the 

 individual what his course should be. It is the Group Will imposing 

 itself upon the individual, or rather it is the Will of the individual find- 

 ing expression through the Will of the Group. The force of this cumu- 

 lative social pressure must be great; greater, probably, than the in- 

 dividual is apt to realize. This sort of control prepossesses leadership 

 and here, more clearly than elsewhere in the county, can the source and 

 the activities of that leadership be discerned. Economically it is the 

 leadership of the farmer who has himself succeeded; morally and religi- 

 ously it is the leadership of the older, tried members of the Meeting. 

 Always it is quite unostentatious and self-efifacing. 



So far we have been looking at the favorable aspects of this community 

 and have been constrained to praise rather than to criticism. But in 

 conclusion we may point but that if this community is to reach its maxi- 

 mum de\-elopment and fill the place of its maximum usefulness, if indeed 

 it is to maintain its present level, there are certain pertinent problems 

 for which it must find a solution. There is its race problem, less acute 

 here than elsewhere, and also in process of solution, but important, never- 

 theless. Had Sandy Spring had for its negro population only the 

 descendants of that group of negroes originally given their freedom, and 

 trained there under such admirable auspices, its problem would not now 



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