370 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



recognized, it is true, but largely in a perfunctory way. At 

 basis the appeal has been to philanthropy and has laid its chief 

 emphasis upon the injustice of denying to the children of the 

 poor the advantages that the children of the rich enjoy. 



It is in no sense derogatory to our people that they have sup- 

 ported and extended educational opportunities primarily from 

 this essentially philanthropic motive ; but the exclusive appeal 

 to this motive has been unfortunate. It has intensified the lo- 

 calism of education. It has led the richer communities to self- 

 satisfaction with their own educational efforts on the ground that 

 they were doing their best for all the children within their 

 own borders. If children beyond their borders were less well 

 circumstanced the richer communities might lament the fact, 

 but they could hardly be expected to divide their wealth and 

 their advantages with their less fortunate neighbors. Thus the 

 fact that American communities are interdependent educationally 

 as well as commercially and industrially has been obscured. 

 That the wealth and prosperity of a great city are directly re- 

 lated to the prosperity of its tributary area is clear to all. That 

 the prosperity of this tributary area depends upon the intelli- 

 gence of its inhabitants, that the schools of this area should be 

 matters of concern to those who have the city's prosperity at 

 heart, and that the city has an obligation to the outlying dis- 

 tricts from which its wealth has been derived, these are truths 

 not so readily grasped. 



It has indeed taken the experiences of the past year to drive 

 home this basic fact of educational interdependence. It has 

 taken the crisis of the great war to prove convincingly that 

 there can be no such thing as an American community that 

 lives to itself alone, whether in industry, in politics, or in edu- 

 cation. With seven hundred thousand illiterate young men sub- 

 ject to the draft, the educational backwardness of any single 

 district or area becomes at once a matter of national concern. 

 Modern warfare is a conflict in which mental efficiency and 

 physical efficiency combine to play the leading roles, and even 

 the kind o~ physical efficiency which modern warfare demands 

 is the intelligent kind the counterpart of adequate knowledge 

 and clear thinking. 



The war has revealed all this with startling clearness. It is 



