THE VILLAGE 467 



allied to it is a permanent social factor from generation to gen- 

 eration. It is a part of the equipment of the perennial ele- 

 mental industry of this city or village. Were there a knitting 

 mill on the edge of a small city, with five hundred employees 

 living about the mill, this whole industry land, buildings, and 

 people would be unquestionably part and parcel of the city. 

 In like manner surrounding the agricultural city is a huge con- 

 tinuous nature industry, not directly unified to be sure, but 

 real and actually united just the same. 



Every inch of advance on the farm in intelligent skill, man- 

 agerial ability, moral control, governmental development, will be 

 reflected in the little city by an increased farm consumption of 

 goods, higher grades of farm desire, and better qualities of farm 

 citizenship ; whereas the same qualities of skill, intelligence, and 

 integrity in the city will be quickly transmitted to the farm and 

 to the advantage of the population on the land, if avenues of 

 social intercourse between "wheel and hub" are open wide. 



Our study shows that the farm homes in the trade zone of a 

 small city share with the city homes the major commercial and 

 social interests requiring combined capital of many to carry on. 

 Circumstances hitherto have hindered the large-scale development 

 of some of these enterprises among the farm homes, but these 

 circumstances may not be in fact need not be permanent ; for 

 the same incentive which has led the city population to spend 

 some of its surplus profits upon equipment for religion, higher 

 education, government, information, art, leisure, and play, is 

 present in a latent form in the farm population, simply ready 

 to be induced to join hands in an alliance of fair play. 



THE TOWN'S MORAL PLAN 1 



HARLAN PAUL DOUGLASS 



IT is possible for the little town to have a moral plan, approxi- 

 mated through conscious standards of social control. As every- 

 where, human conduct is determined chiefly by the natural ac- 

 quiescence of the human spirit in the ways of the social order 



i Adapted from "The Little Town," pp. 115-120, Macmillan, N. Y., 1919. 



