THE VILLAGE 469 



While all moral battles must be waged on every front at once, 

 it is possible to discern a sort of pedagogical order in which the 

 offensive should be undertaken. It would be foolish to make 1h<> 

 first issue that of closing cigar stands on Sunday, which at best 

 would only stir the conscience of a fraction of the community, or 

 that of enforcing liquor laws, which always involves a contest 

 with formidable interests from outside the community. Rather 

 the battle should be drawn on some community issue pure and 

 simple, in which the enforcing of the collective against the in- 

 dividualistic viewpoint involves some broadly fundamental but 

 localized field. When the battle is fought to a finish here other 

 victories will come more easily. 



The most difficult yet necessary phases of the little town's 

 struggle for moral standards are those involving outside in- 

 terests not directly amenable to the community conscience. They 

 are often said to "interfere" with the community; if so they 

 must be made to interfere helpfully as well as harmfully. The 

 most frequent and insidious of these interests is the organized 

 liquor traffic, although often the interests of alien corporations 

 clash with those of the community and interfere in a similar 

 way. In these cases the essential nature of the problem is that 

 it is not local in character. Local tools are used, but the prin- 

 cipals to the conflict are too remote to feel local pressure. Under 

 such circumstances the only resource of the little town is to 

 combine with other communities using the resources of state- 

 wide publicity, organization and political action. The unro- 

 mantic, perpetual, straight-away pull of law-enforcement with 

 all its costs in time, money and personal discomfort, is the in- 

 evitable price of community morals in their wider setting. 



Even more difficult than law enforcement, but affecting more 

 people in more ways and entering more subtly into community 

 life, are the problems of social control in the round of social 

 intercourse ; of amusements, particularly for youth ; the prob- 

 lems of standards of consumption registered by the expenditure 

 of money, and of the use of leisure. The concrete forms in 

 which these issues confront the little town are the party, the 

 dance, theater and amusement place ; dress, travel, Sunday ob- 

 servance and the like. 



Probably the most rational method of precipitating a body of 



