146 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



been made from this principle, but as a rule it will be 

 found that a subordinate Grange draws its members 

 substantially from a single farming township. This 

 plan has worked well and if it serves the Grange, it 

 ought to be satisfactory in the larger cooperation which 

 is to be found in the organization of a real rural com- 

 munity. Where a township cannot well constitute the 

 area of a community, it can be made by mutual agree- 

 ment, acting through county farm bureaus or some 

 other overhead organization. The main thing is to set 

 apart a region or an area big enough so that the farm- 

 ers having similar interests may maintain those interests 

 as a unit; so that they may have their own churches, 

 their own schools, their own business agencies. Yet 

 this community must be small enough so that the mem- 

 bers of the community can all come together, not occa- 

 sionally but frequently, to discuss their common inter- 

 ests and to enjoy themselves as one big family. A com- 

 munity can be in a measure self-supporting. It may 

 stand on its own feet. It may learn to act as one man 

 in common concerns. Therefore, it must not be so big 

 as to destroy this common interest nor so small that it 

 cannot support the organizations and agencies through 

 which society is accustomed to work. 



COMMUNITY METHODS IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT 



The individual farmer does not lose his identity 

 through the application of the community idea, for it 

 has nothing in common with " communism " or " col- 

 lectivism " or " socialism " as those words are ordina- 

 rily understood. It is simply a more intensive and bet- 

 ter developed form of rural cooperation than we have 

 ever known. It takes the idea underlying the Grange, 

 the cooperative idea that is the foundation of all our 



