THE COUNTRY HOME [chapter 



raised their house frames, husked their corn, and 

 reaped their harvests by united effort, while the 

 women knitted and spun and wove the family cloth- 

 ing and carpets. The state was called the Com- 

 monwealth, and the town meeting still remains 

 as a recognition of our necessary common weal 

 — and our possible common woe. As we look 

 ahead we shall understand that individualism must 

 increase its efforts for united work. The new 

 country life will teach us to link our energies as 

 never before. The middleman will become of 

 less importance. Postal Savings Banks will gather 

 the earnings of the poorer classes, and make them 

 small capitalists. By going into the country we 

 are not to be scattered and alienated, but to be 

 brought into an alliance that is impossible in the 

 herded city. 



By these steps we are coming into an era of co- 

 operation in country schools — a cooperation that 

 is being worked out by events as much as by logic. 

 Small district schools by the wayside are giving way 

 to town schools, with splendid sanitation and bet- 

 ter teachers — these in turn becoming centers of 

 moral and intellectual life. It is not at all unlikely 

 that the restoration of the town church will be in 



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