LEADERSHIP 599 



sive, in securing popular cooperation in community enterprises 

 and building up a real socialization. 



Volunteer Community Leadership. It is difficult to secure or 

 to support professional leaders for rural organizations, and when 

 the right sorts are found, they are usually only temporary. It 

 is extremely necessary to develop a volunteer leadership for all 

 local enterprises. This gives latent talents a chance to develop 

 through self-expression in social service, and it secures continuity 

 of leadership and stability of policy. ... I do not believe that 

 our problem of rural socialization will ever be solved finally by 

 outsiders. Resident forces must ultimately accomplish it. The 

 farmer himself and his natural leaders must take the burden 

 upon them. The farm-bureau agents now serving over 1,200 

 counties in the United States have a conspicuous opportunity in 

 this relation if they can only fit themselves to meet it. They 

 are exactly the people who could make the most of such courses 

 as were offered in the Cornell School for Leadership in Countrj r 

 Life. It is evident that no single agency or type of agency will 

 be able to handle this matter successfully. All agencies involved 

 in rural redirection and in specific service in any field of country 

 life must share the burden. The rural department of the Young 

 Men's Christian Association, within rather narrow geographical 

 limits, is doing a fundamental and valuable work. Genuine 

 centers of education for rural life, centralized schools with 

 modern teachers and equipment, are rapidly meeting the com- 

 munity need. The new country church, the community-serv- 

 ing church, when you can find it, is making itself useful and re- 

 spected. The pity of it is that the rural church is too frequently 

 an arrested development, sadly weakened by divisions, in- 

 adequately equipped and manned, and lacking any social vision 

 and community program. The right kind of a church, led by 

 the right sort of a minister, has the best possible chance to serve 

 the community and to develop the latent leadership of ambitious, 

 right-minded boys and girls. But to accomplish this, united 

 Christian forces are essential. Sectarianism, that curse of rural 

 Christianity, must be crucified in order to save rural religion. 

 When the day comes that rural Christians are ashamed to be 

 Methodists or Baptists or Disciples because it prevents their 

 being community Christians, then we shall see more Christian 



