CHAPTER II 



LITTLE STUDIES IN COOPERATION 



The hunger for brotherhood is at the bottom of the unrest of the modern 

 civilized world. — George Frederick Watts 



In the labyrinth of garden possibilities through which we 

 have been threading our way, two have been constantly attract- 

 ing our attention : training in science and training in coop- 

 eration. Suppose we were accused of setting upon these too 

 high a value. This charge might be made in all sincerity ; 

 and it might be admitted, too, provided our attention were 

 riveted upon school problems alone and not upon world prob- 

 lems. But out in the world both science and cooperation play 

 leading roles in each day's business, great and small. The 

 role of science is to develop the type of mind which in its 

 humdrum aspect can turn its attention to inhibiting snap 

 judgments or to sterilizing the baby's milk, but which can, 

 nevertheless, perform equally well the supreme service of 

 discovering the typhoid germ. 



Cooperation renders its peculiar service by developing lead- 

 ership and initiative, — not initiative in school sports and 

 school debates alone, but initiative that makes the worker 

 forge ahead in studies that connect with the larger if not the 

 more real world of civic activity and household economics. 

 Said the child, struggling to define salt, " It 's the stuff 

 that when it is n't in things makes them taste bad." Likewise 

 of cooperation it may be said that, when it is n't in things, 

 they go, oh ! so badly. This, of course, is simply because we 

 do not see what the other fellow is driving at. 



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