Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/340



centres. One new line of strategy has recently been developed. It takes the small town or the village as its point of departure and regards this as the focal point of a community compounded of town and country. The towns of small size, that have no manufacturing or other self-supporting activities, are to-day dependent for their prosperity upon the business created by the country demand for supplies of all sorts and for local marketing facilities. Since the rural mail service, the improved economics of the farms, the mail order house and the automobile have freed the farmers from their old time dependence upon the local town, it becomes necessary for the towns as a measure of selfpreservation to make overtures to the country people in the hope of establishing new and mutually beneficial relations between them and the towns. In the proposed interchange of benefits the towns can offer, if they will, a modernized mercantile service, which will at once exclude the mail order house from the community. It can of¥er in many cases the readiest and best solution of the problem of giving country boys and girls adequate educational opportunities, to which end it needs merely to adapt the work of the town school more fully to the needs of country pupils, and to secure the inclusion of the entire community area in the school district—at least for high school purposes. The town can also afford social, recreational, and religious opportunities to supplement the more strictly' local or neighbourhood opportunities now enjoyed by rural dwellers. Many special favours could