Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/628

 612 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

these means of communication proving that we cannot avoid the conclusion that herein lies the remedy. Improved wagon roads, the rural free mail delivery, the farm telephone, trolley lines through country districts, are bringing about a positive revolu- tion in country living. They are curing the evils of isolation, without in the slightest degree robbing the farm of its manifest advantages for family life. The farmers are being welded into a more compact society. They are being nurtured to greater alertness of mind, to greater keenness of observation, and the foundations are being laid for vastly enlarged social activities. The problem now is to extend these advantages to every rural community in itself a task of huge proportions. If this can be done and isolation can be reduced to a minimum, the solution of all the other rural social problems will become vastly easier.

FARMERS' ORGANIZATION

Organization is one of the pressing social problems that American farmers have to face. The importance of the question is intrinsic, because of the general social necessity for co-operation which characterizes modern life. Society is becoming consciously self-directive. The immediate phase of this growing self- direction lies in the attempts of various social groups to organize their powers for group advantage. And if, as seems probable, this group activity is to remain a dominant feature of social prog- ress, even in a fairly coherent society, it is manifest that there will result more or less of competition among groups.

The farming class, if at all ambitious for group influence, can hardly avoid this tendency to organization. Farmers, indeed more than any other class, need to organize. Their isolation makes thorough organization especially imperative. And the argument for co-operation gains force from the fact that rela- tively the agricultural population is declining. In the old days farmers ruled because of mere mass. That is no longer possible. The naive statement that " farmers must organize because other classes are organizing" is really good social philosophy.

In the group competition just referred to there is a tendency for class interests to be put above general social welfare. This