Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/833

 PROBLEM OF RURAL COMMUNITY 813

are too narrow. For convenience and mutual understanding, let us define a rural community as one that is characterized by genuinely rural conditions. This would include all farming neighborhoods and, according to the last census, all centers of population up to 4,000 inhabitants.

One must be on his guard, moreover, against the fallacies which are wont to be made in the discussion of this problem, such as non causa pro causa, which mistakes conservatism for decadence, crudeness for barrenness ; insufficient data, which, observing the degeneration of one rural community, make unwarranted generalizations therefrom as to country life as a whole ; false comparison, which compares rural life with urban life, and deduces disparaging results accordingly; and non sequitur, which infers that the problem of the country is the same as that of the city.

In the treatment of this question one must approach it with the broadest possible study and with thoroughly scientific methods. In most of the attempts to solve it from the reli- gious side, the suggestions have been dogmatic and empirical rather than scientific. While I wish also to approach it from the religious side, it will be my endeavor to look upon the prob- lem at the same time as a sociological as well as a religious one, and to study with strictly scientific methods.

The outline of treatment in this paper will be as follows : The rural problem as a community interest ; the end of social action to be attained ; causal relations and conditions ; methods of amelioration ; regulative principles ; program for reform.

I.

The urban problem is that of a growing congestion, but the rural problem is that of a growing isolation. While the evils connected with the city have long provoked discussion, because they force themselves upon public gaze, the vicissitudes of the country have been somewhat disregarded, because hidden in their solitude. Nevertheless, they are just as threatening, if not more so, because the country is largely the source of that human stream that is constantly flowing to the city. Statistics