Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/842

 822 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

One of the methods of amelioration is the rural social settle- ment. This method has its origin and inspiration in the urban social settlement which has been such a powerful factor in solv- ing the problem of the city. In presenting this method as a solution of the problem of the rural community, John P. Gavit, a well-known worker in settlement circles, says :

The same needs which welcome the settlement to crowded city quarters prevail in rural villages and scattered populations. There is the same occa- sion to exemplify higher family and intellectual ideals ; the same opportunity to unify a community reft with schisms, social, racial, and religious ; the same crying absence of a force to mediate the advantages of education and world- knowledge to those whose ill-paid labor has placed to their credit against society a large account of obligation ; the same absence to fill of initiative to social action for the betterment of local and general conditions.

But, as he elsewhere adds :

The unification of races and tongues and religions in heterogeneous city wards is a simple problem beside the assimilation of the cliques and the theological and the caste feuds in a small village or agricultural community.

It is just here that this method fails, as must all methods that are borrowed from the urban community. The difference of social structure militates against its success. In the city the very friction of congestion helps to unify its races and religions ; and the settlement method based upon this social structure is at once practical and effective. In the country, on the contrary, the very separation in its isolation helps to divide its social and religious life ; and a settlement awkwardly joined to this social structure would be helpless between " a devil and a deep sea of theological discussion and prejudice." As Mr. Gavit says : " Leadership in such an enterprise would be exhausted early in the siege, and the adaptability of Paul's ' all things to all men ' would be tested to the limit." One must ever take into account the independence of the isolated inhabitant of the rural district; and any method of amelioration which tinges the least of the spirit of patronage will die a sure and speedy death. " You may flatter the American farmer, but you cannot patronize him," says the editor of the Michigan Fanner. And this is why the rural social settlement can never be a success in ameliorating rural life.

In itself the settlement idea is a good one. It furnishes an