Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/844

 824 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Now, these conditions do not exist in the country. There the people are scattered and isolated. Life has no great extremes of poverty and wealth, ignorance and culture ; and while the home life may not be so rich as it should be, it is healthful and stimulating on the whole. Moreover, the great need of society today is not the transference of home functions to the church ; it* is rather the restoration of those which have been taken from the home already. The important question before the American people today is how the family may be reinforced in its con- structive elements. The truth must be emphasized that teaching and religion are permanent functions of the home. If we would make education "intellectual, industrial, and seasoned with char- acter;" if we would make religion an expression of divine fatherhood and brotherhood, we must not delegate the perma- nent functions of the home entirely to the school and the church. While the conditions of urban life are destructive to the home life, it is not so in the rural districts. And it is the duty of the country church so to arrange its polity that it conserves and intensifies the home as an institution, instead of robbing it of its functions and of separating it into individuals.

The "village improvement society," unlike the other organi- zations mentioned had its origin and inspiration in a rural com- munity. Originated to satisfy but one of the six interests of human life, the aesthetic, it has now broadened its scope to con- tain them all. The objects of the American League for Civic Improvement include all the cultural interests, " together with other local needs of home and community." In general, the aim of this society is to promote health by securing better hygienic conditions ; to add to the community wealth by better- ing all those conditions which cause economic loss; to promote intellectual life through the introduction of lectures, entertain- ments, reading-circles, libraries, and better school facilities ; to promote sociability through the improvement of roads, side- walks, street-lights; by giving the people interests broad enough and vital enough to enable all cliques and all persons to be inter- ested in the same thing; by fraternizing a community through its very organization, leading all classes irrespective of rank or