Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/845

 PROBLEM OF RURAL COMMUNITY 825

sect to work for the common good ; to awaken the love of beauty by cultivating flowers, vines, shrubs, and trees, and by banishing from the public gaze all slatternliness and ugliness ; to promote the standard of Tightness through the improvement of the home, on the basis that " if parents combine to make the circle of the home life beautiful, without and within, they will sow the seeds of truth, honesty, and kindness in the hearts of their children.".

One has but to glance over the wide bibliography of this sub- ject to see how much this society is doing to solve the rural problem. Its success is largely due to the fact that it is scien- tifically founded on the social structure of a rural town, and that its methods are in harmony with the rural problems of isolation and lack of initiative.

What the village improvement society has been accomplishing for the villages the farmers' organizations have been accomplish- ing for the farming communities. They, too, have succeeded because they are founded upon the social structure of rural life, and are scientifically adapted to its problem. It takes a unique organi- zation, indeed, to secure the unity and co-operation of a class of people who are made intensely individual by their vocation, ungraciously independent by their isolation, and who are diffi- cult to organize because of poor facilities of communication and transportation. Yet, despite their inborn suspicion of men, their aversion to patronage, their jealousy of leadership, their tenacity for personal views, their looseness in keeping co-operative pledges, the American farmers have actually been organized; and they are now co-operating hand in soul in the Grange and the Farmers' Institute.

The Grange, whose official title is the Patrons of Husbandry, arose in the year 1849. It was organized by its founder, Mr. O. H. Kelley, to meet two needs : to educate the farmer better for his business, and to cultivate a spirit of brotherhood between the North and the South. The following is the "Promulgation of Purpose of the National Grange " :

We shall endeavor to advance our cause by laboring to accomplish the following objects : To develop a better and higher manhood and woman-