a
profit in hauling produce from the farms to the nearest markets or
shipping stations.

Of more importance to community life has been the development of good
roads, a movement which did not get under way until the present century
and which was chiefly due to the rural free mail delivery and the
automobile. The change in rural life due to automotive vehicles can
hardly be exaggerated. In our best agricultural states practically every
farmer has his automobile. He can get to the community center as quickly
as the business man or laborer gets to his work in the average city, and
can go to the county seat or neighboring city as quickly as one can
drive to the business section from the more distant parts of New York or
Chicago. Auto-bus lines radiate from most of our small cities, and auto
trucks not only bring freight from nearby wholesale centers, but are
rapidly supplanting horses for hauling farm produce to the shipping
station or market.

As good roads have been due chiefly to state and county, and more
recently to national aid, it is but natural that they should have been
constructed where the traffic is heaviest connecting the main centers.
What is now most needed to build up the local communities is a
systematic development of the principal local roads radiating from the
community centers.

Good roads and automobiles have made possible a new sort of a local
community, which could never have existed without them. Consider the
present possibility of consolidated schools with auto-busses to haul the
children; the numbers of automobiles which come in from the farms to
every village center where there is a band concert or movie show; the
ability to get in the "flivver" after supper and ride to a relative's or
friend's on the other side of the town and be back for early bedtime;
and one can perceive how the people in a community area are bound
together and develop common interests in new advantages made possible by
their ability to get together easily and quickly. How could the county
agricultural agent or the visiting nurse cover a county as effectively
as they now do without the automobile? The rural community can now enjoy
the services of expert paid executives in many fields of work as diverse
as a county commercial club secretary, a Boy Scout leader, a Sunday
school executive, or county health officer, because the county has
become a unit which can be covered as easily as a city and is large
enough to support suc