needs. I told of
certain dangers to be avoided, of results that had always followed
certain remedies, of motives to be sought and used, of community ends
to seek. Not knowing the local situation, I could not tell them exactly
what to do next, or how or with whom to do it; not seeing the patient
or his symptoms, I did not diagnose the disease or prescribe medicine.
Several members of the audience who were particularly anxious to start
a new organization on a metropolitan model were disappointed because
they were told, not just how to organize, but rather how to find out
what sort of organization their town needed. They were right in
believing that it was easier to copy on paper a plan tried somewhere
else, than to think out a plan for themselves. They had forgotten for
the time being their many previous disappointments due to copying
without question some plan of social work, just as they copy Paris or
New York fashions. They had not expected to leave this meeting with the
conviction that while the _ends_ of sanitary administration may be the
same in ten communities, health _machinery_ should fit a particular
community like a tailor-made suit.

American-like, they had a mania for organization. I once heard an aged
kindergartner--the savant of an isolated German village--describe my
fellow-Americans as follows: "Every American belongs to some
organization. The total abstainers are organized, the brewers are
organized, the teachers are organized, the parents are organized, the
young people and even the juniors are organized. Finally, those who
belong to no organization go off by themselves and organize a society
of the unorganized." Love of organization and love of copying have
given us Americans a feverish desire for what we see or read about in
Europe. When we talk about our European remedies we try to make
ourselves believe that we are broad-minded and want to learn from
others' experience. In a large number of cases our impatient demand for
European remedies is similar to the schoolboy's desire to show off the
manners, the slang, or the clothes picked up on his first visit away
from home. With many travelers and readers European remedies or
European ways are souvenirs of a pleasant visit, to be described like a
collection of postal cards, a curious umbrella, a cane associated with
Alpine climbing, or a stolen hymnal from an historic cathedral.

Experience proves, however, that just as Roman walls and Norman castles