ment,
jealousy of personal rights, slowness to accept advice, proneness to law
suits over property, thrifty frugality to a fault, indifference to public
opinion, disregard of even the opinions of experts,--all are very
characteristic of people of such independence of life. They seldom yield
to argument. They do not easily respond to leadership. They are likely to
view strangers with suspicion. Self-reliance overdeveloped leads them to
distrust any initiative but their own. Hence they do not readily work with
other people. They refuse to recognize superiority in others of their own
class. All of which results in a most serious social weakness; _failure in
cooperation_, a fatal failure in any society. Positively, this explains
the jealousies and feuds so common in rural neighborhoods. Negatively, it
accounts for the lack of effective social organization.

Where a progressive rural community has readjusted itself to the social
ideals of the new century, these weaknesses are quietly disappearing.
Elsewhere you still find them.

_The Weakness in Rural Institutions_

This unsocial streak of distrust and poor social cooperation runs through
every sort of institution in rural life. Schools are usually run on the
old school-district plan with over-thrifty supervisors, no continuous
policy, and with each pupil buying his own text books; roads are repaired
by township districts, with individuals "working out their taxes;"
churches are maintained on the retail plan, the minister being hired by
the year or even by the week; the churches themselves are numerous and
small, because of the selfish insistence upon individual views; even
cooperative agreements in business have been repudiated by farmers under
stress of temptation to personal gain; while rural distrust of banks and
organized business is proverbial.

All of these unsocial tendencies are probably less due to selfishness than
to lack of practice in cooperation. City people however have had constant
practice in cooperation; hence they work together readily and
successfully. They are organized for every conceivable purpose good or
bad. In fact they are so intoxicated with the joy of social effort, they
are apt to carry all sorts of social life to an extreme. The social fabric
is as complex and confusing in the city as it is simple and bare in the
country. The problem for the country is to develop a wholesome social life
and an efficient institutional life which shall avoid