rvice program; it is not known how many more made such advances
without outside aid. The question of whether the church or some other
agency than either the church or the school should provide community
service facilities may be answered in much the same way. In some
States local communities may levy a tax for the building and
maintenance of community buildings. Where this is possible there seems
to be no serious objection to such a course. But a community building
without adequate supervision is likely to become a center of moral
deterioration. On the other hand, such a public building can be
located more strategically than can a schoolhouse. The objection to
stock-company-owned community houses is much more serious. These are
likely to become mere pleasure resorts, often of a very questionable
nature.

The judgment of the American people seems to be rapidly determining
that the safest plan is to look to the religious agencies for
conserving the social and recreational life; and this judgment is in
harmony with the thesis advanced at the opening of this chapter.

If the principle is accepted that it is the business of the church to
conserve the social life of the community, then it is next in order to
consider some of the problems of social life that are a challenge to
the church at the present time.

The social organization of this country in its smaller communities as
in the larger centers, such as it is, is the product of undirected
uncoordinated efforts of special interest groups. A general
classification of the types of rural organizations may be made, first,
into political, including the incorporated village, towns, townships,
counties, and political parties; economic, including special
associations around specific interests such as farm bureaus, stock
breeders' associations, potato-growers' associations, etc., and the
increasing number of cooperative organizations, such as farmers'
elevators, fruit-marketing organizations, live-stock, shipping
associations; social, including the Grange, the various types of
farmers' clubs for men and women that perform much the same function
as the Grange, and the more or less permanent groupings for purely
recreational purposes, such as dancing parties, card parties, etc.;
and the conventional religious organizations as represented by the
denominations and their many subsidiary groups for special purposes.

As was pointed out in the chapter on definitions, each of these
va