retards the growth of the community, and may very quickly reduce the
power of the community as a whole until it reaches the inefficiency of
savage life.

All true charity, even equity, requires that the object of distribution of
wealth shall be the greater efficiency of each individual. If there shall
ever be a community of individuals gaining equal enjoyment, it will be
made up of those possessing essential equality in personal powers and
attainments, and in accumulated capital as well.

Chapter VII. Methods Of Association.

_Simple association._--While the absolute equality of individuals referred
to in the preceding chapter is practically impossible, the community of
interests as civilization advances becomes much closer through various
plans of association of individuals in common work. Indeed, the community
is a community because a multitude of individuals work together. The
simplest form of association is seen where men work in gangs, all acting
alike, as in lifting a log or a rock, hoeing the field, or in building an
embankment by shoveling. Among farmers the habit of exchanging work, so
common in pioneer settlements, illustrates the advantage of combination.
This may be called simple association, by which many hands make light
work.

_Complex association._--A more complex association is found in even the
rudest settlement when one man undertakes a particular kind of labor for
all his neighbors, they in turn doing a different kind of work for him. A
farmer in a new settlement found the children of himself and neighbors
without a school, and agreed for several winters to teach a school as many
days as his neighbors would chop in his clearing. This association cleared
the land and supplied the school. Such exchanges of labor develop rapidly
in every growing community and form the basis of a most extensive
commerce. When "Adam delved and Eve span" the family was far better
provided for than if both had undertaken to delve and spin. The fair
exchange of products makes each man's product more useful to both himself
and his neighborhood. Such association is less noticeable in a community
of farmers, where all are seeking essentially the same products, than in
almost any other community. Yet the presence of the blacksmith, the
shoemaker, the wagonmaker and the tailor contribute very largely to the
comfort of all concerned.

One chief disadvantage of farms remote from villages is the want of ready
exchange,