ent continued along the path of material and social
progress in the North, while in the South a plantation aristocracy
conservatively maintained its colonial ideas and institutions,
including slavery.

With wider settlement there was an extension of these sectional
differences, except near the border of both, where a blending of the
two took place to some extent. County organization was necessary for a
time, while the country was thinly settled, but neighborhoods
organized as school districts, and by a natural process the school
district became the nucleus of a township government, at first for
school purposes and later for the self-government of the whole
community. In some cases, as in Illinois, it was made optional with
the people of a county whether they would organize a township
government or not, but wherever the two systems entered into
comparison and competition the township government proved the more
popular. As long as pure democracy remains there must be a small local
unit of government, and the New England town meeting seems wonderfully
well adapted to the purpose of self-government. The recent tendency
to extend democracy in the form of political primaries and the
referendum is a stimulus to such organization, and it may be expected
that the town system will continue to extend, even in the South.

148. =Town and County Officials.=--The town meeting is held in a
public building. In colonial days the close connection between church
and state made it proper that the meeting should be in the
meeting-house; in the West, where the school was the nucleus of local
organization, the schoolhouse was the natural voting place. In
present-day New England even a small village has its town house,
containing a large hall, which serves for town meetings and for
community assemblies for various social purposes. In the town meeting
the administrative officers, called selectmen, are chosen annually,
and minor officers, including clerk, treasurer, constables, and school
committee; there the community taxes itself for the salaries of its
officials, for the support of the town poor, for the maintenance of
highways, and for such modern improvements as street lights and a
public library. Personal ability counts for more than party
allegiance, though each political party usually puts its candidates in
the field. An important function of the local voters is the decision
under the local-option system that prevails in the East, as to