Also the development of the relation of individualistic theories to the rise and decline of the doctrines regarding the national state. ↩
I do not wish, however, to minimize the truly democratic nature of our local institutions. ↩
While it is true that there were undemocratic elements in the mental equipment and psychological bent of our forefathers, and it is these which I have emphasized because from them came our immediate development, it is equally true that there were also sound democratic elements to which we can trace our present ideas of democracy. Such tracing even in briefest form there is not space for here. ↩
It became at once evident that a government whose chief function was to see that individual rights, property rights, state rights, were not invaded, was hardly adequate to unite our colonies with all their separatist instincts, or to meet the needs of a rapidly developing continent. Our national government at once adopted a constructive policy. Guided by Hamilton it assumed constructive powers authority for which could be found in the constitution only by a most liberal construction of its terms. When Jefferson, an antinationalist, acquired Louisiana in 1803, it seemed plain that no such restricted national government as was at first conceived could possibly work. ↩
These English writers to whom our debt is so large are not responsible for this, but their misinterpreters. ↩
With the executive and legislative limited in their powers, the decisions of the courts gradually came, especially as they developed constructive powers, to be a body of law which guided the American people. ↩
For ways of doing this see part III. ↩
We used to think frequent elections democratic. Now we know that they mean simply an increase of party influence and a decrease of official responsibility. ↩
See chapter XXX, “Political Pluralism and Functionalism.” ↩
Laissez-faire was popular when there were great numbers of individual producers. When the large-scale business system made wage-earners of these, there was the beginning of the breakdown of laissez-faire. ↩
Besides the more obvious one of “universal suffrage.” ↩
This movement to form societies based on our occupations is of course, although usually unconscious, part of the whole syndicalist movement, and as such has real advantages which will be taken up later. ↩
Since April, 1917, with the rapidly extending use of the schoolhouse as a centre for war services, these numbers have probably greatly increased. ↩
See Appendix, “The Training for the New Democracy.” ↩
That it is also in many instances leading the way to real community organization makes it one of the most valuable movements of our time. ↩
Public opinion in a true democracy is a potential will. Therefore for practical purposes they are identical and I use them synonymously. ↩
Our federal system of checks and balances thwarted the will of the people. The party system thwarted the will of the people. Our state governments were never designed to get at the will of the people. ↩
The war has shown us that our national agricultural program can best be done on a cooperative neighborhood basis: through the establishment of community agricultural conferences, community labor, seed and implement exchanges, community canning centres, community markets, etc. ↩
I do not mean to imply that I think it is easy to learn how to identify ourselves with our city, especially for those who live in large cities. The men of a small town know that if they have a new town-hall they will have to pay for it. In a large city men ask for a ward building because they will not have to pay for it, they think. It is all this which neighborhood organization and the integration of neighborhoods, of which I shall speak later, must remedy. ↩
The plan of Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Phillips for community organization and for the connection with it of expert service is too comprehensive to describe here, but based as it is on their actual experience, and planning as it does for the training of whole neighborhoods and the arousing of them to responsibility and action, it should be studied by everyone, for such plans are, I believe, the best signs we have that democracy is yet possible for America. ↩
How much we are all indebted to the settlements as the pioneer neighborhood movement I do not stop to consider here. ↩
This point will be taken up in chapter XXXIII. ↩
Or perhaps the Senate might represent the occupational group (see chapter XXXIII). Or perhaps the experts mentioned above might be representatives from occupational groups. ↩
In North Carolina the recently organized State Bureau of Community Service—made up of the administrators of the Department of Agriculture, the Board of Health, the Normal and Industrial College and the Farmers’ Union, with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction as its central executive—is making its immediate work the development of local community organization which shall be directly articulated with a
