First, every neighborhood must be organized; the neighborhood groups must then be integrated, through larger intermediary groups, into a true state. Neither our cities nor our states can ever be properly administered until representatives from neighborhood groups meet to discuss and thereby to correlate the needs of all parts of the city, of all parts of the state. Social workers and medical experts have a conference on tuberculosis, social workers and educational experts have a conference on industrial education. We must now develop the methods by which the citizens also are represented at these conferences. We must go beyond this (for certain organizations, as the National Settlement Conference at least, do already have neighborhood representation), and develop the methods by which regular meetings of representatives from neighborhood organizations meet to discuss all city and state problems. Further still, we must give official recognition to such gatherings, we must make them a regular part of government. The neighborhood must be actually, not theoretically, an integral part of city, of state, of nation.
When Massachusetts is thus organized, the neighborhood groups and intermediary, or district, groups should send representatives to city council and state legislature. The Senate might be composed of experts—experts in education, in housing, in sanitation etc.91 The neighborhood and district centres would receive reports from their representatives to city council and state legislature and take measures on these reports. They should also be required to send regular reports up to their representative bodies. We should have a definitely organized and strongly articulated network of personal interest and representative reporting. Then the state legislature must devise ways of dealing not only with the district group but with the neighborhood groups through the district group, and thus with every individual in the commonwealth. The nation too must have a real connection with every little neighborhood centre through state and district bodies.92
America at war has found a way of getting word from Washington to the smallest local units. The Council of National Defense has a “Section of Cooperation with States.” This is connected with a State Council of Defense in every state. In most cases the State Council is connected with County Councils, and these often with councils in cities and towns. Beyond this the Council of National Defense has recently (February, 1918) recommended the extension of county organization by the creation of Community Councils in every school district. Its official statement opens with this sentence: “The first nine months of the war have shown the vital importance of developing an official nationwide organization reaching into the smallest communities to mobilize and make available the efforts of the whole people for the prosecution of the war.” And it goes on to say that the government must have such close contact with small units that personal relation with all the citizens is possible.
President Wilson in endorsing this step, said,
“[This is an] advance of vital significance. It will, I believe, result when thoroughly carried out in welding the nation together as no nation of great size has ever been welded before. … It is only by extending your organization to small communities that every citizen of the state can be reached.”
Thus when the government found that it must provide means to its hands for keeping constantly in touch with the whole membership of the nation, it planned to do this by the encouragement and fostering of neighborhood organization. The nation is now seeking the individual through neighborhood groups. It is using the School Centres (it recommends the schoolhouse as the best centre for community organization) for the teaching of Food and Fuel Conservation, for Liberty Loan and Red Cross work, for recruiting for the army, for enlisting workers for war industries, for teaching the necessity and methods of increasing the food supply, for plans to relieve transportation by cooperative shipments and deliveries, for patriotic education etc.93 This “patriotic education” has an interesting side. In a country which is even nominally a democracy you cannot win a war without explaining your aims and your policy and carrying your people with you step by step. If beyond this the country wishes to be really a democracy, the neighborhood groups must have a share in forming the aims and the policy.
Of course one would always prefer this to be a movement from below up rather than from above down, but it is not impossible for the two movements to go on at the same time, as they are in fact doing now with the rapid development of spontaneous local organization. There were Community Councils in existence in fact if not in name before the recommendation of the Council of National Defense.94
Through these nonpartisan councils not only national policy can be explained and spread throughout the country, but also what one locality thinks out that is good can be reported to Washington and thus handed on to other sections of the country. It is a plan for sending the news backwards and forwards from individual to nation, from nation to individual, and it is also a plan for correlating the problems of the local community with the problems of the nation and of cooperating nations.
But why should we be more efficiently organized for war than for peace? Is our proverbial carelessness to be pricked into effectiveness only by emergency calls? Is the only motive you can offer us for efficiency—to win? Or, if that is an instinctive desire, can we not change the goal and be as eager to win other things as war?
I speak of the new state as resting upon integrated neighborhood groups.95 While the changes necessary to bring this about would have to be planned and authorized by constitutional conventions, its psychological basis would be: (1) the fact
