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gives will richly repay all the time and effort spent upon it. To develop better relationships between town and city, to draw the people of country, town, and city closer together in common tasks, this is one step toward a better America.

All too frequently the big city is absolutely oblivious to what it owes to the surrounding territory. Its own strength is drawn from that territory to a degree but little realized. The trade and business of even the largest cities depend in large measure upon the people of the small towns near by. The industries draw new workers from the population of surrounding areas. Upon the breakfast and dinner tables of the city are the produce of contiguous agricultural lands. In the city high schools and libraries are students from the towns. On nearby farms and in neighboring small towns are the best, because the nearest, markets for the factories of the city. In the hospitals, the jails, the children's and old people's homes of the city will be found those who come from small towns near by. Whether in the field of business, of economic welfare, of education, of health, or of social welfare, is it not time for the city worker to pay more attention to the rural and small-town problems near by? Should not city, town, and country make up more fully to their interrelationships, their mutual dependence upon each other, their community solidarity? Should they not work out their problems together?

About three years ago, the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce analyzed the business of St. Louis. St. Louis families, they found, purchased from St. Louis manufacturers and merchants about $186,000,000 worth of goods a year. Yet this was only one-thirteenth of the total production and sales of that city. Twelve-thirteenths of the business of St. Louis depended on the prosperity and purchasing power of consumers living anywhere from one to five hundred miles away. Approximately 1,000,000 buyers, the study showed, lived within ten miles of the St. Louis Court House. Within 500 miles, however, lived 50,000,000 buyers. Each hundred miles from St. Louis was found to add about 10,000,000 new consumers or buyers. When this region was prosperous, St. Louis was prosperous. When this region was unable to buy, St. Louis was dead.

St. Louis, through this study, "discovered" (as they themselves put it) the farmers of Missouri and nearby states, “discovered" the small towns, and concluded that it would pay in dollars and cents to render to these communities any service within their power. "The proper development of the various communities in this district," says the Chamber in a recent circular, "governs the prosperity of the consumer and increases his buying power." And so the St. Louis Chamber put into operation under the direction of Carl Baer a Development Service Bureau designed to make available for all communities in the St. Louis district the services of expert organizers to help in the establishment and development of local chambers of commerce, farm bureaus, and other community movements.

Through helping rural and small-town communities, St. Louis helps itself. This is sound doctrine, is it not, whether it be applied along lines of business, or public health, or education, or citizenship, or the alleviation and prevention of any of the social ills? For the professional worker or the social work organization of any sort located in the big cities it will pay certainly and surely not to overlook the problems and possibilities in the smaller communities round about them. Our cities and small towns are interdependent to an extent as yet but dimly realized.

About ten years ago, Horace A. Moses, president of the Strathmore Paper Company, became convinced that the village of Woronoco in Hampden County, Massa

chusetts, needed some sort of a civic revival. Mr. Moses, a few years before, had purchased a paper mill in the village, and also a large farm. As a citizen, a taxpayer, a mill owner, a farm-owner, a churchman, he was interested in the welfare of Woronoco from almost every conceivable angle.

In Springfield, the county seat of Hampden County, one day, he told his friend, and business acquaintance, Joshua L. Brooks, who was then president of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, of a plan he had in mind for Woronoco. "Mr. Moses," said Mr. Brooks, who is president of the Brooks Bank Note Company, "you know that I have a farm in Wilbraham. Wilbraham has problems different in details but not essentially different from those of Woronoco. Your plan for Woronoco interests me for Wilbraham." The two men talked things over. Between Woronoco and Wilbraham, both small towns, lay the Connecticut Valley with the cities of Springfield, Holyoke, and Chicopee. Back from the valley to east and west in Hampden County were twenty other towns, varying from well-nigh deserted hill towns of less than two hundred population through prosperous farming communities up to towns of 18,000 with manufacturing and industrial plants of large size. The interests of all were common, concluded these two men, at least to the extent that everybody in all these towns and cities desires prosperity and general welfare for themselves and the entire region. Why not recognize the fundamental interdependence of these communities? Why not bring country and city, farmer and manufacturer and merchant, men and women, rich and poor, all together in a common program for the development of the whole of Hampden County? Why not urge the people of each town and city to take part in the work and to contribute each their share of brains, money, members, and organizing ability for the purpose of making Hampden County more prosperous and a better place to live in?

Thus was born the Hampden County Improvement League. Three leading citizens of each town and city were brought together and the idea of a county league discussed. All were enthusiastic for the plan. Then began a series of public meetings in town after town, at which the plan was presented and those who wished to join invited to become members. Membership dues in those days was for any amount from $1 a year up. More lately it has been found wise to increase the minimum membership to $5 a year. Everywhere the plan for the League was welcomed warmly, and hundreds of members joined at once. Today, with over 5,000 members, most of whom have pledged for a period of three years, the Hampden County Improvement League is, so far as I can learn, the largest and strongest county organization in the United States that is devoted primarily to the upbuilding of rural and small-town life.

Built upon the fundamental idea of city and country working together throughout the entire county, the purposes of this League, as stated in its charter, are very broad. Reference is made to activities for a better agriculture, as the fundamental industry; to better roads and better schools; and to the increase of industries; and, as a final clause, the objects are stated to be "to foster, encourage, and promote all things in the communities of Hampden County which tend to advance, or conserve, the material, educational, civic, moral, and religious welfare of the communities."

The program of the League includes agricultural demonstrations for better farming; the development of co-operative purchasing and marketing organizations; home economics work with the women of town and country and city; boys and girls club work in gardens, canning, live stock, poultry, bees, and home economics; community and county meetings, exhibits, and picnics; legislative activities, and a broad program of

publicity and educational work through the newspapers and through the League's own monthly publication, The Hampden.

Primarily economic in purpose and program, the Hampden County Improvement League is not a social work agency as ordinarily defined. In several respects, however, it illustrates forcibly principles that I wish to emphasize. The first is the combination of resources over a geographical area wide enough to provide with reasonable adequacy for the type of needs that the League is designed to meet. Few, if any, of the small towns in Hampden County could carry on for themselves all that is now going forward in this line of work within their borders. With the co-operation of Springfield and Holyoke, however, these things become possible, not because these two cities do them but because through the League they and the local leaders work together on constructive activities in which all are vitally interested. The second principle illustrated is that the real challenge of small-town problems, even more clearly presented than in the large cities, is in the underlying, fundamental, constructive activities that make for better economic and social life. Community problems, rather than individual problems, are the big field for interest and attention in the small towns, and interest in these lines once aroused and backed by adequate resources is more quickly rewarded by definite results in the smaller communities than in the larger and more complex cities.

Five years ago in Prince George's County, Maryland, the county was giving public relief to more than sixty families. There were sixty-one children of the county in institutions at public expense. There were 221 sick folk from the county in Washington hospitals. There were eighty-one mental defectives from the county in Maryland state institutions. There was no physical training or medical inspection in the schools. There were no Boy Scouts in the county. Not a town in the county, nor the county as a whole, had seen the need of social work to meet these conditions. When the need was pointed out, not enough funds, it was thought, could be secured in the county to employ even a single worker.

Back in Baltimore were organized agencies in all these fields of social work, and as it happened they were federated and working together in the Baltimore Alliance of Charitable and Social Agencies. Most of these organizations were already reaching out into various counties of the state, but none as yet into Prince George's County. What more logical and necessary than the uniting of forces? The strength of Baltimore and her social agencies joined hands with interested leaders in Prince George's County. Through united effort a worker was financed, mainly locally, as I recall it, and one of the best of Baltimore's case workers went to Prince George's County. Alone she could not have hoped to face the problems. But from Baltimore when she needed a psychiatrist she could get the worker from the Mental Hygiene Society; when she needed help with a tubercular patient she could call on the Maryland Tuberculosis Association; when she needed assistance with a discharged prisoner, the resources of the Prisoners' Aid Association were at her disposal; and when the schools became interested in medical inspection and organized athletics the Public Athletic League stood ready to help. To these and other Alliance agencies through the Alliance office she had direct access. Her primary task was to build up local interest in these problems, and a knowledge of how to meet them, but even in this task the specialists were available to help her when help was needed.

Just when the work was established, the United States went into the war, and the plan had to be discontinued. Whether it was ever resumed, I do not know. Was this

not, however, another illustration of a method by which, as it seems to me, the problems of small towns can be met adequately and constructively, and that is by joining to the resources of local leadership and funds the assistance and backing and thoroughgoing co-operation of the people and the organizations of our larger centers of population? Education of local leadership is the great task, but will it not always be true that, however intelligent and effective local leadership and organization may become, the assistance of larger communities in dealing with certain types of problems will be necessary? The assistance of state departments should be used to the full, but, beyond this, voluntary organization and private activity are necessary and can accomplish much that state departments can never touch.

For the small town I make this plea to the civic and social work leaders of our cities. Do not overlook nor forget the villages and towns around you. Their health, their social progress, their economic prosperity will contribute to yours. They need you, but you also need them. Nine million people in the United States live in 12,905 incorporated villages or towns of less than 2,500 population. Four and a half million more live in 1,320 towns of from 2,500 to 5,000 population. One-eighth of all the people in the United States live in villages or small towns, besides the 40 per cent more who live in the open country. These areas are the home of loyal American hearts, who need the help of your clear vision and high purposes for human welfare in our country. They stand ready to play their share with you in making America a better land for all her millions of people. They have not the resources in money or in trained leadership that is concentrated in your cities but they look with confidence to you to join hands with them in working out along constructive lines the fundamental problems of better standards of life and work in which we all are interested and for which this Republic of ours was established.

HOW A NEIGHBORHOOD CAN IMPROVE ITS
MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITIONS

O. G. Cocks, Secretary, National Committee for Better Films, New York For years we have noted the increasing power and attractiveness of the motio. picture for the general public. Only now are we beginning to understand its field and its effects on various groups of people. In many cases its attractiveness has proved the source of irritation, but leaders of community life have done little to utilize the power which is inherent in this agency for entertainment.

The motion picture has been made by commercial agencies f tion. From 50 to 150 copies of a given film drama have been p taneously from large centers throughout the United States, fro slowly into the smallest community. Those themes and stories will hold the attention of the largest number of people and prove p to all persons involved from the writer and actor through the produ to the local theater manager.

The same picture has gone into all kinds of communities from the tan center with its cosmopolitan tastes, to the village with conserve and with no desire for the stories which stimulate the city dweller. penetrated farther into the neighborhoods where people live than any mercial amusement.

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We have just begun to learn that the motion picture is adapted fundamentally for milies. For various reasons notably its dramatic element, its simplicity, as well as s frequency and cheapness, it has been welcomed by all members of the family as a leasant way to spend their leisure time. While this is the case, there have been many nemes worked out in a manner attractive to adults and in every city certain theaters 1 the down-town section have appealed to the adult group. These have become more umerous and more popular than the vaudeville. In both the neighborhood and the own-town theaters the entertainments have consisted of elements which would appeal o all classes. Usually there is a drama containing some kind of a plot with plenty of ction and thrill; in addition a comedy of a sort, coupled with current events and some abloid form of education. A certain amount of culture is injected but in so disguised a orm that the audiences do not resent its introduction.

Some 14,000 theaters in the United States have drawn nightly on an average >ne-tenth of the population. Inevitably we have all wondered what the effects of this continuous entertainment could be on the people. Everyone has had an opportunity to speculate and some astonishing theories have been defined, all the way from the motion picture as a cure-all for the ills of society, to the motion picture as the source of all modern evils. As a matter of fact, little real study has been given to the actual effects of motion pictures on various elements of the population. The time has now arrived when theory is giving way to knowledge based on facts. Among those who have attempted to make some studies is the National Board of Review and the National Committee for Better Films. Some years ago we asked a series of definite questions— some 35 of them on the effects of motion pictures on young people under sixteen. On the basis of the answers to these 350 questionnaires a set of rules was drawn and pictures were selected for young people.

Within the past few weeks another questionnaire was circulated in a fashion to draw the most sincere and frank answers from selected high schools of the country. On the basis of the answers, some 18,000 boys and 21,000 girls in about seventy-five high schools, we have obtained facts which are distinctly favorable to the motion picture. We know now from the lips of the young people just what the motion picture is doing from several important angles. These two organizations have also been in daily touch with the audiences of the country and can speak of the influence of the motion picture upon the public, with a certain amount of authority. Many of us have desired those who make motion pictures to modify them in a variety of ways: we want less melodrama; we want more variety; we want more mentality; we want more translations from history and literature; we want-many things; but we seldom appreciate the absolute necessity of public support for pictures which contain these elements. Some excellent dramas with historic, literary, ethical, artistic, and intellectual elements have failed miserably in the theaters. It is also the case with many of the finer types of film dramas. They had only a moderate success when they should have rivaled the best sellers of literature in publicity.

Only those who make a daily study of motion pictures can speak with assurance about the existence of a vast number of motion pictures which are above the average and may be classed as "good" for the family, and for young people's entertainment. The fact of the matter is, however, that these pictures come to our neighborhood theaters and depart before many of us know that they are worth while. No system has been worked out which has been accepted by the public generally, which calls atten

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