THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION: THE RURAL COMMUNITY IDEAL Walter Burr, Professor of Sociology, Kansas State Agri- If considered at all in an absolute sense as equivalent to the ideal rural community, the subject assigned me is quite meaningless. One may not correctly speak of "the" ideal community or of community ideal. There are as many concepts of the community ideal as there are persons who enjoy dreaming in terms of community life. Dreamers of this sort, whether in the guise of those seeking for themselves some holy grail of blissful happiness, or professional social workers who carry the halo of divine election to save a world that really doesn't seem to care to be saved by the various nostrums suggested-these dreamers have worked a great deal of damage to themselves (if they tried their own medicine) and to others who became their victims. All society is in the process of social evolution. There is nothing fixed, nothing nailed down. Social life is a process, from lower to higher, and not a fixed entity now or at any time past or to come. There might be agreed upon certain ideal or desirable factors in the process of any given time or place, but immediately the time is changed, and often the place, and the factors are related to each other in a different way, some of them disappear and others enter to take their places. This process may be studied, especially in rural society, because of the less complex nature of that society. We have witnessed, during the past few years, the emphasis upon the rural demonstration idea. In the work of agricultural agents on Smith Lever funds, as well as of women agents, certain theories of agriculture and home-making have been demonstrated. Chemical substances in the soils and their relation to time elements and to air and moisture nature and content are facts to be counted on. Even in this well-understood field, where nearly all the factors are material things that can be moved about at will and controlled-where the soil and the seed and the insect pests and the machinery have no powers of thought nor volition to cause them to upset the program of work through which the ideal is to be reached-even here there is grave danger in assuming that an ideal can be safely fixed and attained. How much more so, then, in the field of human social action! Here you have not only all the physical factors that have any bearing upon community life, but plus that you have the annoying fact-annoying from the standpoint of the one who persists in saving the world or the community to his particular ideal that here are humans to deal with, who have a way of springing new ideas, adopting new loyalties, making new discoveries, and even moving away from the field of action suddenly and entirely. It is not our business to build communities after a preconceived ideal. It is our business to come in upon the life of a community as it actually is now, help to release resident forces for expression, study the process by which they continue to operate, and proceed from lower to higher. Anything other than this partakes of despotism, however benevolent the intention may be. The status of the community at any given time is the result, up to that time, of certain living moving factors peculiar to that community. The social worker is likely to have fixed his ideal as the result of experiences and observation of other social phenomena in entirely different communities. The fact that one rural community is not like another or a group of others does not tell anything about that community being ideal or not being ideal. For it, it may be better off for not being like the others. Because a cooperative cheese factory makes an ideal basis for economic and social success in certain communities in Wisconsin, a Wisconsin worker comes down to certain live-stock or wheat sections of Kansas, and assumes that the cooperative cheese factory would make the economic basis for community success there also. This entirely without consideration of the fact that the atmospheric and climatic conditions are different, and that beef-cattle farmers and wheat farmers do not ordinarily make good milkers of cows. In social organization the illustration holds good. Sister Kennicott may import from the outside all sorts of ideal programs which should take the place of Main Street activities. But they are not of Main Street, and have no place there. Neither is Main Street to be blamed; it has as much right to be itself in its own way as has Broadway or Lake Shore Drive. One who desires to see efficient community life will wish above all else to have resident forces released for free and progressive action. This awakening to action may come from the outside. As to what the action shall be, will be determined entirely by those same resident forces. The awakening may be through the business life of the community, and will probably be brought about naturally by the desire of business men in the town to profit more by the increased demands which such an awakening will bring for the goods which they have to sell. Chambers of commerce are getting more and more alive to such new opportunities. Since business is becoming more of a recognized unit, business organizations, from the United States Chamber of Commerce down through the states to the counties and into the communities, may be depended upon to bring this type of awakening through what may be termed the legitimately selfish interest of business success. Politicians also play their part in bringing about such an awakening and release of resident forces. Of course their claim is a desire to save the "deer peepul," but that is only a part of the political program for personal and party success. It is good for this community awakening to have in a state a fairly equally divided force as between parties, so that the campaigns may be hotly contested. No one needs to work this up. The outside forces, for their own interests, will search out local leaders and put them into action. Religionists play their part in awakening the local community and releasing local forces. The denominational leader wishes to make a better record for his church order this year, and word goes out all along the line to whip up the sleepy ones. We must have this year so much more money, so many more converts, and certain other concrete evidences of advance. This all has its effect to awaken the sleeping and almost dead in the rural community. Sometimes, of course, the denominational leaders wish they had not wakened the sleeping lion-for the awakening sometimes results in a rebellion against the denomination and the starting of a community church. The school forces are inseparably connected with state headquarters, and the state leaders are always heckling the legislature for increased requirements for teachers and equipment, etc. This makes for awakening the local community to its need. The point is that we need have no worry about the awakening of resident forces and their release for action. When a rural community is awakened by business, or politics, or education, or religion, we find the tendency for social buzzards of various kinds to swarm in to see what they can get out of it for their organization. They have their various programs to impose upon the community. The rural community does not need them. It is made up of the same good American citizenship from which the self-elected saviors have come, and in many cases of purer American citizenship. If let alone at this point, local leadership will evolve plans and programs and projects native to the soil, that will be better than any that could be imported. When they seek sources of information, there will be agencies ready with the information as to such sources. Our states are supporting liberally universities and colleges with amply maintained extension departments to serve exactly this purpose for all of our communities, and the rural people are already paying taxes for the support of these state agencies. There was never a time in history when the people, through taxation, were supporting so many scientific specialists and research men and women as they are supporting at the present time. For the most part the people are doing this liberally and willingly. None of this service is, or ought to be, forced upon the rural community. It is there for the asking, and already paid for by the people themselves. No one is justified in carrying it in to the people until they want it and ask for it. To enforce upon a community from the outside the ideal of any individual or organization is decidedly harmful. It is establishing a benevolent tyranny. Social workers are usually the worst sort of benevolent tyrants. Rural people have especially been tyrannized in this regard by their well-meaning institu tional friends. They are continually being offered "the benevolent end of a despotism." The rural community ideal, then, is to keep natural social forces in politics, business, education, religion, alive and active and operating within and without the community, arouse and awaken resident forces within the community, and then, as far as professional social workers are concerned, give the community absent treatment. The rural community ideal just now may be "self-determination for the American rural community." VII. MENTAL HYGIENE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL THE RELATION OF PSYCHOPATHIC HOSPITALS Samuel T. Orton, M.D., Director, Psychopathic Hospital, Iowa City The psychopathic hospital movement had its origin, apparently, in an attempt to meet three chief demands in the field of mental medicine which could not be met readily by the state hospitals. These institutions laid the foundations, and the men they trained carried forward their ideas, but they labored under certain limitations of expansion of their service which made necessary the formation of new organizations designed on a plan to avoid their restrictions. These needs were, first, temporary care; second, research; and third, teaching. The term "institutions for temporary care" was used to designate those hospitals which were permitted by law to accept mental cases for observation, treatment, or temporary custody without the usual elaborate processes of legal commitment. In this group of cases were included three main classes. First, were those of acute recoverable psychoses-true mental disease—in which there was good outlook for an early and complete recovery, and in which, for that reason, formal commitment was unnecessary. This group had been, and are still, to a considerable extent, cared for in general hospitals and often without the advantage of the services of specially trained psychiatrists or psychiatric nurses. Second, there were many emergencies where immediate care was indicated, either as a protection to the patient or to others, pending the time required for their commitment. These cases all too often spend this interval in jails and prisons, and usually with little or no medical attention. Third came the borderline cases of mental disease which were not frank enough in their expression or severe enough in grade to warrant commitment, and yet which could only be properly studied and advised by men with psychiatric experience. These three classes were largely excluded from the state hospitals because of the rigid legal barriers which had been erected around those institutions to prevent improper incarcerations. |