RURAL GOVERNMENT
The Necessity of Government.—Institutions of recreation and culture are in most cases the voluntary creation of local groups of individuals, except as the state has adopted a system of compulsory education. Government may be self-imposed or fixed by external authority, in any case it cannot be escaped. It can be changed in form and efficiency; it depends for its worth upon standards of public opinion; but it cannot cease to exist. As the activity of the child needs to be regulated by parental control in the home and by the discipline of the teacher in the school, so the activity of the people in the community needs to be regulated by the authority of government. Self-control on the part of each individual or the existence of custom or public opinion without an executive agency for the enforcement of the social will, is not sufficient to safeguard and promote the interests of all. Government has everywhere been necessary.
The Reign of Law.—The existence of regulation in the community is continually evident. The child comes into relation to law when he is sent to school to conform to the law of compulsory education. He goes to school along a road built and maintained by law, takes his place in a school building provided by a board of education or school committee that executes the law, and accepts the instruction of a teacher who is employed and paid according to the law. His hours of schooling and the length of terms and vacations are determined by the same authority. During his periods of recreation he is still under the reign of law, for game laws regulate the times when he may or may not hunt and fish. When he grows older and assumes the rights of citizenship he must bear his part of the burdens of society. He has the right to vote as one of the lawmakers of the land, but he is not thereby free to cast off the restraints of law. He must pay his proportion of the taxes that sustain the government that binds him, local, State, and federal taxes. He must perform the public duty of sitting on a jury or administering civic office if he is summoned thereto. Even in his own domicile, though he be householder and head of a family, he may not injure the public health or morals by nuisances on his own premises, his financial obligations to creditors are secured against him by law, even the possession of his acres is made certain only by public record. It makes no difference whether the legal restrictions under which he lives are local or national, they are all a part of the system for which he and his neighbors are responsible, and which as citizens they are under obligation to maintain.
. Political Terms.—It is important to understand and use correctly certain terms which occur in this connection. The state is the people organized for the purpose of exercising the authority of social control. In its sociological sense it is not restricted to a large or small area, but in political parlance it is used with reference to a large district which possesses a certain degree of authority over all the people, as the State of New York, or the sovereign state of Great Britain. Government is the institution that functions for social control in accordance with the will of the people or of an individual to whose authority they submit. Politics is the science and art of government, and includes statesmanship as its highest type and the manipulation of party machinery as its lowest type. Law is the body of social regulations administered by government ostensibly for the public good. Each of these may be and in the past has been prostituted for private advantage. In the state one man or a small group has seized and held the sovereign power through the force of personal ascendancy or the prestige of birth or wealth, and has used it for himself, as history testifies by numerous examples. The forms of government in many cases have not been well adapted to the functions that they were designed to perform. The despotic administrative agencies that were overthrown by the French Revolution were ill-adapted to the governmental needs of the lower classes. Much of the governmental machinery of the American republic has not matched the constitutional forms that were originally provided, and the Constitution has had to be stretched or amended if the government of the founders of the republic was not to be revolutionized. So law and politics have had to be reorganized, revised, and reinterpreted to fit into the social need. Law is a conservative factor in progress, but it adapts itself of necessity to the demands of equity.
The Will of the People.—On the continent of Europe rural government is arranged usually by the central authority of the nation; in America it is more independent of national control. On this side of the water the colonial governments often interfered little with local freedom, and after the Revolution the people fashioned their own national organization, and in giving it certain powers jealously guarded their own local privileges. They were willing to sacrifice a general lawmaking power and grudgingly to permit the nation to have executive and judicial authority, but they retained the management of local affairs, including the raising and expenditure of direct taxes. Local government, therefore, has continued to reflect the mind of the community, a mind occasionally swayed by emotional impulse, but usually controlled by a love of order, and by an Anglo-Saxon pride in self-restraint. The will of the people has made the government and sanctions its actions. It may be that the will is not fixed or united enough to force itself effectually upon a set of public officials, and may await reform or revolution to become forceful, yet in the last resort and in the long run the will of the people prevails. By the provisions of a democratic constitution judgment is frequently passed by the people upon the administration of government, and it is within their power to change the administrative policy or to reject the agents of government whom they have previously elected. Locally they have the advantage of knowing all candidates for office. The efficiency of rural government depends much on its revenue, and farmers are reluctant to increase the tax rate; slowly they are learning the value of good roads and good schools.
The Ancient History of the Community.—The government of the rural community has a history of its own, as has the community itself. This government gradually fits itself to meet local needs, but it is slow to put away the survivals of earlier forms and customs that have outlived their usefulness. The history of the community goes back to primitive times, when the clan group recognized common interests and acknowledged the leadership of the chief or head man. Custom was the law of the clan, and its older members assisted the chief in interpreting custom. Government in the community developed in two ways, one along the path of centralization of authority, the other in the growth of democracy. One tendency was to attach an undue importance to ancient custom, and to throw about it a veil of sanctity by connecting it with religion. Such a community in its conservatism came to possess in time a static civilization, but it lacked virility and commonly fell under the control of a neighboring energetic community or prince. This is the usual history of the Oriental community. The other tendency was to adapt local law and organization to changing circumstances, and to make use of the abilities of all the members of the community, to give them a voice in the local assembly, and a right to hold public office. Such progressive communities were the city states of Greece, the republic of Rome, and the rural communities of the barbarian Germans before they settled in the Roman Empire. When the Greek communities became decadent they fell under foreign dominion; Rome imperialized the republic, but never forgot how to rule well in her municipalities; the Germans passed on their democratic ways to the English, and from that source they were brought to America.
Two Types of Rural Government.—In America there have been two types of rural government growing out of the manner of original settlement. In New England the colonists settled near together in villages grouped about the meeting-house. One or more villages constituted a town for purposes of government. In these small districts it was possible for all the citizens to meet frequently, and in an annual assembly the voters of the community elected their officers and adopted the necessary local regulations. Long custom transplanted oversea had kept a close connection between church and state, and until the new American principle of separation was universally adopted, the annual town meeting in Massachusetts was a parish meeting, in which the community voted with reference to the needs of the church as well as of the state. In the South community life was less closely knit, and town meetings were not in vogue. The parish held its vestry meetings for the transaction of ecclesiastical business, for episcopacy was the established church; overseers of the poor were elected at the same meetings. There were county assemblies for social and judicial purposes, but in each a few prominent people in the neighborhood managed affairs and perpetuated their privileges, as among the landed gentry of England. It was in these ways that popular government 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.
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 whether the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be licensed for the ensuing year; under an increasing referendum policy the acts of the State legislature are frequently submitted for review to the local voters.
Where the town system does not exist or is part of a larger county, officers are elected for more extended responsibility. The functions of county officers are mainly judicial. Among the county officers are the sheriff elected by the people to preserve order and justice throughout the region, the coroner whose duty has been to investigate sudden death or disaster, and to hold an inquest to determine the origin of crime if it existed. The county commissioners or supervisors are executive officers, corresponding to the selectmen of the town; the clerk and treasurer of the county have duties similar to the town officers with those titles.
Political Relations and Responsibilities.—The local community, alike under township and county government, is a part of a larger political unit, and so has relations with and responsibilities to the greater State. The town meeting may legislate on such matters as the erection of a new schoolhouse or the building of a town highway, but it cannot locate the post-office or change the location of a State or county road. It may make its local taxes large or small, but it cannot increase or diminish the amount of the State tax or regulate the national tariff. The townsman lives under the jurisdiction of a law that is made by his representatives in the State legislature or the national Congress, and he is tried and punished for the infraction of law in a county, State, or national court. As a citizen of these larger political units he may vote for county, State, and national officials, and may himself aspire to the highest office in the gift of his countrymen.
Political Standards.—To a foreigner such a system of government may seem exceedingly complex, but by it self-government is preserved to the people of the nation, and a good degree of efficiency is maintained. There are problems of social control that need study and that produce various experiments in one State or another before they are widely adopted; there is corruption of party politics with unscrupulous methods and machinery that is too well oiled with "tainted" money; but local government averages up to the level of the intelligence and morals of the community. If the schoolhouse is an efficient centre for the proper training of boys and girls to understand their social relations and civic responsibilities, and if the meeting-house is an efficient centre for the discussion of social ethics and a religion that moves on the plane of earth as well as heaven, then the town house will give a good account of itself in intelligent voting and clean political methods. If the school-teacher and the minister have won for themselves positions of community leadership, and are educators of a forceful public opinion, and if the community is sufficiently in touch with the best constructive forces in the national political arena to feel their stimulus, the political type locally is not likely to be very low. A self-governing people will always have as good a government as it wants, and if the government is not what it should be, the will of the people has not been well educated.
READING REFERENCES
Fairlie: Local Government in Counties, Towns, and Villages.
Fiske: Civil Government in the United States, pages 34-95.
Henderson: Social Elements, pages 292-317.
Hart: Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities, pages 92-105.
Cooley: Social Organization, pages 402-410.