Among the country people themselves there is no demand for better local government or almost none; they are satisfied or content themselves with grumbling about taxes and in fierce partisan politics. ...  The country people of America lack an adequate sense of civic and social responsibility, and the deficiency is rising into critical, national importance. [Footnote 2:  E.C.  Branson, Report of subcommittee on local government, National Country Life Conference, Baltimore Proceedings, 1919, pp. 68, 69.]

Another says,

The first thing to be reformed in county government is not the officers down at the courthouse, but our own attitude toward the county, and particularly toward public office.  For, after all, public officers in this country are just what the people make them ... [Footnote 3:  H.S.  Gilbertson, Forms of County Government, in the University of North Carolina Record, No. 159, October, 1918, p. 38.]

There are those who advocate breaking up the county into smaller units for purposes of local self-government, as in New England.  Thomas Jefferson, living in Virginia where the county was the sole unit of local government, was a great admirer of the New England town meeting, and said that “public education and the subdivision of the counties into wards,” or townships, were the “two hooks” upon which republican government must hang.  On the other hand, we have observed an opposite tendency to concentrate the administration of schools, roads, health, and other matters, in the county government (see pp. 294,325).  The fact is that both the organization for centralized, county-wide government, and that for the government of local communities within the county, have their uses.  Neither can do its best work without the other.  The problem is to deter mine what the business of each should be and to establish a proper balance between them.  One thing is sure, namely, that the government of the county cannot be effective unless the people of the various communities within the county are organized to cooperate both for their local interests and for the interests of the county as a whole.  This may be provided for in part through township governments, where they exist, and in part through such unofficial organization as that described for the New England town (p. 402), or as that furnished by the farm bureau with its local community committees (p. 30).

One of the most progressive states in the matter of county government is North Carolina.  One of the chief instruments by which this progress has been made is the north Carolina club, organized by the University of North Carolina for the study and promotion of the interests of the state.  The North Carolina Club has affiliated with it county clubs, each of which studies its own county and promotes its interests.  In North Carolina they are working in both directions suggested above:  in the direction of an effective central county government, and in the direction of organization of all local communities for the study of needs and for teamwork in providing for them.  See references.