A community of farmers has interests of its own, largely centering around farming activities, or the social life of the local neighborhood.  A few miles away is a village or city whose people also have their own peculiar interests, such as the lighting of the streets at night, or the building of a new high school, or the election of a mayor.  Yet there are interests common to both the farming community and the city community.  The city is dependent upon the country for its food supply, and the farmers are dependent upon the city for their market.  Probably some of the farmers send their children to the city schools.  Thus city and rural communities are bound together into a larger community with interests common to both.

In the early days of western settlement a community was founded in Illinois.  It was an agricultural community, but in the midst of it a village grew, which in the course of time became a small city.  One of the first settlers was a young farmer with a mechanical turn of mind.  He began experimenting to improve the methods of planting grain.  The result was the invention of a corn planter, the manufacture of which became one of the chief industries of the growing city, employing hundreds of men and sending machines to all parts of the world.  Another young farmer invented a better plow than those which had been in use, the manufacture of which became another of the city’s industries.  In those pioneer days each family usually made its own brooms, but one young man in this community earned his way through the local college by making brooms from corn raised on the college farm.  The college cornfield disappeared in the course of time, but on one part of it there grew up a broom factory employing a large number of workmen.  These city industries were thus literally “children of the soil,” and the city’s prosperity depended upon the agriculture of the surrounding region.  On the other hand, the city provided the farmers with improved plows and corn planters, furnished them an immediate market for their products, supplied them with goods through its shops and stores, and gave education to hundreds of farmers’ children in its schools and college.

NEED FOR RURAL AND CITY TEAMWORK

Sometimes jealousies and antagonisms arise between small neighboring communities, and especially between rural and city communities.  This interferes with the progress of both communities, and of the larger community of which each is a part.  It may be proposed to build a township high school.  It is natural that the several communities that comprise the township should each want it.  But the interest of the entire township should be considered in determining the location of the school, and not merely the advantage of one local district as against others.  It sometimes happens that the people of a city are exempted from taxation for county purposes outside of the city, although