Community Civics and Rural Life | Page 6

things done during the entire week.
Write the six wants across the top of a page of your notebook or a sheet
of paper:
Health Knowledge Association Beauty Religion Wealth
Arrange the activities in your list in the six columns according to the
wants which they satisfy. If any activity clearly satisfies more than one
of the wants, write it down in EACH of the proper columns.
Which column is the longest? which comes next? which is the shortest?
Is your longest column also the longest in the lists made by other
members of your class? Compare your other columns with those of
your classmates. Which wants seem to keep you busiest?
Which do you think is most important? Why? Discuss this question in
class. Do you all agree in regard to this point?
If any of the activities in your list are for the purpose of earning money,
tell for what you expect to spend the money. Show how the things you
expect to buy with your money will help to satisfy your other five
wants.
For which of these six wants do you spend the most time in providing?
your father? your mother? If there is a difference in the three answers,
why is it?
Do you have difficulty in classifying any of the things you do, or that

you see others do, under any of the six heads? Make note of these
things and, as your study proceeds, see if the difficulty of classification
is removed.
Suppose a boy is a BULLY: what wants does he satisfy by his bullying
conduct? Suppose a boy or a girl is ambitious to become a LEADER,
either among present companions or later in social life, business, or
politics: under which head or heads would you place this ambition?
A boy wants to enlist in the army, or a girl as an army nurse: do these
wants come under any of the six heads?
Would you, after your discussion of these topics, add any other group
or kind of wants to the six mentioned? If so, what would you call it?
Every one wants HAPPINESS. Why is it not necessary to make a
special group under this head?
Make a list of things done in your home to provide for each of the six
wants.
What is done in your school to provide for the want for health? for
beauty? for association with others? for the religious want? Has your
school work any relation to your desire to make a living? Is it the
business of the school to provide for all these things as well as for the
want for knowledge?
Make a list of a few things done in your community outside of the
home and school to provide for each of the six wants.
Think of something in which your entire community is deeply
interested, such as the improvement of the roads, or the building of a
new high school, or a county fair, and explain what wants it provides
for.
What wants do the following things provide for: rural mail delivery;
weather reports; a corn club (or a similar club); a school garden; a
library; the telephone; a hospital; a parent- teacher association?

THE PURPOSE OF DEMOCRACY
We may often hear our common purposes as communities or as a
nation stated in different terms than those suggested in the paragraphs
above. For example, Franklin K. Lane, the Secretary of the Interior
during the war, said, "Our national purpose is to transmute days of
dreary work into happier lives--for ourselves first and for all others in
their time." Again, President Wilson said that our purpose in entering
the world war was to help "make the world safe for democracy."
Although these two statements read differently, they mean very much
the same thing; and they both refer in general terms to the things this
chapter discusses in more familiar and express terms. For "happier
lives" can only result from a more complete satisfaction of our common
wants. Our own happiness comes from the satisfaction of our own
wants AND FROM HELPING TO SATISFY THE WANTS OF
OTHERS. And "democracy" means, in part, that the COMMON
WANTS OF ALL shall be properly provided for.
In the Declaration of Independence we read:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL
MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY
THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS,
THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT
OF HAPPINESS.
OUR UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
The statement that "all men are created equal" has troubled many
people when they have thought of the obvious inequalities that exist in
natural ability and opportunity. But whatever inequalities may exist,
people are absolutely equal in their RIGHT to satisfy the wants
described in this chapter. These are the "unalienable rights" which