Organizations, no doubt, have their value, but when overdone their effect is more than questionable. At the present time individual initiative, which is probably the greatest force for good in our civilization, is being benumbed and stifled by the mad passion for organization. In the matter of food production we constantly get news about this and that great organization that is arranging to investigate and take action, and the ordinary man gets an entirely wrong idea into his head. He thinks that with all the Government committees and commissions and public-spirited organizations at work, it is entirely needless for him to undertake the little he might be able to do by his own efforts. This is a serious misconception; many great movements are started that are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." While organized effort, properly directed, will undoubtedly accomplish great things, individual initiative has been the foundation of practically every success our country has known. This tendency to flock together into organizations whenever there is anything to be done is not an entirely healthful sign. Some recent experiences have led me to mourn the disappearance of an effective though somewhat undesirable type of citizen known in the past. In trying to define the kind of man I am thinking of, I remember a report of a scene in the police court in New York some years ago. A lawyer was examining the badly battered plaintiff. "What did the defendant say to you on that occasion?" "He said he would knock my head off." "And what else?" "He said he would mop the floor with me." "And what else?" "Er--also he done it." There would be a great deal of progress in this world if it could be said after the plans suggested by each man--"also he done it." The trouble just now is that we all organize and nobody gets his head knocked off and the floor doesn't get mopped up. CHAPTER XIV THE WARD LEADER