sympathetically, than upon the remedial treatment afforded through professional workers, courts, institutions and other public agencies. Social welfare is like health, for which sanitation and hygiene are more important than doctors and medicines. What is needed in the rural community is a transformation of the old-time family hospitality and neighborliness into a feeling of responsibility for the unfortunate within the community with whom there may not be immediate contact, but who nevertheless affect the moral and social life of all its people. It needs the spirit and devotion of the Good Samaritan on the part of the people, but it also needs the public health nurse and the social worker who, like the inn-keeper of the parable, can give adequate care to the unfortunate. FOOTNOTES: [72] See Charles E. Gibbons, "A Rural Slum Community." The American Child. February, 1922. pg. 343. [73] "Juvenile Delinquency in Rural New York." Kate Holladay Claghorn. U. S. Dept. of Labor, Children's Bureau. Publication No. 32. Washington. 1918. [74] "Social Responsibilities of the Rural Community," p. 129. Cornell Extension Bulletin 39. Rural Community Conference Cornell Farmers' Week. 1919. CHAPTER XVI THE COMMUNITY'S GOVERNMENT Local self-government is a well-established tradition in the United States, but as far as the rural community is concerned it is more tradition than fact, for outside of New England the rural community has no legal or political status. In New England the townships were originally created as community units, for they were modelled after the European village community. The meeting house determined the site of the village where the farmers and craftsmen resided, and the boundaries of the township were coincident with the limits of their lands. The origin of the New England township has been well described by John Fiske in a famous chapter on this subject:[75]