I do not mean to imply that I think it is easy to learn how to identify ourselves with our city, especially for those who live in large cities. The men of a small town know that if they have a new town-hall they will have to pay for it. In a large city men ask for a ward building because they will not have to pay for it, they think. It is all this which neighborhood organization and the integration of neighborhoods, of which I shall speak later, must remedy. Footnote 88: The plan of Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Phillips for community organization and for the connection with it of expert service is too comprehensive to describe here, but based as it is on their actual experience, and planning as it does for the training of whole neighborhoods and the arousing of them to responsibility and action, it should be studied by every one, for such plans are, I believe, the best signs we have that democracy is yet possible for America. Footnote 89: How much we are all indebted to the settlements as the pioneer neighborhood movement I do not stop to consider here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXVII FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION: THE UNIFYING STATE -------------- HOW can the will of the people be the sovereign power of the state? There must be two changes in our state: first, the state must be the actual integration of living, local groups, thereby finding ways of dealing directly with its individual members. Secondly, other groups than neighborhood groups must be represented in the state: the ever-increasing multiple group life of to-day must be recognized and given a responsible place in politics.[90] First, every neighborhood must be organized; the neighborhood groups must then be integrated, through larger intermediary groups, into a true state. Neither our cities nor our states can ever be properly administered until representatives from neighborhood groups meet to discuss and thereby to correlate the needs of all parts of the city, of all parts of the state. Social workers and medical experts have a conference on tuberculosis, social workers and educational experts have a conference on industrial education. We must now develop the methods by which the citizens also are represented at these conferences. We must go beyond this (for certain organizations, as the National Settlement Conference at least, do already have neighborhood representation), and develop the methods by which regular meetings of representatives from neighborhood organizations meet to discuss all city and state problems. Further still, we must give official recognition to such gatherings, we must make them a regular part of government. The neighborhood must be actually, not theoretically, an integral part of city, of state, of nation.