Until genuine local leadership is available, community organization will be impossible. It is true that often where the need for community activity is sufficiently great that the very necessity develops new leadership. Herein lies the value of beginning the process of community organization by some enterprise which enlists the enthusiastic support of the whole community, for in such activities new leadership is often developed.
Any form of community organization which is to be permanent and effective must represent the actual life of the community, which is largely dominated by existing organizations. Most individuals are loyal to certain of these organizations and these loyalties are the social realities which must be recognized in any attempt to unite them in larger aims. Unless most of the leading organizations of a community can be affiliated for community progress, any so-called community organization will be but another organization. The League of Nations hardly represents the world community as long as the United States, Germany and Russia are not affiliated with it, nor would our federal government be representative of our national life if it were responsible only to the direct vote of the people and did not give recognition to the states as states. It is for this reason that community organization will proceed most efficiently where it is initiated by the joint effort of several of its leading associations, the churches, the grange, the farm and home bureau, the Red Cross, the business men's association, etc., for without their support a divided loyalty will persist.
For the same reason, a community organization cannot be under the auspices of any one existing organization as a chamber of commerce or farm bureau. Both of these and others are community organizations, but they are for specific purposes. Proponents of both of these have advocated making them community-wide and all-embracing in their functions, but it needs but little reflection to show the impossibility of such a plan. To cite but one objection. The rural church is the most deeply-rooted and in many ways the most powerful of rural institutions. It can coöperate with these other organizations for community purposes, but neither of them can enter into the religious field. The same is true of lodges, schools, health organizations, government, etc. Community organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce or Commercial Club, the Grange and the Farm Bureau for agriculture and homemaking, the Red Cross for its activities, Church Federations, and others should all be encouraged where needed, but although each of these has certain community functions, no one of them can do or can direct the work of another. The community organization must bring them together so as to best coördinate their work for the good of the community, not through the power of an organic federation, but through the influence of conference, good will and devotion to the common weal.