Robert L. Warren*
The idea of the American community is deceptively simple, as long as one does not require a rigid definition. The term evokes a rich imagery associated with the "country village," the "small town," or the "big city" of an earlier day. One thinks of the country village's Main Street, with its several stores and post office, and the streets, houses, and lawns that immediately surround it in the setting of an enveloping prairie, dairy-farm country, or forest. One recalls the road that traverses the five, ten, or twenty miles—seldom more except in the Far West—connecting it with a small city. Here in the small city is a larger population, a greater variety of shops and services, a daily newspaper, a series of wholesale establishments serving surrounding villages, perhaps a college or university, a hospital, a number of industries. Or one imagines the larger city with its concentration of people, its burgeoning suburbs, its businesses, medical center, museums, department stores, and newspapers that serve a large section of the state or perhaps parts of several states.
One thinks of places large and small, places whose appearances reflect the specialized industrial or other functions they perform, places that vary with climate and topography, with the origin of the people who first settled or later migrated there, with diverse history and traditions—places that differ from each other in a dozen ways and yet with much in common.
The idea of the American community is deceptively simple, as long as one does not require a rigid definition. The term evokes a rich imagery associated with the "country village," the "small town," or the "big city" of an earlier day. One thinks of the country village's Main Street, with its several stores and post office, and the streets, houses, and lawns that immediately surround it in the setting of an enveloping prairie, dairy-farm country, or forest. One recalls the road that traverses the five,...
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