ABSTRACT

THE NEW TOWN MEETING DEMOCRACY:
A STUDY OF MATCHED TOWNS

By

Vivian Scott Hixson

There has been little serious research on the effects
of the different kinds of town meeting systems that still
exist over a broad section of New England. Reports from the
past, concentrating on their grant of wide voting and
initiative powers to the electorate, tend to represent them
as UtOpian democracies; but sociologists and political
scientists of the last hundred years, drawing on studies
of stratification and political life, on studies of the
political and social life of other small towns, and on
studies of the effects of the system of initiative and
referendum in larger units, tend to discount the value of
these political forms as a means to a more democratic
political life--particularly, if the political system is
measured in terms of the content of its citizens' informa—
tion, ideas, and decisions.

In an effort to disentangle economic and social forces
from the effects of different political forms, this study
examines the formal and informal political life of two
economically and socially matched towns, to see whether
or not the apparently more democratic procedure of the new

town meeting system has any real impact on informal political

Vivian Scott Hixson
life, measured empirically against the real political life
of a city council town, and in terms of an ideal of
egalitarian, humanitarian democracy.

The "new town meeting" system studied is one in which
the "town meeting" element has been reduced to a forum
on the day of the vote; the system is, in effect, one of
broad initiative and referendum. The town studied, however,
was one which had discarded the "talking town meeting"
system within the last fifteen years, and some retrospective
information ongthis’sySfiem was available as well.

The major conclusions of the study are based on inter-
views with past and present town officers, interviews with
a broad sample of heads of households, voting records, and
surveys of the distribution of public services. An appendix
to the study explores and the advantages and disadvantages
of the method of controlled comparison.

With the understanding that there are limits to the
certainty of conclusions drawn in a single, controlled
comparison, these are the findings of the study.

1. Neither political system displayed any advantages
with respect to the following criteria: (a) the tendancy
of occupational and educational status to determine those
citizens respected as authorities on local government,

(b) the tendancy of occupational and educational status
to determine whether or not the citizens would vote; and
(c) the tendency of town governments to enact preferential

legislation for industry and business.

Vivian Scott Hixson

2. But the superiority of the new town meeting system
was striking in these more specific details of Chatterton's
political life: (a) the citizens had greatly superior
information on major town decisions; (b) their information
was more likely to focus on specific decisions and less
likely to consist of vague rumors about persons or groups;
(c) different income groups were much more capable of per—
ceiving and maintaining separate and rational interpretations
of their interests in town decisions, (d) citizens were more
likely to talk, innovate, object, and organize, (e) the
activity rate of a citizen was less predictable from his
occupation and education and more dependent on his social
integration than in the city council town; (f) town officers
were more likely to initiate and encourage citizen petitions;
(g) the economic elite were less likely to believe that they
should be accorded special influence in town affairs——indeed,
less likely than other citizens in the same town—-and,
(h) because of these factors and the specificity and flexi-
bility of the voting system, actual decisions made were more
likely to preserve methods of funding and collecting taxes

that were public and redistributive.

THE NEW TOWN MEETING DEMOCRACY:
A STUDY OF MATCHED TOWNS

by

Vivian Scott Hixson

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Sociology

{X \
\

In

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
James B. McKee and Bo Anderson of the Department
of Sociology at Michigan State University contribu-
ted close and constructive criticism of earlier
versions. I would also like to thank Thomas
Green, formerly of the Department of Political
Science at Michigan State University, for prelim—

inary advice.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction to the Problem

Small Towns, Referenda, and

Egalitarian Democracy 1
The Two Towns 21
II. The Two Towns Are the Same 57

 

III. The Two Towns Are Different

 

Introduction 44

Who Benefits? 48
Information 56

The Discriminating Voter 67
Initiative and Insubordination 78

The "Rules of the Game" 82

The Inhibited Elite 98

IV. Conclusion 106
V. Bibliography 122

 

VI. Appendices
Appendix I: Methods

On the Validity and Efficiency of the
Method of Controlled Comparison 126

The Survey Method 140

Supplementary Data and Notes on Methods:
Listed by Page Number of Reference in Text 144

Appendix II
The Educated New Englanders 161

iii

When efficiency experts encourage systems of government
for nations, states or cities that make their governments
even more remote, professional, and incomprehensible than
they already are, there is at least some Opposition from
sociologists and political scientists. When managerial
systems spread through the small towns, the same writers seem
to be barely aware of them. The problemsof nations and
cities stimulate a huge and rapidly evolving debate over the
systems of government and economic conditions conducive to
democratic political life. When a small town system appears
that promises a more democratic political life, only a
scattering of journalists report it.

It is not only because it is small that the small town
is ignored. It is also because, over the last hundred years
of American literature and social science, an image of small
town political life has emerged that no longer allows for

its casting as the appealing underdog of American democracy.

2
Granted, it is at this level that the best ratio of voters
to representatives can be obtained, but from Lynd's Middletown
through Vidich and Bensman's Small Town in Mass Society, the
majority of the persisting classics create a picture of small
town ineptness, venality and social intimidation so pervasive
as to nullify any advantages that might seem to be obtained
through size.1

For Veblen, "The country town of the great American
farming region is the perfect flower of self-help and
cupidity standardized on the American plan....The
location of any given town has commonly been determined
by collusion between 'interested parties' with a View
to speculation in real estate, and it continues through
its life history (hithereto) to be managed as a real
estate ’prOposition'. Its municipal affairs, its
civic pride, its community interest, converge upon
its real estate values....Aside from this common int—
erest in the town's inflated real estate, the towns-
men are engaged in a vigilant rivalry, being competi-
tors in the traffic carried on with the farm pOpulation...
The retail trade, and therefore in its degree the
country town, have been the home ground of American
culture and the actuating center of public affairs
and public sentiment....In.American parlance, 'The
Public', so far as it can be defined, has meant those
persons who are engaged in and about the business of
retail trade, together with such of the kept classes
as draw their keep from this traffic. The road to‘
success has run into and through the country town,

or its retail-trade equivalent in the cities, and the
habits of thought engendered by the preoccupations

of the retail trade have shaped popular sentiment and
popular morals and have dominated public policy in
what was to be done and what was to be left undone,
locally and at large, in political, civil, social,
ecclesiastical, and educational concerns....This is
also what is meant by Democracy in American parlance,
and it was for this country-town pattern cf democracy
that the Defender of the American Faith once aspired
to make the world safe."

 

1Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern

American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and WOrld, 1929).
Arthur Vidich and Joseph.Bensman Small Town in Mass Society
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958).

2Thorstein Veblen, in The Portable Veblen, ed. by Max Lerner.

5

In Middletown, small town government exists only as an
overgrown Middletown's schiz0phrenic dream of its past. Not
size alone, but industrialization as well has made its tra—
ditional, personalized politics a guarantee that neither
efficiency nor democracy will prevail. The election of a
popular, reassuringly familiar and incompetent "man of the
people" precludes an effective attack on industrial problems
and perpetuates an actual government of businessmen, machine
politians and the underworld. Police enforce farm town laws
against the uncomprehending industrial poor. Moral exhorta-
tion, like the magical incantations of primitive tribes, is
the preferred solution to every civic problem up to total
collapse. Whether or not the original Middletown government
was democratic and egalitarian, its ritualized remains only
impede the present government in its clumsy struggle against
economic and social disaster.

The local governors of Vidich and Bensman's "Springdale
Village", paralyzed by their own incompetence, voluntarily
let power slip upwards to county or state levels, or sideways
to experts and the "invisible government" of business-dominated
civic groups, while talking and smiling through routinely
unanimous votes before an almost totally uninterested audience.
No one contests offices; a bare 10% bother to vote. In the
larger unit of Springdale's "town", the Opposition that grows
up and around the issue of the roads exhausts itself in
meaningless election campaigns against the powerless strawman
figure of the "road supervisor". Rare direct challenges to

the town governors themselves are quickly suffocated by the

4
local newspaper and an easily mobilized clique of prosperous
farmers. A

Wildavsky's Leadership in a Small Town, written as a
refutation of Middletown's image of small town domination by
local businessmen is more optomistic; but it goes only so
far as to assert that "pluralism" in leadership-—a feeble
descendant of classical ideals of democracy--is possible in
an admittedly a—typical, non-industrial college town.1

In the more general works in political science, the
image of small town government is typically disreputable,
particularly to the eye of the liberal cosmopolitan. In
Samuel Lubell’s early Future of American Politics, the mer—
chants and bankers of midwestern towns intimidate the nat-
urally POpulist and Democratic farmers.2 In Grant McConnell's
Private Power and American Democracy, these smallest of
"small units" are the most pathetically and naively vulner—
able to corporate pressures. In Dahl's essay on the ideal
size for democracy, "Democracy and the Chinese Boxes", the
small town is a place "filled with the oppressive weight of
repressed deviation and dissent, which, when they appear,

erupt explosively and leave a lasting burden of antagonism

 

lAron Wildavsky, Leadership in a Small Town (Totawa, New
Jersey: the Bedminster Press, 1964.)

Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (Garden City:
New York: Doubleday, 1952).

2

and hatred."1

If writers are classified not so much by their methods
as by the perspective that guides their selection of facts,
Sinclair Lewis, the Lynds, and Vidich and Bensman are all in
the same tradition, For these writers, the paramount need
is to unmask the figure of small town democratic harmony
to reveal oligarchy and constraint beneath, lest the utOpian
image of the small town be used to support the superficially
similar institutions that impede genuine egalitarian change
in larger communities.

In these brilliant descriptions and analyses, scant
attention goes to the legal forms of government. It is
assumed that these forms hardly matter; and if any variation
in these forms were really capable of ameliorating the sit—
uation, it would have no chance of adoption. The small town
is in the twin grip of an economic and social intimidation
that overwhelms competing forces. In mass society, its
people are left-overs, so inferior to the enterprising
emigrants to cities that they are inadequate to even the

simple tasks that are left to them. They are simultaneously

 

lGrant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New
York: Alfred A. KnOpf, 1966), p. 95-96.

Robert A. Dahl, "Democracy and the Chinese Boxes" in Henry
Kariel, ed., Frontiers of Democratic Theory (New York:
Random House, 1970), p. 576.

Other, less celebrated studies in the same vein include:
Basil G. Zimmer and Amos Hawley "Local Government as Viewed

by Fringe Residents" in Rural Sociology, 25, (December, 1958).

Robert E. Agger and Daniel Goldrich, "Community Power Struc-
tures and Partisanship", American Sociological Review, 25

(August, 1958).

Robert E. Agger, "Power Attribution in the Local Community:
Theoretical and Research Considerations", Social Forces 54

(May, 1956).

6
Oppressive and dull, and no tinkering with statutes will
redeem them.

But at the same time, another equally noticeable trad-
ition still venerates one form of small town government, and,
at least in its safe setting of the past, dwells on its lost
possibilities.

....the failure to grasp (the town meeting form) and

continue it--indeed to incorporate it in both the

Federal and State Constitutions--was one of the tragic

overSlghts of post-revolutionary development....

Hannah Arendt and Morton White, as well, tender their
regrets: Hannah Arendt for the revolutionary fervor that
flowered briefly in the participatory "public happiness" of
old town meeting life--Morton White for the model that might
have led away from couny'and state units to a nation of
powerful and viable large city governments.2

Behind both stands deTocqueville's small but striking
portrait of the New England town meeting democracy of the
1850’s.

"Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are

to science; they bring it within the pegples' reach,
they teach men how to use and enjoy it.

 

lLewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt

Brace, 1961), p. 552-553.

2Morton White, The Intellectual vs. the City (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 175.'

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963), p. 165ff.

5Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Cambridge: Sever
and Francis, 1862), p. 76.

7
The native of New England is attached to his township

because it is independent and free; his co-operation
in its affairs insures his attachment to its interest;
the well-being it affords him secures his affection;
and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his
future exertions. He takes a part in every occurrence
in the place; he practices the art of government in the
small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to
those forms without which liberty can only advance by
revolutions; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a
taste for order, comprehends the balance of powers,
and collects clear practical notions on the nature of
his duties and the extent of his rights.1
The traditions conflict. No form of gowmnment could
have ever created such a democracy if small town social
pressures for deference and conformity did hold its citizens
in the fabled "vise—like grip"; it is doubtful whether de
Tocqueville would have been impressed with towns that were
under the decisive control of merchants and real—estate
speculators. More to the point of present policy, if the
destiny of all small units is to be crushed-by the dominant
economic powers and problems of industrial society, Hannah
Arendt and Morton White would be better advised to let the
present town meeting system alone in its inevitable decline.
What is the reality of "Town meeting" government? Now,
in assembley-line towns, in "blue—collar suburbs", in "small
towns in mass society", does it make a difference? Might it
make enough of a difference to turn a "Springdale" into
Hannah Arendt’s political "treasure"? In 1960, there were
still 1,595 "towns" in New England. Some were governed by
traditional town meetings, some by the variations in the old_

form that split off at the turn of the twentieth centure and

have spread widely since. There are still more than ten

 

1Alexis de Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 85.

8
million Americans who live in towns no larger than 5,000—--
well under the recommended upper limit for even the old town
meeting form. Should they be advised, in the interests of
democracy, to live under one of these "town meeting" forms?
Or might they be as well advised to adopt any efficient
means of conducting business and let the chimera of small
town democracy fade on the library shelves?

This study attempts an answer to these questions.
Taking a town governed by the most widely disseminated of
these new town meeting forms, the study contrasts its politi-
cal life with that of another town, governed by the almost
equally venerable system of Mayor and Council. Although
they are governed by contrasting political forms, the two
towns are yet so alike in the ac0pe of their powers, their
political context, their social integration, their economic
history, composition and setting, their organizational
structure and their ethnic composition, that such differences
as do exist can be easily handled in the analysis. In a
controlled comparison, the political system is tested to see
whether it does or does not have a democratic effect.

* * * * * * * * *

If the question could be decided on the basis of
differences between the formal political systems of these
towns, there would be no difficulty in reaching a decision.
We would have to do no more than glance at the election laws
to some to the conclusion that the one system is obviously

more democratic than the other. That variant of the town

9

meeting that is usually labelled the "Australian Ballot system"
required that the voters themselves pass on the annual town
budget, item by item, in a secret vote. HOW'mUCh money is to
be spent on roads, sewage systems, schools, police, and any
other separable project; whether or not the town will hire
police or nurses, or run a nursing home, or indebt itself
or change its system of voting--all this is decided separately
in the annual voting of citizens. Elected representatives--
the "selectmen"-—set up the basic budget, but if 5% of the
voters petition for a vote on a new budget item, that item
must be included on the ballot. By state law, the projected
budget must be circulated a full three weeks ahead of the
yearly vote; the annual "Town Report" of the officers must
be "in the voter‘s hands" by election day.1

Smaller, administrative decisions are made by the
Selectmen, and, in many cases, a paid town manager. Of
what was once a lengthy and colorful list of elected auxiliary
officers--including such arcane posts as those of water warden
and fence viewer--the most important survivals are the offices
of clerk and assessor, the one charged with keeping records,
registering the vote, checking titles and the like, the other
charged with the crucial task of determining each citizen's
contribution to the prOperty tax.

The mayor and council system that even now governs
thousands of small towns and cities in the United States
requires only that the voters elect the council, once every

two years. Only items requiring bond issues must be voted

 

lLaws cited here are for the state of Vermont. Other New
England laws are similar. See Andrew E. Nuquist, Town
Government in Vermont (Burlington: University of Vermont, 1964).

10
by the citizens; if other budget items are to by—pass the
council and appear on the ballot, they must be supported by
10% of the voters, or more.1

On the face of things, the new town meeting system is
obviously more democratic, the mayor and council system more
distantly representative. The citizens of the new town
meeting have easier access to the selection of problems and
broader voting powers. The case would seem to be closed.

But from Veblen to Vidich and Bensman, critics of small
town government have been guided by a definition of democracy
that includes far more than voting laws. Their indictment
is based on a broad, sociologists definition of political
life. They are concerned with values, with information and
sources of information, and with systems of actual influence
and power. From this broad perspective emerge these general
charges against the democratic reputation of any form of
small town government.

First it is charged that the smaller the political unit,
the more susceptible it is to the domination of local business
and industry on which the small unit is peculiarly dependent.
Local investors and their values will determine basic poli—
tical goals. Moveable industries will be bribed to stay.
Concurrently, the small unit will be served by only one

newspaper, or a whole series of media owned by one corporation,

 

1Probably a typical percentage under the mayor—council system.

From the Excelsior City Charter, 1956. See also the Michigan
Legislative Handbook.

11
filtering its view of the outside world.1 The advantages
offered by a change in the form of government, such as the
new town meeting system, would be paper advantages, of
little use to citizens whose views and economic destinies
are dependent on forces beyond their control.

Secondly, it is charged that the communal integrity and
significance of the small town has been so destroyed by the
emergence of mass society that its remaining people no longer
have the talent or the will to make any form of participatory
government work. In this situation, the introduction of
broader referenda would place an intolerable burden on the
small town citizens' dwindling interests and capacities for
political action. On the state level, any number of observ-
ors have pointed out that voters tend to avoid referenda on
the ballot, particularly when the voting is complicated,
and that this, combined with the difficulty of petitioning
for ballot placement, makes it likely that referenda will be
initialed by special interests and passed by minorities.2
Too, the more complicated the ballot, the more difficult it
is for the voter to discern his own interests, and the more

likely it is that he will innocently vote for measures or

 

lSee Joseph Klapper The Effects of Mass Media (The Free
Press, 1960); Joseph La PalombaraIflls the Press Too Free",
in The Pacific Spectator, (Vol. 7, Winter, 1955; and Bryce
W. Ruhker The First Freedom, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1967).

2See v.0. Key and Winston Crouch Initiative and Referendum in
California (University of California Press, Berkely, 1945);
J.G. La Palombara and C.B. Hagen "Direct Legislation:
Appraisal and a Suggestion" American Political Science
Review, XLV, pp. 407—408; and

J.R. Pollock The Initiative and Referendum in Michigan

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1940), Chapter 5.

 

l2

representatives that will work against him. Although there
are no serious investigations of town meetings themselves,
journalists report from time to time that attendance is low,
and real debate is rare.1

Finally, and with the greatest weight of evidence, it is
charged that the very intimacy of political life in the small
unit brings all the weight of social and economic status to
bear against the poor. Political action is personal action--
person to person talking, persuading and petitioning--and the
more such action is required, the more the political system
is weighted in favor of the educated, the wealthy, and the
leisured. Feelings of helplessness and inadequacy paralyze
the poor man in the political world; his respect for achieve-
ment encourages him to defer to the judgment of the accomplished.
They in turn are likely to give him a short hearing. Access

isself is curtailed; aside from the lack of money itself, the

loweincome man is more likely to work at inconvenient hours;

 

1See for example John W. Alexander and Monroe Berger, "Is

the Town Meeting Finished?" in The American Mercury (August,
1949), pp. 144-151.

15
the loweincome woman is more likely to work.1 In the past,
egalitarian values might have emerged from the small community
network of kin ties and lifetime friendships, but with the
decline of parochialism, the values of the small community
are increasingly determined by the nationally pervasive
pattern of ranking by occupational prestige. In this situa-
tion, a town meeting system, particularly the older system
of public meetings and debates, would be a formal guarantee
of democracy and an informal aid to privelege. The town
meeting would offer its extra Opportunities for citizen
influence only so that the elite could increase their already

inordinate power.

 

lR.E. Lane's Political Life (New York: The Free Press, 1959)
provides an excellent summary of research up to 1959, on:

the non—voting of low status citizens such as the young,
women, Negroes and those with low education and income;

the psychological dynamics of the transfer of feelings of
helplessness and inferiority to the policital world; the
difference in Opportunities for rational investment of time
in political activity. For a case study, see William F.
Whyte's Street Corner Society (Chicago: University of Chicago,
1955). Since that time, the jury studies of F.L. Strodtbeck,
et. al., "The Social Dimensions of a Twelve-Man Jury Table"
(Sociometry, 24, 2, Dec., 1961) have provided particularly
solid evidence on the effect of occupational prestige differ-
ences on what is supposed to be the deliberation of peers.

Of all available sources, the best for specific comparison

is Robert Agger and Vincent Ostrom’s "Political Participation
in a Small Community", in Political Behavior, ed. by Heinz
Eulau, Samuel J. Eldersveld, and Morris Janowitz (Glencoe:
The Free Press, 1956). Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz in
Power and Poverty (Oxford.University, 1970), demonstrate

that the separate victories of economically powerful groups
eventually create local political rules and traditions that
not only create practical difficulties for lower—status
political groups, but deny them basic legitimacy.

 

14

Clearly, a direct answer to these charges is only possi—
ble if the effect of the new town meeting system is investi—
gated in the real political life of the chosen town. To
put it more precisely, these questions must be answered in
each of the two towns: who benefits from this government's
decisions? Why? What ideology, what set of political
values guides these decisions? To what extent do the citi—
zens have the knowledge, the will and the opportunity to
influence the selection of issues and the making of these
decisions? To what extent is political influence and activity
determined by occupational prestige? If these questions are
answered, the emerging differences and similarities between
the two towns will provide at least some evidence of the
broad effect of the new town meeting system.

But, given the nature of these questions, a pragmatic
controlled comparison between two towns is not enough. To
stop with that would result in data that would be strangely
out of touch with the broad questions of Veblen, the Lynds
and the rest--questions that demand a comparison of real
political systems in terms of a model of the ideal, and an
ideal beyond the standard Utilitarian model of democracy.
Without a new image of a democratic utOpia, their accusa-
tions against existing political realities could never have
been made, nor could the questions in this study be investigated.

Take, as a beginning, the accusation that there is a
broad, determining "structural bias" in the enclosing economic
and infdrmation systems that determines the beneficiaries

of governmental decisions in spite of governmental forms.

l5
If we were to discover that the formal and informal leaders
of the town were unusually likely to be owners and managers
of local businesses, we would have only part of the answer.
Nor would it complete the case to know whether or not local
citizens thought that managers and businessmen had some
special talent for these positions. The heart of the
accusation lies in the implication that these business-
oriented town leaders, despite their protestations of love
for the public interest, make decisions that are not in
the real interests of the people as a whole. We can make
no judgment as to the truth of that contention without
some clearly articulated standard of what these interests
really are.

The charges against the competence and rationality of
the voter raise the prOblem of the democratic ideal with
equal force. It would be easy to devise and apply a hap—
hazard "information test". But would we be measuring
information that the voter really needs to know? To take an
example from national politics, does the voter really need
to know the names of Cabinet officers? Or is it more impor—
tant that he be able to identify the key legislation proposed
by the current administration--and, in particular, legislation
affecting his interests? "Activity" and "initiative" present
similar problems. What kind of activity and initiative should
a competent political actor display? Was it really a sign
of democracy at work when thousands of citizens voted against
flouridation on the theory that they were about to be

poisoned in a Communist plot?

16

Consider the final accusation against local government--
that the pressures of socio-economic status deprive lower—
income citizens of the Opportunity and the will to act,
perhaps so severely as to reverse the effect of the supposedly
democratizing system. It is relatively easy to trace the
effect of socio—economic status on peOples' esteem for each
other as political actors and sources of information; it is
relatively easy to see whether they do or do not have the
opportunity to act and whether they do or do not make use
of it. The problem, again, comes with the goals of action.
If less educated peOple automatically defer to the definitions
of problems that the highly educated create; if the less
occupationally successful adOpt the conceptions of the highly
placed, in whose interests do they act?

I NOne of these problems are confronted by J.S. Mill or
Thomas Jefferson or any of the founders of the standard
American ideal. If recognized, they are dismissed, with the
easy assumptions of their age. Raising these questions,
Veblen, the Lynds and the rest were indirectly proclaiming
a new, precise and demanding set of democratic ideals. If
they disliked the American country town, "Middletown",
"Springdale" and the rest, it was because they believed
that the egalitarianism of the ideal political system should
be unaffected by the obvious inequalities of economic life.
If they were offended by these governments, it was because
they believed that a democratic government should be more
than a hardware store where individual citizens might line
up to buy what essential services their individual incomes

could afford. They believed that the poor should receive

1'?
relatively more at a political dispensary than they could in
the private market; and that if political altruism should
come from anyone, it should come from the economic and
occupational elite. Behind their apparently objective
descriptions of small town political life lay their vision
of a new'UtOpia, born in reaction to an increasingly grim
picture of the real effects of economic power on political
life.

In this utOpia, no individual or group interest would
be favored at the expense of others. Put more specifically,
in terms of the usual barriers to this happy state, the
information system would be so broadly informative and so
equitable over time as to eliminate the usual biases, not
only in the perception of specific issues, but in the basic
assumptions of political life. There would be no "halo
effect" of political authority granted on the basis of
occupational or economic success as such. Political experts,
if necessary, would be unbiased, or at least equally available
to contending parties. Unequal political power could be
derived only from the more pacific political talents and
investments; differential economic positions and organizations
would either not exist or be restrained from influencing
political life. Like Hannah Arendt, Eric Fromm, Abraham
Maslow and the rest, these critics Of small town politics
value political action itself. In a new version of the old
Enlightenment faith, this egalitarian democracy would be
attained through political action which would be, in itself,

creative of greater humanity in human beings--greater

l8
perception of others, greater involvement with the whole.

It is less easy, drawing from these writings, to decide
what the sphere of the small government’s authority should
be. Reading The Small Town in Mass Society, for example, it
is unclear whether the authors feel that "Springdale‘s"
abdication of authority is wrong in itself, or deplorable
only as evidence Of Springdale's incompetence. But if we
are to be consistent with the other stated values of this
ideal, one thing is clear. In this Utopia, political parti-
cipation is valuable not only for its redistributive effects,
but for its effects on the quality of life. Political engage—
ment, responsibility and competence in the population in
general are an intrinsic part of the ideal. If the admini-
stration of a local government seems inegalitarian, an
advisor acting in accordance with the ideal cannot automatic-
ally suggest a solution through centralization. If a citizen
believes in both egalitarian and participatory democracy,
destruction of local control is the last, not the first
resort.

There remains one final problem in the use of this
ideal, and that is the problem of whether or not the social
scientist, as such, has the right to make use of it at all.
The more conservative tradition would say, no. If any ideals
should enter the investigation, they should be those selected
by the majority of the people being studied. The investigator,
like a traditional anthrOpologist in another culture, should
only observe the extent to which the society is able to live

up to its own stated ideals. The values of egalitarian,

l9
participatory democracy are not majority ideals; they may
not even be held by the majority of the educated. To set
them up openly as a standard of comparison is to make poli-
tical sociology even more Openly political than it now
pretends to be.

The efforts of the more traditional to avoid the use
of a broadened model of democracy are understandable. But
they are, in one sense, unrealistic. Even if all investi-
gators were to cease such studies now, these standards would
continue to exist. The debate would simply move out of the
circles of the academics, and be carried on by journalists,
literary critics, and others even less well prepared. The
effect of this moratorium would not be to eliminate the
conclusions of the earlier studies, but to leave them hanging
in the air, vague and elusive, but impossible to ignore.
Assuming that there are many for whom these ideals cannot
be brushed aside, thissmudy attempts to answer, in part,
the question of the extent to which they can exist in the
real world of American local politics.

Other objections to the use of these ideals-—indeed to
the use of the more traditional democratic ideals as well—-
stem from their impracticality, from the impossibility of
imagining how they might all be attained simultaneously in
their perfect form. But the impossibility of their attain-
ment in the ideal state may have little or nothing to do
with whether or not real political system "A", existing
somewhere near the oligarchic end of things, has proceeded

further towards the egalitarian humanitarian democratic

20
ideal than real system "B". In this case, to proceed in light of
the ideal is not to impose impossible standards, but to
establish an orientation to the problem broader than that
provided by the simpler, pragmatic models. It means that
the two systems will be measured in more ways, for broader

objectives, than is usually the case.

21

The Two Towns

The upper reaches of New England are proverbially popu-
lated with town meetings, small towns, small businessmen and
small farmers, a mixture most familiar to readers of old
Saturday Evening Posts, and inextricably confusing a peculiar
economic and political past, so that anything which might seem
unique to these towns is usually attributed not to any par-
ticular cause, but to everything at once, vaguely labelled
"history". But the Old economic patterns are changing.

In Vermont, factories now employ 25% of the work force,

more than twice the prOportion who still work the farms, and
state foresters plead with ex—dairy farmers to mow their now
unprofitable fields, to keep Open the views of red barns

and mountains so essential to the tourist trade. In some
ways, the economic life of upper New England is slowly
converging with that of the Middle West. There are small
numbers of large, profitable farms; a nultiplicity of
industries and businesses; and hordes of blue-collar commu-
ters who move daily over roads that increasingly cut through
and around the picturesque old corkscrew trails in the
hills. To the extent that the distinctive political system

remains, it will stand more and more alone, stripped of its

22

cover and visible as the system itself.

If we were only concerned with finding a New England
town that would match a midwestern town in its recent economic
history, we would have little difficulty. But the past may
have its impact, too, and there are sound historical reasons
for believing that the peculiar density and centrality of
New England agricultural villages was, at least at one time,
essential to the vitality of New England political life, and
that early Michigan townships were vitiated by the midwest
pattern of settlement on widely separated farms.

For that reason, we have turned to a less regionally
typical town, one of that small scattering of towns in
northern New England that had scarcely a glancing acquain—
tenance with the agricultural life before their industries
began. Sharing the New England political traditions, but
not their economic base, these towns mined and finished
slate or marble or granite—-or manufactured cloth or shoes—-
while conducting town meetings in the regional way. Now, as
single dominating local industries give way to a scattering
of small plastics and engineering firms, these towns are
moving—-not at a single bound, but at a gradual, normal pace-—
through the successive stages of industrial life.

Chattertonl is typical of these. A mining town once,
with a side interest in early New England’s textile trade,
it has profited in the normal way from the engineering and
plastics firms that have moved in since the Second World War.

The mining and stone finishing business employs only 9 to

 

1
Both towns have been given appropriate pseudonyms.

25

10% of the work force now; an old and declining railroad
warehouse claims another 10%; while the barely 15-year-old
engineering firm, "Eagle Electronics" commands almost as
much as both of them put together. Coming up rapidly in
second place is a huge, new cut—rate department store housed
in the cheap hulk of a dead shirt factory, drawing customers
from the region at large. A somewhat smaller plastics company
manufactures "life-like Dynel hair" for Barbie dolls and the
bald; various small groceries and restaurants and hardware
stores and the like employ a few people apiece; and a big
third of the work force commutes to nearby cities to work in
larger factories or to drive trucks, from Florida to Maine
and back again, with occasional stOps at home. 16% work the
night shift; 10% work out of town for days and weeks at a
time. (Nearly half of the work force are factory Operatives,
truck drivers, janitors and the like.1

Located in a relatively flat and central part of Vermont,
and hacked into jagged slag piles of discarded rock, with the
mountains visible only as a low wavering blue line at the
edge of town, and the small river choked with blackened
brick factory shells and railroad yards, the town never had
a chance to cash in on the tourist business that now fattens
so much of the rest of the state. A "blue-collar" town,
partly a "blue-collar suburb", living on the leavings of
what Galbraith aptly labelled "cockroach capitalism" or
commuting to take jobs in cities offered by the larger

corporations, this town is like thousands upon thousands of

 

1See Appendix for details, and methods.

24

other small towns in other states.

Bearing the imprint of its history, the town's organi-
zations are at the same time typical of many and perhaps most
Of the small towns in the northeastern quarter of the United
States. First in town, and symbolic of New England, the
Congregational church stands firmly on the village green.

But the Methodist church of the early 19th Century "circuit
riders" and midwestern frontier is equal to it, and incon-
gnnus EpiSOOpalians and Baptists fill out the Protestant
fold. By far, the largest single congregation is the
Catholic, symptomatic of the Irish laborers and Welsh quarry-
men who once came by the hundreds to work in stone. But
workmen make poor churchegoers. As always in blue—collar
towns, where draft calls are high and exemptions unlikely,
the Veterans' organizations are better attended than some of
the churches. And among all the voluntary organizations,

the unions are the most important to their members' lives.
Meetings are held rarely, and usually outside the town, but
when men are asked what "voluntary organizations" they belong
to, they are liable to look blank, and then say, "I belong
to the Union."

Other organizations exist for the few. There is the
inevitable Volunteer Fire Department, offering sociable
suppers and fund—raising carnivals for the community and
local glory for the thirty-odd men on the team; there are
the Masons; there is a PTA; there is a Chamber and a Junior
Chamber of Commerce. The Grange, always an incongruity in

this factory town, has become a small de facto teenagers'

25
club to the dismay and indignation of the old. The fraternal

organizations, the "friends of the library", hobby groups,
bridge clubs and others coordinate miniscule spatterings of
people.

By the stereotypes, this is a queer town--a Yankee
clipper ship commandeered and piloted by a pirate crew of
factory hands--but it does not seem unusual to the inhabi-
tants, and indeed, is not at all unusual in the real world.
Thousands of towns all over the industrial northern Midwest
were set up by New Englanders, with Congregational churches,
Voluntary Fire Departments, Masons and the rest--and these
old organizations persist side by side with the organizational
life brought in at later times—-often submerged, but always
resurfacing, their weather-beaten buildings still intact.

All the usual small town organizations are here, and
what is probably the usual level of small town membership.
52% attend some non—church organization in town. ’Since,
nationwide, only about 57% of American men claim to have
even a paper membership in'a non-church organization,
Chatterton is probably slightly better organized than
average, as one would expect a small town to be. However,
most social contact is provided through friends and through
kin--the friends to be seen at work, the kin in regular
visits to family members spread widely and thickly through
the town. For this is a stable town, as American towns go.
In the last twenty years of census records, it has grown
by slightly over a hundred peOple, and that largely through
annexation. Although less than a third of the inhabitants

26
were born in town, almost all of them have moved in from
near-by; genuine "immigrants" from more than thirty miles
away, or from other states, are rare. Almost all of them
have easily accessable relatives; 75% have relatives whom
they go to see in town. Nor is tranquillity disturbed by
noticeable ethnic or racial divisions. The last industry
large enough to draw immigrants was at its peak of power
a hundred years ago. 80% of the names in the telephone
book come from the British Isles. The rest are a smattering
of French Canadian, Polish and Italian, in that order, but
only one or two citizens out of a hundred—-like Ligia Milagros
or Henri Quedot--were actually born abroad. The Catholics,
once probably the poorest of working class families, are now
distributed among the town’s occupations as widely and equit—
ably as the Protestants. There are practically no Jews.
The only dark faces in town belong to the "fresh air"
children sent up by the church groups for a summer sampling
of the superior country life.

Always industrial, but with no prospects for growth;
with neither the ethnic diversity and excitement of a large
city nor the antique charm of a farmer's village, Chatterton
is a cosmOpolitan's nightmare of small town peace. The only
feature that might conceivably reinforce the basic differ-
ences of income and occupation among this small town's
citizens is its geography. The majority live clustered
around the traditional village green, while an intractable
cliff, the river, and the railroad segregate a full third of

the town on their own plateau. Only one road links the two

27
sides. But although most of the "best" citizens do live on
the village green side of town, the pOpulations of the two
sides have average incomes that vary by only $900.00 a year.
The difference is real, but not striking.l

The forces that created the economic and social life of
Chatterton shaped countless others like it, perhaps many
hundreds of towns that could have been said to "match". Of
these, the one studied here is in Michigan. Its name--
celebrating more the hopes of its founders than anything
else-—is Excelsior City.

Excelsior City is a step—child of history, one of the
many that have seen the slow death of their founders'
dreams, but somehow manage to persist, never booming, never
quite fading away. In the early days of the state it was a
railroad town, a proud industrial center in the middle of
the farms—~not spread out over the fields like other early
Michigan "towns", but built up closely around its tracks and
switches, with school buildings and a village green and news-
paper of its own, and with its streets named for the counties
in Michigan, as if it confidently expected that inevitably
it must come to be the center of the state.

But the automobile arrived, and somehow the boom never
came. As close as thirty-five miles away, real cities rose,
but Excelsior City, which grew up to be a midget, stayed

where it was. After the Second World War, even the switching

 

1A detailed description is available in Appendix I, "The
Wrong Side of the Tracks".

28
jobs began to go. Now, all of the railroad jobs put together
employ no more than 9% of the labor force, and the strongest
reminder of the railroad past is an old, brown, bare, dusty
hotel where remnants of retired railroad men sit day after
day in what might be an old railroad station waiting-room in
a town where the trains no longer stop.

Again, it is the industrial engineers and the nearby
cities who have rescued this little town. Twenty-year-old
"Efficiency Engineering" employs some 50-55% of the work
force, while the brand—new, bravely titled "Triumph.Machine"l
follows with 5%. The usual stew of small businesses takes
up some of the slack, but again, as in the Vermont town, a
third of the work force commutes to work in the real cities,
in this case to manufacture Michigan's inevitable cars.
Again, nearly half of the work force are Operatives, truck
drivers, janitors and the like: 19% work a night shift; and
8%F-in this case, more railroad men than truckers--regular1y
work hundreds of miles away from home.

Set up first by transplanted New Englanders, Excelsior
City's organizations are a match for the organizations in
Chatterton. Congregationalist and Methodist early New England
coexists with Catholic and Lutheran and Baptist later America,
and in almost the same proportions.2 The early 19th century

Masons and Volunteer Fire Department are as much a part of

 

lPseudonyms are selected to preserve the flavor of the original
names.

2See Appendix for details.

29
the town's life as the later Unions, the Veterans' organi-
zations, and the Chambers of Commerce. The recent demise
of a Wesleyan hospital has left Excelsior City with an un-
usual smattering of health clubs among the hobby groups, but
other than that, organizational life is much the same.

As socially stable, as closely knit, as unfamiliar with
outsiders or immigrants as the town in Vermont, Excelsior
City is different only in that the distant origins of its
small minority of non-British families are most likely to
be Polish, with the French Canadians in second place. Of
Michigan's growing pOpulation of Mexican-Americans, only one
and a half families have come in, and no one anticipates more.

Again, the town is sliced into two sides—-this time by
a set of over-active railroad tracks. But again, the citizens
on "the other side of the tracks" are almost as likely to be
prosperous as anyone else.

Excelsior City, like Chatterton, exists in a politically
competitive state, where conservative Republicans, liberal
Republicans and Democrats of all varieties fight for state
offices in a shifting three-way—-occasiona11y four—way-—
battle.2 Welfare Democrats go in and out of the Governorship;

in the current fight over Vietnam policy, one Senator in each

 

1See Appendix for detailed figures.

2For documentation of the extent to which Vermont's liberal
Republicans played the part of northern Democrats in the
past, and for evidence of the existence of clear-cut fac—
tional voting within the Vermont Republican party, see Duane
Lockard, New England Politics, (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1959), p. 14, f.f.

flflqn.‘ .. LTHHHJF |.. IA

50

state is a "hawk", the other a "dove". In this competitive
context, both of these blue-collar towns lean unsteadily
towards the Democrats. In 1966, Chatterton went 62% for
Hoff, Vermont's "war on Poverty" Democrat, while simultane-
ously trying to elect a liberal Republican as Representative.
In the same year, Excelsior City voted for Michigan
Democrats, but at the same time went 59% for a liberal
Republican Governor.l

Except for the system itself, the framework of local
government is identical in the two towns. Both are home
sites for regional high schools. Neither of the two towns
is a county seat or any other such honor that might make
its politics a special concern; neither is caught in a
bewildering net of cross-cutting taxing units, that might
make politics an inexplicable tangle for those caught inside.
Neither has an incorporated village inside its boundaries.2

Potentially, the powers of these two local governments
could be the same. Beyond the usual authority to tax and
zone, both towns have the power to regulate advertising,
billboards, and the establishment of businesses. In addition
to the usual fire and police departments, they have the

power to own and Operate, if they so desire, cemeteries,

 

l1968 voting followed a similar pattern. Data were taken
from the Vermont and Michigan Legislative Handbooks.
2Incidentally, this problem is much more likely in Michigan
than in Vermont. Vermont's counties exist only as court
districts and ballot-collection centers. They have no
taxing powers. On this point Harry Scoble's "Leadership
Hierarchies and Political Issues in a New England Town" is
misleading--another example of the anti-town-meeting tra-
dition. For facts on state laws, see A.E. Nuquist.

51

hospitals, water, light, heat, power, gas, sewage, garbage
disposal and parking facilities. Legally, it is possible
for either one of these towns to expand in the direction of
American municipal "gas and water" Socialism.l

With one town numbering 2,459 and the other 5,512, both
of these towns are small enough to allow full range to the
traditional pressures of small town life.2

Generally, these two towns match well. In many of their
essential characteristics, the match extends to the smallest
details, so that figures on one town come to a few percentage
points of figures on the other. But a perfect match would be
as unlikely as a discovery of matching fingerprints in human
beings, and there are some important differences, counselling
particular care in the analysis of the results. Although
similar, the economic history of the two towns is not iden-
tical. Chatterton was once dominated by a local family of
quarry-owners, and if local legends are to be believed, the
family oligarchy matched that of Middletown's notorious "X"

family. On the other hand, the once-dominant railroad of

Excelsior City was a nation corporation, probably far less

 

lFrom Excelsior City's Charter, 1956. From the New Hampshire-
Vermont Municipal Manual, for Chatterton.

2

 

In the census figures for 1970, both towns had gained by
about 500. Since this survey was taken at about the same
time that the actual census figures were being collected,
the true figures were around 5,600 for Excelsior City and
2,700 for Chatterton.

32
interested in local affairs.:L The occupational distribution
of the two towns now, while a close match in some ways, is
different in others. The percentage of citizens who are_
factory workers, Operatives, and the like is almost exactly
the same in the two towns, but the more prestigious groups
are divided differently. Chatterton has roughly 10 to 15%
more citizens who are educated professionals, technical
workers or businessmen. Chatterton is near an ancient
teachers' college, and most of these surplus professionals
are school teachers, many of them commuting from their old
home town to teach in nearby towns or cities in New York
State.2 Education is a vital factor in politics, and at
every stage, this analysis must guard against mistaking the

effects of education for the effects of the political system

 

lSee R.O. Schulze, "The Role of Economic Dominants in

Community Power Structure", in The American Sociological
Review, XXIII, Feb. 1958, p. 5-9.
2Even if the number of peOple working in professional and
technical jobs had turned out to be perfectly matched, it
would have been almost impossible to match the rates of
education. Of the non-farm pOpulation living in Michigan
towns under 2,500 pOpulation, from 10.5% to 12.7% are
liable to have had at least one year of college; in Vermont,
the figures run from 15.5% to 17.5%. Among towns of 2,500
to 5,500 pOpulation, the Michigan average is 15.4% and the
Vermont average is 15.6%. Only in towns of 5,600 and over
are the two states comparable. Judging from the results of
the present survey, the situation was not the result of a
greater availability of professional jobs in.Vermont; at
the higher levels, the residents in the Vermont town tended
to be overbqualified for the jobs they held. See Appendix
for a discussion of the probable causes and political
consequences of this phenomenon.

55
itself. Again, although all the other important factors
affecting social stability and political Opportunity match in
the two towns, it so happens that in Chatterton, there are
somewhat more single women—-divorcees, old maids, and widows--
who stay at home all day, and are the heads of their house-
holds. Finally, although the enclosing states of Michigan
and Vermont have had similar political histories, their recent
economic history has been strikingly different. Since shortly
after the invention of the automobile, Michigan state politics
has resounded to the clash of big business and the unions;
while as late as 1954, Garceau and Silverman could report
that two-thirds of the state legislators of Vermont were
unable to identify the lobbyists for either industry or
labor, and one-third had never heard of the state‘s leading
organization of industrialists.l Since no normal community
in the United States is unaffected by its political environ—
ment, it is logical to expect that the citizens of the
Michigan town will be more aware of business-union tensions,
and perhaps more "class conscious" in their local political
lives. Too, the cities of Michigan are huge, while the
cities of Vermont and nearby upstate New York are small.
In both Chatterton and Excelsior City, one-third of the work
force commutes to a nearby city; but Chatterton‘s city, at

18,000, is in 18th century scale. The Michigan city is

 

lOliver Garceau and Corinne Silverman, "A Pressure Group and

the Pressured: A Case Report", American Political Science
Review, p. 672-691 (Sept. 1954).

34
sixteen times as large, and although it is still too far
away to affect Excelsior City's land values and econOmic
development, the men who commute to it may be far more aware
of the distinctively big city problems of crime and race.
In all these instances of unintended differences between
the towns, this analysis will proceed carefully, so that at
the end, there will be no confusion as to the effects of the
local political system itself.
* * * * * * * * * *

Eight hundred miles apart, these towns are, if not
identical, at least fraternal twins. Once dominated by
one big industry, they have both moved into a more modern
mix of dependence on local small engineering firms and the
jobs offered by nearby cities. As in many small towns in
New England and the Middle West, the churches and organi—
zations of different centuries have accumulated and mingled
in them in peaceful accomodation. Like most small towns
in the United States, they have attracted few immigrants in
recent times, and have only the faintest suggestion of the
vivid ethnic diversity that atamps the political life of so
many American cities. They are small, they are stable,
they are homogenous. Their governments have equal powers.
They harbor the same national political ideOlogies. If
their political life were determined by small town social
pressures and national ideologies, it would be almost
indistinguishable from town to town.

And yet, for anyone walking through these towns, there

are signs—-in street names, in public buildings, in the

55
styles of houses--that argue that at least in the past,

social and political life has been different. Inadmissable
as evidence, they still suggest what more reliable measures
might declare.

In the Vermont town, there seems somehow to be a
greater sense of identity, of its having a particular place
in the stream of history. Some of Chatterton's streets are
named for local families, or for the "Fairlawns“ and

"Broadviews" of typical American suburbs; but others are
named for Liberty, Union, Washington and Adams, for the
early and still persisting public institutions of the Academy,
the Cemetery, and the Park; for town industries, like
Mechanic, and Marble; for the River, and for a field of
wild grapes. In Excelsior City, aside from the conventional
and family names, the old streets are named in three cate-
gories: one nod to Lincoln, one to the Railroad, and the
rest the names of Michigan counties, as if the town were
only a reflection of the state surrounding it. A relatively
expensive development has recently added a new category:
the names of prestige colleges in the East, to which,
presumably, its residents will send their children. There
are no names of town-owned institutions, no recognition of
the local landscape, and only the slightest remembrance of
the past.

The "village green" with its monument, its benches,
and its band shell, dominates the center of the Vermont

town. Standing around the village green is a veritable

56
museum of architectural styles, the best that has been
available to the quarry—owning family through time. The
house of the chief living representative now is a modestly
elegant colonial salt-box. No larger than any other house
in town, it is an immaculately preserved antique. All the
flowers in the garden are native wild flowers from the
surrounding woods: baneberry, jack-in—the-pulpit, maiden-
hair fern, and mocassin flower.

The village green in Excelsior City was given up as a
site for a grammar school long ago. The wealthier residents
and the owners of local businesses live in brand new split-
levels and ranch styles out of the architect's catalogue;
their gardens grow zinnias and marigolds, and they might be
living anywhere in the United States.

These are only intimations. They suggest that the
town in Vermont has been more public and more conscious of
itself, perhaps because it is in the older, more slowly
settled part of the country, perhaps because its distinctive
political system has helped to keep it so. But the truth of
its politics cannot be read in the houses and street signs
of the town. It can be discovered only in the ideas and

action of its peOple.

57
The Two Towns Are the Same

If the new town meeting system were capable of producing
our egalitarian UtOpia, it would transform the system of
stratification. The distribution of both prestige and the
material goods of life would be determined not by occupation
and inheritance but by the political system. The fact of
equal citizenship would reduce the facts of differential
economic placement to insignificance.

In all seriousness, we would not expect that situation
here, or indeed, anywhere except in specifically planned
Utopian communities. A more realistic, but still optomistic
prediction would be that this political system would be rel—
atively unaffected by occupation—income systems-—that informal
and formal influence, Opportunities for activity and the use
of public funds would be distributed relatively impartially.
And as a final possibility, it is far more likely, according
to the bulk of the literature of political sociology, that
neither will be true, Instead, the political system will be
seriously affected or absolutely determined by economic
arrangements.

The discovery of the truth of the matter waits on the
results of a wide variety of investigations into a number
of facets of political life. At the minimum, these include
the pattern of interpersonal influence, the distribution of
political goods, the pattern of information, the formation
of public Opinion and the resolution of contested decisions.

So long as all of these facets are eventually investi-

gated, it makes little difference to the logic of the inquiry

58
where we start. But since, in the beginning, this study was
stimulated by the earlier small town studies--Middletown,
Springdale, and the rest--it is only correct that we begin
with the two facets of political life most broadly illuminated
by these predecessors: the system of interpersonal influence
and the effects of occupational status on individual political
activity.

Systems of interpersonal influence have been most
carefully charted either in small groups or among the elite,
as in F. Hunter’s famous "reputational" study of political
influence among the elite of a large city. In communities of
this small size, and especially when investigating a system
such as the new town meeting, where elected officers have so
little formal power to make decisions, it makes more sense
to study the community broadly and ask people at all levels
of economic and political power for the "opinion leaders"
of their informal political lives. Whose Opinions do they
respect, and does this respect naturally flow upwards to those
of higher occupation, education, and income? Is a citizen
respected in this community because he is well-informed,
intelligent, and active in politics, without reference to
whether or not he has proved himself to be a "smart man" in
business? Or does prestige in the world of work create
haloes of political prestige for the local saints of
commerce and industry? Is there any difference between these
informal systems of personal influence in the two towns?

Similarly, how do the physical and psychic limitations

59

of occupation and income affect the possibility that
individuals will try to make active and influential citizens
out of themselves? In these towns, who votes? Who petitions?
Who speaks? Who complains? In the new town meeting system,
will greater opportunities for action make citizens out of
Genevieve Knupfer’s "underdogs"?l Will it make no parti—
cular difference? Or will occupational prestige, leisure

and self—confidence confine these opportunities to the elite,
and make them even more exceptionally secure than they might
otherwise be?

The bulk of research suggests two predictions, neither
one of them a credit to the democratic reputation of the
system. The first prediction, based on the national and
international uniformity of occupational prestige systems,
and on the other small town and political influence studies

is that there will be no difference between the towns.2

 

lSee G. Knupfer, "Portrait of the'Underdog" iniR4E.ILane,

Political Life, op. cit.

2See R.E. Agger and V. Ostrom, "Political Participation in

a Small Community", op. cit. In this town, nationally

pervasive attitudes associated with occupational prestige

had striking effects on rates of political participation.
For evidence of the degree to which occupational prestige

systems in various parts of the country and various sizes

of communities agree, see Paul K. Hatt, "Staatification in

the Mass Society", in the American Sociological Review,

Vol. 55, April 1950.

40

The influence of occupational prestige will overwhelm any
competing factors. The second, and supplementary prediction
is that extra Opportunities for voting and petitioning will,
indeed, be preponderantly exploited by the occupational elite.

More extreme predictions, even more pessimistic, are
suggested by a mixture of sociological research, literature
and history purporting to describe the New England region
itself. First, there are the erratic and colorful condemna-
tions of New England life by Cleveland Amory (The Proper

Bostonians), Sarah Orne Jewett, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet

 

Beecher Stowe and the rest. Then there are the historians,
characterizing early New England as a "Deferential society",
in which the less fortunate and less educated voluntarily
acceeded to the judgment and the rule of their betters; and
there are the sociologists, such as W.L. Warner, Digby
Baltzell, Andrew Hacker and Nathan Glazer, who offer

evidence that the "deferential society" continues to prevail.1
There are contradictions in these reports; Warner's "upper
uppers" of Yankee City have tended to retreat from politics
into social exclusiveness and ancestor worship, while the

other sociologists refer to a combined political, economic

 

1The term "deferential society" originated with Walter
Bagehot's history of England, and was used by Jack Pole and
David Hackett-Fisher to describe 18th and early 19th century
America, and by Robert Dahl to explain the early high
occupational status of town officers in the New Haven of

Who Governs? ’

For the present, see: W. Lloydd Warner and Paul S. Lunt,
The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1941); Andrew Hacker, "Liberal Democracy
and Social Control", in The American Riitical Science Review,
Vol. LI, No. 4, Dec. 1957; and Nathan Glazer and Daniel P.

Moynihan Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965).

41"
and social elite; but the strong impression of a tighter
stratification system prevails. If true, it puts the New
England elite in the same historical role as Germany's
Bismarck and England's Disraeli--offering apparent electoral
opportunities to the lower orders so that their loyalty might
be secured.1

Three different images conflict: first, there is Norman
Rockwell's painting of the honest, energetic man in overalls,
gripping the chair back as he earnestly rises to speak in
the town meeting; secondly, there is the image of Middletown,
Anywhere U.S.A., in which the man in the business suit takes
the natural lead; and finally, there is the image of the
Harvard background, the ancestral portraits on the wall, and
the properly acquired clipper—ship fortune behind the man
who, as a public service, generously agrees to run the town.
In this particular New England town, which image is closer
to the truth?

When they are assembled, the facts of interpersonal
influence in this New England town are, for the mythmakers,
regionalists and poets, dull and disappointing. If the cit-
izens of the Vermont town are asked who they talk to on local
affairs, and whose Opinions they respect; and if they are
asked the educations and occupations of those "opinion
leaders", the results are almost exactly the same as they

are in Excelsior City. About 50% of the active citizens in

 

1For details, see Appendix.

42
both towns are to some extent, politically egalitarian-—
that is, they respect the local political Opinions of
at least one specific person who has either a lower occu-
pational prestige or a slighter education than themselves,
and/or they express egalitarian sentiments, and protest that
they do not allow such crass considerations as income and
education to affect their estimation of a man‘s ideas.
There are as many citizens who respect the Opinions of
those lower in income and authority in Excelsior City as
there are in Chatterton. Nor are the "egalitarians" of
Chatterton likely to make more generous exceptions: the
average "social distance" involved in these exceptions is
much the same. Nor are "egalitarians" of any kind any more
likely to exist in any particular place on the economic-
educational ladder in Chatterton than they are in Excelsior

City.1

On this scale, at least, there are no differences,
and for those well-educated in the social sciences, no real
surprises either.

If explored for "elitist" attitudes, the citizens of
Excelsior City and Chatterton match again. When asked
whether or not "the peOple who have the largest financial
investments" or "the most educated people" should have more
than the usual influence on town affairs, the citizens of the

two towns arrange themselves for or against the question

in largely similar prOportions.2

 

1For details, see Appendix.

2For details, see Appendix.

45

But what about political activity itself? Do the
problems of free time, access, economic intimidation and
soOial pressure create the same pattern of apathy for low-
status voters in both towns? Are the upper—status New
Englanders hyper-active, and the less prestigious depressed?
Again, by the simplest and most commonly used measure of
activity,--whether or not the citizen voted in this and
previous years--the results give no credit to regionalism.
The towns are exactly the same. In both towns, about 40%
of those at the "machine Operative" level could be considered
"high participators", as Opposed to about 80% of the
proprietors, technicians, and professionals.1 So long as we
measure only the rate of voting, and are unconcerned with
its content and rationale, there is no difference between
the towns. The preponderant determining power of economic
systems is such that these voters act practically without
reference to what the local political systems may be.
According to this measurement, the new town meeting system
is powerless to stimulate either the disadVantaged or the

elite.

 

1For details, adjustments for education and access, etc.,

see Appendix.

an

The Two Towns Are Different

 

If this were a short paper, rather than an extended
study, the answers might end here. The general, abstract
pattern of influence and activity has been charted; the
two towns have been put into the same box; the answers
should be presented in the context of a quick deflation
of regional romanticism and/or the influence of local poli-
tical systems.

But if the investigator pays attention at all to what
his subjects themselves say about the system they inhabit,
he may begin to suspect that there are indeed important
differences between the two towns, differences not caught
by the coarse nets of the abstract stratification study.

Consider, for example, some of the things the respon-
dents say about their local government. When citizens in
Excelsior City, the Michigan town, are asked whether or not
(a) town officers and (b) tax assessors are favoring speci-
fic groups, the disgruntled are likely to respond this way:

I don't vote because they don't run anyone I like....

The rich part of town gets everything. The working

man doesn't have anything to say. (No. 15)

The peOple who are on the council are the managers at

Efficiency Engineering. They think they own the town.

(No. 11)

The representatives speak for the peOple, but they're

really controlled by financial and pressure groups.

Business men are in all the offices. They control

nominating lists, too. (NO. 65)

They favor the land develOpers in the Chamber of
Commerce.....(No. 66)

45

Eight out of twelve who suspect council bias, suspect
favoritism to "the rich". Seven out of thirteen who suspect
tax bias specify "the wealthy" or "industry". No one in
this town suggests favoritism to the poor.

Although suspicions in the Vermont town are just as
high, they center on different targets. Only one man thinks
that the assessors and selectmen favor the rich, while three
are convinced that they favor "the poor" and "the aged".

One of these is indignant:

The "X" faction-—they're the proverbial rich in this

town--are really over—taxed for their prOperty. It's

undemocratic. That's Communism! (No. 62)

Is there any meaning to this? Is it perhaps just a
phenomenon of greater "class consciousness" in Michigan?
Then why are there no accusations, by the rich in Excelsior
City, of favoritism to the poor? Is it the greater militancy
of the Michigan unions alone? The officers occasioning
these comments are, indeed, different from town to town.

The Michigan councilmen are more likely to be Officers for
"Efficiency Engineering" or the railroad; the Vermont town
officers are more likely to be mail carriers, clerks, or
the like. Is this one of those temporary and accidental

differences of leadership leading to temporary and accidental

46
differences in public reactions?1

The only way to answer these questions is to directly
confront the problem of "interests". Instead of asking only
what and who the actors are in this political drama, we have

to listen to what they are saying and watch what they do.
What kind of decisions are made? In whose interests? How
do the citizens of these towns formulate their ideas of
what their own interests are? How do they define the
"interests" of "the town", and why? For what purpose are
they politically active?

Like Dahl, we must examine decisions, but not just in
order to find out who makes them; as Bachrach and Baratz
suggest, we should find out in whose interests these deci—
sions are made, and waigh those decisions by their long-
range importance in the system. Like Agger, Goldrich and
Swanson in The Rulers and The Ruled, we are interested in
ideologies, but not just in order to classify what those
ideologies might be. Operating from the supposition that

the rich and the educated normally have superior Opportunities

 

1At the time of the study, two of the Excelsior City council—-

men were officers of Efficiency Engineering, a third was a
local executive for the railroad, and a fourth was the owner
of a large retail store. In Chatterton, one selectman was

a highrschool teacher and part—time farmer; one owned and
ran a one-man garage; and only the last--one out of three——
occupied an executive position in an important local company.
A year later, this selectman was replaced by the local mail
carrier. The town clerk, however, was related to the quarry—
owning family.

47
to impose their ideologies on others, we want to know whether
one of these systems offers lower—status people a better

chance of seeing and protecting interests of their own.1

 

1Robert E. Agger, Daniel Goldrich and.Bertram.E. Swanson

The Rulers and the Ruled, (New York: Wiley, 1964).

48
Who Benefits?

First, without going into the intricate mechanics of
how decisions are made, we need to know what these decisions
are, What does this political engine produce, and for whom?
Assuming for the moment that the individual citizens are
fully capable of defining their own interests, are there
any groups of citizens who are liable to continually lose
in the game?

No political system operates entirely according to an
income interest group model, and the small town is liable to
deviate more than most. Additional confusion lies in wait
for the analyst who is unaware of the fact that "the poor"
in a small town are a vastly different group from "the poor"
in large cities, and living in very different circumstances.
They are not black, they are not migrants, they are not young,
they do not live in apartment buildings. In these small
towns, the vast bulk of "the poor" are old, and old resi-
dents, living alone or with each other in a shack, or in the
decaying shell of the old family home. If the home is in
good condition, they are renting it out, and living in one
room of it themselves. The consequences of this are many.
For example, in Excelsior City, the local government removes
and trims dead and unsightly trees on the public streets
and then charges individual tree owners for the work. If
this were a real city, one might dismiss this as a fair way

of dealing with the affluent yard owners who are likely to

49
be the local "beautification" advocates anyway. But of
those whose income is under $4,000 a year, 70% in Chatterton
and 80% in Excelsior City own street trees.

Take the "dry" laws, annually passed by both towns—-
in Michigan by vote of the council, in.Vermont by the vote
of the town. Readers used to large cities might immediately
see this as discrimination against the lower—middle and lower
classes, where disproportionate numbers of southeastern
EurOpeans and Catholics still remain. But if this point
of view is outdated in many of our large cities, it is totally
inapplicable here. The Catholics are equally distributed
throughout the income and occupation heirarchies, and the
peOple who are most passionately in favor of the dry laws
are the old--who are, at the same time, most likely to be
the poor.

Some factors in the situation are helpful. The two
towns are small, and their transactions are public. They
take in and spend almost exactly the same grOss amount each
year: $200,000. State laws make it possible for both towns
to expand or retract their own powers within a fairly gen—
erous sphere. Either Chatterton or Excelsior City could
regulate advertising, billboards, and the establishment of
businesses; each could own and operate cemeteries and .‘
hospitals, as well as water, light, heat, power, gas, sewage,
garbage disposal and parking facilities. As a first step,
it is relatively easy to take each income group and see how

it has fared in the decisions that have concerned it in

50
recent years.

In both towns, important social transactions have gone
on at the expense of the dignity of the poor. In the riot
summer of 1968, the Michigan town passed a "stOp and frisk"
law. 75% of those making over $12,000 a year approve of
the law; of those making between $8,000 and $11,999, 56%
approve. But among those making less than $8,000 a year,
those approving and disapproving are almost equally divided,
with the disapproving making such comments as: "I think they
always tend to pick up the lower—class man, the working man"
(No. 4), or, more vigorously, "Any policeman that comes
snooping in my car should get a peeler right under the
chin." (No. 65)

Chatterton, for its part, has for decades published in
its annual "Warning" the names of those individuals delin—
quent in paying local taxes. At medium and upper incomes,

a minority--never more than 27%L-Oppose the measure. But
among those making less than $5,000 a year, the Opposition
jumps to a clear majority of 58%, on the grounds that it is
"unnecessary", or "unfair to the poor."1

In direct benefits to business, the two towns match
again. The Vermont town spends $1,000 a year on a tiny
airport, suitable for private planes, and probably at one
time spent considerably more establishing it. Parking meters

in the business section pay for themselves, but originally

 

l"Income group" was determined by the man's income. Exper-
imentally, some calculations were made of the respondent's
gross incomes in proportion to the number of peOple being
supported; but the different "income groups" resulting did
not react differently from the above.

51
involved high installation costs. For its part, Excelsior
City spends an extra $2,000 a year maintaining brilliant
vapor streetlighting in the downtown section. If it is
conceded that of all separable local groups, businessmen
will be most eager to keep up'a strong police force, it
looks at first glance as if Excelsior City were far more
concerned for the safety of its business section. Excelsior
City spends $44,000 a year on a patrol car, dispatcher
system, and four patrolmen, while Chatterton spends an
insignificant $5,000 maintaining a part-time "watchman" who
drives his own car. Blandly unconcerned with "crime in the
streets", Chatterton repeatedly turns down a Chamber of
Commerce request for a patrol car. But the geographical
context differs, and the decision may have little to do with
the income groups involved. Excelsior City lies fifteen
miles away from a metropolitan center of about 500,000;
Chatterton is within twelve miles of a city of only 18,000,
in a state with a proverbially low crime rate.

Where middle and upper-income groups are beneficiaries,
the conclusions are less clear. Assuming that readers of
books are most commonly found at middle and upper income
levels, the Michigan town.makes considerably greater provision
for their leisure time. The Michigan town library is funded
at an elegant level of $10,000 a year, while the Vermont town
library ekes out a part-time existence on $5,000, supplemented
by small gifts from sympathetic civic groups. Chatterton

offers a tax inducement for new building, a benefit to those

52

who can afford to build, but the actual amount of money
involved is small. Since there are usually no more than
three new houses in a year, the actual transfer of funds is
about $5,000 a year, total, in forgiven taxes. On the other
hand, although the law has a firm 80% support among those
who make $8,000 a year and up, support drops to around
60% among those who are unlikely to build houses. More or
less, the law Obviously caters to the middle and upper income
brackets.

At this point, the two towns match, and it looks as
if economic stratification dominates again. But if we stOp
here, we have overlooked real differences between the actions
of these two governments, differences which affect not only
the present but the future distribution of funds.

In Excelsior City, a high percentage of the budget-—
l4%_-is raised not by property taxes, but by assessments
on individual prOperty owners for services to individual
property owners. In Chatterton, the same services are
distributed at large and paid for by prOperty taxes. This
means that the citizen of Excelsior City gets only as many
of these services as he can afford to buy as an individual,
rather as if the government had turned itself into a non-
profit hardware store. In contrast, the poorer home-owner
in Chatterton stands a good chance of getting considerably
more services than he can easily pay for, at the indirect
expense of the wealthier taxpayers. Because it is more public,

the Vermont town is more charitable.

55
Specifically, the resident of Excelsior City buys all

road work--curbs, paving repairs and major resurfacing—-as
an individual paying for the frontage on his prOperty. If
the majority of the people on his block petition for the
improvement, he is bound to accept it and pay for it to the
extent that it touches his land. City water lines are laid
the same way. If he lives on the corner and both roads are
included, he pays twice. The three to four-figure bill is
an impossible sum for the poorer home owner, and there are
many such. Of those who make under $4,000 a year in these
towns, more than 90% cling to some sort of house. For the-
certifiably indigent, the City Council "may provide for
deferred payments" in return for "mortgage security on the
real property of the beneficiary, payable upOn his death."1
For those not judged to be in "poverty", a delinquent assess—
ment automatically accumulates fines up to 6% of the original
charge, and, after three years, the state law allows the
county to sell the property involved. In practice, admini—
stration of the system may or may not be lenient-—another
and more thorough survey would be required to discover the
truth of that situations-but the fact remains that in one
way or another, the poorer house owner is liable to find
himself in large-scale debt for a street or water line im-

provement he would rather not have had.

 

1From the Excelsior City Charter, 1958.

54

In Chatterton, on the other hand, the poorer home-owner
pays not all at once on the basis of his frontage, but from
year to year in the regular taxes, assessed on the basis of
the negligible worth of his usually—weather—beaten and shaky
old house. If he lives among high status neighbors-—and in
these towns, many do-—he is likely to ride along soot—free
on their greater political influence, like a hobo on a
freight train, and wake up happily some summer to a parti-
cularly fine new road, gutter and curb laid out at his
doorstep.l

In a relatively small but similar action, Chatterton
yearly performs about $1,000 to $1,500 worth of "tree work"
at public expense. In Excelsior City, comparable "Beautifi-
cation" forces are gratified with about $2,000 worth; but
while the city decides whose trees or weed patch has to be
trimmed, the individual owner of the offending herbiage is
billed for the work. TOO, every year, Chatterton contributes
$1,200 plus the cost of supervision towards the maintenance
of town cemeteries, in which are buried rich and poor
alike. Excelsior City has never considered such a plan.

Where does this public and redistributive local govern-
ment come from? Whatever its source, it does not seem to be
a recent or transient phenomenon. In the past, as well, New
England towns have had an unusual record of public enterprises
and attempts to regulate business. In the early 19th century,
for example, Vermont townsvare briefly the cooperative owners

of a railroad. In the early 20th century, long before the rest

 

lFor evidence on the extent to which road repairs are allocated
according to the occupational prestige of home owners, see
Appendix.

55
of the country, New England towns passed zoning and anti—
billboard laws. Now, in the case of Chatterton, the chief
guardian of this tradition seems to be the new town.meeting
system. In the case of the payment system for paving in
Excelsior City, a clear majority at all levels Oppose the
system; but the decision has been made in spite of them.
Although certainty waits on closer analysis of how decisions
are made, it looks at this point as if the differences in
distribution systems are, specifically, a consequence of the

forms of local government.

56
Information

They're all one group. About a hundred of them.

They all vote "no" on everything. (Supt. of Schools,
Chatterton)

It's very distressing. People just automatically

vote "yes" unless it's very clear it's something

they don't want. (Selectman, Chatterton)

They don't teach town affairs in school. (No. 52, Ch.)

The wide voting powers of the Vermont town's peOple
might make it seem obvious that these decisions are the
simple consequence of "the people's will"--were it not for
the evidence from so many other referendum systems that the
people's political incompetence lets real power slip upwards
into the hands of special interest groups and their repres-
entatives. .Given the nature of decisions in Chatterton, it
is unlikely that they can be credited to selfish "special
interests", but it is perfectly possible that their nature
is not the result of the pOpular voting, but a benevolent
political ideology on the part of the special interests and
elite who actually run the town.

A first check on this possibility requires an investi—
gation of information levels. Just how much do the voters
of this town know about the referendum items on which they
vote? DO they know, at the very least, what the alternatives
are? Or, like the caricatured referendum voter, do they
bumble into the voting booth out of a vague sense of citizen
duty, take a bewildered look at the ballot, and when in doubt,

vote "yes"?

57

Studying information on the national level is incredibly
difficult. Vast numbers of different sources--TV, radio,
newspapers, magazines, political organizations, even the
"underground press"-—compete with each other, and make the
tracing of influence a nightmare of complexity. On the
local level, however, things are simple. No radio or TV
station or national magazine would feature these towns
unless the Russians did, indeed, launch an invasion on the
village green. Their doings are their own, and only the
local newspapers will take the time to explain why the roads
in Excelsior City are, or are not, going to be paved in a
certain way this year. In fact, in these two small towns,
there are only two formal sources of information: local

newspapers and that New England institution, the Town Warning

 

and Report. Fortunately for this study, if not for the
residents of the town, Chatterton's own newspaper burned to
the ground a full year before the study began. With the
Chatterton weekly out of the way, a clear contrast emerges
between two sources of information: Excelsior City's weekly
newspaper and Chatterton's Town Warning and Report. Since
the fire, a.dafly'in a nearby city has taken a half-column to
report on Chatterton's doings from time to time, but the
reports are fragmentary, discontinuous, and usually simply
social. -

Excelsior City's weekly is a competent lOcal newspaper.
Town council news runs on the front page, and small-print

detailed records of transactions run on the back. News

58
stories are clear and concise. Circulation is large, and
extends beyond Excelsior City's borders. If the claims of
the office are correct, every man, woman and child in
Excelsior City could buy a OOpy and still not account for
the number of OOpies sold.

Chatterton's Annual Warning and Report is annually
printed and circulated to every poll at a cost to the town
of about $500. The Town Report contains a clear accounting
of previously budgeted funds, results of elections to office,
a register of births, deaths, marriages and failures to
collect town taxes--and, usually, a very short statement by
elected officers, including a few privileged words of advice
from the selectmen on the upcoming vote.

Pursuant to the state law, budget items to be voted on
are clearly stated in the "Warning" and the whole circulated
three weeks before the vote. For example, one "Article" in
1968 read:

To see if the Town will appropriate $5,500. 0 for the
repairing of the town streets and highways.

Once every two years, on the average, the petition and
referendum process puts one or two of the Michigan town's
budget items on the general ballot, where, in usual referendum
style, they compete for attention with voting for state and
national offices.

Every year, on the first Tuesday in March, some thirty

 

1This was one of several items dealing with road repair;

some roads are "town" roads and some are eligible for
partial state aid, and must be dealt with in a separate
"article."

59

traditional items, plus a small number of innovations, appear
on a Vermont town ballot absolutely restricted to local
decisions.

These are the formal sources of information. Since the
two towns are equally sociable——since there are as many
large kin groups in one as in the other, and as many members
of organizations--and since we can control for education
levels, differences in information can be reasonably attri-
buted to differences in ultimate sources.

But is it fair to compare information levels on one
set of issues in Chatterton to information levels on a
different set of issues in Excelsior City? Dull as small
town local government may seem to be at first glance, one
town's tedium is another town's fury, and exactly identical
issues are seldom considered from town to town. The issues
that are compared have to be selected so that if the deci-
sions themselves are not exactly the same, their intrinsic
interest will be. Equivalent amounts of money or penalties
should be at stake in the two towns, and in the case of
this study, with its concern for economic stratification,
the issues should be selected for their potential capacity
to set one economic interest group against another.

The most obviously discriminatory action in Excelsior
City is the decision to shift road payment back to an
individual basis. For some fourteen to fifteen years,
Excelsior City was one of two towns in the state to try to

pave on a payment—at-large basis. During this time, most

60

of the north side, where all of the important officers of
local companies live, was provided with excellently smooth
black—tOp surfaces, gutters, and curbs. When the time came
to extend these services across the tracks, the city managers
advised the council that the city had run out of funds, and
that it would be wise to retreat to a system of individual
payment. Except for the case of some new, expensive north
side housing which had been left sitting on gravel roads,
the big unpaved and badly paved areas were all in the South.
Residents of Excelsior City are not census takers, and are
unaware of the exact differences in average annual income
between the city's areas, but they do know where "the high
muckyemucks live."1 The decision affected 14% of_the town's
budget, and hundreds-~sometimes thousands—-of dollars for
the individual homeowner involved.

No such staggering amount of money has been at stake
in any recent decision in Chatterton. The only comparably
large decision-~in terms of social penalties, rather than
money-—is the decision to print in the Town Report the names
of all those delinquent in paying their taxes. This means
that after the Report lists the births, marriages and deaths
in the town for that year, it also lists the names of
delinquents and the amounts of money they owe. Printed
credit is also given when one Of the delinquents manages to
pay part of the bill, but the total effect-is of a public

"report card", delivered not to one's parents but to the

 

lSee Appendix, "The Other Side of the Tracks".

61
community at large. People who have had their names printed
are embarrassed, brave, or bitter:

I was young—~21--my parents had just died, and I had

to pay for it. SO I was "delinquent". I had to ay

interest on that tax.‘ In the depression. (No. 51
It should be keptin mind that this social penalty is
generally balanced by the town's reluctance to take legal
action; but the effect is still to punish the poor. Over
the years, the town has usually decided to "print the names".
Given its long history, if any decision should be known in
Chatterton, it should be this one.

Another decision which confers fairly large and obvious
benefits on a particular group is Chatterton's decision to
reward the building of new houses by granting tax rebates on
the first $15,000 of the "appraised valuation"--or, in
Chatterton, the first $60,000 worth of the building's market
value--for a period of three years. Some new house and
business builders who have actually experienced the tax
break are skeptical:

My son—in-law built under that. (law) It was cheap,

but when they did pay taxes, they really clobbered

them. (No. 45)

Be that as it may, there are those who can build new houses
and those who can't, and it is the builders who, at least
temporarily, profit. The saving currently amounts to an
individual saving of up to $1,200 a year for three years,

and in the actual situation of minimal expansion, currently
costs the town as a whole about $5,000 a year. In Chatterton,

this should be the next most interesting and divisive decision.

62

Comparable at least in the amount of money involved is the
decision in Excelsior City to take over a defunct school
summer recreation program, at a cost of $5,000. Although
in the center city this would obviously be a gift to the
poor, in Excelsior City, surrounded by woodlots and fields
and streams, the need for organized games is less obvious,
and seems to be felt primarily by education-conscious parents,
and merchants afraid of the spontaneous and inventively
destructive entertainments of the unorganized young.

Obviously, although the stakes of these decisions are
roughly equivalent, other features make them rather poor
matches. Slightly different income groups are involved, and
the age of the decisions varies. For that reason, particular
attention should be paid to knowledge levels on the last pair
of decisions chosen: in both cases, involving the police.

This is the situation in the two towns. One year ago,
in remote and peaceful Vermont, a town restaurant owner
secured the moral support of the Chamber of Commerce and
the requisite fifty signatures for a place on the ballot
and asked that the town buy a police cruiser. Reluctantly,
the selectmen placed the item on the ballot, but without
specifying the amount to be budgeted, a technical maneuver
which would have allowed them at least a year's grace should
the measure pass. Fortunately for them, it did not. When
town meeting time came around again, the same fifty signa-
tures were presented, a prOperly budgeted request for a

police car appeared on the ballot, the selectmen counseled

65
against it in a terse one-line message in the Town.Report,
and again the item was voted down.

At about the same time, the same scenario in reverse
was going on in Michigan. Uncomfortably dose to the scene
of the Detroit riots, the council decided that they needed
a better police short-wave radio system, but, given the
budget, could not afford it. The newspaper ran an indignant
report, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce started a fund
drive, appealing to citizens in general. After a couple of
months, the J.G.‘s raised $800, and the radio was bought.

In one town through a petition, and in the other case
through a fund drive, an attempt was made to alert at least
the business community to the challenge. But in one case,
publicity was limited to a few lines in the Town.Report,
while in the other, it appeared in a weekly newspaper, in
several successive stories on the front page.

In sum, these were the amounts of publicity given the

 

 

issues:
Chatterton coverage time elapsed1
(all three) in "Warning" 4—6 months

Excelsior City

”roads" 2 columns, front page 1-5 months
"recreation" 2 articles, front page 0—2 months;
5-5 months

"police radio" 2 articles, front page 9-11 months

 

lSince survey data was gathered over a nearly two-month
period of time, some respondents were interviewed four
months after receiving the "warning" and some six. The
same situation held in Excelsior City.

54
As a test of minimum competence, in this survey, each
respondent is asked a standardized question conveying a
minimum amount of information, as, for example, "who do you
think should pay for road work?" If the respondent can supply
any additional facts about the actual situation, he passes.
From this first test, the Chatterton citizens emerge with a

strikingly higher level of information.

 

 

percent -

ignorant police ' roads, names houses, recreation
Excelsior City 62% _ 1W0 44%
Chatterton 14% 7% 16%

"Access" controls for commuting have no effect; education
has some effect, but does not alter the contrast between the
towns.1 Only on the issue of the roads--dealing with a
preponderantly large amount of money and an item central
to local government--do the Michigan citizens rise to the
Vermont town's level. 84% of the Chatterton citizens know
something about the least interesting item; only 58% of the
Excelsior City citizens know about the least interesting
decision there. In the case of the police issues, the
difference involves half of Excelsior City. 5

These are the most important and publicized decisions
available. The evidence almost overwhelmingly points to an
Excelsior City where only two decisions of government are

familiar to a majority of the peOple.

 

1See Appendix for details.

65

At this point, a defender of Excelsior City might claim
that the broad comparison is unfair. Except for the police
item, the Vermont town issues are years older. The "roads"
issue is two years old; the "publishing names" issue was
most recently revived five years ago. The "recreation"
issue is less than six months old; the "tax break" has been
around for two years. 'Time, he might argue, has made it
possible for the facts of these situations to gradually
seep through informal conversations into general knowledge.

There are two answers. First, knowledge in Chatterton
is poorly related to the age of the issue; the police issue
is only a third as old as the housing issue, while both are
equally known. But more significantly, is it really an
accident that there are so few such new items in the Vermont
town's "Warning"? If the voters really do have more control,
they may make it much more difficult for the officers to take
initiatives, partimlarly those that are potentially devisive.
The "ward system" cities investigated by Charles Adrian and
OliverWilliamsl were noticeably different from cities
electing officers "at large" in their niggardly attitude
towards public spending. If both the "ward" system in large
cities and the "item-voting" system of New England small
towns give more weight to the views of the less prosperous;

and if, given the American property tax system, these views

 

lSee Charles Adrian and Oliver Williams Four Cities: A

Study in Comparative Policy Making (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1965).

 

66
involve fear of local government spending, then the Vermont
town system is indirectly creating another circumstance
favorable to a high level of information-—a slow rate of

change.:L

 

1For a discussion of the "rationality" of this low tax

ideology, see p. 68.

67
The Discriminating Voter

Familiarity is not intelligence. It may still be true
that Chatterton's voters are simply and deferentially
accepting elite ideas of what will "benefit the town" from
realtors who might benefit from new building; "town fathers"
who want to see the taxes collected and money well spent,
and a unified elite who, more beneficently, want to preserve
the public nature of government. This picture would sit
well with.New England's aristocrats who, from their remote
urban sanctuaries, like to imagine their relatives running
the little towns of the countryside from a smaller but
similar Olympus of superior and benevolent understanding.

Granted, we know now that informal networks of influence
in Chatterton are no more deferential than they are in
Excelsior City, but considerable deference is obviously present
in both towns, certainly enough to account for elite ability
to define situations. In short, it may still not be the
voting system that matters in these towns, but the ideologies
of the two elites.

At this point in the investigation, we need to know
what public Opinion is. Where is it located? Where does it
seem to be coming from? If there are different, competing
definitions of a situatiOn, are they centered in a particular
group—-an income group, for example, or an educated elite?

Or do they seem to be the ideas of isolated individuals,

randomly scattered in the pOpulation? When we ask people

68
what they think about issue "x", do we get not only the
same opinions, but the same phrases over and over again?
If so, it seems likely that these people are part of an
informal influence network; they pick up each others'
Opinions and, often without being specifically aware of
it, pass them along to others in the group. If there are
several such Opinion clusters in a town, is there anything
else that the members of these groups have in common? Are
they all college educated? Are they all neighbors? Are
they members of the same income group? Or is it just that
they all happen to be patrons of Alice's Bar and Grill?

Take the police-car issue in Chatterton. At first,
opinions look personal and cranky. One man attacks the
watchman for wasting gasoline; another suspects him of a
scheme to acquire a publically funded glory wagon; others
resent the instigator businessman as a "newcomer"--, i.e.,
not born in town. But the same colorful stories begin to
recur, and eventually Opinion clusters emerge—-not according
to education, location, or other possible factors,--butl
according to income group and working circumstances.

They are not the income-group Opinions one would
normally expect. From a background in big city politics,
one might predict that the "rich" would be enthusiastically
in favor, the middle-income would be lukewarm, and the poor
would be split between fear of theives and fear of the
police. In reality, despite the fact that the police-car

issue has been twice put on the ballot by business-district

69
signatures at the instigation of a twice-robbed restaurant
owner and the Chamber of Commerce, the well—to-do join the
poor in deciding that the town does not need it. It is from
this group, largely composed of businessmen and technicians,
that one gathers an image of the watchman as a bumbling old
half-wit, wandering uselessly around the town like the pro-
verbial sacred cow. The well-to-do would rather like to
have better protection, but are resigned to not having it;
the aged poor are terrified of rampaging adolescents and
drunken drivers from New York state, but are at the same
time dead set against spending any money on it. A sample
of the crime prevention schemes of the aged at their most
ridiculous is that of the man who proposes building a gate
across the interstate highway to keep the New Yorkers out.
The only group firmly supporting the cruiser purchase are
the men in the middle-income brackets--1argely skilled and
unskilled Operatives--who support the watchman personally
as a workman who, like themselves, must work for low pay
with dreadful equipment. "A man shouldn't run his own
car;" (No. 24) "He's got a terrible job..." (No. 40), and
"He just labors, like myself." (No. 15).

Despite the tricks of small town personalization, if
the most widely adOpted Opinion rationales are plotted on
a chart, each rationale has a definite location in a
particular income group. In this case, those who feel
sympathy for the watchman are particularly likely to talk
to each other. Many of those who feel that there is "no

70
need" are taking their cue from the town report, or indivi-

dually reaching their conclusions.

 

 

 

 

 

% of those with an Opinion in each number with

income group who adopted these rationales an Opinion
INCOME GROUP (a) sympathy (b) no need for

car

O-$4,999 O 60 ' 2O
$5,000—$7,999 44 16.5 18
$8,000—$11,999 42 16.5 12
$12,000 plus 11 22 9

Opinions favoring the practice of "publishing names"
of the tax-delinquent cluster around a demand for compliance,
ranging from a gentle "we had to make peOple realize what
was happening" from an ex—Selectman (No. 14), to the less
frequent, indignant "shows up the scoundrels" of NO. 54.
The major objection to the practice comes from those who
think it unfair to the poor, and the poor are most likely
to exchange Opinions here. On this issue, the opinions of
the wealthiest group seem to be modified by their education—-
the only instance in which education is of any supplementary

help in explaining Opinion distribution.l

 

1Those in the $12,000 plus category who thought it "unfair

to the poor" were a technician and an insurance man; both
had finished college.

71

% of those with an Opinion in each income number with
group who adopted these rationales an Opinion

income group (a) must enforce (b) unfair to

poor
0-$4,999 29 47 24
$5,000-$7,999 47 16 19
$8,000-$11,999 61 o 15
$12,000 and over 50 25 8

The major interpretation of the third issue, the new
housing "tax break", separates entirely according to the
different perspectives of income groups. The top group
speak in terms of "building up the town"; the middle
applauds its benefits to "struggling families" like them-

selves; and the bottom condemns it as a "subsidy for the

rich."
% of those with an opinion in each income number with
group who adopted these rationales an opinion

 

 

income group (a) struggling family (b) subsidy
for the rich

O-$4,999 15.5 52 22
$5,000-$7,999 5595 15 l5
$8,000-$11,999 25 o 15
$12,000 and over 0 O 9

Prestige has its effect. Opinions typical of the low—
income group tend to be more sharply confined to that income
group than are the opinions Of the more prestigious income
classes, who are indeed surrounded by a "halo" of imitators.
But even among the middle and upper-income groups, Opinions
cluster; on clear cut issues, the wealthy have no chance of
drawing even a substantial minority of the poor away from
their own ideas of how justice should be done.

Not only in their distribution, but in their logic and

72
perspective, these Opinions are the realization of income
interest groups. And, given the limitations of local govern-
ment, realistically so. To label this "low tax ideology" a
product of the "small business mentality" as Vidich and
Bensman do, is to reason by stereotypes rather than the
realities of small town politics. Public Spending on any-
thing except the necessities is of no particular benefit to
the poor when they feel a legal and moral obligation to pay
a nonprogressive prOperty tax. Nor are these opinions of
low-income peOple in Chatterton the vague protests of nega—
tivism documented by Horton and Thompson in the upper New
York state "Springdale" area.1 They are specific to the
issue at hand.

What is Opinion like in Excelsior City? Given its
greater hostility towards its business—class governors, and
given its location in supposedly more class-conscious
Michigan, does it have an even sharper division of Opinion?
Surprisingly, it has practically none. Only three Opinions
exist widely enough to bear charting, and their relationship

to income is much less pronounced.

 

1John E. Horton and wayne E. Thompson "Powerlessness and

Pelitical Negativism": A Study of Defeated Local Referendums",
American Journal of Sociology Vol. LXVIII, No. 5 (March 1962).

75

% of those with an Opinion in E.C. adOpting this rationale:

 

 

 

income group Roads: "unfair to south"1 number with an
opinion
0-34,999 52% 19
$5,000-$7,999 25% 20
$8,000-$11,999 46% 15
$12,000 and over 45% 11

"Police Radio" Issue

% of those with an Opinion in E.C. adOpting these rationales;

 

 

 

 

income group "need better "no need" number with an opinion
protection"

0-34,999 58% 25% 15

$5,000-$7,999 55% 0% 12

$8,000-$11,999 41% 8% 12

$12,000 and over 62% 12% 8

Other Opinions on the three test issues are scattered
and individualistic.

The main reason for this odd situation is lack of
information. The residents of Excelsior City are so un-
familiar with the issues that even when they are reminded
of their substance, they are likely to remain neutra1——in
one case, by a majority.

Excelsior City
% with an opinion,peach question

 

"police radio" 60%
"streets" 84%
"recreation" 58%

It would be well at this point to remember that these test

issues involve the largest single expenditures of the year.

 

lOpinion was slightly related to residence in the south side,
but the relationship was not striking. Even this most
obvious division in the community resulted in no clear—cut
factions.

74

In the case of Chatterton, at least 85% are always
"on side." And although the less educated, lowest income
group is less likely to be knowledgeable, it is no less
likely than any other income group to be "on side"; except
for the case of the "tax break", where one person is un—
decided, everybody in the low income group claims to have
an Opinion as to what should be done. Some of this, un-
doubtedly, can be chalked up to pride, but if so, the citi-
zens in Chatterton have more pride than those in Excelsior
City, and that, too, is significant.

In action, what do these opinion patterns mean? Despite
the definite Opinions formed by lower income groups in
Chatterton, low voting turn—outs should cancel a good deal
of their effect, if our previous voting statistics are correct.
In part, this is true, but the peculiar voting system provides
a flexibility not available in representative systems.

Voters in this system can——and often do—-choose to vote on
some issues while avoiding others. Intensity counts. While
the conscientious vote of the upper-income group is fairly
steady, the voting of the other income groups is highly
variable, moving from 29% to nearly 60%. In the case of the
police car, the lowest income group is more likely to vote
than either of the two groups in the middle. When the poor
in Chatterton care, they do vote, and heavily enough to give

them a chance to win.

75

Chatterton-- % of income group voting
on each issue
"Police car"

"Names"___ _________
"New houses CCCCOCOCCOCO

 

 

 

7O -__ I ’II"
/—'
60 "N I! /
--— ames“ /’ '.-
50 ---"Police
40 ---
50 '--"houses"..-
20 ---
10 ---
L I AL I
T’ I l I
O to $5,000 to $8,000 to $12,000 plus
$4,999 $7,999 $11,999

If we look at the distribution of Opinions in Chatterton,
as "natural", and put questions of stratification temporarily
to one side, then the new town meeting system is working
remarkably well. Even if all citizens had voted on every
question, the decisions would not have changed. For example,
the vote to "publish names" was 558 for, 107 against. If
all "on-side" peOple had voted, the opposition would have
been stronger, but would still have been no more than half
the number who wanted to keep on publishing. By contrast,

in Excelsior City, only one of the three decisions made by

76
the town council had anything close to the majority of
"on side" Opinion. In the case of the controversial change
in road funding, an overwhelming majority at all income
levels opposed the decisions. If the Excelsior City town
officials had been responding to majority vote they would
not have funded recreation, they would have retained the
public system of financing street repair, and they might--
or might not——have bought a new police radio. In two of
these instances, the Excelsior City officials were simply
and understandably ignorant. They had no idea of what town
Opinion really was. There was no way of regularly polling
even a sample of the citizenry to give the officers an idea
of what the people thought. No one would ever have known if
it were not for the accident of a sociologist's inquiry.
But in the instance of the road paving, the councilmen did
have an uneasy apprehension of public Opinion, and here the
decision was made because they thought it more efficient, and
because no one could stOp them.

Some of the lustre of the new town meeting system dims
if instead of comparing it to a real——and perhaps typical—-
city council town, we compare it to an ideal model of egali-
tarian democracy. From this perspective, we notice and
regret the restricted province of understanding and sympathy
for the poSition of the poor, and reflect that if such under-
standing were more widespread such decisions as that to

"publish names" would not be made, or--better-—would be

77

supplemented by plans to collect taxes in better accordance
with ability to pay.

But compared to their counterparts in Excelsior City,
the lower—income citizens in Chatterton are lucky. They
have a veto, and they use it. Limited as they are, they
still have better information and a better Opportunity to
plead and decide their own case. As each piece of the
picture is filled in, this small New England town begins to
look increasingly like a cross between the mythical town
meeting village and one of Charles Adrian's "ward system"
cities; while Excelsior City looks like one of Adrian's
"non partisan" cities, ruled by an autonomous elite out of

touch with a poorly formed public Opinion.l

 

1Charles R. Adrian "Some General Characteristics of Nonpartisan

Elections" American Political Science Review, 46, (September,

1952).

78
Initiative and Insubordination

If anything approaching Hannah Arendt's ideal of the
truly political life ever existed, it must have been the
early town meetings, and perhaps particularly the early
town meetings of Vermont, where nearly universal manhood
suffrage existed at the beginning of the state.1 If any;
thing remains of that peculiarly active political life, it
will manifest itself in something besides voting and talking.
The citizens in this political system will be genuinely
active in a sense that citizens in a more representative
system cannot be; rather than letting themselves be repre-
sented, they will represent themselves. As representatives
usually do in a less active system, they will innovate
policy and organize support for it; they will be less in—
clined to passively approve suggestions from the tOp; and
on occasion, they will demand and win changes in the "rules
of the game."

A specific (and modest) example of innovation is that
set by Chatterton's dentist, who suggested that the town
vote on flouridation of the water supply. "It was my mistake,"
said Selectman X, a rueful Opponent of flouridation. "I should
have gadg the dentist get up a petition, but I was too easy

on him. So I got trapped. They voted it in!"

 

l .
No excluSlons were made for reasons of race or creed;

slavery was unconstitutional in Vermont. There was a very
small property qualification.

79

More widespread and vigorous activity was needed in the
campaign to remove the roaring "drag strip" from a residential
district in the less prestigious south side of town:

We had a fight with them over closing hours. They kept

stretching it out. The official closing time was 10:50,

but they'd stretch it out 'till twelve. Then people

got up a petition. If a petition gets seventy-five or

a hundred—-that warrants attention. (Selectman Y)

Then there are the campaigns against elected officers;
for example, a recent and successful campaign in Chatterton
to bounce one of the long-time assessors (or "listers"), a
part-time dabbler in real estate transactions. This, too,
required petitions and voting and, in addition, the willing-
ness of a substitute candidate to stand up to the peculiar

intensity of a small-town campaign:

I ran for assessor once. The stories they told about
me were awful. (No. 51)

Never try to run against the town clerk. Somebody tried
once, and they dug up all sorts of gossip. (No. 17)

Far more difficult and rare are attempts to change "the
rules of the game:" the regulations governing the selection
of issues or candidates to be voted on, and the circumstances
of the voting itself. In Chatterton, the last change and the
most important one came some fifteen years ago, when the old
"talking town meeting"-—with its voice vote, its public
divisions of Opinion and its requirement of personal atten-
dance for hours on end-—was voted out, and the private
"Australian ballot" system voted in.

Judging each of these types by the amount of public

participation and effort required, the first is relatively

80
unimportant, while the types involving petitioning obviously
bring many more citizens into much more active roles--par~
ticularly, in carrying the petition around from door to door.
The last type-—a pOpularly inspired change in the "rules of
the game"—-requires so much more talk, planning and organi—
zation as to put it in a class by itself.

In order to make some rough comparison of rates of
"initiative and insubordination" we can collect town records
for some years past, and assign numerical scores: for an
"ordinance" request, one point per instance; for a more
serious "budget" request, two; for requests accompanied by
petitions, three points—-so long as the petition is signed
by about one hundred peOple and is not circulated by the
town officers themselves. Changes in the "rules of the game"
should be reserved for more careful and detailed examination.
At this point it would be well to reflect on the fact that
none of these actions really requires the participation of
the whole "town". At most, as in voting down officers,
official articles, and voting rules, it requires a majority
of the voters, and most of the hard work is done by a very
few people. These "scores" are only a way of getting a
rough, comprehensible comparison among the towns.

If we compare Chatterton's yearly average with that
of Excelsior City, it is by now no surprise to discover
that Chatterton is far ahead, with an average of nine points

a year, as Opposed to Excelsior City's three. At only one

81
time in the past six years did Excelsior City have as many
as six points in one year.

Since this type of political behavior may appear and
disappear in a particular town because of unique historical
events, comparison is wise. No other "matching" town is
available in Vermont, but in a nearby and slightly more
rural Vermont town, where one might expect the usual
quiescence of farmers, the rate is eight a year, or almost
as high as Chatterton.l

‘ During the last two years, the specific actions yield-
ing this score in Chatterton were: three budget requests
by individuals; three petitions signed by 75 to 100 peOple;
and the campaign against the assessor. In the comparison
Vermont town, in the last two years, there were two "ordinance"
requests, two budget requests, and a petition by 10% of the

voters to call a special town meeting, at which a zoning

 

1To provide a record, histories were constructed from the
reports of the chief officers of the towns, and in the case
of Excelsior City, supplemented by the record of town council
meetings and "news" supplied by the local newspaper.
Chatterton's history was constructed from three detailed verbal
reports fitted together. The above figures are for the most
recent two years. If averages are computed for four years,
Excelsior City's average remains about the same—-5 and 1/5
points a year--while the averages of the Vermont towns fall
to 7 for Chatterton and 5 for the comparison town. Since
neither had a newspaper, this may have been the result of
failing memories.

82
ordinance favored by the selectmen was voted out. In
Excelsior City, there were three "ordinance" requests and
one "budget" request, all from relatively small groups of

citizens.
**********

The "Rules of the Game"

Some fifteen years ago, the mayor of Excelsior City
was a southrsider, and although new street—paving predict-
ably favored the wealthier north side, "payment at large"
was adopted, eventual paving of the south side was promised,
and the southrsiders were hOpeful of change.

In the words of one northaside partisan,

When the south had council members it created a lot

of trouble—-a real mess. Then when the mayor——he was

their most pOpular man, you know—-when he moved out,

they lostr Things are smoother, now. (No. 61)

If the "Letters to the Editor" are any guide, the
"smoother" regime of the north increasingly resulted in an
impoverished and bitter south. See, for example, these
letters from early 1966. Interestingly enough, both the
eloquent and the near-illiterate had a tendancy to sign
themselves "Anonymous".

I have always been of the opinion that the primary
function of a municipality was to foster the enhance-
ment and development of its citizens rather than to en-
gage in the scramble for new industries, subdivisions,
and sources of revenue. A primary function of community
leadership is to translate legitimate protests into
workable programs by correcting the basic conditions

which have lead to protests and to develoI> the latent
potential of the human resources within our community.

85

Protests have been prevalent for years from the South
Side residents, asking for adequate sanitary and storm
sewers, decent roads, curbs and gutters, sidewalks, a
park, and a new and adequate school for their children
to attend....

Mr. Mayor, I heard you tell us South~Siders to come
to your budget meetings because they were Open to the
public and we were welcome to come and bring our
problems.....We were there the next week Mr. Mayor at
the budget meeting you said to come to. You weren't
there, Mr. Mayor and none of the other men. How come
you told us to come there and no one was there?....
Meeting with ill success at the polls, the frustrated

southesiders radicalized. Charging illegally secret meetings,
the leaders of the south—siders tracked the council down to

a private house one night, and confronted the culprits like
the Keystone Kops. The local newspaper carried the south,
side leaders' triumphant and outraged letters and proclama—
tions; but from the point of view of the northrside council-
men, it had been their win. AdOpting an amused and unruffled
pose, Councilman.X announced that: "They tried to stop us
from seeing each other on the street. So we purposely had

a party, to show how ridiculous it all was....We settled it.
We showed we had a right to be friendly".

The results of this move being equivocal, the southe
siders began to push for a "system change"--in this political
milieu, a charter revision. After a vigorous campaign, the
item requesting a revision appeared on the ballot and was
passed. However, the mechanics of revision boded ill for
the south—siders' cause. In charter revision, the town as

a whole voted only on approval of the change as a whole; the

details of the new charter were to be worked out by a

84
"charter commission" set up by the existing city council.
Although one long-time south-side leader was on the council,
he was handicapped by uncertainty as to the changes he
wanted. Doubtless thinking of the recent pOpular south—side
mayor-—and apparently unaware of the fact that the south-
side of town was a numerical minority--he at first pushed for
a "strong mayor". Having lost that battle, he shifted to
the more solid ground of a demand for councilmen from
separate "wards". Uncertain as he was, he was ahead of
discontented citizens in general in Excelsior City, who had
practically no knowledge of alternate forms of local govern-
ment at all. No one could fault the southrside leaders for
lack of energy, but at the time of this study, the prospects
for real change appear to be poor.

In contrast, insurrections in both of the towns in
Vermont have won successful and important changes in the
basic rules of voting. These changes took place some years
ago--eight in the comparison town and fifteen in Chatterton
itself--and seem to have left the vast majority of both
towns contented.

Since, in both cases, this change replaced the tradi-
tional talking town meeting with the Australian ballot,
these cases are important not only for this study, but for
the retrospective light they shed on what the original town
meeting once was.

In Chatterton, where the change came fifteen years ago,

only the older and more active profess to know why, but if

85

their Opinions count for anything, the traditional town
meeting was, indeed, susceptible to economic intimidation.
Of the six older citizens who volunteered detailed histor-
ies of the change, five cited economic intimidation by the
quarry-owning family--and the sixth informant, who did not
cite such intimidation, was himself one of the notable clan.

For this gentleman, who tended to see his public life
as a history of unrequited labor, the educated and progres-
sive defenders of the talking town meeting had been defeated
by the forces of traditionalism—-in particular, the "old
peOple."

The meeting is dull now. It used to be fun. The
Australian Ballot is the worst thing that ever happened
to the town. ....I was on the school board. We were
putting up a larger school, and pushing for three-
district consolidation. We got that, and then asked
for an expanded building. The old people blocked it.
We "divided the house" and exposed peOple; friends

and relatives got divided, and it was too much for them.
The Australian Ballot was pushed through by the old
peOple. The "pre-meeting" is all artificial. There's
no flexibility in action. Now the selectmen aren't on
the spot any more. It's like Russia. (No. 67)

Arguing against this portrait of aged Bolsheviks was
the report typical of the remaining five informants:

Fifteen, eighteen years ago, there used to be a
millionaire. He's stand up and look around, with
everybody's mortgage in his pocket, and he's get his
way. You know, after the Australian Ballot came in,
he never went to another meeting! (No. 14)

The only peo 1e who wanted to keep it (the old town
meeting form were the bankers and the industrialists
and some of the older peOple, the traditionalists.
(No. 26)

Not only did the other five informants unanimously

charge economic intimidation, but one of them, a school

86
teacher, maintained that it was not the "old peOple" but
the "rich people" themselves who were blocking education
and progress;

PeOple who wanted the new school were afraid to vote

for it. There were no Open threats, but the bank and

mansion owners--they're all related--are against

progress. (No. 17)

Whatever the facts of the case might have been, the upshot
was that the old system went out, and at the time of the
survey, a clear majority remained in favor of the Australian
Ballot. 54% were definitely in favor, 55% were neutral, and
only 15% were Opposed. However, support for the Australian
Ballot was not nearly as high as support for the town meeting
system in general, which drew the approval of 70%. .Many of
the peOple who voted for the Australian Ballot did so with
mixed feelings:

Some peOple say they miss the excitement. If you were

a good speaker, and could get up and make a speech, you

were a hero. And the winners would pass out cigars and

candy....(No. 26)

I came from a little town where you stood on your feet

and said your piece. Women brought their babies--it

was a big event. (No. 45)

Of greater importance for this study is the fact that,
as oppressive as the old public system appeared to be, it
did allow for change. If the voice-vote system had been
actually under the tight control of the owners of the
quarry and the bankr-and according to local mythology, this
town was closer to a "company town" than any other town in

the state—-then no amount of support could have brought the

Australian Ballot in. The fact of this change in the "rules

87

of the game" must place close limits on any characterization
of the older town meeting as a system favoring oligarchy.

With less antagonism between classic "business" and
"labor" groups, the more rural comparison Vermont town changed
for similar reasons. Complaints centered on the difficulty
of attending the meeting during daytime hours; when it was
rescheduled in the evening, workmen and old peOple complained
that hard—fought issues turned into late night endurance
contests. Finally, just as in Chatterton, the great majority
turned to the less flexible but more equitable Australian
Ballot system with few regrets. If this system proves in-
convenient, in either of the Vermont towns, it too may be
voted out by the same process that governs initiative and
voting on the usual "articles" of the budget.

* * * * * * * * x *

Why are the citizens of the Vermont towns so much
more active and insubordinate? Considering the laws in-
volved,the relative success of the Vermonters is not
surprising; but there is no more startling reversal of
apparent reality in this study than the collapse of the
investigator's initial image of an active and antagonistic
citizenry in Excelsior City. At first glance, one of the
most striking differences between Excelsior City and Chatter-
ton was the physical neglect of Excelsior City's south side,
and the general recognition of "south siders" vs. "north
siders" as a local political war that made Chatterton's

quarrels seem dull and unexciting. The north side in

88
Excelsior City was slowly expanding in neat, planned
develOpments; the south was growing in small individual
houses where floor coverings and walls were put in by the
family, and lawns came in as they might. The north had the
schools; the south's primary school had been closed, and
the children had to walk dangerously across the multiple
railroad tracks to the north side's schools. The north
side's sewer system was working well; the south side resi-
dents could not legally use disposals. Although the newest
develOpments on the north side still had gravel roads, most
of the north side had good blacktOp paving and cement curbs;
the south side had the bulk of the potholes, and the gravel
roads, and no curbs at all.

In the first interviews, city officials drew a picture
of deep antagonism between the southside leaders and the
"respectabla'representatives of the north. In survey results,
one respondent after another brought up the troubles of the
disadvantaged south side. At this point, it seemed obvious
that Excelsior City's southesiders must be more estranged in
some way than Chatterton's south~siders--Excelsior City's
southrsiders must be relatively poorer, or more in the
minority, or in some obviously distinct ethnic group or
newer in town—-and that this must be creating more real
political activity in Excelsior City than in Chatterton.

In fact, none of these conditions exists. If anything,

Excelsior City's south—siders are more well—to-do than

89

Chatterton's; there are relatively more of them; they are
no more likely to be immigrants or foreigners and their
fabled political activity is an illusion.1

The truth is a paradox. The Excelsior City that seems
to be so much.more involved in political conflict is in fact
much less capable of develOping and rewarding broad political
interest. But just because broad, income—interest groups do
not appear, and because the city officials are freer to make
decisions based on what seem to be the immediate needs of
efficiency, they create obvious physical invidious distinc-
tions between the sides of town, and spawn another kind of
conflict group--more obvious in its geographical integrity,
but because of its geographical limitations, much weaker.
As a result, the history of the south—sidaleaders' efforts
to get "system change" is tragi-comical, a tale of temporary
victories and long range defeats. It is of more than passing
interest that the situation parallels the isolated protests
recorded by Vidich and Bensman in "Springdale"--the aggressive
but lonely leaders, the attempts to organize a neglected
side of town, and the persistence and futility of the protests.

The vital contrast between the two systems does not lie
in the immediate fact that the Vermonters have been able to
win changes in government while the citizens of Excelsior

City have not; in the Vermont case, the protesting citizens

 

1See Appendix "The Wrong Side of the Tracks"

90
were a majority, while in the Michigan case, the south-siders
were a minority. The root cause of Excelsior City's
quiescence and rigidity is that the only kind of group
organization its system facilitates is the division of sides
of town, a division which artificially limits the number of
peOple who can be drawn into the visible conflict group. If
Excelsior City's discontent could be expressed in full, and
in relation to specific issues, the councilmen would see a
new majority; as it is, they see and feel only the discontent
of the south side, which is a numerical minority, and con-
tributes, after all, "less than a quarter of the prOperty
tax base." (Councilman X)

Political activity is an investment, and citizens are
more likely to invest when they expect to win. In Chatterton,
the citizens can look to a record of success that goes far
beyond a few important victories over the rules. In
Chatterton, of the three most recent "article" requests,
one was turned down. Three petitions had been signed by
one hundred citizens, and three were acted upon: i.e., the
ordinance was enacted, or the article put on the ballot for
voting at large. In the supplementary Vermont town, the
selectmen rejected one prOposed "article" out of eight.

In Excelsior City; of four petition-supported requests of

the "article" type in the past six years, the council turned
down three. Of two petitions signed by at least one hundred
citizens, one was accepted and one turned down. The rate of

failure is 50 to 75%. The contrast persists when the most

91
important insurrections are considered alone. During the
last two years, each one of the towns has seen a particularly
large scale effort to change policy. In Chatterton, an ad
hoc group made a concerted effort to get rid of a town
officer who had been re—elected for decades. In the supple-
mentary Vermont town, 10% of the voters called for a special
town meeting, over the protests of their officers, and
reainded their vote on a zoning law. In each of the Vermont
instances, the townspeOple won. From month to month, then,
the Vermont citizens can see that the petitions that they
sign are respected; and when someone comes to the door
requesting signatures, they will be less likely to turn away
with the pathetic cynicism of the man who said, "It don't
matter what we say. They'll do what they want anyway."

To see this success record only as the result of the
voting laws, and the income interest groups that the laws
favor, is to underestimate the complexity of the informal
political system that has grown up around these laws over
time. Nothing could be more naive than to imagine that the
town officers are involved in a series of pitched battles
with an insurgent populace. The town Officers are well
aware of the possibility that their preferred Options may
be voted down, and their anathemas voted in at any time,
and because they are aware of it, they develOp a wary
sensitivity to the currents of town feeling, and a reluctance
to take any action without first sampling, as it were, the

temperature of the waters.

92

I feel peOple gpght to petition before we get into it.

I'm trying to be fair....I'm against government dictating.

That's why I want petitions. (Selectman Y)

If anybody just requests an article, we like to label

it a "request". ....Sometimes we don't want to put it

in ourselves; we wgpt a petition first. ...(Se1ectman Z)

With town officials anxiously anticipating and searching
for the voters' Opinions, many of the petition "victories" of
the active townspeOple bear no resemblance to battles against
entrenched official Opposition. They are signs of active
citizenship, and should be counted as such; but they exist
in a political world that is usually less like a war with
ballots than like an argument among friends.

Too, information is vital. The Chatterton citizens
are more likely than the citizens of Excelsior City to talk
about local issues, but they talk in direct prOportion to
the information they possess. A higher information level
alone provides a broad base of talking citizens who can
support and encourage leaders. And it is not only the Town
Report that enables people to see and use alternatives.
Here again, the voting laws indirectly create the active
citizens they require. Cautioned by the voting laws, the
town officers seek public Opinion. Their sampling device
is the petition; and the petition carries the description
of the facts of each important case from door to door.

Finally, and in an unexpected way, the political
history of the region itself provides a kind of information.

When Chatterton was moving out of the old town meeting system,

there were observable alternate forms of government in real

95

towns and cities nearby--in particular, the Australian Ballot
system, which had already been widely introduced into the
state to OOpe with the problem of larger populations. When
small but embattled Chatterton began to look for a way out
of the older, too public system, the "Australian Ballot"
system lay conveniently at hand, ready for adaptation to a
different purpose. When the Excelsior City protestors were
looking for a way out, their Options were limited, and their
lack of information made them easy prey to false justifications
for the status quo. When told of the town meeting and
detailed ballot system of government, the citizens of
Excelsior City were liable to reply that they liked the
idea, but that after all, their town (of ca. 5,000) was
much too large for it. It wouldn't be "efficient." Since
the town's conflict was largely defined in terms of geo-
graphic sections, respondents were asked if they would
approve a system of "ward" voting. Again the size was wrong;
for 40% of those who rejected the ward idea, the town was
"too small."1

Information stimulates talking; and talking flself
provides information for others, and stimulates them to
more effective action. So important is this apparently
inconsequential gossiping and arguing among friends that it
can overcome the power of occupational prestige and education
in deciding who will be politically active in the town. In
both Excelsior City and Chatterton, newcomers and isolates

are, naturally enough, less likely to vote or sign and pass

 

lSee appendix for details.

94

around a petition. But while the effect of "social integration"
in Excelsior City is confined to lower educational levels,

in Chatterton it is much stronger. A well-integrated high
school graduate in Chatterton is five times as likely to be
highly politically active as a less sociable man with the

same education. The converse is true, too. Those without

kin and associations withdraw, so that the contrast between

the active and the quiescent is striking.1

I. 8th grade education, more or less

 

 

 

Excelsior City Chatterton
Participation Participation
low high low high
social low: 66% 55% (15) 80% 20% (10)
integration med: 50% 50% (20) 62% 58% (16)
high: 58% 62% (8) 44% 55% (9)

II. High school graduates (excluding those with college

 

 

 

experience)
Excelsior City Chatterton
Participation Participation
low high low high
social low: 52% 48% (7) low: 85% 17% (6)
integration med: 50% 70% (10) med: 50% 50% (4)
high: 45% 54% (11) high: 14% 86% (7)

The citizens of Excelsior City complain about the dominance

 

1See Appendix for details.

95

of business; in Chatterton, they complain about "cliques."l

You got a small group runnin things; it don't change
unless they pass on. (No. 44

Information and insubordination are not just cause-
and—effect. They are intertwined, each one stimulating the
other in a circular process. Take the case of Chatterton's
unpopular tax assessor. Although other towns in the state
frequently publish the "lists", Chatterton makes no effort
to publicize the procedures and results of tax assessment
in detail; those knowledgeable on the subject of taxes have
acquired their knowledge in other ways. At the time of this
survey, tax knowledge in Chatterton is related not to a
difference in education or income, but to a difference in
attitude towards the controversial assessor. In Excelsior
City, where there is no protest, there is no correlation.
Over all, of those who display knowledge of assessment
processes, there are more from Chatterton who have the
highest quality of information, by 26% to 8% for the citizens

of Excelsior City.2

 

lConceivably, in a town less vulnerable to economic intimi—
dation than Chatterton was, the public quality of the old
town meeting might have created another contradiction of
economic determinism: the phenomenon of the leader of low
occupational prestige and high oratorical gifts. At last

one such man exists, without an adequate forum, in Chatterton
now. Although working in a mechanical, non-verbal job, this
man is an entertaining and knowledgeable speaker on local
politics.

2See Appendix for details.

96

Because there was a protest, the Chatterton citizens
are better informed.

The broad political history of the area and the actual
laws of the state guarantee better information. Information
by itself stimulates talking; information, talk, and lenient
laws stimulate initiative, protest, insubordination, and
even better information in turn. It is a more active poli-
tics, and, despite the retreat into the private Australian
Ballot, a more sociable politics, sociable enough so that the
ordinarily controlling powers of occupational and educational
prestige can be--at least occasionally--overcome.

There is some evidence that the more successfully
rebellious Vermonters have develOped a permanently higher
level of distrust towards their officers, regardless of what
those officers might happen to be doing. Although the
Chatterton citizens have much greater faith in their system
of government than do the citizens of Excelsior City, their
trust in their town officers is comparatively low, as low
as it is in Excelsior City. In view of the fact that the
Chatterton officers are broadly representative, while the
Excelsior City officers are widely recognized and attacked
as being recruits from "Efficiency Engineering'S"business
office, the reasons for this distrust are interesting. Some
of the distrustful, naturally enough, complain about
"cliques". But the Chatterton people are also much more
likely to withold trust on "general principles", and three

times as likely to maintain that they cannot be expected to

97

judge without "more information"-—although by other measures
they appear to be quite well informed.1 In spite of all
attempts to see the Vermonters as generalized American
citizens, some of the old quaint regional images refuse to
fade into the mists of the past. Because of their local
political system, these New Englanders really are in-grown,

cliquish, and crusty.

 

1As in Lipset's I.T.U., distrust of specific officials co—

exists, in a stable democracy, with loyalty to political
institutions.
See Appendix for charts.

98
The Inhibited Elite

When citizens of Excelsior City and Chatterton are
asked what they think the power of town officers, businessmen,
and "the educated" should be in town politics, their replies
make them look very much alike. When they are asked to name
the individuals whose Opinions they respect, again, the two
towns seem similarly stratified. If we had no more evidence
than this, we would say that the undoubted political
differences between the towns were all differences of speci-
fic action and results, and that they have left no trace on
the broader beliefs and values of the peOple.

But in fact, at the same that these questions are being
asked, we have been collecting spontaneous comments and
epithets to decorate and enliven the staid statistics of
social science, and the resulting contrast between the two
towns is puzzling. Excelsior City is an anthropologist's
paradise. The well-to—do are the "big bugs" (No. 66), and
the "aristocracy" (NO. 16) who live in the "silk stocking
district" (No. 45), while the others live in "honkie town"
(No. 28), "Hamtramck" (No. 20), "Georgetown" (No. 46), and
"Mortgage Hill" (No. 2)1 A councilman describes his defeated
Opponents as a "group of malcontents", led by the "town

drunk" and a "bar girl". (Councilman X)

 

1In fact, Excelsior City is no more geographically divided

by income than Chatterton is, nor are there noticeable
numbers of southerners or Poles anywhere in town.

99

At first, Chatterton promises to be even more colorfully
vituperative. One of the early respondents, in the old days,
chief constable of the local jail, is asked whether or not
the laws are enforced equally. "Well", he replies, "when the
woodchucks get drunk, you can lock 'em up. But Mr. Higheand-
mighty-~that's a different story." (No. 20) Again, in the
next day's interview, the woodchucks appear. After some
days of contemplating a vision of fat, furry little peOple
with protruding teeth periodically invading the town, we
discover that "woodchuck" is the local name for peOple who
live in the woods-~not like country gentlemen or suburbanites,
but more or less like hermits, with irregular jobs and the
companionship of their families alone.

But with this, the Vermont adventure is over. There
are no more. And from the town officers, there is no name—
calling at all, in any of the long conversations held. Even
though some are sympathetic to the outrage of the recently
defeated assessor, their comments are limited to resigned
and detached discussions of the reasons for his defeat.

Too, there is a curious defensiveness among the "elite"
in this town. After a lifetime of public service, the
retired banker feels rejected and unappreciated. A teacher
says:

People don't like us. Teachers are priveleged, and

they're suspicious of us. Vermonters are suspicious
people. (No. 66)

100
A woman born in town, but educated outside says:

I don't like Vermont....PeOple are so gossipy. They're

all jealous of rich peOple, jealous of peOple who spend

money. You should hear the things that are said about
me, just because I try to have a beautiful house and
yard. They can't stand ambition, can't stand aggressive

peOple. (NO. 51)

Unlike the jovial, vigorous businessmen and profession-
als of Excelsior City, many of Chatterton's elite seem
repressed and frustrated, like the parents of rebellious
adolescents. The obligations are still felt, but the
rewards of parenthood are slim.

When the attitudes of all citizens are lumped together,
the two towns match. But when we look for the attitudes of
elites alone, curious and interestingly Opposite patterns
emerge. Take, for instance, attitudes towards the influence
of the elites themselves. As will be remembered, citizens
in both towns were asked how much influence they thought
(a) those with the largest financial investments, and (b)
those with the better educations, ought to have on town
affairs.1 In general, the two towns matched. But if we
now divide the sample, so that we can see how each occu-

pational group reacts separately, the towns become Opposites.

In Excelsior City, businessmen are, as we might expect,

 

1See "The Two Towns Are the Same" and the Appendix.

lOl
self-expansive:

Attitude towards business influence
number of

 

 

'Anti Resistant .Egg respondents
Businessmen, etc. O 62% 58% (I6)
Clerks, etc. 11% 77% ll% (28)
Operatives, etc. 25% 66% ll% (51)

The operative level is most Opposed to them; the clerks are
in the middle, and the business level leans toward Open
power.

But in Chatterton, results are almost unbelievable.

Attitude towards business influence
number Of

 

 

.Anti_ Resistant .239 respondents
Businessmen, etc. 55% 65% [No (24)
Clerks, etc. 25% 50% 25% (16)
Operatives, etc. 7% 75% 18% (27)

Three out of ten of those in the economic elite are so wary
of the "investors'" influence as to go out of their way to
make Spontaneous comments about it in response to other
questions. The ratio of three out of ten holds if we
consider only the businessmen and managers, excluding
technicians and professionals; and some of the businessmen
interviewed are without doubt the "large investors" them-
selves. And it was the manager on the board of Selectmen
who spontaneously told the interviewer that he Opposed
letting any men with real estate interests sit on the
prOposed planning board, because "these peOple have too
much already." PrOportionately speaking, Operatives in

the Vermont town are more favorable to business influence

102
than the businessmen are.

Take the question on the influence of the "educated".
NO one in town is really hostile to those with "better
educations," but, again, of the three individuals who
caution against the special influence of the educated in
Chatterton, two are teachers and the other has been to
college.

In broad patterns of actual person—tO-person influence,
the two towns are alike. But closer acquaintance with the
towns reveals another curious refusal of the educated
Vermonters to promote themselves. Upperbincome citizens
in Chatterton are more likely to have some degree of college
education than the well-to—do in Excelsior City, but they
have no unusual inclination to be influenced by the educated.
The average social distance of an income "line-crossing"
relationship for these richer peOple in Chatterton is one
and one-third levels. But the average education "line-
crossing" relationship crosses two and one-fifth levels.

In other words, they may have an education themselves, but
they are not particularly impressed by formal education in
others. A

When Garceau and Silverman reported that Vermont state
legislators were relatively unaware Of business and union
lobbyists, they noted, too, that a large proportion of these
legislators from Vermont towns were actively hostile to

business influence, and attributed this sentiment to the

lO5
prevelance of farmers in the state.1 But our businessmen
in non-agricultural Chatterton are truly "traitors to their
class." And just as Chatterton's small businessmen are
unusually likely to warn against the influence of business,
so are the educated unusually likely to disapprove of overt
influence from the educated. This might look like "noblesse
oblige" were it not for the conspicuous absence of reciprocal
deference from inferiors.

If political power were the sum Of an individual's
social advantages, and politics a war of all against all,
with each individual maximizing his chances on a separate
rational calculus, then the well-educated businessmen and
technicians in Chatterton would dominate the town. More
active, more knowledgeable, more prestigious, more resource-
ful, they would manage Chatterton as the elite of Excelsior
City never could. But the mechanics of voting in the new
town meeting system have impeded it, and beyond that,
reacting to the realities of the present and the traditions
of the past, the elite of Chatterton have develOped a
different morality. They are inhibited, but not against

their will.2

 

lOliver Garceau and Corinne Silverman, "A Pressure Group and

the Pressured: A Case Report" op. cit.

2The educated, too, seem to want to protect the others against
the influence of the wealthy. When referring to Chatterton's
adOption of the "Australian Ballot", the higher the education,
the more likely the respondent was to declare that the secret
ballot protected peOple against economic intimidation. See
Appendix.

104

In the course of the study, the educated of Chatterton and
Excelsior City were asked if they would consider moving out
of town to accept a better job. In both towns, family and
friends enfolded and softened the ambitious; but while the
educated citizens of Excelsior City said that they liked their
town, many of the supposedly reticent New Englanders spoke of
"love", offering spontaneous testimonials to the friendliness
and tolerance of its peOple.

I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Everybody knows

everybody else. They're generous, they aren't

religiously bigoted....(No. 28--a Methodist).

I had to work away, but I always came back here in

the summer....The friendliness, cooperation, our many

close friends, our family home....(No. 55)

I love it; it has a small population, but it has five

churches, and no one of them is more important. We

have college peOple, fairly well fixed; we have a class

of people that are workers, the quarry men...(No. 1)

This last speaker was a retired Spinster schoolteacher,
ninety-three years Old, an embodiment of New England myths,
who emerged from her sitting room dressed in rusty black,
clutching a bible, and inquiring why anyone would be asking
such questions on "the Sabbath"-—and then, thinking slowly
but clearly, embarked on a testimonial to racial, ethnic
and religious tolerance that would have done credit to the
Abolitionists.

There were only one or two who thought of mentioning
the political system itself.- It would be odd if they did,

in considering the momentous and personal decision of

whether or not to move away. But political life in the

lOS
broad sense may well have something to do with their answers.
For the educated in the new town meeting system political
life is more social, more pervasive, ande—judging from
other studies--on balance more rancorous than in other
systems.1 But in community as well as in marriage and
friendship, contention need not lead to bitterness and
separation; where the argument stimulates the better exchange
of information, the result can be awareness and sensitivity.
It is not improbable that the yearly quarreling over tiny
budget details, so irritating at the moment, serves over
the years to create an awareness and love of the whole.2
The New Englander is attached to his township, not so
much.because he was born in it, but because it is a

free and strong community, of which he is a member,
and which deserves the care spent in managing it.

 

lSee William Gamson "Rancorous Conflict in Community Politics"

American Sociological Review, Feb. 1966, Vol. 51.

2See Lewis Coser The Functions of Social Conflict, Chapter
VIII, "Conflict-—The UnifierYr (New York: The Free Press, 1956).

5Alexi's de Tocqueville, Op. cit., p. 85.

106

Conclusion

Veblen's description of the small town as a congeries of
shopkeepers and land speculators; the Lynd's description of
the small town as the humble captive of corporations; Vidich
and Bensman's description of the small town as a collection
of politically incompetent remnants of pOpulations; accounts
from countless sources of the small town as repressive,
stifling, and deferential to social status and economic
power—-—all of these descriptions have created an image of
the small town as intrinsically destructive of democratic
political life. It has been a logical and scholarly reaction
to wave aside suggestions of political reform at the local
level as pointless struggles against external, overpowering
economic forces and internal social and economic intimidation.

In an effort to disentangle economic and social forces
from the effects of different political forms, this study has
examined the formal and informal political life of two
economically and socially matched towns, so that it would
be possible to see whether or not the apparently more
democratic procedure Of the new town meeting system could
have any real impact on informal political life, measured
empirically against the real political life of a city council
town, and in terms of an ideal of egalitarian, humanitarian
democracy.

With the understanding that there are limits to the

certainty of conclusions drawn in a single, controlled

lO7
comparison, and with the recognition that with replication Of
the study, certain failures in the matching process might be
better corrected, these are the findings.

1. Neither political system displayed any advantages
in respect to the following criteria: (a) the tendency
of occupational and educational status to determine
those citizens respected as authorities on local govern-
ment; (b) the tendency of occupational and educational
status to determine whether or not the citizens would
vote; and (c) the tendency of town governments to enact
preferential legislation for industry and business.

2. But the superiority of the new town meeting
system was striking in these more specific details Of
Chatterton's political life: (a) the citizens had

reatly superior information on major town decisions;
%b) their information was more likely to focus on
specific decisions and less likely to consist of vague
rumors about persons or groups; (0) different income
groups were much more capable of perceiving and main-
taining separate and rational interpretations of their
interests in town decisions; (d) citizens were more likely
to talk, innovate, object and organize; (e) the activity
rate of a citizen was less predictable from his occu-
pation and education and more dependent on his social
integration than in the city council town; (f) town
Officers were more likely to initiate and encourage
citizen petitions; (g) the economic elite were less
likely to believe that they should be accorded special
influence in town affairs——indeed, even less likely
than other citizens in town-~and, (h) because of these
factors and the specificity and flexibility of the
voting system, actual decisions made were more likely
to preserve public services that had the effect of re-
distributing public funds, and were more likely to
preserve methods of funding and collecting taxes that
were public and redistributive.

These effects of the new town meeting laws were not
discovered as isolated, independent differences between the
two towns. They emerged as an interdependent system of
political behavior and belief. Broad voting and petitioning
powers and better information stimulated these citizens of

Chatterton to talk, to innovate, to object and reorganize,

108

and these activities, in turn, informed the rest. The town
officers, sensible of the unpredictable power of the voters,
were reluctant to take initiatives without seeing evidence
in petitions of strong interest in the matter, with the
result that their infrequent initiatives had time to filter
through.the town's conversation networks into general com-
prehension, while their requested petitions carried information
directly from door to door. Acting not just as independent
conscientious citizens, but as a result of their place in
networks of sociability, citizens of the upper, middle, and
lower income groups developed quite different interpretations
of events, and acted upon them--so that even though the
interpretations of the well-to-do were more likely to filter
down than the interpretations of low-income people were
likely to filter up, these separate views continued to exist.
Expressed in voting, these views of lower-income peOple had
the occasional effect of maintaining more public and re—
distributive and democratic methods of governing—-and at the
least, they cautioned the economic and educational elite of
the town to make no Open claims to special privelege or
influence in town affairs.

This new town meeting system has evolved slowly out of
a unique political tradition in a particular area of the
country with a peculiar claim to national respect. But it
is not an indistinguishable part of local regional tradition,
and there is no need to resort to the mysticism of regional

history for explanations of the political behavior of the

lO9
citizens of this town. These more democratic values of
Chatterton's political and economic elite--deference to
public Opinion, and reluctance to demand special influence
on governmental decisions--are natural outgrowths of the
greater public power and information that the voting laws
guarantee. It is the existence of information and voting
powers on specific budget decisions that has linked public
Opinion and action to the sociability networks of the
separate income groups of the town, and made it possible for
lower income citizens to see and defend their interests in
a more redistributive government.

This evidence of the impact of formal political practices
serves not only to endorse the new town meeting system; it
calls attention to the danger in political sociology of
emphasizing sociology to the detriment of politics. As
Kelley, Brown & Ayres put it in their decisive study of the
impact of registration On low-income voting, even the
sociologist must "put first things first."1 Much of the
broad, general pattern of American local government is
undoubtedly best explained in terms of values and behavior
ultimately derived from nationally pervasive economic patterns
and power relations; and small town government is undoubtedly
influenced by the social forces peculiar to smaller towns.
But if these facts are investigated to the neglect of

differences created by the laws, sociology not only emerges

 

lKelley, S., Brown, W.G. and R.E. Ayres "Putting First

Things First: Registration and Voting" APSR June, 1967.

110
with a distorted image of causation, but concentrates its
energy on the discovery of those factors in the situation
that are least amenable to change.

Excelsior City is an excellent example. Without the
contrast of Chatterton, the political life Of Excelsior
City--with its neglected "wrong side of the tracks", its
retreat from public government, its embittered but disorgan-
ized protests——would seem to be the inevitable result of its
economic and social circumstances, another "small town in
mass society." With Chatterton as contrast, this pattern
emerges as the consequence of more specific forces as well:
the lack of political information and powers that might
build effective and separate income interest groups, the
resulting neglect Of a low-income part of town, and the
develOpment of a conflict group based on geography-~more
obvious in its geographical integrity, but because of its
geographical limitations, much weaker than an income
interest group organization would have been.

Without the contrast of Chatterton, the rancour and
slander of Excelsior City's personalized politics would
have made it one more bit of evidence in the cosmopolitan's
case against the social repressiveness, "antagonism and

1 If political forms

hatred" of small town political life.
were to be credited with any influence at all, William

Gamson's work would have led to the prediction that the more

 

lRobert Dahl, "Democracy and the Chinese Boxes", Op. cit.

lll
formally democratic system would be, if anything, more
"rancorous".l With the detailed comparison of the two
towns, the simple idea of "rancour" breaks apart. In
Chatterton, there is more political excitement than in
Excelsior City, but of a different kind. It is contention
of issues, not antagonism against groups and persons, that
enlivens the new town meeting town. Like workers and
managers who have evolved a mutually acceptable and legiti-
mate system of bargaining, the interest groups of Chatterton
display a different kind Of class consciousness, less
concerned with group antagonisms than with the consequences
of specific acts.

TOO, with examination of the effects of this specific
political system, the citizens of the small town no longer
seem helplessly dependent on the news media for their basic
political ideology, or fated to identify their interests with
those of local elites, for lack of competing sources of
information. In Chatterton, with practically no newspaper
coverage at all, the political system and a normal income
spread in the community are enough to stimulate different
income classes to realistically different positions on
specific issues.

In short, while recognizing the extent to which broad
patterns of economic and social organization limit possibi-

lities, this investigation has gone far towards demonstrating

 

1William Gamson, "Rancorous Conflict in Community Politics"

op. cit.

112
the power of a relatively small and simple difference in the
legal form of government to bring informal political life
closer to a democratic, humanitarian ideal. With the
introduction of the factor of different forms of government,
numerous political patterns normally interpreted as conse—
quences of the demographic, economic, and social character
of the American small town as a general type have either
varied or disappeared. Rationality, values, and.behavior .
were significantly affected. These differences observed
were part of an interdependent pattern of political life,
directly dependent on these major features of the new town
meeting system: yearly citizen voting on all budget
allocations for distinct tasks; easy procedures for initial-
ing budget items and new votes; and yearly circulation in
one package of concise and intelligible information on town

affairs.

If this had been a more abstractly theoretic study,
the summary of results would end here. But there is a
moral and practical purpose to this investigation as well.
If this investigation supports the new town meeting system
as more egalitarian and democratic than existing alternatives,
it recommends it as well. And because of this, questions
that have no necessary relationship to the sociological
purpose of the study become inescapable.

First, is it enough to recommend this form of government

to other towns as more democratic, more egalitarian, more

115

conducive to rational political life, when local democracy
is the apparent enemy Of such widely valued public goods as
recreation space, public landscaping, education and the
ecological balance? Lower-income groups--particularly, the
aged--are the notorious murderers of all large local invest-
ments, and any plan that makes local government more demo-
cratic gives them greater power. Acting in blind "political
negativism", many of them use the vote to register a general
protest against their relatively helpless economic and
political position;1 others protest the weight of non-pro-
gressive or really retrogressive local property taxes; others
resent the dominance of middle and upper income classes in
local planning, as did the man in this study who resented
"paying for all these fancy women's bright ideas." For one
reason or another, programs that would benefit the whole
community in the long run are being voted down, with the
result that there is increasing pressure to remove both
taxation and control to ever more remote centers of govern-
ment, in the name of the long-range public good. For these
compelling reasons, a system that increases the power of
local democracy might seem to be of doubtful value.

But is the villian here too much democracy or too
little? Consider the details of these relationships. It

is the sense of political helplessness that creates political

 

lJohn El Horton and Wayne E. Thompson, "Powerlessness and

Political Negativism, a Study of Defeated Local Referendums'
op. cit.

114
"negativism". It is exclusion from information and decisions
that leads to community plans that are the exclusive property
of middle and upper income groups. It is a long history of
control by upper—income groups at the local and state level
that has prevented the introduction of income taxes. The
solution that comes most naturally to experts in government
is to reduce what democratic control remains; but it may be
equally practical, and in terms Of major values, more desir—
able, to do exactly the Opposite. In this investigation,
Excelsior City, with its more remote and representative system
had no more of the civic amenities than Chatterton. In fact,
the more democratic town had a somewhat greater supply. The
major effect of the greater power of lover-income groups in
Chatterton was not to cut down public services but to ensure
that the burden of payment would be spread more equitably
among the income classes.

Secondly, and particularly where the school budgets are
concerned, there is good reason to believe that low-income
voting is blamed out of all prOportion to its real contribu-
tion to the situation. Irving Fowler's large scale study
of "community welfare" came to the conclusion that the
relative degree to which lower-income groups were represented
in community "power structure" had no effect On community
welfare—~and neither did a lot of other pOpular candidates
for chief cause. Community welfare, broadly defined as

"the amount of goods, services, facilities and gratifications

115

a community makes available to its inhabitants"1

depended
primarily on the extent to which the community was in a
position to tap the great resources of large and technolog-
ically modern industries. It is more than coincidence that
waves of defeated school referenda occur during waves of
recession, not during waves of progress towards democratic
control.

The most serious and realistic challenges to the
desirability of democratic control occur when there is the
possibility that a poorly informed democratic decision could
irreversibly damage the long range resources of the environment.
It is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely, that
education and information in a small community would be
adequate to persuade it to voluntarily adOpt the huge tax
burden of a sewage system efficient enough to reverse the
destruction of water systems.. Only in the case of fishing
and tourist towns have small communities had the strength to
turn away lucrative but destructive industrial plants.

Given the burden placed on education and information systems,
and the economic power of the major actors, anyone concerned
with long-range survival would-be well advised to appeal to
the states and the nation.

But there is in this question a problem as insidious
as the dilemma of Dahl's "Democracy and the Chinese Boxes."

Dahl's essay pointed out that the more the planner seeks a

 

lIrving Fowler, op. cit., p. 15.

116

political unit large enough to contain all the groups that
might claim to have an interest in its decisions, the more
likely it is that he will end with no democracy at all.1
The environmental dilemma is much the same. The more closely
the planners approach a unit large enough to make the best
and wisest use of the environment, the less possible it
will be to make anything close to democratic decisions in it.

Perhaps the most important fact that democratic planners
need to keep in mind when considering demands for the extinc-
tion of local government powers and the institution of
centralized ecological control is that issues which actually
involve the ultimate destruction of basic economic and
survival resources are much rarer than current popular
rhetoric would make them seem to be. In this aspect, demands
for ecological control represent much the same kind of threat
to democracy as that created by militarists who see a
tightly centralized society as their only defense against
constantly immiment invasion. Most ecological issues are
in fact conflicts of style of life, or more precisely,
conflicts occasioned by the fact that it is only when a
certain number of high—priority needs are satisfied that
voters become willing to pay for aesthetics. The value
systems of upper and lower income groups may be exactly
the same; but because upper income groups have already

acquired a basic repertoire of possessions, they are far

 

lRobert Dahl, op. cit.

117
more likely to be willing to make subsequent investments
in the civic amenities than are the lower income groups
who have yet to acquire attractive private living spaces
for themselves.

TOO, it should be remembered that the most dangerous
sources of environmental destruction are precisely those
agencies over which local governments have never had any
noticeable control—-the large corporations. Attacks on
small local sewage systems are attacks that are being made
where the enemy is weakest, not where the danger is most
great.

Finally, in this list of drawbacks to democracy, there
is the conflict of democracy and egalitarianism, a conflict
that takes place on a battlefield far broader than would be
apprOpriate to the scOpe of this essay. As applied to small
local governments, the problem is primarily caused by the
fact that some communities are rich and others poor, just
as some states are poorer than others, with the result that
small local governments, no matter how democratically
organized, are incapable of taking effective action on
large scale problems of distribution. Here, the problem of
equality and the problem of ecology combine, in that both of
them require a government large enough to tap at least some
of the resources of the corporate sector of the economy.
Where decisions are made in favor of government at the higher
levels, as in the Expanding decision throughout New England

to take the administration of welfare out of local hands, the

118

problem of democratic control shifts to the politics of
states. But the result is not necessarily a clear loss
to democracy, even at the local level. Where government
action provides the poor with better health, job Opportunities,
and freedom from the intimate surveillance of their higher-
status neighbors, it strengthens the liklihood of vigorously
democratic institutions at all levels of society in the long
run. Some strategies for equality do interfere with local
democratic procedure. But in many of these cases, the
short-range loss of immediate democratic local control over
that particular issue is small, and the long-range gain in
the resources of citizenship is great.

In each of these instances-~political negativism,
ecological control, and the achievement of minimum levels
of welfare-~the evidence against small town local democracy
has been weak or misconstrued. That these cases have been
accepted so quickly and so widely is evidence of the extent
to which the drive for the acceptance of federal government
programs of the New Deal variety has widened and generalized
among a large group of journalists and academics to an
automatic bias against any form of local government control.
If this bias is for the moment set aside, and the facts are
considered, it is clear that even for the ecologist, the
economic egalitarian and the advocate of public welfare,
there are relatively few perils in the extension of small

town democracy, and much to be gained.

119

The evidence for the new town meeting system has been
presented. The case for the extension of small town local
democracy has been made. Whether or not it will, in fact,
ever be extended remains to be seen. Pragmatically, the
democratic effect of the system depends heavily on the
quality of its information, and the quality of the Town
Report depends to an unknown extent on the supervision and
encouragement provided by organizations and agencies at the
state level. The organization of state-wide "Town.Report
contests" in Vermont in the 1940's may have been of great
importance in raising the reports to their present quality.
For any present-day extension to be effective in the long
run, some such state level aid and supervision would
probably be necessary. In light of this, extension outside
of the New England area would have to occur on a fairly
general basis, as part of a wide spread movement, rather
than as an effort at reform in isolated towns. But inside
New England, as a return to Older forms on the part of
established communities, or as an adoption by newly organ-
ized suburban towns, the election and strengthening of the
new town meeting system would be relatively simple.

If the morale of its people will have anything to do
with its survival and spread, the prospects for the new
town meeting system are good. In this study, 74% of the
residents of Chatterton were in favor Of some kind of town
meeting system, and 64%, no doubt encouraged by tourism,

journalism and regional pride, had a hazy, Optomistic image

120
Of themselves as the pace-setters of a nation of town
meetings. As one respondent put it: "I guess we have the
best town meetings in the country, don't we!" (NO. 12)

What are the chances that this mirage will materialize,
at least in the nation's small towns? On one side of the
argument, there is the new technological determinism of
scholars like Jacques Ellul, who see all future political
values inevitably shaped by demands for efficient management
of large-scale economic and political systems. On the other,
there are the actual attempts at increasing local democratic
control that have been breaking out at all levels of the
society in recent years. Despite their failures, the civil
rights movement, the black power movement, and the various
movements among American Indians and Mexican-Americans have
not only created organizational strength where none existed
before, but have made other Americans enviously aware of
their own feelings of political helplessness. Despite
engulfment and failure in the cities, the federal anti—
poverty program of the 1960's had as one of its goals the
involvement of the poor themselves in the planning of
programs, and an acceptance on the federal level of the
general principle that such local control was not a luxury
but an essential condition of the task at hand. To return
to the evidence of this small study, when the inhabitants
of Excelsior City were asked what they thought of the various
forms of the town meeting system, they replied that they

thought them too "inefficient" for a town of their size--but

121
they made this judgment reluctantly, not as a choice between
valued ideals, but as a necessary surrender of a genuinely
valued ideal to what they saw as overwhelming practical
problems. That they were so easily convinced of these non-
existent practical problems seemed not so much the result
of any conspiracy of efficiencyeminded businessmen as the
fact that, as if they still lived in the 19th century, their
vision of practicable alternatives was limited to the systems
prevailing in the towns and cities next door. If information
is as vital in choosing a system of government as it is in
determining the struggle over the smaller decisions of the
budget, then the advance of education and the social sciences
themselves may prove to be as much of a determinant of
political change as Ellul's technology. If this is true,
when there are vague strivings for democratization in towns
like Excelsior City again, the circulation of studies like

this one may be the catalyst for change.

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122

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX I
Methods

126

APPENDIX I

On the Validity and Efficiency of the
Method of Controlled Comparison

Controlled comparisons are less familiar in sociology
than in anthrOpolOgy, where social action is more likely to
be described as part of a detailed and complex system.

When dealing with a strange and locally encapsulated culture,
it is taken for granted that such descriptions are possible

and necessary. In the more familiar home territory usually
occupied by the sociologist, it is usually assumed that such
preliminary descriptions are unnecessary and unfruitful,

and that more can be gained by selecting indices of presumed
systems of action and immediately testing possible correlations
in a broad sample of cases.

The inherent dangers of this leap to quantification have
been outlined by a number of writers. Essentially, these
various warnings center around the problem of validity:
whether or not the convenient "indices" used in the study
do refer to the real actions or systems that are supposedly
being correlated, and whether or not the bit of social
action being studied is really a separable aspect of social
reality. Sometimes, as in Lazarsfeld's and Merton's classic
demonstrations, "latent" classes and concepts can be re-
covered through statistical manipulation, but it must be

the more common experience that the data of the broad and

127

shallow survey are incapable of representing these more valid
classes and concepts under any kind of ex post facto manip-
ulation. The essential Observations were simply not included
in the survey in the first place. In these instances, this
highly technical method has been inefficient in the true
sense of the word; it has been wasteful of resources in
prOportion to the progress made towards a desirable. goal.

The problem of this monograph is a good example of a
case where a broad and shallow survey would have been of
little use. A comparison based on the most easily Obtain-
able facts of the political life of these towns would have
been grossly misleading; on most counts, the towns would
have appeared to be exactly alike, and no multiplication of
numbers of cases would have changed this appearance.
Absolute voting 1evels--frequently used as an index of
"participation"--were not different from town to town.
Nor were the absolute levels of public spending. Obvious
differences, such as the occupation and income background
of the Officers, might have been misinterpreted as evidence
of less "deference" to high occupational status in the New
England area. An example of an actual study using town
meeting systems, in which this kind Of error was made, is
William Gamson's "Rancorous Conflict in Community Politics".l
There, greater participation in communfly affairs was
connected with greater "rancour". But "rancour" was measured
by easily obtained interviews with town Officers alone; and

it never occurred to the researchers that what they might

 

1op. cit.

128
really be measuring was the town officers' ability to
perceive rancour in the more communicative town system, or
the existence Of "rancour" as one facet of a political
life that was livelier on all counts. Nor did it occur
to them that the different systems might encourage different
kinds Of rancour--the participatory system, the excitement
over issues themselves; the non—participatory, rancour
over groups and persons dimly perceived to be powers in the
situation.

Granted that the problem of the large-scale, shallow
survey is that it is liable to create only an illusion of
an acquaintance with the patterns and causes of social
action, the case study method is its polar Opposite in
virtues and flaws. Sure of its intimate Observations of a
system in action, it is highly vulnerable to the charge that
its findings are unique and.mon-generalizable, and that it
is incapable of distinguishing true from false interrelated—
ness in the seamless web of its observations in the single
case. The Obvious and recommended solution is a synthesis,
a research pattern that utilizes both.methods in prOper
sequence, the eventual survey and correlations growing out
of a long accumulation of case studies.

If this were the usual methods text, the essay would
stOp here. But in this quickly sketched synthesis, major
problems have been buried, problems that are made Obvious
only if we turn from a contrast of the case study and the

large-scale statistical analysis to a comparison of the

129
case study and an intermediate form, the controlled
comparison.

The difference between these two methods is not clear
to most researchers, and.the blurring that takes place in
casual descussion is such that sociologists are liable to
attribute exactly the same functions to both of them; that
they "provide descriptions" and "suggest hypotheses". This
blurring of functions has been primarily encouraged by the
purveyors of single case studies, who, in their efforts to
make their studies seem useful, lean heavily on the
assertion that their studies "suggest hypotheses." In
fact, taken by themselves, they can do nothing of the kind.
Hypotheses do emerge from these case studies only because
of the fact that both the reader and researcher of the case
study are actually seeing the case study against a mental
background of other case studies or accumulated personal
experiences, against which the new material is constantly
being checked and compared. Take, as an example, the widely
read Tally's Corner% which.makes the standard case for its
existence--that it suggests hypotheses. There is, in fact,
nothing in the life histories of the men Of Tally's Corner
to suggest that their distinctive social relationships are
due to poverty, race, immigration patterns, or any other
particular combination of the host of facts that make up
the environment of their lives. The "suggestions" emerge
in Liebow's mind, and the reader's, as they compare the
emerging life histories with what they know Of the life

lElliot Liebow, Tally's Corner.

l5O
histories of other men in other circumstances. It is from
these uncontrolled and impressionistic mental comparisons
that the hypotheses really arise.

Seen in this light, the function of the controlled
comparison is clear. It takes another vital step in social
research out of the realm of guesswork and intuition. It
is not the case study that is the preliminary step to factor
analysis. The case study, ideally, should be followed by
the controlled comparison of case studies, the more the
better, before any large scale survey and factor analysis is
begun. In attitude studies, where the system being investi-
gated is often an ideology, or some aspect of the individual
personality, this function is often served by the preliminary
series of comparable, Open—ended, in-depth interviews. In
the study of social systems, the comparable step is the
controlled comparison of case studies of the system in question.

There is one final area of confusion between the case
study and the controlled comparison that should be dealt
with here. At this point, one might be tempted to conclude
that it is, after all, the controlled comparison and not the
case study that "suggests hypotheses." In fact, it is the
case study added to the background of the reader and research-
er which "suggests hypotheses"; the controlled comparison
does more than suggest. With a single case study we know
only that in one instance, Factor "A" was associated with
Factor "B", in a context of "C", "D", "E", "F", and etc..

In the controlled comparison, even with only two cases, we

know surely that at least in these instances, when no other

151
Observed factor differed, "A" and "B".QlQ.YQEZ together.
Although a discovery of the reasons for this co—variation
would require many more instances, at least one instance
Of co-variation has been solidly recorded.

In the case of this particular study, how much has
been established through this controlled comparison? Have
we established only that in this one instance, "A and B did
vary together?" Consider the usual possibilities: that this
observed variation was "accidental", or wholly the result of
other factors not observed or considered; that the Observed
variation Of "A" with "B" did indicate an actual interdepen—
dency, but one that could occur only in the context of factors
"C", "D", and "E"; and conversely, that with variation in
factors "C", "D", and/or "E", the relationship between "A"
and "B" might be stronger.

In the case of this particular study, there are several
important considerations. First, it is important that the
differences between the two towns were established not on
the strength of single instances, but after consideration
of many. For example, not on one issue, but on numbers of
issues, the residents of Chatterton were better informed
and more likely to form separate income-group Opinion
clusters; not on one, but on many occasions over the years,
the residents of Chatterton had been more likely to sign and
circulate petitions. In effect, then, dealing with these
separate issues, we had not one "instance of variation",

but many. The possibility that each variation was caused

152
by a different and unrecognized factor is ocrrespondingly
decreased, and it becomes more plausible that these
constant instances are part of a stable system of inter-
dependencies. Secondly, this study has dealt not only with
the towns as units, but with individuals. Contrasting
individuals with each other, within the towns, correlations
have been made that point to certain parts of the political
system as of particular importance in creating the Observed
high levels of participation and protest: in particular,
the information system. As a result, there is additional
assurance that the Observed differences between the towns
are part of a stable, interdependent political system; and
in addition, we know that some parts of that system are of
much higher importance than others.

In short, there is relatively little possibility that
the differences between Chatterton and Excelsior City were
created by varying combinations Of "other" factors, or that
these images of contrasting, internally interdependent
political systems could be made to dissolve into a mist of
illusions.

In the case of this study, there are two areas of
uncertainty. One stems from the way the matching had to
be done in this case; the other is inherent in single
controlled comparisons. The first is the uncertainty as to
the relative effect of the legal political system itself,
and the effect Of the political, social, and economic history

of the region as a whole, in creating attitudes favorable to

155
that system's survival. HOW'mUCh does it matter, for example,
that elected Officers and businessmen in this town identify
their political system as "the town meeting system", and a
peculiar credit to the region in which they live? Only if
we could find a transplanted "new town meeting" in another
region--and I have not yet heard of one--would it be possible
to find out.

The second uncertainty has to do with the unknown effect
of all the factors that were held constant when the two towns
were compared. For example, to what extent are the democratic
effects of this political system limited to towns of between
2,000 and 5,000, which are largely industrial, and in which
no more than one-third of the inhabitants are commuting to
work? On this point, the single controlled comparison is of
no particular help. But if different types of matched pairs
were added, the degree of generality of the findings would
not only be established, but, according to several methodolo-
gists, would be established with greater certainty than through
the use of the more usual methods. The use Of matched pairs
of towns or cities, according to Herbert Barry and R.G.
D'Andrade,l would maximize the independence of each pair
of communities in relation to the similarity between the
members of each pair. "This method thereby represents a

partial solution to the statistical problem first pointed

 

lHerbert Barry, III "Cross-Cultural Research with Matched

Pairs of Societies", The Journal of Social Psychology, 1969,
79. R. Narroll, and R.G. D'Andradeg"Two Further Solutions
to Galton's Problem", American AnthrOpologist, 1965, 65.

154

out by Galton and more recently emphasized by Narroll, that
the various interrelationships among human societies (or,
certainly, communities in one country) invalidate the use
of statistical tests based on the assumption of independent
cases."1 The choice of a controlled comparison, then,
functions not only as an instance of Observed variation,
but as the first set Of cases in an eventual series.

* * * * * *

As a method of reaching valid conclusions, the
controlled comparison is highly recommended. But in the
real world Of research, particularly in the case of communi—
ty studies, how practical is it? If the experience of this
researcher is any guide, the recommendation on that score is
somewhat less than enthusiastic. First, there is the general
problem of the extent to which properly matched and contrasted
communities can be found in the real world. Clusters of
culture traits which are not necessarily functionally inter-
related may in fact seldom occur outside of that cluster,
owing to the peculiar historical circumstances of their
origin. The various forms of the town meeting, for example,
do not occur outside of that Old, well-educated and self-
conscious region called New England, with its peculiar
economical and social history. Secondly, there are problems
of resources, that compound the original matching problem.
In this study, a better match than a town in Michigan would

have been a town in upper New York State, a much more

 

lHerbert Barry, III, Op. cit., p. 26.

155
comparable region; but the author had no Opportunity to be
in New York for the requisite time. Hence, Michigan, and
more problems of comparability. In at least one instance,
the choices were a veritable Scylla and Charybdis. Once
the choice of a controlled comparison was made, the best
use of resources dictated the choice of small towns that
might be examined carefully, rather than large towns that
would have to be studied by hasty and unpersuasive methods.
Too, since there were a greater number of small towns within
driving distance of home base, the chances of finding
acceptable matches were higher. But, alas, the sketchy
information given by the U.S. Census becomes positively
minimal when dealing with communities below 2,500 population;
and all Of the available small communities in Vermont had
been just below 2,500 in 1959. The following is a quick
sketch of some of the desperate strategems I adOpted in my
efforts to avoid being left with one useless, unmatchable
case study. First, since there were more facts known about
the possible matches in Michigan than in Vermont, I decided
to do the study in Vermont first, establish that community
as known, and then select the best match from the pool of
candidates in Michigan. In order to reduce the chances of
selecting something peculiar and unique in Vermont, however,
I still had to find out as much as possible about the town
before entering. I was particularly concerned about
commuting. For the Michigan towns, the U.S. Census pre-

sented figures on the kind of industry in which each person

156
in the community worked, and since the Directorygof Michigan
Manufacturers gave at least rough figures on the numbers of
persons employed by local industries, one could make a
reasonable guess as to the numbers of local peOple who worked
(a) at each local industry, and (b) out of town. In Vermont,
the corresponding directory was almost useless, and there
were no census figures. Fortunately, the state government
had recently completed an excellent survey of local industries,
giving the number of people (drawn from unknown localities)
working at each. The tentative match was made by combining
this information with the U.S. Census information on the
number of peOple commuting from the country to the city,
making three precarious assumptions en route: that country-
to-city rates could be converted to average town—tO-city rates;
that the town's distance from the closest city would to some
extent determine the number of commuters; and finally, that
the towns under study would draw few workers from outside
themselves. Owing, probably, to luck, these initial estimates
proved largely correct. But, given the circumstances of the
study, I had no way of knowing this until the long process of
the survey in both towns was complete, by which time I was
Operating on a mixture of prayer and stoicism. As another
example, take the problem of ethnicity and religion, one
of particular importance in the generation of sustained
conflict between income interest groups. The delicacy of
the U.S. Census is such that questions of religious affilia-

tion are not raised at all, race designations are limited

157
to "white" vs. "non—white", and immigration statistics tell
us only that a certain percentage were born abroad, or were
of "mixed or foreign parentage". Membership figures for
churches can be obtained through central church headquarters,
but only with a good deal of planning and patience, and even
then, as with figures on commuting, there is no indication
of whether the communicants live inside or outside of the
town's political boundaries. In the case of this study,
estimates were made by looking at the size of church buildings,
looking for church schools, looking at the names in local
telephone books, and prowling around the town looking at
the color and shape of peOples' faces--with the totally
unexpected and irritating result that there were more
Catholics in the Vermont town than there were in the Michigan
match. Fortunately, these relatively Old stock Catholics
turned out to be indistinguishable from the rest of the
pOpulation, so far as their economic status and local
political actions were concerned, but the initial discovery,
at the end of months of research, was a nasty shock. Finally,
there was the inevitable matching failure--the generally
higher level of education in New England small towns--that
probably resulted from the same complex of historical facts
that preserved the town meetings in New England in the first
place. Subsequent analysis made it quite clear that educational
matches were simply unobtainable, with the result that every
statistic in the study had to be corrected for education.

(See Special Appendix, "The Educated New Englanders".)

158

At this point, the practical problems in the matching
of towns should be clear enough. Some of them, having to
do with the interrelated origins of institutions, are in-
evitable; others occur because of a general dearth of vital
statistics, and become much worse for the lone researcher
with a low budget for travel.

Does all this mean that the controlled comparison is
generally impractical in community studies? The decision
depends on two aspects of the research problem. If the
major factors involved in the research question can be ade-
quately represented by easily available statistics, and if,
conversely, the social units involved--communities, organi-
zations, etc.--are uncharted wildernesses, full of unknown and
possibly influential "other factors", then the controlled
comparison becomes ridiculously expensive in relation to
the slight statistical advantages Obtained. The best thing
to do is to deal with as many cases as possible, using
standard statistical methods. On the other hand, if the
major factors are easily represented, and large numbers
of social units are charted well enough to make additional
field work unnecessary, controlled comparisons will be easy
and statistically advantageous.l And finally, as in the
case of this study, if questions of validity are primary;

if a question can best be approached by an intimate examination

 

lHerbert Barry's article on the link between alcoholism and

independence training belOngs here. Op. cit.

159
of cases, then, with all of its difficulties, the controlled

comparison of case studies is the necessary choice.

Social Units Studied

1. possible relevant 2. many possible
factors well known relevant factors
and indicated. poorly known

and/or indicated.
Research question

 

 

 

1. NO validity controlled controlled
problems comparison useful comparison
statistically inefficient
2. Problems of Controlled comparison of case studies
validity best method.

 

 

 

140

The Survey Method

Problem 1: What unit was to be interviewed? If voting-age
individuals were taken, I would be comparing women with.men
in unforeseen prOportions. Given the known pressure towards
marital and household solidarity on political ideology, it
seemed that the safest thing to do would be to take a sample
of household groups, treating each group of kin or pseudo-kin

living together as the basic unit to be sampled.

Problem 2: Who was to be the representative of the group?
Various studies of suburban local politics reveal a frequent
take-over of local politics by the wife; but since the towns
studied were, if anything, "blue—collar suburbs", it seemed
safe to assume that even if the usually busy men had less
Opportunity to learn about politics than their wives, they
would usually dominate discussions. On balance, more would
be gained by comparing "heads Of households" than by com-

paring the more easily interviewed wives.

Problem45: What should be the sampling method? Random

 

sampling would avoid problems created by geographical
uniformities in the arrangment Of houses, but it would
frequently result in the over-sampling Of neighborhood

groups, who might have unusually homogenous Opinions.

Since the towns sampled were old, with haphazard numbers of
houses on each.block, and with very few multi—family dwellings,

it was decided that it would be safe to deal with a fixed—

141
digit sample, selected by walking along each street and counting

mailboxes.

Problem 4: At what point should newcomers be excluded on
the basis of ignorance? Since the turnover in these towns
was small, no great group would be included in the survey by
adOpting liberal criteria. And since a residence of at
least six months would allow voting in the most recent
election, this was adOpted as a criterion, giving the new—
comers a chance to show whether their newness was more
important in their activity rate than their education or

occupation level.
Results 7

The representivity of the sample: In the case of the Michigan
town, much of the data could be checked for rough comparability
to the U.S. census data taken some years earlier. In the

case of the Vermont town, where less census data was available,
figures could be checked for at least education and age.

If the probable incomes and actual occupations and ages of
"refusals" and "ineligibles" are taken into account, the

survey was at least as accurate as the census had been in
representing education, incomes, occupations and ages in

the Michigan town, and accurate at least for education and

age in the Vermont town.

The size of the sample: In the Michigan town 100 contacts
were made; in the Vermont town, 92. 8% and 9% of the persons

contacted were new in town and ineligible. 5% and 5% were

142

either insane or bedridden. Out of 92 able and eligible
contacts in the Michigan town, 85% were interviewed; out of
84 able and eligible contacts in the Vermont town, 85% were
interviewed.

On the basis of the sample, it was estimated that there
were about 620 group households in the Vermont town, and
about 275 single individual households. Of this total universe,
approximately 10% of the heads of the households were recorded
by occupation and age in the survey. Of the estimated able
and eligible population of household heads, approximately
10% were interviewed at length. Comparable figures were

achieved in the slightly larger Michigan town.

A note on those who refused to be interviewed

Of eligible contacts, 12% and 15% either refused outright
or were always "busy". In both towns, they were predominantly
the poor and the Old. Some lived in.shaCks like the Vermont
man who regularly came fuzzily home from work after a stOp
in the New York state bar, and cheerfully told the inter—
viewer, "I wouldn't be any good to you, dear, I would just
tell you anything to make you happy." More typical were
the Old living in houses that once had.been pretty, even
grand, but were now falling inexorably inward upon their
owners. Some of these came out onto the porch to be inter—
viewed, but others retreated suspiciously within, protecting
themselves from the possibility of an unpleasant exposure

of their circumstances.

 

145
In the Vermont town, one small businessman and one
teacher were "too busy". In the Michigan town, one large
business manager and one small businessman were "too busy",

and one Methodist minister was deeply suspicious.

144

Supplementary Data and Notes on Methods

Note: Data are arranged by their occurrence in the text,
and except for the first section, are preceeded by the exact
page number of the discussion in the text to which they refer.

I. Supplement to "the two towns"
Stablllty Chatterton Excelsior City

% of respondents born
in town 27.1 26.5

% returned after working
elsewhere 4.5 __-_

% "non-natives" resident
at least 20 years 50.0 55.8

% "non-natives" resident
at least 10 years 18.6 11.8

Soc1al Integration Chatterton Excelsior City

% of respondents who have
relatives in town they
visit 75 a 76

To compare "social integration", each respondent was given
a "social integration" score. For each separate household
of town relatives visited, the respondent was given one
point. For every organization attended in town, the

respondent was given two points. The following comparison

 

resulted: Chatterton Excelsior City
Scoring O, l or 2 28% 22%
Scoring 5, 4, 5 or 6 57% 48%
Scoring 7, 8 or 9 54% 50%

(Scale divided according
to natural breaks.)

145
Age of respondents

U.S. Census data gave comparable age ranges for the two
towns. Collected survey data agreed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

% in Age Group Chatterton Excelsior City
19-54 19% 25%
55-65 59% 57%
65 plus 25% 20%
Organizations
groups affiliated with
churches: %'attending—- Chatterton Excelsior City
Catholic 9% 5%
Methodist 5% 5%
Congregational 5% --—-
Baptist ‘ ---- 1%
Masons: % attending—- 9% 12%
Rotary, Shrine, hObby
clubs, etc. 10% 16%
Chamber of Commerce,
aIld JOCO'S 400 1%
Social Service: Fire
Company, etc. 1W0 11%
Veterans' organizations 21% 5%

(Excelsior City's
American Legion met in
combination with a nearby
town, and was not counted.
It should have been.)
Union membership-—
(% of work force)

unskilled or semi—skilled 25% 50%
skilled 6% 17%

Ethnic Estimates (methods)

Chatterton's Town;Report provided lists of births, deaths
and marriages, including place of birth for individuals
named. Estimates of distant ethnic origin were also based
on origins of last names listed in the telephone book.

146

 

Religion % of churchrgoers
Catholic Cong. Meth. Baptist Episc. Luth.
Chatterton 46% 18% 18% 14% 4% —-—
Excelsior City 29% 19% 52% 5% 5% 5%

Catholics made up 29% of the church—goers in Excelsior
City and about 46% of church-goers in Chatterton. What
with the known impact of religious solidarities on local
politics, this might have created serious problems,

were it not for the facts that (a) church-goers were a
distinct minority in both towns—-40%F-and that (b) the
larger group of Vermont Catholics was scattered haphazardly
through the town's area, and was an exact microcosm of

the town's diStribution Of occupations and income.

Occupations
Using the most easily separable groups, and ranking the

retired at their original level, this was the distri-
bution Of occupations:

 

 

Chatterton Excelsior City
Business, professional,
teachers, technical-- 56% 21%
Foremen, Office workers,
sales clerks, skilled—— 22% 56%
Factory workers, janitors-- 42% 42%

If the figures included only those presently working
or looking for work, the results were:

 

 

Chatterton Excelsior City
5 1% ’ 1600
25% 45%
46% 42%

Respondents were ranked according to charts provided

by R. Centers in "Social Class, Occupation, and Imputed
Belief", American Journal of Sociologyi LVIII (May 1955),
p. 546. The rank order in this article takes into
account the fact that the public is in only approximate
agreement on the relative positions of occupations.

The grouping above divides the occupations along the
lines of clearest demarcation.

Education——See special Appendix, "The Educated New Englanders".

 

147
The wrong Side of the Tracks

When asked about possible bias from town officers, the
residents of the Michigan town are far more likely than the
residents of the Vermont town to speak in terms Of
favoritism to areas of town. In order to investigate the
cause, a chart was made of the income composition of each
locally identified part of town. The results shed some
light on the factors affecting perceptions of what are
"better'and "worse" sides.

The disadvantaged "across the tracks" sections in both
towns are indeed poorer than other areas on the whole, but
they hold a surprising number of high-income peOple as well.
In both "across the tracks" areas, while around 70% of the
heads of families are making under $8,000, 7% in the Vermont
and 19% in the Michigan area are making $12,000 a year and
over. When the supposedly "poor" section in each town is
compared to the entire remainder of town on the better side
of the tracks, the differences are small. In the rest of
the Vermont town, 65% of the heads of families are making
under $8,000 a year--a difference of only 5%F-; and in the
rest of the Michigan town, 60%. Clearly, the symbolic
effect Of the tracks is more important than the actual
distribution of wealth.

Interestingly, when a chart is prepared showing what
percentages of the highrincome group live in the various
parts of town, only 15% (Michigan) and 20% (Vermont) of
them live in the small areas of town that are labelled the
"silk stocking district" and where the "high mucky—mucks
live." Indeed, in the Michigan town, 46.2% of those
making over $12,000 a year are living on "the wrong side of
the tracks." The small "best" area of the two towns deserves
its reputation because of two features: first, the relative
prOportions of rich and poor living in those areas, and
secondly, their attractiveness to those high—income business-
men and professionals whose income and authority are particu-
larly visible to the local residents because they work and
own businesses in town.

In short, even in these small towns, only the most
visible differences in wealth and power leave their images
behind. Railroad tracks, local business and their owners,
areas of new housing in predominantly old towns--these make
a difference. The actual distribution of wealth, the
considerable numbers of people who draw high salaries in
supervisory positions in other towns and cities-~these are
only vaguely perceived, if at all.

148
Page in text

p. 42--Egalitarianism

Individuals were asked if they could think of
anyone whose Opinion they respected on local affairs
who made less money, or had less education then them—
selves. They were scored on this question only if
they had earlier replied that they did talk about local
affairs at least occasionally; and they were scored
separately on the number of peOple mentioned and the
"depth" of the differences between the respondent and
the people whose Opinion he claimed to respect. They
were also given a point if they made "vague egalitarian
assertions" in reSponse to the question.

"Educational egalitarianism" was scored by giving
each respondent one point for each step down made in
the following scale:

. 8th grade, plus or minus

. high school graduate

. college contact (for at least one year)
. college graduate

PNNRJF‘

The score was then divided by the number of people
mentioned to give him an average "depth" score.

The same procedure was followed in scoring for
occupational "egalitarianism." The four levels were:

1. laborers, most "service" workers, gas station
attendants, mechanics, store clerks and the
retired.

2. Operatives, truck drivers, less successful
craftsmen.

5. successful craftsmen, skilled workers, foremen,
government clerks.

4. professionals, technical workers, successful
small businessmen, managers of stores and
factories, salesmen with franchised stores.

Differences between this scale and the "occupational
prestige" scale used in grouping occupations when
dealing with participation rates reflected an effort
on my part to make the scale more nearly represent
income and authority rather than occupational values
and educational qualifications. See the appendix
"The Other Side of the Tracks" for confirmation Of
these assumptions.

Since "vague egalitarian assertions" would come
easiest for those on the bottom, a respondent was
given zero credits if he were in the lowest education

149
§

and income category himself; one credit if he were
either a high school graduate or in category two or
three on the income-authority scale; three credits
if the respondent was either college contact or first
level in income and authority; and four credits if
the respondent had reached college level above and
was first category in income and authority.

Of those who discussed local politics, those who
had any kind of "egalitarianism" score at all came
to 5D% in Chatterton and 28% in Excelsior City:
(19 out of 61, and 17 out of 60). Of those who
discussed local politics, the percentage who made
"vague egalitarian assertions" and their educational-
economic positions were again, almost exactly alike.

Egalitarian Assertions

Scores reached: O l 2 5 4
Chatterton 21% 5% 2% 2% 2%
Excelsior City 20% 2% 5% 2% 2%

Very broadly, without distinguishing between types
of elites, controls for education revealed this still
very similar pattern:

% having any "egalitarianism" score

 

 

Excels10r City Chatterton total in
8th grade, plus total ed. class
8th grade, plus 10% (40) 11% (55)
high school grad. 56% (29) 26% (17)
college contact 66% (6) 50% (10)

87% (8)

Dividing "egalitarian relations" into its two possible
components, there were exactly the same results. For
example, if results were controlled by education levels,
the number of education "line-crossers" or "egalitarians
was the same in both towns. Of high school graduates,
Excelsior City had 7% "crossers", and Chatterton 17%.
Of respondents with "college contact", Excelsior City
had 66% "crossers" and Chatterton 40%. Considering

the small numbers involved, differences were not
significant. Controlling by income—authority levels,
the number of "crossers" of income-authority lines

was equally comparable.

I!

150
Page in text
p. 42—-Elitism

Citizen samples in both towns were asked:
"Who do you think ought to make the major decisions
in your town (city) government?"

(a) the people who have the largest financial
investments in town

(b) the most educated peOple in town

(c) the elected officials

(d) the people directly?

"Do you feel that the people who have the largest
financial investments in the town should have more
influence than the average citizen?"

"How about the most educated peOple?"

 

Other questions offered additional opportunities for
the respondent to express himself on the same point.
For example, many respondents, when asked their
Opinion of the form of local government, or the
possible bias of town Officers, took the Opportunity
to talk instead about their fear of the domination of
businessmen. Wherever these Opinions were encountered,
they were taken into account. ‘

On the basis of responses, the samples were divided
into four categories in relation to each different
"elite". There were those who expressed fear of the
elite'sinfluence in government; those who were
resistant; those who would approve of that elite's
greater influence; and finally, at the farthest
extreme, those who thought that the elite should make
the "major decisions in city (town) government.

The results had very little to do with what is
usually called "elitism". The respondents in this
survey were not expressing generalized attitudes towards
all elites. If anything, attitudes towards economic
and educational elites tended to polarize. For example,
in the Vermont town, a little less than half of the
sample (51 out Of 70) had definitely pro- or unusually
anti-elite sentiments. Of these, thirty-one, 77% had
different attitudes towards the two different elites.
In the Michigan town, there were 54 out Of 75 with
definite pro- or anti-elite opinions, and of those,

91% assigned these elites to different moral spheres.
In fact, there were in these samples no more than 5

to 9% Who were consistently "pro-elite" to any degree-—
and if, in order to be considered "elitist", an
individual had to want to give more decision-making
power to town officials as well, there were no more
than two or three such individuals in the entire
sample, both towns included.

151
Page in text
p. 42--Elitism, continued
Without exploration, these were the results:

Economic Elite

 

 

 

. anti- resistant pgpy ver ro
Chatterton 19% 64% 15% 5% (70)
Excelsior City 15% 51% 11% 4% (75)

Educational Elite

anti- resistant 'ppgg ver ro
Chatterton 4% 74% 20% 1% (7O)
Excelsior City 1% 55% 44% 1% (75)

In both towns, many more respondents were worried
about the possible influence of business interests
than were worried about the educated, despite the
fact that both towns had gone through bitter battles
over school millage the summer of the survey. It
was also obvious that a vast majority in both towns
felt that economic elites should have no special
influence in town affairs. Only the educational
elite, and only in Excelsior City, came close to
getting a vote of confidence.

 

A.Note on Regional Attitudes Toward the Poor

Since at the time of the survey, the Vermont town
was still involved in the administration of a partly
locally funded welfare program, some questions were
included to indicate attitudes towards the local poor.
It was originally anticipated that involvement with
the program would have some effect on attitudes.

The Vermont town is indeed different from the
Michigan town; the Vermonters are more sympathetic.

As it turns out, however, this has nothing to do with
the local welfare program, or Governor Hoff's anti-
poverty campaign. It is instead correlated with the'
fact that the Vermonters who have not completed high
school think of the state as a poor place to find
work, while the comparable respondents in Michigan
are convinced that jobs are available. In fact, there
are equal numbers Of poor in both towns, and.Vermont
has been experiencing a small boom; people's
impressions of their region's economic fate may have
more to do with the presence or absence of large
cities than with the actual employment rate.

152
Page in text

p. 45-—Voting

With no special credit given the Vermont town for
their Opportunity to vote on details, and with the
resulting figures controlled for education and access
problems, the results were an impressive tribute to
the determining power of the factors involved, consid-
ering the muchediminished numbers in the samples.

% attaining a "high" or "medium" voting frequengy
8TH grade education Some high school h.s. graduates

or less (commuters only) (commuters only)
(retired only)
Chatterton 50% (lO/20) 45% (5/7) 57% (4/7)
Excelsior City 50% (9/18) 40% (4/10) 61% (ll/l8)

p. 54—-Roads

Road repair does correlate with occupational—
prestige, not only in Excelsior City, for Obvious
reasons, but also in Chatterton, where the town
manager is selectively responding to complaints in
making his uni-lateral decisions.

 

 

Repairs % of occupational-prestige group with
"bad repairs"
Chatterton Excelsior City
Business, etc. 4% (25) 12% (16)
Clerks, etc. 15% (15) 21% (24)
Operatives, etc. 50% (25) 25% (50)

% of occupational-prestige group with
complaints about roads

 

 

Chatterton Excelsior City
Business, etc. 27% (15) 25% (16)
Clerks, etc. 44% (9) 48% (21)
Operatives, etc. 57% (19) 18% (28)

Since both towns were compact, and were internally
uniform in geography, factors of engineering could be
eliminated. Numbers of peOple living on each road
could be taken into account, and information on state
aid was easily available. Areas of new construction,
and the few people living in the outlying rural areas
of the Vermont town were eliminated. The categories
used were simple; regardless of the type of road, it
was classed as being in "good" or "bad" repair. To
qualify as "bad", a gravel road had to be muddy in

153

wet weather or full of holes; a paved road had to have
pot-holes, either unrepaired or poorly patched.

Obviously, the Chatterton government is more re—
distributive not because its officers react to occu—
pational—prestige in any unusual way, but because its
payment system is typical of governments rather than
businesses.

A preliminary investigation of types of roads
revealed that, making allowances for all interfering
factors, types of roads were distributed entirely
according to the number of epople living on each road.
No amount of joggling would fit the reality into a
pattern of discrimination in favor of occupational
prestige.

p.64--Information

% ignorant on each issue (Number of cases in parentheses)

 

 

 

 

 

Education "Police" "Roads, names" "houses, rec."
less than high school
Excelsior City 62% (40) 5% (40) 50% E40)
Chatterton 17% (55) 8.5% (55) 17% 55)
high school or more
Excelsior City 62% (29) 5.5% (29) 58% E29)
Chatterton 17.5% (17) 11% (17) 24% 17)
some college
Excelsior City 67% (6) 17% (6) 55% (6)
Chatterton 0% (9) 0% 9) 11% (9)

College graduates were not included, since the Michigan
town had none that were in the sample.

p. 88—-Information and talking

At first, "talking" seemed to be stimulated by the
system of voting itself. Respondents were asked
whether they could remember talking about the three
test issues in the past year to anyone outside of the
members of their immediate household, but living
inside town. When controlled by education, the
Vermont town citizens were still considerably talkier.
However, this turned out to be entirely the result of
different levels of information in the two towns.

Of those who knew about the issues, the percentages
in each educational group who talked about them were
exactly the same from town to town.

154
Page in text
p. 95—-Wards as an alternative

47% of the Excelsior City respondents rejected
"wards" as an alternative; 40% of these because they
thought Excelsior City too small. 18% of the
Excelsior City residents had no Opinion at all.

p. 94--"social integration" and activity

To arrive at a scale of general "participation in
local politics", political acts were weighed accord-
ing to their presumed effectiveness. Occasional
talking about local affairs equalled one point;
frequent talking equalled two points, if the respon-
dent had talked about two of the test issues, at least.
If the respondent voted on representation or issues
during the past five years, he received four points;
if he voted the last time, eight points. Signing a
petition or voting on one of the test issues equalled
nine points-~or twelve, if the respondent did both.
If the respondent had an official position that was
of minor importance, he got 50 points; if he held a
major Office, 50. These points were assigned so that
a highly talkative person could.ppt_be considered as
much involved in politics as an actual voter. Signing
a petition was considered roughly twice as effective
as casting one vote, considering the system under
examination.

When comparing the two towns, adjustments were
made for the fact that the Excelsior City residents
did not have as many types of political action Open
to them.

 

I. 8th grade education, more or less

 

 

 

 

Excelsior City Chatterton
Aparticipation: low high low high
social low: 66% 55% (15) 80% 20% E10)
integration:med: 50% 50% (20) 62% 58% 16)

high: 58% 62% (8) 44% 55% (9)

II. High school graduates
. Excelsior City Chatterton

low: 52% 48% (7) 85% 17% (5)
med: 50% 70% (10) 50% 50% (4)
high: 45% 5w% (ll) 14% 86% (7)

155
III. "College contact" and college graduates

In these categories, the Excelsior City sample was
either too small or non—existent. The Chatterton
samples, of 10 individuals with "college contact"
and 18 with four years of college, split into groups
of four that were as nearly equal as possible, indi-
cating that at this level, the effects of social
integration were overwhelmed by the effects of edu—
cation in Chatterton as well.

Page in text

p. 95—-Information and protest
Knowledge of assessment:
none apparent poor better best

Chatterton accepting 70% 60% 42% 25%
critical 50% 40% 58% 75%
(50) (10) (12) (16)
Excelsior accepting 77% 50% 50% 50%
City critical 25% 50% 50% 50%
(55) (24) (8) (6)

Note: no attempt was made to measure the quality Of
information in the original questionnaire. These
judgments were made on the basis of comments inci—
dental to other questions about taxes. Hence the
title "none apparent".

p. 97--Trust in officers

55% in the Vermont town, and 58%% in the Michigan
town felt that their Officers were fair. When atti-
tudes towards the tax assessor were included, the
Vermonters were much.more suspicious, but this had
to do with recent events. 24% Of the suspicious
Vermonters felt that they "needed more information"
before saying whether or not the town officers were
fair; 9% of the suspicious residents of the Michigan
town gave this kind of answer.

Local and National "Powerlessness"

Answers to a "local sense of power" question were
scored according to the following scheme, an arrange—
ment suggested by the natural pattern of responses.

"High sense of power"--a definite "yes" when asked
is the respondent feels that he has some effect
on local decisions, with or without mention of
specific firm friendship with officers, occu-
pational sources of influence, etc.

156

Medium High--a more generally stated belief that
people would listen to the respondent, if he
tried.

Lowe-definitely, none.

Respondents were not thinking of variations in the
formal Opportunities offered by various types Of local
governments. Indeed, they were generally unaware of
these variations. People who answered definitely
"yes" were thinking in terms of prestige, influence,
and personal ties.

Generally, occupation level affects these scores
in similar ways in the two towns:

 

 

 

 

Excelsior City Chatterton
low confidence high low confidence high
Prof., etc. 69% 51% 60% 40%
Clerks, etc. 74% 26% 61% 95%
Operatives, etc. 80% 20% 76% 24%

As is immediately obvious, however, the residents
of the Vermont town remain on the high side, a
phenomenon partly explained by education. People with
past or present professional, technical and business
occupations in the Vermont town are much more likely
to have full college educations or college contact.
Respondents with "some college" in the Michigan town
are 60% "confident"; in the Vermont town they are
40% confident, being outclassed by the "full college"
group which are 75% confident. These last figures
suggest that the sense of being influential is a
limited quantity in both towns, and that the very
presence of large numbers of college graduates in the
Vermont town has a depressing effect on those who
have not quite made it through.

However, the Optomistic clerks and skilled workers
in Chatterton cannot be similarly explained. In
general, they are somewhat less well-educated than
their counterparts in Michigan, but more confident
that they will be listened to. Attempts to explain
this through "age", "time in town", "place of wor "
and "social integration" fail. The more confident
people are not noticeably high participators, either.
Since this is a minor phenomenon, the quest was
abandoned at this point. At a guess, it may be the
result of the prevalence of talk in the Vermont
town, combined with the lower occupational status
of town officers, both factors combining to make
more people feel as if access is possible.

 

157

An Attempt to Use the Seeman "powerlessness" scale

For a first check on intervening factors, such as
political ideology, membership in unions, etc., each indivi-
dual's local "sense of power" score was to be subtracted from
a comparable national "sense of power" score. This last
was the Seeman "powerlessness scale", minus a small propor-
tion of non—political items. ‘

Early analysis revealed that something had gone wrong.
Correlation between individual scores on the two scales was
poor, and When the national government scores were arranged
by occupational-prestige group, they actually ran in Opposite
directions in the two towns.

 

 

Excelsior City Chatterton
Occupational _
prestige: Optomistic Pessimistic Optomistic Pessimistic
High: 75% 25% 62% 59%
Medium: 80% 20% 66% 55%
Low: 46% 54% 72% 28%

The most likely explanation takes account of-the fact
that the Vermont survey was taken before the Presidential
election of 1968, and the Michigan survey just after. The
very vagueness of the scale made it a projective test for
any central feeling about the national government; and
after Nixon was elected, white-collar people felt more
optomistic, blue-collar people less.

 

AA

Q.1O

158
The Questionnaire

Have you ever been to one of the town meetings?

Did you ever vote in a local election? Which one?

(Or on the town budget for the year?)

When was the last time?

Which of these would you say interests you more, the
decisions made by your local government, or the decisions
made by the state government?

Which do you spend the most time talking about?

DO you ever worry about the results of a decision made
by the town government?

Do you ever get interested enough in one of these
local political problems to talk about it with someone
outside of the peOple in your own house?

I wonder if you could give me the names of the people
you have these conversations withe—the people whose
Opinions you have some respect for.

Usually, if you ask peOple about this, it turns out
that the peOple a person talks to and whose Opinion

he respects turn out to have about the same kind of
background as he does——and if there's any difference,
they make a little more money, or have a little more
education than he does. I'm interested in finding
exceptions to that rule. Can you think of anybody

in this group, whose Opinion you respect on local
politics, who is not doing as well financially as you

are? Which ones?

(If no answer). Why? Is it that you don't know, or
don't want to say? (If no names, get the number of
exceptions).

Can you think of anybody on this list who didn't go

as far in school as you did? (Etc., as above)

(State first selected issue for town.) Did you ever
happen to hear about that question? What did you

hear about it?

(if yes) How did you want that question to be decided?
(if yes) Did you try to do anything so that the question
would be decided your way?

through 20--Same probes for issues two and three.)
through 22--Questions on school bonds.)

What do you think of the (city council) (kind of town
meeting system you have) as a form of government?

WOuld you like to see any changes? Why?

Would you like to see it entirely done away with and
something else put in its place?

DO you feel that in this community people get more of

a chance to express themselves and influence their
government than they do in other communities in the
country? Or do you think it's about the same all over?

 

Q.55
Q-54

Q.55
Q.56

Q-57

Q.58

Q-59
Q.4O

Q.4l

159

Do you feel that the property tax in this town is high?

DO you think some people pay more than they ought to

have to pay?

Do you think some people pay less than they ought to?

If a person doesn't like the way his property has been

assessed, is it easy for him to complain and get some

attention paid to his problem?

Is there anybody in this town who would find it diffi-

cult to pay the property tax? Why?

Has anybody ever suggested revising the property tax

to make it easier on people who have low incomes?

Would you approve of the idea?

Do you think peOple who can't pay their taxes should

be allowed to vote?

Of all the responsibilities of town government, which

do you think is the most important? Where should the

money go first?

Is the town doing anything to help the poor here? Do

you think they're doing enough?

Do you feel that the town officers are working for

the good of the town as a whole, or to benefit parti-

cular groups in the town?

Who do you think should make the major decisions in

town government?

(a) the people who have the largest financial invest-
ments in the town?

(b) the most educated peOple in the town?

(c) the elected officials?

(d) the peOple directly?

DO you think that the people who have the largest

financial investments in the town should have more

influence on decisions than the average citizen?

(Same, for "most educated peOple".)

DO you feel that peOple like yourself have any actual

effect on decisions made by the town?

Is there anybody who has considerable influence in this

town who you feel would stand up for your interests?

Why?

(Q.42 through Q.55 were taken from the Seeman "powerlessness"
scale, op. cit.

(Q.56 and Q.57 were a short form of the question used by
William.Form and Joan Rytina, "Ideological Beliefs on the
Distribution of Power in the United States," American
Sociological Review, XXXIV, (February, 1969), 19-51.

DO you get town water here?

Are you on the town sewer system?

How do you feel about the way the town keeps up the
roads near your house? (apartment?

Are you renting, or is this your own house?

How many people are living here with you? Are you
supporting them all, or is someone else helping?

 

160

How long have you lived in this community?

How do you feel about living in this town?

What do you feel are the advantages and disadvantages
of living here?

Outside of the peOple in your own household, do you
have any relatives living in this community? (If yes)
Do you ever pay visits to any of them? How many
different families do you visit? How often?

DO you belong to any clubs or organizations or churches
that hold meetings here? Do you ever have time to
attend? About how often?

Could you tell me how old you are?

What was the last grade you attended in school?

What do you do for a living? Where?

How much money a person makes is a private matter, but
it would be helpful to me to know for statistical
reasons. Could you let me know which of these cate-
gories your yearly income would fit? After or before
taxes? (Categories went from "$1,000 to $2,999" up to
$15,000).

 

 

APPENDIX II

The Educated New Englanders

161

APPENDIX II
The Educated New Englanders

In New England, every citizen receives the elementary

notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover,

the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the

history of his country, and the leading features of its

Constitution. In the States of Connecticut and

Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man

imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a

person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.

So far as this investigation has been concerned only
with the effects of a particular kind of political system,
the factor of education has been only an impediment, to be
removed from the picture as rapidly as possible in order to
reveal underlying relationships. But if we descend to simple
description of the political life of the region, the educa-
tion factor plays a different part.

In the first stages of the study, in "the two towns",
important differences were unexpectedly discovered in the
education levels of similar size towns in.Vermont and
Michigan, up to the 5,600 population level. On the basis
of any number of other studies, we know the consequences of
education in citizen competence, sense of duty, and levels
of political activity. In the very small and local politi—
cal system studied here, education levels have these con-
sequences: first, the Vermonters have considerably higher

levels of talking, voting, and petitioning their officers,

and where this is not the result of greater Opportunities

 

1Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, op, cit., p. 404.

162

offered by the more participatory system, it is the result
of education. Secondly, the Vermonters are more confident
and optomistic that their citizen efforts will succeed. In
so far as this creates a distinctive political "mood", the
higher level of education in these southern Vermont towns
changes both the reality and the atmosphere of political
life so that it more closely approximates the ideal of the
democratic small town.1

The origins of this regional pattern of high education
may lie partly in New England's history of early establishs
ment of free schools and geographically accessible small
colleges. Especially for the Older generation, commuting
to school was easier in the New England region. But present
day migration patterns are involved as well. In southern
Michigan, the prOportion of professional jobs available in
a community correlates perfectly with the percentage of
adults with a bachelor's degree. Supply and demand react
to each other in a perfect economist's model. But in central
and southern Vermont, there is wide dispersion, with.many

of the towns of all sizes showing a relative excess of

college degrees.1 Of the thirteen Vermont populations charted,

 

1Data were plotted for "non-farm rural populations" in

central and southern Vermont, and in four counties of
southecentral Michigan, chosen for their relative distance
from large cities. In addition, all Vermont towns and a
sample of Michigan towns (14) up to 10,000 population were
charted, excluding college towns and towns in which the
foreign-born amounted to more than 7%F—which had the intended
effect of excluding several northern towns in Vermont and
Michigan that were high in recent Canadian immigration.

165
seven deviate from the straight line of the Michigan data,

five towards an excess of education.

Adults with 4 years

of college
15_ __
a
Vt?!» on?
p D a? a.
VCrmu-i- Data. ' Q.-

 

 

O 5 10 15 2O

 

% employed at the "professional" level
(definition of U.S. Census)

In the case Of the small towns studied here, the
"college educated" in the Michigan town are predominantly
the young who have not yet finished their college education,
and are working in order to go back to school. In the
Vermont town, they are almost a natural distribution.

This pattern may be entirely the result of the
relative distances young educated Vermonters may have
to travel in order to reach jobs appropriate to their
talents.1 This is not a migration study, and without

considerable further investigation, no definitive answer

 

1And, in some of the most southern towns, the recent influx

of retirees from higheincome jobs in the New York and Boston
area.

164
can be given. But from this one microcosmic study, there is
a suggestion that other factors are at work as well.

Neither town attracts "outsider" retirees, other than
farmers moving into town from the surrounding countryside.
But the retired of the Vermont town include a type non-
existent in the Michigan town: those who were born in town,
spent successful working lives elsewhere, and then returned
for their old age.

What does the Vermont town have that keeps the younger
educated people with it, and has brought the retired back
home? At one point in the interview, all of the respondents
were asked what they thought of their town, whether they
would move out of it for a better job, and what were its
advantages and disadvantages. Their answers pointed two ways.

First, there were the diffuse protestations Of love for
the community, that were discussed in the chapter, "The
Inhibited Elite". Secondly, there was the "outdoor life".
Although the surroundings of the two towns were similar to
the casual Observor, 17% of the Vermonters cited surroundings
as an advantage; none of the Michigan town residents did.
Whenever an educated Vermonter talked about the advantages
of what the locals would call "huntin' and fishin'", he
would immediately follow it with a complaint about the lack
of cultural and educational facilities. But, significantly,

he never had a plan for moving out to find them elsewhere.

 

165
It's a good community. There's hunting, fishing, the
country life...although opportunities for education
are very poor. (No. 69)

I like small towns. I like to hunt and fish. There are
cultural disadvantages, Of course...(No. 51)

It's a rural community. Vermont is resort country.
The schools are above average...(No. 17)

I love it. I've been to the cities. This is a wonder—
ful place. Anywhere in New England is wonderful, out
of the cities. There's fishing, hunting, golf--we
don't have the theater, we don't have education, but

it's a nice place to live. (No. 14)

Chatterton itself is no beauty, but it is in Vermont,
and in New England. Famous resorts, real mountains and
wild lakes are a short drive away. Except for a few of the
most popular tourist areas, there is no land boom; areas
that are wild now will stay wild ten years hence. The
Michigan town, surrounded by woods and fields as it is,
lies a half-day's trip from anything resembling mountains;
and although there are a few new buildings in the town
itself, not far down the highway subdivisions are creeping
outward from one of southern Michigan's enormous cities.

Perhaps then, this town and others like it in New
England have been able to hold or draw back their college-
educated partly because, in exchange for the price of

staying at a somewhat modest job, they can offer an environ-

ment envied elsewhere by the rich.

     

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