delivery; weather reports; a corn club (or a similar club); a
school garden; a library; the telephone; a hospital; a parent-
teacher association?

THE PURPOSE OF DEMOCRACY

We may often hear our common purposes as communities or as a
nation stated in different terms than those suggested in the
paragraphs above. For example, Franklin K. Lane, the Secretary of
the Interior during the war, said, "Our national purpose is to
transmute days of dreary work into happier lives--for ourselves
first and for all others in their time." Again, President Wilson
said that our purpose in entering the world war was to help "make
the world safe for democracy." Although these two statements read
differently, they mean very much the same thing; and they both
refer in general terms to the things this chapter discusses in
more familiar and express terms. For "happier lives" can only
result from a more complete satisfaction of our common wants. Our
own happiness comes from the satisfaction of our own wants AND
FROM HELPING TO SATISFY THE WANTS OF OTHERS. And "democracy"
means, in part, that the COMMON WANTS OF ALL shall be properly
provided for.

In the Declaration of Independence we read:

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED
EQUAL THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN
UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.