State historian Theodore Blegen noted in 1963 that the outbreak of the Second World War brought with it to Minnesota little of the internal policing, symbolized by commissions of public safety, or anti-Germanism that had marked the First World War. Instead, the state organized countless war councils and committees, each concerned with some aspect of mobilization or public opinion. (67) One of those committees was the Citizens Service Corps, operating out of the Minnesota Office of Civilian Defense. In 1942, when it was becoming clear that war would seriously affect daily life in Minnesota for an indefinite period, this Corps issued a bulletin titled War Activities in Minnesota Schools. Besides discussing the immediate shortage of teachers, particularly within the context of the draft, the bulletin also included a section on the "development of community discussion groups" organized out of the schools. This section revealed both the role of experts in small-town civic life and the role the state envisioned for itself in fostering the public sphere. The expectations inherent in the bulletin grew out of the precedents of rural sociology, particularly the country-life movement of the 1920s; careful consideration of this document provides an opportunity to test the degree to which small towns as separate spaces were created and defined as "communities" by the state during a period of potential political crisis.
Long before the formal declaration of war, public leaders from the local to the federal level had been extolling American schools as the founding guarantors of national democracy. Depression-era campaigns to extend vocational training had by the end of the 1930s been reinvigorated by new demands for national security and "preparedness." The mayor of Tracy, in concert with a nationwide campaign inaugurated in 1921, proclaimed November 10 to 16, American Education Week. This observance fell, not coincidentally, on Armistice Day: the observance of American Education Week was first suggested by the newly formed American Legion. In Tracy in 1940, student speakers on the meaning of the armistice were echoed by the president of a local college, whose article on "the tragic fires . . . now burning up European civilization" was published on the front page. The letter from Franklin Roosevelt supporting the 1940 theme, Education for the Common Defense, made it clear that school training "in defense activities" was matched in importance by "the development of an appreciation of our traditional freedoms . . . democracy [and] the Bill of Rights." The Tracy schoolteachers, lest they be unsure what approach to take to the idea of common defense, received from the national sponsors a set of daily themes: enriching spiritual life, strengthening civic loyalties, financing public education, developing human resources, safeguarding natural resources, perpetuating individual liberties, and building economic security. These themes were implemented by each department in the high school: home economics students would hear reports on "the need for Consumer Education"; science teachers would emphasize training for defense industries, biology teachers the importance of bodily health; art and English students were put to work illustrating the set themes, while the social science teachers set out to teach not only the background of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but the financial structure supporting government and public education. (68) Both in daily practice and in rhetorical ideal, then, schools in this period were imagined by local elites and by national organizations to be the central civic sites in American communities of all sizes. Given the relative paucity of political action on other fronts in Lyon county's small towns, they were for residents in Tracy and Cottonwood at least the central civic space.
With the outbreak of war, the Citizens' Corp in St. Paul used this base of community rhetoric surrounding the schools to involve citizens in war activities at the local level. In other words, defense of the schools, "the creator and savior of our American democracy," (69) was a patriotic duty and a means for the community to become one with the wider state-led war effort. Divisions between the state, embodied in local superintendents and school boards, and the wider community of parents and students were obliterated by the rhetoric of the Citizens Corp, which urged that
While the very existence of free schools depends upon complete and intelligent cooperation with the war effort to insure a successful outcome, there must be no diversion, as a matter of permanent policy, of either the resources or the responsibilities which can best be channelled through a unified system of public education devoted to the maintenance of the Democratic Way of Life in America. (70)The schools served both as an institution of civic engagement and the space within which civic participation took place. As such, they provided a special site within which public support for state endeavors could be derived. At the same time, they provided society with the opportunity to critique the endeavors for which the state sought people's support. Thus wartime brought out the contradictions between state bureaucracies and 'the Democratic Way of Life'; luckily, state-employed experts already possessed the tools by which that contradiction could be minimalized in people's daily lives.
The U.S. Commissioner of Education and regional defense boards urged on local school boards a series of school-sponsored 'town meetings for war.' These were intended to answer the questions of the community regarding their place within the war effort, specifically questions about problems arising from the circumstances of war and queries about agencies, private and state-run, though which people could work to combat those problems. The chairman of the local defense council was to serve as presiding officer of at least the first community meeting, and he was encouraged to emphasize the "responsibility of the persons who accept responsibility for preparation of the community in time of war to answer questions of their neighbors." (71) Implicit in the discussion of these meetings was an expectation that experts, presumably funded by the state, would provide the answers to the people's questions. When some of the purported goals of these town meetings were the "pooling of opinion, judgement, and interpretation [in order] to determine upon and recommend appropriate action," (72) the state as collector of opinions and actor upon recommendations was ever-present. While these community meetings were to be implemented throughout the state, including in urban areas, the pattern of information gathering closely approximates that of farm bureaus and other community associations formed under the leadership of rural sociologists in the 1910s and 1920s.
Although the schools were encouraged to be leaders in the formation of community meetings on a variety of war issues, the school buildings were not themselves considered the most appropriate meeting sites for all forums. In a list of factors to consider in planning a community discussion, the meeting place itself was first on the list. The Citizens Corp recommended that "good lighting, a comfortable temperature, easy chairs, and an informal atmosphere are desirous. . . . desks or chairs in straight lines should be avoided." (73) Clearly the school buildings themselves had been on the minds of the bulletin's authors, as precisely those places least amenable to the forums proposed to rally community war activities. Instead, small groups were encouraged to meet in homes, and the provision of light refreshments' was encouraged. Described in this way, the community forums sounded most similar to the many women's associations already meeting in small towns such as Tracy and Cottonwood in Lyon County. Only when large groups were anticipated, as for example when the drive for community meetings was inaugurated, were community leaders encouraged to use auditoriums, and here the public schools and community centers were recommended.
As for the forum participants themselves, community organizers were encouraged first to compose a "local advisory board or committee . . . chosen probably by the school authorities." These advisory boards were to include representative leaders from "each of the important community groups such as business, social service, welfare, labor, church, youth, parent-teacher, legion, farm organization, etc." (74) In Tracy and in Lyon county generally, most of these community groups existed only through the cooperation of the state with local 'voluntary' associations: intervention by Minnesota state bureaus sustained, among others, the parent-teacher, farm organization, and social service associations of Lyon County. Indeed, farm bureaus existed to provide a channel for state university extension officers to bring information to local people. That these organizations eventually developed their own purposes in no way diminished their original embeddedness within bureaucratic state structures. The democratic impulses of such local associations--the social hours which followed farm bureau speakers' presentations, the improvisations of local social service providers during the crisis years of the depression--only partially mitigated their prior obligations to state systems. Thus, when the Citizens Service Corp called for the 'democratic' involvement of all community elements, it relied to an overwhelming extent on constituencies already formed within the context of other bureaucratic initiatives of the state. (75)
Having formed advisory boards from the ranks of people already accustomed to negotiating the intertwined demands of local associations and state institutions, community leaders were then to ensure that participants in local discussion groups were "representative of all important interests, social and economic" and possessed "a broad and varied background of experience [to] support the most valuable discussion." The Citizens Service Corp emphasized what it labeled cosmopolitanism and democracy, insisting that the entire community should participate in discussion groups, no matter whether any single local organization sponsored or underwrote a specific meeting. Meeting leaders were advised to seek the cooperation of newspaper editors in securing a cross-section of community opinions: newspapers could publish surveys of proposed future topics and invite public selection for future discussion, simultaneously opening the meetings to democratic input and promoting interest in the forums. When describing "an illustrative town meeting," the Citizens Corp noted that opening and closing prayers should be delivered alternately by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy. (76)
At the same time, the rhetoric of participation by multiple interests could not disguise what was in essence a propaganda campaign designed to promote "reasonably common judgements." Besides involving the community in "some group singing in every discussion meeting," local leaders were directed to induct a few local men into the services during every meeting, and local gold star mothers (women whose sons had been killed in military operations) were to be recognized. Even without the emphasis on strong leadership, such an environment could hardly have been conducive of genuine debate, which in any case was supposed to be resolved through the provision of relevant information "to illuminate and clarify differences of interpretation." (77) Granted that leaders were to be chosen for their ability to set aside personal prejudices, and it was assumed that criticisms of local war efforts would be fielded. Indeed, the meetings were themselves referred to repeatedly as 'Freedom's Forums' and described as "a living symbol of war-united America." (78)
Nevertheless, the list of suggested discussion topics made it clear that the justness or validity of the war itself, open debate about the advisedness of specific foreign policy, was never considered a possible source of difficulty. Instead, it was expected that people might debate the best way locally "to further the effective progress of the war," to consider why "non-war public construction [should] be suspended during the war," and to formulate ways in which "the problem of national minorities [could] be satisfactorily met." (79) The Citizens Service Corp maintained a resolute optimism that the questions posed--including "Why should the state be expected to assume a larger share of the financial responsibility for essential local public undertakings?"--would themselves lead to a 'reasonably common judgement' out of all proportion to the actual conditions of popular opinion at the time. A state of war, during which any opposition to the terms of debate would itself be answered with an appeal to 'facts,' could thus serve to promote unprecedented community support for the state, without resort to the previous war's commissions of public safety and anti-democratic crackdowns on free speech.
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