Using data from the Census of Agriculture and other secondary sources, we examine the relationship between scale offarm operations in a county and the well-being of local residents. Following earlier work by C. Wright Mills and Walter Goldschmidt, we hypothesize that in agriculture dependent counties that are dominated by a small handful of very largefarms, the level of community welfare will be significantly lower than in counties in which agriculture is organized around smaller-scalefarm operations. Findings show that scale offarm operations is related to well-being. However, this relationship is mediated by the level of civic engagement and the strength of the economically independent middle class. A theory of civic community is proposed to accountfor thesefindings. At the end of World War II, two research reports commissioned by a U.S. Senate Special Committee to study problems of American small business, examined the relationship between the concentration of economic power at the community level and the social and economic well-being of local residents (Goldschmidt [ 1946] 1978; Mills & Ulmer [1946] 1970)'. The thesis advanced in both of these studies was that communities in which the economic base was composed of a plethora of relatively small, locally owned firms would manifest higher levels of social, economic, and political welfare and well-being than communities where the economic base was dominated by a few large absentee-owned firms.