NEWCOMERS IN THE COMMUNITY

One general cause is bringing new people into the average country community. The exploitation of land expresses the transition from the period of the land farmer to that of the scientific farmer or husbandman. The signs of this exploitation are the retirement of farmers from the land, the incoming of new owners in some numbers and of tenant farmers in a large degree, into the country community. The influence of the absentee landlord begins to be felt in communities in which the landowner was until 1890 the only type. In most of the older states immigration from foreign lands has not greatly affected the country community. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states of the Northwest substantial sections of the community are invaded by people of sturdy Germanic and Norse extraction. In New England the Poles, French, Portuguese and some Jews are settling in the country. But throughout the states of the Union as a whole the population, both the newcomers and older stock, are American.

The dates of this exploitation of land are, generally, from 1890 onward. Reference is made elsewhere to the description of this process in the Middle West.

Independent of these causes the same process has appeared in the South, in Georgia, Mississippi and in West Tennessee, as well as other states. In sections in which the values of land have not been doubled, as in Illinois and in Indiana they have, the same exodus from the farm and invasion of the country community by new people has taken place.

One cause of this exploitation of land is the shrinkage in size of the older families. Everywhere the exploitation of land is the greatest where the soil is the richest and the farmers the most prosperous. Even in the exceptional populations such as the Scotch Presbyterians and Pennsylvania Germans, this effect of agricultural prosperity is slowly at work.

In Chester County, Pennsylvania, and in Washington County, where the most substantial farmers in the country are found, the families in the present generation are small. Many of the older stock have no children. Families which have retained the title of their land for eight generations are losing their hold upon the soil, by the fact that they have none to inherit after them.

Another cause of this exploitation of land is the increasing number of small farms in certain regions. This means that in certain sections the farming population has a new element, for the holders of these small farms are many of them new to the community.

The process, which is made clear by the census of 1910, is this. The earlier retirement from the farms was by sale, the farmer taking money instead of land. The second stage of retirement from the farm was through absentee landlordism and the placing of tenants on the farm. This process has come to an end in many sections of the Middle West, with the return of the sons of the landlord to the family acres in the country, so that there is a sort of rhythm in the flow of population from the country into the town and backward to the land. In this process there is no invasion by new people, except the temporary residence of the tenant farmer in the country, and some of these have in the process gained a footing by ownership of land. But this ebb and flow of population out of the country community and back again has weakened and strained the country church and school and has not yet begun to strengthen them. There is every evidence that with a pleasant and agreeable country life the country community can retain the best elements of this population, which comes and goes. The country church and school ought to take measures to retain the best of the country population through these changes.

Through all these causes the presence of a large proportion of aliens in the community who are American born, but locally unattached by birth or ownership, has effected great changes in the country church, and other community institutions. The State of Illinois, which has a tenant farmer population of more than 50 per cent in its richest sections, has suffered severely through the loss of many country churches. There is no precise measure of this loss, but a sociological survey recently made in Illinois indicates that in the past twenty years more than fifteen hundred country churches have been abandoned in the State. This statement must be accepted as approximate, but the number is likely to be greater rather than less. This abandonment of country churches has come in the same period in which the proportion of tenant farmers has greatly increased. Reference is made elsewhere to a similar condition in the State of Delaware, in which the churches of the old land-owners have been abandoned and replaced at heavy expense with poorer churches built by the incoming tenant farmers.

Everywhere in the United States this process has in some measure affected the country. It does not much matter whether the proportion of tenants is increasing or decreasing, the present effect is one of instability. In New England where in the past ten years tenantry has been diminished ten per cent, the country churches are weakened as elsewhere. The churches have not yet had time to recover while the population is in a state of change.

The old order in the country is crumbling. The church is an expression of stability. The people on whom the church always depends for its audiences, its enthusiasm and its largest accessions, are marginal people, working men, adolescent youths and those who are coming to a position in the community. The exodus of these from the country community, or the incoming of persons in these classes into the country community, has been unfavorable to the country church at the present time.

It may be said at this point that a state of transition is for the time being unfavorable to ethical and moral growth. Moral conditions are sustained by custom, and where customs are in change, moral standards must themselves be in transition. The country community is moral so far as adhering to the standards of the past is concerned. But the population themselves who have to do with the country are undergoing extraordinary moral change, with incidental loss, and many of the problems of the United States as a whole are made more acute by the waste of the country community. Among these should be cited the amusement question in the small town, the decadence of the theatre in the cheaper vaudeville, the white slave traffic and the social disorders peculiar to unskilled laborers, many of whom come from country communities of the United States and Europe.

It must be remembered, too, that the rural free delivery and the telephone have entered the country community in the past twenty years and their effect has not yet been recorded. It has probably been in the direction of chilling instead of warming the social life of the country. The old acquaintance and the intimate social relations of the country community have not been helped by the telephone: and along with the presence of aliens in the community, one-fourth or one-half or three-fourths of the population, the telephone has had the effect of lowering the standards of intimacy and separating the households in the country one from another. The rural free delivery has put country people into the general world economy and for the time being has loosened the bonds of community life.

In those states in which the trolley system has been extended into the country, for instance Ohio and Indiana, the process of weakening the country population has been hastened. Sunday becomes for country people a day of visiting the town and in great numbers they gather at the inter-urban stations. The city and town on Sunday is filled with careless, hurrying groups of visitors, sight-seers and callers, who have no such fixed interest as that to be expressed in church-going or in substantial social processes. For the time being inter-urban trolley lines have dissipated the life of the country communities.

The duty of the church in the country under these conditions can be accomplished only under a widened horizon. The minister and the leaders of the church must lift up their eyes. They need not be discouraged if for the time being they accomplish little, for the period of exploitation must come to an end normally with the exhaustion of its forces, before the better day can come. But this period is one of enlargement. The units of social life will be spaced farther apart. The country community will advance as soldiers say, “in open order.” This is true for the family life, in which the father, the mother and the children have greater freedom from one another; as well as in the community, in which neighbors become less intimately dependent on one another. The church must therefore preach the world idea. At this time of transition the country church should undertake its foreign missionary service. The great causes of the Kingdom which are world-wide should be presented to country people when they are lifting up their eyes from local confines to look at the world and the city and the nation. As the daily paper comes into the farmer’s household the farmer’s church should interpret the history of the time in missionary terms. The literature of the great missionary agencies should be distributed in the farm household. Wherever the catalogue of the big store in Chicago or New York is found on the center table, beside it should be placed a modern book expressive of missionary evangelism. As the mind of the countryman develops to comprehend the world in his daily thought under the impetus of a daily newspaper, his conscience and his religious experience should be expanded correspondingly.

In a time of exploitation of land the country church should regenerate its financial system. The system of barter passes away in the day of speculation in farm land; and the country church which can find means to endure the period of exploitation must put its financial system on a new basis. The tenant farmer is crudely striving through problems of scientific agriculture. He may, indeed, be a soil robber, but by his waste of economic values he and other men are learning to conserve. The financial system of the church should be placed at this time on a basis of weekly contribution, for with the tenant farmer comes system, cash payments, regular commercial processes. The business administration of the church must be made to correspond.

The country minister and schoolteacher must therefore become prophets of the intellect and of the spirit, in the new order. If they cannot minister to the new intelligence of the farmer and his children, their institutions will necessarily decay. The farmer who succeeds in the new social economy of the country will not endure old sermons which were appropriate in his father’s time. The emphasis must not be placed on tradition, but upon inductive study. The preacher must not feed the people on special instances, but upon representative cases. The intelligence of the new type of farmer will not be satisfied with sensations and with the unusual; but he demands to be trained in standards of the new day, when science, system, organization and world economy are making their demands on him and his very soul is concerned in his response to those demands.

The task of dealing with newcomers in the country community is educational, financial and recreative. One should add that it is also evangelistic, but I have in mind the possibility that these newcomers may be Catholics with whom Protestant evangelism will not be successful. It is possible also that they will be of another Protestant sect from that of the reader of this chapter, so that to evangelize them would mean proselyting. The writer believes very heartily in rural evangelism. It is an essential process in building the country church. These chapters are devoted primarily to the building of the country community and in that process the securing of members for the country church is preliminary only. Leaving, therefore, the question of rural evangelism for treatment in another place, let us take up the educational treatment of the newcomer in the country community.

The proper machinery for this education is the common school and the Sunday school. As the common school is treated elsewhere, the use of the Sunday school in organizing the rural population belongs here. Few churches realize the power and value of Sunday-school training. I am insisting that the life of country people is religious. The use of the Sunday school is to train the young of the community in religion. All country people accept the Bible as a holy book. They all believe in the education of their children and in much greater numbers than they will respond for a church service their children will respond to the work of religious culture on Sunday at the church. The Sunday-school organization is interdenominational. Its lessons and its methods are a common heritage of the churches at the present time. The machinery is perfect, but the Sunday-school leaders lack vision and they lack the progressive spirit. If only the teachers and ministers realized the value of the Sunday school and its acceptance with the people, there would be needed no other machinery for building the country community.

The Sunday-school should be a close parallel to the day school. If the day school in the community has any progressive features, the Sunday school should use these and improve them. Between the two there should exist the closest sympathy, not formal or definitely organized, but actual and expressed in parallel lines of work. Where the day school is graded, the Sunday school should accept the same grading, strongly organizing all its classes. The pupils in the Sunday school should pass by successive promotions from teacher to teacher and from grade to grade.

If the day school in the country is unprogressive and is taught by a succession of indifferent persons, the Sunday school should practise under the guidance of religious leaders those principles of modern pedagogy which should be used in the common schools. Graded lessons, the organization of material and progressive development of religious truth from the simpler to the more complex, should find their place in every Sunday school. The opportunity for service to the whole community thus offered through the Sunday school is excelled by none in the country community.

The upper classes of the Sunday school should be organized. Young men and women especially, who are in danger of finding the Sunday school irksome because their intelligence has passed beyond its control, should be organized in classes which on week days have a club or society character. The Sunday school should use as an ally their tendency to organization and should satisfy their social needs by giving them regular and approved opportunities for meeting and for pleasure.

Another principle which the Sunday school can practise for the benefit of the community is the centralization of religious teaching. Even if the common schools are not centralized, the children for the Sunday school should be brought to the church from outlying regions in hired wagons every week. It is better that a large Sunday school be maintained under efficient leadership than that a number of small schools with indifferent teachers should be maintained in various school districts. The larger body can have better leadership. It is more closely under the supervision of the minister, who is generally the superior in education of the laymen, and the social value of the meetings of the Sunday school will be greater in the larger body. All the arguments which make for the centralization of the day school have force for the consolidation of Sunday schools in one large school.

The Sunday school offers a basis for church federation. In the community it is frequently possible for Sunday schools to be united and for the advantages of this common teaching to be made even greater because all the children of the various churches are in one body. The best leadership and the best teachers are thus secured and the community spirit is cultivated through the young people and more loosely attached members of the community.

The older classes of the Sunday school on a basis of study of the Bible should be organized for practical ends. The adult Bible class can be made to have all the influence of the grange in the country community. The fathers and mothers of the community may meet throughout the week socially. They may undertake together the study of the economic life of the community. Lecturers from the agricultural college, representatives of the Play Ground Movement, of the county work of the Y. M. C. A., of historical societies interested in the community’s past and other representatives of national movements, may be welcomed and heard by this organized class, the basis of which is religious education.

What I am urging may be accomplished by any church in some measure, however divided the community may be. It is the business of the individual church which has a vision of the community as a whole to act as if it were a federation of churches. Frequently ministers are in favor of church federation, as if that process were an end in itself. The writer believes that the individual church can accomplish the ends of federation if the union of churches can do so. The best means for effecting federation of churches is to practise the program of federation until it shall come about.

The community made up in a degree of new families and the community in which the newcomers are young men and women, children of the residents, are bound to educate these invaders of the community, whether they come from without or whether they come by “birthright membership,” in the spirit of benevolence. The giving of money to public uses is one of the cherished social forces of our time. The country community is just entering into the day of cash. The period of barter is over. The farmer therefore needs in his ethical and his religious training, to have definite culture as a philanthropist. The future of the farm-hand in America is still very hopeful. The tenant farmer expects to be an owner. The farmer’s son believes himself to have a future. These hopes from earliest years should be disciplined by the practise of giving. For this end the church is a rarely well fitted means. The financial system of the church must be made democratic. The custom of renting pews belonged in the land-farmer period. The writer does not suggest that it be abolished because it can often serve a more democratic purpose in its mature forms under careful supervision than any substitute, but it is all important that the country church be a training-school in the consecration of money to the uses of the community and of the kingdom of God.

For the average countryman the kingdom of God should be embodied in the country community. This is not to say that his vision should be narrow. On the contrary his vision is often of the spread-eagle sort. He overlooks the opportunities for benevolence which are near at hand. He believes in foreign missions sometimes, and contributes impulsively to the support of men in China who are paid a better salary than the pastor in his own community. He applauds the gifts of millionaires and of city people generally to hospitals, but he ignores the ravages of disease in his own community. The divine imperative is that the country community be first organized, by those who live there, for local well-being. For this, contributions of money are necessary and they must be made by all in the community.

The question has been raised frequently whether an endowment is not necessary for the country church. The writer began his ministry in a country church which was generously endowed. He still believes in the value of endowment for some country communities. Ex-President Eliot of Harvard recently commended the principle of endowment to the New England Country Church Association, as a solution of the rural problem. President Butterfield of Massachusetts Agricultural College has emphasized the same principle. It is quite likely that in the Eastern States where the country community has been depleted by the departure of an extraordinary number of families and individuals, an endowment would be of value for the country church. One must not hold to a theoretic opposition to such a method. The important thing is to provide a trained pastor for the country community. In these Eastern communities a larger proportion of the former members of the community have prospered than in Western communities. Many of them are very rich. In these cases it is but natural that an endowed church in the country community express the ministry of the more prosperous citizen to his poorer brethren, but everybody knows that these depleted communities I will not say these excessive fortunes are among the most lamentable factors in American life.

The endowment of the church, however, is a very poor apology for a bad situation. It has but limited use, and the creation of a large fund to be used in the country community necessitates careful supervision by men of such business ability as are not usually found in a country community. To remedy such conditions as those with which President Eliot and President Butterfield are most familiar is a specific problem. It is not the general situation throughout the United States. The purpose of these chapters is to make plain the way by which the average American community may escape depletion, may retain the leadership of its best minds and may prosper in a democratic way. I am interested more in training the country population for the future than in mending the mistakes of the past. But I believe that for depleted country communities in New England, New York and Pennsylvania an endowment of the country church would in many instances be effective: and for them alone.

Let the country church undertake its financial problem in a business-like way. At the beginning of the year make a budget of all the monies needed for the year’s work. Face the issues of the year frankly. Pay to the minister and to other employees of the church a sufficient amount to provide them with needful things throughout the year. A living wage is not enough. The minister especially needs a working salary. With little variation throughout the country as a whole the minister in the rural community should have in order to minister to his people, to educate his children and to look forward without fear to old age, twelve to fourteen hundred dollars a year and a house. Many country communities have a more expensive standard, and there are a few in which less is required. But in Southern States and in Western communities I have found the conditions, created by the prices which prevail throughout the country as a whole, at this standard.

When the budget of the year is prepared, including missionary and benevolent gifts, it should be distributed by the officers through consultation with all the members of the church, young and old, rich and poor, in such way as to secure a gift from every one and to meet the obligations of the church as a whole. For the moral values of the situation the small gift of the poor and of the child are even more important than the large gift of the well-to-do. For the securing of these gifts the envelope system, especially the so-called duplex envelope, is the best means which can be generally used by churches. It is a method flexible enough to reach every member and it represents in its duplex form the double motive of giving to the community itself and to those larger national and missionary enterprises to which the country should contribute.

The third method of developing the country community is recreative. I mention it here for completeness of statement. Another chapter is devoted to recreation in the country community. The amusements and recreations of the country community are immersed in moral issues. The ethical life of the community is the atmosphere in which social pleasure is taken. Therefore the recreations of the community are to be provided and supervised by those who would undertake to create a wholesome community life. A maximum of provision and a minimum of supervision are required. Country life is devoid of means for recreation. Some one must provide it. Usually it is either neglected altogether, and the result is dullness and monotony; or it is provided for a price, and the result is an organized center of immorality. Recreation requires but little supervision. The presence of older persons, and those of a humane friendly spirit, is usually necessary to the games. These are based on honor and with a few simple principles the young people and working people of the community will organize their own play and find therein a great benefit.

To summarize this chapter, the acute problem in many communities today is the merging of the life of newcomers in the community into the organized social life which is older and more settled. This task belongs above all to the country church. Many of the detailed applications are for the school to follow out, but the business of the church is to see and to inspire. If the church is not democratic, the community will be hopelessly divided. If the church welcomes the newcomer and finds him a place, the community will be inspired with a democratic spirit. The task of the church is indicated in the new prosperity of the country which tends from the first to remove from the community those who prosper. The church’s business is to win to the community all who come into it and to release from its hold as few as possible.

In a discussion of country life in a Tennessee college town the question was asked of a professor of agriculture who was speaking about farm tenantry, “What should the church do for the tenant farmer?” “Borrow money for him and help him to buy land,” said the professor.

Such a solution might be the church’s task, but the example of England’s policy for Ireland shows that the professor commended a governmental rather than a religious service. For it is found that the Irish farmer a tenant on land whereon his ancestors have for centuries been tenants when he secures the land in fee through the new policies of the British Government, frequently deserts the country community, selling his land to a neighbor. Some sections of Ireland are said to have a new kind of small tenantry and a new sort of small landlord. The task of the country community begins where the task of government leaves off. It is to inspire the resident in the country with a vision, and to lay upon him the imperative, of building up the country community out of the newcomers, who enter it by birth or by migration.