the reconstruction of country life; and we have a sufficient devotion among men of intelligence and of means to direct this constructive social service toward the entire well-being of country people and of the whole commonwealth.

The writer is indebted for help in the preparation of this book to Miss Florence M. Lane, Miss Martha Wilson and to Miss Anna B. Taft, without whose assistance and criticism the chapters could not have been prepared and without whose encouragement they would not have been undertaken; also to his teachers in Columbia University, especially Professors Franklin H. Giddings and John Bates Clark whose teachings in the Social Sciences furnish the beginning of a new method in investigating religious experiences.

New York, July, 1912.

EVOLUTION OF THE COMMUNITY

I

THE PIONEER

The earliest settlers of the American wilderness had a struggle very different from our own, who live in the twentieth century. Their economic experience determined their character. They appear to us at this distance to have common characteristics, habits and reactions upon life; in which they differ from all who in easier times follow them. They have more in common with one another than they have in common with us. They differ less from one another than they differ from the modern countryman. The pioneer life produced the pioneer type.

To this type all their ways of life correspond. They hunted, fought, dressed, traded, worshipped in their own way. Their houses, churches, stores and schools were built, not as they would prefer, but as the necessities of their life required. Their communities were pioneer communities: their religious habits were suitable to frontier experience. Modern men would find much to condemn in their ways: and they would find our typical reactions surprising, even wicked. But each conforms to type, and obeys economic necessity.

There have been four economic types in American agriculture. These have succeeded one another as the rural economy has gone through successive transformations. They have been the pioneer, the land farmer, the exploiter and the husbandman. Prof. J. B. Ross of Lafayette, Ind., has clearly stated[1] the periods by which these types are separated from one another. It remains for us to consider the communities and the churches which have taken form in accordance with these successive types.

Prof. Ross has spoken only of the Middle West. With a slight modification, the same might be said of the Eastern States, because the rural economy of the Middle West is inherited from the East. His statement made of this succession of economic types should be quoted in full:

"The agrarian occupation of the Middle West divides itself into three periods. The first, which extends from the beginnings of immigration to about the year 1835, is of significance chiefly because of the type of immigrants who preempted the soil and the nature of their occupancy. The second period, extending from 1835 to 1890, had as its chief objective the enrichment of the group life. It was the period in which large houses and commodious barns were erected, and in which the church and the school were the centers of social activity. The third period, which began about the year 1890, and which is not yet complete, is marked by a transition from the era of resident proprietors of the land to that of non-resident proprietors, and by the fact that the chief attention of the land owners is paid to the improvement of the soil by fertilization and drainage and to the increasing of facilities for communication and for the marketing of farm products."

Each of these types created by the habits of the people in getting their living, had its own kind of a community, so that we have had pioneer, land farmer, exploiter and husbandman communities. Indeed all these types are now found contemporaneous with one another. We have also had successive churches built by the pioneer, by the land farmer, by the exploiter and by the husbandman. The present state of the country church and community is explained best by saying that it is an effect of transition from the pioneer and the land farmer types of church and community to the exploiter and husbandman types.

The pioneer lived alone. He placed his cabin without regard to social experience. In the woods his axe alone was heard and on the prairie the smoke from his sod house was sometimes answered by no other smoke in the whole horizon. He worked and fought and pondered alone. Self-preservation was the struggle of his life, and personal salvation was his aspiration in prayer. His relations with his fellows were purely democratic and highly independent. The individual man with his family lived alone in the face of man and God. The following is a description by an eye witness of such a community which preserves in a mountain country the conditions of pioneer life[2].

"It is pitiful to see the lack of co-operation among them. It is most evident in business but makes itself known in the children, too. I regard it as one reason why they do not play; they have been so isolated that they do not allow the social instinct of their natures to express itself. This, of course, is all unconsciously done on their part. However, one cannot live long among them without finding out that they are characterized by an intense individualism. It applies to all that they do, and to it may be attached the blame for all the things which they lack or do wrongfully. If a man has been wronged, he must personally right the wrong. If a man runs for office, people support him as a man and no questions are asked as to his platform. If a man conducts a store, people buy from him because he sells the goods, not because the goods commend themselves to them. And so by common consent and practise, the individual interests are first. Naturally this leads to many cases of lawlessness. The game of some of our people is to evade the law; of others, to ignore the law entirely."

The pioneer had in his religion but one essential doctrine,—the salvation of the soul. His church had no other concern than to save individuals from the wrath to come. It had just one method, an annual revival of religion.

The loneliness of the pioneer's soul is an effect of his bodily loneliness. The vast outdoors of nature forest or prairie or mountain, made him silent and introspective even when in company. The variety of impacts of nature upon his bodily life made him resourceful and self-reliant; and upon his soul resulted in a reflective, melancholy egotism. His religion must therefore begin and end in personal salvation. It was a message, an emotion, a struggle, and a peace.

The second great characteristic of the pioneer was his emotional tension. His impulses were strong and changeable. The emotional instability of the pioneer grew out of his mixture of occupations. It was necessary for him to practise all the trades. In the original pioneer settlement this was literally true. In later periods of the settlement of the land the pioneer still had many occupations and representative sections of the country even until