The Mormons represent this organization in the highest degree. Perhaps
no other so large or so powerful a body of united farmers is found in
the whole country. They have approached the economic questions of
farming with determination to till the soil. They distrust city life and
condemn it. They teach their children and they discipline themselves to
love the country, to appreciate its advantages and to recognize that
their own welfare is bound up in their success as farmers, and in the
continuance of their farming communities. This agricultural organization
centers about their country churches. They have turned the force of
religion into a community making power, and from the highest to the
lowest of their church officers the Mormon people are devoted to
agriculture as a mode of living.
This principle of organizing the community consciously for agriculture
results in the second condition of the life of these three exceptional
peoples.
They build agricultural communities. The Mormons are organized by an
idea and by the power of leadership. They have recruited their
population through preachers and missionaries. This new population is
woven at once into the fabric of the community. They are not merely
employed in the community: they are married to the community. The
organization on which the Mormon community is based becomes embodied at
once in a society, with its own modes of religious, family, and moral
feeling and thought.
These two principles are discovered in the Pennsylvania Germans. For
more than two centuries they have continued their settlements in
Pennsylvania. They are today a chain of societies loosely related to one
another through religious sympathy and a common tradition, but united
only in the possession of certain characteristics. They also are an
organization for agricultural life, though not so consciously organized
as the Mormons. Their societies are older and they have replaced with
instinctive processes that which is among the Mormons a matter of logic
and shrewd application of principles.
The life of the Pennsylvania Germans is expressed in the community. They
have as much aversion to other people as they have fondness for their
own. Their religion consists of a set of customs in which to them the
character of the Christian is embodied. These customs can be expressed
and embodied only in the life of common people working on the land. They
make plainness, industry, and patience, austerity of life and other
agricultural virtues constitute sanctity. It is impossible to believe
sincerely in their mode of life and not be a farmer. It is easy to
believe the Pennsylvania Germans' code, if one is a farmer, and it is
profitable as well.
The Scotch and the Scotch Irish Presbyterians represent a third
principle of agricultural success. Their churches are tenacious and
their country communities outlive those of the average type. In them is
represented in the highest degree the principle of austerity. By this I
mean, as defined by an economist, the custom of living so as to produce
much and consume little. These people look upon life with severity. They
have little sympathy with the expansive and exuberant life of the young.
The men of the community, who are the producers, occupy a relatively
greater position than the women, who are the consumers. They exemplify
to a slight degree the conscious organization for agriculture, and in a
high degree the resultant social life which we have noted among the
Mormons and the Pennsylvania Germans; but to the highest degree the
Scottish Presbyterians represent this self-denial and rigidity of
life--which appears in the others also--and they embody it in their
creed. This austerity gives to them a forbidding character, and robs
them of some of the esthetic interest attaching to the other two, but it
is possible that they are more nearly the ideal type of American farmer
because of certain other traits possessed by them.
The Scotch farmer has not in the United States settled in communities or
colonies, as he has in Canada, but the typical farming community of this
stock is Scotch Irish. As Prof. R. E. Thompson has shown,[17] the
emigrants from the North of Ireland, who are themselves of Scotch
extraction, have colonized extensively. That is, they have settled
their populations so as to cover a territory and possess it for
themselves. But the Scotch, from whom they derive many characteristics,
have settled no colony in the world except in the North of Ireland.[18]
The peculiarity of these Scotch Irish farming settlements, as shown
especially in Pennsylvania, is their capacity to produce leaders in
sympathy with the whole of American life. The Mormons produce leaders,
but their influence is compromised by religious prejudices. The
Pennsylvania Germans have produced no leaders whom they can call their
own, and very few writers or educators. The Scotch Irish, on the other
hand, considered as farmers, have contributed an extraordinary
proportion of the leadership of the United States. They have been able
to maintain their own communities in the country and to find for these
communities a sufficient leadership, and they have sent forth into the
general population a multitude of men for leadership in the army, in the
legislatures, in the colleges and universities, and above all, in the
pulpit.
In these three types of successful farmers religion is an essential
factor. No history can be written of the Mormons, of the "Pennsylvania
Dutch" or of the Scotch Presbyterian without recording their religious
devotion, their obedience to leaders, to customs and to creed. One
cannot live among them without feeling the peculiar religious
atmosphere which belongs to each of them. They are admirable or
obnoxious, according as one likes or dislikes this religious character
of theirs, but it pervades the whole life of the community. If it be
true that there is no type of farmer--except the scientific farmer of
the past few years--who has succeeded as these three types have
succeeded, and there is no country community so tenacious as their
communities are, and if it be true that these farmers more uniformly
than other farmers are religiously organized, then it follows that there
is an essential relation so far as American agriculture goes, between
successful and permanent agriculture and a religious life. The country
church becomes the expression of a permanent and abiding rural
prosperity. Agriculture is shown by its very nature to require a
religious motive. An element of piety appears to be necessary in the
makeup of the successful farmer.
In these three types of successful farmer there appears another
principle which is common to them all. They are not only organized for
farming, but they are organized as a mutual prosperity association,
based on their consciousness of kind. Prof. Gillin has called attention
to the habit of the Dunkers in Iowa, who are of the Pennsylvania German
sects, by which they extend their farming communities.
"The thing that is needed is to make the church the center of the social
life of the community. That is easier where there is but one church than
where there are several, but federation is not essential. Thought must
be taken by the leaders to make the church central in every interest of
life. I know of a community where that has been done. It is the
community located south of Waterloo, Ia., in Orange Township. It is
composed of an up-to-date community of Pennsylvania Dutch Dunkers. From
the very first they have made the church central. When these great
changes of which I have spoken began to occur, the leaders of that
community began to take measures to checkmate the attractions of the
towns for their young people. For example, Fourth of July was made a day
of celebration at the church. When the people of other communities were
flocking to town by hundreds, the youth of that community were
gathering, in response to plans well thought out beforehand, to the
church grounds where patriotic songs were sung, games were played, a
picnic dinner was served, and a general good time was provided for the
young. They have also arranged that their young people have a place to
come to on Sunday nights where they can meet their friends. The elders
look to it that provisions are made for the gatherings of the young
people on Sunday so that they shall 'have a good time,' with due
arrangements for the boys and girls to get together under proper
conditions for their love-making. Even their church 'love feasts' held
twice a year, are also neighborhood gatherings for the young people. The
church is the center of everything. Is a farmers' institute to be held
in the community, or a teachers' institute? The church until very
recently was open to it. Is a farm to rent or for sale? At once the
leaders get busy with the mail, and soon a family from the East is on
their way to take it. This country church has not remained strong and
dominant in the country just by accident or even by federation. It has
survived because it had wise leaders who have met the changes with new
devices to attract the interest of the community and make the church
serve the community in all its affairs, but especially on the social
side. Such thought takes account of the 'marginal man' too. The hired
man and the hired girl, the foreigner and the tramp are welcome there.
No difference is made. There is pure democracy. With the growth of the
class spirit I do not know how that can survive. These hirelings are not
talked down to; they are considered one with the rest. They will some
day get enough to buy a farm and become leaders in the community,
perhaps. The church is theirs as much as anyone's else. It looks after
their interest, not only for the hereafter, but here and now. Under its
fostering care they form their life attachments, it provides for their
social pleasures, it is the center to which they come to discuss their
farming affairs or whatever interests them. And in spite of the fact
that the preaching has little contact with life and its interests, so
strong is the social spirit that the preaching can be left out of
account. What could be accomplished were the preaching as consciously
directed to forwarding the social interests of the community one can
only speculate."[19]
Thus they work for the propagation and extension of their own community.
The Scotch Presbyterians in like manner favor their own kindred and
their kindred in the faith, though, I think, in a lesser degree. The
Mormons are consolidated both by formal organization and by instinctive
preference for their own in a multitude of co-operating habits, through
which they build up their communities and contend with one another
against their economic and religious opponents. It is not enough to say
that this is clannishness; it is a mingling of kinship and religious
preferences. It constitutes the strongest form of agricultural
co-operation to be found in the United States.
A Quaker community represents ideal community life. There is none poor.
The margin of the community is well cared for by the conscious and
deliberate service of the central and leading spirits in the community.
At Quaker Hill, New York, there has been for almost two centuries a
community of Friends. The Meeting has now been "laid down" but the
customs and manners by which these peculiar people maintain their
community life have been wrought into the social texture of the present
population of Quaker Hill. During two centuries this community has
cared for its own members in need. It was not beneath the dignity of the
Meeting to raise money and purchase a cow, early in the eighteenth
century, to "loan to the widow Irish," and at the close of the
nineteenth century, the few Quakers and the many Irish and other
"world's people" took part more than once in subscriptions by which the
burden was borne, which had fallen upon some workingman or poorer
neighbor through the death of horse or cow, or even to bear the expense
incidental to the death of his child.
These Quakers co-operated in their business life. They made themselves
responsible that no member of their Meeting should be long in debt. From
1740 for 100 years and more, the records of the Meeting show that
marriage was made impossible and other vital experiences were forbidden
by the Meeting, unless the individual Quaker paid his debts and
maintained his business on a level dictated by the common opinion of the
Quaker body.[20]
In 1767, Oblong Meeting of Quaker Hill, New York, began the legislative
opposition of the Society of Friends to the institution of slavery. This
great economic movement expressed the degree to which the Quaker
discipline merged the religious life in the economic life. This
consolidation of religious and economic life was essential in the
community building of the Quakers.
It is surprising to many to discover that the "Pennsylvania Dutch" were
part of the same movement of population which brought the Quakers into
Pennsylvania. William Penn spoke German as well as English. His mother
was a German. When he inherited his father's claim against the British
Crown, and received from Charles the Second the grant of that extensive
territory in America on which he launched his Holy Experiment, he began
to advertise and to seek for settlers on the Continent as well as in
England.
William Penn was a Quaker, and on the Continent he found immediate
response in the greatest number of cases among the various branches of
Mennonites, Anabaptist, and other sects, who shared a common group of
beliefs and experienced at this time a common persecution. William Penn,
therefore, reaped a harvest of responses in the territory between the
mouth of the Rhine and the Alps. His proposal made its own selection,
and brought to America a population calculated like the Quaker
population for the building of communities. The largest single
contribution was made by the Palatinates, who were at that period
undergoing extreme persecution.
The communities founded within the first century after the opening of
Pennsylvania have remained to the present day, and the earliest
establishments of Mennonites and Quaker communities in Pennsylvania have
been duplicated in the westward stream of immigration, especially in
Ohio and in Iowa. These people are roughly called the "Pennsylvania
Dutch." Even when one meets them in Michigan, Iowa or Minnesota, this
name clings to them, and the form of social organization which they
elaborated in Eastern Pennsylvania still persists.
This social organization has varying characteristics. It is somewhat
difficult to analyze the intricate windings and entanglements of
doctrinal and practical belief in custom among the Mennonites, Amish and
Dunkers. Old school and new school have been formed in almost every one
of these sects. Eccentric and peculiar principles of belief in
organization have formed the lesser and the least permanent groups; but
there is a common principle in them all. Their ability to form
communities in the midst of hostile populations and adverse conditions
has been due to the co-operation between their religious and their
economic habits.
The "Pennsylvania Dutch" have simple doctrinal characteristics. They
have never worked out in detail the logic of their beliefs. They put the
weight of their organization upon practical customs, as the Quakers did.
In some cases, this applied to clothing; in some or all of these sects
to the manner of speech; to family customs; but, the one peculiar
principle in it all, which has been vital to the success, to the
persistence, to the wide extension of these sectarian groups has been
that the religious life has penetrated the economic life. They have not
permitted members of their community to be poor. They have turned the
attention of their religious sympathies to the economic margin of the
community. They have enforced the payment of debts, and they have
governed and controlled marriage conditions. By subtle enforcement of
custom having the power of laws, they have governed the community in its
vital relations, and perfected the system by which the poorest man shall
make his living and by which the richest man shall make his fortune.
Recently, I was in Lancaster, Penn., and passing through a market I was
told by a resident that all the truck farming of the market for that
city had come into the hands of the Amish, and my friend added, "If you
go at an early hour to buy, and ask the price of certain vegetables, you
will probably be told, 'We do not know the price yet; we will have to
wait until all the farmers come in.'" That is, after two hundred and
more years of living as farmers in this section of Pennsylvania, these
sectarians maintain their community life, co-operate in the monopolizing
of an industry, and in fixing the price of the monopolized product in
the markets of a Pennsylvania city.
This survey of community-building peoples in America may throw light
upon the recommendations of Sir Horace Plunkett for the organization of
country life upon an economic basis. The present writer heartily agrees
with him that the center of the community must be economic. He says that
"Better business must come first" in constructive policies for American
country life, but "by failing to combine, American and British farmers
persistently disobey an accepted law."
Social division is the impending danger which threatens the future of
the American community in the country. For if the analysis of
agricultural success in this chapter is correct, then the farmer is
exceedingly dependent upon his neighbor, and the permanence of rural
populations depends upon the social unity of the farmers in the
community. The highest expression of this social unity is in the
farmer's religion. Worship thus becomes a symbol of agricultural
prosperity. The writers and the orators have then truly spoken who
symbolized the beauty of rural life in the church steeple. The farmer
himself seems to recognize, in the church spire rising above the roofs
of the hamlet, the symbol of prosperous and satisfactory life in the
country.
As the tillers of the soil come to the necessity of co-operation in the
new order of life in the country, as the old isolation passes away and
the modern farmer comes to recognize his necessary dependence upon other
farmers in the community, a common place of worship will become
necessary to the community. One church will of necessity express the
life of the community and the periodic meeting of all the people in one
house of worship will be the highest and most essential symbol of the
feeling and the thought and the aspirations of that community after
true prosperity and permanence.
The purpose of this chapter has been to present the general
characteristics of the most exceptional communities in the country.
These are Mormon, Scotch Presbyterian and Pennsylvania German. By their
very names they indicate religious organization of the community and
"birthright membership" associations. They are grouped under the one
principle, that in them the religious organization is an expression of
their social economy. Their social and economic life is under the
domination of their religion.
These farmers are organized in the interest of agriculture. The
resultant social life constitutes a most intense organization in which
voluntary and conscious combination matures in instinctive union
embodied in blood relationship, neighborliness and economic union. These
populations show the correspondence between economic and religious
austerity. Thrift takes the form of dogmatic repression and finally
their organization and their relationship express themselves in
organized efforts for the well-being of the community. They deliberately
as well as instinctively co-operate.
It is the writer's belief that these exceptional communities exhibit the
principles on which American life must be organized, if the farmer is to
be a success, if his schools are to progress, his churches to be
maintained, and if the country community is to be a good place to live
in. None of these populations can be imitated. It would be impossible
for a community to take over their modes any more than it could imbibe
their motives. The study of them throws light upon the problem of
country life in America. Above all things it illustrates the especial
union of the country church with the social economy of the farmer and
his household. It shows that the life of country people is co-operative,
that it is undermined by division and disunion and that in the open
country where man is least seen his society is most evident. The
dependence of each man upon his neighbor is increased in modern times by
the thinning out of the rural population and the increased economic
burden laid upon the farmer.
Finally, the exceptional populations present an exceptional victory over
economic and natural forces. They abolish poverty within their own
bounds. Every one of the communities just described turns the power of
its common organization upon the problem of maintaining the lower margin
of the community. They who are in danger of falling behind are sustained
and carried on. None in these communities is permitted to fall into
pauperism. The workingman without capital, whether he be in their
meetings or only employed on their farms, is kept from want. The widow
with her little house and one cow is insured against the loss of any
feature of her small property. This seems to me to be the greatest
triumph of these communities. It is the test, I am convinced, of their
organizations and of their success. In this they demonstrate one of the
greatest possibilities of country life. They show that in the open
country it is possible for men to live without the suffering and
degradation of poverty.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: History of American Presbyterianism, by R. E. Thompson.]
[Footnote 18: An exception to this statement must be noted, in the
Scotch settlements in Canada and Nova Scotia.]
[Footnote 19: Professor John L. Gillin, in American Journal of
Sociology, March, 1911.]
[Footnote 20: Quaker Hill, by Warren H. Wilson.]
VI
GETTING A LIVING
The core of a community must be economic. The main business of life is
to get a living.[21] The reason for existence of any community is found
in the living which it supplies its residents. Men are attracted to a
community by the increases in their living furnished by that community.
The first element in the getting of a living is the securing of daily
bread, shelter, clothing and the satisfaction of physical needs. It is a
mistake to think of the community as beginning in religious
institutions--narrowly understood--or in social gatherings or in
educational service. The initial human experience is the finding of
food.
But the getting of a living is a long process. A living is more than
bread, and a roof and a coat. In quest of a living men go from the
country to the town and from the town to the city. They migrate from the
small city to the large. In each of these moves they secure a further
element in their living. Each of these communities is characterized by
the increase which it contributes to the living of its citizens, but in
every community the initial experience is the securing of daily bread,
shelter, clothing and material economic gains. Whatever is done,
therefore, for the community in a service to all the people must have
initial concern with the purely economic welfare of the people.
Sir Horace Plunkett's book, "The Rural Life Problem of the United
States," develops this principle very clearly. He shows that in the
Country Life Movement in Ireland it was necessary to go into the very
heart of the people's aspirations, and organize their economic needs.