r 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 thir
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