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.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 31: "The Agrarian Changes in the Middle West," by J. B. Ross.]

X

CO-OPERATION

In contrast to other classes of the population country people have a
marked preference for individual action and an aversion to co-operative
effort. The causes of this are historical. In general these causes are
of the past and they are not a matter of persuasion. The American farmer
has not co-operated in the past because: first, the necessities of his
life made him independent and impatient of the sacrifices necessary in
co-operating with his fellows. We have still many influences of the
pioneer in modern life. So long as agriculture is solitary work and its
processes take a man away from his fellows, co-operation will be
retarded. So long as the countryman has to practise a variety of trades,
he will be emotional, and the social life of the country will be broken
up by feuds, divisions, separations and continu