l producing sixty
bushels per acre, wasting four-fifths of their land values. This waste
is a wrong that should be denounced in the country church just as
sternly as doctrinal sins, which have occupied the attention of country
ministers in the past.

Expert farmers say that if corn-stalks for fodder are left out in the
field until they are fed to the cattle they lose forty to fifty per cent
of their food values. This waste is sinful, but the sin is visible only
in the new economy of exploitation which counts all values in terms of
cash. No sooner is the sinfulness of waste observed than its connections
with moral delinquencies of country people becomes clear. In the
improvement of rural morality due to the sifting of country people
during the farmer period, it becomes evident that among a people so
serious-minded some delinquencies still remain. The immoralities that
still lurk and fester in the country are due very largely to waste. This
waste of human things is parallel to the waste of economic values.

In a conference there was some difficulty in persuading a certain
country minister to speak. When finally he arose he said, "I am not much
interested in the scientific analysis of the country church. All I am
interested in is sin." One wonders whether he was dealing with the sins
of the country in their causes or in their effects, or was he simply
concerned with the sins which consist in opposing the doctrines of his
particular denomination, whatever it was. This wastefulness of the
values in the soil enters into the social life of the country. Farmers
care as little for the social values as for land values. Young men and
women ignore the moral importance of little things. They are not taught
that coarseness is wrong. They are not made to realize that cleanliness
and courtesy and reverence for the human body are of vital importance in
life.

Country people are prudish and they cover with a strict reserve all
discussion of the moral relations of men and women. Yet in the same
communities there is loose private conversation and coarse references
are common. The strict standard of the household prevails within its
limits. Books and magazines must not discuss, however seriously, the
problems of life. But in the intercourse of the community there is not
the same care. The moral life of country people requires cultivation of
the leisure hours, the casual talk, the occasional meetings of men and
women, and especially of yo