ave
conquered the market in distant cities. The standard to which they
compel their members to conform is the standard of the demand in the
world market. If the milk farmers about New York City are to combine
they must first impose a self-denying ordinance upon their own members
and furnish the city with a quality of milk in harmony with the demands
of modern sanitary experts. This is an ethical principle not of the
pioneer or the farmer economy, but of the new husbandry to which very
few farmers have conformed.

In the building of country communities, therefore, the ethical teaching
must be of a new order. There is already a general teaching of morality
in the country churches. The temperance reform is a moral propaganda
born of the farmer economy. The expulsion of the saloon from country
places has been in obedience to the farmer's conscience. The temperance
reform exhibits the transformation from individual ethics which were
advocated in 1880 to communal ethics which are represented in the local
option aspects of this reform. In 1880 the individual was asked to sign
the pledge of total abstinence. In those days it was as important that
innocent children sign the pledge as that drunkards sign it. The lists
of pledge signers were padded with the names of persons who had never
tasted strong drink. In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League began its agitation,
which has proceeded among country people with increasing influence. The
individual is ignored and the pledge is signed now by the community, by
the county or by the state. The attack is not upon the individual
drunkard, but upon the community institution, the saloon. This is a
great gain in the direction of social ethics. It illustrates the
transformation from the pioneer whose impact was upon the individual to
the standards of the exploiter period in which the impact is upon the
commercial institution. The local option movement has had its growth in
the period of exploitation dated by Prof. Ross from 1890. In this
movement the country churches have been distributing centers, the places
of discussion and nuclei of moral energy.

If the general moral standards of country people are to be transformed
from the pioneer formulae to those of the modern world economy, the
country churches must be led by men trained in economics and reinforced
by a thorough knowledge of social processes. The temperance movement
already begins to show the deficiencies of a propaganda purely negative.