e brought into the country
parish, for the church's sake. Indeed the minister would do well if his
scholarship be the learning of the husbandman. No other science has such
religious values. No other books have such immediate relation to the
well-being of the people. The minister is not ashamed to teach Greek,
or Latin,--dead languages. Why should he think it beneath him "to teach
the farmer how to farm," provided he can teach the farmer anything? If
he be a true scholar, the farmer, who is a practical man, needs his
learned co-operation in the most religious of occupations, that the land
may be holy.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: Rural Economics, by Prof. Thos. Nixon Carver.]

[Footnote 13: "The Country-Life Movement," by L. H. Bailey.]

[Footnote 14: "Ireland in the New Century," by Sir Horace Plunkett.]

[Footnote 15: Professor Thomas Nixon Carver.]

[Footnote 16: See Chapter V.]

V

EXCEPTIONAL COMMUNITIES

Most of this volume is devoted to the average conditions which prevail
throughout the United States. The attempt is made to deal with those
causes which are generally operative. It is the writer's opinion that
the causes dealt with in other chapters are the prevailing causes of
religious and social experience in the most of the United States. As
soon as the community, after its early settlement, becomes mature, these
causes show the effects here described. But there are exceptions which
should be noted and the cause of their different life made clear. These
exceptions are represented in the Mormons, the Scottish Presbyterians
and the Pennsylvania Germans.

"The best farmers in the country are the Mormons, the Scotch
Presbyterians and Pennsylvania Germans." This sentence expresses a
general observation of Prof. Carver of Harvard, speaking as an
economist. The churches among these three classes of exceptionally
prosperous farmers show great tenacity and are free from the weakness
which otherwise prevails in the country church. There is a group of
causes underlying this exceptional character of the three classes of
farmers.

These exceptional farmers are organized in the interest of agriculture.
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 thei