a
religious and economic ideal?

In economic operations the Quakers dwelt in this world. They sought a
living and they sought wealth--not for the services wealth can render in
culture and education, but to accumulate it, possess it, invest and
manage it, and to live "in plainness."

Yet they subconsciously did also seek after a prosperity that should be
general. Not closely, not in any declarations or definite teachings of
their code, but still in a real way, as a by-product of their code of
life, they acted so that none in their community should be in want. This
they did with profound wisdom--for they taught no communal doctrine--and
the details of their action toward weaker members of the neighborhood
were uncommonly shrewd and sensible. I will show later the effects of
this in the fact that the population under our study shows the absence
of defective classes in a significant degree. There are no idiots, no
defective, no criminal, no pauper classes among the Quaker Hill
population.

The mind of the community had, indeed, an active interest in liberty and
the contribution noted above (see Ch. IV. Part I) in the agitation for
the abolition of slavery in this state was an act of public spirit along
the lines of a great national experience. The fact that the meeting of
Friends in 1767 was held on Quaker Hill, which initiated effective
action against slave-holding, is much cherished on the Hill, and is
commemorated in a stone and bronze memorial at the Meeting House.

Equality of suffrage and universal suffrage are jealously believed in,
owing to the Quaker teaching as to woman's parity with man. Yet in the
school-meeting, in which women have the same right to vote that men
have, there are seldom any women present. Indeed, except for a packed
meeting once in a decade, to decide some agitated question, few women
attend school-meetings.

The size of the holdings of land on the Hill, and the curve of increase
and decrease for seventy years, are exhibited in Table II.

TABLE II.

_Land-Holdings on Quaker Hill: Acreages on which Owners are taxed._

Years 1835 1845 1865 1875 1890 1900 1906
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No. Owners 31 26 39 51 48 53 42
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Highest Acreage 610 540 445 420 540 540 540
Higher Q