ailure of the churches may fairly be called
pathetic. These counties are Adams, Athens, Brown, Clermont, Gallia,
Highland, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Noble, Pike,
Ross, Scioto, Vinton, and Washington. In this area, after more than a
hundred years of the work of the churches, the religious, social, and
economic welfare of the people are going down. Although the churches have
been here for more than a century, no normal type of organized religion is
really flourishing, while the only kind which, during the past fifteen
years, has been gaining ground, the cult of the Holy Rollers, is scarcely
better than that of a Dervish. The churches have failed and are failing to
dispel ignorance and superstition, to prevent the increase of vice, the
spread of disease, and the general moral and spiritual decadence of the
people.

Most of the information concerning the Eighteen Counties, as for
convenience, this region is hereafter called, was derived from personal
investigation on the ground by Mr. Gill, from the testimony of two trained
investigators, and from interviews and correspondence with local
merchants, physicians, clergymen, school teachers, superintendents of
schools and churches, farmers, and Sunday school workers. Information
confirming what had already been received was found in the statistical
reports of the national and state governments. Some of the results of a
study of the reports of the Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics and the United
States Census are given in Table A and in Maps A, and Maps 1 to 10, on
pages 26 to 36.

In Map A the heavily shaded area indicates the Eighteen Counties included
in this region. Ten other counties bordering upon them are shaded more
lightly. Many communities in these ten bordering counties are influenced
by the migration of population from the Eighteen Counties.

In no less than twelve out of the Eighteen Counties, the death rate from
tuberculosis is excessive. (See Map 1 and Table A, column 1.) Reports of
the Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics for the years 1909, 1910, and 1911
(the latest we could secure on this subject), give the average annual
deaths from this disease for 100,000 persons, as 125 for the whole State.
On Map 1, all counties are shaded whose rate exceeds not 125 only, but
145. Of the seventeen counties in the State whose death rate from
tuberculosis is 145 or over, all but five are in this region, and of the
five one is a bordering county.

Outsi