was valued at not more than $25.00 per acre. All of them are in the
Eighteen Counties. (See Map 10.) In the remaining five the land is valued
at not more than $50.00 per acre. It becomes impossible, therefore, to
avoid the question whether the character of the soil determines the
character and destiny of the people who are born upon it.

Attention should be directed in passing to the fact that the low value of
the land is due in part to the failure of the people who live upon it to
develop and use the natural resources which are available. In some of the
poorest regions in the Eighteen Counties an occasional farmer is making a
good living from the soil, although his land by nature is no better than
that of his poor neighbors. As a rule the agricultural opportunities of
the region are neglected. For example, little fruit is grown, although
both climate and soil in much of the region are very favorable to fruit
production.

But it remains true that the natural conditions as a whole are not as
favorable for agriculture, as they are to the north and northwest; and it
is an unquestionable fact that the character and condition of the earth's
surface has a relation to the physical, intellectual, social, and moral
conditions of the people who live upon it. Undoubtedly this is as true in
southeastern Ohio as it is elsewhere. Poor soil, as a rule, does not hold
upon itself the most enterprising families so tenaciously as good soil,
and for that reason we might fairly expect the people of these districts
to have less vigor and less initiative. On such soil it is therefore more
difficult to sustain thriving churches, and so the moral and religious
life may be more prone to decline.

But soil conditions by themselves cannot demoralize a people. They can do
so only where the church is failing to do its work. The natural conditions
of soil and climate are by no means worse in the Eighteen Counties than in
many other areas where fairly good moral conditions are found. They are no
worse than they were in the parish of John Frederick Oberlin, nor in many
fairly prosperous New England communities of to-day. Even where moral,
economic, and other conditions are bad, communities usually respond
quickly to the work of a well-equipped resident pastor, as the experience
of home missionaries abundantly proves.

In the first parish served as pastor by Mr. Gill, the soil and the people
were very poor. The moral conditions, because of a church s