on powerful and sometimes very respectable forces were
lined up in favor of its continuance. But as soon as the fight against
the saloon had been carried to the point of its legal elimination many
of those who once supported the barroom because of the profit to them
became its opponents. Formerly the saloon was a center for the
corruption of many if not most of the youth in the community. Now,
most communities are bringing up a far higher grade of young people
morally than they once were because it is no longer necessary to fight
against this center of immoral infection.

The lesson these illustrations should teach is this: that the
conventional method used by the churches during the past half century
of depending almost entirely upon individual regeneration through
personal appeal as a means of salvation of the race has handicapped
the church and limited its effectiveness. When it is once understood
that the mind and the character of the individual can be influenced in
as many ways as there are social contacts, and when the means of
approach through all these contacts is understood, then the
effectiveness of the church will be immeasurably increased. Social
life must be saved not only through individual regeneration but also
through the establishment of a right attitude on the part of the
individual and as many individuals as possible. On the other hand,
individual attitudes can be established in large part by bringing
about, through means now fairly well understood, good economic
conditions and social organization.

The sad part about the traditional limited method of approach to
improvement of group life has been that in probably the majority of
cases impulses were aroused by personal appeal to do good and then
through ignorance of objectives in group advance those impulses were
allowed to die. The "backslider" is an excellent illustration of the
results of periodic renewal of impulse to right living. In most other
cases the impulses thus aroused have found their expression in a
hypersensitiveness in regard to certain phases of personal conduct.
Emphasis upon personal moral conduct to the exclusion of effective
interest in social progress characterized much of the product of the
personal evangelistic campaigns carried on periodically during the
past two or three generations, while the real work of making the world
better has been directed by men and women not particularly subject to
these periodical waves of religi