te in the large centers. Wage-earners in the large
centers who have no assurance of permanence of jobs are not inclined
to give liberally toward providing adequate building and equipment for
religious services. No wage-earner can be expected to give hundreds of
dollars out of his income toward building a church when the next month
may find him compelled to move to some distant city. In like manner it
is difficult in large centers to get wage-earners even to maintain a
church adequately. Consequently the church is to-day spending
millions of dollars to provide church buildings for wage-earners in
large cities. Yet it does not have any program for bringing about wage
returns, permanency of employment, or interest in business that would
make it possible or desirable for the wage-earner to finance his own
church building. Neither does the church have a plan whereby the
industries of a city make any adequate contribution to the housing of
religious institutions for those connected with the industry. Although
the wealth of America is centered in the great cities, the provision
for religious service to city people is being made by people living in
small towns and in the open country.

As in the city, so in the open country. It has become necessary for
the general church to provide even pastoral maintenance in certain
sections where land is worth three hundred dollars per acre. The
transient tenant has no abiding interest in the community because he
expects to move at the end of the year. This condition is gradually
becoming worse; and unless the general church undertakes the solution
of problems affecting the local church but over which the local
church has no control, the future will bring either a decline in
religious influence in rural sections or a continuous burden on
national boards that should and would under proper conditions be cared
for by local communities.

That the church can help in improving economic conditions to the
advantage of all rural life has already been abundantly demonstrated.
On the Brookhaven District, Mississippi Conference, Methodist
Episcopal Church, the missionary board of that denomination made a
contribution of three hundred dollars toward the support for the
summer of a man and woman engaged in organizing community clubs.
Twenty-one clubs were organized, and as a result of their efforts over
fifty thousand pounds of fruit and truck were saved during the period
of the war when food conservati