The new home missions, an account of their social redirection

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The new home missions 1

EDITED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF TECE

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

B. — Special helps and denominational mission study literature for
this course can be obtained by corresponding with the Secre-
tary of your mission board or society.

REV. T. O. DOUGLASS, OF IOWA

Veteran home missionary statesman and administrator

GPM

DEC 11 1914

THE NEWM^-y,,^^^
HOME MISSIONS

AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR
SOCIAL REDIRECTION

BY

HARLAN PAUL "^DOUGLASS

Author of "Chmstian Reconstruction
IN THE South"

THE PRESBYTERIAN DEPARTMENT

OF MISSIONARY EDUCATION

Rooms 907-908

156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY

Copyright, 1914, by

Missionary Education Movement of the

United States and Canada

TO
MY FATHER AND MOTHER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface xi

I Home Missions as the Geographical Expansion of the

Church 3

II From Social By-product to Social Aim 31

III An Adequate Program for the Country 61

IV The City and the Stranger 93

V Social Knowledge and Social Justice 129

VI A Social Restatement of Race Problems . . . . 157

VII The Social Reaction of Home Missions upon the Church 191

VIII Social Realization of Christianity in America . . . 225

Bibliography 251

Index 259

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Rev. T. O. Douglass Frontispiece

Horse Power and Hand Power 12

The Itinerant 26

Rev. Peter Cartwright 32

A Strong Village Church 72

Le Moyne Institute, Memphis, Tennessee 82

Rural and Urban Population 94

Labor Temple 102

Bulletin-Board of a Down-Town Church, New York . . . 106

Total Immigration by Decades no

Rev. Josiah Strong 132

A Group of Chinese Children, San Francisco 162

Young Men of a Japanese Mission, Portland, Oregon . . . 166

An Overchurched Rural Community 200

Rev. Charles L. Thompson 208

Secretarial Council on the Commission of the Church and Social
Service of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in

America 216

PREFACE

Home missions as understood by this book are a
group of activities attempting to Christianize the
United States, and carried on by the Churches as
such.

There are manifold other agencies working for the
same end, but not ecclesiastically organized. Such
are the great national non-sectarian allies of the
Church like the Young Men's Christian Association;
such are the multitudinous philanthropic agencies of
general scope. These grow out of but do not di-
rectly represent the Church. Home missions on the
contrary are the churches themselves at their task
of redeeming our nation.

Home missions, again, operate as agencies of the
churches collectively. This contrasts them with the
activities of single parishes, which though similar are
unrelated to each other. The home missionary units
may be city, district, state, denomination, or nation,
but they are always ecclesiastical grouf>-activities car-
ried on through agencies of which the Mission Board
is the type.

Naturally, agencies in which the churches act col-
lectively will concern themselves primarily with gen-
eral problems rather than local, and particularly with

3di PREFACE

problems of national significance and dimension. Most
typically then home missions express the social and
spiritual consciousness of the churches in matters of
nation-wide concern which can best be handled col-
lectively by churches acting in larger units, as when
the board has some national responsibility for its
denomination.

All this is necessary for precision, but is simply
a long way of saying that home missions mean very
largely the Qiristian work of the denominational mis-
sionary boards operating in the United States.

The importance of discrimination within the realm
of agencies operating for the redemption of America
is seen at once when it is expressed in terms of the
division of financial support. Thus the officially re-
ported benevolent giving of a representative denomi-
nation (apart from the home expenses of local par-
ishes) approximates $2,400,000 annually. This total
roughly divides as follows:

To foreign missions carried on through general
Church agencies 25 per cent.

To home missions carried on through general

Church agencies 25 per cent.

To other benevolences under denominational aus-
pices, chiefly local 25 per cent.

To other than denominational benevolences 25 per cent.

A book on home missions in the broadest sense
might tell the story of the three fourths of the above
total which is devoted to the redemption of our own
country. In the narrowest sense it would have to

PREFACE

xui

confine itself to the one fourth which is officially rec-
ognized as the work of boards of general jurisdiction.
As a matter of fact this book takes a middle course.

It is not confined strictly to the activities of mission-
ary boards, but considers them in connection with the
large movement of the social application of Chris-
tianity as inspired and in the general sense directed
by the Church. On the other hand, it does not pre-
sume to claim for home missions as such the vast
social consequences of American Christianity.

The seepage and flow of the Christian spirit through
the underground crevices and channels of society is
beyond charting or measurement. Home missions
name a particular set of pumps and engines, which
raise and distribute this flow through a particular sys-
tem of pipes and sluices upon particular areas, using
a technical, intensive method. They do not convey all
the water which gets to these particular areas. Some
rains down out of the general atmosphere of Ameri-
can Christianity ; other is pulled up by capillarity and
its moisture conserved at the surface by methods
of moral cultivation of which home missions are only
one. Once its flow is turned upon the land it mixes
immediately with all the waters. The harvest is the
result of all the forces operating.

Home missions are thus but part of a greater proc-
ess— and this is the assurance of their success. We
may, however, note their precise methods and areas,
and the superiorities of results where the social spirit
is directed by home missions over those which depend

xiv PREFACE

on the meteorological accident of Christianity as the
general moral climate of America. Certain crops
grow only under missionary irrigation and the yield
is always greater for all crops when home missions
assist in their cultivation. In other words, home mis-
sions are an efficient and dependable process of social
salvation in which the social spirit has become definite,
purposeful, adaptive, and accurate.

Not only does this book not confine itself to the
social service activities of the home missionary agen-
cies as such, but it is not primarily concerned with
activities at all. It does not so much treat of the new
things which are being done as the expression of
the social spirit, as of the new spirit in which all
things are being done. Its deepest interest is in ten-
dencies and their interpretation, not in describing par-
ticular facts. Consequently it omits from formal treat-
ment a great many interesting and important phases
of social home missions. Only enough are introduced
reasonably to illustrate and amplify the general move-
ment in its chief fields of expression.

Finally, the book strives to give a unified impres-
sion of the great process whereby home missions are
being made over again inwardly without interference
with their old functions. This is the most marvelous
aspect of their social redirection. It is like the
building of the new Grand Central Station in New
York City. Its miracle is not that it finally stands
complete — a gigantic feat of engineering and archi-
tecture— but that it was built without interruption of

PREFACE

XV

trafUc. On this spot stood a vast material creation do-
ing a million-handed work of moving human beings
and goods. Now its place has been taken by a ten
times vaster one different in every detail. There was
a new motive power, electricity; a new social tech-
nique of admitting and discharging the human ebb
and flow of a metropolis; new problems of subter-
ranean engineering, and new ideals of civic beauty.
All these were wrought into this mighty pile through
a series of years — yet all the while its trains kept run-
ning. In and out they dodged and twisted, hundreds
upon hundreds every day, and day after day, past
stone heap and under massive girder, not without
makeshift and inconvenience, but always on the tracks.
The station kept on serving while experiencing com-
plete reconstruction. It was the Grand Central all
the timiC from old to new. This same fact of radical
transformation without interruption of traffic is the
clue to the home missionary story as the following
pages try to tell it. The old home missions have be-
come the new home missions and the work has gone
right on.

New York, N. Y.,
June 3, 1914.

Harlan Paul Douglass.

HOME MISSIONS AS THE GEOGRAPHICAL
EXPANSION OF THE CHURCH

CHAPTER I

HOME MISSIONS AS THE GEOGRAPHICAL EXPAN-
SION OF THE CHURCH

"The Regions Beyond." Some thirty years ago a
child was growing up in a minister's home of the Mis-
sissippi Valley — into some such understanding as this :
Home Missions are a process which begins in New
England and ends in the "regions beyond," Here we
are in the Central West ; a little while ago our church
was receiving missionary aid ; that is, somebody "back
East" sent money through the board to help pay the
preacher's salary. We tried as hard as we could to
come to "self-support" in order that people "back
East" might be free to send more of their money to
the "regions beyond." After a little our state would
be able to help all the weak churches in it, and the
people "back East" might send all their money to the
"regions beyond." Later we ourselves would be send-
ing money to the "regions beyond." Then the regions
just beyond would doubtless repeat the process.
Finally the church and Sunday-school would be every-
where and presumably the job would be done.

Expansion Westward. Now this child's naive under-
standing of the "regions beyond" scarcely escaped be-

3

4 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ing profound, for the consciousness of them was the
clue to his nation's history of that time. Home mis-
sions were an aspect of national expansion westward.
They were the religious version of the geographical
occupancy of the continent. They were migrant Chris-
tianity ever camping on the trail of empire and con-
quering for ideals what the pioneer conquered for
the nation ; redeeming from materialism and vice what
he redeemed from forest, swamp, empty prairie, and
roving savage.

Significance of the West. The West was a state of
society, not an area. It was the bending of old insti-
tutions and ideals under the influences of free land,
the remolding of habits by free environment. It was
the breaking up of custom and its reestablishment with
a difference. The West was not the frontier, but
rather the chaotic state left just behind an ever-retiring
frontier and the effort to organize it. As fast as
this was done the West passed on, leaving a belt of
population suddenly aged and like older parts of the
nation; yet always leaving also an ampler and freer
spirit. Thus "decade after decade, West after West,
this rebirth of American society has gone on, has left
its traces behind it and has reacted on the East." ^
Less by imitation than by domination and free adapta-
tion, the West has been assimilated to the nation and
assimilated the nation to itself.

Landmarks of Western Expansion. It will be a
sufficient initial background for our study of the home

* Turner, "Problem of the West," Atlantic Monthly, 78: p. 289.

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 5

missionary movement, to recall the chief landmarks
of westward expansion before 1830; (i ) the organiza-
tion of the national domain west to the Mississippi
under the ordinance of 1787, and its vast enlargement
by the Louisiana purchase (1803) and the Florida
purchase (1819); (2) the westward movement of
population which increased the scarce 100,000 people
of the trans-Alleghany states of 1790 to over three
and a half million by 1830, making them a large quar-
ter of the nation and giving Ohio alone more people
than Massachusetts and Connecticut combined; (3)
the pressing back of the Indians by war and treaty and
the facilitation of settlement by the building of roads
and waterways, by the use of the steamboat on west-
ern rivers, the opening of the Erie Canal and by the
liberal land policy of the government; and (4) the
admission of states, Kentucky 1792, Tennessee 1796,
Ohio 1803, Louisiana 1812, Indiana 1816, Mississippi
1817, Illinois 1818, Alabama 1819, and Missouri
1821.

The Crucial Dates. Between 1830 and 1835 a re-
markable group of forces came to focus. The West
of that time was politically in the saddle through the
election of Andrew Jackson as President ; the first rail-
road was building; settlement had touched the Missis-
sippi River in the Northwest ; the Webster-Hayne de-
bates had formulated the sectional policies of the
North and South; the agricultural differentiation of
the Northwest from the empire of cotton was estab-
lished; prairie farming and the agricultural revolu-

6 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

tion in the North through machinery were just at
hand; and the definite reservation of the whole na-
tional domain for the genuine settler scarcely a dec-
ade away. Finally the era of actual colonization in
the Pacific Northwest was beginning, and with it the
consciousness that the entire continent was destined
to be covered by American homes. ^ These mighty
and all but coincident changes mark the period after
1835 as essentially different from the preceding one.

Two Phases. This date divides also the two eras
of the older home missions. Since the West was never
long in one place and since the later West enjoyed
the results of advancing civilization, and could now
attack the wilderness with machinery rather than
with the ax; and since it shared the development of
the nation, particularly in its diverse sectional evolu-
tion, religious evolution naturally divides into two
phases : ( i ) a preliminary or pioneer phase com-
pleted while the frontier was still substantially homo-
geneous, and (2) a characteristic phase in which
home missions minister to the home-making and com-
munity-building farmer. His type, moreover, subdi-
vides with the economic and sectional diversification
of American life.

Preliminary Phase. The object of the preliminary
home missions was the pioneer; their agent, the it-
inerant preacher; their method, the revival. The pio-
neer was a man who attempted single-handed or in
small groups the conquest of the Western wilderness

^ Schaf er, History of Pacific Northwest, 145.

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 7

— a task which could only be accomplished thoroughly
and finally by a considerable population using ma-
chinery and advanced organization.

A Surviving Pioneer. One understands him best
by going to see him. One finds him persisting in the
Southern Appalachian or the Ozark highlands. There
one may visit one of his "contemporary ancestors" —
a farmer, he calls himself. He lives in a log cabin
in a clearing of perhaps two acres on a stony Ozark
hillside. His equipment consists of a hoe, an ax,
and a gun. He owns no work animal, possesses no
farming implements, farms without wheels. Forest
and stream still help largely to furnish his larder.
With his ax he clears his land, builds his house, and
makes most of its meager furniture. A hundred years
ago thousands of men like this one thronged the Na-
tional Highway from Pennsylvania westward, goods
packed on horseback or drawn in a single cart, and
stopped where a wheel broke or a horse died; while
the better-provisioned pressed on toward the sunset
in their heavy canvas-covered wagons drawn by four
or six horses. ^ With many pioneering became a
habit. They could not breathe with the smoke of
another's house in sight and so pressed ever west-
ward, the advance couriers of a civilization which
they abhorred.

Pioneer Traits. The struggle with the wilderness
wrought into the earlier pioneer's mind a set of dis-
tinctive characteristics which have often been de-

* Turner, Rise of the New West, 80.

8 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

scribed. Lonely and out of touch with society, com-
pelled to be sufficient unto himself for such rude sub-
sistence as he could get, he lost capacity for group
action and became an extreme individualist. Away
from books and culture and with no one to enforce
moral demands upon him, he became rude and wild;
resentful, when society again caught up with him, of
all interference with his actions. He took the law
into his own hands — or rather kept it there. He re-
verted in the direction of the Indian with whom he
fought, and from whom he learned. The perils
of the wilderness and the savage forced his life against
a background of fear. The frontier got on his nerves
and he became excitable, reckless. Whisky became
his passion, solace, and inspiration. His religious
restraint gradually fell from him, and he became wildly
emotional in religion. Its fires flared fitfully under
the exhortation of the itinerant preacher and blazed
out in the great revival of 1800.

The Early Revival. This frontier revival made
a temporary social impression by achieving like-mind-
edness in a highly individualistic population. It got
their common response to the motive of fear. The
Indian had already forced the pioneer to occasional
cooperation. The terrors of hell and of the Indian
became the chief socializing forces of the frontier.
Of institutional strength the early revival had noth-
ing. It lacked constructive social principles and in
its inevitable reaction seemed destructive to the more
stable types of religious organization. But it held

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 9

the frontier for the gospel till other forces and better
motives could appear.

How Religion Spread. Religion in the earliest
West was propagated with very little ecclesiastical
guidance. To be sure Methodism was already follow-
ing its high instinct as essentially a missionary sys-
tem; and the Methodist was everywhere along the
frontier. But so was the Baptist, who multiplied
without the slightest church machinery. The first
praise thus belongs to men of religion — lay preachers
largely — who were of the Western movement itself,
who incarnated its motives, took its risks, lived as their
neighbors did, preached under responsibility to the
Lord alone, and who made faith in its rude forms in-
digenous to the frontier. The missionary found and
shepherded these men but the Lord created them.

A Famous Missionary Survey. How frontier re-
ligious conditions looked to the eyes of the older sea-
board states appears in Mills and Schermerhorn's fa-
mous report of their tour of missionary exploration in
1 81 3. Sent out by the Massachusetts and Connecti-
cut Missionary Societies they crossed the Alleghanies
in Pennsylvania, passed through what is now West
Virginia and the Western Reserve of Ohio, traversed
Kentucky and Tennessee, traveled with Jackson's
troops to Natchez, thence reached New Orleans by
flatboat. They found Presbyterian ministers chiefly
settled in the towns, supporting themselves by school-
teaching or vocations other than the ministry. Such
few missionaries as the General Assembly and Cum-

lo THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

berland Presbytery had were sent out for periods of
six or eight weeks only, and their fruits fell to the
Methodists and Baptists. Everywhere they reported
most appalling religious destitution. As we would
put it to-day, Christianity was neither numerically
strong nor socially effective. What they chiefly cata-
loged were the vices of the frontier — the profanity
and Sabbath-breaking of Ohio; horse-racing, dueling,
and gambling in Kentucky and Tennessee. They
found no Bibles in Louisiana, and to their Puritan
minds New Orleans was a city of unparalleled wicked-
ness. More sin, they reported, was committed there
on Sunday than in all the rest of the week. They
were shrewd enough, also, to discern beneath some
of the sectarian vagaries of the frontier the mental
quirks of their own New England. Their report con-
stitutes the first original, comprehensive, and states-
manlike home missionary survey of Western conditions
ever attempted.

The First Boards. Behind Mills and Schermer-
horn stood a group of agencies which first conceived
home missions as a general, organized, and permanent
method and enterprise of national evangelization. Nat-
urally they represented the more developed and com-
mercial sections of the nation, specifically New Eng-
land and the middle states. Denominationally they
were Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Dutch
Reformed. Almost simultaneously, about the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, these churches organ-
ized home missionary movements, sometimes under

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH ii

state designations, but substantially with like intent,
to follow the frontier with the institutions of religion.
By 1826 the strongest of these agencies, the Con-
necticut Missionary Society, had sent out 200 mis-
sionaries and organized 400 Presbyterian and Con-
gregational churches. The characteristic method was
that of somewhat transient service, the missionary
laboring briefly in a given community, then pressing
on to preach to others. Essentially the same method
was more systematically employed in the early Metho-
dist itinerancy. Fundamentally it was not a matter of
denominational polity but simply the inevitable method
of the first frontier.

From Forest to Prairie. By 1830 the "conquest
of the great forest" which covered the eastern third
of the continent was completed, and settlement was
just venturing upon the vast prairies of the Mississippi
Valley, So long as pioneering was done in the forest
it remained substantially the same as it had been in
the colonial period. Upon the prairies it took new
forms, was reen forced by new resources, and was
followed by that characteristic phase of home missions
comprehended within the experience of the middle-
aged of the present generation.

The Second Phase of Home Missions. In contrast
with the preliminary phase of home missions for the
pioneer, this second and characteristic phase had for
its object the farmer, and for its method the com-
munity church with its settled pastor. It dates roughly
from 1835 to 1890. Of course there were farmers

12 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

before 1835. Though the earHer settlement of the
West had attracted diverse elements, the actual home-
seeker had always been in the majority. But the con-
quest of the entire continent had not yet become the
objective of American religion which it was from De
Tocqueville's time on, and the farmer was not yet
the conscious agent of national expansion. This came
coincidentally with an agricultural revolution the like
of which the world has never seen.

From Hand to Horse Power. *Tn 1833 practically
all the work of the farm except plowing and harrow-
ing was done by hand. Though there had been minor
improvements in hand tools, and considerable improve-
ment in live stock and crops, particularly in Europe,
yet it is safe to say that, so far as the general character
of the work actually performed by the farmer was
concerned, there had been practically no change for
4,000 years. Small grain was still sown broadcast,
and reaped either with a cradle or the still more
primitive sickle. . . . Grain was still thrashed with
a flail in 1833, or trodden out by horses and oxen,
as it had been in ancient Egypt or Babylonia. Hay was
mown with a scythe and raked and pitched by hand.
Corn was planted and covered by hand and cultivated
with a hoe. By 1866 every one of these operations
was done by machinery driven by horse-power, except
in the more backward sections of the country." ^ It
was in men thus suddenly equipped with new imple-
ments of conquest, and reen forced by a more favorable

* Carver, Principles of Rural Economics, 84, 85.

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HORSE POWER AND HAND POWER

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 13

public land policy and by the railroad, that the passion
to subdue nature flamed out into the vision of the
"nation's continental destiny." Shrewd, bold, and
in the end grasping, the farmer hastened across the
prairies to seize all the natural wealth of America
that could be seized by men working with horse-power
in family groups. He became the central figure of
our history for more than a half -century.

The Farmer. Agriculture is essentially a domestic
industry. Unlike business or manufacturing, it is car-
ried on at home and its work shared by all the mem-
bers of a family. The head of the family is self-em-
ployed. He takes orders and receives wages from no
man. He thinks of himself and makes others think of
him as independent. His relations with others outside
of the family group reflect this independence. He
owes them nothing beyond the simple duties of neigh-
borliness. Unlike the pioneer, however, he has neigh-
bors and lives in permanent communities within driv-
ing distance of the country store, school, and church.
But social development stops here. Most of the rela-
tions between farmer families are competitive. As
landowners, or potential landowners, they feel their
essential equality and do not realize their poverty in
the more intricate social ties. This generalized state-
ment does not fit all farmers, but it fairly pictures the
type.

The Church of the Farmer. The farmer's religion
reflects his character. It is individualistic, centering
in personal salvation. It is conservative, seeking to

14 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

protect the family group from disintegrating vice and
to conserve the virtues of thrift and purity. It warns
therefore against gambHng as the enemy of thrift, and
intemperance as the enemy of the home. The farmer
seated his church with family pews, but saw no ob-
jection to dividing the community between many
churches if the interests of personal salvation were
only provided for. He continued but toned down the
pioneer's revival, and added the peculiar institutions
of the family group, the Sunday-school, and the
prayer-meeting. He tended to have a settled pastor,
frequently himself a farmer. He received missionary
aid and learned traditionally to contribute to missions.
And his women organized sewing circles.

Appropriate Missionary Methods. As the farmer
appeared in the older states, the existing home mission
agencies began to sense his peculiar needs and vision
as contrasted with those of the pioneer, and to provide
for them. Thus in 1825 a senior in Andover Theo-
logical Seminary, Andover, Massachusetts, reading an
essay before the student Society of Inquiry said :
"We want a system that shall be one — one in purpose
and one in action — a system aiming, not at itinerant
missionaries alone, but at planting, in every little com-
munity that is rising up, men of learning and influ-
ence, to impress their character upon these communi-
ties— a system, in short, that shall gather the re-
sources of philanthropy, patriotism, and Christian
sympathy throughout our country into one vast reser-

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 15

voir from which a stream shall flow to Georgia and
to Louisiana, to Missouri and to Maine." ^

Organization with National Vision. This was symp-
tomatic of the growing appreciation of changed con-
ditions, which issued in 1826 in the organization of
the American Home Missionary Society, with the pro-
gram of establishing a permanent ministry throughout
the West under "national direction." Its organizers
were 126 delegates representing thirteen states and
denominationally divided between the Presbyterian,
Congregational, Reformed, and Associate Reformed
bodies. Not only does it mark the beginning of mis-
sions as a comprehensive national enterprise, but it
undertook the task with surprising disregard for sec-
tarian considerations in the broadest spirit of Chris-
tian statesmanship.

Action and Reaction. Its more intimate motive re-
peatedly shines through the routine of frontier preach-
ers' reports as spread on the pages of the missionary
magazines of the day : Our own children have moved
to the wicked and careless West. We must hasten to
provide them with the same religious environment
that they had back home. Socially interpreted, the
oft-cataloged sins of the West were just the abandon-
ment of the old religious habits. With this clue to
duty home missions as originating in the East were
rather anxiously conservative than consciously alert
to lay hold of the new moral forces which were wak-
ing in the West, or to direct their positive destinies.

* Quoted by Joseph B. Clark, Leavening the Nation, 60, 61.

i6 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Repeatedly the men at the front had to agonize with
their Eastern backers to get them to understand the
socially formative significance of the Western churches.
Home missionary vision grew as some of the West-
erners themselves came to occupy the directing seats
of the national organization. And throughout their
characteristic period the most fruitful and innovating
of home missionary ideas sprang from missionary
ground. By this give and take process home missions
became balanced and nationalized instead of being
merely the religious subjection of one section to an-
other.

General Tendencies and Differences. The limits
of this chapter do not permit detailed narration of
specific denominational movements in home missions.
Certain general ecclesiastical and sectional differences
however require pointing out as essential to social
interpretation.

Church Polity and Missionary Organization. First,
strongly organized Churches did not find the same
need of separate and specific home missionary or-
ganization as did those of weaker polities. It was
very easy for those who shared some form of episco-
pal organization to discover that the Church itself
was a missionary agency. This principle was an-
nounced in almost identical language by the Metho-
dists ^ in 1820 and the Episcopalians ^ in 1835. On
the other hand denominations of congregational pol-

* Buckley, Methodism, 650.

^ Burleson, The Conquest of the Continent, 48.

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 17

ity had no ecclesiastical agencies to do the collective
work of the churches and were therefore compelled
to create voluntary societies. Since these and the
kindred boards of the Presbyterian bodies bore the
name of "home missionary" and created separate his-
tories, it is much easier to trace and judge their work
than that of denominations in which home missions
form a more integral part of ecclesiastical develop-
ment. The home missionary movement, therefore, was
far broader than the home missionary name, and
justice requires that this be remembered in estimating-
the contributions of the several Churches to it.

The Denominations and the People. Second, the
denominational results of home missions were largely
conditioned by the character of the population emi-
grating by successive waves to the West. The pio-
neers who conquered the great forest before 1835
were predominantly Southern. Evicted from the sea-
board states through the invasion of their inland coun-
tries by the cotton kingdom with its slave-economy,
"the free farmers were obliged either to change to
the plantation economy and buy slaves, or to sell their
lands and migrate. Large numbers of them, particu-
larly in the Carolinas, were Quakers or Baptists, whose
religious scruples combined with their agricultural
habits to make this change obnoxious. This upland
country was a hive from which pioneers earlier passed
into Kentucky and Tennessee. Now the exodus was
increased by this later colonization. The Ohio was
crossed, the Missouri ascended, and the streams that

i8 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

flowed to the Gulf were followed by movers away
from the regions that were undergoing this social and
economic reconstruction." ^

Settlers from the South. Even in Ohio which was
first settled by New England colonies the Yankee was
soon distanced, and the Southerner crowded close
upon the emigrant from the nearer middle states.
"The Illinois legislature for 1833 contained fifty-eight
from the South (including Kentucky and Tennessee),
nineteen from the middle states, and only four from
New England. Missouri's population was chiefly Ken-
tuckians and Tennesseeans. ... It was the poorer
whites, the more democratic, non-slaveholding element
of the South, which furnished the great bulk of the
settlers north of the Ohio." ^ With the spread of this
population went the expansion of its familiar churches,
those which had attached themselves to it and ex-
pressed its pioneer moods in the Southern uplands.
This means that in its raw bulk the human material
of the West was chiefly Methodist and Baptist — not
by reason of the peculiar polity of either denomina-
tion, for they were diametrically opposed — but by
virtue of their previous relation to and affinity for
the population.

Two Dominating Types. Third, the social organi-
zation of the Western population was largely the work
of two highly specialized types, the Scotch-Irish and
the Yankee. The Scotch-Irishman was the natural

* Turner, Rise of the New West, 54, 55.
'Ibid., 77-

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 19

leader of the pioneer days and the peculiar conqueror
of the forest for social institutions. He was individu-
alist of individualists in his Calvinism — yet his clan
spirit was stronger than this theology and he migrated
in patriarchal bands. The movement of such a band
from Tennessee to Illinois in 18 16 is typical.

A Scotch-Irish Church. "They had enjoyed in some
measure the ministry of the famous Dr. Gideon Black-
burn of Nashville. Nearly all the adults of it were
members of the church; and every morning and eve-
ning on the way they had family worship. Grandfather
McCord, the patriarch and lay preacher, usually con-
ducting the service. After reaching the borders of
Illinois they began to look for a suitable place for
settlement, but they journeyed on and on until they
reached the heart of the territory and were crossing
streams which made their way westward to the Mis-
sissippi River. Finally one morning the old patriarch,
looking out from his encampment upon a broad prairie,
dotted with groves, and evidently supplied with liv-
ing streams, said : ^This shall be our place of rest ;
and Bethel shall be its name,' and Bethel was the
name of the place for many years, and it is the Bethel
Church to this day. . . . Their house of worship in
1827 was a log cabin, in size twenty by twenty-five
feet. The pulpit was a box made of split clapboards.
The house was seated very well, for the time. A
seat made of split puncheons or slabs was in those days
considered quite comfortable. Then, in the winter,
that the house might be warm enough for pioneers, a

20 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

plan was adopted that would freeze out any modern
congregation, but which in those days answered a
very good purpose. A space about six feet in diame-
ter, right in the middle of the house, was left without
flooring, securing thus an earthen hearth ; a bushel or
two of charcoal was laid there and set on fire. This
made the house quite comfortable on cold days." ^ At
the end of thirty years members of the Bethel Church
swarmed to a new location in southern Wisconsin —
fifteen being transferred in a single year. Here in a
more mixed community they still responded to the
patriarchal leadership of one of the McCord stock,
and expressed marked clan-cohesion for another gen-
eration.

Fitness for Community Leadership. This capac-
ity for bringing forth strong and compelling com-
munity leaders and for establishing social and spiritual
permanence around them was the Scotch-Irishman's
immense gift to the West. It is more than half of
the secret of the staunchness and dependability of the
Presbyterian Church to which he traditionally be-
longed. And as Dr. Warren H. Wilson has shown,
it made him the typical farmer of the older period.

The Yankee. Still more potent for social organiza-
tion was the New England migration. The New Eng-
lander came late upon the Western scene. After its
first expansion into western New York and Ohio
immediately after the Revolution, this section had
been busy with fisheries, had developed extraordinary

^ T. O. Douglass, Autobiography, 9-14.

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 21

commercial activity, and had successfully used its
surplus population in establishing infant manufac-
tures. But after the destruction of the carrying trade
by the war of 181 2 and especially after the completion
of the Erie Canal, the Yankee swarmed westward,
bringing culture and capital, a developed institutional
sense and a machinery of social life which no other
section or stock possessed. His advantage in these
respects rested back upon his distinctive system of
original land tenure.

Land, Town, and Church. "In the early days in
New England it was not customary to make grants
of land directly to individual settlers. . . . The ear-
lier towns were practically settled as church commu-
nities ; that is to say, the formation of a town amounted
practically to the organization of a church congrega-
tion and then settling as a congregation upon a tract
of land and calling it a town. When a town was
settled, all members who were admitted to citizenship
were given grants of land." ^

Community Life and Moral Discipline. Upon this
basis of landholding New England developed two
dominant traits which by 1830 had become its dis-
tinctive marks, namely, its community life and its
moral discipline. Observers from other sections were
impressed by its "clustering of habitations in vil-
lages," its spires of white churches marking to the
eye each separate hamlet, its comfort and thrift. They
were not slow, also, to sense and often to resent that

^ Carver, Principles of Rural Economics, 66.

22 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

focusing of moral sentiment upon individual conduct
which made every man his brother's keeper.

The Schoolmaster of the Frontier. In his most
typical migration the New Englander picked up his
church and community organization bodily and set
them down in the midst of the wilderness intact. He
expanded his idea of moral discipline till he became his
brother's keeper at large in the New West, its school-
master and moral reformer, and he backed and
financed this tendency through the national missionary
societies of which he was the chief projector. States
whose original population was predominantly South-
ern took the social stamp of New England and succes-
sively called themselves the "Massachusetts of the
West." Laws, institutions, and ideals were made by
this aggressive Yankee minority. To-day the typical
church of New England, the Congregational, is numer-
ically and sometimes even relatively stronger in the
Western states, which were socially organized by New
England, than in New England itself.

Sectionalism. Fourth, the development of diverse
agricultural economies by the North and the South,
which were at the roots of their social and political
sectionalism, ultimately directed the westward move-
ment of home missions into parallel streams which
remained separate throughout the period and until
increasingly reunited by the newer social aspects of
their tasks.

West versus East. The earliest sectional feeling
was that of West versus East, as if Mason and Dixon's

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 23

line were stood on end. The whole frontier, from
North to South, was essentially a unit against the
older seaboard states or sections. This sectionalism
was acutely evidenced first within certain states, for
example, in the struggle for political ascendency be-
tween the tidewater and the upland sections in Vir-
ginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.^ Each of these
states was sharply divided by nature into two agricul-
tural provinces : the coastal plain, with its plantation
system, based on slavery ; and the forested mountains,
fit only for frugal pioneer farming. Between them
lay the piedmont, a debatable ground.

King Cotton. The story of the enormous economic
effects of the cotton industry, after the invention of
Whitney's gin, is familiar. Already in 1818 it had
made the exports of South Carolina and Georgia
worth half as much as those of all the rest of the
nation. Cotton increased its average sixfold between
1830 and i860. It invaded first the interior valleys
and more accessible uplands, driving the Southern
small farmer into the mountains and beyond, and as
we have seen, increasingly north of the Ohio river.
Against his single-handed opposition and even against
the stubborn clan-economy of the Scotch-Irish the
plantation system was victorious. The plantation was
a little world in itself — with its self-contained econ-
omy; its grouping of slave cabins around the "great
house"; its industrial discipline; its division of labor
between skilled mechanics, house servants, and field
* Turner, Rise of the New West, 52.

24 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

hands ; its systematic sanitation and frequently system-
atic religious instruction. In its westward march
across the broad Southern plains it exhibited an effec-
tive method of occupying and organizing new country.
It provided highly specialized ability and strong natu-
ral leaders. It gave the South an advantage scarcely
balanced by the manufacturing gains and internal im-
provements of the North.

Cultivator versus Hoe. The transient character of
this advantage appeared with the agricultural revolu-
tion following 1833 which gave the North machinery
to release human labor. The slave could not use these
machines. There followed the war of the cultivator
against the hoe, which could have but one outcome.
Add to this the facts that immigrants who now rushed
in from Europe avoided the South because unwilling to
compete with slavery; and that the physiography of
the South limited its improved lands to plots and
patches while the prairie states could be farmed solidly
from border to border, and one has a clue to the result
of the Civil War profounder than the marching of
armies. Scarcely staggered by the losses of war the
Northern farmer pressed westward, improving his
implements, followed by his "granger" railroads, add-
ing empires to his acreage and billions to the value
of his product, till checked and forced into a new
economy by the semi-arid section of the far West.

Denominational Sectional Divisions. The division
of the stronger and more national denominations into
sectional branches on the question of slavery is better

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 25

viewed in its larger social aspect. It was really a re-
flection of the divergent types of agriculture between
the sections. The church reflected the farmer. Dif-
ferent types of farmers required different churches.
The ground of separation was economic as well as
and perhaps more than political or moral. Home mis-
sions became necessarily sectional, representing the
geographical expansion of religion with the migration
of the Northern or Southern farm types.

Achievements of an Era, Thus with minor diverg-
encies of method but with essential universality the
task of the geographical expansion of religion has been
fulfilled. As the central missionary interest and typi-
cal missionary method of the Church it culminated
by about 1890. It was but a rough preliminary con-
quest compared with present social tasks, but it was
a conquest. There had been diversities of gifts but
the same spirit, and it was a masterful one. The area
to be covered was vast in unparalleled degree. For
the first time in human history a nation with an im-
perial domain to evangelize was to try the experiment
of a voluntarily supported Church, which would go
nowhere except as the devotion and colonizing genius
of its people should carry it. As a sequel, religious
opportunity, as measured by the presence of the
Church, has been marvelously equalized — the newer
states fast becoming as privileged as many of the
older ones. The five great sections into which the
census now divides the nation vary surprisingly little
in the ratio of church-members to population. In

26 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

brief, the voluntary Church in American life is every-
where and is accepted as inevitable. As bound by
virtue of home missions to go wherever national ideals
go, it constitutes one of the prime factors in that
"Americanization of the world" of which Mr. Stead
wrote.

Heroes in Review — The Indian Missionary. The
pageant of our national movement westward has often
impressed the imagination. Its great types follow
one another — trapper, frontiersman, farmer, manu-
facturer and workman. Each has his religious double
— first, the Indian missionary. Often the settler found
his log chapel among the teepees of the prairie. The
missionary was there first. The other day, on a newly
opened reservation, a missionary reported the first
religious service for the handful of settlers who gath-
ered from beyond the horizon to a sod house in the
midst of an empty prospect. There was nothing be-
fore it of Christian history — except thirty years of
lonely labor for the souls of the Sioux. On a neigh-
boring reservation a man was ministering whose
grandfather before him preached the gospel to the
savages. These were they who first — and sometimes
with their blood — consecrated the soil of this land
to the social uses of God.

The Itinerant. After them came the itinerant. One
day the music of our grandfather's ax in the clearing
was broken in upon by the clatter of hoofs and the
hail of a mellow voice. The preacher had come, wet
with swimming the streams, bearing news of two

MISSIONS AS EXPANSION OF CHURCH 27

worlds. He went but came again, till he had gathered
out from the crude elements of the frontier stern and
inflexible groups of Christians, who set up vigorous
rules of life against pioneer profligacy, intemperance,
perchance against the enslavement of human beings.
He made the hearthstones of our grandfathers the
altar of our fathers' faith.

The Pastor. Our uncles and our fathers were
breaking the tough prairie sod behind steaming horses,
when there came striding across the gray furrows a
stranger — manifestly from the East, who announced
that church would be held next Sunday. He had a
missionary's commission in his pocket and had come
to stay — on $300 from the board and what the people
could raise. He had also a state constitution and the
plans of a college in his head. After that there was
church every Sunday. Soon came a colony, with its
land patents, its surveyor, doctor, and school-teachers,
bearing in the midst of its "prairie schooners" — like
the ark in the midst of Israel — a chest with books for
a library and a communion service from the old home
church.

College and State. In due time the state and the
college appeared. In the one, thousands of the most
virile men of this generation were born ; in the other,
trained. The stamp of home missions was upon both.
A generation grew to manhood without seeing a legal-
ized saloon. The doors of college classrooms bore
the names of New England churches that had fur-
nished the desks at which we sat. Our library was

28 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

the books of dead preachers — our laboratory the cast-
off apparatus of Eastern institutions. But the East
sent us men of first quahty, and we began to raise
them ourselves. They gave us high and austere views
of life, sound attitudes toward scholarship, and fo-
cused our faith and duty upon the "regions beyond.''
They made us what we are — men with something to
hold and much to learn. Our day shows other, per-
haps better things to do. Yet theirs was a great task
well done. God help us to do ours as well!

FROM SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO
SOCIAL AIM

CHAPTER II
FROM SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOQAL AIM

A Preview. The first chapter sought to tell the
story of home missions before 1890 as a geo-
graphical process, interpreted by its economic back-
ground and with its social expressions incidentally
noted. It will be the purpose of this chapter to con-
sider the chief of these expressions with respect to
their permanent social values, to show why all of them
together are not broad enough to furnish a program
of collective religious service for to-day, and to sum-
marize the characteristics of the new home missions
which issue from our wider social vision and deeper
social consciousness.

Men Larger than Their Theories. The older home
missions defined their aim in terms of personal salva-
tion, and their conservative instinct drove them to or-
ganize religious institutions on old patterns, which
safeguarded the home and reflected a simple social
economy. But manifestly such a formulation of the
case is inadequate to explain such a man as Manasseh
Cutler. He began his life in Massachusetts and ended
it there as a Congregational pastor. In his seventy
years he was by turn pioneer, storekeeper, lawyer,

31

32 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

physician, army chaplain, and author. His career
made him state legislator, and member of Congress;
and he declined Washington's commission as Judge
of the Supreme Court of Ohio. As agent of the Ohio
Company and organizer of the Marietta Colony, he
was trader, politician, and statesman enough to hold
up the great land bargain which opened the national
domain to settlement till freedom, education, and re-
ligion had been written in the organic law. However
he would have phrased it, such a mind was profoundly
interested in the colonization of the West as a social
process, and there were social potencies in his life
undreamed in his theology. Equally, all along their
successive frontier lines, home missions wrought so-
cial effects, which officially must be set down as by-
products. Many of the men who wrought them,
however, had the exact equivalence of the modern so-
cial spirit, a spirit as suited to their day and task as
our best mood to ours.

On Virgin Soil. The conditions -under which they
wrought conspired to give home missions strategic
social value. They drank of the vigor of the new
West. Migration to a frontier necessarily means
rapid social change. It selects the active and eager,
and puts them into a society largely free from social
stratification; it releases and quickens individual en-
ergy, awakens ambition, and creates "go." Home Mis-
sions, therefore, may have found transportation hard,
money scarce, and minds preoccupied ; but, when once
arrested by the challenge of the spiritual life, there

REV. PETER CARTWRIGHT

Called a backwoods preacher

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 33

were optimisms, courage, and vision which gave re-
Hgion tremendous advantage.

Call for Leadership. The West was a state of so-
ciety profoundly dependent upon leadership. The dis-
solution of older social tradition by migration, the
gathering of many sorts of men on the frontier, the
resulting conflict of ideas and sentiments made some
sort of new leadership inevitable. Peter Cartwright
flailing the rowdies of the Kentucky camp-meeting
was a symbol of men who must arise for all the higher
constructive tasks of civilization. It is something to
find sheep without a shepherd, for then perhaps they
will follow you. Under these conditions home mis-
sions became one of the chief organizing factors of
American society.

We have now to enumerate some of their methods,
and to appraise their chief results.

I. The Transplanted Community. The previous
chapter has already indicated the transcendent im-
portance of that method of Christian colonization
which brought the Church community from the older
regions intact. Thus the Pilgrims had brought their
Church from Holland and set it down on these shores.
Thus in successive journeyings the Church moved
west, bringing with it full social organization of the
community type, efficient leadership, and, frequently,
economic capital. This method made the transition
from old to new with the least social loss, and had
great advantage in social power over more frag-
mentary migrations. It escaped, in large part, the

34 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

period of frontier disintegration, and was able to
organize and impress great masses of plastic popula-
tion of other types. Thus the famous Dorchester
Church migrated from Massachusetts, seventy-five
years after the landing of the Pilgrims, to South Caro-
lina; and thence fifty years later to Georgia, continu-
ing its name and organization, and leaving its stamp
upon three states.

Western Reserve Example. As typical of this
process. Dr. Josiah Strong describes a colony on the
Western Reserve: "Founded by a far-seeing and de-
voted home missionary. He had become convinced that
he could do more to establish Christian institutions on
the Reserve 'by one conspicuous example of a well-
organized and well-Christianized township, with all
the best arrangements and appliances of New England
civilization, than by many years of desultory effort in
the way of missionary labor.' The settlers were care-
fully selected. None but professing Christians were
to become landholders. As soon as a few families
had moved into the township, public worship was com-
menced, and has ever since been maintained without
interruption. A church was organized under the roof
of the first log cabin. At the center of the township,
where eight roads meet, was located the church build-
ing fitly representing the central place occupied by the
service of God in the life of the colony. Soon fol-
lowed the schoolhouse and the public library, and
there, in the midst of the unconquered forest, only
eight years after the first white settlement, the peo-

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 35

pie, mindful of higher education, and true to their
New England antecedents, planted an academy." ^

Christian Colonization. So perfect a case of
Christian colonization was necessarily somewhat rare,
but the general method was so common that a widely
used and recent school text-book on civics ^ begins its
interpretation of social organization in America with a
study of a Western church community. The stimula-
tion of Western migration by missionary promoters,
the guidance of its group movements, and their prompt
organization into church communities went on ex-
tensively especially under New England auspices.
Strangely enough it is Mormonism which furnishes the
most complete example of religious colonization. While
going sadly wrong in doctrine, this movement pre-
eminently manifested social capacity and the ability
to assimilate alien elements. Some of the more pre-
tentious efforts at orthodox Christian colonization
failed because of speculative entanglements; others
like Jason Lee's splendid Oregon company, gathered
in the interest of Indian missions, builded better than
they knew, and became centers of new common-
wealths.^

Other Applications. Such a method does not differ
at its roots from the social settlement, which to-day
colonizes the "city wilderness" ; and it would make a
perfectly sound basis for the modern development

* Our Country, 196.

*Dunn, The Community and the Citisen.

' Schaf er, History of the Pacific Northwest, 169.

36 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

of a rural community, say in connection with an irri-
gation project. It is not a method to be abandoned,
but one to which we shall return.

2. The Missionary Pastor. Recipient of a meager
stipend and of cast-off clothing, traditionally rearing
his family on pumpkins and milk, socially considered,
the home missionary was a strategically placed, supe-
rior man. The plastic West yielded itself to the in-
itiating energy of strong personality, which sociology
recognizes as among the primary social forces every-
where. Of course not every missionary could be a
Gideon Blackburn, with states for his parish, but
there were mighty and constructive men among them
almost without number. Simple goodness too has its
own efficiency. The letters of one of the indomitable
laymen who molded states refer most affectingly to
his mild missionary pastor as "John the Beloved."
Not alone the big-fisted frontier preacher, but such
leader incarnations of spiritual grace have power to
move the mystic who lurked always at the bottom of
the Scotch-Irishman, or to focus the deeper forces
of the Yankee community. To catalog the home mis-
sionary in all his varieties is to catalog an army. The
itinerant's physical endurance and spiritual travail
but one passage can describe. "In journeyings often,
in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from
my countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils
in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in
the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labor

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 37

and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst,
in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." ^

A Commonwealth Builder. What then shall be said
of the reserve resources and staying powers of a man
who died in 1910 after a continuous pastorate of
sixty-five years west of the Mississippi River; a
man who started with the beginnings of things
and lived to see his portrait hung in the capitol
building of his state as one of the chief makers of
the commonwealth; and what of thousands of this
type, who wrought out community results, under the
ideal of permanence, results which modern social con-
structiveness cannot surpass ? And, whatever his type,
the central fact in home missions was the missionary.

3. Together. The most constructive application
of the ideal of permanence was in the group-apostolate
or Band. Such home missionary groups went out
from Eastern theological seminaries to successive
frontiers — Illinois, Iowa, the Dakotas, Washington —
all in the spirit of the famous eleven of the Iowa
Band, "Each to found a church and all together a
college." Such bringing of highly trained men to
the task of institution building, in the plastic period
of the West, constituted a social technique of the high-
est order. No method could be more effective if ap-
plied now to complex social situations.

4. The Sunday School. Sects still persist in
America to whom the Sunday-school is an unorthodox
social innovation, along with missions and the prayer-

*2 Cor. xi. 26, 27.

38 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

meeting. They reflect the ideal of the most primitive
frontier, before safety and neighborliness permitted
the intensive religious process of the home-making
farm group. The Sunday-school preceded the organ-
ized church in frequent practise and, perhaps even
more than the regular pastorate, is the typical religious
institution of its time. It supplemented the home; it
expressed community organization on the elementary
level ; it could be operated under humble circumstances
by the average layman. It was thus peculiarly adapted
to pioneer conditions. From 1824 union agencies, and
later denominational ones, sent out organizers of Sun-
day-schools. Of course Sunday-school missions redi-
rected by pedagogy continue as one of the great de-
partments of present-day home missionary work. The
most enlightened program for rehabilitating the coun-
try community looks to the modernized Sunday-school
as a central factor. Child welfare is a most crucial
point of modern social emphasis. With the broaden-
ing of their field to include the whole scope of religious
education (including missionary education) and with
the development of a higher type of experts, Sunday-
school missions discover a new task fundamentally
involved in the intellectual readjustment and social
leadership of the Church. In a world which is becom-
ing increasingly a child's world their essential service
will wax rather than wane.

5. Literature. Narrowing the survey, as our defi-
nition of home missions requires, to that literary out-
put which bore the imprint of denominational pub-

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 39

lishing houses, or was directly promulgated for pur-
poses of missionary propaganda, not much is left to
impress the critic or historian of American letters.
Yet whoever has seen Sunday-school literature in the
hands of a rural community has seen the seeds and
may have watched the development of vast forces.
The story of Lincoln's boyhood or the memory of
any one's Western grandfather will illustrate the
frontier's poverty in books. Mills and Schermerhorn
kept exclaiming, "No Bible south of the Ohio River,"
and they might have added, "Nor any other book!"
It was not strange therefore that they were making a
second trip within two years with a supply of Bibles,
and that the most outstanding result of their revela-
tion of frontier conditions was the consolidation in
181 6 of earlier agencies into the American Bible So-
ciety, In 1825 followed the American Tract Society,
to produce and circulate a more general Christian
literature. These two now venerable union agencies
of home missions, supplemented by denominational
presses and societies, have put staggering millions of
printed pages into national moral development and
covered the continent with good books.

Why Books? Some of our present moods incline
us to see in all this a pathetic overemphasis on literary
methods, characteristic of Yankee reforms in general.
But the actual situation gave it its deep wisdom. Thus
a Wisconsin missionary in 1836 pushed across the
Mississippi, preaching the first sermon and organizing
a Sunday-school in an infant settlement of the Black

40 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Hawk strip. "I proposed," he reports/ "if they would
raise $5.00 I would furnish $10.00 worth of books;
and they immediately collected $1 1.50 and paid it over,
and I have forwarded the library." Now the sociol-
ogizing mind might raise the question whether the
Black Hawk strip did not first need some more imme-
diate element of civilization than books. But the mis-
sionary goes on to explain, "They urged me to come
again. But there are six or eight places on this side
[of the Mississippi], equally important, that I have
not visited for many months." In brief, books econo-
mized men and in the hands of the frontier Sunday-
school teacher were powerful leaven. Behind this
consideration there lies also the deepest social implica-
tion of Protestantism, namely, that all men must be
educated to be able to read the Bible understandingly.
Of this conviction, however far it takes one, the book
was the symbol. Almost everywhere the Sunday-
school library was the first publicly accessible collec-
tion of books. Traditional its literature may have been
or prosy, but home missions were the first Carnegie of
the nation.

6. The Church School. Precisely this background
is necessary for a genuine evaluation of the church
school. Recent historians of American education are
inclined to emphasize the fact that in its original en-
vironment the church school was professional —
founded "to raise up a learned and goodly ministry" ;
and aristocratic — always dominated by the ideal of

^ Home Missionary, September, 1836.

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 41

"ye university"; also that denominational ends could
not include a complete democratic system or a demo-
cratic adjustment of education for the entire people.
It is more to the point, however, to contemplate the
actual function of the church school as tempered by
the spirit of the West to its own uses. Thus the most
characteristic church school, the academy, was the ex-
press image of Western democracy in its best ideals.

The Academy. In contrast with the class-cleavage
idea reflected in the college and grammar-school sys-
tem, the academy directly reflects the rise of the char-
acteristic American middle class. It is "one of their
glories that they were in the earliest days so bound up
with the higher interests of the common people." ^
Thus the constitutions of the two historic Phillips
Academies make no mention of college preparation as
the object of their founding. The academies spread
westward as exponents of the kind of education which
was fittingly open to all aspiring youth under condi-
tions of frontier equality. Most of the so-called West-
ern colleges were merely academies at first and shared
their ideals. They furnished the frontier with its
teachers ; they originated general education for women ;
they mediated between the culture of the civilized
world and the inchoate West; they made our fathers
and mothers what they were.

The College. The fundamental educational needs
of the frontier being provided in the academies, home
missions were profoundly right in their instinct to

' Brown, Making of our Middle Schools, 229.

42 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

raise up leaders for the new civilization through the
colleges. When the Iowa Band resolved, "each to
found a church and all together a college," it was be-
cause they believed in themselves, in the contribution
to society to be made by such fully trained men as
they. The outcome of their faith, and of faith like
theirs was that the destinies of American higher educa-
tion up to the Civil War were virtually in the hands of
the church school and that institutions of such ances-
try and type still educate two thirds as many students
as are found in the thronging public universities. As
everybody knows the stronger of the early church
schools have quite outgrown their ecclesiastical control
and almost entirely their denominational affiliations;
have become universities, and are the most highly
favored recipients of benefactions from men of great
wealth. Harvard and Yale have long ceased to be
thought of as belonging to the churches which founded
them. Church schools of middle size are in great
danger of becoming prosperous class institutions for
the children of the well-to-do; centers of sound schol-
arship indeed and of a certain culture, but standing a
little apart from the main current of democratic as-
piration and service; or else of being crowded to the
wall by the none-too-gentle pressure of trust methods
in education. The former danger is the more serious
and subtle. From no standpoint of social efficiency
can defense be made for the effort to maintain thirty
or forty colleges, such as denominational zeal has
founded in some of the states of the Middle West,

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 43

and nobody to-day tries to defend it. On the other
hand nothing should dim the fact that most of the
large colleges have been small colleges through most
of their history and that consequently the small college
has done more, as it perhaps can still do, for demo-
cratic opportunity in higher education than any other
type, *

Newer T5rpes and Needs. Public education is at
the bottom a matter of taxable property. Where re-
sources for its adequate support do not exist, as in
many thinly settled and backward areas of the na-
tion, the church school, adapting the academy ideal
to modern educational demands and supported by mis-
sionary money, will have a long future of indispen-
sable service. New forms of the church school sug-
gested by the International College at Springfield,
Massachusetts, will reflect the needs of new popula-
tion for assimilation to our civilization. In the de-
velopment of the backward races its place is still cen-
tral. An adjustment between Christian education and
the state university is bound to be found. All these
mean the continuance of an old though modified home
missionary method.

7. Constructive Legislation and Moral Reform.
The home missionary was so much a social former
that it was not his first task to be a social reformer.
When laws and institutions were in making he was
on the groimd and had possession of the machinery.

* Thwing, Education in the United States Since the Civil War,
15.

44 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

He sat in constitutional conventions and wrote planks
into political platforms. His deepest interest was in
safeguarding the home and its thrift. Therefore he
was the aggressive agent of temperance and the in-
veterate foe of gambling, particularly of the legalized
lottery. In the sectional conflict, the home missionary
lived along the firing line of national righteousness as
he understood it. The time came when "every Metho-
dist preacher was regarded as an abolition agent." ^
During the struggle for Kansas, one wrote: "Stirring
times at Tabor now. Pastor John Todd has a brass
cannon in his haymow, and another on wheels in his
wagon shed. He also has boxes of old clothing,
boxes of ammunition, boxes of sabers, and twenty
boxes of Sharp's rifles stowed away in the cellar." ^
With such a tradition behind them it is not surprising
that some of the earliest expressions of modern so-
cial militancy were in home missionary institutions
of the central West. To men far from cities and
the noise of industrial battle, sitting among the sheep-
cotes of strictly rural states, came echoes of social
strife which kindled old reforming fires. This tradi-
tion of devotion to reform remains part of the perma-
nent equipment of home missions for their task.

8. Special Social Adaptations to the Backward
Races. Writing as late as 1900 on religious move-
ments for social betterment. Dr. Josiah Strong nar-
rated chiefly the institutional activities of exceptional

"■ Helm, The Upward Path, 232.
* Douglass, Pilgrims of Iowa, 130.

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 45

parishes and could find little to include under "organ-
ized denominational effort for social betterment" but
missions to Negroes and Indians.^ In these realms
home missions made some fundamental social experi-
ments, the results of which hold good for all time:
These included such conspicuous failures as the at-
tempt to handle the national Indian policy by assign-
ing the reservations to the charge of denominational
boards,^ and such highly original and fruitful suc-
cesses as the application of vocational training to racial
uplift, as worked out at Hampton and elsewhere. But
both failures and successes pioneered the way to the
newer social insights and service, and their agencies
abide among the most useful of the present day. Some-
thing of their story will be suggested in other con-
nections.

9. Influence on EcclesiasticaJ Organization. The
West made the nation what it is. Its Eastern con-
sciousness has always been hampered by the "persist-
ent presence of the frontier," and its most vital
process has always been the give and take of the
sections. Similarly home missions have made the
American Church what it is. Whatever its creed or
form of polity, its main business in America hitherto
has been geographical expansion and its organization
has reflected this necessity. Whether by board or by
bishop, its extension agencies have been ecclesiastically

* Strong, Religious Movements for Social Betterment, go.

* McKenzie, The Indian in Relation to the White Population,
14 S.

46 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

formative. Thus they have been the chief tie between
the local churches of congregationally organized com-
munions, which denied all centralizing authority. At
the other extreme they brought the Protestant Epis-
copal Church to adopt the revolutionary device of
the missionary bishop sent out by the Church at
large. ^ Indeed the missionary task is likely to become
the main organizing principle of American Christian-
ity. The rapid and revolutionary changes in polity
now going on in several of the great denominations
are all in the confessed interest of working efficiency
in missions as socially broadened and redirected.

lo. Initiative. Our national humor lets us appre-
ciate the observation that any chance meeting of three
Americans spontaneously organizes with chairman,
secretary, and a man to second motions. This tend-
ency leads to sinful overorganization. On the other
hand it is a testimony to social resourcefulness bom
of pioneer conditions. The frontier was the mother
of initiative. That a thing had never been done be-
fore was no reason for not trying it now. It made
the reforming spirit adventurous and adaptive. Home
missions in this atmosphere got zest for experiment.
This is a profound variation from the ordinary con-
servatism of religious institutions. It remains an es-
sential of the spiritual equipment now that the Ameri-
can Church stands on the frontier of social experience.
Social experiment under the principle of voluntary
organization will throng its new regions with incipient
. * Burleson, The Conquest of the Continent, 60.

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 47

sects, with varied cure-alls. But newly acute prin-
ciples of selection are at work, which, with the
growing scientific temper, may be expected to weed
out the unfruitful more quickly than in former years ;
and out of this multiplicity of experiment the clear
portents of a better day will soon break. Such ad-
venturous alertness, such resourceful initiative are
the priceless heritage of the home missionary spirit.

Is the Past Adequate? Thinking back now over
the whole social heritage of home missionary history,
it is an insensate soul which does not thrill with rev-
erent pride and satisfaction. And if such a soul
chances to inhabit a body and use a brain which
reached maturity before 1890, it is at least an even
chance whether it may not say within itself. Is not such
a heritage sufficient? Isn't the mighty past adequate
to give a missionary program to the present? Are
there any novelties which are more than novel, which
constitute essential additions to all resources and
methods? To meet this mood it is only fair to con-
sider some of the inadequacies of the older home mis-
sions to their own day and increasingly to ours.

The Shortcomings of Our Fathers. Thus in 1844
a home missionary reported : "The cause of the delay
of this report is the existence of the smallpox, in an
epidemic form, in our village. We have been, and
are being, most severely and dreadfully scourged with
it. It commenced in this village on October 28 in a
very mild form, and continued such for a considerable
length of tim.e, so that four weeks elapsed before any

48 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

of our physicians discovered its true character, so as
to venture to call it by its true name; and another
week passed away before they could all be persuaded
of it. From its commencement no death occurred by it
until December 6, since which it has been very fatal.
As a consequence, all business is at a standstill;
the schools are suspended; and the places of worship
nearly deserted. Many are sick, and they must have
attendants. The whole village is affected with the
disease. . . . Fifteen, who a few days since were
among us in all the buoyancy of spirits and of life,
now lie beneath the turf. What the end will be, God
only knows. The disease stole in among us in so
mild a shape that almost the whole community were
fully exposed to its contagion before they were aware
of the danger. And when the alarm came it was
too late to flee, or to take measures in self-defense.
And when resort was made to vaccination, it was
found that we had imposed upon us a vitiated, if not
spurious, vaccine virus, which proved to be no pro-
tection, yea, much worse than none. God meant to
scourge us; he did not intend that we should be able
to escape or elude it. And we feel but the just expres-
sion of his wrath. May Heaven dispose this people
to profit by this severe judgment." ^

Then and Now. One hardly knows which to ad-
mire least, the sanitary stupidity which failed to dis-
continue church services during the epidemic or the
theological stupidity which ascribed an uncontrolled

* Quoted by T. O. Douglass, Autobiography, 23, 24,

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 49

epidemic to God. Manifestly the fifteen who died
were members of the community and church in a
sense not comprehended by the current home missions.
Increase this membership to hundreds of thousands
using" a common water supply or sewerage system in
a great modern city and rehgion clearly must at once
take more inclusive and more intricate forms to match
the fact or to control its malign possibilities.

Out-of-Date Morals. In 19 13 a Southern state en-
acted legislation intended to eradicate the cattle tick
and so gain a Northern market for its cattle which
had previously been excluded by rigid quarantine.
Dipping tanks were provided in all towns. The moun-
tain men back from a certain railway line organized
night riders and dynamited a dozen tanks in a single
night. Their chief use for cattle was to haul lum-
ber. They raised none for market, had no concep-
tion of the relation of the cattle industry to the pros-
perity of the state, nor that of the price of beef to the
cost of living. Their outlook was that of the earliest
frontier; their social morality belonged back of 1835.

Transitional Problems. The social inadequacy of
the typical farmer's morality is explained by Dr. War-
ren H. Wilson: "The transition from the older
economy to the new is illustrated in the dairy in-
dustry which surrounds every great city. The dairy
farmer has ideas of right and wrong which are purely
individualistic. He believes that he should not cheat
the customer in the quantity of milk. He recognizes
that it is wrong, therefore, to water the milk, but he

50 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

has no conception of social morality concerning milk.
He gives full measure; but he cares nothing about
purity of milk. He is restless and feels himself op-
pressed, under the demands of the inspector from the
city, for ventilation of his barns and for protection
of the milk from impurity. I have known few milk
farmers who believed in giving pure milk and I never
knew one whose conscience was at ease in watering
milk. That is, they all believe in good measure and
none believes in the principle of sanitation." ^ The
conditions which excused this limited outlook had gen-
erally passed by 1890.

The End of an Era. The census of that year an-
nounced the disappearance of the frontier line in the
Pacific Ocean. The first rough conquest of the con-
tinent was completed. True, there remained much
land to be possessed, but it was in general land on
which little rain fell — land unconquerable by the
farmer homesteading by single families, or by any of
the ordinary resources of the farmer economy. A new
physiographical province and a new order of society
demanded new home missions. Of current religious
movements, only the high social organization of Mor-
monism was equal to it. How it must be conquered
generally is the lesson taught by the irrigation pro-
jects of California. In their first stage they were co-
operative, small groups of settlers acquiring a water-
supply and constructing irrigation works by their own
labor. But to conquer any considerable area from the

* The Evolution of the Country Community, 174, 175.

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 51

desert required far more capital than such groups
could secure. In their second stage therefore irriga-
tion projects were taken in hand by corporations
which floated vast amounts of bonds, employed expert
engineers and built magnificent works, all resulting in
a very high average of failure and great loss to in-
vestors. At last it was evident that the task was too
great for any one but the state itself or the Federal
government. Only the state could wait long enough
for returns, could control the monopolists and justly
distribute water, a matter so fundamental to any
civilization that the Almighty ordinarily keeps it in
his own hands. ^ In brief the physiography of a large
third of the American continent ordained that the
farmer economy should cease. To the triumphant
stream of Western expansion the desert said, "Hith-
erto shalt thou come, but no further ; and here shall
thy proud waves be stayed."

The Remaining Frontier. A modification of this
generalization is made possible by the development of
dry farming, which is pushing the line of profitable
cultivation farther westward. Within a year the au-
thor has seen the opening of a northwestern Indian
reservation for settlement. The tiny claim shacks
spring up like magic. Somebody has sold the lumber-
yard at the end of the railroad a carload of blue
building paper. Every shack is hastily covered with
it. A single strand of barbed wire is quickly strung
to outline each claim. Prairie water-holes are lo-

* Carver, Principles of Rural Economics, 142,

52 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

cated or shallow wells dug. A load of coal is hauled
weary miles and dumped unprotected before the shack
door. With feverish energy man and beast bend
themselves to the task of breaking the soil. They will
give it over only at the last moment and in time to
sod up the cabin before winter closes in. Sturdy Ger-
man-speaking Russians most of these settlers are.
There is something vastly impressive in the primitive
strength and dignity with which they stretch their
blue line of civilization against the winter and the
desert and wait the fickle moods of next season's rain.
Yet even in this case the old forms of farm economy
are inwardly changed. First across the line after the
"opening" was an automobile containing a tent and a
safe and the first institution of the new area was a
bank. The railroad grade was ahead of the settler.
Pioneering was done with capital and advanced so-
cial resources rather than with bare hands before the
opening excursion trains brought thousands to the
land lottery by which the claims were assigned. After
several days' association with them one felt that
speculators greatly outnumbered genuine home-seekers.
They were more interested in lottery than in land.
The old spirit had passed and the frontier is involved
in new issues, social to the core.

Transformed Tasks. The task of extensive home
missions therefore can never be completed, because
it has vanished. There are unoccupied regions into
which people must be followed by the Church. There
will still be heroic missionary service for scattered

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 53

communities in thinly settled regions. It will demand
many men and cost much money, especially when such
regions are peopled with foreigners, who have to be
pursued in order to be assimilated ; but it will be inter-
esting rather than typical, and the social emphasis
must dominate and furnish its main constructive prin-
ciples; while in the characteristic processes of con-
quering the semi-arid (or swamp) regions the most
immediate factors will be the thickly settled communi-
ties of consciously interdependent people and the ac-
tive agency of the state in meeting their basic needs.
Problems of intricate social organization will be in-
stantly compelling. There will be nothing to corre-
spond to the long pioneering of our fathers. Old
things have passed away for the parts of our land
which still remain to be populated.

New Application of Religion. The religion which
saves the newest frontier must prevent the epidemic,
sanctify the dipping vat, provide pure milk as well
as full measure, and pure politics as well as pure
milk, besides controlling the monopolists by law as
well as from within their own conscience and taking
pastoral care of the dry farmer by automobile.
And all this does not begin to take account of the
revolutionary inner change which has overtaken the
older countryside from Vermont to Oklahoma, nor
of the inert rural millions of colored folks, nor
of the nation's cities thronged with strangers, nor of
the clash of industrial classes — all of them among the
dominant elements of the America in which we live.

54 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

The New Home Missions. All this demands new
and socially redirected home missions and compels one
to pronounce upon the old home missions Jesus' ver-
dict upon the best man of a departed age : "Among
them that are born of women there hath not arisen
a greater than John the Baptist: yet he that is but
little in the kingdom of God is greater than he."
The last quarter century has seen the gradual trans-
formation of home missionary aims and methods until
their social aspects are now the dominant ones. To
describe and interpret these is the chief task of this
book. Education has coined the term redirection in
order to express the parallel experience which it has
been undergoing. It has been made manifest that
the redirection of home missions tends not to destroy
but to fulfil home missions of the older type. At the
same time there are fairly sharp differences. The
old was extensive; the new is intensive. The old
thought it sought individual salvation chiefly ; the new
knows that it seeks social redemption equally with in-
dividual salvation. The further characteristics of
current home missions as socially redirected will ap-
pear in the successive chapters. For the present it will
be sufficient to indicate them briefly.

I. Contrast Between Old and New. The new
home missions are conscious of enlarged moral
realms in which the gospel is to be realized. This
enlargement comes by the rapid annexation of new
moral fields, but also by the complication of moral
issues in all fields, as the brain's surface is increased

SCm:IAL by-product to social aim 55

by the deepening of its convolutions. The demand that
one generation should not waste the natural resources
of another, should not devastate the forests of pos-
terity nor burn up their coal, would have seemed far-
fetched to our fathers ; still more would it have seemed
remote from religious concern. They knew no such
far-reaching questionings as ours, say, concerning the
equitable distribution of wealth ; but their greater sur-
prise would have been to discover how many other
moral issues this one involves, as the modern con-
science senses it. Their charity was the giving of
alms : ours is the constructive statesmanship which re-
duces the death-rate of nations and adds years to the
average of human life. Their human relationships
were few, simple, stable. Ours are many, complex,
and changing. Consequently their goodness was near,
direct, and obvious, while ours is remote, necessarily
devious, sometimes obscure. This greatly complicates
duty for the good man of to-day. His is a sky-scraper
morality. Not only must he be good on every floor —
four stories below ground and fifty above — ^but up
and down from floor to floor run elevator shafts, elec-
trical connections, mail chutes, telephone wires, and
vacuum cleaning tubes. His moral structure is not
only higher, but more highly organized inwardly. His
religion must be the attempt to realize the program of
Christianity with all it implies both as to bulk and to
complex relationship. Home missions are expanding
to match and serve these enlarged moral realms.
2. New Moral Values. Current home missions are

56 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

conscious of new moral values, particularly of the
value of socially depressed or obstructed men. On the
vigorous and untrammeled frontier men were unequal
in muscle, health, and skill, but they were equal in
status and potential opportunity. Or at the least they
felt equal and more nearly regarded each other so
than before or since. Now conscience is compelled to
concern itself more profoundly with second comers
— with those who arrived after all the free land and
most of the natural advantages were occupied by
others ; with primitive possessors who were shouldered
aside; with exploited peoples — former slaves or more
recent ones; with landless men, tenants, and wage-
earners; with emigrants and depressed city masses.
The human values within these social ranges are newly
sensed by the Church to-day.

3. Concern the Entire Church. Current home mis-
sions address themselves to the entire Church.
Formerly they were considered as expressing the lib-
erality of the well-established churches to the feeble
frontier ones. But the social frontier is everywhere.
New elements in our civilization shake the foundations
of the strongest churches. The richest are frequently
the least effectively attuned to their present task
and most in need of social salvation. There are no
exempt religious classes to whom home missions need
not minister. The boards now represent an appeal
to the collective social conscience. Vast sums of
money are being spent, not to help the religiously
needy in the frontier sense, but to reeducate the most

SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT TO SOCIAL AIM 57

venerable elements and sections of the Church. There
ought to be home missions to theological seminaries,
to endowed churches, to prominent city pastors, and
there are. The profounder social task universalizes
the process.

4. Use Scientific Method. Current home missions
are the inheritor of that great clue to duty, the scien-
tific method. The discovery that rigid collective tests
of goodness ought to be made, which may serve as
guides to millions and prevent their millions of mis-
steps, has made all things new in the realm of morals.
No specific proposal to social conscience can evade
the necessity of submitting to such tests. The sec-
tarian extension of needless duplicatory and rival
churches, for example, cannot now continue, primarily
because the scientific spirit is so widespread and so
clearly presents the social consequences of such a pol-
icy. All Christian strategy presupposes preliminary
investigations and suggestions of this spirit.

5. Call for Expert Leaders. Concerning specific
social issues as they do, current home missions have
developed a type of expert leaders who may fairly
qualify with experts in other realms. They have
taught the sociologists; they have taught the statisti-
cians. Before teaching they had to learn from both.
The new leader is more of a specialist, and (though
true prophets are scarce) not less of a prophet than his
predecessors. The social engineer tends to supersede
the ecclesiastic as the typical church leader.

6. Secure Better Team Play. Because with such

58 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

an approach to duty and under such leadership they
cannot be fundamentally sectarian or sectional, cur-
rent home missions are demanding and getting better
team play between communions than ever before.
Leaders in home missions have the daily habit of work-
ing together. That this is not exceptional but ordi-
nary is another omen of the new day.

7. Necessitate Profounder Religious Sanction. And
finally, current home missions are compelled to find
profounder religious sanction and support than the
older type. It is no disparagement of the religion of
the past to say that we must have more religion than it
had to meet the complexities and interrelations of duty
to-day. The intensive in method requires the inten-
sive in experience. We cannot get nearer to God than
our fathers did, but we can bring God nearer to more
points of life and more grades of men. To do this
will take not less but more of the power which wrought
in Christ and now works in us to raise society to new-
ness of life. Social by-product has thus become social
aim. Home missions henceforth have free course to
the goal of social redemption for the land of our
love.

AN ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR THE
COUNTRY

CHAPTER III
AN ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR THE COUNTRY

The Vanishing Farmer. The first step toward an
adequate home missionary program for the country
is the discovery that the old one is inadequate. It is
inadequate because the man it was suited to serve
no longer exists. Like the Indian and the trapper who
preceded him the farmer is gone^ — a vanishing race.
True, there are five million more Americans on the
soil than there were ten years ago, and nine people have
been born in the country or moved thither for every
one who came away. Yet those who stayed have suf-
fered inner change and those who came have brought
or received another heritage than that of yesterday.
The open country is peopled with a new type which
home missions, first of all, must understand. The
frontier line has been drowned in the Pacific Ocean.
Nearly all of America's free land which can profitably
be conquered by single families has been taken up.
Homesteading is no longer a significant resource for
surplus population. Now we are adjusting ourselves to
the consciousness that somebody has preempted nearly
all the farm land there is. And, because millions still

6i

62 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

crowd in who want it, it has become immensely valu-
able.

Rising Land Values. Rural churches seeking aid
from the board of which the writer is secretary must
answer the question, "How much have land values
increased in your community in the last five years?"
A recent answer read, "250 per cent." The most
frequent answer is from 25 to 50 per cent. And 25
per cent, would be the answer even in many sections
of the older farming states. For the country at large
land values increased 100 per cent, between 1900 and
1910. One day the farmer waked up to the discovery
that, under such conditions, while one might make a
living or a little better by working hard, one might
become wealthy by doing nothing. Indeed he could
scarcely avoid becoming wealthy if he owned a signifi-
cant amount of land. Following this clue, he found
himself facing three alternatives : either to borrow
money and buy more land for its rise in value, or else
to rent the farm and wait for its rise in value, or
finally to sell the farm and buy a larger amount of
cheaper land in order to profit by its rise in value.

The End of the Old Order. Choosing any of these
alternatives makes the farmer a speculator; the sec-
ond makes him also an absentee landlord; the third
makes him also an emigrant. All focus attention upon
rise in land values instead of upon farming. All
quench the inner moral light of the true farmer,
namely, his attachment to the land as a homestead, a
place whereon to build a home, and substitute an at-

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 63

titude which regards the land as something to make
money from — and chiefly unearned money. When
these motives operate sharply, the kind of man whom
home missions chiefly dealt with up to 1890, whom
they knew how to help and save, whose typical insti-
tutions they largely created, simply ceases to be. The
life goes out of the old order of rural life.

New Factors, Before determining her new pro-
gram, the Church must understand the concomitants
and consequences of this epochal change — ^both the
harmful and the hopeful. It must measure the de-
cline of rural civilization, of its population, its birth-
rate, its landownership, its civic and private virtue;
the decline of its schools, its rural social centers, and
the dying off of the country churches. It must get
a broad-minded and ardent appreciation of the new
sources of rural strength — of its new physical re-
sources like good roads and the gas engine, its techni-
cal resources in scientific agriculture, its political re-
sources in the taxable enthusiasm of a mighty people,
its sufficient economic resources in the present and
prospective profits of farming.

Moral and Social Elements. Particularly must the
Church sense the moral and esthetic resources of coun-
try life. Dr. Warren H. Wilson argues hopefully
that the sifting of population between city and coun-
try is a division of the nation between equally good
stocks, each selecting its fitting environment; and not,
as some have made us to fear, the leaving behind in
the country of the inert and inefficient. At any rate.

64 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

there is a tremendous leaven in the open country of
strong, sound folks who are there because they pre-
fer to be there — who have followed the soil for its
lure and have hallowed it with their love. Nor are
the city man's back-to-the-country tendencies alto-
gether to be despised, even though they may get no
further in the first generation than the suburbanite's
rather ineffective garden. There are a hundred Chi-
cago boys in the Illinois College of Agriculture, and
more to follow.

The New Fanner. But the country's best moral
resource is the young working farmer of this genera-
tion, who with his complete education and his mind
fully open to the advantages of the city, has deliber-
ately chosen the life of the countryman for his lot.
Along with his knowledge and enthusiasm he often
cherishes a unique because newly enlightened pride,
tenderness, and devoutness toward the life of the
farm. This idealistic note in the young farmer is
unmistakable, to develop which, with all its finest im-
plications, is the high task of religion.

Patience for Reconquest. For so long lingering
with factors preliminary to the specific work of the
Church in the country, the apology, if it needs one,
is that it has been in search of the only clue to duty
which the Church pretends to possess. She knows she
must approach all her problems humbly through pre-
cise social knowledge. On the old ground of her chief
missionary triumphs she turns to a patient doing-all-
over-again in a pro founder sense. She grew up with

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 65

the farmer. She followed him through forest, over
prairie and desert, to the utmost sea. She thought at
times that her work would be done when its geo-
graphical expansion was complete. She now sees that
it is God's way that the Church should never be out
of a pioneering job anywhere. Social change has
broken down many of the seeming successes of the
past; it has also brought forth the forces of a better
reconstruction. Rural humanity is to be cultivated
over again for salvation's sake with improved ma-
chinery. Intensive moral husbandry is to be applied.
There is to be wider appreciation of the social inter-
relations of souls. A keener conservationist con-
science is to sense the values of humbler men. Good
seed will yield thirty if not an hundredfold. In spite
of somewhat diminishing returns the fields are white
unto harvest. No program of the Church's specific
duty could possibly be adequate which did not faith-
fully count all resources, trace all relationships, scien-
tifically appraise all factors, and lovingly visualize the
totality of rural life with which religion is concerned.
Rural Leadership. The first direct contribution to
rural life by which the Church purposes to make her
service adequate is leadership. This was her oldest
contribution to the nation. Home missions were essen-
tially a far-sighted plan to supply strategically placed
superior men to the plastic society of the West. Now
that its first plasticity is over, now that the task is
largely one of remolding old institutions, now that
mere goodness and good sense are no longer infallible

66 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

guides to right results, it is required that the supe-
rior man shall be an expert. The Church must fur-
nish the rural life expert.

The Layman's Part. The only agent is not neces-
sarily the ordained minister of religion. The employ-
ment of lay expert service by the Church is increas-
ing in most of its fields of service. With all excep-
tional rural groups — negroes, foreigners, mountain-
eers— the Christian school must supplement the
church, and indeed precede many of its organized ac-
tivities. This fact calls for thousands of lay mission-
aries with adaptation to work in the open coun-
try. The Sunday-school worker has in the country
a field peculiarly his own. Almost everywhere the rural
social settlement would be a mightily apt agency of
betterment. Stripped to its essence, this would simply
mean that a family or two of Christian farmers, who
can farm, should move into a community for the
sake of the community and go into profitable and
permanent farming, taking gradually the natural place
of leadership to which community forces should call
them. The first denomination which has wit and
courage enough to supply such leaders as part of its
home missionary program will touch the center of the
rural life problem. At the same time the expert rural
leader which the Church will and ought chiefly to fur-
nish is the minister of the gospel. He must be pre-
pared, placed, paid, and made permanent.

Preparing the Ministry. Except the theological
seminary repent and become rurally minded it cannot

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 67

prepare such a minister. And its antecedents and pres-
ent environment are a great barrier to repentance. We
know that it occasionally puts rural economics into its
curriculum, and holds country-life conferences; but
these will not suffice. For, in the first place, the semi-
nary's atmosphere is non-rural; it has been getting
most of its students from the church school, which is
a recreant institution country-wise. Located generally
in the small town, the church school has been steadily
engaged in impoverishing the country by educating
its natural leaders away from it, and adding insult
to injury by boasting of this triumph. When its cul-
ture has been modern at all it has been obsessed by so-
cial problems interpreted in city terms. In the great
rural states, country-mindedness in education has ex-
isted chiefly in the publicly supported universities and
agricultural colleges. Unless the theological seminary
then can revolutionize both its source and itself, it can-
not adequately serve the country-life program.

New Theological Centers. Perhaps the practical
solution lies in the development of a new type of
training-school for the rural ministry in connection
with the state universities. Many of the denomina-
tions have already discovered that the bulk of their
youth are going, not to the denominational college,
but to the public institutions. They are therefore be-
ginning to found church houses and Biblical chairs ad-
junct to the universities, to establish university pas-
torates and the like. Now Madison, Wisconsin, and
Champaign, Illinois, being among the chief centers of

68 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

agricultural learning, ought naturally also to be among
the great theological centers of the nation. The semi-
naries located in Chicago could do much worse than
to send their prospective country ministers to these
places for their senior or postgraduate years. They
could get their theology in the denominational house
and their rural economics in the university, meanwhile
drinking in an atmosphere charged with the sense of
responsible and resultful rural service to entire states.
In the East, Drew Theological Seminary, at Madison,
New Jersey, might ally with the neighboring Rut-
gers College, at New Brunswick, New Jersey;
Rochester Theological Seminary, Rochester, New
York, with Cornell University, Ithaca, New York;
while one of the superfluous urban seminaries of New
England might glorify itself by establishing itself
as a connecting and completing link between Amherst
College and the Massachusetts Agricultural College, at
Amherst, Massachusetts, and becoming an exclusive
agency for the training of rural pastors.

Placing the Minister. Granted his preparation by
some adaptation of agencies yet to be perfected, the
country minister has next to be placed. There can be
no social adequacy in conditions which place him in
a competitive church which divides a rural community
rather than unites it. To place the minister strategi-
cally from the standpoint of public welfare, there must
be team-play between the denominations. In this mat-
ter the difficulty of the situation is largely expressed
by the old rural formula, "One's afraid, the other

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 6q

dassent." We know that the leading denominations
have comity principles to which their missionary
boards are committed, that they are employing the
survey method in whole groups of states as the basis
of Christian strategy, that they are rapidly adjusting
cases of overlapping and duplication between local
churches. The representatives of eighteen communions
have voted that the era of extension is over in certain
trans-Missouri regions, and have united upon a rural
church commission to advise what intensive program
comes next. On the other hand, local surveys gener-
ally show that rural people are only negatively and
traditionally sectarian. Rouse a healthy community
spirit on agricultural matters and they will get to-
gether religiously whenever they know that their
leaders will let them. An adequate program of plac-
ing the rural leader will simply assume and act upon
the new resources of denominational cooperation and
self-sacrifice, just as it assumes and uses the new
science and technique of the farm.

Paying the Minister. Any agricultural situation
which can support the farmer adequately can also
support the preacher adequately, but it ought never
to be able to support a superfluous preacher. The
country needs to conserve its resources, and has no
money to waste on churches. For a community
church, really serving the higher life of a successful
farming group, it can afford to pay well, and it should
be made to do so. Home missionary policy will be
very foolish if it does not insist on an adequate salary

70 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

for the rural minister, and it ought to enlist in this
behalf some of the forces which have so successfully
advanced other rural interests. Better prices for farm
products ought to mean better pay for country
preachers. The church is modest in asking for herself
— but she does think that the agricultural colleges,
the rural politicians, and the social experts generally
should get behind a campaign of education for the
adequate support of the great voluntary institutions
which must furnish rural leadership in the highest
things. This opportunity of cooperation she offers
them in her great task.

Keeping the Minister. After the church gets its
rural leader it must keep him. This she has largely
failed to do in the past. The choice young minister
has been willing to serve a rural apprenticeship but
not to live a rural life. In 1890 the Yale band of six
young men went to Washington. Now two are mis-
sionary secretaries, one a city pastor, one a social
worker in Chicago, while a fifth preaches in a town
of ten thousand. But one remains in Washington and
he is a college president. The kingdom of God is
doubtless richer but surely the state is poorer for their
going. But now, if there is anything in vocational
guidance, it would have been better to give Washing-
ton a type of men permanently suited to rural leader-
ship. And if the rural population is indeed equal to
the city population, but temperamentally different, it
will be wise in the rural minister to perfect the rural
type. Give him the same fundamental education with

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 71

the city youth — as broad, as generous, as modern —
then let him speciaHze on rural life and go to the
country to stay. Countr}^ life in its best interpre-
tation is big enough in economic possibilities, esthetic
satisfactions, and moral enthusiasm permanently to
fill any life which is fundamentally attuned to it.
Such a man will find the spheres of his promotion in
the superintendency of country churches, in rural
bishoprics, in rural social organization, in the con-
solidated school and the extension work of the agri-
cultural college. If he can make the moral conquest
of the small town, causing it to serve the country
rather than ape the city, he will have done a service
of unparalleled social import for the nation. Thus
rural leadership which is adequately prepared, placed,
and paid may become permanent.

Developing Community Spirit. Such leadership
will then address itself to the outstanding deficien-
cies of the country life, such as the lack of community
spirit. Rural America was settled by independent
family groups in competitive economic relations, who
have never been brought adequately into community
experiences and relations. The old rural community,
such as it was, was too small. Team-haul distance
over poor roads, which constituted the limits of the
rural community, did not include enough or enough
kinds of people to save life from pettiness and inbreed-
ing of ideas. People knew or imagined too much
about one another. Good roads increase the team-
haul distance and enlarge the community. The auto-

']'2 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

mobile both enlarges and enriches it. For the true
correlative of community is variety. The accessible
range of rural life is to include both more and more
varied elements. One must think largely of it, for-
getting its old poverty and fragmentariness. Instead
of the country store which it has lost to the mail-order
house, the newly mobile farm population is to
possess itself of a considerable center, with its co-
operative store and creamery, its consolidated school,
its well-equipped church, and ultimately its community
bank. The actual farm population is not to be or to
be felt inferior to the folks who work in these insti-
tutions, for the farmer will own them all. Because of
their more varied relations, and especially because they
are no longer merely competitive family groups, coun-
try people will draw more effectively together and
will achieve the conditions of community life.

United Through the Church, As has already been
agreed, the church cannot serve such a community by
being a divisive rather than a uniting institution, and
the sectarian temper makes it divisive, whether it
burdens the situation with actual rival churches or
not. The church must become community-minded. It
cannot repair the damage of community division by
any saving of souls, since the divided community can-
not so organize its resources as to conserve and utilize
saved souls. Without the community spirit, saved
souls must either flee to the city for usefulness or else
fall from grace.

The Gospel of Cooperation. As a community

A STRONG VILLAGE CHURCH

In a population of 971 this church enrolls about 325 people, and provides for the social

and religious life of the community

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 73

agency, the church will concern itself primarily with
forms of cooperation — civic, economic, educational,
and religious. Roads and schools, the chief civic as-
sets of the country community, will be its twin re-
sponsibilities. The grange and the market will be
its allies. Its gospel will concern these spheres of
religion. They will be the concrete subject-matter of
preaching, interpreted in terms of community sin and
salvation.

Worship and Play. Again, rural leadership,
through the church, will address itself to the crying
needs of worship and of play. Those two words be-
long together. The affinities of worship are not with
work; its place in religion is not the same as that of
work. There is no actual service of God but work.
Worship is something else — a second, equal good.
It is the play of the spiritual life. It idealizes and
summarizes its most significant points, its highest joys
and deepest solemnities, like birth, death, the sense
of sin, the relief of salvation. But its function is the
function of play. It is necessary to urge this stub-
bornly, because the rural mind, while devout as to
prayer, is not ordinarily devout as to local history,
nor as to the season's crops, nor as to children's
games, nor as to beauty in garb and manner. Because
it is not devout in these matters, its young life aban-
dons it for the city, which does idealize life in steel
and stone, in the civic spectacle, in libraries and gal-
leries, in baseball games, moving pictures, and even
in milliners' windows. The country, too, must be

74 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

given its parade, in which life is admired and made
to glitter. And how rich its materials for idealiza-
tion! The pageant of its founders and their deeds,
the anniversaries of the Christian year, especially the
seed-time and the harvest festivals which Chris-
tian got from Jew and Jew from pagan, the local
fair, the corn and tomato club and other children's
contests, community athletic teams, Boy Scouts and
Camp Fire Girls, the singing school and the school
entertainment — all these the church will foster and
promote as its own because they are the community's,
and because only when life in all its reaches is ideal-
ized, played upon by the imagination and played at
through some recreational expression, can its totality
be significantly summed up in the worship of God.

Emancipating the Individual. Again, and to make
its country life program finally adequate, the church
must address itself to individuality which has been
crushed in the excessive solidarity of the farm family.
The farm family had in excess the cohesion which the
farm community lacked. As an economic and moral
group-unit, it was so closely knit as to forbid play to
personality. It cramped the self-expression, particu-
larly of the wife and children. *T feared my father;
I dared not love him" is the too frequent confession
of the country-bred man. The country home showed
the worst vices of unregulated production. No fac-
tory legislation socialized its methods. It exacted work
and paid no wages. Its hours of labor were un-
limited. It employed child labor, not with equally

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 75

harmful effects as those of industry, but in the same
exploiting spirit. John Brown lived and fought in
Kansas, but Professor McKeever has had to face the
farmers of that state with the startling challenge, "Do
you own your daughter?" The West in general has
housed its stock better than it has housed its men.
Rural life has still to be rendered into the fundamental
terms of human well-being. Its methods must be re-
vised to get the fullest value for the individual life.

Farm Mothers and Farm Children. Now the church
is against all exploitation, all harmful overwork of
women and children, all grinding labor. She stands
for education, specialization, a fair chance for in-
dividual talent within, and not at the cost of run-
ning away from, rural life. The farm boy and girl
must have room for initiative, a garden or a poultry
yard of their own, some ready money, a weekly half-
holiday. The farm mother must have machinery
in the kitchen, some definable right in the family
purse, time for her visiting and her club. The coun-
try church must enrich her life by organization for
all ages and sexes. Doubtless the disintegration of
family life and the division of its members' inter-
ests have gone too far in the city. In the country how-
ever they must be carried further than in the past. So
long as town spells individual freedom and country
spells bondage, the forceful boy or girl will not be
slow to choose. The Church has first to free and
then to socialize the individual units of rural society.

The Things That Are Caesar's. All the foregoing

76 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

is to confess that the Church is not to furnish technical
leadership in agricultural processes. This the state
is prepared to supply in rich abundance. It is the
church's cue to specialize in the fields which she au-
thoritatively commands, those of religion and funda-
mental social organization. But nothing is more cer-
tain than that without her authority in these fields
the entire program of rural betterment is blocked.
Twenty years ago scientific agriculture in America
was in its infancy. Its intellectual outlook was vitiated
by crude conclusions from misunderstood Darwinism.
Its interests were narrowly technical, its spirit materi-
alistic, its exponents one-sided in culture. They were
despised by the classical colleges, called "dungists,"
and some of them justified the appellation. Then came
the wonderful burst of new agricultural knowledge
and an avalanche of financial resources for the sup-
port of research and popularization. Next dawned
the consciousness of the high social mission, of the
statesmanship, of rural rehabilitation.

The Question of Motive. All went well till the
rural betterment movement came to the question of
motive. Then technique and taxes alike felt suddenly
inadequate, paralyzed with a sense of moral bank-
ruptcy. One saw the humorous spectacle of previ-
ously self-confident experts scurrying to the Church
and theological seminary to find some one who com-
manded the sources of motive — some one who could
make the people of rural communities cease gossip-
ing and begin to work together in the light of a new

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 'jy

day. One saw also what was not humorous at all but
solemnly joyous, namely, the technical experts them-
selves often struck pious by the sense of the need of
an adequate power to fill and thrill the great resources
of their securing. Some of the most genuine, devout,
and practical Christian messages of to-day are com-
ing from the agricultural colleges and the rural econo-
mists. They fully appreciate and confess the central
place of the church in rural life. They call for —
the situation calls for — a profound and adequate pro-
gram of rural evangelization in intimate and mutually
inspirational fellowship with the great economic and
technical program of the state in behalf of the open
country.

Avercige Conditions. The current program of ru-
ral betterment is wonderfully complete and attractive.
It by no means compasses, however, the needs of vast
areas of America on which people are trying to live
from the soil. It assumes rather land of sufficient
natural fertility to support rural population of aver-
age density, as well as a population of average intelli-
gence and capacity to utilize American advantages, to
whom the great resources of the state and nation for
rural betterment are equitably extended. Under such
conditions, the better methods and disposal of re-
sources, agricultural, social, and religious, which con-
stitute our adequate program, may be trusted to issue
in a high degree of happiness and prosperity. Home
missions then will consist only temporarily and inci-
dentally in extending financial aid to rural churches.

78 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Professor Carver's challenge may be fully accepted:
If Christianity means better farming, as it should, the
better land will inevitably get into Christian hands,
which in the long run will be amply able to sustain
their own churches.

Poor Populations on Poor Lands. But on the vast
areas where these conditions cannot pertain rural
home missions must continue to mean something quite
different — and more expensive. Where, for example,
there is a heavier population than the land can sus-
tain in decency, degraded conditions of life are bound
to result, typified for instance in the highlander of the
Southern Appalachians. Here are sterile mountain
counties with as many people per square mile as live
in the fruitful prairie states. From the standpoint of
the economist the people should leave the land and
come away to some place where they can make a de-
cent living. Yet, strangely, they love their wild and
barren acres as home. While they stay, home mis-
sions must stay with them. Moral victories may be
won even on a field which is economically untenable.

Survey of a Mountain Community. Where one of
the narrow southernmost spurs of the Appalachians
penetrates a seaboard state lives to-day a community
of 78 souls under essentially pioneer conditions. These
.78 constitute 13 families. There are two other house-
holds, composed in the one case of a widow dependent
on a Confederate pension and the community's single
spinster, and in the other of two missionary teachers.
There are three orphans, one child cripple, and one

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 79

illegitimate among them, two aged couples, and one
bachelor hired man — the only wage-earner of the
group. All the rest make their living, such as it is,
in family groups under economic independence. Prac-
tically all of them own land (which is worth from two
to ten dollars per acre), and all of them subsist par-
tially by its cultivation. Yet but one of the thirteen
families really farms for a livelihood and that one
only by the renting of hay-land in the valley below to
supplement the meager acres which the mountain af-
fords. Five do this farming entirely without wheels,
each with a single work animal for which they cannot
produce sufficient feed.

Hewers of Wood. Seven of the thirteen families
live chiefly by the forest itself. Its first wealth has
been appropriated by the lumberman long ago. Such
rare lumber tracts as remain are exploited by capital
with machinery and trained men. It is left to these
seven mountaineers to go lonely into the depleted for-
est with saw and ax to cut tie timbers for the railroad.
The smaller trees they sometimes turn into fire-wood
for neighboring village people. One man splits the
rarer cedar or poplar into shingles. Nothing more
complicated, more akin to the great world's busy in-
dustry, is attempted than this.

Other Occupations. Besides being hewers of wood,
three heads of families perform the function of trans-
portation for the rest, hauling ties to the railroad and
supplies to the mountain. One of these is also the
community's only approach to a capitalist. He owns

8o THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

four or five yoke of oxen and employs the aforemen-
tioned hired man. A profane and forceful Scotch-
Irishman from another state, he married a wife well
educated in the missionary school, half kindly and
half cruelly keeps an orphan child, and represents the
embryo exploiter of his neighbors. Two more fami-
lies supplement their living from the soil by keeping
the community in touch with the outer world ; a man
as mail-carrier, a woman as postmistress. The post-
office is the sole indigenous community center, but it
is soon to be abolished and the livelihood of two fam-
ilies cut in two by the extension of rural free delivery.
Then both families say they must move away.

Literacy, Health, Morals. The adults of four of
the thirteen families are fairly literate, but none of
these is native of the mountains and but one of the
state. Of the 52 children of the community 28 are
of school age according to local interpretation, and 22
of these are enrolled. There are four months of school
term to be provided with $200 of public funds, but
these have usually been supplemented with three or
four months more of mission school term. The
health of the community is good. There is little
tuberculosis (the crippled child probably has it), and
no typhoid locally originating. Eyes are in fair con-
dition and hookworm not suspected. The children are
usually bright. It is not clear whether the few cases
of excessive dulness are due either to mental defect
or to saturation in tobacco from infancy. Most of
the women dip snuff. Drunkenness is rare. The

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 8i

single case of illegitimacy within memory was punished
by the relentless ostracism of the woman. Family
groups persist loyally, as under pioneer conditions
they must. On the other hand a boy of seventeen
married a girl of fifteen and to-day at nineteen is the
father of two children.

Survival of Primitive Religion. Denominationally
speaking the community is first of all "hard-shell"
Baptist, then Methodist and missionary Baptist. But
none of these churches has ever had permanent or-
ganizations or maintained stated services. Just now
the only acutely religious people are the Holy Rollers
who have come up from the mines and converted the
three or four remotest families of the community.
Their characteristics are the claim of sanctification,
the gift of tongues, and religious emotion expressed
in physical paroxysms. They meet in a mountain
cabin. Suddenly babel breaks forth. The lights are
extinguished. They throw themselves together on the
floor and roll till exhausted. Recently a woman per-
sisted in the exercise for half a day, lying in the open
air before her cabin while the community sat around
on rail fences and mule-back to watch. They are back
in 1800 when stricken sinners lay in windrows under
the "power" of the Kentucky revival. Like men,
like results.

Deserting the Mountains. Economically speaking,
there is just one sensible man in the community. At
the time of this writing he is just preparing to move
thirty miles to town and put his family to work in

82 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

the cotton-mill. He proposes to omit for them the
entire evolution of the American people from 1835
to 1890 and to press them direct from the pioneer
into the industrial stage. The physical, social, and
moral risk is apparent; but their family income from
the beginning will be more than he could think of
gaining as expert tie cutter and mountain farmer.

Missions Upon an Inadequate Basis. Home mis-
sions as represented by two Christian women doing
religious, community, and school work may convert
individuals and even somewhat mitigate the social
fragmentariness and spiritual desolation of this moun-
tain community. They may educate the children, who
are by no means degenerate, to leave the mountains,
which of course does not help the community which
is left. Of constructive social results, to speak truth,
they have little to show for their efforts. The frontier
has lasted too long with these thirteen families. They
are not socially plastic. They cannot farm on the
mountain and achieve a decent standard of living.
Industry must either come to them or they go to in-
dustry. For the present their salvation is in the
mill towns. And what a salvation!

Undeveloped Resources. The case just cited is an
extreme one, intended to enforce the dependence of
satisfactory religious results upon a sound economic
foundation. After the surplus population is removed,
the resources of the mountains should be developed
to the full so as to sustain adequately those who re-
main. There are types of agriculture peculiarly suited

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 83

to such regions; stock-raising, dairying, and fruit cul-
ture. The better mission schools are working hard to
teach the new generation how to profit by these re-
sources. There are extensive deposits of coal, too, un-
derlying these mountain farms, and industry is fast
coming to the mountaineer when the mountaineer will
not go to industry. Between industry and improved
mountain agriculture, population may hope to get ad-
justed to resources. Meanwhile, home missions as
Christian philanthropy must strive to equalize oppor-
tunity for the woodsman's boy as for the Turk or
Hindu,

The Case of the Negro. Another case in which our
adequate program will be very inadequate without
the further painstaking efforts of home missions is
presented by the eight million rural Negroes of the
United States. Hordes of them, if they knew such
things existed, could not read the bulletins through
which Uncle Sam would teach his children to farm.
Generally they have been left outside of the scope of
those agencies by which the states seek to quicken
agriculture. The Negro's schools have been miserable,
inadequate — fragmentary in time, poorly housed,
poorly taught. Even over his conspicuous gains in
landownership, the economist shakes his head, remind-
ing us that in the long run land will gravitate into
the hands of those who can use it best. But the
Negro knows little but traditional, land-robbing farm
methods. In common with all tenants, he uses insuf-
ficient fertilizer. His typical tenant holding is too

84 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

small from which to make a living in the American
sense. Child labor seems the only alternative to starv-
ation for his family. In debt to his landlord for a
year's living before his crop is "made," his margin
of opportunity would be pitiably narrow even if his
intelligence were greater. In many sections his prog-
ress is discouraged by violence. Sometimes his agri-
cultural organizations are favored by his neighbors
so long as they make him a better producer; nearly
always they are bitterly resented when they seek to
influence labor conditions or the prices of agricultural
products.

A Rural Social Settlement. Rural mission schools
for Negroes have from the beginning largely sus-
tained their pupils by furnishing them with the op-
portunity of farm or domestic labor in connection
with the institution. They had therefore less to learn
from the modern social redirection of education, since
they were already teaching so largely in the terms of
the pupils' immediate environment. For them, as for
home missions in general, the new order consists
largely in gathering up and revaluing their social by-
products, and then in setting them up as direct social
aims. Thus the Joseph Keasby Brick School in east-
ern North Carolina had operated a farm of 1,029
acres, and had essentially conducted a rural social set-
tlement for twenty years; had graduated generations
of tenants into farm owners; had organized and in-
structed farmers ; had sent out brilliant young men as
instructors of agriculture or the industries, till it

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 85

found itself in the midst of a Negro population own-
ing 100,000 acres of farm land in three contiguous
counties and with taxable property in one of the
three worth $1,250,000. Yet all this while the school
had cherished the delusion that its chief function was
to prepare students for college. When therefore re-
cently its supporting missionary board asked it to
accept explicitly the role of a school of rural life, it
somewhat resented the suggestion. Its practise was
better than its preaching. Its thinking needed redirec-
tion though its doing had long ago turned "home to
the instant need of things."

Notable Community Service. Three years ago a
large Negro school in Alabama, whose large farm had
previously been an ornamental adjunct rather than an
integral factor in education, set itself directly to de-
velop a department of rural community service. Its
first step was to organize a Negro farmers' associa-
tion for its county. This association meets in the
county court-house three times a year; has two hun-
dred members and an average attendance of seventy-
five. Two years ago it established a Colored Farm-
ers' County Fair, which last year gathered 2,000 ex-
hibits and awarded nearly a hundred different prizes.
The school conducts an annual "school in the field" —
a day on which the whole countryside gathers to its
model farm, the men to inspect and receive instruc-
tion in new agricultural methods, the women to have
demonstrations in home nursing, the care and feeding
of infants, cooking, and sewing. Two hundred men

86 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

and seventy-five women now profit by this occasion.
Fifty of them, a year ago, took away each loo grains
of tested seed-corn and competed for a prize Jersey
pig which should go to the farmer raising the largest
yield of corn. In a state which averages less than
15 bushels, David Rutledge raised 56 bushels on one
acre and got the pig. An agricultural prize has been
established for students of the institution for the
greatest profit from a half acre of land. Nine stu-
dents have prepared the land, planned the crops, tested
the seed, and are now competing for this prize. Ad-
vanced students in sociology have been studying the
inside and outside of farm homes in order to make
the gains of better farming count in better living.

Cooperating with the State. The college has laid
hold of the public school system, too, and is redirecting
it into social efficiency. Thus the County Teachers'
Institute is annually held within its walls and con-
ducted by one of its professors under state authoriza-
tion. In connection with this Institute industrial ex-
hibits by the several rural schools are developed. Two
days per year are allowed to public school-teachers
for observation in schools other than their own. These
are utilized by the college to offer a County School of
Observation in which suitable methods for rural
schools are discussed and demonstrated by its model
school. A teachers' reading circle is conducted by
its extension department. Patrons of rural schools
are being organized into School Improvement Leagues
and the educational authorities of the state are being

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 87

encouraged to take a more active interest in their
welfare. The railway system on which the college
is located is seeking to develop a more diversified type
of agriculture along its line, in view of the approach
of the cotton boll-weevil; and, along with the state
and federal government, is fighting the cattle tick. The
college is being used by all these agencies. Its suc-
cessful alfalfa culture has been made an object-lesson
to the entire state in profitable diversification; its dip-
ping vat has become the center of the county cam-
paign for tick eradication.

Large Beginnings. All this is necessitated by an
adequate program of home missions for the rural Ne-
gro, because for him hitherto the resources of the
state have been inadequately supplied. He has been
so poor a farmer that he could neither maintain family
life upon a decent standard of living nor support the
community factors essential to rural well-being. But
where the better mission schools reach out, large be-
ginnings have been made. No more eager and teach-
able population exists in America than the Negro
farmer, when once he is adequately acquainted with
the best possibilities of rural life. And probably no
ministers more uniformly make it their business to
organize and teach for rural betterment than some of
the graduates of such schools as have been described.
The author receives hundreds of reports from Negro
churches each year in which community gains in cot-
ton, peanuts, or sugar-cane are as carefully counted
as souls saved. Yet there are left unawakened, inert

88 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

millions. Among them and those of other backward
races and groups in the open country lies one of the
longest, most stubborn, most patriotic and rewarding
tasks of home missions. The extracting and exploit-
ing industries, like lumbering and mining, project their
peculiar communities and social problems into rural
conditions and constitute special tasks for home mis-
sions. Wherever they go, mountain and marsh, prairie
and piedmont, coastal plain and high plateau, each
adds its touch of variety, its challenge and its diffi-
culty to their work.

Who Is My Neighbor? Recent studies in local his-
tory have established the intimate dependence of civ-
ilization upon these physical variations. A very little
ridge of hills in the midst of a plain, a very narrow
valley huddled between mountains, will produce radi-
cal differences in population. How very little a physi-
cal difference may reenforce other factors to create
strange social types is seen within twenty miles of
New York City, where descendants of Indians, Dutch,
and Negro slaves have lived for a century on the
edge of the highlands as a peculiar community, ex-
tremely backward in culture and utterly unmoved
by the mighty pulsing of the city's life so near them.
In the most fertile and highly improved prairie states,
the thin fringes of brush along the streams often
shelter generations of social Ishmaelites. The richest
valleys often look up to impoverished hill towns, lack-
ing every progressive factor of rural life. Not only
in the city are there proximity of wealth and poverty,

ADEQUATE PROGRAM FOR COUNTRY 89

sharp contrast of social fortunes, and the need to unite
men in community enthusiasms. In the country, as
well, many a Christian, longing for a larger sphere
of service, may walk in his garden in the cool of the
day and find a mission field no farther away than the
hills to which he lifts his eyes.

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER

CHAPTER IV

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER

Concern for the City. The nation has watched its
own marvelous urban growth with deep searchings of
heart. It is found that 46 per cent, of our population
now lives in cities and we are wont to record this
fact as a Problem in capital letters. The gains of
the country for the last decade were 1 1 per cent. ;
of the city 35 per cent. Our cities now number 2,405
with a population of 42,623,000 people, and the city
has grown faster in prestige than in numbers. Its
psychological sway is far beyond its weight. The
country thinks in terms of the city as never before.
The city bears acutely upon the souls of all the people.
The country is in a mood of spiritual dependence
and quickly adopts the city ways and conventionali-
ties.

Is the Country Harmed? The assumption, how-
ever, that urban growth is necessarily at the expense
of the country needs to be sharply challenged. The
growth of the rural districts in the last decade is close
to the growth in total population of long settled civili-
zations like that of Germany; it nearly equals the in-
crease of our own native stock. The country is popu-

93

94 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

lous enough, or rather too populous in spots, already.
Fewer country people could support the city than
at present, and the economic balance will be better
when more have gone from the country. One farm
laborer can produce enough to feed seven or eight peo-
ple at present, and under ideal conditions of American
agriculture ought to be able to feed sixteen. The
chances are that, with normal development, the city
will grow even more rapidly than in the past. What
it has been getting, up to now, is surplus population,
especially that from foreign immigration. The British
Agricultural Board treats the English urban movement
as normal, and complains only of the supplementary
drain of population overseas.

Reason for the City. The city is inevitable. It is
the creation of the country and exists for the sake of
the country. When country population increases nor-
mally and produces with the tools and the science of
modern civilization, it needs vast city populations to
transport, transform, and exchange its surplus. Spe-
cifically, the city is the product of the machine; it is
the greatest machine-made product. One may con-
dense the history of its evolution as follows : Steam
substituted the machine for the hand tool, and the
machine necessitated the factory, which is simply a
battery of tools moved by common power. Many ma-
chines in one place require many people to run them.
These many people living and working together are
a city.

Where Must the City Be? The location of cities is

TOTAL

49,548,565

\}vJoaj^

TOTAL

49,625.583

Circles shoiv relative size o/ totals

Based on Cc/i>5us of /9/0

RURAL AND URBAN POPULATION

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 95

typically a reflection of the concentration of industry.
Where there is material to be manufactured, power
to drive machines, and men to consume goods, the
cities spring up in groups. Factory production seeks
proximity of raw material, water-power or fuel, and
markets. The result is not an even distribution of
urban population, but its concentration where condi-
tions have located industry. The varying accessibility
of labor and the tendency of industries to mass to-
gether have created in America very interesting ex-
tremes of concentration. Thus 40 per cent, of all the
gloves manufactured in the United States are made
in a small city ^ of 21,000 people; or, more specifically,
of 381 glove factories in the United States (Census
of 1900) 243 are in New York State, 166 in Fulton
County, 150 being in the adjoining municipalities of
Gloversville and Johnstown. ^ The iron industry has
two conspicuous centers; and the extreme concentra-
tion of the knit goods industry, of the manufacture of
collars and cuffs, boots and shoes, silk, glass, and pot-
tery is familiar. Each of these industries has created
a train of cities. While industry has a general west-
ward movement, by far its largest bulk and the great-
est percentage of its workers lie in the 11 northeastern
states constituting less than one fifth of our area and
bounded by a line run from Philadelphia to St. Louis
and thence to St. Paul. And since the city is the re-
flection of industry it is natural to find in this area

* Gloversville, N. Y,

* Brigham, Commercial Geography, 209,

96 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

32 out of our 50 cities of more than 100,000 popu-
lation each.

The Great Cities. The largest cities of any nation
have outgrown the forces which originally located
them about single industries or limited markets.
Favored by the law that "to him that hath shall be
given" they have become vast centers of production,
gathered empires of dependent territory around them,
focused upon themselves the lines of transportation,
become the world markets and the radiant points of
civilization. They are among the great social and
spiritual achievements of our day.

The Shame of the City. A just social evaluation of
the city requires the balancing of its human losses
and human gains. Its shame has been often exploited
— crowding, anonymousness, heedlessness of the in-
dividual as a person. While the machinery of the city
follows the single life closely, recording name and birth
and death, and how much it costs one either to live or
to die, yet it is as names rather than as immortal souls
that the city regards its children. The difficulty of
acquiring a home in the physical sense puts great moral
overstrain on family life. The immensely diverse and
conflicting elements of the city make civic unity diffi-
cult. The city is a synonym for bad government,
which means primarily unsuitable government, one
not as yet properly adapted to the new social
situation. It is inevitably the lair of commercialized
vices. Machine-like organization devised to serve the
great needs of civilization is prostituted to serve the

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 97

forces which degrade and damn. Temptation is sys-
tematized and made profitable.

The Glory of the City. But its worst shame must
not blind us to the city's glory. In the city ideals
dominate environment. It may become what it will.
Man made it, but, instead of calling it therefore arti-
ficial, reverence ought to see in it the completest and
most natural utterances of the divine in him. It has
greater moral resources than the country and it handles
them better. It is making much more rapid social
progress. It points the way in most of the hopeful
programs of social betterment.

Health. The city has reduced infant mortality to
the lowest rate ever achieved. It is preventing as
never before the tremendous waste of being born only
to die. The body is better safeguarded in the city
than in the country. Eyes, teeth, and tonsils are cared
for in the public school. There are better general
provisions for the care of sickness — less pain in sick-
ness and far better social measures to prevent sick-
ness. Even tuberculosis is shown to be less prevalent
among city children in the United States than in the
country. Repeated physical tests between country-
bred and city-bred students in university gymnasiums
have shown the average city boy to be freer from
physical malformations and more normally developed.

Sanitation. City streets are cleaner than barn-
yards, and city tenements than too many rural kitchen
yards. The city man is cleaner in his personal habits
than is the American farmer. The farmer consumes

98 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

the milk which the city will not buy. He has not
learned that it is no cleaner than the flies which light
upon his utensils; nor that the "cowey taste" which
the city visitor misses in his pasteurized milk is simply
the contribution from the manure pile. City food is
both cleaner, cheaper, and more varied than country
food. The air of city gathering-places, through super-
vised ventilation, is purer than that of the country's,
where, as Dr. North points out, the advantage of
working all day in the open air is more than offset
by the habit of sleeping all night in a tightly closed
room with one's head under the bedclothes. While
American health statistics from the registration area
(17 states) indicate that the country is somewhat
healthier than the city, it must be remembered, for
example, that the whole hookworm belt is outside of
this area. It is doubtful whether a survey covering
health conditions in the entire nation would prove
the country to be generally more healthy. At any
rate, improvement is infinitely easier in the city than
in the country owing to better agencies of public con-
trol in sanitation.

Conditions of Work. At present there are greater
opportunities for work, and work to utilize more men
at fitting tasks for city men than in the country.
There is more leisure as well as more work. The
city offers the shortest working day ever afforded to
humanity.

Social £ind Educational Advantages. There is also
wider fellowship; for while neighborliness is scarce,

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 99

within class lines both at work and at play organiza-
tion is keen. In the city the lowliest may belong to
something. From the organization of the Christian
Church down, the city has been the home of group
loyalties and of democratic movements. The city is
intellectually alert as compared with the country.
Everybody reads the daily paper; everybody discusses
the issues of the day; living in a city is in itself an
education. It is an education in esthetic sensibility.
The store windows, public buildings, amusement-
places — the stage — and even dress tend to universalize
taste. The city has schools for all its children, which
is far from true of the country at large. They are
none too good, but they are the best which were ever
afforded to the people in general and their results are
immeasurably significant.

Life Richer and More Satisfying. There are more
varied satisfactions in the city. In the country the
range of harmonious and helpful things is limited,
and it is not great enough to fill the most forceful and
adventurous lives. The city affords many avenues
of rewarding interest to one who is not vicious but
who is merely eager and zestful. Goodness is better
organized and more efficiently directed in the city than
in the country; it also touches life at more points.
City life is dynamic. Its moral mood is that of
achievement. Religion is less inclined to deal in nega-
tions.

The City at Its Best. All told, the city is democ-

loo THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

racy's finest achievement for the largest numbers of
men. Any of its moods justify the poet:

"Earth hath not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touch-
ing in its majesty."

To understand the city at its best one needs to ex-
plore the city child's memories. One whose earliest
experiences were those of a white cottage standing
amid green fields, whose adventures were of the swim-
ming-hole, and whose dignitary was the country dea-
con, almost certainly fails to understand the satis-
faction one may find in idealizing the good old win-
dowless bedroom, the good old city pavement, the
good old public bath, the policeman, the shops, and
the public school; yet all these may be as sound and
sacred material for human reverence as the other.

The Citizen. But the finest achievement of the city
is socialized character, and this may be found best ex-
hibited in industrial masses. Owning no home, and
never expecting to own one; with little of personal
wealth, laboring from day to day with little personal
reserve against the future, millions of human beings
live on worthily, strong in the possession of collective
responsibility and wealth, inhabiting the whole city
as their home and owning it in the broader sense of
enjoying its heaped-up common possessions. They
do not miss what they have never had, and they have
both human satisfactions and moral excellencies of
a new and permanent sort. This thoroughgoing ur-

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER loi

banized humanity is the most promising material of
the city church.

New Religious Conditions. Religion in the city is
in the same condition with political and social institu-
tions. Most of their forms and too much of their
spirit are simply survivals from the farmer economy,
not at all adapted to urban conditions. Thus the
older home missionary program is totally inadequate
to the modern city. The mission church of the older
commercial city was fairly successful because it dealt
with a largely static population — clerks and dependents
who were devoid of class resentment. Now however
it has to deal with an acutely class-conscious industrial
population with which it almost totally fails. Indus-
trial workers have personally felt the contrast of
wealth and poverty which the city presents and have
consequently thought effectively about them. They
have asked the question of the fundamental justice of
existing conditions and have acquired a highly critical
attitude for institutions which tend to restrain men
without at the same time urgently concerning them-
selves with the rectifying of conditions.

The Fortunes of the Churches. The mobility of
population in cities, rapid changes within given areas,
and lie irresponsibility of the transient tenant class
tend to make the lot of the smaller city church always
precarious. Almost any moment its substantial peo-
ple may have to move away in the face of an inun-
dating flood of aliens. Expansion of manufacturing
or business, with any of the more radical movements

I02 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

of populations, may reduce to poverty or exterminate
even the strongest city church. Probably no American
city of over 100,000 will fail to show ancient and
venerable houses of worship turned into storage ware-
houses or vaudeville theaters.

Urban Missionary Strategy. The subjection of re-
ligious institutions in the city to sudden attack and
at almost any point, by changes in population, compels
a missionary strategy which views the total denomina-
tional prospects of a given city as a single problem.
To make headway a denominational group must or-
ganize and view all church problems as home mission-
ary problems. Its several congregations cannot sur-
vive if they are parochially selfish, each tending to go
its own way. Land and buildings cost so much in the
city that only the most exceptional church can get
along without denominational aid at some time or an-
other. Denominational city missionary organizations
which include all the congregations of a city and which
view all their problems as missionary problems are
characteristic of our present religious policy. Again
the city is too difficult for Christian conquest by the
denominations acting separately. More and more it
compels interdenominational strategy and organiza-
tion. The Church as a whole must get the sense of
the city as a whole and must collectively direct its
forces to the city's redemption.

Types of Churches. The religious strategy of the
modern city, with its suburbs and "satellite" cities,
necessitates a wide range of religious institutions

LABOR TEMPLE

Located at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, New York City. There are
600,000 people south of Fourteenth Street and east of the Bowery. Attendance at Labor
Temple, in 1913, 250,000

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 103

matching the city's varied needs. Even in the heart
of the city the majority of churches will be of the
familiar "family" type. American life fortunately
is not so stratified but that its large middle class
reaches both up and down and combines in its char-
acteristic churches the capitalistic, professional, com-
mercial, and industrial populations. As many sur-
veys have shown, Protestantism is not literally out of
touch with "labor." In typical cities as high as 75
per cent, of Protestant church population are wage-
earners, either as clerks or industrial workers. Given
adequate resources the extension of "family" churches
to match the growth of cities in their residential dis-
tricts is one of the most profitable forms of home mis-
sions. There will be more new churches of this
type than of any other; and large investments in
them will be soonest justified. A growing city in
the Middle West, for example, is located in the bend
of a river. Across the river on two sides are massed
its industries and the lowest grade of laboring popu-
lation. On the other two sides a middle-class popu-
lation, chiefly American, has expanded in an almost
continuous band about two blocks wide per year, for
the last decade. In these successive rims of city
growth a single denomination has located some ten
churches, most of which have been successful beyond
the average. Other denominations have secured like
results. In a few cases rival churches have interfered
with one another, but on the whole the process has
been effective and orderly.

I04 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Future Development. With the prospective growth
of our more than 2,000 cities in the next decade, mis-
sionary forces face the necessity of furnishing several
thousands of such typical churches. To be sure, their
constituency is largely not home-owning, and they
suffer from the extreme mobility of urban popula-
tions, but there is a larger permanent nucleus than
in any other type of city church and with reasonably
strategic location and forceful leadership such
churches ought to and do succeed. They must of
course be housed and equipped in general harmony
with the type of community which surrounds them.
Their parish methods need not be radically revolu-
tionized, but they must live ever in the sense of their
greater field — the entire city.

"Down-town" Churches. Specialized types of
churches are also found in most American cities. For
example almost every population of 100,000 people
can support at least one "down-town" church, or-
ganized around a commanding pulpit and furnishing
a forum for inspirational messages to the entire city.
Such churches frequently wield great civic power, as
well as gather immense audiences of more or less
transient people.

The Institutional Church. This type is an attempt
to serve the needs of communities deficient in home
life by reason of poverty, or of new or unplaced people
living in boarding-houses. It performs a great variety
of functions, furnishing amusement and recreation,
education, medical care and nursing, employment and

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 105

business advice, to its constituency. It generally suc-
ceeds chiefly in serving young people who are rising
out of the class in which they were born, or during
their transition from country to city. The actual com-
munity life about the institutional church frequently
does not progress, but is rather continually depleted by
the removal of its best material through the successful
agency of the church, the masses remaining no higher
than they were. Frequently when civic agencies of
social betterment are perfected the institutional church
is found to be no longer necessary. But where it is
needed and when it is needed it is a fundamental form
of Christian service.

Churches for Foreign-speaking People. Usually
under native pastors, these furnish another character-
istic urban type. Our more recent aliens are generally
non-Protestant and not easily accessible to missionary
organizations. When Protestant, however, as in the
case of the Welsh, German, and other northern Eu-
ropean peoples, the church organized along the line
of the common language group is a suitable and often
effective one. On the other hand it should be re-
membered that the gospel in one's native tongue is not
the same as the gospel preached effectively under city
conditions. Many of these churches simply bring the
rural traditions of Europe, which are no more suitable
to the modern city than the rural traditions of Amer-
ica. The children rapidly Americanize and the charm
of the gospel in the native tongue wears away. The
foreign-speaking church peculiarly needs social redi-

io6 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

rection. It may then hold its young people and de-
velop normally into self-support as an American
church, or it may become extinct after performing its
temporary service to an alien group in transition.

The Social Settlement. Extreme diversity of class,
creed, and race under city conditions frequently makes
the sectarian church simply an agent of further divi-
sion in the community. It cannot therefore do the
fundamental social work of organizing a neighbor-
hood spirit. The creation of such spirit and its devel-
opment are more easily served by the social settle-
ment, which may be ardently Christian in spirit but
not ecclesiastical in form. The social settlement
brings diverse people together, finds for them com-
mon ties, gets them to cooperate and therefore to
respect and like one another; helps them to idealize
their common life and in general establishes the moral
foundations of constructive social progress. In rare
cases a church manages to do all this when it has a
pastor who is large enough to tower above the insti-
tution which supports him, and when a church is
large enough to allow him to be a community man
rather than an ecclesiastic. There are splendid ex-
amples of such men who have grown up with urban
communities, have overcome their prejudices, incar-
nated their ideals, and subordinated the institutional
life of the church to the functions of social leader-
ship. But the man and the church that can do this
are rare.

Social Ministries of the State. The largest and

BULLETIN-BOARD OF A DOWN-TOWN CHURCH,
NEW YORK

Meeting the needs for church services in a polyglot community

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 107

best social progress in the modern city has been
wrought through the civic activities of Christian men
apart from the direct activities of organized churches.
This is probably to be a permanent condition, and it
is not necessarily derogatory to the Church. Even if
the Church were less sectarian it could not match the
extreme diversity of city population. Social problems
are largely problems of technique involving expert
knowledge and highly specialized talent. The Church
is less able to furnish these qualities because it in-
cludes all sorts and conditions of men. Many social
services may be better performed by more limited vol-
untary organizations. City government supported by
the taxation of the entire people is properly responsi-
ble for the larger social environment of its people.
Through government, Christian ideals and Christian
conscience can most fundamentally affect the condi-
tions of urban life. Through politics the Christian
man can approach the entire city as his field of service
and touch its various human problems, not indeed with
the old intimate personal touch, but in far-reaching
working alliance of the group-leaders of its diverse
classes and races, in a broad and effective way.

The Unappreciated Church. On the other hand,
just because most social reforms can be secured and
financed by the state, the free Church, which can exist
only through the love and gifts of its adherents, has
a better right to both of these than some agencies
which have come between it and the state. In this
respect the Church is being called back into its own.

I08 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

There is new warmth of feeling between social work-
ers and organized Christianity evidenced by the large
recent stress upon the Church in social life in the
teaching of the schools of philanthropy. The direct
social activity of the Church will surely increase rap-
idly in the next decade ; and home missions and social
service will come better to understand one another in
the modern city. Much of the enthusiasm and many
of the Christian efforts which have been drafted off
into social service channels outside of the Church
had far better return and help convert the mind and
perfect the machinery of the Church for this task.
Division of Labor. The Church need not feel be-
littled by any discovery of permanent limitations upon
its direct usefulness in social service. Whenever any
other agency can really do a thing better than the
Church can it should be allowed to do it. Many pre-
cise social tasks will probably remain too complicated
for direct performance by church machinery. The
Church's clue is, first of all, many-sided service, with a
variety of typical organizations ; secondly, timely serv-
ice performed in advance of the arousing of civic
conscience and the perfecting of civic machinery; and,
finally, the permanent service of furnishing vision and
religious inspiration deeper than any social knowl-
edge. The Church need have no pessimism over its
present situation. Its urban growth has exceeded
that of the f)opulation. It is not out of touch with
the profoundest of urban problems, but is rather serv-
ing them by a variety of ministrations. The city is

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 109

the best thing which God has yet achieved through
man, and its better fortunes for all the future are
bound up with the agency which can interpret its
life and transfigure its work.

The Stranger. Through the Church the city ought
to be a place where strangers meet and make friends.
But this is doubly difficult under American conditions.
America is not settled in the sense of the older world.
It has always contained an unexampled number of
people new to their present environments. The native
stock is hardly more at home than the foreign-bom.
The West, wherever it has been, has always been full
of strangers and now there is the vast cityward move-
ment. The cost of immigration includes the pain of
loneliness, the temporary loss of social position and
esteem, the risk of not-yet-established talent invested
in new fields, and deep breaches in personal relations
and neighborliness. Leakage from its ranks through
immigration has been the chief numerical loss of the
American Church. The church-member of the East
too often has become the worldling of the West. The
country deacon moves to the city and meets unex-
pected barriers of social stratification in his own com-
munion. There will be three or four years of lost
time before he gets into most efifective working rela-
tions with his Church in a new place, if indeed his
children ever survive the shock of changed environ-
ment.

The Foreigner. Of course the most difficult Strang-

no THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

er is the stranger from other shores.^ There are now
thirteen and a half million of foreign-born people in
the United States, this being 14 per cent, of the total
population. They constitute over one fourth of the
population in the New England and Middle Atlantic
States. Adding those one or both of whose parents
are foreign-born gives a total of 35 per cent, of our
population as belonging to foreign stock in blood and
culture. Foreigners came to America in the decade
preceding 1910 to the number of eight and a half mil-
lion. Three and a quarter million, however, went back
home again, thus illustrating a newly acquired mo-
bility in industrial populations, and leaving a net in-
crease for the decade of five and a quarter million.
The Geography of Immigration. Three fifths of all
who came remained in the New England and Middle
Atlantic States, which we have already identified as
preeminently the industrial and urban section of our
nation. Of the foreign-born 72 per cent, dwell in.
cities ; of the total population but 46 per cent. While
this absolute massing of urban millions in the North-
east constitutes the most extensive problem of the
stranger, yet in proportion to population the most
acute situation is in the mountain and coast states of
the Northwest. Here naturally immigration is more
largely rural and just for that reason more difficult

^ Since the immigrant has recently been the subject of inten-
sive mission study, this book will deal only summarily with the
background of facts which illuminate his home missionary
problem.

1821-50
1831-40

1841-50
: 1851-60

j

!l861-70
: 1671-80
188I-9C
I89I-0C
i 1901-10

1891-00

1901-10

I Based on Jnnuat Reporls of

I Commissioner 'General of Immi0aiioji

TOTAL IMMIGRATION BY DECADES

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER iii

to assimilate. Here must home missions continue
many of their pioneer forms to meet a typically social
problem. Nothing could better demonstrate the fal-
lacy of the expectation that country life as such will
solve social problems than the fact that the rural
Pennsylvania Germans, whose ancestors came over
to America in colonial times, are as a group less
American in ideals and ways than the Germans who
came chiefly to the cities in 1846. Nowhere do an
alien tongue, creed, and social order so stubbornly en-
trench themselves as in rural colonies. The natural
conservatism of country life vies with clannishness to
prevent change. The extremest case of all is that of
the Mexican population of the Southwest, whose oc-
cupancy of their territory antedates our oldest Eng-
lish-speaking colonies and whose disinclination to be-
come assimilated is the habit of three hundred years.
This stubborn habit of clannishness must be prevented
in the aliens of the newer West.

Social £ind Moral' Factors. Everywhere the alien
flood comes largely from rural homes. Its character-
istics in the American city are not only those of a
population moving from one land to another, but from
one social environment to another. They are new
to the city as well as to the nation, being largely a
peasant population coming from the open country and
undergoing the new stress of industrialization. In
short, they are suffering the extreme experience of
change in all directions at once. Necessarily then the
percentage of individual incapacity to meet this dif-

112 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ficult test will be large. The immigrant's almost uni-
versal expectation of larger advantage than is destined
to be realized in the new world gives a pathetic side
to the whole problem. His material returns for his
labor will not be so great as the stranger imagines,
nor will his finer hopes have full realization. At the
same time the coming of vast bodies of human beings
cherishing strong and definite idealistic expectations
certainly adds to the moral resources of the nation.
We import energy and faith when we receive the
stranger within our gates.

The Newer Immigration. Previous to about 1882
most of our immigrant population had come from
Northern and Western Europe, from lands which were
racially allied to ours and which had experienced paral-
lel developments in modern democracy and civilization.
Suddenly since that time their great bulk has come
largely from Southern and Eastern Europe. Now
scarcely one fifth come from the Protestant and fully
modernized lands whose civilization is likest ours,
while over two thirds come from countries which bor-
der on Asia or the Mediterranean Sea. We now deal
not merely with the stranger, but such a stranger, who
has grown up with our cities until they are largely the
human reflection of his problems and struggles. They
come from the lands of infinite local variation, of
many dialects, of extreme clannishness, of social dis-
integration. Every human variety may be found in
all our greater cities living largely in clannish com-
munities which reproduce as far as possible charac-

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 113

teristics of the old home. Our greatest city — New
York — is particularly the city of the stranger, and
gets its unique character and interest from being the
gateway of the continent.

Give and Take. Home missionary interest is con-
cerned primarily with the social give and take of the
immigration process. It wishes to understand the
interaction of the nation and its new peoples, in whom
it is equally interested. Its knowledge of sociology
leads it to expect that such a mingling of elements is
bound to bring vigorous and rapid social change,
whether in the direction of progress or not. Home
missions are the attempt of religion to turn the immi-
grant tide into channels of progress. As a concrete
process the give and take of immigration exhibits six
fundamental phases:

I. Dislocation. To find oneself a stranger in a
new place is to be filled with bewilderment and to ex-
perience strain. The new world challenges the alien.
It is an economic challenge. Can he find a job and
make a living, especially one which will enable him
to send for his family and establish them upon the
American standard of living? It is a political chal-
lenge. Can he adjust himself to American institu-
tions, escaping exploitation by the political boss and
arriving at responsible citizenship? It is a moral
challenge. Foundations of customary morality are
rooted in the habitual life of the group to which one
belongs. The group being broken and the sanctions
of morals shaken by his transfer to a new world, can

114 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

the alien discover and rebuild character upon new
sanctions? The Hebrew race for example has been
traditionally chaste. One of the great moral victories
of the Hebrew prophets of the eighth century before
Christ was the stamping out of religious prostitution.
It is perhaps the supreme tragedy of Judaism that
the first general undoing of their work should be upon
the soil of America, through the overstrain of immi-
gration upon Hebrew morality. Finally immigration
is a religious challenge. Orthodoxy tends to vanish
with the control of the religious community which can-
not survive in strength its transfer across the seas.
Shall the Catholic and the Jew, who form the bulk of
the new immigration, turn materialistic in America,
or shall they find a new religious life springing out
of their new experience and relations?

2. Marked Group Cohesion. As men cling to-
gether in panic, the first instinctive remedy of the
alien group for dislocation and its challenges is clan-
nishness. The immigrant population sticks together
in crowded colonies, invades similar industries, acts in
political unity under the boss, experiences a narrow-
ing moral and religious tendency in which reactionaries
tend to get possession of the ancient sources of leader-
ship. This tendency to swarm is the root of most of
the problems of the modern city, and all of them
are complicated by this reactionary tendency. From
the standpoint of the nation one would wish to scatter
the immigrant into small and easily assimilable bands.
From the standpoint of his most thoughtful leaders.

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 115

however, there is a real danger in too rapid Americani-
zation. There is a reactionary mood and an over-
hasty one. Between them somewhere must He the
secret of normal evolution into a new life to which
every people has a right.

3. The Revufeion of the Older Population. As the
immigrant group withdraws from us in dread, we
equally withdraw from it in dislike, and so the dis-
tance between us is doubled. The American moves
out of the foreign district. He seeks another job en
masse if the foreigner comes into his industry. He
denies the foreigner entrance to his social circle. He
leaves his religious organization if the foreigner gets
in. Part of the American's revulsion is intelligible,
for, for the time being at least, the sudden coming
of great masses of aliens threatens his standard of liv-
ing. The newcomers can underlive us and their com-
petition brings down our wages. On the other hand
they bring new demands to be supplied, create new
opportunities for our more established intelligence to
serve, and rapidly adopt our standards themselves.
Their gain on the whole is far greater than our loss.

4. Disintegration. In the process of give and take
there follows the certain disintegration of immigrant
groups. In spite of their best efforts at cohesion they
invariably lose the young people. Church, cathe-
dral, and synagogue alike suffer. The bigoted Jap-
anese Buddhist, who came to California resolved to
keep entirely clear of suggestions of Christianity,
found even the moving picture shows full of Christian

ii6 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

suggestiveness. One who has grown up with it can-
not possibly comprehend how freighted and saturated
with new influences is every scene and activity of a
new land. With America beating in upon his brain
and heart, the young foreigner is bound to desert in
thought, if not in fact, his native group. Unless
caught up into the better phases of American life he
becomes the social rebel and criminal, and the disin-
tegration of the foreign colony thus becomes the dis-
integration of society in general. The more success-
ful and progressive members of the foreign-speaking
group also tend to desert it. The millionaire or lit-
erary Jew moves out of the ghetto and loses himself
in American society, thus robbing the people of their
natural leaders; so that disintegrating foreign-speak-
ing groups are even more dependent than others upon
the purposeful leadership of patriotic and Christian
agencies.

5. Assimilation. In the molding of the original
American stock the elements were very diverse and
the resulting sectional and regional variations were
considerable. Each chief element brought some con-
tribution of genius or tendency which was not totally
lost in the resultant fusion, the survival of which has
added variety and interest to our national life. In
perspective we are reconciled to the variations in our
English-speaking tradition introduced by the Irish and
German immigration before 1880. It made our cities
and helped develop our West. In time of war it
shared our blood baptism into national unity. The

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 117

present generation thinks of America as naturally
and fittingly including such variations in civilization
as are presented by the surviving peculiarities of these
groups.

The Saturation Point. The real heart of our pres-
ent fears as to immigration concerns the suddenness
and bulk of a new kind of people whom we suspect on
racial grounds and otherwise of being a new quality
of human stuff. We are not clear whether, coming
in such large numbers as they do and presenting a
wider variation from the dominant civilization of our
people, they may not introduce stubborn dissimilarities
which will make it permanently harder to work out
American destinies under the ideals of democracy and
the Christian faith. A saturation point has un-
doubtedly been reached in some of our more con-
gested regions. No one can believe that immigrants
of such quality should be dumped down where there
are already too many. Both the maintenance of the
American standards of living and the operation of
the American institutions are made difficult under
such circumstances.

The Great-Heart Among Nations. That immigra-
tion should be controlled with reference to assimila-
tion is a formula that few will challenge. Its applic-
ability to concrete issues however leaves room for
many debates. Most of the tests by which the check-
ing of immigration has been proposed are at outs with
our traditions and obnoxious to our convictions.
Christians who take the world view-point of foreign

ii8 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

missions will be unable to regard the welfare of
America alone in thinking about the immigration
problem. Our brethren across the seas are as truly
our brethren as the native-born. Check we may, di-
rect we should, but essentially to obstruct so reverend
an epic process as the migration of peoples in the
search for ideals would be the unfaithfulness of
America to her finest mission. Our gates should be
still open to the North, South, East, and West, though
more precise and scientific tests of fitness and greater
certainty of practical advantage on the part of the
incoming stranger may well be required.

6. Dilution. The outcome of the immigration
process cannot fail to be the dilution of the American
type by alien elements. "Dilution" is a figure of speech
generally used in a deprecatory sense. Of course the
peculiar stream of American life will be diluted and
its inner qualities changed ; but the so-called alien ele-
ments are already in the same world which Americans
have to inhabit. The result of their inclusion in our
midst will simply be a somewhat modified ratio of
the elements as adjusted here. We dilute the life
of the alien far more than he does ours. He brings
us positive gifts; not merely raw labor power, but
various fine heredities and conspicuous national tal-
ents ; he brings also optimism and idealism which tend
to dry up in the older stocks. From the moment we
reached the Pacific coast and found our free land
occupied the chief ground of our historic idealism
failed us. From that moment we needed intensely a

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 119

new world commerce in morals and sentiments. Thus
some of the finest exemplifications of the modern so-
cial spirit are found in the American Hebrew. It is
precisely the higher interests of our national life —
our music, art, and literature — which are most con-
spicuously indebted to the foreigner. As the "mud-
hog" sinking the foundations of our tunnels and our
sky-scrapers far underground, and as the poet singing
from the loftiest pinnacle of our achievement, he of-
fers his share to the common life.

Missions and Dislocation. To each of these phases
of the give and take of immigration there is a positive
and appropriate home missionary ministry. To meet
the immigrant in his first shock of dislocation and be-
wilderment, home missions send a representative to
Ellis Island to soften the gruffness of officialism, and
become responsible for the newcomer whose friends or
relatives fail to meet him, or who is without sufficient
money to reach his proper destination. The guardian-
ship of unprotected girls and women is also their spe-
cial care. While duplicatory and not always properly
supervised private agencies have seriously compromised
the efforts of the missionary boards to use this initial
opportunity for service, its helpfulness is still great.
Naturally the immigrant's most necessary tool in the
new land is the English language, without which he
can neither know his rights nor contribute his share
of human intercourse to his new home. In far slighter
measure than one would wish and with not nearly so
much efficiency as the Jewish community, Protestant-

120 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ism, chiefly through the Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, but increasingly under the impulse of home
missionary direction, has begun to teach the alien
English, and to give him his first lessons in patriotism.
This has been the long-time and most characteristic
approach of Oriental missions to Chinese and Japan-
ese.

Missions and Group Cohesion. Utilizing and mak-
ing the best of the tendency to group cohesion, home
missions for many years have organized the Protestant
immigrant into foreign-speaking churches, with pas-
tors of their own race, and supported them by frater-
nal counsel and supervision and grants of money.
Naturally those European denominations like the
Lutherans, which early became naturalized in America,
have had the larger opportunity with the incoming
millions of their own language and faith, but many
of the larger denominations have long had conspicu-
ous success in the evangelization of Scandinavian and
German immigrants, as well as those of more recent
arrival. Of Southern Europeans, Italians furnish
the most hopeful material for Protestant evangeliza-
tion. Under urban conditions there is a growing ten-
dency to organize the foreigner into branch churches,
sometimes occupying the same building with the sup-
porting American church and preferably under its
careful control.

The Guidance of Foreign-speaking Churches. The
chief weakness of these efforts is the lack of satis-
factory leaders, both as to character and ability, and

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 121

as to fitness for modern social guidance. The danger
from the reactionary is great. A sincere and conse-
crated man sometimes contrives simply to lead his
people away from broad American sympathies. The
schools therefore which train the foreigner for effective
work with his own people are vitally necessary. The
ultimate guidance of these foreign-speaking churches
is an exacting problem for the missionary administra-
tor. They are frequently sensitive, self-opinionated,
veneered with American progress rather than funda-
mentally changed. The supporting boards must stub-
bornly lead where they only seem to help. They must
be sympathetic, eternally patient, bearing and endur-
ing all things; but they must not let group-cohesion
define, limit, or thwart the social realization of Chris-
tianity in the united nation.

Living Ties. The only basis of vital and enduring
leadership is genuine and spontaneous fellowship. Of-
ficial ministries are but the giving of stones for bread,
so long as the average church-member in his personal
life is deliberately sundered from the foreigner. The
irony of the situation would be unendurable except for
those great mediatorial souls — our missionaries —
whose friendships bridge for us the class, language,
and color lines ; who in their lives preach peace to
those who are afar off and to those who are near.
But for them how deep and hopeless would the es-
trangement be between the diverse elements of the
nation! Their devotion does not excuse but rather
shames our lack, but how they link the land together

122 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

with their hearts! And what genuine and abiding
satisfaction they find in their friends from other
lands; how little condescension and sense of superi-
ority there is about the real missionary !

Notable Workers. Dr. E. A. Adams gave his earlier
missionary service to Bohemia herself, and then came
home to a notable career in the heart of the Bohemian
section in Chicago. Here he identified his fortunes;
here he reared and educated his sons and daughters and
proved that missionaries' children may be none the
worse for social sacrifice. For forty years Dr. William
C. Pond has been a father to the Chinese of the whole
Pacific Coast. Going South as a boy in his teens with a
missionary father, Dr. E. C. Silsby has devoted virtu-
ally the whole of a long life to Christian service for the
Negro. Ranged with these venerable peers of the
apostles is the splendid band of those who are newly
linking their lives with the lives of the stranger to
teach him the ways of the flag and of the cross. They
do not pass by on the other side; and they find the
Samaritan an interesting and lovable type who makes
a remarkable recovery from his wounds under the
medicine of fellowship. This is home missions at
their best.

Missions and Disintegration. Protestant home mis-
sions have a peculiar responsibility for alien groups in
their disintegration. Children and youth especially
need the evangelical gospel. Speaking for himself, the
author largely excepts the Jew from this responsi-
bility. He believes that the Hebrew faith in America

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 123

is destined to evolve into essential Christianity and
that, in its progressive wing, it already shows strong
tendencies to quick, democratic adaptation to modem
conditions. The social ministries of the Hebrew
Church are many and effective. They have set the
pace for Protestant missions not once nor twice. We
should cooperate therefore in civic and moral reforms
with enlightened Jews, should respect and strengthen
the vital forces of their religion and should not prose-
lyte their youth, believing that they will come most
surely to know Christ through the practise of his so-
cial teaching.

Roman Catholic Immigrants. Similar considera-
tions would apply to the Roman Catholic Church so
far as it is actually holding its immigrant youth
to vital religion and so far as it is truly democratic
and modern. There are exceptional localities in which
it is all of this. As a first aid in the religious placing
of undigested alien masses, its social service is tremen-
dous. Nowhere is it the part of home missions to at-
tack or tear it down, though specific Catholic aggres-
sions are to be resisted. The most outstanding fact
however, about the Roman Church in America is that
it does not hold its own. Vast as its numbers are
they would be twice as large had that Church been able
to retain the great immigrant masses of its adherents
who have thronged to our shores. The millions of its
young deserters are the ripe field of Protestantism.
This is a social rather than an ecclesiastical judgment.
Religion must adjust the alien to the new world on

1124 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

democratic terms. Only Protestantism can meet this
test. That Protestantism shall not fail to do so is the
burden of home missions.

Building on Old-world Missionary Foundations.
There are moreover deep-rooted elements of his-
toric Protestantism in populations generally counted
as Catholic. Thus hundreds of Italians in New York
City, who had never known the touch of missions in
America, reported themselves to the Census as Protes-
tants. The land of Huss could not be without a strong
Protestant tradition. Foreign mission converts from
papal lands and from the Near and Far East trickle
by hundreds through the immigrant millions. Home
missions cannot do less than conserve what foreign
missions have saved.

Missions and Assimilation. Less spectacular than
peculiar and separate institutions for foreign-speaking
peoples, but sounder and more happy is the persistent
assimilating process which takes the foreigner right
into the American community and church. With the
northern European, especially upon the frontier, this
was the rule rather than the exception. The pioneer
home missionary church was typically a fusion of
human elements. One of the author's childhood rec-
ollections is of a Norwegian Sunday-school superin-
tendent, and he grew up without any deep sense of
separation from the Scandinavian boys who were his
schoolfellows. We burden our souls so much now-
adays with the difficulties of assimilation as to for-

THE CITY AND THE STRANGER 125

get our tremendous successes, which are the world's
marvel, and which are still largely operative.

A New England Example. About twenty years
ago a young minister took up a pastorate, which was
to last for over fifteen years, in a Connecticut mill
town. His church was a merger of two ancient par-
ishes, which, with the dying off of the native stock,
had been starved into uniting. The predominant mill
population was German and there were a few of
their children in the Sunday-school. At the end of
the fifteen years the church-membership was chiefly
of German extraction so Americanized as co continue
the best Puritan traditions. By this time however
a new generation of common labor had arrived upon
the scene, consisting of Catholic Polanders. To
win the Germans required only that the Puritan church
should cease to be conceited and that its pastor should
be persistently faithful in work with the children.
But neither of these could penetrate within Polish
bigotry and clannishness. The pastor therefore
changed his tactics; made friends with the Catholic
priest, saw to it that the Polish group-leaders were
recognized in civic affairs, and enlisted them in a no-
license movement. Assimilation includes both proc-
esses. When individuals cannot be directly reached
and their group brought to disappear in the general
community life, they may yet be effectively included
under common ideals. A staunch and aggressive
minority, in possession of social tradition and organi-
zation, may still subject armies of aliens. Thus the

126 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Puritan spirit still dominates New England, and its
best ideals, as expressed in O'Reilly's great tribute to
the Pilgrims, are the common possession of Yankee
and Irishman.

Missions and Dilution. Naturally there is no home
missionary agency which deliberately strives for the
dilution of American life or the American Church by
alien elements. But home missions does purposefully
introduce into the Church those who humanly justify
the apostolic epithets, "more feeble," "less honor-
able," "uncomely." Less steady alike in faith and in
morals, with lower standards of general intelligence
and of religious taste, compelled to make present shift
with an inadequately prepared ministry, they range
themselves, no more strangers and aliens, but fellow
citizens with the saints. Their ultimate contribution
to it will be worthy of membership in the body. Of
none may the Church say, "I have no need of you."
Doubtless the present average of American Christian-
ity is in many resi>ects lowered by their inclusion.
They do not make it easier for the Church to be free
from spot or wrinkle or any such thing; they do help
it to include men out of every tribe and tongue and
people and nation who are to throng the holy city.
In the deliberate judgment of home missions the lat-
ter alternative is more worthy of Christ's Church.
It is his finally to present it to God faultless; it is
ours to see that not the least of his brethren is absent
from the ranks in that great day.

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIAL
JUSTICE

CHAPTER V
SOaAL KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Standing Room Only. Just after the Revolution-
ary war a soldier received from his grateful country
a grant of five thousand acres of land in central
Tennessee. Early in the last century this tract was
cut up into farms for pioneer settlers. These were
described in the old records by natural land-marks —
this gum tree and that big hickory — which time and
civilization long since removed. One who went re-
cently to locate his ancestral acres within this tract
could identify them only by the mill-site. There
was but one mill-site on the five thousand acres. The
man who got it became a man of power over his
fellows. To him must every stubborn pioneer back
bend, as it brought com to be ground. There are
no more unoccupied farms for the newcomer and
tliere never was more than one mill-site. Let the five
thousand acres stand for the national domain and the
mill-site for its limited natural resources — its water-
power, and waterways, its harbors, mineral deposits,
and forests — and one has America in miniature. The
land and its points of strategic value are all pos-

129

I30 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

sessed. They who possess them control the nation
and the later comer. Our perplexity over this fact
is what we call the social problem.

Who Owns the Nation? Of course the case is not
quite so simple as our preliminary illustration might
suggest. Upon the primary basis of control of land
and natural resources modern civilization has built up
a great social order in which the transformation and
transportation of the raw materials of wealth are of
equal moment with the productive land, its fields, for-
ests, and mines. Whoever therefore owns the factory
and the railroad controls the nation. But these again
are so vast that no one can own them except as he
first borrows the savings of many thousands of ordi-
nary people. This the adventurous, extraordinary
man does; and by so doing is able, with others like
him, to organize great systems of control over
lands and produce, coal fields, oil deposits, railways
and steamships, terminals and harbors, banks and
exchanges, public privileges and the making of laws,
newspapers and the agencies of public opinion and
conscience. To control this man, with his hordes of
allies and dependents who have had their lives fitted
into and their thinking tempered by this vast organi-
zation, is the second great factor of the social prob-
lem.

The Industrial Toilers. But the chief aspect is the
possession by capitalistic organization of vast out-
numbering millions of propertyless workingmen whom
it calls its hands, and whom it pays what it calls wages.

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 131

Large numbers of them perform skilled tasks and re-
ceive pay equal to or beyond that ordinarily received
by the school-teachers, newspaper men, artists, musi-
cians, book-writers, ministers, and other spiritual lead-
ers of the nation. But still larger numbers do not
receive enough to take their homes out of sordid and
ugly surroundings, nor to leave margin for defense
against sickness and unemployment, nor to keep family
life intact, nor to prevent the benumbing fear of want,
nor frequent actual undernutrition.

The Human Factor. These millions of low-paid
v^rorkers are not in every respect amiable human beings.
They want, many of them, more than they have, but
also more than they can or ought to have without great
improvement in their personal efficiency. In their
present frame of mind, the best of conditions would
not make them happy. Some of them we have met
among the Strangers of our earlier chapter; others
we will meet among the Race Problems. They are
not easy of adjustment within the nation. They re-
spond imperfectly to the loyalties which are our second
nature. Their vivid class consciousness makes them
difficult to work with ; their conduct frequently makes
them difficult to apologize for. They are like the rest
of us in these respects. They are not nearly so hum-
ble as they want the Church to be and are not con-
scious of any social sins to repent of. Their moral
and spiritual discipline is one of the prime phases of
their social problem. They need to be made fit for
their present and prospective tasks, and for the fellow-

fi32 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ship and responsibilities to which they aspire. At the
same time their mood is eager rather than sodden:
they have positive moral ideals and are developing
fresh loyalties, which put them far and away beyond
any mood which is merely conservative or any moral-
ity which is enthralled by the past. They bring a
definite contribution to the social problem and repre-
sent a fundamental attack upon it. Their great mes-
sage to the nation is that social issues are upon us,
that they are to be taken seriously, that men must live
with them day and night, and that nothing which
claims to be fundamental, as religion does, can make
them anything but central in its interest.

The Vision and Machinery of Justice Alike Lack-
ing. On the whole America finds herself unprepared
to meet the social problem which has stolen upon
us as a thief in the night. Half the nation scarcely
knows that there is one; the other half knows that
there is but does not know what to do about it. We
should have no agencies to carry out our knowledge
if we had it. We are alike without the vision and the
machinery of justice. Thus one reports that a chief
industrial city of the South represents a "survival from
the farmer-economy, whose common needs and in-
dividual responsibilities are very different from those
of ^his massed industrial population dropped down in
the geographical center of the cotton-belt. It is of a
piece with the cramped city limits, the village council,
the outgrown income, the criss-cross town plan, the
civil service based on fees, the farmyard sanitation,

REV. JOSIAH STRONG

A pioneer in social reconstruction

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 133

the stupid system of municipal works . . . With no
public library, no public recreation, no meeting hall for
her citizens, no city plan for growth."^ In other
words, Birmingham, with her 20,000 coal and iron
workers, just happened. She does not represent so-
cial reason, social conscience, or social control; and
with minor variations Birmingham in these respects is
a piece of America. Thus our unpreparedness for it
is a final factor in the social situation.

The Early Response of the Church. In its recogni-
tion of the moral urgency of the social situation the
Church was not second among American forces. Not
soon enough, yet as soon as any one else she began to
sense its importance. By the time outside criticism
of the Church for social neglect had become acute,
self-criticism had become drastic. By 1889, while
such courses were still rare in the universities, three
Congregational theological seminaries in New England
were teaching young ministers to study social prob-
lems radically. Men like Josiah Strong, Washington
Gladden and Richard T. Ely had become Christian
evangelists of social duty. By 1893 the Baptist and
Congregational communions had developed active
propagandas for social justice. Many men were speak-
ing with heat and some with light. This prophetic
phase of the movement had also its martyrs at the
hands of conservatism and complacency. But on the
whole the Church responded rapidly. Institutional
and social service activities were begun in many par-

^ G. R. Taylor, The Survey, January, 1912.

134 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ishes and the social conscience became the sudden pos-
session of a new Christian generation.

Slower Officialism. As late as 1900, however, Dr.
Strong could not catalog any general home missionary
movement of social betterment except service for the
backward races. In mitigation of this delay it may
be urged that collective action must necessarily wait
upon the development of the average conscience. Vol-
untary organization may forge ahead under prophetic
impulse, but official agencies have to organize and
bring up the main body of the Lord's host. Thus
social issues got into home missions as early as into
national politics, and into missionary offices sooner.
Now practically every important denomination has an
official social service agency either incorporated with
its existing home missionary machinery or additional
to and allied with it; while, in the collective advocacy
of home missions through federated agencies, the so-
cial note has become distinctly dominant. The Federal
Council of Churches more and more stresses social
interests as the common burden of American Chris-
tianity, and the marvel is, not that some conservative
sects oppose this tendency, but that more do not.

Redirecting Home Missions. Yet one has to con-
fess a certain defensive and apologetic attitude in the
official literature of social Christianity hitherto. The
current assent of the Church to the social gospel has
reached the stage of official toleration, but in many
instances has not gone much further. When it comes
to the redirection of home missions in detail, to the re-

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 135

casting of policies and particularly to the shifting
of appropriations, old ways are stubborn. Outside
the realm of formulas and inside the field of action
lies the test of all professions. In home missions it
concerns not merely the redirecting of the whole proc-
ess, but ultimately the moving of perhaps five million
dollars a year in appropriations and 15,000 men from
conventional or sectarian to social tasks — a step for
which no one is quite ready as yet.

Inescapable Social Issues. This book then seeks to
urge the futility of superficial measures and the ne-
cessity of radical action. Vast and sudden changes
in society demand equal changes in the Church.
Twenty-five years ago a man said in the spirit of the
apostle, "I am debtor to barbarians" ; and lost himself
in the Indian country on the upper Missouri River.
Years were passed in lonely labor, when suddenly
there broke in upon his solitude construction gangs
of aliens to build a railroad — Greeks, they were. So
the missionary added modern Greek to his accomplish-
ments, sent to Athens for Testaments and amended his
life motto to read, 'T am debtor both to Greeks and to
barbarians." After the Greeks came Japanese, sleep-
ing in the same bunk houses and remaining as section
men after the construction gangs had passed on.
With the fencing of the ranges the stockmen crowded
into the Indian country, starting a trail of graft which
led to the senate-chamber of the United States, which
the missionary must follow or run from duty. After
the stockman came the Dutch renter following the

136 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

irrigation ditch; and after him, with the opening of
the reservation, the country towns. Where railroads
crossed on the edge of the reservation sprang up sud-
denly the little city, surrounded by a region of inten-
sive farming, on whose depot platform one to-day will
watch a dozen nationalities as he waits for a train.
A man went into the wilderness to preach a simple
evangelism, and lo, Jerusalem and all Judea went out
to him. God pursued this man of the obscure, single-
hearted mission with all manner and complexities of
social problems. He could not free himself from them.
No more can the Church. It is beset behind and be-
fore by social issues. And what it must meet it should
master for its Master's sake.

No Compromise! No moderate or compromising
mood therefore is fitting. The age needs the alert
passion of original Christianity. The Church needs
an energizing consciousness of its ties to the lowliest
and the furthest. It must enforce an aggressive
brotherliness in the face of growing fixity of social
classes. One cannot pass from one American city to
another nor go back to his boyhood country home for
a visit without keenly realizing the increased separate-
ness of men of diverse fortunes within his own life-
time. Who then can doubt that it is time to be radi-
cal? We must give over planting children's gardens
on vacant city lots when the need is to tax the lots
out of vacancy.

The Approach through Social Knowledge. The
most characteristic and notable aspect of the home mis-

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 137

sionary attack upon the social situation is its method
of approach. The impatience of social passion is
checked, the radical spirit is made effective by the
approach through precise social knowledge. What-
ever others may do, home missions propose to find
out social duty first of all by the investigation of defi-
nite areas and the conditions of the life and labor of
their people. They start, not with the social order in
general, but with one's own community. They dis-
cover the needs of that community by a "survey" of
all its significant conditions. All the experts, all the
official prograins agree on this method of approach.

The Case of Muscatine. In 191 1 a Commission
of the Social Service Secretaries of leading denomina-
tions, cooperating through the Federal Council of
Churches, thus approached the acute social problem of
Muscatine, Iowa. This flourishing city of 20,000 on
the borders of a prairie state was one in which the
strength and success of earlier home missions had been
notably exemplified. It had suddenly developed a ro-
mantic and profitable industry — that of making pearl
buttons from the clam-shells which are furnished in
great quantity by the Mississippi River.. By this in-
dustry nearly half of its population lived; yet both
the community and the state of which it was a part
had ignored many of the possibilities which grew out
of this fact and were totally unprepared to meet them.
Industrial conditions were not seriously bad. When,
however, the workers attempted to get comparatively
minor grievances rectified by organizing a union they

138 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

were met by a prompt lockout. Petty violence was
resorted to in return and the persecution of non-union
workers. The militia was called out ; and later private
detectives hired from Chicago. A futile return to
work was arranged through the intervention of the
churches, the chamber of commerce, and the governor
of the state. It failed because it did not go to the
roots of the trouble and was in the interest of peace
rather than of justice. A general strike followed, with
additional violence, which alienated public sympathy
from the strikers and shunted the minds of the com-
munity from the issue of social justice to that of
public order. Finally the whole situation became in-
coherent— a matter of overstrained temper and nerves.
Workmen abandoned their homes seeking work else-
where and factories moved to other places. In terms
of the community, the losses to purse, to poise of
mind, and to human kindness were enormous.

A Gross of Buttons. The report of the Commis-
sion made it plain that there was a rather simple but
unsolved technical issue at the bottom of the whole
difficulty, namely, how many buttons made a gross?
Wages were paid for so many gross of buttons; but
was a gross a gross of buttons or of good buttons?
What were good buttons ; buttons which sold at stand-
ard price or at any price? If all marketable buttons
were to be counted, at what rate? This involved the
question whether the lowest grade buttons were pro-
duced at a profit or a loss, and this the manufacturers'
crude system of accounting failed to reveal. Mani-

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 139

festly this question was not to be settled by orating
upon street corners nor by the muskets of miHtia. It
needed just a production expert and a cost accountant
to devise a clear definition of a gross of buttons as an
invariable basis for wages. But as the Commission
pertinently remarked, this simple point had become
the supreme test of religious values in Muscatine just
then.

All Have Sinned. The report of the Commission
went on to deal out even-handed criticism to all parties
who had so conspicuously failed in their mutual re-
sponsibilities : to the manufacturers for their unwill-
ingness to allow the workers to organize while they
themselves were practising this same fundamental
right, and for their refusal to recognize the community
as being a party at interest in all industrial situations ;
to the workers for injustice to non-unionists, for gross
misrepresentation of factory conditions, for public dis-
order, and for a disregard of the community exactly
equal to that of the manufacturers. It condemned the
churches for failure as teachers of public morals to
include leadership as to industrial conditions, for
permitting unnecessary, loose, and aggravating ideas
to dominate the public mind and for not pointing
prospectively the way of social righteousness and
peace. It found the community guilty of not under-
standing the relation of industry to civic responsibility,
for not providing such means of social recreation as
would have been a safety-valve against violence, and
particularly for failure in the development of common

il40 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ideals and aspirations. The state, it pointed out, had
no adequate means of keeping public order under con-
ditions of industrial strife, nor of investigating nor
preventing the evils which led to such strife.

Scientific Basis of Justice. It is not to be pre-
sumed that every one in Muscatine agreed with the
findings of the Commission in all particulars. It was
still open to any of the parties to the situation to pre-
sent its own point of view and plead its case before
the bar of public opinion. It remained however that
the Commission had viewed the whole situation in a
judicial spirit as no one else had. Its members were
experienced in social diagnosis. They brought to bear
the best clues from human experience elsewhere. They
approached the problem of Muscatine with all the
social knowledge available. Their findings represented
social justice as nearly as we can now approximate
it in such matters. This general method home mis-
sions recommend for universal application. It is scien-
tific in that it is an application of the method of induc-
tive study to actual conditions. It does not deal in
vague theories of society but soberly seeks to point
out local responsibility and concrete remedies for social
ills. It is neither socialistic nor anti-socialistic, be-
cause it does not begin with philosophy at all but rather
with the practical attitudes of the Christian gospel to-
ward all human problems.

Willingness to Differ in Details. It is strategic
because it presents a basis on which men may unite in
practical programs when they could not at all unite in

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 141'

theory. Debates about social orthodoxies are just as
unprofitable as about theological orthodoxies. A doc-
trinal debate about social duties would simply further
divide the Church. Men have a right to be extremely
sensitive when social conclusions are drawn in the
name of religion without the most painstaking pre-
liminary study of particular facts. The approach
through social knowledge does not preclude differences
in judgment between men of equally sincere and sen-
sitive consciences. Social workers are entirely accus-
tomed to the spectacle of divided opinion on such
concrete issues, say of the wisdom of a widowed
mothers' pension law, or the terms of a workingmen's
compensation act. It is just this willingness to differ
in detail, to correct errors by experimentation, and
to view the whole matter in an open-minded and scien-
tific rather than a dogmatic spirit which characterizes
the current home missionary attitude. Such an atti-
tude takes much of the sting out of old bitterness and
has, for example, largely enabled the North and South
to see eye to eye and to unite in common effort for
the uplift of the Negro.

An Ounce of Prevention. The final excellency of
this approach to social issues is that it is by its very-
nature preventive. As seen in the Muscatine case, the
weakness of home missions was that their ministries
came too late. Immense damage through social strife
had already been suffered. But the most significant
of wars are those which were never fought; where
the issue and the irritant were ready, but were over-

142 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

mastered by the stronger forces of peace working out
thoroughgoing moral adjustments and profound hu-
man reconcihations. While home missions therefore
in their direct functioning cannot show frequent suc-
cessful mediation in industrial conflicts, they are doing
something better. Their diffusion of the social spirit,
their advocacy of social adjustments, their guidance
of the Church in local courses of study, are the precise
means which will prevent a repetition of the Muscatine
situation.

The Local Survey. At the present moment, in con-
nection with the new Christian strategy both of city
and of rural missions, large numbers of communities
are engaged in surveying their local social conditions.
Indeed, the survey method is in danger of becoming
the current fad; yet nothing would this book more
earnestly commend than this very method. It is the
essential first step for an efficient local home mission-
ary program. Nothing which is permanently wise or
significant can be done without an accurate knowledge
of and the education of the community in its own
social conditions. One of the largest services of recent
missionary scholarship and publication is that of per-
fecting the technical methods for making and using
such surveys, and in this matter the Church may be
proud of her leadership. The recent bulletin on the
Social Survey issued by the Russell Sage Foundation^
shows how largely this general field of social study is

* Bulletin No. 2, December, 1913.

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 143

indebted to home missionary leaders for literature and
results.

Justice through Social Control. Out of these
many social studies and local experiments, and in
harmony with the general social thought of our age,
home missions are able to formulate a constructive
program of social justice for the Church. Certain
agreements have emerged and established themselves
in the modern Christian conscience. Their economic
background may be variously stated. It does not ques-
tion the fundamental rights of property — say in eggs.
It is recognized that there will be a season of fluctua-
tion in the price of eggs, owing to the fact that hens
will produce them more profusely in the summer than
in the winter. There is no disposition to forbid a
profit to the man of intelligence and foresight who
buys up quantities of eggs and puts them in cold
storage against the day of relative scarcity. It is in-
sisted however that the eggs which he sells out of
cold storage shall be good, and that the new resource
which has come to humanity in the preservation of the
food supply through refrigeration shall in its largest
use tend to equalize human advantage and not merely
to enrich those who are able to get possession of it.
In other words, strict social control is to be exercised
over all economic processes and monopoly advantage
is to be limited. Whenever a monopoly advantage
can be shown to be directly of social creation, as when
a public franchise gives an exclusive right to a city
street, a harbor frontage, or an interstate railway line,

144 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

the state is particularly bound to compel private busi-
ness to work out the ends of social justice and may
often find it advantageous directly to assume the busi-
ness itself.

The Well-being of Men Paramount. Some such
general tendency of economic thought undoubtedly
underlies the missionary program. Home missions,
however, by no means ask specific consent to this or
any other strictly economic proposition, but are rather
directly concerned with the human and moral aspects
of the social order. In this realm their fundamental
agreement is that any specific exploitation of human
beings, any industrial or social condition which is
shown to degrade man, by attacking his health, limit-
ing his educational opportunity, or subjecting him to
moral overstrain, must cease. Society is not to do
business at the expense of any of its members, but
only on condition that all shall have an opportunity
for normal and worthy life.

A Social Creed. The specific convictions which ex-
press this agreement and which have been drawn out
of study and experience have been formulated by
home missions as the social creed of the American
Churches. In their form they are a development from
a long series of declarations by the denominations
and are most perfectly expressed in the action of the
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ of Amer-
ica, at the last great quadrennial gathering in Chicago
in 1912:

The Churches must stand:

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 145

1. For equal rights and complete organized justice
for all men in all stations of life.

2. For the protection of the family, by the single
standard of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper reg-
ulation of marriage, and proper housing.

3. For the fullest possible development for every
child, especially by the provision of proper education
and recreation.

4. For the abolition of child labor.

5. For such regulation of the conditions of toil
for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral
health of the community.

6. For the abatement and prevention of poverty.

7. For the protection of the individual and society
from the social, economic, and moral waste of the
liquor traffic.

8. For the conservation of health.

9. For the protection of the worker from dan-
gerous machinery, occupational diseases, and mortal-
ity.

10. For the right of all men to the opportunity for
self -maintenance, for safeguarding this right against
encroachments of every kind, and for the protection
of workers from the hardships of enforced unem-
ployment.

11. For suitable provision for the old age of the
workers, and for those incapacitated by injury.

12. For the right of employees and employers
alike to organize for adequate means of conciliation
and arbitration in industrial disputes.

146 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Staying Eternally Teachable. It is worth while to
insist again that even these specifications, which at
once stir the heart and compel the conscience, are not
to be regarded in the old dogmatic and strictly creedal
sense. Their application is to be worked out through
further years of experimentation as to the precise
terms of a given law or regulation in the interests
of social justice. The laws of one state will not pre-
cisely fit the conditions in another. Nothing could
be more abhorrent to the spirit in which missions ap-
proach this matter than a legalistic tendency which
should array the Church in the interest of some par-
ticular formula instead of keeping it eternally teach-
able as to social duty. The Church will reach a work-
ing knowledge of the truth only by persevering in the
task of local adjustment and experimentation. The
realization of social justice through home missions
is largely in the hands of agencies other than the
organized Church. Home missions are the impelling
and educating agencies ; Christian men and women are
the individual inspiring units of organization, but the
Church as such is not to be the chief factor in the
securing of social results. If Christ is really sovereign
over all the forces of society, it is his right to utilize
those best suited to a particular end and to hold the
Church in reserve when need be for its original task
of spiritual insight and moral impulse.

No New Organization. Thus a typical declaration
of one of the denominational social service commis-
sions states explicitly that it does not recommend any

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 147

new ecclesiastical organization in the interests of social
justice. It calls upon the Church everywhere to teach
Christian ideals of social relationships and industrial
and community welfare; to study local conditions; to
make its members good citizens and particularly to co-
operate with public, private, educational, social, and re-
ligious agencies. In other words, it is in the spheres of
politics and of voluntary organization, rather than of
formal ecclesiastical activity, that the hand-to-hand
work of social justice is chiefly to be done. Thus in the
catalog of the definite social ideals for which the
Churches must stand it is evident that almost every
item is a natural field for legislation in the activity of
the Christianized state. The regulation of marriage
and divorce; the control of tenement-house construc-
tion and sanitation ; the maintenance and adaptation of
schools; regulation of child labor and of factory con-
ditions in general; conservation of health; compensa-
tion for industrial injuries ; means for conciliation and
arbitration in industrial disputes, and the definition of
a living wage in given industries are all ultimately
matters for social decision through legislation; and
this control must be carried out into actual justice
through political administration.

Cooperation. To get these ideals before the public
conscience and to organize them into compelling public
opinion, state by state and city by city, manifold volun-
tary organizations are necessary with which the
Church must heartily cooperate. Such are local parent
and teachers' associations in the interests of efficient

148 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

public schools; the national and local Child Labor
Committees; the Charity Organization Societies; the
Anti-Saloon Leagues ; public health organizations ; the
Sabbath Leagues; and always the local boards of trade,
manufacturers' associations, and trade-unions. Occa-
sionally the social survey will find radical lacks which
must be corrected by the creation of additional organi-
zations. In the main however there is chiefly needed
a perfection and yoking up of the machinery already
existing and its agreement upon a common construc-
tive program for the community. When home mis-
sions tell the best of their Christian youth to go out
and act through these agencies, they do the Church
no less honor than if they organized a new depart-
ment within her own walls.

Direct Social Ministries. There remains however
a very large field for the direct social functioning of
the Church. The local social service program natur-
ally varies as to the needs of particular parishes. The
family church will find its usefulness largely in estab-
lishing a branch or social settlement in a foreign or
industrial quarter of the city. The down-town parish
may become directly institutional and be itself used
by the whole round of public and voluntary social
institutions, besides carrying on its own multifarious
missions of social betterment Home missions func-
tioning as a city church extension organization may
strongly direct the social activities of aided churches,
particularly those under foreign-speaking pastors.
They may even find it wise to label some particular

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 149

church a labor church, and to use it as a common
meeting-ground for organized industry and religious
insight. In general, however, the fewer class labels
we attach to Christian institutions the better. For the
backward and non-European peoples, the national
home missionary boards will continue their marvelous
round of constructive social service, ranging from the
distribution of old clothes to the organization of build-
ing and loan associations ; the housing of public libra-
ries, and the reorganization of agriculture. All these
forms of service are in actual operation in hundreds
of communities throughout the nation under direct
home missionary impulse, or as the outgrowth of home
missionary education merging with the common social
intelligence of the Church.

Brother versus Expert. Especially important in all
these efforts is the spirit which respects and utilizes
on terms of equality the initiative and local leadership
of the people whom home missions desire to help.
Thus the system of fraternal delegates sent by de-
nominational or local church organizations to sit in
trade-union councils has put the touch of personal con-
fidence and intimacy upon the whole question of the
Church and labor. A recent social survey in Morris-
town, New Jersey, was raided and wrecked by a mob
of 400 Italians who did not relish the exhibition of
their unfortunate living conditions. It would have
been far better to have advised with the leaders of the
Italian colony in advance, made them understand the
necessity of public intelligence as to the lives of all the

150 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

people of the community, and utilized their better im-
pulses in the movement for their own redemption.
Human contact is the fine secret of effectiveness in
all social service work, and a fine regard for the feel-
ings of others will be the Church's best equipment for
her expert and technical task.

The Church's Own Labor Problem. Finally there is
the question of the Church's own employees — her
ministers and janitors. She cannot well instruct the
world in justice as to wages and conditions of labor
until she has more radically and intelligently consid-
ered the minister's remuneration and the conditions
under which the paid servants of the church are com-
pelled to live, educate their families, and do their
work. The ability to secure high-class executive talent
for small pay has often been pointed out as the su-
preme test of the cooperative movement in the eco-
nomic field. This the English cooperators have been
able to secure. Many of their local managers could
draw immensely larger salaries in the world of com-
petitive business but choose rather to remain with a
movement which stands for human ideals instead of
individual gain. In America the Church is the only
agency which has been at all able to command and
keep high-class men on inadequate pay, but she has
no right to press this advantage too far or to glory
in it when the real glory belongs to her faithful ser-
vants. The Church's own labor problem needs im-
mediate attention.

Justice before Kindness. Allied to this is the prob-

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 151

lem of old age pensions for ministers and their sup-
port in disablement. In this matter the Church has
shown great kindness but an inadequate sense of jus-
tice. Her aged ministers have been offered charity
when an earlier realization of social justice would
have provided adequate systems of pensioning such as
are now expected of all reasonable corporations. It
is impossible that the Church should lead the world
in such matters until she has set her own house in
order.

The Church's Own Housing Problem. The same
considerations apply to those forms of social service
which are directly carried on by the Church collectively
through the missionary board. In her mission schools,
for example, the Church has created her own housing
problem. Home missions have become the voluntary
landlord to Indian, Negro, Mountaineer, Oriental,
Porto Rican, but have frequently housed them in mis-
sion buildings and plants lacking the minimum re-
quirements of collective safety and decency as re-
flected in modern legislation. Indeed she has some-
times suffered the humiliation of having the state com-
pel her to provide decent safety and sanitation for
her wards. Not even in the name of Christ is it per-
missible for two or three hundred to be gathered
together without an unimpeachable supply of pure
water, fire protection, adequate air and light, and a
system of sewage-disposal which reinvigorates the
soil rather than contaminates it. Yet in relatively few
of the mission schools are these minimum requirements

152 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

met. The whole conception of adequate support of
missionary enterprise must be revolutionized in the
light of the modern social conscience. Immensely
larger sums must be contributed to missionary treas-
uries before the Church can provide for herself the
conditions of collective life which her social justice
program demands of the world.

The Social Gospel. Summing up, then, home mis-
sions are deeply concerned with social justice and
throw their strong and persistent weight into the
trembling balance of the Church's conscience. They
propose the method of local and concrete attack upon
social problems based on accurate knowledge, con-
fident that the ultimate results of this method will be
exceedingly radical. They discover a group of agree-
ments growing out of experience which they have
expanded into a common workable program of so-
cial advance. Home missions attempt to achieve social
justice piecemeal, but do not intend to stop until the
work is done. Each church and community is set to
repairing the breaches in justice over against its own
house, and where there is no house all join together
to build the wall. Home missions get their working
strength from their alliances. They first set the
Church to train Christian workers, who in turn or-
ganize voluntary agencies of social betterment; then
the Church utilizes and cooperates with these agencies.
Her allied ministers include business men and poli-
ticians. She views both with a degree of suspicion, and
keeps examining their ulterior motives ; and the Church

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTICE 153

is just as sensitive about her own ulterior motives. She
keeps examining herself to see if she is really continu-
ing in the social faith. Home missions direct the local
church in its large immediate ministries of social bet-
terment, but are more fundamentally concerned with
the duty of advocacy and education. They proclaim
a social gospel in which justice in the collective life of
men is regarded, not as a by-product of religion, but
as one of the essential exercises of religion itself as
interpreted by Christ. To those who question whether
the sphere of social religion is really central in his
heart, they reply with the old catalog of Messianic ac-
tivities, "The deaf hear, the lame walk, and the dead
are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached
to them; and blessed is he who is not offended in me."

A SOCIAL RESTATEMENT OF RACE
PROBLEMS

CHAPTER VI
A SOCIAL RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS

Race Problems Include All Others. As affecting hu-
man fellowship in America race problems have com-
monly been approached passionately, and largely so
because they have commonly been approached through
their extremest contrast, namely, that of the most ad-
vanced white type as over against the lowest colored
type. One begins by staging mentally a drama of
conflict with these two as hero and villain respectively.
Its theme concerns their difficulty of association under
democratic conditions. The plot is complicated by the
fact that one was recently the slave of the other. The
result is tragedy.

Common Conditions of Social Misery. A better
and more just approach, the author submits, was dis-
covered by him when he arrived in a strange city at
night in the midst of a blinding winter storm and
sought to locate a social settlement in a slum quarter.
Regretfully relinquishing the friendly lights of the
departing street-car and the solid, slippery pavements,
he plunged into a maze of crooked and narrow side
streets with deep mud underfoot and the bewildering
outlines of huddled dwellings as his guide to direction.
He knew that he was in the heart of a district in which

^57

158 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Irish, Jew, and Negro lived under common conditions
of social depression and misery. Occasionally silent,
shadowy forms lunged by, crouching against the walls
of houses for protection from the cutting wind. In
the storm and dark one was color-blind and felt only
the sudden presence of men like himself, buffeted by
the elements and seeking the same light and warmth
he sought. And somehow in the stress of common
struggle with the elements one assumed in them a com-
mon humanity which knew the same inner gusts and
fires of passion and sought the same desired haven of
the soul.

Negro and Italian. What the sentiment of the night
wrought the severe, scientific survey of the day reen-
forced. Here was a definite, frequent social setting,
the most frequent one indeed in which the social
problems of race present themselves in the greatest
American cities. Vast groups of varying races on
the lowest economic level live contiguously in the
poorest quarters and suffer every social ill together.
Here in a newer outlying district it is the Italian and
the Negro. Year before last the place was a swamp.
Then it suddenly became dotted with cheap and patchy
habitations standing in sodden pools of water. Now
the old country road which was its main artery has
been partly paved. Huge heaps of paving-blocks and
a huddle of contractors' carts obstruct it. Tav»'dry
saloons ornament every corner. The district has filled
with houses. Being just without the city limits, it
has neither sidewalks nor sewers, is inadequately

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 159'

lighted, and has no schoolhouse and no permanent
church. Under these conditions of sudden social acci-
dent the newest arrivals from sunny Italy and the
sunny South are dumped together by the overflowing
city. Here, in the cheapest, least improved, least reg-
ulated area, they begin their search for a job and their
struggle for a place. Their men, women, and children
have just a life apiece to live, each his own, and all
burdened with a common social handicap.

First Aid to the Injured. One diagnoses the first
needs of these diverse race-groups as identical. They
need to have the building and sanitary codes extended
and to be provided with the ordinary public facilities
of the city. If clean streets, ventilated tenements, fire
and police protection, equally applied laws, equal
schools, rational amusement, and effective labor or-
ganization can help a group of Italians they ought
to help an equal group of Negroes in the next block ;
and they do. If criminals and prostitutes are herded
into the districts where the poor must make their
homes, if jobs are few and precarious, and the swamp
is allowed still to occupy the street, Italians and Ne-
groes alike may become acute social problems; and
they do. Under such circumstances the social con-
science has enough with which to busy itself for some
time before it gets to any specific matter of race. The
first step of civilized procedure is clearly to remove
specific social evils.

Social Evils Always Specific. From the standpoint
of the man who is going to do something about the

i6o THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

matter the so-called inferior races in America are pri-
marily victims of a peculiar social status coupled with
the experience of specific social evils. With large num-
bers of the white race of like status they suffer com-
mon difficulties and are subject to like remedies. All
the urban perplexities and wrongs which earlier chap-
ters of this book discuss — crowding, bad housing, in-
adequate sanitation, compulsory association with the
depraved, inferior economic opportunity — beset, some-
what unequally to be sure, the urban Negro, Jew,
Oriental, or European immigrant. All the factors
which figure in the decay of rural civilization war
against the inferior race in the open country. The
Indian, rural Negro, Mexican, Porto Rican, or Orien-
tal needs all that other country people need and more.
All social resources, all social compassion and wrath
ought to be equally available on their behalf.

Reducing the Problem's Dimensions. Reform this
and that specific abuse and the race problem shrinks
in size; reform them all and it largely evaporates.
Race difficulties are nearly always simply common
forms of social difficulties, the hopeful remedies to
which are perfectly well known and agreed upon. This
aspect of them should be dealt with first. Race, the
sociologists warn us, can no longer be used as a jug-
gler's hat from which to draw theoretical explanations
of social difference when concrete explanations are
right at hand. "More and more," says Ross, "the
time-honored appeal to race is looked upon as the
resource of ignorance or indolence. To the scholar

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS i6i

the attributing of the mental and moral traits of a
population to heredity is a confession of defeat, not
to be thought of until he has wrung from every factor
of life its last drop of explanation."^ Note the order
of explanation; for this is the kernel of the thought.
We are to cry "race" last of all, after we have reck-
oned with every other factor, every nearer and more
obvious cause. Then if there is something left, say
of the Negro's deficiency, which belongs to him as a
Negro, one must confess it ; but not until from every
social factor has been wrung its last drop of signifi-
cance, and till every known duty, based upon his spe-
cific social handicaps, has been performed toward him.

Colored Americans: The Negro. It is from this
view-point that home missions as socially redirected
now approach the non-European race material of the
United States ; first to catalog, to locate, and briefly to
characterize it. One American in every ten is black.
Ten millions of Negroes, recently enslaved, now suf-
fering every ill of a socially depressed group, are
massed chiefly in the rural sections of the South but
stream increasingly toward the Northern cities. They
absolutely outnumber the white population in South
Carolina and Mississippi and have gained more rapidly
than the whites during the last census decade in West
Virginia, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. No man can deny
that the Negro is below the nation's average in health,
wealth, education, civic intelligence, and civilized mor-
ality. Yet his rich capacity for improvement has been

^ Foundations of Sociology, 309.

i62 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

demonstrated at ten thousand points. He is vastly
increasing in numbers, homes, ownership of land, and
variety of successful occupation. He is multiplying
his farmers twice as fast as the white population is,
and his strength and gains as an agricultural producer
and proprietor are notable. He has reduced his illit-
eracy 14 per cent, in the last ten years and made im-
measurable gains in racial self-respect, initiative, and
moral control. Judged by the ratio of his churches
and ministers he is the most religious of all Americans.
The Indian. Arriving almost contemporaneously,
the Pilgrim Father and the African slave found the
continent thinly possessed by barbarian primeval
Americans of whom three hundred thousand — a
slightly increasing rather than a dwindling number —
abide with us still. Now almost everywhere engulfed
by white civilization, pressed from decreasing reserva-
tions on to small individual holdings — and these fre-
quently in semi-arid regions where whites can farm
with difficulty — the Indian is obliged to make his tran-
sition from savagery to civilization under enormous
handicaps. He must abandon tribal life under the
benevolent paternalism of the government, and face
the problems of living and a job. His deeply en-
trenched traditions are desperately at outs with Amer-
ican notions. Individual ownership is alien to his pro-
foundest sense of the meaning of property. Individual
responsibility is all to learn. Greed and graft menace
him ; red tape hinders. Whisky, trachoma, and tuber-
culosis undermine his physical manhood. He is the

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 163

victim of the unearned increment of land values, an
idle rich man without adequate incentive to industry';
yet in spite of his millions and Uncle Sam's, fourteen
thousand of his children remain out of school.

The Eskimo. Clinging to our Arctic coasts, strug-
gling for existence under the severest climatic and
economic conditions known to the human family, live
the Eskimo, a sound, stocky, cheerful, democratic race
of fishers and hunters, organized only into fragmentary
village groups. Their snow houses, fur clothing,
weapons, lamp, sledge, and canoe show marvelous me-
chanical ingenuity and artistic instincts. White civili-
zation has brought them employment, schools, and the
reindeer; also liquor, disease, and the lust for gold.
Missions must counteract these by morality, sanitation,
and intelligent faith.

The Chinese. More than half way to meet the west-
ward movement of the European races across our con-
tinent, came Chinese pilgrims of poverty — a few hun-
dreds of thousands — from beyond the Pacific. They
built the first railroad which linked our two oceans;
they performed the heavy frontier tasks of the mine
and the ranch and the drudgery of the kitchen. Feared,
abused, and excluded as cheap labor, they have dwin-
dled now to only about seventy thousand, one half
of whom are massed in California. One third of
them are engaged in agricultural pursuits; another
third in trade and industry ; only incidentally are they
laundrymen. Chiefly they are enterprising, hard-
working, and literate Cantonese. Among them are

i64 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

great merchants; not a few are well-to-do. So long
as they were an ill-housed, not-yet-adjusted immigrant
group, sharing the same quarters with criminals and
prostitutes, they showed excessive immorality. For a
long time the Chinese in America was typically without
a wife and without a God. He had left both his family
and his faith beyond the seas. Now, however, in the
Christian communities are scores of fine and stable
families, hundreds of children bom under the Stars
and Stripes, and intending to stay there, and a per-
manently organized group life which, while little as-
similated to American ways, is not without increas-
ingly adequate social standards and agencies of its
own. And while their contribution to America is yet
but slight, these Christian communities have had a
vast influence on their former homeland. New China
owes much to them both in ideals, benevolent contri-
butions, and men.

The Hindu. One of the latest wrinkles in Oriental
exclusion, aimed chiefly at the Japanese, proposed to
keep out all peoples not tall enough to get into the
United States army. But this would be more than
half an invitation to the tall and turbaned Hindu, him-
self frequently an ex-soldier of Great Britain. Some
6,000 only have been admitted to our shores. These
constitute an insignificant though interesting addition
to the variety of our non-European elements, impor-
tant only because the surplus millions of India have
to be reckoned with somewhere if not here. They
simply testify within our gates to a world-wide re-

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 165

sponsibility in which home missions and foreign mis-
sions are one.

The Japanese. There are Japanese in America to
the number of seventy-one thousand only. Ninety-five
per cent, of them are confined to the Pacific Coast
states. They tend rather to scatter among the general
population than to create distinctive quarters, and they
uniformly adopt American customs of dress and hous-
ing. As rural laborers they are the chief factor in
much of the distinctive agriculture of the Coast states.
Emigration is now voluntarily restricted by the Jap-
anese government and there is reason to believe that
it can be permanently controlled without friction be-
tween the two nations, if the status of the Japanese
now in America can be satisfactorily adjusted. Quick
to learn English, literate almost to a man, great read-
ers, keenly intelligent on civic aflfairs, the Japanese
propose to have something to say about this adjust-
ment. They have strong and educated leaders, an
active press, and the means of focusing group senti-
ment. Their Buddhism, with 5,000 enrolled adherents,
is aggressive and adaptive, imitating modern Christian
organizations and activities. Their racial sensitiveness
and capacity for initiative combine also to turn their
Christian activities largely into self-directed lines.
Interdenominational evangelism, federated churches,
close cooperation between the several communions, and
the production of Christian literature all thrive in
their hands. While numerically insignificant — so that
all the Japanese in America could be poured into New

i66 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

York City and scarcely any one be the wiser — their
massing in thinly settled states, their temperamental
aggressiveness, successful competition with American
interests, and their membership in a mighty and highly
self-conscious nation, make them, above all non-
European groups in America, most significant for in-
ternational weal or wo.

The Hawaiian. The beautiful and immensely fer-
tile Hawaiian Islands form the home of a scant
200,000 of population incredibly mingled in race and
blood. They were the scene of one of the earlier
triumphs of foreign missions which first completely
Christianized a pagan people. Now upon the soil
of Hawaii as part of our own nation, the battle for
civilization and Christianity has to be fought all over
again by reason of the inpouring Oriental races, Jap-
anese furnish the largest racial element, and with
Chinese constitute over a half of the population. The
dominant religion of the Islands is Buddhism; the
dominant form of Christianity, Mormonism. The
small but wealthy white population, led by sons of the
early missionaries, with one hand exploits the labor
of these thronging aliens and with the other actively
and handsomely sustains the institutions of philan-
thropy and education, encouraged by the fellowship
and gifts of the homeland churches.

The Mexican. Along our southwestern border
from California to Texas, on former Mexican soil, live
perhaps three quarters of a million Americans of Mex-
ican race. Their Spanish fathers came before our

YOUNG MEN OF A JAPANESE MISSION
PORTLAND, OREGON

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 167

Pilgrim Fathers came. No one knows with accuracy
what racial blend the present generations represent,
though competent observers guess them to be one fifth
Spanish, two fifths Indian, and two fifths mixed, al-
ways with a dash of Negro blood. At any rate the
effective result is non-European in trait and tendency.
As lonely cattlemen and ranchers in empty deserts, as
teamster and laborer on railway construction and irri-
gation projects, as miner, fruit grower, and packer,
the Mexican lives and labors. His latest recruits are
miserable refugees from revolution across the border.
He is a bigoted Catholic, the victim of a stationary
half-civilization. Yet he does not lack shrewd politi-
cal leaders, nor rich landholders; nor promising
youths, whose training in mission school and agricul-
tural college is the best hope of a better day.

The Porto Rican. In the West Indian world, as in
the whole of continental America south of the Rio
Grande, we are neighbors to a mixed racial breed,
which verges away from the European type. Under
the flags, first or last, of the chief European powers,
for four hundred years the West Indies have been
becoming more and more Negro. And strangely
enough those Islands which have been and remained
most European have been just the former possessions
of poor, decrepit, much-belabored Spain, who never-
theless was the most genuine colonizer of them all.
Even in them, however, the resultant racial blend is
distinctly non-European. One of these Islands has
fallen to us. Of blood so mixed that the census has

i68 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

given over the attempt to distinguish black from
white, and of civilization so one that black and white
think, feel, and act alike, Porto Rico adds her million
and more of souls to our deeply sundered human stuff.
The economic efficiency of the entire Island is said
to be cut in half by the hookworm disease alone. The
decrepit and bigoted Romanism of four centuries
failed to bless if it did not curse the people. American
rule has added population, preserved order, furnished
capital and initiative for industry, planted two thou-
sand schools, fought disease, and is valued for its
results but not loved. Self-government, native initia-
tive, democracy, thrift, loyalty, and the effective carry-
ing of civilization into the lives and homes of the
masses largely wait upon the living fellowships of
Christian missions.

Numerical Summary. Totaling the entire group of
important non-European populations in the United
States one gets, in approximate numbers, the follow-
ing result:

Negroes 10,000,000

Indians 300,000

Orientals 150,000

Hawaiians 200,000

Mexicans 750,000

Porto Ricans 1,100,000

Total 12,500,000

This twelve and a half million constitutes one eighth
of our people; and the eighth upon which more

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 169

heavily than on any other social pressure rests. Upon
them, first and last, all the social evils focus. And, as
the chapter began by saying, there is an overwhelming
mass of remediable wrong to which we know the
remedy, which must be righted before there is any
justice in invoking specific race factors in the problem.

The National Attitude toward Race. As a mat-
ter of fact, it must be confessed, almost nobody takes
that attitude. On the contrary, the non-European
eighth of our people is marked by our minds in ad-
vance for particular hopelessness. We have nearly as
many actual European-born foreigners within our
borders as the total population which is non-European
in origin. Yet unquestionably we regard their dilu-
tion of our blood and institutions as less ominous than
that of our darker brethren. What is this twelve and a
half million more than another twelve and a half
million ?

Discrimination between Europeans. The broadest
ground for an answer is doubtless in the fact that we
instinctively discriminate also within the European
immigrant population. What is the five million from
Southern and Eastern Europe more than the nearly
seven million from Northwestern Europe? The best
one can say is that we are inwardly aware of a greater
separation from the Southeastern European. There
is a feeble consciousness of kind with respect to him
and a profounder consciousness of difference. He is
nearer to Asia and to Africa than we are or our
fathers were. Mixing with the aboriginal peoples he

I70 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

has covered one of the two American continents and
the other as far as the Rio Grande with a hybrid
stock. His is an intermediate, buffer breed which
makes, we think, a fundamental difference in the char-
acter of our population.

The Color Line. Remoter still from us, as meas-
ured by our feelings, is the colored man, whose case
we have been considering. His initial needs, we ad-
mit, may be the same as those of any other of like
social status ; but his final needs must lie deeper. There
is a residual something, we are sure, which makes
the problem of race more than a matter of social ad-
justment. So we incline to amend our formula to
read: race problems include all others, but they also
exceed all others. The precise meaning of this dis-
tinction comes home one day to the leader of a settle-
ment club including Negro and Italian boys in a New
York suburb. This very little Sandro, she reflects,
should he turn out to be a successful artist, engineer,
or merely a rich man, might live in a house on Upper
Mountain Avenue and belong to the Montclair Golf
Club, a thing not conceivably possible for Sam how-
ever talented or rich he might become. In a single
lifetime the Italian might compass the whole range
of social achievement; but, as most Americans feel,
generations of Negroes cannot do it

A Depressing Social Atmosphere. As a matter of
course, therefore, social effort proceeds with less hope-
fulness for the non-European peoples even when pre-
sented side by side with depressed Europeans of the

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 171

same social stratum. There is no doubt about their
race handicap which lies in us. We feel differently
about them, knowing that they will encounter special
difficulties — our little faith being one of them — and
suspecting that they will exhibit less initiative and
resistance under them. It weakens our efforts,
saps our faith, limits our patience, undermines our
strength. On the one hand we are victims of a social
heredity which forbids us to be scientific in race mat-
ters, and which makes it almost impossible for us to
do the best which might be done with the material at
hand. On the other hand our thought of them is a
depressing atmosphere for the "lower" races to live
in. It affects their response. Knowing our little
faith in them, they tend to have little faith in them-
selves. Their social heredity was largely made by us.
It restricts and depresses their capacities and ener-
gies, and they are the victims of it.

The Issue Not Equality but Capacity. For the sal-
vation of both of us, therefore, it is important to know
what the best social knowledge has to say about the
ultimate and irreducible significance of race, if there
is any, which must persist as a barrier to human fel-
lowship, no matter what we hope or can do. About
equality we have no time to waste. There is no such
thing as equality between individuals; how then can
there be between groups composed of individuals such
as the sexes, the races, or the nations? Equality is
not only impossible but unnecessary. We do know

172 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

a certain horrid equality among the dregs of mankind.
It has been said that "the bottom of hell is level."
What is important for us to know, however, is whether
in natural capacity the sound cores of the various
races overlap in their larger areas, so that they might
bring substantially equal brawn and intelligence to
common tasks and might find, in a well-rounded civili-
zation, honorable and normally rewarded places for
the special gifts of each; also whether each can fur-
nish a proportionate number of leaders able to meet
one another on common ground.

The Case of the Negro. So far, this chapter has
endeavored to avoid that chief specific bone of racial
contention in America, the Negro problem, and to keep
discussion on the broadest grounds. Humanly speak-
ing, the Negro problem is not the chief race problem.
On account of his greatly inferior numbers the Negro
will figure relatively little in the ultimate human out-
come. The Armageddon of race, if there is to be one,
will be fought between the white and yellow races.
Our nearer American race problem, however, does
chiefly concern the Negro. Its specific issue is whether
he has capacity to associate with us on democratic
terms in the significant things which belong to Amer-
icans. Settling this issue for him settles it for all
the darker-skinned races.

Practical Common Ground. In this matter it
seems wise to the author to present ground for others
to stand on which is distinctly lower than his per-
sonal understanding and conviction. It is high enough,

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 173

however, from which to reach great social conclusions.
Professor William S. Sutton of the University of
Texas has written a pamphlet on the Education of
the Southern Negro which is issued by the University
as official Bulletin No. 221. Discussing the signifi-
cance of ultimate racial factors in humanity, Professor
Sutton says: "How far training can modify and
overcome original mental characteristic nobody has
yet determined. Boas, in his work entitled The Mind
of Primitive Man, published this year, devotes a chap-
ter to race problems in the United States. Concern-
ing the question, how far undesirable traits now found
in the Negro population are due to racial influences,
and how far they are due to social environment for
which that population is not accountable, he reaches
this conclusion :

Verdict of Anthropology. " To this question an-
thropology can give the decided answer that the traits
of African culture as observed in the aboriginal home
of the Negro are those of a healthy, primitive people,
with a considerable degree of personal initiative, with
a talent for organization, and with imaginative power,
with technical skill and thrift. Neither is a warlike
spirit absent in the race, as proved by the mighty con-
querors who overthrew states and founded new em-
pires, and by the courage of the armies that follow the
bidding of their leaders. There is nothing to prove
that licentiousness, shiftless laziness, lack of initiative,
are fundamental characteristics of the race. Every-
thing points out that these qualities are the result of

174 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

social conditions, rather than of hereditary traits,'
He remarks, with emphasis, however, that it would
be altogether a fallacious view to assume that there
are no differences in the make-up of the Negro race
and other races, and that their activities should run
in the same line. Whatever determination shall finally
be reached concerning the respective values of racial
inheritance or modification by environment, however
well-founded may be certain racial instincts, it seems
clear that, in the education of the Negro, he should
be granted every reasonable opportunity to make all
the advancement of which he is capable. To deny him
such opportunity is unkind, undemocratic, and un-
safe." 1

General Conclusion of Professor Boa^ Professor
Boas, summarizing his own conclusions, finds that "no
proof of the inferiority of the Negro type could be
given except that it seemed quite possible that per-
haps the race would not produce quite so many men
of the highest genius as other races; while there
was nothing at all that could be interpreted as sug-
gesting any material difference in the mental capacity
of the bulk of the Negro population as compared with
the bulk of the white population." ^ He therefore
pushes his logic further than Professor Sutton does
and judges that with opportunity the Negro will be-
come fully equal to citizenship.^

^Sutton, "Education of the Southern Negro," 13, 14.
^ Mind of Primitive Man, 268.
* Ibid., 272.

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 175

Irreducible Minimum of Missions. For the practi-
cal purposes of the missionary outlook it will be
enough to agree that any racial factor underlying so-
cial difficulties and evils will be found capable of modi-
fication in the direction of greater equality. It may
be stubborn; it cannot be implacable. There is much
at any rate that we can do besides removing evil con-
ditions. We can modify nature so far as change of
environment can affect it. We have gone nowhere
near the limit of profitable effort. Fundamental social
improvement at the worst is only checked, not pre-
vented, by ultimate racial factors. If any race can
radically better itself, all can. As concerns the darker-
skinned races in the United States, home missions are
the attempt of the Church to do all that can be done
for each and every one through the total resources of
Christianity and civilization.

Missionary Education. The most outstanding mis-
sionary service which the Church has undertaken for
our incomplete Americans of non-European origin is
education. So deficient are they that education must
precede most of the organized activities of the Church
itself. So needy are they and at so many points that
education must include manifold forms of social bet-
terment activities, and be brought to bear on every
social problem. So vast are their numbers and so
acute their needs that all the splendid and increasingly
available schools of the states and of the federal gov-
ernment must still be mightily supplemented by the
Church. With rising standards of living in the people

176 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

whom she has lifted up, her ill-supported schools have
come into newly difficult responsibility and sharp
struggle to maintain the quality of their service. They
are not carpet-bagging institutions. They were planted
to stay ; and stay they must.

The Right Policy. But we speak of education
now in the broadest sense as deliberate social direc-
tion. "Through education," says Dewey, "society can
formulate its own purposes, can organize its own
means and resources, and thus shape itself with defi-
niteness and economy in the direction in which it
wishes to move."^ Educational policy best tells in
what direction a nation wishes to move, and to move
with its most depressed and alien elements. And mis-
sionary education should indicate what the Church be-
lieves to be the Christian direction of national tendency
for and with the belated races.

A Cubit Added to Stature. Conscious of its chal-
lenging power and responsibility missionary educa-
tion for the non-European populations has actually
shown two phases : first, it has dealt with the deter-
mination of racial outlook and the discovery of racial
capacity. It has been a hopeful adventure beyond the
horizon of their proved powers in the direction of the
ampler men they were believed to be. And if the
analysis of our former paragraph is right this is both
noble and scientific. If the powers of the "lower"
races are stunted by our little faith in them they
should be enlarged when our faith increases. When

^ My Pedagogical Creed, 17.

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 177

One ascended on high, he "led captivity captive, and
gave gifts unto men." One of his gifts is that of
making a lesser man greater than he was by the ex-
pectancy and daring of fellowship.

"And there was that about his eye
That none might see and crouch "

His dominant word was, "Man, stand up," and men
stood up — for him. Who would not like to be such
a man?

"Oh, tender dreamer of a generous dream
Who didst believe so surely in our soul,
That ever since, our soul, and evermore,
Affirms, defines itself "

Who would not wish remotely to help on such effects ?
A Contrasting Ideal. Quite another program of
racial education for the colored peoples has been com-
monly and influentially held. Their education is to be
vocational, with no expectation that they will ever
want to enlarge their vocations. It is conceived as
merely a tool for use in present status, not as a key
to wider possibilities. It is a splendid idea that edu-
cation should prepare men frankly for the concrete
probabilities of their life, but a vicious one when prob-
abilities are limited by narrow expectation. Whoever
believes that there are fatally "lower" and inferior
races will lack faith to try those broad incentives which
are the soul of the educational method of home mis-
sions.

178 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Leadership Primary. Now, if in ultimate issues
the soul is greater than the body, the primal need of
any group in a fundamental, character-molding strug-
gle out from under social depression is not to be ad-
justed to the immediately practical demands of their
lives, nor to be fitted in the shortest possible time for
making a living. It is rather to extend the boundaries
of experience and achievement within which prac-
tical demands may grow. In short, it must have lead-
ers whose gains become the ideal capital of the strug-
gling masses. It must have its energized examples,
its standard-bearers, its men of whom millions will
say, "I can because he has." Such leadership is the
chief human value of Jesus Christ to this world. And
in the largest social interpretations of education noth-
ing could be sounder than the enthusiastic quest and
joyful discovery by the mission school of the excep-
tional man who should show by his own life what
other men can do, and thus lead his people out of the
wilderness.

Release of Suppressed Capacity. A just educa-
tional policy, then, for either Church or nation, toward
any group which has recently suffered, or is suffering
from social repression, must seek to find adjustment,
not to its present fragmentary and distorted manifes-
tations of natural capacities and traits, but to its future
completely emancipated mind and genius. The im-
mediate task of education with respect to such a group
must be to rouse and discover that suppressed capac-
ity. First find your man. This should be the imme-

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 179

diate business of education; for lack of it any policy
toward him is sure to blunder. "What a thing is when
its becoming is completed, that we call the nature of a
thing," said Aristotle. Because strong sentiment in
the nation persistently urges a type of training which
would fix the Negro and his dark-skinned fellows in
their incompleteness, let the educator, patriot, anthro-
pologist each beware. This is the crux of the prob-
lem.

The Masses. The leaders being found and their
capacities proved, the door being faithfully held wide
open to possibilities, missionary education under social
redirection has experienced a certain return to prob-
abilities. It is now attempting to adapt its education
more democratically toward meeting the prospects of
the masses. Perhaps the author's chief personal con-
tribution to home missions has been the partial work-
ing out of such redirection in a large group of schools
for non-European populations. Elsewhere he has for-
mulated the principles of such an adaptation as fol-
lows: "A wise democracy will not offer its masses
merely the schools of the professional or leisure
classes, but will multiply class schools until there are
enough to go around, and thus one to fit each Amer-
ican group. As an invitation to the fairer possibilities
— because the best wealth of a nation is always its
poor boys — all these diverse groups of schools will be
'open at the top.' The state, as destiny, must never
forbid the university to any child because he is poor
or black."

l8o THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Race More Varied than CI&ss. "When this central
issue is secure, it freely follows that the immediate
economic and practical needs of any historically pe-
culiar or socially handicapped group of Americans,
such as the juvenile delinquent^ the Indian, the immi-
grant's child, the unskilled worker, may dictate a tem-
porary policy of special training for their masses. The
actual employment of such a policy can be justified
only by a detailed sociological study of their actual
situation. But such a study reveals that the Negro's
case at least is not parallel to those cited. His life
is indefinitely broader than that of any social group.
His millions contain groups of all degrees of develop-
ment. The only analogy for him is the analogy of
white population in its entirety. He needs not one
but all kinds of American education for the diverse
grades and classes of his people.

Life from Within. The profoundest educational
right of any |>eople is the right to have its inner re-
sources of character utilized for its own uplift. Sub-
ject groups, whether children, women, or dependent
races, while they cannot be controlled unless their
own souls are enlisted in the task, may be and have
been warped and distorted by external pressure. It
can hinder but cannot help. It never succeeds. The
modern school confesses that when it fails to awaken
the child's own interest its failure is absolute. Some
are bold to believe that the world-wanderings of the
"new woman" will lead her back to many of her old
tasks, but if so it must be because her heart comes

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS i8i

around to them again. Her return cannot be of com-
pulsion. At all hazards she must follow the inner light.
The question of incentive is equally central for Negro
education. Vocational efficiency in the long run must
be the same as social efficiency. Train, indeed, for
the child's "actual condition in life," but be quite sure
that condition is understood. We inhabit many-storied
houses and our true calling is to occupy them through-
out. The effort to make any man a good worker with-
out making him a full man will fail ; and could it suc-
ceed, it would but give us a blinded Samson grinding
in the prison-house of spiritual bondage. ^

The Church and Religion. In no sphere is the utili-
zation of native capacity and resource on the part of
non-European populations so subtly and profoundly
important as in religion, and in none have they blos-
somed more convincingly. For example, seven eighths
of all Negro churches are included within racial de-
nominations, self-governing and chiefly self-support-
ing. Ninety-eight per cent, belong to the various
Methodist and Baptist bodies. All told, the Negro
church is the chief institutional achievement of the
race; its best embodiment of self-government and
group ideals. On the other hand, as an agency of
Christian life and leadership it has notable defects —
lax moral standards, poor business methods, crude and
noisy worship, no fundamental grasp of race needs
and their remedies. In these matters, while all de-
nominations are struggling forward, the chief stand-

* Christian Reconstruction in the South, 296, 299, 301.

i82 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ard-bearers of social redirection have been, and still
largely are, a relatively few churches attached to the
Northern denominations, and notable for their edu-
cated ministry, restraint in worship, rigid morals, and
careful supervision.

Spiritual Gifts and Fruits. The raw material of re-
ligion is possessed by the Negro in rich abundance,
together with a very genius for its portrayal. Over
and over again their worship repeats the universal and
fundamental cycle of religious experience; first, the
sense of misery and unworthiness amounting often to
complete physical collapse; then the feeling of salva-
tion and uplift by a power not oneself; finally the joy
of relief and abandon of gratitude. Indeed, to awaken
this round of emotion and to dramatize it by voice,
posture, and action is the express object of the typi-
cal Negro church service. Some of the simpler fruits
of religion too are delightfully exhibited in the Negro's
version of it : a characteristic cheerfulness based on
faith as well as on temperament; an unfeigned piety,
dependent, resigned, childlike; a mood of friendliness
to fellow Christians. Never have these graces and the
vitality and power of Negro religion had franker
recognition than by many of the masters of slavery
days. Whoever knows Negro believers knows saints
not a few ; souls which have much to teach and to give
of the fine mystery of salvation.

The One Spirit, No original theology or formula-
tion of Christian truth is yet included in the Negro's
religious development. At the same time it has by no

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 183

means remained naive and unsophisticated. On the
plane of practical wisdom, it has studied deeply the
spiritual states of men, their moral weaknesses, and
the common means of grace. Profound and shrewd
insights abound in sermonizing and glow in prayer
and song. As religious lyrics the jubilee melodies
reach universal significance and stand as a unique
racial contribution to American Christianity.

Fresh Potencies of Grace. No one can deal with
the hopes and aspirations of these churches without
feeling that their initiative and self-consciousness is
something to be touched reverently. Their religious
genius includes fresh and unexplored spiritual poten-
cies. It is a stream of grace newly sprung from the
Source of all grace, from which uniquely interesting
expressions are to be expected. In spite of all their
too well known shortcomings it is easy to feel in the
collective religious life of the Negro churches the
presence of a very holy thing. To the Christian mind
the deepest fact in any human being or group is the
fact of God. "If then God gave unto them the like
gift as he did also unto us, when we believed on the
Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I could withstand
God" (Acts xi. 17).

On Earth as It Is in Heaven. Confronted with the
fact of God in the darker-skinned races, the mission-
ary conscience is compelled to face the often dis-
quieting issue of ultimate race relations undei the
gospel. The necessity of facing it is implicit in the
great Christian consequence of God in men, — the fact

fl84 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

of brotherhood. Especially does the whole momentum
of the modern social conscience press for at least a
tentative answer as to how the races are to live to-
gether in the kingdom of God on earth.

Peter and Cornelius. The New Testament nar-
rates pointedly, in the Peter and Cornelius episode,
the particular method of the new-born impulse to
brotherhood in the early Church. And the Spirit's
first step in this actual case is disappointing. It seems
negative and inglorious. It is the refusal to make
dogmatic announcement to prejudiced minds of the
exact terms of unprejudiced fellowship. One step the
Spirit takes inexorably : There are social consequences
to religious fellowship. Cornelius drew the conclusion
that baptism at Peter's hands implied social intimacy
on Peter's part — "Then prayed they him to tarry cer-
tain days." To Cornelius this was the climax of the
episode; and Cornelius was right. The church in
Jerusalem, on the other hand, did not at all meet the
issue which Cornelius raised. When they heard
Peter's story "they held their peace" (as to his social
conduct) "and glorified God, saying, 'Then to the
Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life.' "
This is the great admission of the spiritual princi-
ple of Christian brotherhood; yet it is quite a dif-
ferent matter from stopping in a Gentile's house
certain days.

Not Forcing the Issue. This evasion of the social
consequences of the gospel was cowardice on the part
of the Church — yet not to force it was wisdom on the

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 185

part of the Spirit. The half -emancipated mind of the
Church was by no means ready for the ultimate issue.
It could not bear it then ; it cannot bear it now. We
are not prepared to raise in detail the question of ulti-
mate social arrangements under the gospel.

Type of Mind Required. What manner of mind
might judge that question? A stubbornly teachable
mind, ready to experiment to the death with race
relations, as men with the flying-machine. Assuredly
a free mind, not one browbeaten by repressive preju-
dice. Still more necessarily a just mind, unswayed
by the clamor of racial epithets. Finally, the mind of
Christ, for which (God forgive us) we have sub-
stituted a mongrel religion.

Milk for Babes. At worst we have no right to as-
sume that the terms of perfected Christian fellowship
will be offensive. Indeed we ought to know, on the
authority of such fragmentary Christianity as we have,
that they cannot be offensive. Christianity has not
had a chance to show what unforced forms its fellow-
ship will take. But the gospel cannot require of us
that to which it does not first conform our hearts.
Love is — love, which means something spontaneous;
and there is no fear in it.

Searching Standard of the Kingdom. Again, we
know that the proprieties of the kingdom of God will
not be lax. Its sense of social fitness will not be less
keen than that of the world. Some men of wealth
will find surprising difficulty in getting into so select
a company. Does one really fear that Christian so-

i86 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

ciety will be less refined than Mrs. Grundy? Will the
emancipated soul be less socially discriminating than
the traditional? Does the taste of the kingdom of
God suggest social promiscuity and anarchy. So long
as perfect love delays to cast out all fear, it will help
many to ask themselves such questions.

Brotherliness a Constructive Principle. Far more
important is it to insist that Christian brotherliness is
a constructive social principle, which we must first
free and then trust. We must not force its hand nor
let another do so.

Realizing Brotherhood through Personal Courage.
The story of Peter and Cornelius teaches also that
there is immediate specific gain every time the chal-
lenge of brotherliness is pressed to a particular issue.
"Can any man forbid the water, that these should not
be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well
as we?" This is not the word of a man dogmatically
certain of the whole future, nor yet of a man assured
just now even of the assent of the whole Church.
Rather, it is the instant clinching of the gains of an
exalted hour, by a man none too certain even of his
own heart. There is a grimly humorous contrast be-
tween Peter's courage, with the Spirit's immediate
backing, and Peter's defensive attitude before the
critical Jerusalem church. The moral is : If you feel
a big, fine, generous, brotherly impulse, act on it —
you may cool off by to-morrow, too.

Step by Step. Yet at the worst, every time any
man, however feeble his courage, has dared to throw

RESTATEMENT OF RACE PROBLEMS 187

out that challenge, a specific gain has been made. Can
any man forbid the water ? No man ever has. They
have been baptized in it. Prejudice for a moment
has been dissolved. Brotherhood for a moment has
been realized. Nay, sometimes it even lasts on for
several days. Make the challenge over again and
the days of brotherliness begin to overlap. Finally,
some good day, they merge together and there shall
be no more night. This is the heroic, constructive
method of achieving brotherhood piecemeal, through
personal courage. For those who are of the kingdom
and patience of Jesus it will suffice.

THE SOCIAL REACTION OF HOME MIS-
SIONS UPON THE CHURCH

CHAPTER VII

THE SOaAL REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS UPON
THE CHURCH

Weakness of Division. Even the pillar of fire had
its dark side. Told in the book of Joshua the
conquest of Caanan seems the exalted onslaught of a
united people; told in the book of Judges it appears
as a long-drawn-out series of independent tribal forays
and fragmentary occupancies with only occasional
brief spurts of national cooperation. A third record
of the same events — also a true one — might have been
written' from the standpoint of the Caananites. "Israel
struck us down at length," it would read, "but how
much sooner would they have done it if they had
always struck together!"

Competitive Missions. The facts permit the story
of home missions to be told as hitherto in this book,
namely, as the common geographical expansion and
social readjustment of Protestant Christianity. This
furnishes a sound, illuminating, and practical view-
point. It is not complete, however, without the con-
fession of the sectarian aspects of home missions.
The conquest of America by the Church has been made
under the competitive system. This fact has peculiarly

191

192 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

determined the social forms of home missions. Most
of the thousands of pages which have been written
about home missions during the last hundred years
have treated them implicitly if not explicitly as the
process of denominational self -propagation. Its large
motive has been that of extending some particular
communion throughout the nation. This has been the
appeal to which men responded in prayer, and in cash ;
and in this aspect home missions are most definitely
challenged by the newer social insights and tasks of
the Church.

Sectarianism. Let it be understood from the outset
that social insight and duty do not challenge sectarian-
ism because it is sectarian, but because it is harmfully
divisive. Sect is a word from which the average
Protestant instinctively shies. An uneasy conscience
drives him to seek some softer equivalent. But the
sociologist does not spare us; in his analysis we are
sectarians. Nor is sectarianism a bad thing unless it
works badly. It merely means that there are, within
the immense variety of any nation's population, certain
like-minded people who are mentally reenforced by
one another and thus make some one chord to vibrate
with great vigor. Having discovered one another,
such people draw together, create agencies emphasiz-
ing their common interests, and achieve some form of
organization. By badges and banners they make them-
selves a "peculiar people." By their slogans ye shall
know them (when not by their nicknames) — Socialist,
Suffragist, Progressive, Pragmatist, Futurist, Cubist.

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 193

Religious sects are no less respectable if based upon
distinctions equally vital.

The Social Justification of Sect. According to this
definition one easily understands why many a sect will
be short-lived. The furor which throws its tempo-
rary movement upon the crest of the social wave sub-
sides. It represented no permanent human interest or
point of view. Its abortive "organ" suspends after
the third issue. On the other hand, sheltered in clois-
ter or in lodge-room, expressed by robe or regalia, en-
trenched in secrecy, a sect with scant capital of dis-
tinctive interest may perpetuate itself for a long time — ■
so ample in man is the faculty of imitation. Any sect
which has vitality enough to meet normal exposure to
the competitive interests of civilization and to with-
stand its leveling forces when fairly met, may be as-
sumed to have some social value, temporarily at least.
So far as American religious sects have been based in
an honest attempt to rally like-minded people around
an idea which they felt worthy, they have been so-
cially natural, intelligible, and so far admirable.
To call them sects makes them neither better nor worse
than the merits of their case as judged by its ulti-
mate social results.

The Inevitability of Sect. Organization by sect is
one of the permanent methods of human society. Such
organization may take place within as easily as without
the bounds of a Church. Thus the various monastic
orders of Roman Catholicism and the high or low
church parties, the liberals or conservatives of Protes-

194 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

tantism, if they have common standards, leaders, and
organs of expression, are as truly sects as though they
were completely separate rival denominations. Sec-
tarianism therefore as a natural phenomenon is not
incompatible with a certain unity in the Church ; since
sects are already comprehended in bodies whose large
unity is not broken. A Church may learn to be more
tolerant and inclusive instead of dividing, and this
alternative is just as often used as the method of divi-
sion is. But not to divide does not remedy or obliter-
ate sects. It simply reacts upon them in another
way. These considerations are intended to convince
the reader that he must abandon all idea that sec-
tarianism in itself is either bad or good, in order to
study its particular forms in the American Church
and to judge by their actual social results how much of
either bad or good has been in them.

Sectarian Methods Taken for Granted. The older
home missions definitely organized themselves for
sectarian propagation and perpetuation, taking for
granted the measures necessary to bring this result
about. Thus a majority of the governing board of
the typical church school were required to belong to
the communion which founded it, or else were wholly
the appointees of some ecclesiastical body. The teach-
ers must be of like faith. For professors creed sub-
scription was necessary. Fixed requirements of re-
ligious observation extended to students, and this was
intended to secure continuity of belief and tradition.
Students for the ministry got free tuition and other

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 195

aid and became thus financially obligated to their
denominations. Barely living salaries, with more or
less certain annuities in case of disablement, age, or
death, tended to keep the clergy in a permanent eco-
nomic bondage. In many communions, periodical
accounting for denominational results was exacted
of all denominational servants; and in all, promotion
and esteem depended largely upon the numbers and
money found to their credit in denominational book-
keeping. This made the home missionary largely a
propagandist of some special sectarian gospel in con-
scious competition with others.

Education in Sect Loyalty. Frontier churches were
constantly reminded that their denomination was aid-
ing them now in the expectation of receiving as much
again and that very soon ; they must therefore hasten
on to self-support. Of seventeen boards whose con-
ditions of granting aid were recently examined, but
one failed to make this duty of sect-loyalty explicitly
paramount. Denominational boards and bishops pros-
pered or starved according to their success in gaining
funds and adherents for their own communions. A
definite type of sectarian ecclesiastic developed. Men-
tally and morally he was own cousin to the magnates
of competitive business.

Pleas and Plans of Propaganda. "Benevolence"
was skilfully wrung from faithful denominationalists
on pleas of the frontier's need of the gospel inter-
spersed with reports of the progress of "our glorious
Church." Doubtless this mood was more marked in

196 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

some communions than in others. Some, Hke the Con-
gregationalists in their plan of union with the Pres-
byterians, or in the South, were Hberal in regions
where the character of the population gave them little
chance to succeed, and sectarian where they found
themselves really in the denominational race. All
shared competitive methods and ambitions and all
had reaches of consciousness and of service which
towered above all sectarian formulation. To these
this book as a whole bears vigorous witness; mean-
while this chapter sets itself to read faithfully the
other side of the shield.

Origins of American Sects. Before passing verdict
on this process of sectarian self -propagation it is neces-
sary to hold the mind still longer in suspense while
inquiring how the particular sects came to be which
one finds struggling for ascendency in America?
Why these, one asks, and not others? American de-
nominationalism consists of all the sectarian divisions
which have immigrated to our shores from all the
lands from which our people came, generously multi-
plied by national, linguistic, and racial cleavages and
added to by all the schisms of our national history,
especially by the sectional shattering of the great de-
nominations between North and South; and by all
the theological aberrations of crude minds unfettered
and intoxicated by the intellectual ferment of a youth-
ful nation. From the beginning there were Catholic
and Protestant; then English, Dutch, Scotch, Swede,
and German, each with his national variant of the

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 197

Reformed faith. The English split again into Puritan,
Quaker, and Baptist, and again into liberal and ortho-
dox. Frontier disintegrations of old habits, quickened
emotionalism, and doctrinal zeal were the occasion of
offshoots like Cumberland Presbyterianism and that of
Alexander Campbell; or the opportunity of freshly
imported vital movements, especially that of Method-
ism. When civilization had transformed frontier
crudity, reaction sometimes set in and pioneer religious
ways persisted in sectarian guise, as in the Primitive
Baptists of the Southern mountain states. Religious
originators like William Miller, Joseph Smith, Mrs.
Eddy, and John Alexander Dowie founded sects on
alleged direct revelations. Churches imported by in-
coming races brought the sectarianism of Babel not
yet mastered by the spirit of Pentecost.

The End Not Yet. Altogether there are 186 va-
rieties of American Christian, differing in polity
or doctrine, or nationality or race or temperament;
and doubtless more to follow. There is absolute
liberty of religious practise so far as is compatible
with civilized decency. The Church is a voluntary
organization supported by the gifts of its member-
ship. Any one who can get one disciple may start a
sect. The census will enumerate one with as few as
a dozen churches. There is no reason why the num-
ber should not be indefinitely multipHed.

A Plea in Mitigation — Great Family Groups. But
it is not fair to leave the matter without certain quali-
fying comments. First, the actual situation is not

198 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

nearly so bad as the confession that there are 186 de-
nominations sounds. The mighty Methodist, Baptist,
Lutheran, and Presbyterian family groups include the
vast majority of Protestant Christians. While divi-
sions within families are often the most bitter and
irritating, still families are families, with ties to bind
them together as well as tempers to drive them apart.
There remains the principle, and in important respects,
the practise of union within these groups, which re-
cently are showing special capacity for cooperating or
getting together.

Church Has Succeeded. Second, the Church as de-
nominationally propagated in America has succeeded.
It has been growing faster than the population. In
1850 there were only 149 church-members out of every
thousand of our people; now there are 391. The
ratio has much more than doubled. Between 1890
and 1906 church-membership gained upon population
by over 6 per cent. The immigration of this period
was overwhelmingly Catholic, in spite of which the
Protestant gain was nearly 2 per cent. America's
total church-membership in 1906 was 32 million. To
count children and adherents would be to multiply
this multitude more than twice. Over a billion dollars
is invested in church property. There are sittings in
houses of worship for 58 million people. Over twelve
million dollars are spent annually for home missions,
and thirty-eight millions are applied to human better-
ment under definite Christian direction. Whether be-

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 199

cause of or in spite of sectarian methods, these are
the facts.

Overchurching Is Limited. Third, there are thou-
sands of communities in America which have never
known the actual rivalries of sectarian churches. Of
missionary aid extended to churches in Vermont by
Baptists, Congregationalists, and Methodists, 45 per
cent, goes to fields where there is but one church. In
thousands of communities more, sectarianism has not
worked distinct moral or social harm. The Colorado
survey of the Federal Council found only 1 1 per cent,
of communities where flagrantly objectionable duplica-
tion of churches existed.

The Indictment — (i) Divisiveness. So far the dis-
cussion has professed to hold the scales even as to the
good or evil of denominationalism in home missions.
One may be pardoned for suspecting, however, that the
last few paragraphs were a sort of plea of mitigation
in advance of a dreaded indictment. And now the
indictment must be faced : denominational home mis-
sions have made a profound social failure. First,
they have made the American people more different
than they were, and have kept them more different than
they might have been if subjected to other nationaliz-
ing influences without the pullback of sect. Denomina-
tions have caused extra and arbitrary social divisions,
have sometimes fixed hurtful schisms, have prevented
assimilation. Not all of the sects have been guilty
of all of these sins, and perhaps none of them has
been guilty all of the time; but these have been their

200 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

collective results. In the large the charge stands.
The Church has hindered as well as helped the Amer-
icanization of Americans.

The Indictment — (2) Neglect and Preoccupation.
In supplying the religious needs of the nation the
Church has, in the second place, flagrantly disregarded
the law of supply and demand, congesting privilege in
the more desirable places denominationally speaking,
and leaving vast numbers of obscure places without
the adequate gospel. Besides the Church has been
so preoccupied with self-propagation as not easily
to sense many of its newer social duties as they have
appeared. It has therefore now belatedly to cure
evils which a socially-minded Church might have pre-
vented.

An Extreme Case. The evidence for these charges
of social failure may be read in single cases or in the
great summaries of religious conditions. Thus a com-
munity of 800 souls in a far Western state is re-
ported as having eight churches, as follows : Catholic,
Presbyterian, Baptist, 3 Lutheran, and 2 Methodist.
The investigator finds that sectarian envy and jealousy
express themselves in social cliques and an anti-com-
munity spirit, but that by strange contradiction there
is little genuine denominationalism in the f>eople. Ten
denominations are represented in the membership of
the Presbyterian church and people easily pass from
one church to another. This shows that the population
could have been united by the churches much more
than it was. There was not really enough local sec-

AN OVERCHURCHED RURAL COMMUNITY
Within this radius of four miles there are 24 churches. This represents one church
for every 113 persons, including children; one church for every 30 voters; one church for
every 23 families

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 201

tarianism to create 8 churches without assistance
through the pressure of outside organizations. The
Catholic church in this community, one assumes, em-
bodies historic differences which it is necessary to
express; the Presbyterian and Baptist perhaps stand
for the more intellectual in contrast to the more emo-
tional type of religious experience. It would be fair
enough to mark this difference by separate organiza-
tions among 8,000 people, but not among 800. The 3
Lutheran bodies divide along linguistic lines, and
are samples of the 24 divisions into which that noble
communion has sadly fallen in the national life. The
Methodist divisions are Northern and Southern. These
meaninglessly continue in the far West old border bit-
ternesses of which men have long ago repented in rela-
tions in which they are more Christian than they are
in their churches. Thus 800 souls are less united,
less American, less socially effective and probably less
religious because of the churches as they are.

Average Conditions. The author's memory runs
back to three out-in-the-country charges in one of
which he, as a Congregationalist, fought the Presby-
terians, in another the Baptists, in the third the Meth-
odists. In one case the community was suffering a
heritage of sectarian bitterness which had divided
families and always obtruded itself into the simple
social gatherings of the countryside. In all the cases
it involved a waste of time and money to have dupli-
catory churches at work. In none of them could the
modern community ser\ace program for the country

202 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

church have been carried out without grave hindrance,
by reason of denominational division and jealousy. In
each of them the denominational evil will have to be
healed — if it has not been already — ^before the church
can do the business of the Kingdom in a modern, so-
cially constructive sense.

The Colorado Survey. Turning now to larger areas :
The Colorado investigation of 1909 made by the Na-
tional Federal Council of Churches revealed 133 places
in that state of from 150 to 1,000 population without
a Protestant church, 100 of which had no Catholic
church either. Extreme cases of overlapping were
reported; like the community of 300 people with six
churches receiving an aggregate of $600 annually from
missionary boards.

The Neglected Fields Survey. Far more extensive
than anything undertaken before is the great Neglected
Fields Survey which the Home Missions Council has
under way. It is nothing less than a united attempt —
as yet imperfectly carried out — to get detailed knowl-
edge of religious conditions in every school district of
the fifteen Northwestern states which, as our remain-
ing frontier, receive a very large proportion of the
home missionary aid of the nation. Partial results
for five states, which have now been published, indi-
cate that there are probably 170,000 people in them
living more than four miles from a church, and that
over 1,000 unchurched communities show presumptive
evidence of the need of permanent organization. The
survey shows also what denominations might most

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 203

usefully serve the people in many of these cases. Thus
there are perhaps 300 calls to the Methodist church,
150 to the Lutheran, 100 each to the Presbyterian,
Baptist, and Catholic, 50 to the Congregational, and
so forth. But in these cases, as in the many cases of
overlapping, the survey committee does not pretend yet
to advise finally as to what should be done. It has
reported a general situation. There are many points
of religious distribution and many others of religious
congestion. Much education of local church leaders of
the several states in social-mindedness and the spirit
of comity is necessary, and a more intensive study
of the administrative situation, before the positive pro-
gram of cooperative advance can be ventured upon.
The situation is in faithful, responsible hands for
further working out.

Redistribution of Religious Forces. At the same
time it does discover and confess a grave misapplica-
tion, over a vast area, of national missionary resources
directed and distributed through national agencies.
It is pertinent then to offer even a theoretical sugges-
tion as to how the Churches might better direct their
expenditures, and get the money to found a thousand
new churches in five states, should that prove to be
wise. The researches of the Rev. George Frederick
Wells show how it might be done.

Case in Vermont. If the Baptist, Congregational,
and Methodist religious forces of Vermont were re-
organized into non-duplicatory churches of two hun-
dred members each, with pastors receiving $1,000 sal-

204 THE NEW HOME AHSSIONS

ary each, not only would Vermont be more efficiently
supplied with the gospel, but $65,000 per year would
be released for use elsewhere. Sending only one third
of this saving to the 15 Northwestern states, Vermont
alone could maintain fifty of the thousand presumably
necessary new churches.

Showing of Rhode Island. Little Rhode Island is
essentially an urban state. Most of its 356 churches
are massed in the five largest cities. They have 65,000
members of 2^ different denominations and cost $780,-
000 annually to maintain. In a city a membership of
300 is not too large nor a salary of $3,000. If the
religious forces were redistributed on this basis, Rhode
Island would save 140 ministers and $140,000 annually
for service elsewhere. Rhode Island could then af-
ford nearly 50 men and sustain over 100 new
churches in the Northwest, have an equal number left
for new forms of social evangelism and still a third
available for the foreign field.

A National Survey and Program. The social aspects
of church organization as discovered and verified
over such wide areas, through painstaking investiga-
tions carried through years, and digested by the most
competent experts, mark a new era in religious strat-
egy. It is possible to hope that in a very short time
we may have an adequate survey of the entire religious
forces of America, as a basis for a common program
of advance. Already the federal census as relates
to the churches has been distinctly modified by the
superior methods of the New York Federation of

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 205

Churches. The cooperating churches could undoubt-
edly bring Congress to try to find out in the next
census what needs to be known in this matter of na-
tional import; or if not, they can find out for them-
selves. The subject is worthy the attention of the
universities in their advanced social studies. We
should then in a little while be able to make a com-
plete theoretical redistribution of the religious forces
of the nation so as to serve the social need down to
the least community. All the social cracks and crev-
ices, which extensive home missions in her proudest
days somehow failed to reach, would be supplied — on
paper. The survey method extended to the whole na-
tion and interpreted by the best science and scholar-
ship is competent to give the united American Church
its national institutional program. Till one is reached
the work at best will be in the twilight.

The Truth Even If It Hurts. There has been a
fashion to deprecate too great plainness of speech in
the matter of the duplication and overlapping of
churches. The effect has been feared upon the layman
and his purse. Will he not say, "No more of my
money to be wasted in rivalry," and turn away with
the impression that the Church is socially unadjusted
to the situation and generally inefficient and incom-
petent? Yet probably the aforesaid layman is, this
very moment, paying a fourth more than he should
for his table because there are too many grocery stores,
besides deliberately contributing to the support of a
minister, a choir, an untaxed building, and a janitor

2o6 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

in competition with the church in the next block. He
cannot cast the first stone, because he lives in a glass
house. The sin has been the sin of all. Even at the
cost of denominationalism the religious needs of Amer-
ica must be met; and the layman must pay for
it this way till a better is found.

Better Way Found. As a matter of fact a better
way is being found. Not only has the Church the
method to find out the conditions and their remedy,
but she has told the truth about herself more com-
pletely and fearlessly than any one else has. And she
is far along in applying the remedy. She is in most
excellent position to say to the layman: "We used
your money magnificently in taking this nation for
God in the continental sense. We are fast getting
both the technique and the will necessary to take it
for God in the social sense. Only lift up your eyes
and see how all things ecclesiastical are becoming new
under the impulse of the vision and passion to save
the collective and community life of the people."

Increasing Cooperation. The remainder of the
chapter will try to summarize what is to be seen in
this realm. In 1903, Randolph, Vermont, a typical
New England town of 1,800 inhabitants, had seven
churches. The two oldest and strongest, the Congre-
gational and the Christian, then united, sold one of
their parsonages, tore down one of their meeting-
houses and, with the aid of a generous donor, erected
a fine community house and music hall. The merger
enabled the new organization greatly to increase the

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 207

pastor's salary, to carry on what corresponds to Young
Men's Christian Association and Young Women's
Christian Association work, to control public amuse-
ment and to use it as a positive means of grace, and
to command civic leadership. The experiment has
justified itself by ten years of pronounced success.

Machinery of Direction and Adjustment. One of
the most enlightened of religious journals, recently
describing this case, commented : "Church union has
furnished striking headlines for the press, provided
attractive themes for public speakers, contributed to
the making of books, has admitted of many theories,
and yet has found but few consistent advocates who
have attempted to put into practise what is so ardently
and generally urged." This comment is so much less
than the truth as to be distinctly misleading and mis-
chievous. Not only do reports from a single denom-
ination indicate that it has participated in the merg-
ing or federating of more than fifty churches within
two years ; but beyond such local combinations the
churches are weaving and strengthening a vast central
network of directive and restraining organization. In-
creasingly made official, as real an expression of the
Church in America as the denominations themselves,
it has been called into being chiefly in direct and
prompt response to the challenge of the social task.
The organized Church is the denominations plus their
1 machinery of cooperation and adjustment. The or-
j dinary church-member may not realize this, but he
will never understand the dominant tendencies of his

2o8 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

age till he gets beyond regarding local church con-
solidations as exceptional, and fully appreciates the
great actual and permanent agencies of working unity.

The Home Missions Council. Founded in 1908, this
great agency of working unity includes 33 boards of
national jurisdiction working in the United States and
dependencies, and represents thirteen denominations.
As many as 5,115 of the 6,066 missionaries work-
ing in the fifteen Northwestern states are under the
commission of its constituent boards who have co-
operatively agreed, first, to the mutual allotment of all
unoccupied fields that none may be without the re-
ligious privileges, and second, "to decline to endorse
applications for home mission aid in places where the
gospel of Christ is earnestly and adequately promul-
gated by others, and where assured prospects of
growth do not seem to demand the establishment of
other churches." On these two commandments —
against "overlapping" and "overlooking" — hang the
law and the prophets of the united home missionary
program.

Cooperation for Special Groups. Standing com-
mittees of the Home Missions, Council on immigrants,
Indians, Spanish-speaking peoples, Negroes, and other
exceptional groups, act as clearing-houses for common
plans in their respective fields, all having under way
important pieces of united work. The immigration
committee is midway in a nation-wide survey to deter-
mine the measure both of overlooking and overlapping
in missions to the stranger within our gates. After

REV. CHARLES L. THOMPSON

Chairman of the Home Missions Council, representing 34 organizations and 24 denominations

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 209

a careful study three years ago, the entire unevan-
geHzed Indian population was allotted definitely, group
by group, to the different denominations, who are oc-
cupying the assigned territory as rapidly as their
funds permit, and also undertaking joint educational
work at certain points. Interdenominational councils
have been organized, composed of executive and other
workers among the Orientals of the Pacific coast, and
the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest. These
act as agents of the Home Missions Council and of
their several boards in comity matters and in united
work. For example, native evangelists representing
our common Christianity have been sent to scattered
Orientals in small and transient rural groups, and sup-
ported by subsidies paid jointly by the boards.

Comity in Porto Rico. From the first American
occupancy, Porto Rico has been divided territorially
for mission work between the larger denominations.
While others have later pressed in without full regard
for comity considerations, the Island after thirteen
years remains essentially without overlapping of forces
and with all its significant towns occupied — very in-
adequately indeed, by the cooperative Protestant ad-
vance. Joint educational and publication agencies are
also engaged in by the more neighborly denomina-
tions.

United Measures for Negroes. These are so largely
carried on by agencies not fully coordinate with most
©f the constituent boards of the Home Missions Coun-
cil, that cooperative measures have chieflv originated

210 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

in voluntary joint conferences of officials. They ac£
however in close cooperation with the Council, and
also with the great funds for Negro education and
the Federal government Substantial beginnings have
been made in standardizing courses of study and school
administration, in the exclusion of unworthy and
fraudulent institutions, and in federating competitive
institutions.

The General Boards of Denominational Education.
These have also their Council established in 191 1, in
which most of the stronger communions are included.
It is working on the problems of the distribution of
colleges and academies with respect to comity consid-
erations, the control of new foundations, standards of
academic efficiency, cooperation with the state uni-
versities, and joint measures for publicity, and for in-
teresting givers in Christian education. Comity in this
field may hope for financial encouragement from that
benevolent disposer of educational destiny, the Gen-
eral Education Board.

Cooperation of All Home and Foreign Missions
Agencies. The general policies of home missionary
promotion, agitation, and advocacy are now planned
unitedly by the Home Missions Council and the coop-
erating Council of Women for Home Missions. They
in turn now stand in a larger affiliation of all home
and foreign missionary agencies in their approach to
the Christian public for interest and support. Whether
the whirlwind campaign methods famiharized by the
Laymen's Missionary and Men and Religion Move-

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 211

ments survive or not, the unity of missionary agencies
is permanently attained in this field. Joint plans, joint
budgets, the common use of experts and devices are
here to stay.

Missionary Education. Particularly in the sphere of
missionary education is cooperation made effective and
permanent. Through the Missionary Education Move-
ment, as the agent of the boards for pedagogical and
publishing work, is produced the general literature
necessary to carry out missionary advocacy as jointly
planned from year to year, and, more especially, care-
fully prepared and graded text-books and other mater-
ial for mission study classes. These are circulated by
the hundred thousand. Summer assemblies are also
held for the training of teachers for such classes and
of missionary leaders in the local churches. Technical
methods are cooperatively worked out by the Move-
ment and the educational secretaries of the several
denominations. Recently the home and foreign mis-
sion study programs have been unified.^

The Sunday School World. The International Sun-
day School Association, from motives not directly so-
cial, has long been committed to the uniform lesson
and largely to standardized methods of treatment. Re-
volts from its ideals of uniformity in the more pro-
gressive communions have compelled it to adapt its les-

* This book is one of the first to be issued under the joint plan,
which contemplates a companion volume, The Social Aspects of
Foreign Missions. The two books constitute authorized current
study material for the entire constituency of the American
Protestant Church.

212 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

son material to the different ages; and incidentally
have reminded us of the need to keep voluntary initia-
tive alive. On the whole, however, the Sunday-school
has been one of the most successful as it has been one
of the most conspicuous spheres of Christian coopera-
tion. More recently cooperation has been developed
among the denominations through the organization of
the Sunday School Council of the Evangelical
Churches, in which publishers, editors, lesson writers,
and secretaries unite for conference on common prob-
lems.

Local and State Federations. Naturally such vast
cooperative agencies of national scope could not have
originated before unity in work had first been tried
out in smaller areas as it was in the interchurch federa-
tions, particularly of some of the New England states.
Home missions in actual operation are largely the de-
nominational machinery of state, conference, or city.
Unless these are converted to the practise of comity
even when it hurts, resolutions of conventions and
exhortations of headquarters' secretaries can have little
weight. If they have weight, it is because the spirit
and practise of unity are widespread in the American
Church. Thus, thirteen states have active church fed-
erations, and seven more have more or less rudimen-
tary ones. Wisconsin furnishes a typical example. Its
federation originated directly in the social motive. It
worked out its own solution for sectarian overlapping,
namely, to induce competitive churches in a com-
munity to secure a joint pastor, while retaining their

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 213

separate organizations. In cases of conflicting in-
terests it appoints advisory councils, composed of
representatives of all denominations, and submits the
case to them, as reflecting the wisdom of the united
Church of Christ,

Exchange of Fields. In the newer Western states,
where a larger proportion of churches are necessarily
recipients of missionary aid, cooperative movements
naturally fall more directly under the leadership of
national boards. First by conferences, modestly called
"Consultations," denominational state leaders and of-
ficials have been skilfully introduced to the ideals of
working comity; then after thorough surveys of con-
ditions, institutes are being held, under the auspices
of the Home Missions Council, in which experts ad-
vise as to the redirection of the whole missionary enter-
prise and the strategic redistribution of its united
forces. Such a program is under way in fifteen states.
Then, the situation is left to work itself out — not,
it must be confessed, without a certain "watchful
waiting" on the part of the initiating boards. And
it does often work out. Thus, in October, 19 13,
representatives of three of the strongest denominations
in South Dakota met and agreed upon a policy of the
reciprocal exchange of fields in order to prevent the
duplication of churches. Forthwith, the Congregation-
alists surrendered two churches and their outstations
to the Methodists, taking in exchange five Methodist
points. The result is that some ten communities,
largely in the newly-opened Indian country west of

214 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

the Missouri River, will be more adequately served
with the gospel, and that without the financial and
spiritual strain of sectarian rivalry. And similar
processes are at work in various fields from Maine to
Washington.

City and Country Federations. The ultimate sphere
in which working unity is to be practised is, of course,
local. If it fails with actual groups of neighboring
churches, it fails everywhere. Crucial importance,
therefore, attaches to the local federations of churches,
usually organized with the city or the country as a
unit. About a hundred aggressive organizations of
this type are now reported, eighty-five per cent, of
which have originated within five years. Some of
them are affiliated with the national Federal Council
of Churches, and operate in the realm of public opin-
ion, or unite in occasional civic interest rather than
conduct consistent policies of church extensions and
community service. Some exist preeminently to
give the churches the basic sociological informatipn
on which to found policies, as does that of New York
City. The most effective local federations, however,
directly combine the home missionary agencies of the
given city or district, both in the positive strategy of
unitedly possessing the community for God, and the
negative strategy of keeping out of each other's way
while doing so. After all, the only absolute expres-
sion of working unity is that which controls budgets
and subsidies, locates institutions, and places men
unitedly. This, Chicago, St. Louis, and other of our

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 215

greater cities are beginning to do, basing their policies
on painstakingly acquired knowledge, and using de-
nominational interests and forces merely as pawns in
the high game of applying urban Christianity to the
actual factors in home mission service.

Social Service cind the Federal Council. The newly
developed activities of the Church in the interest of
social amelioration and justice, particularly with ref-
erence to the living and working conditions of wage-
earners, have been handled in various ways by the
different denominations. Some have attached "social
service" departments to their old home missionary
boards; others have created new agencies. All the
chief communions have them, however, and virtually
from the beginning they have been in the closest work-
ing alliance through the national Federal Council, in
which the denominational social service secretaries con-
stitute a "cabinet." Their platforms, methods, investi-
gations, and publications have been joint labors, imme-
diately made effective in common.

Reuniting Families. Finally, important mergings
of denominational families are under way. That be-
tween the northern Presbyterians and the Cumberland
Presbyterians is accomplished, though not without re-
division; that between the United Brethren and Meth-
odist Protestants is in hopeful process of consumma-
tion; that between the Northern and Southern Pres-
byterians still in the stage of preliminary overtures
and joint sessions. The Methodists, North and South,
have a Federal Council to which cases of possible

2i6 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

cooperation are being referred for adjustment. They
have commissions also at work trying to define their
respective spheres, to prevent future competition, and
to plan joint advances, and in the North the regular
and Free Baptists are now happily reunited. Thus
each of the greater denominational families is seen to
be in the process of reintegration.

Unity in Far-reaching Fields. Summarizing the
fields in which working unity is largely and increas-
ingly in effect, one is amazed to find how far-reaching
it is. The home missionary frontier in at least five
sixths of its extent; the newer intensive missions to
rural life; virtually all the exceptional peoples — In-
dians, Orientals, Negroes, Mexicans; denominational
education very largely ; missionary publicity, education,
and publication on a nation-wide scale; city evangeli-
zation and social service ; and the sectional divisions of
churches are all powerfully moved, if not practically
controlled, by working unity as a current practise under
highly organized agencies. Its program is theoretically
universal ; its realization actually astounding.

How Widely Effective. Some of the sectional
branches of the Church still linger outside of its scope,
and the great Negro sects are practically little touched
by it. There are thousands of remote communities
steeped in the sectarian spirit which do not even dream
that it exists. But these are overmatched by equal
thousands of communities which have never known
sectarian rivalry because they have always been served
by a single church organization ; and, more profoundly,

SECRETARIAL COUNCIL OF THE COMMISSION ON THE

CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE OF THE FEDERAL

COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN

AMERICA

Charles O. Gill Frank M. Crouch

Harr>' F. Ward Henry A. Atkinson

Samuel Z. Batten Charles S. Macfarland

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 217

by the super-sectarian spirit which, thank God, has
distinctly pervaded American Christianity in spite of
its divisions; which has enabled it to make essentially
a unified impression upon the expanding nation, and
to assimilate it so largely to the Protestant type.

Permanent Factors of Ecclesiastical Organization.
There needs to be a deliberate revolt against the habit
of thought which takes the census as the point of de-
parture, and goes on to regard the Church in its 186
denominational divisions. Just as staggering and as
significant columns of figures could be arranged, show-
ing its manifold coordinating and cooperative rela-
tions, extradenominational, interdenominational, fed-
eral, and world-wide. Under the impulse of social
vision these have become the essential expression of
the Church to tens of thousands.

One-sided Conception. To ignore these is one-
sided and unscientific. The Christian imagination need
not be so, even if the United States Census is ; and the
census should reform. The agencies, organizations,
and movements which work in unity are as much a
part of American Christianity as the sects are, while
the spirit which works in unity is native to the Chris-
tianity of Christ, in which there is no place at all for
the spirit of sect. Facts as above presented are enough
to provoke the spirit of song, and when next taunted
with the weakness and waste of denominational divi-
sion the up-to-date Christian may at least retort, "Like
a mighty army moves a large part of the Church of
God."

2i8 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Social Sectarianism Still at Work. How much fur-
ther will working unity carry us? That question
cannot be answered by itself alone. The Church can-
not conquer herself for Christian unity except as she
also conquers society. All moral problems are pro-
foundly interrelated. If the class spirit gets a per-
manent upper hand in America, some sect will incar-
nate it, and live on, under some honored but misused
name, as the Church of the rich, or of the intelligent,
after its historic or doctrinal origins have been for-
gotten.

Racial Lines of Cleavage. The Christian Japanese
of the West are close to the edge of a new secta-
rian division from the American churches along
racial lines. What they feel to be an attack upon their
racial self-respect has almost impelled them to sever
the denominational relations and to unite .as a Japanese
Church. As long as a social color-line is drawn, a
sectarian color-line may be expected between white
and Negro denominations. Our swarming immigra-
tion from eastern and southern Europe brings to us
new sects, reflecting their petty provincialisms, their
linguistic differences, and their obscure doctrinal dif-
ferences. Thus, the greatly useful Lutheran com-
munion is being increasingly broken into fragments.
The Greek Catholic Church appears in four divisions.
The number of linguistic sects is thereby increasing
rather than diminishing, and except as the foreigner
is assimilated, sectarianism as a divisive and disin-
tegrating spirit is sure to increase at one point even

REACTION OF HOxME MISSIONS 219

while we conquer it at another. Indeed, even holding
the ground we have already gained depends upon vic-
tory all along the line against all the unbrotherly forces
of society. Only by being strong enough to unite all
life in service can the Church unite herself in service.

After Working Unity. Again, will working unity
carry us beyond itself to some form of organic union
embracing all denominations? Let it be insisted that
working unity is unity — as definite and concrete an
evidence of the spiritual oneness of the Church as
sacrament or symbol, and a very much more signifi-
cant one. Yet none will doubt that, if working unity
is accomplished, she will feel an inner necessity to
idealize herself in some fresh outward and visible con-
fession of the one Lord and the one faith. What
has the social outlook to say as to the form which this
instinct will probably take?

The Psychology of Sect. Here enter some of the
obscurer insights of the social psychologists in the
study of sects. They think they discover certain
broad differences in human nature within the Amer-
ican population, say four types of mental make-up,
the areas of which may be roughly defined. Thus,
according to Giddings, "the 'forceful' congregate about
seaboard and lakeboard, in all the mountain regions,
and on the great plains. The 'convivial' predominate
in the South. The 'austere' are thickest in a broad
belt reaching from New England to Iowa and Kansas.
The 'rationally conscientious' are found here and

220 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

there in cities."^ These elemental differences the so-
cial psychologist interprets as "natural sects," whose
differences will spontaneously appear in separate re-
ligious expressions and organizations. He then pro-
ceeds to tabulate the American denominations and
to assign them to the different natural sects to which
they correspond. Naturally, most of us fall between
the types, and none may feel greatly flattered by the
scientists' handling of his own case.

Temperamental Affinities. The least discriminating
however, will sense the contrast between the more
emotional and the more intellectual denominations,
and confess that there are certain Christians with
whom he feels in temperamental affinity and others
who strike him as somehow alien. Further, the so-
cial psychologist argues, the great denominational
families correspond roughly to the natural sects and
their intermediate types. Only let them reunite and
the result will be half a dozen or so vast and master-
ful branches of the Church, which could afford to
ignore such other denominations as did not then unite
with them on grounds of inner similarity.^ Some-
thing approximating this result would appear to be
desirable from the standpoint of social effectiveness.

Sect and Efficiency. It is doubtful, however, wheth-
er social effectiveness would prescribe more than
a working unity between such great bodies. Our in-
dustrial trusts, we are finding, have often succeeded

^Quoted in Ross, Foundations of Sociology, 303.
* McComas, Psychology of Religious Sects, 227.

REACTION OF HOME MISSIONS 221

in spite of their size rather than because of it. Some of
us suspect that something similar is true of the Roman
Catholic Church. A denomination might easily become
of unwieldy size. Dr. Fisher of the Laymen's Mission-
ary Movement of the Methodist Episcopal Church
explains the failure of his denomination to respond as
readily as others to the appeal for a missionary ad-
vance on the ground that it is so much larger a
mass to move. Judging by the criterion of efficiency
rather than of pride, the missionary administrator
would be slow to recommend the nation as the work-
ing unit. So large a unit is at least not directly in-
dicated by the social view-point in church organiza-
tion.

A Few Denominations and Working Unity. If,
therefore, half a dozen denominations should be found
necessary to express the more permanent and natural
psychological differences between men, it would not
defeat social effectiveness to have the ultimate Amer-
ican Church so organized, provided always that the
working unity which we have even now in fairly com-
plete outline were perpetuated and perfected.

Spiritual Unity. Whether men utterly commited to
fellowship in service would find esthetic fitness and
moral concentration in erecting some further inclusive
order of the visible Church the future will determine.
Such a united Church ruled by experts and social
engineers rather than by ecclesiastics might escape
some of its ancient perils. Its advantages over a

222 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

harmonious federation of denominational families will
be doubted by those whose temperaments make them
willing that the ecclesiastical body shall have members
differing sufficiently one from another to remind them-
that their Head is Christ alone.

SOCIAL REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY
IN AMERICA

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIAL REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY
IN AMERICA

Making the Gospel Operative. The rehgion of the
New Testament is a seamless robe which cannot be
divided. There is no such thing as a social realization
of Christianity standing alone. Not any nor all of the
forces and agencies which this book has tried to inter-
pret and honor can make the gospel operative in
our land. In Browning's "Death in the Desert" (to
borrow an illustration of Dr. Jowett's) the end comes
to the aged apostle John while hid from persecution
in a cave with three humble converts and a boy. Lay-
ing him where a rift of light plays on his face they
try to rouse him for a last farewell. They touch his
lips with wine, cool his brow with water, chafe his
hands and pray; he smiles but sleeps on. Then the
boy springs from his knees, fetches the graven tablet
of the Gospel and pronounces, 'T am the resurrection
and the life" ; whereat the old man rouses, sits up, and
speaks. Humanity is that aged frame. Social serv-
ice may apply the stimulants to life — the wine, the
water, the chafing of the hands ; personal religion may
pray; but the living word alone can stir life itself

225

226 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

afresh and make it to triumph in all the measureless
realm of being.

Man Bound to Fail. No improvement of environ-
ment will make the human soul commensurate with its
largest visions. Discrepancy there will still be between
a man and his best; humiliation will be his portion,
with the experience of essential failure and the inces-
sant sense that it is better not to live than not to at-
tain. In its profoundest reaches life will still need
a redeeming touch deeper than any social ministry.
Its total meaning, birth and death, its early and
later mysteries, will still overwhelm; nor will any
"normality" discovered in the natural cycles of life
nor the best balance of social adjustment dissolve the
paradox of sin. Only God himself can wipe away all
tears from human eyes.

Working Together with God. In the sense of these
solemnities the whole mighty enterprise and enginery
of missions is struck humble. The mood of going
about religious service as about a business utterly
dissolves. If machinery is not sufficient for ultimate
things it is not sufficient for anything. Life is of one
piece, and only God can make the cooperation of its
various movements work out into final blessedness.
Home missions simply offer themselves humbly as
the bond-servant of Jesus Christ, for social utilization
and for the service of the common life.

Comfort in Past Results. At the same time they go
about their remaining tasks strangely comforted in

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 22^

this sense of inadequacy by the consciousness of im-
portant service accomplished in the past, and of new
knowledge and resources for the future. Missions
have overspread the continent with the hearthstone
and the spire. They have invented and possessed
themselves of original forms of service which have
worked imperial results alike under the control of old
ideals and now under social redirection. They have
visioned in beauty and order a Paradise Redeemed
for all the spacious reaches of the open country; they
have seen in outline a completed common life through
the mystic potencies of the city, the most perfect re-
flection of the World that Shall Be; they have com-
posed a symphony of nations out of the babel of alien
voices; they have started intelligent and far-reaching
streams of social justice which shall yet roll down like
mighty waters ; they have closed up the deepest racial
gulfs of humanity with the daring of fraternal fellow-
ship; they have made even the Church brotherly and
therefore conquering! These things they have done
in part, even as all human service is yet fragmentary.

Facing the Final Phase. Now home missions must
undertake the final phase of their task, namely, the
combination of these fragments of success into a more
perfect realization of Christianity in America worthy
to be presented to God for ultimate completion.

I. Motive and the Missionary. The social real-
ization of Christianity in America depends upon the
control of personal motive. The missionary is the key

228 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

to missions; and the missionary is one whose own
heart also sends him upon the business which the
Lord appoints. Even to operate the enginery of mis-
sions which the Church has available money to pay
for, there is desperate lack of men. Shortage of labor
is the chief spiritual lack as it is the chief economic
lack of the Church. "More reapers" is still the groan
and travail-cry of fields white to harvest.

Growing Social Service of State. But the field
in which there is greatest shortage of adequately moti-
vated lives is not that of the Church but of the state.
Throughout the book there have been frequent con-
fessions of the relatively limited sphere of the Church
as such in many realms of constructive social effort.
Measured by the number and importance of social
functions performed, the Christian state has been rec-
ognized as the chief agent of the social application of
the gospel. Government is the frequent supplanter of
the Church in ministries which were once ecclesiasti-
cal, so that there is a narrowing of the outward forms
of "religious" service. In education, in libraries; in
the technical aspects of rural betterment; in an infin-
itely varied range of urban activities; in schools for
Indians, Negroes, and similar backward groups, gov-
ernment— local, state, and national — is doing much
which the Church had to do in the earlier eras.

Missionaries of the State. There is no higher call-
ing of God than to serve social ends through the
Christian state. On the other hand, the serviceable-

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 229

ness of politics is strictly limited by the quality of the
men it can summon to its tasks. There are many
things — and they the most fundamental — which the
law cannot do because it is "weak through the flesh."
Its greatest weakness is in the control of motive.
American politics have not directly ministered greatly
to morality. The vaster the social structure, the more
complicated the functions it has to perform, the more
dependent does it become upon the power which drives
its social machinery. The United States Bureau of
Indian Affairs has hundreds of workers under civil
service regulations to carry on its great work, and
millions of money to spend. Yet so keen is its sense
of the need of Christian quality in its service that
a recent Indian Commissioner began a deliberate ap-
peal to the same students who became volunteers to
the foreign missionary field, and to the home mission-
ary agencies, to send men of missionary consecration
to take the civil service examinations. In the whole
range of social ministry, whatever agency does the
work, the Church preeminently must inspire and pre-
pare the men.

Conversion and Calling. The origin, then, and the
renewal of the sources of motive in the hearts of
Christians who may serve either the state or the
Church is of preeminent concern. The Church, as has
been statistically proved, is the chief present source
of social workers ; religion has been their ultimate in-
spiration. Their work consists mainly in drudgery and
in many of its experiences tends to disillusion. The

230 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

discrepancy between social Ideals and our present con-
trol of conditions; the old hardship of delay — that we
are in a great hurry while God does not seem to be —
constantly throws the social worker back into depend-
ence upon the original basis of his consecration in
definite religious experience. Now the least outworn
of religious experiences — the one of greatest working
value — ^is unquestionably that of thorough, conscious,
personal conversion, whereby God comes into specific
possession of one's life. Most lives alternate between
hopes and fears, between doubts and certitudes.
Hearts beat to the rhythm now of weariness and wav-
ering courage, now of new access of faith. Our sure
warrant in these vacillating moods is the memory
of moments which shone by their own inner glory,
untouched by the waxing or waning of the outer day.
"I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear"; but
spiritual extremity always drives one back upon some
self-evidencing experience; "but now mine eye seeth
thee." These are the central realities whereby men
live, upon which the reformer must stand, to which
the prophet must return. It is highly important then
that his faith should be deep-rooted, that in the initial
experience of the Christian religion there shall be a dis-
tinctly social aspect. The high, creative, personal ex-
perience of redemption should have its strong social
coloring, in order that social motive in the completest
degree may bear the fundamental stamp of religion
against the day of its desperate trial.

Social Fire. Individual Christian experience and so-

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 231

cial passion being of right two phases of one experi-
ence, it follows that the call to definite personal service
and to the vocation of the missionary in a day of social
emphasis should have social fire as its inmost quality.
The forms that such a call takes in the lives of
the youth of any generation are largely dependent upon
the teaching of the Church. It cannot create, but it
can direct the divine responses of unfolding souls. The
summons to social service should then be read into
the profoundest call of Christian vocation. The mys-
tical sense and deep confession, 'T know the Lord
has laid his hands on me," furnishes the only certain
and steadying basis for human service. On the other
hand, the social vision greatly reenforces the summons
to Christian service. Qualifications for social service
have become a chief test of the missionary. The
fact that one possesses them becomes the
most definite practical answer to the ques-
tion whether the Lord has truly called him. The
recruiting agencies of the Church have begun to
sound the social emphasis in no uncertain tones. Those
who look for missionary volunteers should go where
social enthusiasm has been dominant and economically
minded, as often in the agricultural college, the state
university, and even in the medical or technical school.
Prayer and the Springs of Motive. But the deepest
preparation and enduement of the missionary is the
work of forces too fundamental for social control.
Spiritual efficiency and power are unlocked only by
the mystic key of prayer. Education is of the schools,

232 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

practical efficiency a matter of working plans and plant,
and men may be hired for pay; but the missionary
spirit is born and nourished only in an atmosphere of
intercession, in which personal resolves are made good
and personal decisions drawn up into the august com-
munions of the saints around the throne of grace.
Prayer, then, for the missionary — that his faith and
zeal fail not, for the administrator of missions — that
his patience and judgment fail not, for the support-
ers of missions — that their devotion and money fail
not, is indispensable in the deeper program of mis-
sionary success. The missionary is the key to mis-
sions. Whoever can find and furnish motive to this
man takes the first step in the social realization of
Christianity in America. This is a preeminent task of
the Church through home missions.

2. The Kingdom of God. The social realization of
Christianity in our country depends also upon an ade-
quate restatement of Christian doctrine. To make
effective the social leadership of Jesus Christ necessi-
tates a redirection of theology and its rearrangement
in social terms around Jesus' teaching of the king-
dom of God. In this doctrine he freed an ancient so-
cial conception from centuries of limitations. In mak-
ing it the central tenet of his thought he kept it so-
cial, and made it more than social, expanding it till it
reached up into all the realms of life. He taught that
the kingdom was to be realized on earth as it is in
heaven. He took good care that this concept should
not be too greatly entangled with the current social

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 233

demands of his own time. It was a germinal idea;
a life-giving spirit, the definite social character of
which he made perfectly plain, but the applications of
which he left largely to each generation. We must
equally preserve the very atmosphere of this doctrine
of Jesus, and must press its detailed claims upon our
day. God Father ; men brothers ! God's reign ; man's
social life expressing it! Let the divine simplicity of
it stand, unvexed by economic or theological subtle-
ties. This will leave the doctrine of the kingdom of
God perfectly open to the most concrete and practical
uses of the present day. When home missions under-
take to check the cotton-boll weevil or to eradicate
the cattle tick in a given community, they get their war-
rant straight from the gospel, in which Jesus purpose-
fully imbedded his social principle knowing well that
it would be needed for unimaginable uses in every
future day.

Spiritual Basis of Fraternity. As it flows out into
the doctrine of universal brotherliness, it is the par-
ticular task of the social gospel to correct and com-
plete the crude and often materialistic formula of
equality which has played so large a part in the social
hopes of the modern masses. In a day when the
Church has had her doubts as to the efficacy of doc-
trine, socialistic doctrine, backed by antiquated philos-
ophies and misunderstood science, has been the staff
of life to millions of crude but effective thinkers upon
social justice. Largely outside of the academic influ-
ences, socialism in its various versions has flourished

i234 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

through the dogmatic method. Banished from the
pulpit, dogma finds a forum in the streets, and flour-
ishes from dry-goods boxes and the tails of carts. The
moral passion which has been behind it shames the
frequent lukewarmness of the Church. To interpret
its very real aspirations for fraternity into the terms
of Christian brotherhood, to show how equality can
only be realized through the enthusiastic sense of
membership in the body of Christ, is the mediatorial
office of the Christian thinker, and will be on through
the centuries. The man who can direct, order, and
convince the great outstanding categories of social
thought according to the mind of Christ has a mission
second to none. Not necessarily apart from daily
deeds of social value, and frequently in connection with
the practical tests of administrative duties, but always
magnifying and controlled by the interpretive gift,
this man fulfils his office under the one Spirit. Home
missions have large share in the social realization of
Christianity through their servants who can think ef-
fectively.

3. A New Creation. The social realization of
Christianity in America depends moreover upon a
warm-hearted faith in lowly men. The old home
missions dealt more largely with their own sons and
daughters of the Church in their Westward migration.
The new home missions have more largely upon their
heart the stranger and those far off, historically and
racially. In the difficult problems of their assimila-
tion to the nation's deepest life, a controlling and un-

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 235

failing faith is impossible apart from the ever-burning
fires of personal experience. One knows in himself
the power of the gospel to make him greater than he
was. Faith simply transfers the certainty of this ex-
perience from the redeemed man to the remotest
brother in whose redemption he labors. This is the
apostolic order of statement : "You did he make
alive," and therefore you can understand social conse-
quences of the life-giving gospel to the Gentiles. To
the man in fundamental doubt as to his brother's full
human quality and capacity, especially to the man suf-
fering the extreme forms of race prejudice, — religion
is the only effective approach. Argument is a blunt
weapon; science is helpless before stubbornness; but
show a man that the lowliest Christian is possessed
of the same spiritual life which he knows himself, and
you make all arbitrary limitations and divisions for-
ever impossible ; all essential fellowships forever neces-
sary. "For he is our peace, who . . . brake down
the middle wall of partition." The Christian life in
lowly men is just as revolutionary as the New Testa-
ment represents it to be. A class or a race with this
experience is a new creation. For it old things have
passed away. It is no longer a question of the natural
powers or capacities of men. For the entire human
race the central fact is the re-creation and reinter-
pretation of life by Jesus Christ, and the development
of new moral forces through his leadership; "By the
one spirit are we all baptized into the one body,
whether we be bond or free."

236 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

Missions at Home. Home missions themselves
have not always accorded full and equal membership
in the body of the nation and of Christ to those whom
we think to be "less honorable, more feeble, un-
comely." The denominations have differed greatly in
their fidelity to the needs of the Negro, Indian, and
other non-European groups, as measured by the pro-
portion of money and men expended in their behalf.
Home missions as denominational church extension
have flourished throughout the field, but the peoples
who could not recompense the church in conspicuous
success or rapid growth have sometimes been forgot-
ten. It is necessary then, sometimes at least, to make
distinctions within the home missionary field itself and
to discriminate between home missions and missions at
home. Thus "missions at home" may stand for the
vast work for remoter and non-European aliens under
our flag, which in problem and method is essentially a
duplicate of foreign missions. So much is this true
that many branches of such work, though on American
soil, are still conducted by the foreign boards of
certain denominations. Since all the deeper bases of
civilization are lacking with such peoples, social serv-
ice for them has to mean, not so much the rectifying
of bad conditions, as the creation of fundamental social
relations. The civilized home, the modern social com-
munity, every deeper aspect of the common life have
to be refounded as well as nourished and directed.
Farm, shop, and kindergarten have to precede the more
highly organized and ecclesiastical forms of religious

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 237

institutions. Relatively speaking, such poor and lowly-
people can do little for themselves financially, and their
missions will cost proportionately more; also results
will be slower. Yet effective loyalty to home missions
means loyalty to them in the persons of the least of
these our brethren. Man for man, home for home,
community for community, they represent the most
desperate of America's needs for brotherly bounty and
friendship.

Loving and Liking. But service is not all we owe
them : there is the deeper debt of appreciation. A sen-
sitive and welcoming recognition that the American
Qiurch is genuinely reenforced by the new moral
powers born in lowly peoples and races is the finest
exercise of social faith. It is the most vital test of
spritual discrimination in a too complacent Church.
That we are receivers as well as givers, that we need
the alien and stranger with their fresh inspirations,
young hearts, and novel glow of ideals is one of the
greatest social discoveries of American Christianity
through home missions.

4. Home and Foreign Missions. The social reali-
zation of Christianity in America depends again upon
the naturalization of Christianity in every nation. It is
not enough that we be reenforced by the gifts and graces
of the new or varied peoples who throng our borders.
Redemption is a world-wide task. The redemption of
our land will come through the fellowships of a world-
wide task, and not alone through our fellowship of
missionary service in foreign lands. We live in an

238 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

age, not only of stupendous migrations of peoples, but
of stupendous movements which both ebb and flow.
From other shores they come to us; to other shores
from us they go. And far more potent than the
momentous recessional of returning pilgrim feet is the
still, small voice of new ideas which he whispers back
to his old home, and which ink and steel, vibrant wire
and thrilling ether echo to every corner of the earth.
Home missions and foreign missions merge and inter-
penetrate as nations move backward and forward
among the continents and pass from moral zone to
moral zone. The typical missionary sits no more in
distant loneliness, but stands on the crowded highway
of nations and sends daily greetings to his brother
across the world by the emigrant who passes 6is
door.

Utilizing World Experience. What America needs
to complete her social version of the gospel in action
can only be discovered for her as the outcome of so-
cial experiments in Christianity as naturalized in the
East and the South and wrought out in practise by
the genius of the darker races under the direction of
the indigenous spirit. Foreign missions must give way
to the home missions of Asia and Africa. Two
divine calls are theirs, of equal moment for the salva-
tion of the nations : first, the call to go ; second, the
call to come away. First, they must evangelize the
people; second, naturalize the gospel by the thorough
founding of the native Church. Then the work of
foreign missions is over. Where foreign missions end,

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 239

home missions begin. All deeper issues must be faced,
all ultimate social applications of the gospel for Asia
and Africa made by the native Church conducting its
own home missions into social fields under the guidance
of the one Spirit, dividing insight and efficiency to
each several race and continent even as he will.

Process of Give and Take. Then will begin that
final process of give and take between the home mis-
sionary fields of earth which will make world experi-
ence available for all and give social Christianity its
widest induction and its broadest catholicity. Those
social ultimates, the family, the Church, the state, will
get their final form from the experiences of the total
human race. Faith and brotherhood will get world
reenforcement and world definition. Till that day they
remain fragmentary even for us. Christian society
must mean the permeation of the common life of the
whole earthly family of God. It can never be realized
in America alone. Apart from all the rest we shall
not be made perfect.

5. Whose Is the Church? The social realization
of Christianity in America depends upon the Church's
radical and sincere repentance of her social isola-
tion. She needs not only the gifts of comers
from all lands, and the graces which can bloom only
in other lands where Christ has become their very
own: she needs as well, yea, first, the worth and loy-
alty of all sorts and conditions of men in our own
America. The Church has position, wealth, technical
resources, and ideals largely because it has received an

240 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

unearned increment from the land and a monopoly ad-
vantage from industry. These have unlocked all the
higher treasures of civilization. The Church has ex-
perienced the profitableness of godliness and proved
the permanent relations which exist between thrift and
virtue and success. It is the Church of people whose
fathers worked hard; the farmer's Church and the
small capitalist's Church ; the institution of the achiev-
ing older population which got hold of natural re-
sources first.

Wealth to Be Democratized. The Church is to be
honored rather than blamed for this condition. She
cannot permanently raise any one to her own position
of advantage except through the same discipline and
on the same terms of character. What troubles hef
peace is the verified suspicion that late comers of equal
capacity and likelihood of character have not now
the same advantage to capitalize their virtues in the
acquirement of wealth and position. It is for the
Church therefore to repent of her exclusive advantage
and to put an end to it. Christian wealth must be
democratized — not by arbitrary equalization or divi-
sion— ^but by the development of a juster social order
which will rapidly equalize it ; by the control of wages
and profits, by taxation and by exacting standards
of Christian stewardship in the use of property.

An Old Virtue to the Front. Taxes must be re-
stored to the place of preeminent virtue which they
occupied in the Old Testament, and the Church must
cease to misquote, as exhortations to Christian char-

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 241

ity, Scriptures whose first application was to the poHti-
cal duty of taxpaying. But taxation must be in-
terpreted religiously in the light of the best Christian
and modern social emphasis. Giving must be carried
out in humility and repentance. Benevolence must take
a third place in the catalog of social virtues. If taxes
come first, personal service comes second, and the giv-
ing of money only third. Of these three the greatest
is taxes. But benevolence has still its place and in
the support of the voluntary Church and its vast train
of missionary and human enterprises it is the central
one. It is preeminently the virtue which makes home
missions possible. In all its uses benevolence must put
on humility. Only humility and works meet for re-
pentance can take away the taint which clings to too
much missionary money.

Keeping Goodness Good. The Church's ideals
must be democratized; she must be humble in her
moral superiorities; she must repent of her frequent
sunderings from the masses, even when their separa-
tions have been partly due to the higher personal ideals
and the finer individual conduct of the church-member.
None of these elements of goodness can even remain
good without their recombination with the more ro-
bust and modern excellencies of social morality, in
which often enough the religious teacher needs to sit
at the feet of the trade-unionist, and the rural saint to
go to school to the city child. Only the speediest
spread and equalization of the moral advantages of
the Church can keep them from decay. The presence

242 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

of this deep mood of repentance in the fundamental
thinking of home missions is a necessary condition
of the social realization of Christianity in America.

6. Environment and the Average Christian. The
social realization of Christianity in America de-
pends, finally, upon an effective strategy of social
control. The Church is committed through the home
missionary enterprise to a social program confessedly
in advance of the average conscience. Just as mis-
sions propose to organize an uplifting environment for
the socially depressed people; just as they try to re-
deem the young criminal by putting him in a com-
munity of higher ideals; so missions propose to or-
ganize an uplifting environment for the average Chris-
tian in which his collective will may function more
generously and wisely than his individual will would
do. The individual Christian is immensely dependent
upon the moralizing pressure of the collective religious
life. This is only to say that he is truly a member
of a spiritual body of which the Church is the visible
organ. The Church is in a strategic position of social
advantage. As an organization it is greatly in con-
trol of the moral atmosphere of its adherents. Its
deep power over them was shown by its former ability
to put upon them a sectarian stamp. It achieved this
end only by ceaseless education. It now sets itself to
put a social stamp upon the mind and conduct of its
members, to do which it must still ceaselessly educate
under a redirected social impulse.

Religious Education, In its larger social expression

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 243

religious education uses the pulpit, the Sunday-
school, and the manifold agencies of public opinion.
It involves a modern use of the Bible as a book of
social invention and adventure; as an instrument for
the guidance of social experiment, and not as a reposi-
tory of doctrine or a completed code of social laws.
Religious education embraces and must direct the con-
crete study of social issues and must interpret the so-
cial surveys which have been explained as the current
method of approach to social duty. Finally, religious
education must include mission study as the record of
the outstanding achievements of the Church, both
social and spiritual, both at home and abroad. Thus
it becomes one of the essential elements in the strategy
of Christian conquest.

Constructive Statesmanship. Home missions have
made the Church one of the chief factors in American
social life. The Church in turn recognizes and sup-
ports home missionary organizations as one of the
chief devices of social progress and control. Among
the greatest triumphs of modern invention are the so-
cial organizations which the new age has originated.
In their local and national phases, expressed either in
the men that they control, the money that they use,
or the influence which they wield, organized home
missions rank with the trusts or the trade-unions as
one of the first-rate social achievements of the genera-
tion. With their experts, their increasingly precise
technique, their ability to dispose their vast forces as
to time, place, and need, and especially in their coop-

244 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

erative results — interdenominational and Interna-
tional— they reach the highest constructive statesman-
ship. They are the most efficient, dominant, and
highly Christianized of agencies for planting the king-
dom of God on the soil of America.

America Becoming Christian. Among the most en-
viable of men is that group of missionary administra-
tors whose part it is, in behalf of the Church, to know
these United States in their social and Christian prob-
lems and potencies, from end to end, and from top to
bottom. Probably they, as no one else, understand
the redirection of patriotism and affection involved in
the social vision of the home missionary task.

A Land of Natural Charms. To know any part of
our land is to love it. The white birches silhouetted
against the dark hemlocks on the New England hill-
side ; the tender little creeping greenery delicately em-
broidering the feet of the Adirondack forest; the
meeting of rugged highland and misty marshes at
the nation's greatest gateway, and the mighty stretch
of reddening sunrise over the waving marsh grasses
up and down all our coastal plain; the widespread
shade of the live oaks draped with Spanish moss,
equally stir and engage the affections of one whose
parish is the nation. The lapping deep-green waters
of the Great Lakes; the dotted farms and forests of
the interior wreathed in the smoke of factory chim-
neys; the steep bridle paths of the Southern Appalach-
ians winding under majestic chestnut and mighty
beech; the smiling cotton fields of the Southern up-

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 245

lands and plains enclosed in a framework of pine tree
and vine, — all are the familiar furnishing of home
to one who lives wherever the flag flies. The shimmer
of sunlight over the prairie; the rich yellow of wheat
ripe for harvest; the smoking gray of the new-turned
prairie sod; and then the high plains southward over
ranch and mine, to where, against the serrated back-
ground of mountains, the cactus towers -as the sand-
like pillars in the ruins of Karnak, and the day-long
mirage mocks one day after day, — each has a mystic
compulsion over the heart of one who knows them all.
From the white peaks of the farther Rockies ; from the
Cascades forested somberly by the firs ; from the stark
grandeur of the high Sierras to the virile beauty of
the Golden Gate, and the smiling gardens and orchards,
with the ancient missions slumbering in the mellow
light between the foothills and the unutterably white
surf of the Pacific, — our land is goodly to know and
to call ours.

A Land of Human Splendor. But infinitely the
most beautiful part of America — the most majestic,
alluring, and passionately compelling is its wealth of
people and of divine incentives to brotherliness. Ours
is a land of human splendor, passing increasingly
under the mastery of Jesus Christ. To miss this is to
miss all; and how often it is missed!

Barrier of the Unfamiliar. Confession perhaps
may best serve the case at this point. Once on a
vacation ramble in Vermont, I experienced one of the
most dramatic surprises of my life. Following a

246 THE NEW HOME MISSIONS

mountain path, I seemed to hear the voice of angry,
quarreling men. My mind pictured a drunken crowd,
carousing in the woods, and I would have turned
aside if I could. Persisting, however, I came upon a
group of Slavic folk picking blackberries; mothers
with little children at their breasts, garrulous grand-
mothers, maidens, brothers, and lovers — all peaceful,
domestic, innocent. And the violent brutal words
which I had heard were the most dulcet tones of the
Itskys and Ozskys. / had never heard them before.
Yet in that tongue mild mothers had crooned their
babes to sleep for centuries ; man had wooed maid ; God
had heard prayers. The excuse, therefore, that I had
never heard it before lacked something of cogency,
partook somewhat of stupidity and provincialism. Yet
for less cause age-long animosities have been cherished.
Herodotus thought the barbarous tongue-tied, so
strange their language sounded to him. And, at the
bottom of their minds, millions of men imagine that
those who differ from them by some superficiality of
color, voice, or mental pace really suffer some positive
defect, or at least somehow lack complete humanity.

The Bond of Peace. For the lack of this keen
and compelling sense of inner likeness and fraternity,
Christianity fails of social realization in America.
Separated by our vast divergencies of origin and tra-
ditions; kept asunder by the vast extent and physical
variety of our country, how desperate the need of a
unifying spirit, of a bond of peace! How wonder-
ful to know and to testify, of personal knowledge, that

REALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 247

everywhere middle walls of partition are breaking
down and men being made one in the blood of the
cross; that out of every tribe and tongue and people
and nation the transformation into kings and priests
unto God is under way.

Privilege and Task. The people under God are
the strength and glory of the land. A mighty land —
to glimpse whose future is to share a mission with the
stars ; to control whose destinies is to stand within the
grip of the right hand of the omnipotent God. What
then lovingly and faithfully to follow and to serve
all the strange and complicated paths of social duty
into the furthest recesses, the uttermost nooks and
crannies of human relationship; to control their inner
qualities and applications as well as their outer exhibi-
tions and forms ! What then to occupy this land for
Christ, not fragmentarily as the field has won upon the
forest, nor fitfully, as the wind sweeps over the prai-
ries, but searchingly, engulfingly, as the waters cover
the sea! What then to share in thy social realization
of Christianity, O country of our love!

"And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea,"

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pioneer Missions

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Qark, Joseph B. Leavening the Nation. 1903, Baker & Taylor
Company, New York. $1.25, net.

Douglass, T. C. Pilgrims of Iowa. 191 1. Pilgrim Press, Bos-
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Hines, H. K. Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest.
1899. H. K. Hines, Portland, Oregon. $1.50.

Piatt, Ward. The Frontier. 1908. Missionary Education Move-
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Puddefoot, W. G. The Minute Man on the Frontier. 1895.
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Shelton, Don O. Heroes of the Cross in America. 1904. Mis-
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Sloan, William N. Spiritual Conquest Along the Rockies. 1913.
George H. Doran Company, New York. $1.25, net.

Stewart, Robert L. Sheldon Jackson. 1908. Fleming H. Re-
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Talbot, Ethelbert. My People of the Plains. Harper & Bros.,
1906, New York. $1.75, net.

Tomlinson, Everett T. The Fruit of the Desert. 1907. Grif-
fith & Rowland Press, Philadelphia. $1.25.

Tuttle, Daniel S. Reminiscences of a Missionary Bishop. 1906.
Thomas Whittaker, New York. $2.00, net.

Whipple, Henry B. Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate.
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252 BIBLIOGRAPHY

City

Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. 1909.
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Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House. 1910. The Mac-
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Betts, Lillian W. The Leaven in a Great City. 1902. Dodd,
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DeForest, R. W., and Veiller, L. Tenement House Problem, 2
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Howe, F. C. The City the Hope of Democracy. 1905. Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.50, net.

McCulloch, J. E. The Open Church for the Unchurched. 1905.
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Riis, Jacob A. The Battle With the Slum. 1902. The Mac-
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Sears, Charles H. The Redemption of the City. 191 1. Griffith
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Stelzle, Charles. Christianity's Storm Center. 1907. Fleming
H. Revell Company, New York. $1.00.

Strong, Josiah. The Challenge of the City. 1907. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.

Wilcox, Delos F. The American City. 1904. The Macmillan
Company, New York. $1.25.

Country Church

Anderson, W. L. The Country Town. 191 1. Baker & Taylor
Company, New York. $1.00, net.

Ashenhurst, J. O. The Day of the Country Church. 1910.
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Bricker, Garland A. Solving the Country Church Problem.
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Butterfield, K. L. The Country Church and the Rural Problem.

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Association Press, New York. 75 cents.
Gill, C. O., and Pinchot, Gifford. The Country Church. 1913.

The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25.
Plunkett, Sir Horace. The Rural Life Problem in the United

States. 1910. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25.
Roads, Charles. Rural Christendom. 1909. American Sunday

School Union, Philadelphia. 90 cents.
Wilson, Warren H. The Church of the Open Country. 1911.

Missionary Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.

Immigration

Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 1912. Houghton, Mifflin
Company, New York. $1.75.

Antin, Mary. They Who Knock at Our Gates. 1914. Hough-
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Commons, J. R. Races and Immigrants in America. 1907. The
Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.

Fairchild, Henry P. Immigration. 1913. The Macmillan Com-
pany, New York. $1.75, net.

Haskin, Frederic K. The Immigrant. 1913. Fleming H. Re-
vell Company, New York. $1.25.

Jenks, Jeremiah W., and Lauck, W. Jett. The Immigration
Problem. 1912. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York.

$175.

Roberts, Peter. The New Immigration. 1912. The Macmillan
Company, New York. $1.50.

Shriver, W. P. Immigrant Forces. 1913. Missionary Educa-
tion Movement, New York. 60 cents.

Steiner, Edward A. The Broken Wall. 191 1. Fleming H. Re-
vel! Company, New York. $1.00.

Wame, Frank J. The Immigrant Invasion. 1913. Dodd, Mead
& Company, New York. $2.50, net.

254 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Races

Baker, Ray S. Following the Color Line. 1908. Doubleday,
Page & Co., New York. $2.00, net.

Brain, Belle M. The Transformation of Hawaii. 1898. Flem-
ing H. Revell Company, New York. $1.00.

Brown, Arthur J. The New Era in the Philippines. 1903.
Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.25.

Douglass, H. Paul. Christian Reconstruction in the South.
1909. Pilgrim Press, Boston. $1.50.

Grinnell, George B. The Story of the Indian. 1895. D. Apple-
ton & Company, New York. $1.50.

Grose, Howard B. Advance in the Antilles. 1910. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.

Hammond, L. H. In Black and White. 1914. Fleming H.
Revell Company, New York. $1.25, net.

Helm, Mary. The Upward Path. 1909. Missionary Education
Movement, New York, 60 cents.

Hinman, George W. "The Oriental in America." 1913. Mis-
sionary Education Movement, New York. 5 cents.

Humphrey, Seth K. The Indian Dispossessed. 1905. Little,
Brown & Co., Boston. $1.50.

Leupp, Francis E. In Red Man's Land. 1914. Fleming H.
Revell Company, New York. 50 cents, net.

Leupp, Francis E. The Indian and His Problem. 1910. Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.00.

Miller, Kelly. Race Adjustment. 1908. Neale Publishing Com-
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Moffett, Thomas C. The American Indian on the New Trail.
1914. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 60
cents.

Murphy, Edgar G. Problems of the Present South. 1909. Long-
mans, Green & Co., New York. $1.50, net.

Oldham, W. F. India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. 1914.
Eaton & Mains, New York. $1.00.

Stone, Alfred H. Studies in the American Race Problem. 1908.
Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $2.00.

iWaid, Eva Clark. Alaska, the Land of the Totem. Woman's

BIBLIOGRAPHY 255

Board of Home Missions, Presbyterian Church in U. S. A.,

New York. 50 cents.
Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. 1900. Doubleday,

Page & Co., New York. $1.50, net.
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Revell Company, New York. 25 cents, net.

General Social

Batten, S. Z. The Social Task of Christianity. 191 1. Fleming

H. Revell Company, New York. $1.25.
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1906. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.25, net.
Clow, W. M. Christ in the Social Order. 1913. George H.

Doran Company, New York. $1.25, net.
Cooley, C. H. Human Nature and the Social Order. 1902.

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.50.
Cutting, R. F. The Church and Society. 1913. The Macmillan

Company, New York. $1.25.
Dickinson, Charles H. The Christian Reconstruction of Modern

Life. 1913. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50,

net.
Elarp, Edwin L. The Social Engineer. 191 1. Eaton & Mains,

New York. $1.50, net
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1910. Eaton & Mains, New York. $1.50, net.
Henderson, C. R. Social Duties from the Christian Point of

View. 1898. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. $1.25.
King, Henry C. The Moral and Religions Challenge of Our

Times. 191 1. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.
Mathews, Shailer. The Making of To-Morrow. 1913. Eaton

& Mains, New York. $1.00, net.
Mathews, Shailer. The Social Teaching of Jesus. 1910. The

Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50, net.
Mathews, Shailer. The Church and the Changing Order. The

Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50, net.
Mathews, Shailer. The Social Gospel. 1910. Pilgrim Press,

Boston. 50 cents, net

256 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nearing, Scott. Social Religion. 1913. The Macmillan Com-
pany, New York. $1.00, net.
Patten, Simon N. The New Basis of Civilisation. 1907. Tke

Macmillan Company, New York. $1.00, net.
Patten, Simon N. The Social Basis of Religion. 191 1. The

Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25, net.
Peabody, Francis G. Jesus Christ and the Social Question.

1900. Grosset & Dunlap, New York. 50 cents, net.
Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianizing the Social Order. 1912.

The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50, net.
Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianity and the Social Crisis.

1908. The Macmillan Company, New York. 50 cents, net.
Ross, E. A. Social Control. 1901. The Macmillan Company,

New York. $1.25, net
Scudder, Vida D. Socialism and Character. 1912. Houghton,

Mifflin Company, New York. $1.50.
Smith, Samuel G. Democracy and the Church. 1912. D. Ap-

pleton & Co., New York. $1.50, net.
Spargo, John. The Bitter Cry of the Children. 1906. The

Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50, net.
Stelzle, Charles. The W orkingtnan and Social Problems. 1903.

Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. 75 cents, net.
Stelzle, Charles. American Social and Religious Conditions,

1912. Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.00.
Taylor, G. Religion in Social Action. 1913. Dodd, Mead &

Co., New York. $1.25, net.
Thompson, C. B. The Churches and the Wage Earners. 1909.

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.00, net.
Tippy, W. M. The Socialised Church. 1909. Eaton & Mains,

New York. 50 cents.
Ward, Harry F. Social Creed of the Churches. 1912. Eaton

& Mains, New York. 50 cents, net.

INDEX

INDEX

A

Abolition talk, 44
Academy, democracy of the, 41
Adams, Dr. E. A., 122
Admission of Western States to

the Union, 5
American Bible Society, 39
American Church, chief business

of, 45; future task, 46
American Home Missionary So-
ciety, 15
American rule in Porto Rico, 168
American Tract Society, 39
American sects, origins of, 196,

197
"Americanization of the World,"

26
Amherst, a proposed center for

training rural pastors, 68
Andover Theological Seminary

essay, quoted, 14
Anniversaries, uses of, 74
Anthropology and the Negro,

173
Aristotle, quoted, 179
Armageddon, the racial, 172
Advantages of city life, 97-100
Agriculture, as affected by horse-
power machinery, 12, 13; new
idealistic note, 64; problem of
a ministry adapted to present
needs, 66-76
Agriculture, Illinois College of,

64
Alfalfa, 87

Alien, the, assimilation of, 124,
125; first problems of, 113;

revulsion of older popula-
tions from, 115

Aliens and "barbarians" on the
upper Missouri, 135, 136

Assimilation of aliens, 124, 125

Atlantic Monthly, quoted, 4

Automobile, 52, 71

B

Band of settlers, a typical, 19

Bank, first in at opening of a
reservation, 52; in plan of
community center, 72

Baptists, 17, 133

Baseball should be a factor in
rural play, 73

Bible, lack of, 10; plans for cir-
culation, 39; value of in
Protestant view, 40; Biblical
chairs, 67

Birmingham, Ala., 133

Blackburn, Dr. Gideon, 19, 36

Black Hawk strip, 40

Boas, Professor Franz, quoted,

173, 174

Bohemia, 122

Books, poverty in, of early

Mississippi Valley region, 39,

40
Boy Scouts, 74
Brotherhood, the fact of, 183-

186
Brown, E. E., quoted, 41
Browning, Robert, referred to,

225
Buckley, James M., 16

259

26o

INDEX

Buddhism, 165
Burleson, H. L., 16, 46

Call to home mission work, 230
Camp Fire Girls, 74
Campbell, Alexander, 197

Canaan, contrasted accounts of
conquest of, 191

Capital and industry, 130, 131

Capitalist, a mountaineer, 79

Cartwright, Peter, 33

Carver, Professor T. N., chal-
lenge of, 78; quoted, 12, 21, 51

Case of social failure, 200

Catalog of social ideals, 147

Cattle tick, 87; mountain men
and the, 49, 53

Census views, 217

Champaign, 111., a center of
agricultural education, 67

Charity Organization Societies,
148

Child labor, 84; Committees,
148; in the country home, 74

Child, old-time city and country,
100

Chinese immigrant, the, 163

Christ. See Jesus Christ

Christian Reconstruction in the
South, 181

Church, the, as respects Ameri-
can social life, 243; fields of,
76; problems of, 64

Church school, ideal of the early,
40

Cities of the stranger, 112, 113

Citizen, the, 100

City church, conditions in, loi-
105; family type, 103; for
foreign-speaking people, 105

City, glory of, 97; reason for, 94;
shame of, 96; some statistics,

93

City life, advantages of, 97-100

City's machinery, 96

Civil War, some results of, 24

Claim outlining in the North-
west, 51

Clannishness, 11 1

Clark, Joseph B., quoted, 15 ;

Coal deposits, 83

Colorado Survey, 202

Colored Farmers' Coufty Fair,
85

Community and the Citizen, The,
35

Community, bank, center,
church, creamery, school,
store, 72

Community - minded church
needed in the country, 72

Community spirit, 71, 72

Community, the transplanted, 33

Congregational Church, 11

CongregationaUsm, 22, 133

Connecticut Missionary Society,
the, II

Conquest of national domain
completed by home missions,
50

Conquest of the Continert, The,
16, 46

Conscience, the modem Chris-
tian, 143

Consolidated school, 72

Constitution of state, itinerant's
thought of, 27

"Consultations," 213

Cooperation rapidly growing
among denominations, 207-
222

Cooperative creamery and store,
72

Corinthians, Second, xi. 26-29,
quoted, 37

Cornelius and Peter incident,
184, 186

Cornell University, proposed al-
liance for training rural pas-
tors, 68

Cotton boll-weevil, 87

Cotton, growth of and slavery,
17; King, 23

Council of Women for Home
Missions, 210

INDEX

261

Country store's successor, 72
County Teachers' Institute, 86
Cumberland Presbjrterianism, 197
Cutler, Manasseh, career of, 31,

D

Dairy industry, 49

Darwinism, misunderstood, 76

Dates, crucial, 5

"Death in the Desert, A," 225

Debt to the alien, our, 119

Degradation in Southern high-
lands, 78

Democratization of wealth, 240

Denominational, colleges, 42 ;
families reuniting, 215; move-
ments explained, 16, 17

Denominationalism in home mis-
sions, 199; effects of, 200, 201

De Tocqueville alluded to, 12

Devoutness, 73

Dewey, Professor John, quoted,
176

"Dilution" of the American
element, 118, 126

Divergences and the bond of
peace, 246

Douglass, T. O., Autobiography,
quoted, 19, 20, 48; Pilgrims of
Iowa, 44

Dowie, John Alexander, sect
founder, 197

"Down-town" church, 104

Dry farming, 51

Drew Theological Seminary, al-
liance proposed, for training
rural pastors, 68

Dunn, A. W. quoted, 35

Early settlers, the, 12

Economic processes and social
control, 143, 144

Eddy, Mrs. Mary B. G., sect
founder, 197

Education, for non-European
peoples, 175, 176; of the South-
em Negro, 173

Education in the United States
Since the Civil War, 43

Ely, Richard T., referred to, 133

Emotional religion, 8

English language, effect of teach-
ing, 119, 120

Episcopal Church and missions,
16

Equality not necessary, 171

Erie Canal, 5; effect of its com-
pletion, 21

Eskimo, the, 163

Evolution, of a city, 94-96; of
the American people, 82

Evolution of the Country Com-
munity, The, 49

F

Faith in lowly men, 234

Far West, the semi-arid, 24

Farm work in pioneer times, 12;
revision of methods, 75

Farmer, the, 13, 14; and the
community church, 11; new,
64; vanishing race, 61

Fathers feared rather than loved
by many country-bred chil-
dren, 74

Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in America, 134, 137,
214; social creed formulated,
144

Festivals and pageants to be
used in rural life, 74

Fisher, Dr. F. P., referred to,
221

Florida purchase, the, 5

Foreigners in U. S., no; assimi-
lation of, 53; churches for, 105

Forests conquered, prairies en-
tered, II

Frontier gone, 50, 61

Gain, facts of the Church's, 198
Garden and poultry for farm boys
and girls, 75

262

INDEX

Giddings, F. H., quoted on types
of mental make-up, 219

Give and take, 113, 119, 239

Gladden, Washington, 133

Glove-factory data, 95

Grange, the, an agency in the
new era, 73

H

Half -holiday, for country young
people, 75

Hampton Institute, 45

Hand-power and horse- power, 12

Harvard and Yale and Church
, control, 42

Hawaiian, the, 166, 168

Health, city and country, 97, 98

Helm, Mary, quoted, 44

Hindu immigrant, the, 164

History of the Pacific Northwest, 6

Holy Rollers, the, 81

Home Missionary, quoted, 40

Home Missions, early form and
work of, 3-48; redirection of,
53-58; now applied to the
country, 61-88; serving the
city and stranger, 93-126;
wide social bearings, 129-247

Home Missions Council, 208,
213

Homesteading, 61-63

Hookworm, 168

Immigration, changes In char-
acter of, 112

Inadequate basis for missions, 82

Indebtedness to the alien, our,
119

Indian in Relation to the Whito
Population, The, 45

Indians, the, 5, 8, 61, 162, 168;
missionary, 26; missions, 45;
reservation opening, 51, 52

Individuality encouraged, 74

Initiative, 46; farm boys and
girls to have room for, 75

Inner resources, 180

Institutional church, the, 104

Intensive, moral husbandry, 65;
program, 69

Interchurch federations, 112

International Sunday School As-
sociation, 211

Iowa Band, the, 37, 42

Irrigation, 50

Itinerant, the, 8, 26, 36

Japanese in America, 165; a

possible church, 218
Jersey prize pig, 86
Jesus Christ, 58, 183; interpret-
ing religion and life, 153, 235;
recognized as alone Leader
and Head, 178, 222
Jew in America, the, 122, 123
Joseph Keasby Brick School, 84
Justice, machinery of social,
lacking, 132

Lack of men in social service, 228

Land values, 62

Landmarks of Western expan-
sion, 4, 5

Language differences, 246

Language group churches, 105

Lay missionary, the, 66

Lay preachers, 9, 18, 19

Layman and his purse, the, 205

Laymen's Missionary Move-
ment, 210

Leadership, 20, 65, 66, 71, 121;
of Jesus Christ, 178

Leavening the Nation, 15

Lee, Jason, 35

Louisiana purchase, 5

"Lower" races, 171

Lumber tracts, 79

M

McComas, H. C, 220
McCord, Grandfather, 19
Mc Kenzie, F. A., quoted, 45

INDEX

263

Machinery lacking for social

justice, 132
Madison, Wis., a center of

agricultural education, 67
Making of Our Middle Schools, 41
Market, the, in rural redirection,

73
Marietta Colony, 32
Men and Religion Movement,

210
Messianic activities, the, 153
Methodism, 16
Methodism a missionary system,

9

Methodists and Baptists among
pioneer missionaries, 81

Methods, early, of home mission
work, II

Mexican, the, 166, 168

Milk and the farmer, 98

Mill town, from the farm to the,
82

Miller, William, religious orig-
inator, 197

MilUners' windows, 73

Mills and Schermerhom's reiport
on frontier conditions, 9, 10, 39

Mind of Primitive Man, The, 173

Minister, the rural, preparing,
placing, paying, and keeping,
68-70

Missionary Education Move-
ment, 211

Missionary methods change, 14

Missionary pastor, 36, 37, 122

Missionary Survey, an early, 9

"Missions at home," 236

Missouri River missionary, a,

135

Money, ready, a need of farm
boys and girls, 75

Moral issues, 53, 55

Morals and milk, 49

Mormonism, 50

Morristown Survey, 149

Motive, search for the source of,
76, 77,

Mountain; agriculture, 82; com-
munity, 78-82

Moving "pictures should be a

factor in rural recreation, 73
Muscatine, Iowa, 137-140, 141
My Pedagogical Creed, 176

N

National Survey, 204
Near at hand mission field, a, 89
Neglected fields survey, 202
Negro, the, 83-88, 161, 168, 172,
180, 182; education of the
Southern, 173; farmers' asso-
ciation, 85; jubilee melodies,
183; missions to, 45; religious
experience, 182; service for,
122, 209
New Englander, the, 20-22
New far-reaching questions, 55
New Testament religion, 225,

233
New woman, the, 180
New York Federation of Church-
es, 204, 205
Non-European peoples, needs of
the, 175, 176, 236; in the United
States, 168
North, Dr. F. M., quoted on

pure air, 98
Norwegian Sunday-school super-
intendent, a, 124

O

Ohio Company, the, 32
Ohio's early settlers, 18
Old age pensions, 151 ^
Open gates, our duty respecting,

118
O'Reilly's tribute to the Pilgrims,

126
Organization, of American Home

Missionary Society, 15; of

early Boards, 10, 11
Oriental exclusion, 164
Our Country, 35
Our national unity, 116

264

INDEX

Overchurching, 119-206
Overorganization, danger of, 46

Pacific Northwest, opening of, 6
Pathos in immigration, 112
Pearl buttons, 137
Personal experience and social

service, 229
Phillips Academies, the, 41
Physiography and the farmer, 51
Picture show suggestions to aliens,

115, 116
Pilgrims of Iowa, 44
Pioneers in forest and prairie,

6-1 1
Plantation system, 23, 24
Play, value of, in the country,

73-75
Political strife, 23
Politics and service, 107
Pond, Dr. William C, 122
Populations, non-European in

the United States, 168
Porto Rican, the, 167, 168
Porto Rico, 209
Prayer, the mystic key, 231
Presbyterian Church, 11, 20
Presbyterian early work, 9, 10,

39 .

Principles of Rural Economics, 12
"Problem of the West," quoted,

4

Protestantism and labor, 103
Psychology of Religious Sects, 220
Puritan spirit, the, 126
Purse, a share in, the right of
mothers or wives, 75

Q

Quakers, 17

Questions, new far-reaching, 55

R

Race, our attitude toward, 169,
170

Redemption a world-wide task,

237
Redirection of home missions,

53-58
"Regions beyond," the, 3
Religion, the farmer's, 13; new

application of, 53
Religious education, 243
Religious experience and the

Negro, 182
Religious Movements for Social

Betterment, 45.
Revival, the early, 8; the farm-
er's, 14
Rhode Island possible new

Church adjustment, 204
Rise of the New West, 7
Rivalry, church, 199
Roads, good, a community asset,

T, 7^ 73

Rochester Theological Seminary,
proposed alliance, 68

Roman Catholic Church, the,
123, 124

Ross, E. A., quoted, 161

Rural Economics, 51

Rural life methods, 70 - 75 ;
Church and state in agricul-
tural processes, 76, 77

Russell Sage Foundation Social
Service Bulletin, 142

Rutgers College, proposed al-
liance, 68

Rutledge, David, wins prize
pig, 86

Safeguarding the home, 44
Sam and Sandro, 170
Sanitation, 97, 98
Saturation point in immigration,

117
Schafer, Joseph, quoted, 6, 35
School, Church ideal in the early,

40
School Improvement Leagues,

86
Schoolmaster, the, 22

INDEX

265

Scientific method in home mis-
sions, the, 57

Scotch-Irish, the, 18-20, 36, 80

Seamless robe, a, 225

Sectarianism, 192-199

SectionaHsm, 22

Sects, origin of American, 196,
197

Shacks and barbed wire in secur-
ing claims, 51

Shortcomings of the early home
mission workers, 47

Silsby, Dr. E, C, 122

Skyscraper morality, 55

Slavery and cotton-growing, 17,

23-25

Slavic group in Vermont, a, 246

Smallpox epidemic, lessons from
a, 48, 49

Smith, Joseph, sect originator,
197

Social, aim and by-product, 58;
conscience, 159; creed of the
American churches, 144, 145;
engineer, 57; frontier, 56;
ideals, 147; leadership of Jesus
Christ, 232, 233; misery, 157,
159; problem, 130; sectarian-
ism, 218; service of Church
and state, 228, 229; settlement,
106, 107, 157

Social and individual redemp-
tion, 54

Social Aspects 0} Foreign Mis-
sions, 211

Social Service Secretaries, Com-
mission of, 137-140

Social types, strange, 88

Soldier's Tennessee land grant,
a, 129

Solidarity of farm life, 74

South Dakota, cooperation in,
213

Southern settlers in the West,
18

Speculator, the farmer now tends
to be a, 62

Spiritual unity, 221

State, work of the, 76

States, admission of new to the

Union, 5
Statistics, Church in the United

States, 198; city and country,

93
Strangers and the Church, 109
Strategy, religious, 102
Strong, Dr. Josiah, quoted, 34,

45, 133, 134
Success of the Church, the, 198
Sunday-school, the, 38; library,

40
Sunday School Council of the

Evangelical Churches, 212
Survey method, strong approval

of, 69, 137
Survey, The, quoted, 133
Sutton, Professor William S.,

quoted, 173

Taxpaying, 241

Taylor, G. R., quoted, 133

Team-haul distance, 71

Theological and agricultural cen-
ters, favorable for rural pas-
toral training, 67, 68

Thinking and doing, 85

Thwing, C. F., 43

Todd, Pastor John, 44

Trapper and pioneer as vanished
classes, 61

Turner, F. J,, quoted, 4, 7, 18, 23

Types, strange social, 88

U

United States Bureau of Indian
Affairs, social workers of, 229
University of Texas Bulletin, 173
Upward Path, The, 44
Urbanized humanity, 100

V

Vices of the frontier, 10; pro-
tection of the family from the,
14

266

INDEX

Vermont, 203; cooperation in,

204, 206
Vocational education, 177

W

Washington (Terr.) and the
Yale Band, 70

Weekly half -holiday. See Half-
holiday.

Wells, Rev. George Frederick,
suggestions made by, 203

West, the, crucial dates for, 5;
significance of, 4; versus East,
22

Western Reserve Colony, a, 34

Whisky, 8

Wilson, Dr. Warren H., 20, 49,
50, 63

Wisconsin, federation in, 212

Woman, aiding in Church sup-
port in farmer period, 14;
educated by academies, 41;
now needing in country, better
guaranties of her comfort, re-
sources, and privileges, 75;
status and habits in mountain
community, 78-81

Working unity, 219

Worship and play, in rural
reconstruction, 73, 74

Yale Band, the, 70

Yankee in the West, the, 18-21,
36

Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, 120, 207

Young Women's Christian Asso-
ciation, 207

Mission Study Courses

'Anywhere, provided it be forward."— £>atAid Livingstone,

Prepared under the direction of the
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT

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Educational Committee: G. F. Sutherland, Chairman; A.
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