THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY
By Warren H. Wilson. The Pilgrim Press. 221 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of The Survey $1.35.
Because Dr. Wilson has made a clear and pointed statement of fundamental conditions, the student of rural sociology is grateful for this book, even though much of what it contains is obvious to him. Throughout, the writer shows his belief that the rural population can be improved by a socially actuated church. Although he believes that a country church should be inspirational he makes clear the fact that the church cannot succeed unless it enters into the whole life of the farm, economic and otherwise. For instance, Dr. Wilson very properly insists that if a farmer is producing but sixty bushels of potatoes on an acre of land which should yield three hundred bushels he is guilty of a wrong that should be denounced just as stridently as the doctrinal sins which have so long occupied the attention of rural pastors. In the co-operation of these activities rather than in actual union the writer sees promise of a solution of many of the problems of the country church. He shows clearly that people cannot be united in religion until they are united in their social economy.
“The business of the church is to organize co-operative enterprises, economic, social and educational, and ... to educate them in the advantages of life together. Co-operation must become a gospel.”
This definition of the business of the church may seem rather heterodox, coming from the head of a Presbyterian department, but the department of which Dr. Wilson is the head has reached its widely recognized effectiveness because it has been actuated by such aggressive common sense as this.
That the volume is dedicated to Anna B. Taft, who has contributed so largely to the success of the movement to reanimate country churches, is indeed pleasant. Dr. Wilson adds to the value of the volume by giving many definite instances of definite achievement in the redirection of country life through the church’s activity.
The book is well named; it does present in an orderly fashion the development of the country community. Dr. Wilson follows Professor Ross of Purdue in his definition of the four types of farmers—the pioneer, the land farmer, the exploiter, and the husbandman. The writer very happily shows that in many communities the evolution has proceeded so irregularly that all the four types of farmers are now living side by side, and that their four sides may be contending for mastery. That the pastor and the church ministering to the farmer of each type are determined by that type is a clearly stated lesson that social workers outside of rural communities might very well take to heart.
Some communities, Dr. Wilson recognizes, are exceptional. He apparently agrees with Prof. T. N. Carver of Harvard that the best farmers in the country are the Mormons, the Scotch Presbyterians, and the Pennsylvania Germans. Each one of these peoples—for they are no less—has come to agricultural prosperity because this agriculture has been built around the church. The organization of the Mormons, for instance, is not only efficient, but it revolves around the church. Dr. Wilson might very well have gone further in this connection and called attention to the fact that the leaders of the Latter Day Saints have made their people happy, here and now, by realizing that all their wants—social, economic, religious, political—were so closely interrelated that they must all be taken care of by collective action.
As a clear and well-proportioned statement, characterized by ample knowledge, careful statement and good temper, the book is valuable.
Warren Dunham Foster.