About 2,500 people live in the three townships described. Sixty years ago nearly all the people were Americans, many of them having emigrated from New York State. In later years the Americans have been supplanted by Germans and Scandinavians. The old settlers now lie at rest in the beautiful cemeteries which are taken care of by the communities with the same care and affection that is bestowed upon private homes and grounds. Many of the descendants of the first settlers are scattered far and wide throughout the United States. The Rev. Hubert C. Herring, Secretary of the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States, and one of the best known among home missionary leaders in America, was born and spent his early life in this section of Wisconsin. The school he attended is at the country cross-roads and near the school is the Presbyterian church which he joined. Dr. Herring’s first efforts at oratory were practised upon the neighboring boys and girls in the Philomathean Society, a country debating society, at that time a leading social and literary organization among the people of the community. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, one of the most popular and prominent of the magazine and newspaper writers, and who is well known to every reader in America, was born in this same township. Twelve other people who are influential nationally and internationally were born and reared in this community.
Most of the people hold their own farms and most of them have money on interest in the bank. The few families who rent farms are working, planning, and saving so that they can buy land and own their farms. The school-buildings are adequate and the grounds well kept; the teachers are efficient and intelligent; and the high school maintains an advanced standard. The young people go directly from these schools into the state university. Here, then, we have the material conditions that would seem to guarantee success in the work of the church. There is no poverty, and very few people can be said to be living on the fringe of the community. There is no overcrowding on the part of the churches, for there are only two American churches and they have a parish twelve miles wide and fifteen miles long, and the pastor serving both is the only English-speaking preacher in this whole district. Now what are the facts? One of these churches was closed for a number of years and now has services only once in every two weeks; the other was also closed for a number of years. One church has a Sunday-school with fifty members and a Christian Endeavor Society of thirty-six members; the church service is attended by twenty-five to forty people. One of the men in the community said: “Many of the people are foreign and have their own churches, of which there are seven in this district; but they have their troubles, for the children are breaking away from the old churches as they have broken from the old languages, and are beginning to come to our Sunday-school.” The community has a good moral record. There has never been a saloon, except at one point, and the two saloons that were located there were voted out years ago. The people are home-loving and law-abiding, but the two churches are not as successful as they were fifty years ago when they were filled at every service.
The first minister in the district was a graduate and honor man of Williams College, and the church was the center of the community life. People looked to the church, were helped and inspired; it sent out teachers, preachers, and other men and women trained in thoughtfulness, to enrich the world. Contributions of such a range cannot spring from the conditions in which the church finds itself to-day. What are the reasons? Some of the people blame the universities. When the young people return from college they seem to take no interest in the church. But the universities are really not to blame. The church fills so small a circle in the community that when the young man has finished his course at the university he cannot fit himself back into the narrow groove of the church activities. In sixty years the old methods of farming have changed. Tools and machinery are of another type. Conditions on the farm are totally different, because the farmers have recognized that new methods are demanded. When the old settlers have their picnics and reunions, one of the older men shows the young men how they used to “cradle” the grain. It is an interesting thing, but compared to the modern reaper the cradle is simply an archaic tool, and no man would think of harvesting his crop with it to-day. The fields of the church life of rural Wisconsin and in other sections of the country are “white to the harvest,” but the ministers are forced to use the old-fashioned “cradle” in harvesting the whole crop. The university is showing the church its opportunity and at the same time pointing out its failure. In the particular locality under discussion the churches have no program. Religion is limited to a very small part of life. The farm demands all the time of the people during six days of the week. On Sunday the work clothes are changed for Sunday clothes and part of the day given over to the church. This is religion. The line of demarkation between the sacred and the secular is much more clearly drawn in the country than anywhere else. The average minister of the country church is much more a man apart from the rest of the community.
The program of the church must be made a part of the whole life of the people. The church out in the districts where the people live who are producing the food for the world is responsible in a large degree for the pleasures of the people. Country people find it difficult to think in terms of the community. It is hard for them to cooperate. The church must shape its program with a clear understanding of the great facts of the community life, and appeal primarily from this standpoint and not simply from that of the needs of individuals.
Another rural study shows a community where 80 per cent. of the people were living on land owned by somebody else. There were five churches, and each of them was struggling for a pitiful existence. Less than 20 per cent. of the people had any connection with the church or any other organization. A minister was sent into this district to make a study of the situation with a view to possible work by the home mission board of his church. In his report he stated that the needs there were just as pressing and demanded just as much statesmanship as any field in India or China. He was furnished with sufficient money to put up a good church building, and the plans of the building provided for social and game rooms. He brought a doctor into the community and attached him to the church as a lay worker. He promoted an interest in better farming methods, and began with organized groups a course of lessons in thrift. Gradually this minister gained the interest of the boys and girls through baseball, basket-ball, singing school, and other community exercises and agencies. People began to come to church. They wanted to hear this preacher, for as one of the farmers said, “A feller who knows enough to talk about the things that we are interested in must know something about heaven. I want to hear what he’s got to say.” The church in this community succeeded, but its success was primarily dependent upon the program that considered the economic needs of the people, and studied to find a remedy for the bad, and to build up the good.
Socialism’s Message to the Church. Socialism has been sneered at as being a “stomach philosophy.” There is ground for this criticism, for a great deal of socialism is purely materialistic; but the fact that it interests itself in the feeding of the people is not a serious fault. Socialism has emphasized many things that the church has failed to appreciate. Consideration of the food problems and of the economic basis of our civilization is something that the church cannot afford to ignore. The great mass of workers who are producing the food of the world are truly ministers to the needs of humanity.
The World of Rural Workers. Figures are dull or they would be marshaled here to show that the producers of the world’s food live in a world to themselves. There are many divisions in this world, and many cross-sections of the life of the people. That the rural church is not succeeding is evident. Its sons and daughters of the past generation are the leaders in the world of finance, art, commerce, and letters; but are the conditions within it to-day such that may produce sons and daughters to fill the places of those who are now occupying the positions of trust and honor? The call and the opportunity of the church are urgent in that great part of the world of work which produces the things that we eat. Shall those who feed others themselves be denied the bread of life? It is a call for leadership, for statesmanship, for planning, for devotion, for sacrifice, and for heroic service.