Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

For ten years Hill Hope, supported personally by the third member of this group of leaders, was, until it was closed in 1904, a country home for working girls. By a liberal policy it became also a center of much interest and of a pervasive influence to the neighborhood. Meetings of a social and devotional character were held there, to which the residents were pleased to come, and in which the young women from the city met and mingled with the Protestant residents of the Hill, especially with those of the Quaker stock. The influence of Hill Hope was very marked, and its power in representing to people of a narrow experience the ideals of a richer and broader life was obvious to any one who saw the place it held in the interests of the whole resident community.

These influences, thus compounded of the humanitarian, the liberal-orthodox and the devotional, but in all things confessedly religious, exerted themselves for the ten years named, unbroken. The death of one member of this group of leaders, the head of one of the three households peculiarly identified with its work, appreciably weakened the group. But in the thirteen years of its influence, it united the whole community in the formation of a church, to some of whose services came all the Protestant population; in whose membership were representatives of all groups of the Protestant residents; and which was able at least once a year to call the Catholics also together at Christmas festivities.

To this group of leaders a guarded, though at times cordial following was given by Orthodox Friends, the Hicksite group, the farmer class, laborers, Catholics and Protestants, and summer people. It was generally inert and negative in spirit, seldom actively loyal. At its best it was willing that leaders should lead and pay the price, and be more admired than upheld. At its worst it was alert to private and blind to public interests, peevish of change, incapable of foresight.

I do not think that Quaker Hill people have much expectation of benefit from social life. They are habitually skeptical of its advantages, though eager to avail themselves of those advantages when proven. Almost every person on the Hill, however, is a member of some secret society, to which he is drawn by anticipations of economic advantage, or of moral culture.

Nor can I say that there is prompt or general reaction to wrongdoing, either of one or of many. I might illustrate with two cases. In one a rich man perverted a public trust, openly, to his own advantage; and a conspiracy of silence hedged his wrong about. In the other, a youth entered in one winter every house on the Hill in succession, and there was no one to detect or to punish him.

The Hill does not exhibit the highest type of social response in the recognition of impersonal evil, in the quest of knowledge, or in free discussion. Almost two centuries of dogma-worship, with its contemplation of selected facts, has made it now impossible to secure from one thoroughly socialized in the spirit of the place the exact truth upon any matter. It seems to be reserve which conceals it, but it is rather the effect of continued perversion of the sense of right and wrong, and indifference to knowledge for its own sake.

The ideal of the common mind of Quaker Hill is the practice of inner and immaterial religion. It looks for the effects of certain dogmas, effects expressed in emotions, convictions, experiences. The ideal contains no thought of the community or of its welfare. It is purely individual, internal and emotional.

It was expressed in the comment of one excellent representative citizen upon another, "He does not seem to me to be the man he once was. He does not say in meetings the things he used to say. He used to be very helpful in his remarks." This was said at a time when the citizen commented on was laboring heroically for a public improvement by which the citizen speaking would chiefly be benefited.

The Quaker Hill man and woman desire to make money. They instinctively love money, though not for any other purpose than saving. They cherish no illusions of an unworldly sort about it. This is true of Quaker and Catholic, laborer and summer resident. It is true of the small class of cultivated intellectual-aesthetes, who might be expected to be less mercenary. They all value money; but not for display, not for luxury, scarcely for travel; not for books or the education of children. Quaker Hill men and women would accumulate money, invest and manage it wisely and live in respectable "plainness." This characteristic is written largely over the whole social area. It is an instinct.

The emotional nature of this population has been by long-continued application of an accepted discipline, economic and religious, restrained and schooled. More beautiful personalities than some of the Quaker and Irish women of the Hill, schooled in a discipline which produces the most charming manners, the gentlest kindness, one may never see. There is no cloud in the sky of these women's justice, truthfulness, goodness. One may remember, even with them, a day of anger, of indignation; but it was a storm restrained; the lightnings were held in sure hands, and the attack was eminently just.