Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

But this very discipline has resulted, in other persons, in an explosive emotionality. One person suffers this explosion in a periodic lawsuit—a rare action for the Hill; another in an almost insane family quarrel, another in an occasional fury of futile violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the emotional ruin of some, and in the subconscious volcanic state in others.

Strange to say, the immigrants, Irish and American, have in this conformed to the better type; so that gentle manners, placidity of character and restraint of emotion may be said to prevail among them.

As for judgment, on economic questions and matters of benevolence the judgment of Quaker Hill people is sound. They use money sanely and with wisdom. They act wisely in matters of poverty and need, or appeal on behalf of the dependent. On other matters, outside the range of the social discipline in which the community has been to school, not so much can be said.

The judgment of the community is not determined by evidence in any other matters than economic. The Quaker Hill mind works subjectively on the lines of instincts and habits inherited and inbred. Auto-suggestion has been a great force in this community. Men and women have had an impression, "a leading," believed to come from the Divine Spirit, and have acted upon it and have led others with them. So that the prevailing determination of the social judgment has been by personal suggestion, and the appeal of inner convictions, fortified by alleged divine influence. It must be said that this is a disappearing habit. Even those born Quakers, now that the Hicksite Meeting has been discontinued since 1885, and the Orthodox since 1903, and the Quarterly Meetings of both societies have ceased to come to the Hill, do not so often see visions or act upon "leadings." The influence of non-Quakers in the place has been of late to quarantine such "leadings" and prevent social contagion.

Frugality is universal. Almost every resident laboring man has a bank account. Indeed, these laborers have done more in saving than have the farmers. But the tastes of all are simple. Clothing is never showy or expensive, and housekeeping is carried on with the most sparing use of purchased articles.

Cleanly most of the people of the Hill are, in person and in their care of house and grounds, of carriages, horses and other properties. The houses and barns are always freshly painted, and an appearance of neatness pervades the community.

For reasons which I will mention in a later paragraph the men and women trained under Quakerism are not orderly, either in the use of their time or in the management of their labor, or in anything, save in the discipline of their religion and in the economic system to which they give themselves.

The community has grown in compassion since the days when Surgeon Fallon's soldiers were starved and neglected in the Meeting House. To-day I am sure no class of men in real need could appeal to the community, or to any constituent group of it, in vain. The growth has been along lines which, beginning in a group-compassion that has from earliest days recompensed any poor member of the Meeting in his sudden losses of property, have widened first to Quakers of other places, then to other Christians, then to other men, and last of all to Quakers of the other Quaker sect; and from Protestant to Catholic and Catholic to Protestant.

Property seems to be sacred. Doors of houses and barns do not require locks, but one winter there was a series of house-breakings, in which almost every summer residence on the Hill was entered. Contents were inspected, but nothing was stolen. But the honesty here is a passive honesty. It is not the aggressively just fulfilment of obligation which one finds in New England.

The Hill is a community with a high level of chastity. This may be said of all classes, though not uniformly of all. Yet it was not always so. The first century of the life of the Quakers here is recorded in the minutes of Oblong Meeting as one long struggle of Quaker discipline against unchastity. There is an amazing frankness about these records, and a persistence in the exercise of discipline, a frequency of accusation, proof, conviction, expulsion from the Meeting, which is astonishing to the twentieth century reader. The best families furnished the culprits almost as often as they supplied the accusers and prosecuting committees. So many are the cases and so frequent the expulsions, often for matters which might better have been ignored, but generally for substantial offences, that one wonders who was left in the Meeting. But men often confessed and were received again, and the Meeting held its ground. In general it may be said that often in the eighteenth century there were more cases of unchastity dealt with in a year by the Meeting, in a population no larger than the present, than have come to public knowledge in the past ten years in this community. The change shows also in a reserve of speech upon these matters.