THE SOCIAL WELFARE.
Quaker Hill is an example of the working of a religious and economic system toward its inevitable results in social welfare. The results consciously sought were mainly personal. They were not seeking culture or security or equity, and not attempting to create a community, those early Quakers; but they sought with all their heart and mind after prosperity, individual and communal; after vitality, morality and that self-expression which is in the form of self-sacrifice or altruism in "the service of others." The conscious mind of the Quaker fathers of this community was other-worldly, except in the matters of business—of which more later. That "spiritual" state of mind was intensely individual. All the interests it regarded were of the self, conceived as an inner, immaterial duplicate of the body, destined for heaven after death, and now enjoying interchanges of experience, especially of emotion and intelligence, with the Deity, during life.
It was a mind consciously framed to serve personal development, with no thought of public or common interests. Yet subconsciously the Quaker was acutely aware of common interests. A Quaker frequently uses the expression "I feel myself in unity with them." Their doctrine of the indwelling of the divine in every man made them quick to feel common emotion. Their group-sympathy was lively and strong. They felt the community, though they never thought upon it. Subconsciously, though not consciously, they were public-spirited. They acted upon a fine social spirit, thought they taught no social gospel.
"The supreme result of efficient organization,"[37] says Professor F. H. Giddings, "and the supreme test of efficiency is the development of the personality of the social man. If the man himself becomes less social, less rational, less manly; if he falls from the highest type, which seeks self-realization through a critical intelligence and emotional control, to one of those lower types which manifest only the primitive virtues of power; if he becomes unsocial, the social organization, whatever its apparent merits, is failing to achieve its supreme object. If, on the contrary, the man is becoming ever better as a human being, more rational, more sympathetic, with an ever broadening consciousness of kind, then, whatever its apparent defects, the social organization is sound and efficient." Let us consider whether Quaker Hill has met this test. It has been well organized. It has had definite purposes. What has been the type of welfare enjoyed as a result? What kind of man has emerged from almost two centuries of cultivation of a religious and economic ideal?
In economic operations the Quakers dwelt in this world. They sought a living and they sought wealth—not for the services wealth can render in culture and education, but to accumulate it, possess it, invest and manage it, and to live "in plainness."
Yet they subconsciously did also seek after a prosperity that should be general. Not closely, not in any declarations or definite teachings of their code, but still in a real way, as a by-product of their code of life, they acted so that none in their community should be in want. This they did with profound wisdom—for they taught no communal doctrine—and the details of their action toward weaker members of the neighborhood were uncommonly shrewd and sensible. I will show later the effects of this in the fact that the population under our study shows the absence of defective classes in a significant degree. There are no idiots, no defective, no criminal, no pauper classes among the Quaker Hill population.
The mind of the community had, indeed, an active interest in liberty and the contribution noted above (see Ch. IV. Part I) in the agitation for the abolition of slavery in this state was an act of public spirit along the lines of a great national experience. The fact that the meeting of Friends in 1767 was held on Quaker Hill, which initiated effective action against slave-holding, is much cherished on the Hill, and is commemorated in a stone and bronze memorial at the Meeting House.
Equality of suffrage and universal suffrage are jealously believed in, owing to the Quaker teaching as to woman's parity with man. Yet in the school-meeting, in which women have the same right to vote that men have, there are seldom any women present. Indeed, except for a packed meeting once in a decade, to decide some agitated question, few women attend school-meetings.
The size of the holdings of land on the Hill, and the curve of increase and decrease for seventy years, are exhibited in Table II.
TABLE II.
Land-Holdings on Quaker Hill: Acreages on which Owners are taxed.