[14] "Ireland in the New Century," by Sir Horace Plunkett.
[15] Professor Thomas Nixon Carver.
[16] See Chapter V.
V
EXCEPTIONAL COMMUNITIES
Most of this volume is devoted to the average conditions which prevail throughout the United States. The attempt is made to deal with those causes which are generally operative. It is the writer's opinion that the causes dealt with in other chapters are the prevailing causes of religious and social experience in the most of the United States. As soon as the community, after its early settlement, becomes mature, these causes show the effects here described. But there are exceptions which should be noted and the cause of their different life made clear. These exceptions are represented in the Mormons, the Scottish Presbyterians and the Pennsylvania Germans.
"The best farmers in the country are the Mormons, the Scotch Presbyterians and Pennsylvania Germans." This sentence expresses a general observation of Prof. Carver of Harvard, speaking as an economist. The churches among these three classes of exceptionally prosperous farmers show great tenacity and are free from the weakness which otherwise prevails in the country church. There is a group of causes underlying this exceptional character of the three classes of farmers.
These exceptional farmers are organized in the interest of agriculture. The Mormons represent this organization in the highest degree. Perhaps no other so large or so powerful a body of united farmers is found in the whole country. They have approached the economic questions of farming with determination to till the soil. They distrust city life and condemn it. They teach their children and they discipline themselves to love the country, to appreciate its advantages and to recognize that their own welfare is bound up in their success as farmers, and in the continuance of their farming communities. This agricultural organization centers about their country churches. They have turned the force of religion into a community making power, and from the highest to the lowest of their church officers the Mormon people are devoted to agriculture as a mode of living.