d
principle of agricultural success. Their churches are tenacious and
their country communities outlive those of the average type. In them is
represented in the highest degree the principle of austerity. By this I
mean, as defined by an economist, the custom of living so as to produce
much and consume little. These people look upon life with severity. They
have little sympathy with the expansive and exuberant life of the young.
The men of the community, who are the producers, occupy a relatively
greater position than the women, who are the consumers. They exemplify
to a slight degree the conscious organization for agriculture, and in a
high degree the resultant social life which we have noted among the
Mormons and the Pennsylvania Germans; but to the highest degree the
Scottish Presbyterians represent this self-denial and rigidity of
life--which appears in the others also--and they embody it in their
creed. This austerity gives to them a forbidding character, and robs
them of some of the esthetic interest attaching to the other two, but it
is possible that they are more nearly the ideal type of American farmer
because of certain other traits possessed by them.

The Scotch farmer has not in the United States settled in communities or
colonies, as he has in Canada, but the typical farming community of this
stock is Scotch Irish. As Prof. R. E. Thompson has shown,[17] the
emigrants from the North of Ireland, who are themselves of Scotch
extraction, have colonized extensively. That is, they have settled
their populations so as to cover a territory and possess it for
themselves. But the Scotch, from whom they derive many characteristics,
have settled no colony in the world except in the North of Ireland.[18]
The peculiarity of these Scotch Irish farming settlements, as shown
especially in Pennsylvania, is their capacity to produce leaders in
sympathy with the whole of American life. The Mormons produce leaders,
but their influence is compromised by religious prejudices. The
Pennsylvania Germans have produced no leaders whom they can call their
own, and very few writers or educators. The Scotch Irish, on the other
hand, considered as farmers, have contributed an extraordinary
proportion of the leadership of the United States. They have been able
to maintain their own communities in the country and to find for these
communities a sufficient leadership, and they have sent forth into the
general population a multitude of men for