be accomplished were the preaching as consciously
directed to forwarding the social interests of the community one can
only speculate."[19]

Thus they work for the propagation and extension of their own community.
The Scotch Presbyterians in like manner favor their own kindred and
their kindred in the faith, though, I think, in a lesser degree. The
Mormons are consolidated both by formal organization and by instinctive
preference for their own in a multitude of co-operating habits, through
which they build up their communities and contend with one another
against their economic and religious opponents. It is not enough to say
that this is clannishness; it is a mingling of kinship and religious
preferences. It constitutes the strongest form of agricultural
co-operation to be found in the United States.

A Quaker community represents ideal community life. There is none poor.
The margin of the community is well cared for by the conscious and
deliberate service of the central and leading spirits in the community.

At Quaker Hill, New York, there has been for almost two centuries a
community of Friends. The Meeting has now been "laid down" but the
customs and manners by which these peculiar people maintain their
community life have been wrought into the social texture of the present
population of Quaker Hill. During two centuries this community has
cared for its own members in need. It was not beneath the dignity of the
Meeting to raise money and purchase a cow, early in the eighteenth
century, to "loan to the widow Irish," and at the close of the
nineteenth century, the few Quakers and the many Irish and other
"world's people" took part more than once in subscriptions by which the
burden was borne, which had fallen upon some workingman or poorer
neighbor through the death of horse or cow, or even to bear the expense
incidental to the death of his child.

These Quakers co-operated in their business life. They made themselves
responsible that no member of their Meeting should be long in debt. From
1740 for 100 years and more, the records of the Meeting show that
marriage was made impossible and other vital experiences were forbidden
by the Meeting, unless the individual Quaker paid his debts and
maintained his business on a level dictated by the common opinion of the
Quaker body.[20]

In 1767, Oblong Meeting of Quaker Hill, New York, began the legislative
opposition of the Society of Friends to the institution of slavery