e boll weevil in his course toward the East. The reasons for
this action lie in the type of farmer who thus found it impossible to
co-operate. Each of these farmers regarded above all other things the
success of his own farm and his own family group. In contrast to this
interest no other claim, no exhortation and not even his word given in
public had any lasting influence upon his action.

The third element in the inability of country people to co-operate is
the ideal of level democratic equality which prevails in the country.
Where universal land-ownership has been the rule every countryman thinks
himself "as good as anybody else." So long as this ideal prevails, that
subjection of himself to another, and the controlling of his action by
the interests of the community, are impossible. The farmer cannot
co-operate when he thinks of social life in terms of pure democracy.
There must be a large sense of team work, a loyal and instinctive
obedience to leaders, a devoted spirit which looks for honest
leadership, before there can be co-operation. These things come not by
persuasion, but by experience. Co-operation is the act of a mature
people. Not until country people have passed through earlier stages and
discarded earlier ideals can the preacher and the organizer and the
teacher successfully inculcate a spirit of co-operation.

Country churches are highly representative in their present divided
condition. This multiplication of churches in the country is lamentable
chiefly because it registers the divided state of country life. It is
true that divided churches are religiously inefficient, but it is vastly
more important that divided churches are embodiments of what one country
minister calls "the tuberculosis of the American farmer, individualism."

It was natural for the pioneer to desire a religion in terms of a
message of personal salvation. Personality in his lonely life was the
noblest, indeed the only form of humanity known to him, therefore the
herald was his minister and emotion was his religion. It is very natural
for the land farmer to organize religion in terms of group life. His
churches were only handmaids of his household. They had but the
beginnings of social organization. They taught the ethics of home life,
of the separate farm and of a land-owning people. Obviously the church
for the pioneer and for the land farmer could be a very weak and
indifferent organization, but efficient for the religious needs