country life; and this education has
been economic, patriotic, co-operative and religious. So perfect has it
been that it is hard to analyze; but the acknowledged center of it has
been a system of schools in which the problem of living is taught as a
religion, an enthusiasm and a culture.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 33: "The American Rural School," H. W. Foght.]

XII

RURAL MORALITY

The moral standards of the pioneer type and of the land-farmer type
prevail in the country. The world economy has precipitated on the farm
an era of exploitation which has not yet reached its highest point.
Meantime, according to the ethical ideals of the pioneer and of the
farmer, country people are moral.

The investigations of the Country Life Commission brought general
testimony to the high standards of personal life which prevail in the
country. In such a representative state as Pennsylvania the standard of
conduct between the sexes was found to be good. The testimony of
physicians, among the best of rural observers, was nearly unanimous, in
Pennsylvania, to the good moral conditions prevailing in the intercourse
of men and women in the country. This indicates that the farmer economy
had superseded the economy of the pioneer.

The moral problem of the pioneer period consisted of a struggle for
honesty in business contracts, and purity in the relation of men and
women. The story of every church in New England and Pennsylvania, until
about 1835 at which Professor Ross dates the beginning of the farmer
period, shows the bitter struggle between the standard accepted by the
church and that of the individuals who failed to conform. The standard
was inherited from the older communities of Europe. The conduct of
individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living.
Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story
of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied
the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in Duchess
County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through
almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were
more cases of adultery considered by Oblong Meeting in every average
year of the eighteenth century than were known to the whole community in
any ten years at the close of the nineteenth century. The farmer economy
in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual
life had by the ninete