FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION IX

I THE PIONEER 1

II THE LAND FARMER 18

III THE EXPLOITER 32

IV THE HUSBANDMAN 48

V EXCEPTIONAL COMMUNITIES 62

VI GETTING A LIVING 79

VII THE COMMUNITY 91

VIII THE MARGIN OF THE COMMUNITY 108

IX NEWCOMERS IN THE COMMUNITY 123

X CO-OPERATION 142

XI COMMON SCHOOLS 158

XII RURAL MORALITY 171

XIII RECREATION 189

XIV COMMON WORSHIP 208

INTRODUCTION

The church and the school are the eyes of the country community. They
serve during the early development of the community as means of
intelligence and help to develop the social consciousness, as well as to
connect the life within the community with the world outside. They
express intelligence and feeling. But when the community has come to
middle life, even though it be normally developing, the eyes fail. They
are infallible registers of the coming of mature years. At this time
they need a special treatment.

Like the eyes, the country church and country school register the health
of the whole organism. Whatever affects the community affects the church
and the school. The changes which have come over the face of social life
in the country record themselves in the church and the school. These
institutions register the transformations in social life, they indicate
health and they give warning of decay. In a few instances the church or
school require the attention of the expert even in the infancy of the
community, just as the eyes of a child sometimes need the oculist, but
with normal growth the expert is called in for problems which have to
do with maturity.

In these chapters the center of attention will be the church, regarded
as an institution for building and organizing country life. It is not
the thought of the writer that the church be treated in ecclesiastical
terms. It is rather as a register of the well-being of the community
that the church is here studied. The condition of the church is regarded
as an index of the social and economic condition of the people. The
sources of religion a