ty-five thousand acres. Mr.
Chaffee is a thorough business man but is a fine Christian and places a
good family on each section of land. He allows no Sunday work. Has a
little city kept up in beautiful condition in the center of his land
where he lives with his clerks and immediate helpers. Here they have a
neat little Congregational church and support their own minister. His
fine influence is felt all over the country. The partners in this farm
also have a land and loan corporation and also a large flour mill in
Casselton which employs about twenty-eight men, running day and night
during the busy season.

"There are many farms smaller, from one thousand acres and up. Many also
of a quarter section. Casselton was built simply as a center for this
beautiful and rich farming region. It is in the center of a strip six
miles long and twenty-five miles wide which is said to be one of the
finest sections in the land. There are other towns sprung up in the same
section also. Through the past thirty years farmers have retired, well
to do, and moved into the city. Here are now maintained excellent
schools."

In conclusion: the exploitation of farm lands is a process with which
the church in the country cannot deal by persuasion. It is an economic
condition. They who are engaged in this process or are concerned in its
effects are in so far immune to the preacher who ignores or who does not
understand these economic conditions. Their action is conditioned by
their status. They will infallibly act with relation to the church in
accordance with the motives which arise out of their condition. That is,
they will act as tenant farmers, as retired farmers or as absentee
landlords. They must be treated on these terms. Their whole relation to
organized religion will be that of the condition in which they live and
by which they get their daily bread. This is a matter independent of
personal goodness. The church is dependent not on personal good
influences, but upon the response which a man makes in accordance with
his economic and social character.

For instance, in Wisconsin a church worker found that thousands of acres
in a certain section were owned by a Milwaukee capitalist. He found
that the tenant farmers on these acres were poor and struggling for a
better living, and he could not, among them, finance an adequate church.
He promptly went to Milwaukee and secured five minutes of the time and
attention of the absentee landlord. Whe