etween production and
consumption.[15] Successful tillers of the soil labor to produce an
abundant harvest. They live at the same time in a meager and sparing
manner. Production is with them raised to its highest power and
consumption is reduced to its lowest. This means austere living. Such
communities are found among the Scotch Irish farmers. Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, is peopled with them and their tillage of the soil has
continued through two centuries.

A notable illustration is in Illinois. The permanence of the conditions
of country life in this community is indicated by the long pastorate of
the minister who has just retired. Coming to the church at forty-eight
years of age, after other men have ceased from zealous service, he
ministered forty-two years to this parish of farmers, and has recently
retired at the age of ninety, leaving the church in ideal condition.
"The Middle Creek Church is distinctly a country charge, located in the
Southwest corner of Winnebago Township, of the County of Winnebago.

"The church was organized in June, 1855, in a stone schoolhouse. The
present house of worship was erected and dedicated in 1861. Five
ministers served the church as supplies until 1865, when the Rev. J. S.
Braddock, D. D., became the pastor and carried on a splendid work for
forty-two years, when he laid down his pastorate in 1907, at the age of
ninety."

"This community was settled by homesteaders and pioneers in the early
days of the West. Many of them came from Pennsylvania and some of them
were of Scotch descent. The history of the community has been but the
history of the development of a fertile Western Prairie country. It was
settled by strong Presbyterian men, and their descendants are now the
backbone of the community. There has been little change, but steady
growth."

The second element in the community of husbandmen is mutual support.
Professor Gillin of the University of Iowa has described to me the
community of Dunkers whom he has studied,[16] being deeply impressed
with their communal solidarity. Whenever a farm is for sale these
farmers at the meeting-house confer and decide at once upon a buyer
within their own religious fellowship. In the week following the
minister or a church member writes back to Pennsylvania and the
correspondence is pressed, until a family comes out from the older
settlements in the Keystone State to purchase this farm in Iowa and to
extend the colony of his fellow