losophy, pragmatism. Or, to put it in the
vernacular, "if it works, it's good." The frontiersman was a
trial-and-error empiricist, who believed in his own ability to fathom
the depths of the problems which plagued him. If the apparent solution
contradicted past patterns and interpretations, he justified his actions
in terms of the realities of the moment. It is this pragmatic
ratio-empiricism which we imply when we use the term "rationalistic."

An examination of the role of _leadership_, suggested by the Curti
study, presents the first summary of this type for the West Branch
Valley. Here, too, the limited numbers of this frontier population,
combined with its peculiar tendency to rely upon peripheral residents
for top leadership, prevents any broad generalizations. The nature of
its leadership can only be interpreted in terms of this particular group
in this specific location.

The last two chapters of this study are summary chapters. The first of
these is an analysis of democracy on one segment of the Pennsylvania
frontier. Arbitrarily defining democracy, certain objective criteria
were set up to evaluate it in the Fair Play territory. Political
democracy was investigated in terms of popular sovereignty, political
equality, popular consultation, and majority rule, and the political
system was judged on the basis of these principles. Social democracy
was ascertained through inquiries concerning religious freedom, the
social class system, and economic opportunity. The conclusion is that,
for this frontier at least, democratic tendencies were displayed in
various contexts.

The final chapter, although relying to a large extent upon Turner's
great work, is in no way intended to be a critical evaluation of that
thesis. Its primary objective is to test one interpretation of it
through a particular analytic technique, ethnographic in nature.
Frontier ethnography has proved to be a reliable research tool, mainly
because of its wide scope. It permits conclusions which a strictly
confined study, given the data limitations of this and other frontier
areas, would not allow.

Democracy, it is no doubt agreed, is a difficult thing to assess,
particularly when there are so many conflicting interpretations of it.
But an examination of it, even in its most primitive stages in this
country, can give the researcher a glimpse of its fundamentals and its
effectiveness. In a time when idealists envision a world community based
upon t