Whichever of these two schools of moral action one belongs to, one is bound, you see, to fight the devil and his guile; and in country life this is no joke, for as it turns out, the devil waved a mighty wicked wand over the American farm tenant when he jockeyed him on to the land into the shoes of the departing farm owner. It was a devilish, cunning trick to decoy the owner, body and soul, into town and into the town church--away from the little country church of his fathers. It was, however, the meanest lick of Satan against the peace of the tenant to bewitch him into flitting from farm to farm and from community to community. And now the situation has come to such a pass that, unless the American church has the grace and backbone and subtlety to outgeneral the devil in his game, the devil wins; for in matters of religion, the landless man is between the devil and the deep sea. “_Churches Detour--Tenants Ahead_” It is old stuff, in a way, this cheerless story of farm tenants and religion. Pick up, as I have done, either at random or quite methodically, booklets, chapters, articles, or pamphlets dealing at first hand with the farm tenant, and the tale of his religious handicap runs drearily, hopelessly to the same sad end. For example, take this rather mild statement from a member of Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission: “The farm owner who has moved to town and is renting his land cannot be expected to be a real, vital force in the rural church. Nor can the tenant who has a one-year lease, or whose tenure is uncertain, be expected to cultivate the Christian graces by intimate fellowship with his neighbors and associates; in other words, to take root in the community and become a part of it.” “Why, then,” it will be asked, “try to dress up the outworn subject again?” The plain answer, without any apology, is simply this: The farm-tenant case, as a phase of religion in eclipse, has not yet cast an image on the American mind. The American church,--and I class together all the Christian bodies in this sweeping term,--the Christian conscience of the American church has apparently reversed itself and “passed by on the other side” of this bedeviled situation. Now such an attitude, such collective behavior, is ruthless, well nigh unforgivable, and in fact incomprehensible. Words must continue to be spoken until the church ceases to detour around the tenant. _The Flood of Tenancy Unabated_ And first of all, in order to see the gravity of the case as it stands, one must sense the resistless character of the sweeping flow of tenancy itself. Decade by decade the flood has risen. In 1880, 25.6 per cent. of the farms in the United States were tenant farms; in 1890, 28.4 per cent.; in 1900, 35.3 per cent.; in 1910, 37.0 per cent.; in 1920, 38.1 per cent.