My controversy with the clergy on the wine question led me to fear that there were other evils gradually creeping into the Church organization which should be exposed, and against which both laymen and clergymen should be warned; therefore, I wrote a tract entitled, "The New Church: its Ministry, Laity, and Ordinances, with an Appendix on Intoxicants and Our New-Church Periodicals," published and sent out in 1886, the latter part to answer some articles which had recently appeared in the Church papers. This tract was sent to about 10,000 or 11,000 Newchurchmen. Then I wrote and compiled and condensed from my previous writings, including "The Avoidable Causes of Disease," a work of 511 pages, fully presenting the wine question in all its aspects, and the use of tobacco and opium, and the bad habits of women, faulty methods of rearing children, etc., etc., of which in paper covers I sent out over 10,000 to my New-Church brethren, and about 40,000 copies I sent to clergymen of various denominations. In the year 1883 my attention was seriously called to the signs of deterioration of the Puritan stock in New England, especially in Massachusetts, my native State, where it was shown that in six years, ending in 1881, the deaths among the native population fully equaled, if they did not exceed, the births; whereas, among the people of foreign birth, the births exceeded the deaths by over 87,000. And I found, on visiting my native town in Western Massachusetts, and the school district where I attended, where we used to have about thirty scholars in the winter and twenty in the summer, when I was a boy, and although there are but two families less residing there now than when I was a boy, and all native Americans, still I found that they had but eight or nine scholars during the winter, and not enough to keep up a school in summer. As a result of my inquiries I wrote a work of 52 pages, calling attention to the spiritual and natural causes of such decline of the native stock, and especially to the bad habits and false ideas of men and women which have produced it. This pamphlet I entitled, "Deterioration of the Puritan Stock, and its Causes," and printed 140,000 copies, which I sent to all the clergymen and physicians in our country whose names I could get, regarding them as the teachers and leaders of the people, and largely responsible for the existence of at least some of the prevailing evils of life.