Quaker Hill: A Sociological StudyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
Quaker Hill: A Sociological Study
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Quaker Hill (N.Y.)
The judgment of the community is not determined by evidence in any other
matters than economic. The Quaker Hill mind works subjectively on the
lines of instincts and habits inherited and inbred. Auto-suggestion has
been a great force in this community. Men and women have had an
impression, "a leading," believed to come from the Divine Spirit, and
have acted upon it and have led others with them. So that the prevailing
determination of the social judgment has been by personal suggestion,
and the appeal of inner convictions, fortified by alleged divine
influence. It must be said that this is a disappearing habit. Even those
born Quakers, now that the Hicksite Meeting has been discontinued since
1885, and the Orthodox since 1903, and the Quarterly Meetings of both
societies have ceased to come to the Hill, do not so often see visions
or act upon "leadings." The influence of non-Quakers in the place has
been of late to quarantine such "leadings" and prevent social contagion.
Frugality is universal. Almost every resident laboring man has a bank
account. Indeed, these laborers have done more in saving than have the
farmers. But the tastes of all are simple. Clothing is never showy or
expensive, and housekeeping is carried on with the most sparing use of
purchased articles.
Cleanly most of the people of the Hill are, in person and in their care
of house and grounds, of carriages, horses and other properties. The
houses and barns are always freshly painted, and an appearance of
neatness pervades the community.
For reasons which I will mention in a later paragraph the men and women
trained under Quakerism are not orderly, either in the use of their time
or in the management of their labor, or in anything, save in the
discipline of their religion and in the economic system to which they
give themselves.
The community has grown in compassion since the days when Surgeon
Fallon's soldiers were starved and neglected in the Meeting House.
To-day I am sure no class of men in real need could appeal to the
community, or to any constituent group of it, in vain. The growth has
been along lines which, beginning in a group-compassion that has from
earliest days recompensed any poor member of the Meeting in his sudden
losses of property, have widened first to Quakers of other places, then
to other Christians, then to other men, and last of all to Quakers of
the other Quaker sect; and from Protestant to Catholic and Catholic to
Protestant.
Property seems to be sacred. Doors of houses and barns do not require
locks, but one winter there was a series of house-breakings, in which
almost every summer residence on the Hill was entered. Contents were
inspected, but nothing was stolen. But the honesty here is a passive
honesty. It is not the aggressively just fulfilment of obligation which
one finds in New England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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