The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious SociologyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious Sociology
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Christian sociology; Country life
The investigations of the Country Life Commission brought general
testimony to the high standards of personal life which prevail in the
country. In such a representative state as Pennsylvania the standard of
conduct between the sexes was found to be good. The testimony of
physicians, among the best of rural observers, was nearly unanimous, in
Pennsylvania, to the good moral conditions prevailing in the intercourse
of men and women in the country. This indicates that the farmer economy
had superseded the economy of the pioneer.
The moral problem of the pioneer period consisted of a struggle for
honesty in business contracts, and purity in the relation of men and
women. The story of every church in New England and Pennsylvania, until
about 1835 at which Professor Ross dates the beginning of the farmer
period, shows the bitter struggle between the standard accepted by the
church and that of the individuals who failed to conform. The standard
was inherited from the older communities of Europe. The conduct of
individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living.
Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story
of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied
the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in Duchess
County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through
almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were
more cases of adultery considered by Oblong Meeting in every average
year of the eighteenth century than were known to the whole community in
any ten years at the close of the nineteenth century. The farmer economy
in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual
life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in
which individual action and independent personal initiative were the
prevailing mode.
The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of
ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has
perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet
endowed with social standards. He knows that it is right to give full
measure when he sells a commodity, but he does not yet see the evil of
breaches of contract. Farmers of high standing in their communities for
their personal character, who are truthful and "honest" in such
contractual relations as come down from their fathers, have been known
to use the school system of the town for their own private profit, or
that of members of their families, and to ignore financial obligations
which belong to the new period, in which money values have taken the
place of barter values.
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