Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 105 



upon them and sweep them from their high ideals. We should im- 

 press them for God, back in the open country, in the fertile plains 

 and prairies, out in God's out-of-doors. 



Take the temperance question. We are beginning. We are 

 gaining strength and forging ahead. In Illinois for the last few 

 years we have been fighting earnestly through the Antisaloon 

 League to try to get a larger unit on which to vote on this ques- 

 tion, on this problem of the saloon. We have the township option ; 

 we want the county option ; but we have been fought at every hand. 

 Why do we have such antagonism on the part of the legislators 

 from Chicago? Because liquor men know the farmers will vote 

 against them ; they know that Bloomington will be free from saloons 

 because the farmers of McLean county are on the temperance side 

 of the question, and it will be the same of Vermillion county, where 

 Danville is situated, and true also of Sangamon county, in which 

 is Springfield, the capital of our state. It will be true of a multi- 

 tude of cities that in themselves have not the moral stamina to 

 settle these things, but let the farmers of the country vote, and they 

 will drive the enemy of the home and of the Christian church out of 

 the country. And so I say that our reform movements have come 

 from the country and they find their most loyal support there. 

 There are two extremes in civilization — one builds up and the other 

 tears down; one emanates from the mob of the city and the other 

 comes from the pure hills and valleys and from the beautiful plains 

 and prairies of these states that we love and this nation we serve. 



Our ministers come from the country, the greater proportion 

 of them. "Uncle Henry" Wallace, editor of Wallace's Farmer, 

 who has been placed at the head of his church in regard to this 

 problem, spoke at their general assembly and asked this question of 

 those present: "All you ministers who have been brought up in 

 the country stand up;" all stood up except two. This illustrates 

 the fact that it is the country to which we must look for our 

 ministers. I do not believe we have gotten to the real heart of the 

 problem as to why so few men go into the ministry, and I do not be- 

 lieve we will arrive at the real answer until we realize that nine- 

 tenths of our ministers have come from the country and in the last 

 twenty years we have been letting the country church die, so that 

 we have been virtually drying up nine-tenths of the fountain heads 

 from which our leaders in church have come. 



I will tell you of a discouraged Vermont pastor. His church 

 had not been growing; most of the young men and women had gone 



