100 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



conditions that we have found in taking these surveys. Our church 

 has possibly led out in this department, and for four or five years 

 we have had specialists visiting certain parts of the United States, 

 and getting rural statistics along general lines, such as the economic 

 and sociological which goes to make up the township, the men and 

 women, the education and so on, general statistics of various com- 

 munities. It will be a pleasure to me, and I trust it will be of 

 profit to you, if I may show a few of these charts. This (showing 

 chart) is a chart prepared by the men and religious movement in 

 that great movement of the laymen of the Protestant church of 

 America that made such a tremendous impression upon the reli- 

 gious life of all of our churches the past year. This shows in colors 

 the general condition of the United States last year when this sur- 

 vey was taken. The black is heathenism in America, the white 

 Protestantism and the red the Roman Catholicism. These figures 

 are drawn and measured on a proportionate scale. And I think 

 we have a right to ask the question, ''From this chart can we say 

 America is really Christian?" That is the problem that con- 

 fronts us in the church, to change the black into the white, and 

 try to drive out the darkness before the light. I think you farmers 

 sometimes get intoxicated with the idea that the cities are growing 

 with such rapidity that you would be led to think there were no 

 people living on the farm. Here (pointing to figures) I have 

 some figures representing the rural and urban population of three 

 decades. Five million people are represented by one inch in these 

 pictures. Coming to 1910, we see that magnificent figure thirteen 

 inches tall representing the 65,000,000 people in America who still 

 live on the farm. See how that compares with the urban figure. 

 You see the rural church has to deal with the larger proportion of 

 the people of America. America may be great as a manufacturing 

 nation, she may be great as a commercial people, but she will 

 always be glad God made these prairies, these marvelous plains, 

 this wonderful fertility of soil; God made it and when he looked 

 upon it he pronounced it good. He meant that this land should 

 become a great agricultural nation, to feed the world as well as 

 shelter whosoever wanted to come. 



This particular survey that I was interested in two years ago, 

 and which started my interest in this great work, was taken in that 

 part of Illinois represented by the shady portion of this map in the 

 very richest country of the United States. I have a little clipping 

 in my pocket which tells me of the refusal of a farmer who lived 



