PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 345 



meet the practical test of productivity; that its members must 

 be made better farmers and better citizens generally by reason of 

 their spirituality; that the more religious they are the better crops 

 the} will grow, the better stock they will keep, the better care they 

 will give it, and the better neighbors they will be, is the church 

 which will deserve to succeed and in the end will succeed. 



It may be laid down as a general law of rural economy that 

 the productive land in any farming community will tend to pass 

 more and more into the hands of those who can cultivate it 

 most efficiently, that is, into the hands of the most efficient 

 farmers, unless it is prevented from doing so by some kind 

 of military force exercised by an aristocratic ruling class, or 

 by an expensive and cumbersome system of transferring land 

 titles. In a democratic country like the United States, where 

 there are few impediments in the way of the free transfer of 

 land, we need look for nothing else. The men who can make 

 the land produce the most will be able to pay the most for it, 

 and in the end they will get it and hold it. This looks simple 

 enough, no doubt, and may not at first seem to signify much, 

 but it is weighted with consequences of the most stupendous 

 and far-reaching character, consequences which it would be 

 suicidal for the church to ignore. 



It means simply and literally that the rural districts are never 

 to be thoroughly Christianized until Christians become, as a 

 rule, better farmers than non-Christians. If it should happen 

 that Christians should really become better farmers than non- 

 Christians, the land will pass more and more into the possession 

 of Christians, and this will become a Christian country, at least 

 so far as the rural districts are concerned. The first result would 

 probably be to paganize the cities, since the non-Christians dis- 

 placed from the rural districts by their superior competitors 

 would take refuge in the towns. But since nature has a way of 

 exterminating town populations in three or four generations, 



