428 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



In agriculture one must wrest a living from nature, and nature 

 cannot be tricked or deluded. But a large element of city popu- 

 lations, and generally they are the dominant element, get their 

 living out of other people; and people are. easily deceived. In- 

 stead of laboring to make two blades of grass to grow where one 

 had grown before, their business is to make two dollars emerge 

 from other people's pockets where one had emerged before. 

 Neither impudence, nor a smooth tongue, nor a distinguished 

 manner, nor lurid rhetoric, ever yet made an acre of land to yield 

 a larger crop of grain ; but they have frequently made an office, 

 a sanctum, a platform, and even a pulpit yield a larger crop of 

 dollars. They who get their living out of other people must, of 

 necessity, interest those other people, and men are so constituted 

 that queer and abnormal things are more interesting to them than 

 the usual and the normal. They will pay money for the privilege 

 of seeing a two-headed calf, when a normal calf would not interest 

 them at all. The dime museum freak makes money by showing 

 to our interested gaze his physical abnormalities. He is an eco- 

 nomic success in that he makes a good living by it, but it does not 

 follow that he is the type of man who is fitted to survive or that 

 religion ought to try to produce. Other men, going under the 

 names of artists, novelists, or dramatists, of certain nameless 

 schools, make very good livings by revealing to interested minds 

 their mental and moral abnormalities. They, like the dime 

 museum freaks, are economic successes in that they make good 

 livings, but it does not follow that they are the type of man 

 fitted to survive or that religion ought to try to produce. This 

 type of economic success is an urban rather than a rural type, and 

 it flourishes under urban rather than rural conditions. So long 

 as it flourishes there is no reason why religious men who conserve 

 their energies for productive service should succeed in crowding 

 them out of existence. The only chance of attaining that end 

 will be for religion to give people a saner appreciation of things, 

 teach them to be more interested in normal calves than in two- 

 headed calves, in normal men than in dime museum freaks, in 

 sane writers than in certain degenerate types now holding the 

 attention of the gaping crowd. If this can be brought about, 

 then it will result that the religious type of man, even in cities, 

 will more and more prevail over the irreligious, provided the 



