THE COUNTRY CHURCH 423 



vania Dutch here, the Scotch and Scotch-Irish there, the Quakers 

 elsewhere, the Yankees in other groups. 



All this changed when the farmer emerged from the woods and 

 drew long furrows in the rich, fertile soil of the prairies; and 

 still greater was the change when, at the close of the war, the 

 government gave one hundred and sixty acres of land at the cost 

 of surveying ($1.25 an acre) to any landless man in the wide 

 world who wanted it and who would become a citizen of the 

 United States. 



Then began the rush for these cheap lands, a rush from New 

 England, from the Middle States, from the South, and from Eu- 

 rope. The farming population began a game of leap-frog. The 

 church organizations, awake to the importance of securing a foot- 

 hold in this new land, pushed their missionary enterprises, aiming 

 to occupy strategic points. The result was a mingling together 

 of men who, while they agreed on fundamentals, gave special 

 importance to distinctives ; and a still further result was the over- 

 churching of the entire prairie country. 



Then the rural church began to decline; for the introduction 

 of railroads and of farm machinery and a far greater use of horse 

 power decreased rural population per square mile. It has con- 

 stantly been decreasing ever since from purely economic causes. 

 Still the rural church did fairly well, although gradually declin- 

 ing in the size and number of congregations, until the last thirty 

 years, when another set of economic conditions began to render 

 it less efficient. 



When thoughtful men began to see that there was no more 

 choice land to be given away ; when the great growth of city popu- 

 lation not merely in the United States but in the Old World (the 

 result of cheap food furnished by the farmers of the United Stales 

 at less than the cost of growing it) began to bring the price of 

 grain up to the cost of production and above it, land began to 

 advance. In the corn belt, the wheat belt, and the fruit belt land 

 has increased at the rate of about 10 per cent, per annum. 



The country church then began to decline more rapidly. 

 Farmers began to rent their farms and move to town. Capital- 

 ists began to invest in lands as soon as the net income would equal 

 the interest on savings, and speculators began to buy land far in 

 advance of its productive value, on the assumption that this 10 



