The school itself, while giving degrees under a State charter, is really 

 an academy. It has done some excellent work, but from the standpoint 

 of the country life enthusiast it has this fault — it has taken the boys and 

 girls from the farm and labored to teach them Latin, Greek, elocution 

 and music. It has made of them doctors, lawyers, teachers and ministers 

 — anything but farmers. It has trained them for the stiff collar instead 

 of the flannel shirt. 



CHURCHES 



There are 179 churches in Gibson County, all but one of them Protest- 

 ant. Of these 134 are white and 45 are colored. This means that there 

 is one white church to every 224 white people and one colored church to 

 every 210 colored people. If the white churches were evenly distributed 

 there would be one church to every 4.8 square miles. The overcrowding 

 of churches is shown strikingly in Map No. 6. 



Nearly all of the country churches and half of the town churches are 

 served by non-resident ministers, as is shown in Table XV. 



TABLE XV.— CHURCHES WITH RESIDENT MINISTERS 



Churches with Churches with 



Resident Absentee 



Pastors Preachers 



Town 22 22 



Country 2 80 



Table XVI shows the number of preaching services per month in the 

 town churches and in the country churches. 



TABLE XVI.— PREACHING SERVICES PER MONTH 



Full /^Tr Half Fourth , , 



T^- fourths T>. T^- Irregular 



Time T- lime lime '' 

 Time 



Town 10 1 18 13 2 



Country . 2 74 6 



Of the 134 white churches 47 are in the towns and 87 in the country. 

 Of the colored churches 20 are in the towns and 25 in the country. The 

 record of the white churches for the last 10 years is shown in Table XVII. 



TABLE XVII.— RECORD OF CHURCHES FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS 



Town Country 



Class No. P. C. No. P. C. 



Growing 23^9% 28—32% 



Stationary 4—9% 14—16% 



Losing 10—21% 17—20% 



Dying 1-2% 8-9% 



Dead 1—2% 6—7% 



Organized within 10 years 8—17% 14—16% 



Total 47 87 



34 



