a Cennessee ^ur\jep 



Within the past seven years the Presbyterian Church in the United 

 States of America has entered the South. The Cumberland Union 

 opened up to it this new field. As a result, new responsibilities have 

 been placed upon it and new and perplexing problems have arisen. The 

 present survey is a step in the direction of assuming that responsibility 

 and solving the problems which it presents. It has been undertaken 

 for the purpose of determining the conditions in the country communities 



• /«a^l,.^llc 



MAP NO. I OUTLINE OF TENNESSEE SHOWING LOCATION OF GIBSON COUNTY 



of a typical county of West Tennessee, to discover what are the present 

 needs of such communities, whether or not these needs are now being 

 met by the church and other agencies, and finally to offer constructive 

 suggestions designed to make the church work more efficient. This 

 work was undertaken entirely without any sectarian motive, and was 

 conducted without regard to denominational lines. It is not an attempt 

 to advance the interests of the Presbyterian Church, but rather to deter- 

 mine how the Presbyterian Church may best cooperate with the other 

 denominations at work in this field in the performance of the function 

 for which the Church was founded and for which alone it should be 

 maintained — that of helping men to live together in loyalty to each other 

 and to their common Father in Heaven. 



METHOD 



The field work for this survey was done in the fall of 1911 and occupied 

 two months. The investigator drew freely upon all published reports, 

 county records, and visited in person all parts of the county. There were 

 three main steps in the process of collecting the field data. In the first 

 place the investigator sought out some man in each neighborhood who 

 was especially well informed and public-spirited. From him he obtained 



