';Hiiitm}i>iH}uvni'n-ifinnnntiii F210 .W57 '^^ * s « o ^ -^ °i. *•' V '^^.'^ 1 v^ .^ /^Va- '^<=^. ^^ c "HO" ^' to .'Jv^ J5 .. "j^ .V » ' ^^ v//. ^'i^" --!/ > ■ •4 o .7a'^;' G^ -^/ J' 'o ^' ': .^"> .0' ,A 'V " .*■< -^■ V * o « o ' -^''^ ;/ \:^i -.-^^ C^ o o 0" V. * o « o ' ^<^ ^. .^.^ .^-^ --,, -<.^ ■fi&7 c> c" ^^•n^. ^^ y .f 0' 9^ * »' -^^0^ A ROUND ROBIN Zhc Soutbevn Migblanbs anb MiQblanbets IRev. Walter C. mbltafter, D.D. (s^® @: (^ (^i® ^ Cburcb /BMsstons publisblng Co. 211 State Street, Hartford, Conn. rz/0 T. B. SIMONDS PRINTING CO. Hartford, Conn. FEB 18 1916 ©aA418877 CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. I The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 7 1. Extent of the Southern Highlands 8 2. Historical Sketch of the Southern Highlanders . 12 3. Why They Fell Behind . 18 4. A Necessary Classification 24 n Social Conditions and the Point of View 29 1. Obstacles to Social Intercourse 30 2. Social Conditions in the Home 34 3. Social Relationship with Neighbors .... 39 4. The Point of View 45 in Religious and Devotional Characteristics 52 1. Some General Principles 52 2. The Normal Theology of the Mountains ... 58 3. Some Abnormal Developments of Religion . . 64 4. The Earnestness of the Highlander's Religion . . 68 IV The Work of the Church in the Mountains 74 1. The Wider Scope of the Work 75 2. A Brief Survey of the Occupied Field ... 79 3. Typical Evidences of Fruitful Work ... 88 V Missionary Methods and Experiences 99 1. A Kentucky Mission Field 101 2. What One Missionary Did in Virginia . . . 107 3. Missionary and Distillers at Grips .... 108 4. Among the Coal Mines 113 5. A Life Story 119 VI What the Church Has Yet to Do 125 1. Why the Church's Mountain Work Must be Developed 126 2. The Scope and Spirit of This Development . . 133 3. The Agencies to be Used 137 4. Some Specific Suggestions 143 Copyrighted January, 1916 BY CHURCH MISSIONS PUBLISHING CO. PREFACE. In 1908 the Church Missions Pubhshing Company issued a handbook, The Church's Mission to the Moun- taineers of the South, compiled by the Rev. Walter Hughson of the District of Asheville. In the seven years that have passed since the appearance of this valuable book, the first comprehensive survey of the work of the Church in the Southern mountains, the work has developed to such an extent that it has been deemed advisable to issue a new book that shall deal with it in the light of present conditions. This book is presented herewith. A casual survey will show that the subject has been treated as a unit and on the broadest possible lines. This is due to several considerations: The limits of the book and the largeness of the subject; the accessi- bility of detailed descriptionsof specific fields; and the need for such information in this volume as his limited space prevents the individual worker from giving in the publications bearing on his own work. It is hoped that those who read this volume will be led to study individual fields. A large number of leaflets can be obtained from the Church Missions Publishing Co., Hartford, Conn., from the office of the Educational Secretary of the Board of Missions, 281 Fourth Avenue New York, or from the missionary immediately in charge. An elaborate bibliography is not attempted, but the following books will be found valuable. They may be ordered through any book store. Our Southern Highlanders, Kephart. Highlanders of the South, Thompson. "-^^^ The Winning of the West, Roosevelt. The Southern Mountaineer, Wilson. The Crossing, Churchill. Blue Grass and Rhododendron, Fox. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, Fox. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Fox. The Prophet of the Great Smokies, Miss Murfree, (Chas. Egbert Craddock). Mr. Fox's and Miss Murfree's novels are illumin- ating on many aspects of mountain life and character. To this list may be added the late Mr. Hughson's book, The Church's Mission to the Mountaineers of the South, of which only a few copies remain, and Miss Emma Miles' The Spirit of the Mountains, an exceed- ingly charming and sympathetic volume, now out of print, but possibly obtainable at old book stores. CHAPTER I. The preacher had come to a critical point in his sermon. "We face a difficult problem here, my friends," he said. "Let us not deny, or in any way seek to minimize, the perplexity that it causes in our minds. Rather let us acknowledge it in all its large- ness. Let us look it squarely in the face — and pass on." This is as far as most persons go when they travel from "Washington to New Orleans. Two distinct routes offer themselves. That which takes the traveller through Lynchburg, Charlotte, and Atlanta confronts him with the Blue Ridge and its foot hills until he passes into Alabama. That which carries him through Roanoke, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Birmingham takes him through the great inter-mountain valley, which is the heart of the Appalachian system, and which prolongs its features towards the state line of Mississippi. Or if the traveller is going from Cincinnati or Louis- ville to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York; to Richmond and Norfolk; to Charleston, Savannah, or Jacksonville, he will pass through large sections of alternating mountain and valley that please in their every prospect. But whithersoever bound he passes on, as men have been passing on for generations, and in most cases he does not so much as know that he has been passing through a problem, the most difficult and perplexing, the most urgent and encouraging, that faces the 8 Round Robin Christian Church in America — The problem of the devel- opment of the Southern Highlander. We too may pass on, but the problem does not. It remains, and it is growing in importance and urgency every year. We shall in this chapter consider certain elements of the problem : 1st, The extent of the Southern Highlands; 2nd, The origin and history of the Highlanders themselves; 3rd, The conditions of which they have been victims; and 4th, The three classes into which they may be divided. I. Extent of the Southern Highlands. Only recently have writers and students of the subject come to an agreement as to the extent of the Southern Highlands. Some confined the term strictly to the mountain counties. Others perceived that the general economic and religious conditions that characterized the most broken mountain sections prevailed in the foot-hills and even in the contiguous lowlands. But no two persons set the same limits. Now, however, practically all mountain workers, of whatever denomination, have adopted the description given after years of study by Mr. John C. Campbell of Asheville, N. C, Secretary of the Southern Highland Division of the Russell Sage Foundation. According to this authority the field of our study embraces all of West Virginia; Western Virginia and Eastern Ken- The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 9 tucky; Western North Carolina and East Tennessee; Northwestern South Carolina, North Georgia, and Northeastern Alabama. The total included area is 108,000 square miles, or nearly one-fourth of the total area of the eleven Southern states lying east of the Mississippi River. We may get a clearer conception of the great extent of this territory by comparing it with other countries or sections: It is more than one-third larger than England, Wales and Scotland combined. It is more than one-third larger than all New England. It is twice as large as either Pennsylvania or New York. This region is approximately six hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide, and comprises three well-defined belts running northeast and southwest: (1) The most easterly is called the Appalachian Moun- tain Belt, or the Blue Ridge Belt, and comprises the Blue Ridge, the Unakas, the Great Smokies, and the Balsam mountains. This is the wildest and most rugged country of the whole region. (2) Just west of this is the Greater Appalachian Valley, varying in width from twenty-five to seventy-five miles, the north- eastern portion following the Shenandoah River and the southwestern the Holston and the Tennessee. (3) The westernmost belt is called the Alleghany-Cumber- land Plateau. It embraces all of West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and part of Middle and East Tennessee. The topography of this region has wide variety. The rounded or swelling hills that front the Blue Ridge are much like those of the Appalachian Valley, but the 10 Round Robin Cumberland Plateau is entirely unlike the Great Smoky Mountains. The Valley is from six hundred to fifteen hundred feet above sea-level. On the west of the valley rises the Plateau to a height of two thousand feet, ending abruptly with a surface more level than that of the contiguous valley. On the east the mountains rise to a height of from three thous- and to nearly seven thousand feet, ridges of three and four thousand and peaks of five and six thousand being numerous. From the top of Mount Junaluska, overtopping Waynesville, N. C, fifteen such peaks are visible. In the Plateau Belt railroads are con- structed along the top, their descent to the valley being readily made by rounding the long spurs which project into the plain every mile or less. In the Mountain Belt eighty-five per cent of the land has a steeper slope than one foot in five, the railroads are restricted to the riversides, and when passing from one valley to another are forced to grade heavily and tunnel deeply through the transverse ranges that make much of this region resemble a choppy sea of colossal waves arrested suddenly and forever in its upheaval. It is important that this varying topog- raphy be held in mind, for it has much influence on the local population. Five millions of white persons, one-twentieth of the population of the United States, live in this region. This population is twice as great as the total popu- lation of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. More than three millions of them live on the sides and at the bottom of these steep maintain slopes. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 11 The inhabitants are the most homogeneous people in America. Foreign-born and Negroes are ahke conspicuously absent. Not twenty thousand foreign bom persons are found in the entire region; and this statement includes Wheeling, Roanoke, Asheville, Knoxville and Chattanooga. Sixty counties have fewer than ten foreigners resident, three have none. These figures for a region of five millions should be compared with the figures for the North Atlantic States, where in Lowell, Massachusetts, for example, fifty thousand out of a population of one hundred thousand are foreign born. Negroes are more num- erous, of course, but this is true only of the Valley and of the larger towns and cities. Even in the cities the Negro population is only about one-fifth of the whole population, while in the lowland southern cities it is from one-half to three-fifths; but in the back counties it is negligible. Two mountain counties of Kentucky have twenty negroes in a population of twenty-four thousand. The foreign born has not come into the Appalachian mountains because he has been attracted in other directions. The Negro has not come because the mountain people have no need for him, no place for him, and much antipathy against him. In the Valley, it is true, many of the lower strata of both races are on terms of familiarity, calling each other "Jim" and "Tom" in the most natural way imaginable; but where in the remote fastnesses nearness demands and gives neighborliness the Negro is entirely without standing. 12 Round Robin II. Historical Sketch of Southern Highlanders. The homogeneous people of the Southern Highlands are not the descendents of the "poor whites" of colonial and slave-holding times. Let us get that point fixed in our minds. The convicted criminals, the delinquent boys and girls, the derelicts, impoverished, and ne'er-do-weels of England, who became first the laborers and then the flotsam of the English colonies, were the last to enter the mountain region; and when they came they came in such small numbers that in a broad generalizing they deserve absolutely no consideration. The first settlers of the Appalachians were the Swiss and Palatine Germans, loosely termed to-day "the Pennsylvania Dutch," who, about the year 1682, began to settle west of the Quakers in the foot hills of the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge. They were mostly of the Reformed or Lutheran faith, and were democratic in sentiment, industrious, thrifty and efficient, intelligent as farmers or skilled as artisans. But the chief settlers were the Ulstermen of Ireland "the Scotch Irish" as we call them, and as they are yet the predominant strain of this region from Penn- sylvania to Alabama, their history is essential to an understanding of the mountain people and of the problem which they present. The Irish rebellion against Queen Elizabeth had been suppressed with relentless energy, and in 1607 James I. confiscated the estates of the native Irish in the six northern counties of Ireland known as Ulster. Presbyterian emigrants, some from London, but most from the lowlands of Scotland, were settled upon the The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 13 estates and holdings of the Irish. There they set up a Protestantism that has ever since been the most intense and uncompromising in the United Kingdom. Though we call them Scotch Irish, Irish blood does not flow in their veins. They lived in Ireland, but inter- marriage with the Irish was forbidden; and Romanist and Protestant of Ulster have to this day about the same relation and community of interest as had the ancient Israelite and Philistine. The Scotch Irish are simply undiluted Scotchmen who lived for a time in Ireland and then came to America. Seemingly favored by the Crown, these Scotch in Ireland soon came in conflict with their patron. Their leases began to expire in 1633, and dispute arose between the autocratic landlord and his in- tractable tenant. From County Antrim alone, the historian Froude tells us, thirty thousand evicted Protestants emigrated to America within two years. Fiske, in his "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," estimates that within the forty years from 1730 to 1770, at least half a million souls, or more than half the Presbyterian population of the north of Ireland, emigrated to the American colonies, of whose popula- tion at the outbreak of the Revolution they constituted one-sixth. Landing chiefly at Boston, Philadelphia, and Charles- ton, they scattered themselves along the Atlantic seaboard, and pressing westward through both Caro- linas and Pennsylvania, formed both the vanguard of development and the rear guard of the ocean-facing Carolinas. Moving in lines of least resistance the Pennsylvania Scotch began settlements further and 14 Round Robin further southwest in the great Valley. Spreading themselves up the Shenandoah River and the uplands of Virginia and Tennessee and there uniting with their relatives from the Carolinas who had come down the French Border or skirted the far southern foot hills, they pressed on by the Boone Trail into the "Dark and Bloody Ground" of Kentucky. It is interesting to know that among these pioneer settlers were the ances- tors of David Crockett, Sam Houston, John C. Calhoun, "Stonewall "Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. There were some Irish and some French Huguenot settlers also, the first Governor of Tennessee, a leader of these frontiersmen, having anglicized his name from Xavier to Sevier. The Scotch Irish, however, gave the tone and temper to the settlement of this great region, a tone and temper based on self-reliance, inde- pendence, and individualism; and also on intolerance toward anything not consistent with these. These qualities, innate in the pioneers, grew to excessive proportions under the primitive conditions that made every man his own judicial, legislative, and executive authority. They were invaluable in the long-continued Indian warfare, the brunt of which they bore because of their advanced position. In stealth, in courage, and in fierceness they were quite the match of their savage opponents. They were impatient of restraint by their own colonial authority, and in one case rose in insurrection against the civil authority of North Carolina. Being defeated in battle, they crossed the Appala- chian Mountains and settled in the Wautauga region of what is now East Tennessee, and there in 1772, The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 1 5 established the first republic in America based upon a written constitution, "the first ever adopted by a community of American born freemen." In 1775 under Daniel Boone some of these colonists settled in Kentucky, and before the news of the battle of Lexington reached them, they had run up the flag of a new colony, Transylvania, defying the menacing proclamation of the royal governor of North Carolina. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, in 1776, Sevier and Shelby with their two hundred and ten backwoodsmen repelled and defeated a large force of Cherokee Indinas who had attacked the Wautauga settlers. Three years later, in 1779, these same men, their numbers now increased to seven hundred and fifty, captured all the British ammunition stored near Look- out Mountain in anticipation of the coming compaign, and thus saved the colonies that year from a rear attack. But perhaps their greatest service, greatest because rendered in the hour of greatest need, was the defeat of Colonel Ferguson and his two hundred regulars and two thousand Tories at King's Mountain, in 1780. Charleston had been captured by the British; Gates had been defeated at Camden; the enemy were over- running the interior without organized resistance; and Washington himself was saying, "I have almost ceased to hope." Ferguson, from the Carolina foot hills, sent threats across the mountains to Wautauga that he intended to march his army over the mountains, hang the patriot leaders, and lay the country waste with fire and sword. Not deterred by the unrest and 16 Round Robin increasing boldness of the Indians on their rear, Shelby, Campbell and Sevier acted on the principles subse- quently adopted by Napoleon, and with nine hundred of their followers saved Ferguson the trouble of the mountain march by making it themselves. They found their foe entrenched on the natural fortress of King's Mountain, immediately surrounded him, and without waiting to breathe stormed the position from all sides simultaneously, capturing over eleven hundred English soldiers. Thomas Jefferson declared that in its enheartening effect this battle was the turning point in the Revolutionary War. When the battle was over these border men returned home, only to pass through it at once to repel the impending atack of the Indians at Boyd's Creek, three hundred miles from King's Mountain. Of the six leaders in these battles, five were Presby- terian elders. That the ministry also partook of this militant spirit is evidenced by "a philippic against laggards" delivered in 1813 by a Presbyterian minister, who pronounced the curse of Meroz upon such, and declared : "British rum and Albion gold have roused the Creeks' lust for rapine and blood. We are exposed to their incursions; let us carry the war into their country, and go in such numbers as to overwhelm them at once. Apathy on this subject would be criminal. The call of the country is the call of God." Not only did these mountain folk respond freely in the War of 1812, and in the Creek War, but they were among the first of volunteers, first in time and first in numbers, in the Seminole War, the war against The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 17 Black Hawk, and the Mexican War. In the Mexican War almost ten times as many offered their services as were called for. By this time the population of the Southern Appa- lachians exceeded one million souls. As a whole they differed widely from the rest of the South, into which they were projected as a great wedge between the population of the Atlantic seaboard and that of the Mississippi Valley. The economic and social conditions of the aristocratic and baronial South were wholly lacking in the mountains, and the political alignments that resulted were the most marked westward from the Blue Ridge, the east- ern and southern slopes responding more generally to the political conditions of the lowland South. Therefore when the War of the Secession began the mountains of West Virginia, Kentucky and East Tennessee were overwhelmingly for the Union, while the proportion in the mountains of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama was smaller. East Tennessee furnished over thirty thousand men to the Federal armies, the Second Congressional District having enlisted, in proportion to its population, more Union soldiers than did any Congressional District in the North itself. On the other hand, Jackson's famous brigade named the "Stonewall Brigade" was made up largely of these men of the hills. But, whether they fought on this side or on that, the men of the mountains had courage equal to their convictions, and showed themselves among the most valiant of soldiers. Unfortunately the lust of blood did not disappear with the cessation of war; and feuds, assassinations 18 Round Robin and turmoil lasted in sections of the mountains for many years the mutual personal admiration of the warring "Yank" and "Johnny Reb" manifestly not existing where the two came from the same section. In the Spanish- American War of 1898 the mountains again yielded more than their quota of soldiers. "They were the best soldiers we had in the war," said one of the general officers. To-day the recruiting stations throughout the mountains are among the best feeders for the American army and navy. Such nas been the relation of this section to the public life of the nation. It declares that its people possess a virility and a fundamental worth that calls for admiration, whatever may be their passing evils or past drawbacks. III. Why They Fell Behind. When the first settlers came in they followed the valleys and occupied the most desirable portions of the land. So long as their numbers were few there was good land for all, but as the numbers grew the available good land was taken up and the late comers were forced to take second choice. So the hill-sides were settled. So a little later the tide flowed on up the mountains. Those earliest on the ground were, as a rule, the hardiest and most efficient; they remained in the great Valley; and they and their descendants have remained there since. Those who went back into the mountains were the weaker, the less efficient, the less far seeing, the more The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 19 unfortunate. And their characteristics brought the same results that they always bring in those that are isolated, whether in a mountain or on a plain, — fatalism, apathy, and deterioration. It is universally true that when a family or a group of families is cut off from similar groups and prevented from exchange of ideas it tends increasingly to move in the line of least resistance, to regard itself as "in the fell grip of circumstance," to yield itself as the pawn of fate, and to rest in the assurance that whatever is, is because it was so determined. So effort is deemed vain if not profane, and deterioration sets in because the human being lives not as the master of environment but as its victim. The only exception to this universal experience that the isolated deteriorate was Robinson Crusoe. And he is a character of fiction. That deterioration would be their fate these settlers did not know when they thus made their homes. That it has been their fate most of them do not know to-day, because they are living in inherited and there- fore "natural" conditions; and inherited conditions are never unhappy conditions to those who are ignorant of better conditions. But in the judgment of those who did not inherit such conditions, the present status of the mountaineer is undesirable because he lives so far below his capability for living. He lives below his capability and he is unconscious of what he lacks because he has been unable to receive the physical, mental, and spiritual education essential to every life that is to move upward. Once settled, the pioneers were enmeshed by the reaction of the forces of want. The poor soil forbade 20 Round Robin close neighborhood. It yielded meager harvests. It furnished scanty food. The insufficient food was ill cooked. The bodies were ill nourished. Physical energy and will were lessened. Only such labor was performed as sufficed to keep body and soul together. The children were pressed into service at the earliest moment. Since even physicians must have where- with to pay for what they get they were scarce, such as were available being generally self-constituted and worthless. The children could not be spared for school, and there was no money — and, in the minds of parents, no need — for a teacher. There was preaching and there was the religious sense, but there was little spiritual education. The preacher was himself a farmer, one of themselves, uneducated, illiterate, earnest, powerfully convincing his hearers that emotion is the one and only evidence of the work of the Holy Ghost, but seldom venturing into ethics, and when so venturing never rising above or departing from the conventional ethics of the neighborhood. In the largest conceivable sense the destruction of these poor was their poverty. Their nearest neighbors, the more prosperous of the lowland South, were those who should have come to their relief. But in the South as elsewhere in those days the social consciousness and the social conscience were alike undeveloped. Relationship to others had to run the gauntlet of "States' Rights," "local self- government," and "a man's house his castle," and few had a sense of responsibility for, or danger from, a remote and scattered multitude of ignorant mountain- eers who were out of sympathy with the prevailing Southern standards and sentiments. There might. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 21 indeed, have been more sympathy on both sides if there had been more intercourse between Highland and Lowland; but the Highlanders were so poor that they could not move out, the Highlands themselves so poor that the Lowlanders cared not to move in, and the roads so poor that the main channels of travel avoided the entire region. This isolation from the larger South reached its climax just after the War of the Secession. The South bitterly resented the failure of the mountain people generally to go with their section. It pitied the West Virginian who fought in the Union army. It tolerated the Kentuckian. These were border states. But it destested the recalcitrant East Tennesseean, for he was in the very heart of the South. Ten years after the surrender at Appomatox a gentleman living near Memphis had occasion to write to a friend in Knoxville and addressed his letter to "Knoxville, East Tennessee." "I didn't know East Tennessee was a separate state," said a little boy fresh from his geography lesson. "It isn't," snapped the usually kind-spoken father," but it ought to be." The South let East Tennessee alone; and when the passions of those days are considered the South did about the wisest thing it could have done. East Tennessee let the South alone, and for many years lived its own life, self- contained and self-conscious, the richest and, with Eastern Kentucky, the least developed section of the Southern Highlands. When help finally came to these Highlanders it came not from the South but from the North. It came first in the shape of education and second in that 22 Round Robin of industrial development; and in each case it joined its forces to those which the self-helpfulness of the Great Valley had developed. The first help came from the Northern Presbyterians who began on a small scale in 1879 and it found congenial soil in the Presbyterians who had come from the North and a help meet for itself in the schools which they had planted from one end of the Great Valley to the other. The Methodists and the Baptists followed in close succession with numerous schools, both day and boarding, both com- mon and collegiate. Then after a considerable interval the Church whose forlorn hope at Valle Crucis in 1842 had long been abandoned and without a success- or finally began to open up academic and industrial and common schools. These various agencies will be discussed in a later chapter. The second help, that of industrial development, was not intended as a philanthropy. It was purely an attempt to make money out of the undeveloped resources that were found abundantly in almost every county of the whole Southern Highlands. The vast forests of hard wood, the copper, zinc, iron and coal, the marbles that equal or surpass those of Italy, and the water power of scores of mountain streams and rivers — the possibilities along so many lines drew many capitalists and investors, and built many lines of railway and hundreds of towns and villages, and by thrusting mining camps into mountain neighborhoods and erecting great manufacturing plants at the nearest railroad junctions, brought new possibilities and evils, new problems and opportunities, to be taken in hand by the forces of social construction and salvation. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 23 The immediate result of this development was far from uplifting. Indeed, at first it was demoralizing. The sleeping mountain folk, who had been living the life and practising the virtues and vices of the eigh- teenth century, awoke to find the life of the twentieth century breaking upon them. The commercialized vice that attended the industrial development provided, in brothel and saloon, attractions and facilities and encouragements to evil doing that far exceeded those of sequestered slumber. But the sleeper was at last awakened. He was made to see that things could be changed. The great battle-ground of his scepticism as to novelties was in the realm of material things. That has been largely overcome by the evidence of ear and eye. Now that he has believed when convinced of natural things there is hope for his conviction along the line of those heavenly things that deal with the permanent nature of humanity. In this work not only the Great Valley itself has enlisted ,but the whole South is bestirring itself. It is fortunate, indeed, that, with the exception of West Virginia, all the states among which are divided the Southern Highlands slope down to the Lowlands and embrace a population that stands to the popula- tion of the mountains in the relation of "Big Brother." State pride partly, and legislative indissolubility chiefly, bind the interests of Louisville, Memphis, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Norfolk and Richmond and those of all intervening territory in the same parcel with the interests of the rude moun- tain folk, with the result that the South is expending 24 Round Robin large sums for better public education in the moun- tains, in better health, better housing, and better teaching, and is providing for the expenditure of vast sums for the building of roads that will give permanent accessibility. And the religious societies, too, though facing a three-fold problem of South-wide missions to the Negro and to the mill-hand, as well as to the mountain folk, are giving liberally of men, women and money to meet the demands of the spiritual necessities and possibilities in her own Highlands. IV. A Necessary Classification. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that only one kind of population dwells in the Southern Highlands, and that this is the kind pictured in John Fox's stories, or in those of ''Charles Egbert Craddock" (Miss Murfree). This would not be the case anywhere in the world, and the topography of this region and the individualism of its inhabitant have served to empha- size differences. In studying our Mountain Problem these differences must not in any case be forgotten. Three classes, then, dwell in the Southern Highlands. They have been very happily defined by President Wilson of the Presbyterian College at Maryville, Tenn., as the Nominal Mountaineers, the Normal Mountaineers, and the Needy or Submerged Moun- taineers. The first class, the Nominal Mountaineers, occupy the valleys of the Shenandoah and the Tennessee and connecting valleys and plateaus, and have built the chain of cities beginning at Wheeling, W. Va., and Staunton, Va., and extending by way of Roanoke, The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 25 Bristol, Johnson City, Asheville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga to Birmingham. Culture, wealth and refinement are conspicuous in these cities. From them many leading authors, artists, musicians, states- men and financiers have sprung, and in them many more are still living. The population of this class slightly exceeds that of the other two combined. Of course, the rude and the rough even here outnum.ber the cultured and refined. But though law does not sit enthroned in the bosom of every casual passer-by, yet this section is only a cross-section of the nation at large, and its divisions and problems do not differ in any important particular from, those of a similar population in any Northern state. Paradise has not been regained even though Virginia has its Shenandoah Valley ; the New Jerusalem has not come down though Knoxville has eighty-five houses of worship for its white people; but though conditions are far from ideal in even the most progressive cities and districts of the Valley the people there as a whole are able to over- come their own difficulties and solve their own problems. This class will therefore be eliminated from further consideration in this book, and whatever is hereafter said of "the mountain people" will be no more applicable to the Nominal Mountaineer than to the people of Philadelphia or of Boston. The second class is the class of Normal or Typical Mountaineers. These live not merely in sight of the mountains but among and on the mountains. They lack the polish and veneer of the larger world, and are equally lacking in its conveniences and "necessities." Rugged always and ragged often they stand on their rights as men. They eye superiority with suspicion. 26 Round Robin and meet criticism with hostility. Do they in this regard differ from most of us? Is not the chief differ- ence this, that we veil our resentment toward the critic and the mountaineer does not? Much failure to appreciate these people is attributable to an initial misunderstanding, constituting a barrier which, once erected, the mountaineer never takes down. Since the enforced simplicity of their living is not Arcadian it is too often regarded as devoid of virtues. Inter- course based on this assumption is travelling a hopeless road. Many virtues they lack, indeed, and many vices they possess. But one vice they do not possess: Inhospitality. One fundamental virtue does character- ize them: Self-support. Their living may be of a narrowness in food, clothes and lodging that would be intolerable to ourselves, but if they cannot have more they are content with less. Each man applies to himself the Scriptural law: "If a man will not work neither shall he eat." And however narrow his living it is not too narrow to share with an utter stranger, from whom he hesitates or refuses to accept compen- sation in return. The cultured and refined of earth can go to the mountaineer and consider his ways, and learn from him that true hospitality which not only surrenders comfort but actually divides the bed and shares the last loaf with one whom he never saw before and will never see again. Self-support and hospitality are the bed-rock virtues of social life; they are the outstanding virtues of the mountain people; and they furnish a splendid foundation on which to build other necessary virtues. If they are ignorant of "book learning" they are not necessarily ignoramuses. They are generally able to take care of themselves. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 27 Their honesty is equal to that of other people; but their shrewdness is also equal to that of others; and the maxim of the law, "Caveat emptor" ("Let the purchaser look to his own interests") is as applicable in Appalachia as in Connecticut. In fact, the Normal Mountaineer is a normal human being with character- istics conditioned by inheritance and environment; the kind of being we ourselves would be, similarly conditioned; needing assistance if he is to attain all that he is capable of attaining; but unwilling to accept any help that is not given in the spirit of sym- pathetic equality that can say in its deeds: "We are men of like passions with yourselves." The third class consists of the Needy or Submerged Mountaineers. "Of this class," President Wilson in his book "The Southern Mountaineers" says, "not so much good can be said. They correspond to, while they are entirely different from, that peculiar and pitiable lowland class of humanity that was one of the indirect products of the institution of slavery — 'the poor whites' or 'white trash,' as they used to be called. They are comparatively few, but are very incorrectly supposed by many readers of magazine articles to be typical of the entire body of southern mountaineers. By this mistaken supposition a mighty injustice is done to a very large majority of the dwellers in the Appalachians. As fairly judge England by 'Darkest England,' or London by Whitechapel, or New York by the slums, or any community by the submerged tenth. This third class consists of the drift, of the flotsam and jetsam, that are cast up here and there among the mountains. They are the shiftless, am- bitionless degenerates, such as are found wherever 28 Round Robin men are found. Usually they own little or no land, and eke out a precarious existence, such as only a beneficent Providence that cares for the birds and other denizens of the forest could explain. They are those unfortunates that are found everywhere, whether in city or country, who sink to the bottom, and leave upper and middle classes above them. They are simply the lowest class in the mountains, and they deserve at our hearts and hands both sympathy and aid." If we ask ourselves, "What is the number of persons among all these classes that require our aid in attaining to their physical, intellectual and spiritual salvation?" the answer can be given only approximately. The divisions are not sharply defined. They merge into each other and on the large border the division must remain subjective and therefore variable. Thousands of the Nominal Mountaineers are found in the most remote districts. Hundreds of thousands of the Normal and the Needy Mountaineers are living in the Valleys. But with some degree of accuracy the figures may be estimated as follows: The population which can be entrusted to the care of the Nominal Mountaineer, and which therefore does not call for special study or assistance, from without, is about two and a half millions. Of the remaining population of a little less than two and a half millions the Normal Mountaineers number somewhat more than two millions and the Submerged Mountaineers a little less than a half million. Such is the nature and such the magnitude of the field that we now proceed to study at close range and more in detail. CHAPTER II. The famous monograph on "Snakes in Ireland," the entire text of which consisted of the six words, "There are no snakes in Ireland," was entirely too concise for satisfactory illumination of the subject. "If not, why not?" is a question that should have been answered. And one of a philosophic turn would like to ask another question: "Is the lack of snakes in Ireland a good thing for the intellectual and moral discipline of the Irish, or a bad thing?" One is reminded of this monograph in dealing with Social Conditions in the Appalachians. It cannot be said with finality, "There are no social conditions in Appalachia," but it can be said that beyond the family the social conditions are not far removed from nonexistence. A little figuring will demonstrate this fact. In the entire region, six hundred miles long and two hundred wide, five millions of people reside. That is, the population is less than fifty to the square mile. But this average includes the comparatively thickly popu- lated Greater Valley Belt, in whose twenty thousand square miles one half of the entire population lives. In the remaining eighty thousand square miles live two and a half millions of people, or an average of little more than thirty to the square mile. This is ten times as dense a population as that of corresponding regions in the Rocky Mountains, but is only one- sixth as dense as the population of the principal New England States. And since these thirty persons include all the men, women and children, and the children are numerous to an extent almost incredible 30 Round Robin in this day of small families elsewhere, our figures mean that the population averages not more than three or four families to the square mile. Over the larger part of the mountains it is even less than this, for ''the average population" is largely taken up by the little towns, villages and hamlets in which are found from fifty to five hundred inhabitants. In sections of the Cimiberlands and Great Smokies one may travel for days without finding a sign of habitation, and in fact many have so travelled till they have perished of starvation, I. Obstacles to Social Intercourse. Three noteworthy factors still further reduce the social possibilities involved in the presence of three or four families to the square mile. These are: (1) The topography of the square mile, (2) The nature of its flora, and (3) The location of the homes. Other factors present themselves after we enter the homes: (4) Their diminutiveness, and (5) The taciturnity of their inhabitants. Practically the only level space in the whole square mile is that which is covered by the house, but often, level space being entirely lacking, the house is perched on a mountain-side rising one foot in five. Up and down the bed of a tiny rivulet one may stumble over rocks and roots a few hundred yards perhaps without a great deal of climbing; but a few feet away on either side of the house the mountain rises more steeply than the house-roof itself, at an angle of from forty to eighty degrees. It rises thus for several hundred or several thousand feet, and from a summit only a few The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 31 feet or a few yards wide it drops with equal abruptness into anottier valley, which may or may not be isihabited. If neighbors live in two such adjoining valleys, (and a third often intervenes) they may be only a mile apart according to long measure, but in the real measure of energy expended they are five or ten miles apart. In the majority of cases roads cannot be built, because practicable grades and sufficient funds cannot be secured. The only substitute is "the trail," a more or less indistinguishable foot-path which goes almost straight up the mountain, and which demands the toll of strong lungs, strong heart, and strong knees, and, in the case of one who is new at it, massage and long hours of rest at the end. It is no great exaggeration to say that the energy expended in a trip from one valley to another is comparable only to that expended in climbing or descending a ladder for a like distance. The nature of the covering of this mountain roof adds to the difficulty of communication. Unlike the Rocky Mountains the Southern Applachians are all verdure- clad. Not only does every variety of hard-wood cover the entire country, trees appearing to grow out of the very surface rock itself; this might add only to the comfort of travel. But the undergrowth is of almost tropical luxuriance, and offers tropical opposition to travel. Here is the experience of a naturalist as quoted by Kephart in "Our Southern Highlanders:" "A trail that runs through blackberry bushes two miles out of three is hard to follow. Then there was a huckleberry bush reaching to our waists growing as thickly upon the ground as tomato vines, curled hard, and stubborn; and laurel much like a field of lilac bushes, crooked and strong as iron. In one 32 Round Robin place we walked fully a quarter of a mile over tops of laurel bushes and these were ten or twelve feet in height, but blown over one way by the wind." With sur- roundings of this sort, with footing on loose and scanty soil or on hard and insecure and flaking rock, and with the possibility of an unannounced cloud suddenly enveloping the mountain so thick that one cannot see a tree ten feet away, it is no wonder that social inter- course is less frequent than when the neighbor lives "just around the corner in the next block." And we can readily credit the statement that "the people on the north side of Pine Mountain, averaging only a mile thick, know less about those on the south side than a Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutch- men." or that "there are men in these mountains of Kentucky who have never seen a town or even the poor village that constitutes their county seat. The women are as rooted as trees." One woman during twelve years of married life had lived only ten miles across the mountain from her own home, but had never in this time been back to visit her father and mother. Another had never been to the post-office only four miles away. Another had never been even to the country store only two miles distant. But why did the mountain people build their homes in separate valleys, at the extreme distance from others? Why did they not build near, or at, the top of the mountains, thus getting better air and closer neighborhood, and escaping the many hours of mist that linger in the coves while the peaks are bright with the morning sun? For the very practical reasons that they wanted to be near the water, near the gurgling stream if not The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 33 hard by the stream itself, and for the further reason that it is easier to bring both the rough material and the finished product down the hill than to carry- it up. In some sections in quite recent years the increasing denudation of the forests has brought on floods more frequent and compelled the removal of houses a few hundred feet up the mountain; but the vast majority of homes remain and will con- tinue to remain where they were erected so long ago. Being kept at home by these difficulties the moun- taineer lacks the free com^municativeness or loquacity of the city dweller. His words are few and far between, because long ago he had communicated to those about him the experiences, observations, and reflections of his life, and whatever he now says will of necessity be a repetition of what he said last month or last year. Knowing that this is true of others too he does not spend his time gadding. Long periods of silence alternating with short periods of slowly moving con- versation characterize social visiting, and the nervous stranger who seeks to overcome both the silence and the slow movement with incessant volubility finds himself misunderstood and disliked. And finally the homes are so small that the people refrain from visiting out of mutual consideration. Seldom does the house consist of as many as three rooms. Comfortable, indeed, is that home which comprises two rooms with an open covered porch between. Ordinarily the entire family have but one room, from sixteen to twenty feet square, with a little adjoining shed or "lean-to," for cooking, and in this limited space the family life is lived day and night, 34 Round Robin from birth to death. Not infrequently three genera- tions constitute the family so cribbed, cabined and confined. Similar conditions are found in New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore; but they seem especially deplorable in the mountains, where front-foot valuation is unheard of, and where the people have "all out of doors" to build in. II. Social Conditions in the Home When the social conditions of the mountain folk are considered, it is evident that those of the home overshadow all others. When an attempt is made to describe the home it must be understood that the description is composite. No one feature is found in all, and some features are absent from many, but in general outlines the following description is correct : The family have been sleeping for many hours scattered on beds and pallets of the severest and most meagerly furnished kind, the slats of the former and the floor under the latter being much in evidence, and the faded, dirty, and musty quilts of a vintage of ten or twenty years ago thrusting the fact of their exis- tence on the olfactories of the stranger. Some have slept in the room and some in the loft overhead, reached by a ladder. Though the house is built of logs and chinked, and the doors and windows have been shut tight, there has been no lack of air; for the chinking has dropped from the logs, the ground is visible in many places through the cracks and knot-holes in the floor, and the capacious chimney stack could ventilate a moderate sized hotel. Refreshed, they look with little interest on a scene which is far more interesting because more novel. Two wooden beds and two pallets The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 35 on the floor, one or two "split-bottom" rocking chairs, and one or two straight chairs of the same construction, never painted and now grown dark and finally all but black, a short deal table, and an upturned drygoods box, flanked by a tin trunk bought many years ago for $>1.50 — this is the furniture. On the wall hang the unused clothes of the family; they do not take much space. With unstudied alternation also hang dried edibles — apples, peppers, herbs, perhaps some tobacco, and a string of okra. The process of getting dressed is simple. "Getting ready for bed" meant only to "loosen up." "Getting up" means only to tighten up. There are no night clothes, there are seldom any underclothes. "Why make such a fuss about sleepin'?" asked one. A toilet so simple is in keeping with the miscellaneous herding of so many persons, and, in truth, obviates some of the objections to such congestion. Those who care to wash face and hands are at liberty to do so; no offense is taken. But no questions or comments are offered if one overlooks this part of the toilet. The housewife herself generally does overlook it. She has to get breakfast, and the toilet can wait. And to get breakfast she has neither gas stove nor range. She has the fireplace, and some pots and pans and skillets. In the skillet she fries some sow-belly or pork of the cheapest white variety, which comes to the table "reeking in grease," as one told the writer he liked his meat. The bread is made of flour, but the biscuits into which it is made are almost of the dimensions and specific gravity of the two-hundred pound weight on the grocers' scales,; and those who 36 Round Robin have not been hardened sufficiently to digest them prefer the cold "pone bread" of yesterday's dinner, which is set on for breakfast along with even colder "greens" of the turnip or of the "collard" variety. There is not enough tableware to go around, and — "Fingers were made before forks," so why trouble? Why may not the children take their supplies from the plate of father or mother? Or, for that matter, why have intermediate resting places for the food, when all may go to the one bowl, or tin plate, or large dish, and eat directly thence, in a modification of the buffet luncheon? To dismiss the matter of fare once for all: Kephart in "Our Southern Higlanders" gives a glimpse of frequent conditions in this picture which is not at all exaggerated: "Even to families that are fairly well-to- do there will come periods of famine, such as Lincoln, speaking of his boyhood, called 'pretty pinching times.' Hickory ashes then are used as a substitute for soda in biscuits, and the empty salt-gourd will be soaked for brine to cook with. Once, when I was boarding with a good family, our stores ran out of everything, and none of our neighbors had the least to spare. We had no meat of any kind for two weeks (the game had migrated), and no lard or other grease for nearly a week. Then the meal and salt played out. One day we were reduced to potatoes 'straight,' which were parboiled in fresh water, and then burnt a little on the surface as substitute for salt. Another day we had not a bite but string-beans boiled in un- salted water. _ _ .Occasionally, as at 'hog-killin' time' the poorest live in abundance; occasionally, as at Christmas, they will go on sprees. But, taking The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 37 them the year through, the Highlanders are a notably abstemious race. When a family is reduced to dry corn-bread and black coffee unsweetened — so much and no more — it will joke about the lack of meat and vegetables. And, when there is meat, two mountaineers engaged in hard out-door work will consume less of it than a northern office-man would eat. Indeed, the heartiness with which 'furriners' stuff themselves is a wonder and a merriment to the people of the hills." When the breakfast is over the members of the household betake themselves, gradually and without undue haste, to their respective occupations. The husband and father goes to the field which, thin-soiled and infested with stones and gravel, hangs precariously on the mountain-side. It is incredible that anyone can maintain his footing at such an angle, and equally incredible that any plant can root itself and grow. Sometimes a hill of corn or of squashes has to be propped up on one side with stones to keep it from washing or simply falling away. In some places the cultivated slope ends on the brink of a precipice; in which case color is given to the story that a man in the mountains once broke his neck by falling off his farm. The wife and mother gathers and prepares whatever green thing may be available for dinner, makes lye soap in the big pot in the yard, or goes to the loom, or does the family washing, or sits knitting, or droops drowsing. Or she goes out with the axe to chop wood for the fire, or with the hoe to do a man's work as well as a woman's. Her activities and inactivities are varied by the disciplining of the half-dozen little 38 Round Robin children, who are roHing around Hke so many Httle kittens, and solace is taken from her many cares by an occasional dip of snuff. * The children seldom go to school, for when schools exist the school term is only from three to five months and any conceivable excuse suffices to keep the children at home. Organized sports they have none. The little ones do not need them for infant imagination can build up a world from a stick, a rag, or a piece of broken glass; but the older ones come to a point where, without instruments of play, they wander about first aimlessly and then mischievously. Before they come to their ''teens" their favorite pastime is that of throwing rocks — at marks inanimate, animal, or human. With the approach of adolescence the com- bination of neglect, publicity, and careless if not evil conversation by their elders, has opened up to them the vices of unrestrained virility, and evil habits have been formed which endure through life. Children are punished, not for correction and discipline, but because of a passing gust of anger. They are not trained because the parents themselves are not trained. They do what they are forced or bribed to do in the matter of work, and then betake themselves to their favorite pastimes. This schedule goes on year after year without any change other than the growing maturity of the children already in the family, and the addition of another child each year. At a remarkably early age, from sixteen to eighteen, the boy marrieis a girl of from fourteen to seventeen years, and either they live under the parental roof — sometimes in the parental The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 39 room — or the neighborhood has a "log-raisin" and within twelve hours has built a one-room house in which the entire married life of the young couple will reproduce in all particulars the households which they left. The young man married, but without chivalry for woman either before marriage or after. The young woman married, but without visions or ideals before marriage or after. The children came, and the neces- sity of dividing the same possessions among an increas- ing number of mouths and bodies kept the life of the family down to purely material thoughts and consid- erations, whose dominant note was, because of intel- lectual stagnation, not despair but apathy, III. Social Relationship With Neighbors. The same caution is to be observed in generalizing of neighborhood social conditions as in generalizing of those of the home. Elements are present that are not universal, and elements are lacking that are found in some neighborhoods. The picture is general, not particular. The neighborhood is large in extent, small in popu- lation, permanent in its composition, and most remarkably inter-related by marriage. Therefore there are no lines of social cleavage, no barriers to the freest intercourse of family with family and of person with person. All occasions of a public character are attended by the entire neighborhood, and the life and antece- dents of every one present are thoroughly known. The occasions of public gathering are quilting bees, "log-raisings," "young folks' parties," "preaching," 40 Round Robin and burials; and, more frequently and informally, the chance meetings at the mill and the store, where by tacit agreement groups stand or sit around for several hours, giving and receiving the personal experi- ences of the past week. The "log-raising" is the compliment which, when a new house is to be occupied, the neighbors pay to the new tenant. The logs have all been prepared and measured and mortised, and on the appointed day the brawn of the mountain-side gathers to lift the dead weight into place, log by log. The women are also present, preparing the mid-day meal which gives the social tone to the gathering. The "quilting bees" are exclusively feminine in personnel, the neighbors assisting in the tacking of the quilts whose owner has for months, perhaps years, been slowly accmnulating scraps of calico or of velvet and sewing them into patterns, and who is now ready for the pieces to take their place, and for the bed covering of the years to come to be added to the scanty family treasures. The "young folks' parties" have no semblance of seriousness. Everything is done for fun and a good time. If there has been no "revival" recently the probability is that there will be dancing to the accom- paniment of fiddle, or occasionally of accordion. The musician is the master of the feast. He calls the figures and his word is law. His friendly nod or rare word of greeting is prized as highly as a king's by his courtiers; though next morning, the occasion of his glory past, he is plain Bill or Tom, and meets no more respect than any other neighbor. If dancing be barred, The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 41 there are games in abundance that the swains and damsels are not loath to play — games most of which have kissing as reward or forfeit, or the choosing of partners as an evidence of feminine favor; for the young people are simply great roistering boys and girls. "Preaching" is however the occasion of most general satisfaction. This is due not so much to the sense of religion as to the fact that this is the recognized full- dress opportunity for social intercourse. It comes only once a month, and it is attended by all. Most aggressive in attendance are dogs, and babes in arms, whose interruptions of salute or of discontent, however, do not appear to disconcert either the preacher or the hearers. It is also an immemorial custom that two of the youths shall rise in the midst of the sermon, and from brimming buckets with fresh gourds or bright tin dippers "water the congregation." But it is not necessary that all shall go within the building. Groups of like-minded gather at various places within or about the open clearing in which sits the place of worship — this group exchanging experiences in planting, hunting, or going to town; that deep in ribald jest or obscene story, and perhaps back a little among the trees a few young couples "courting." Occasionally those out- side will enter the building and participate in the exercises for a half hour or an hour and then return to the outside. The nearest parallel to this in the Church in the cities is the coming and going of people at the Three Hours' Service on Good Friday. In both cases the service continues with a changing constituency, but with the same ministry and same bodyguard of the faithful. Basket dinners are eaten on the grounds before the second sermon, if there is one; and when all 42 Round Robin is over everyone starts home satisfied in some way — the patriarch satisfied with his prayer, the householder with his bargain, the lover with his progress, the small boy with his story, the mother with her remedy, the lass with her looks; and (shall it be added?) the preacher with the salvation which he offered and so many accep- ted. It was, indeed, a day of social refreshment, entirely apart from its religious import. The occasion of a burial, though the most sombre of all, has social connotations. If the circuit rider is too far away to be secured — and he generally is — a "local preacher" may be obtained. In the lack of both some person of supposedly superior spiritual gifts is placed in charge of the service, which in this event will consist of a hymn and "a brief word of prayer." The coffin is of the rudest, being made for the occasion out of any rough plank to be obtained in the vicinity, or it may even be hewn from freshly cut timber. Without handles it is placed upon two or three poles and so carried to the grave by neighbors. The grave itself is shallow, and irregular in shape. Here again the hands of friendship perform the last offices. One by one the oldest and nearest of friends throw in a few shovels of earth, and are then superseded by the younger, and the grave is filled rapidly. It is an indifferent man or youth who does not take some part in this work of sympathy. Incidentally, a youth often signifies his assumption of manhood by "helpin' bury ole man Blank," and he is thereafter taken at his own measurement. But while the burial itself, though simple, takes all day and is seized as an opportunity for intercourse and mutual inquiry on domestic topics, the death takes on full dignity only when "the funeral The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 43 sermon" is preached, anywhere from three months to three years later. While Kephart thinks this custom "has no analogue elsewhere" than in the Southern mountains, the writer is familiar with it in other sections. One occasion rises to memory vividly when he heard a negro evangelist in Southern Virginia ask the indulgence of his congregation for a little huskiness in his voice one Sunday night, "because," he said, "I preached seven funerals at Blackstone this afternoon," Inquiry developed the fact that such an experience did not indicate excessive mortality : the funeral discourses had been reserved for what seemed good reason and they were finally delivered in a single eulogy when a preacher of desirable eloquence arrived. This is not essentially different from the good custom observed by many Bishops, who preface their Convention ad- dresses with appreciation and laudatory remarks of the noteworthy Churchmen deceased within a twelve- month. And these mountain folk came to these ser- mons of personalities with precisely the gusto with which the multitudes in the city flock to hear the preaching of concrete personalities by the popular evangelist rather than that of abstract philosophizing by the quiet teacher. In the mountains and out of the mountains the same rule holds good that the masses of mankind are moved more by the emotions than by intelligence, more by sentiment than by duty; therefore it is that the announcement of a fun- eral sermon to be preached at a certain time ensures a church crowded to its capacity. It is worth while at this place once more to stress the fact that the Highlander, just because he is a human, rational being, like all other men, has certain provin- 44 Round Robin cialisms and peculiarities of thought and speech and action; and also that like the rest of us he has explana- tion and reason for his peculiarities. "Peculiar" and "provincial" are terms that we use too freely and too lightly. They mean only "unfamiliar"; and to condemn peculiarities and provincialisms without investigation of the reason for their existence is to be guilty of that prevalent folly of making our own familiarity with a habit or a custom the measure of its right to be. The stranger who goes into the heart of the mountains is as peculiar in his habits to the mountain people as the mountain people are to him, and his ears would burn if he knew what they were thinking of him and his ill-concealed sense of superiority. In truth, it may as well be said, certain of our own customs in circles of refinement, as well as in other circles, would give the Appalachian Traveller not less than the Chinese Traveller opportunity for letters of criticism to the home people. He would contrast the multitude of knives, forks, spoons and unrecognized utensils of eating that confuse the unwary guest with the Spartan simplicity of his own table, and balance the necessitated meagerness of mountain dress by the even more voluntarily meagre dress at a dinner or on the beach. His criticism might be foolish. "We can tell him," we say, "why these things are," That is true. On the other hand, he can do the same. If the mountain folk are peculiar to us, we are peculiar to them. If our customs are better than theirs we cannot commend them by condemning those whom we would help. Often a little better understanding on our own part will either remove our objection to their custom or will open up to us the way by which we can The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 45 commend a better custom. But if we ourselves do not consistently apply the rule which we commend we may as well not commend it. IV. The Point of View As a concrete example take the case of the "moon- shiner" or "blockader," who distils liquor without license and against the law of the United States. The usual conception is that the moonshiner is a lawless, untrustworthy desperado of the old-time "cow-boy" type, and that in spirit he is of the same breed as bandits and pirates. This picture of him seemis justified to us by his free use of fire-arms in repelling revenue agents. Yet if we would put ourself in his place we would find that something is to be said in extenuation of his lawlessness. Why should he not take such part of his corn as he pleases, and turn it into whiskey? If he turns part into meal to eat, and the government does not place a prohibitory tax on him for grinding what he wants, what right has the government prac- tically to forbid him to distil his sour mash for his own consumption? The right is not claimed by the govern- ment on moral grounds: revenue is the only ground for the constant spying and arresting and convicting of the mountain people. Public opinion in the moun- tains is that the government discriminates unjustly in so hounding illicit distillers, tram.pling on the inalienable right of man to put the labor of his hand into what form may please him. Unable to perceive equity in the assault of might on right the illicit distillers proceed to meet might with 46 Round Robin might, and they take their own Hves against those of the deputies who are wilhng to come in as agents of injustice. The man who faces the penitentiary for exercising his freedom, and in going to the penitentiary leaves helpless wife and children to shift for themselves, will not hesitate, if need be, to destroy the life of the man who forces him to the alternatives. Let it be borne in mind that the question with him is not at all as to the undesirability or obnoxiousness of whiskey; it has to do purely with personal freedom and governmental injustice. And not a few reputable citizens in more cultured communities find reasons, no better but just as satisfactory, for evading laws that, in their opinion, bear on them unjustly. Consideration of the subject of moonshining leads to the allied matters of drinking and killing, confessedly the most prevalent evils of the mountains. And if to these we add, what in some sections is common, but in commonness is not peculiar to the mountains, easiness in sexual relationship, we have the trinity of evils that blight the mountain life. The three are the temptations that belong to out- door virility everywhere, and the narrowed interests of the lives of the mountain folk and the energizing effect of the bracing mountain air combine to make them not more shameless but less ashamed. And when this is said, something more must be said: The doers of these evils are only a fraction in any community at a given time, but they do not lose caste because of their doings. The neighbors are not indifferent to the doing of evil. They are not moved with especial charity to the wrong-doer. But before all else stands The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 47 individual liberty of action, and until that liberty crowds another's liberty intolerably one is not criticised for exercising it. The confirmed and steady drinker is found in every settlement, and due allowance is made for him in what he says and does, but the majority drink at irregular intervals. Not every community has a still, and the supply must be brought in and paid for by those who lack both still and means. When two or three dollars a gallon must be paid by those who do not see so much money in a month or two it is evident that habitual drinking is out of question for the general run. But when a holiday approaches, preeminently Christmas and New Year, the strictest economy is practiced for weeks and months before to save up money wherewith to buy enough whiskey with which to "celebrate." The men do not act selfishly in its use. The women and children, and often the very babes in arms, take part in the drinking on these occasions. And what they drink is not pure corn whiskey any more. It used to be; but a distiller once informed the writer that he added tobacco, essence of ginger, and red pepper to give it the right burn. Some are said even to add washing lye. No wonder that such evil spirits taken in beget spirits even more evil that come out. Whiskey of this sort, it has been said, "will set a jack-rabbit a-chasin' a bull-dog." While the taking of human life can often be traced to drunkenness it is not always or even generally so. The Highlander lives in the eighteenth century, not in the twentieth, and he has not come to the twentieth 48 Round Robin century valuation of life and abhorrence of violent death. The right of private warfare is still claimed by him, and with it the right to a choice of methods and arms. To him there is nothing worse in slashing with a knife or shooting with a pistol or gun than in smashing with bare fists. The primitive passions seek primitive methods of redress, and those methods are the best with him which will the most promptly and permanently disable the adversary. Every man is his own policeman, judge, jury and executioner; the country is too sparsely settled and the individual- ism is yet too marked to permit the keeping of the peace to be delegated. For the purpose of protection (or of aggression) most of the men of the mountains go armed, their weapons generally concealed. A stout hickory stick, not unlike a shillelagh; or "brass knucks" which are the steel armor of the right hand and crush in the face like an egg-shell; or a revolver of large calibre; or a rifle or a shot-gun; — these furnish the means for carrying into full effect the impulse of anger, or the deadly purpose of a feud, or the resent- ment of unpleasing words. In the westernmost judicial district of North Carolina the statistics show that in the counties where life is most valued there is one homicide annually for every 2,500 population, and that the rate in some counties is as high as one for every 1,000 population. This rate is about six times as great as it is in the entire United States, thirty times as great as it is in Italy of the stiletto, and nearly one hundred times the rate in Germany. Deplorable as is this disregard of life, for which the law seldom exacts reparation, it is not amazing that it should be so when the very preachers have been The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 49 known to fight physically after verbal debate on theological questions about which both were ignorant, and on more occasions than one to engage in conflicts with knives. Kephart, the most dispassionate student and writer on mountain conditions, says: "The High- lander is no worse than the bygone age that he really belongs to. In some ways he is better. He is far less cruel than his ancestors were — than our ancestors were. He does not torture with the tumbril, the stocks, the ducking-stool, the pillory, the branding- irons, the ear-pruners and nostril-shears and tongue- branks that were in every-day use under the old criminal code. He does not tie a woman to the cart's tail and publicly lash her back until it streams with blood, nor does he hang a man for picking somebody's pocket of twelve pence and a farthing. He does not go slumming in bedlam, paying tuppence for the sport of mocking the maniacs until they rattle their chains in rage or horror. He does not turn executions of criminals into public festivals. He never has been known to burn a condemned one at the stake. If he hangs a man, he does not first draw his entrails and burn them before his eyes, with a mob crowding about to jeer the poor devil's flinching or to com- pliment him on his "nerve." Yet all these pleasan- tries were proper and legal in Christian Britain two cent- uries ago." Sexual relationship is determined and limited by the same considerations of personal freedom to act accord- ing to personal desire until that desire crosses the desire of another. It is rendered more irregular by the lack of chivalry to woman. The romance of the fluttering heart is not known in the mountains. The 50 Round Robin woman was made for the man — for his pleasure, his comfort, his service — and the man so regards her and uses her. And the woman, never having known of any other possible status, accepts the relation as a matter of course, and would probably despise a husband who viewed her in any more favorable light. The girls must marry early and bear a large family to their husbands. Sometimes they bear a family without marrying; and, if they care for their children, they do not permanently lose caste. The writer personally knows of one such who reared her family never having had a husband, and who was received by her neighbors on terms of absolute equality. If an unmarried girl becomes a mother the offending man may have to leave the neighborhood for six months or a year, but after the first ebullition the transaction is regarded as an accomplished fact, which would not be bettered by taking a life; and gradually the unmarried mother resumes her life, with just another little body to be clothed and mouth to be fed. Bad as this is it might be compared without disadvantage to social conditons elsewhere. It has not the added evil of marital infidelity. The loyalty of husband and wife to each other is without equal in the world even if, as is occasionally the case, the husband has two wives. Paid prostitutes are not tolerated in a settlement. The social evil is almost entirely in the undisciplined affections and passions of the unmarried, especially in the brazen and aggressive initiative of the young men. To sum up: The Highlander's ethics are determined by the relation which his own right to free and untram- meled self-expression bears to the equal rights of others. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 51 He scrupulously observes the rights of others until he is convinced that they have forfeited their rights. When he is so convinced he has no scruple in pressing his own claim to what he wants, whether by fraud, by force, or by cunning. He will stand by his friend; he will stand against his enemy; but he will stand first for himself. CHAPTER III. "Hold up your hand. If you want to be saved hold up your hand. Salvation is just and free and as easy as that. Hold up your hand and you will be saved." This was the fervid "proposition" of a preacher of more than ordinary intelligence to a congregation of less than ordinary intelligence at the dedication of a new house of worship in the Southern Appalachians. Five men were at once saved on these terms, and were reported by the evangelist as so many "souls saved." The incident was not unique. It gives a fair idea of the religion of the mountain folk. If we are incred- ulous as to the fact we have not kept abreast of much modern revivalism in some of our large cities, and we have not informed ourselves on the history of religion and on the yet widespread conviction that religion and conduct are absolutely independent. If, however, we keep it in mind that the mountain people are yet drifting in the backwater of the current of thought their religious and devotional point of view will take its place naturally along with their other character- istics, and we shall not be surprised that religion as they understand it lacks many of the attributes that we have learned to associate with it. I. Some General Principles Reduced to its lowest terms, religion is fundamentally a sense of the unseen, or spiritual, and of a relation between it and ourselves. If it is to influence our The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 53 lives this relation must be a relation of dependence on our side and of response on the other, and if it is to be anything more than an empty phrase it must be the relation of intelligence with intelligence, of trust with responsibility, and of service with due recognition. Browning, in his "Caliban upon Setebos," gives a fine dissertation on the different phases of natural religion without moral manifestation. And Virgil in his "Aeneid" naively shows how a pagan acting treacher- ously towards the confiding Dido could yet call himself "pious." The conception that men have of the God whom they worship determines the kind of service they will offer their deity; just as, on the other hand, the kind of worship men offer their deity shows what kind of God they think he is. He may be a whimsical tyrant who must be worshipped by flattery or cajolery; or he may be a being of justice, mercy and reality, who is best worshipped by the reproduction of these qualities in the worshipper. Our perception of our relation to him may have the beautiful simplicity of that woman's who said of Christ "If I may but touch the hem of his garment I shall be made whole;" or it may be as rational as was that captain's who said "I also have servants under me, and when I say to one 'Do this' he doeth it. Speak the word and my servant shall be healed;" but when, whether superstitiously or intelligently, we make our appeal to the God and Father of us all with the best member that we have there can be no doubt that our worship is acceptable to God and that he gives rich return to our honesty and sincerity. "If 54 Round Robin there is, to begin with, a mind that wills the right,^it is given to a man not according to what he hath not but according to what he hath." There are as many varieties of religious experience as there are varieties of men; and since intelligence has innumerable grada- tions, and shades imperceptibly into credulity, and credulity is but the older of twins and its brother is superstition, it transcends the wit of men to dogmatize as to the exact place where the religious sense exchan- ges utility for futility. It is necessary to be reminded of these general principles when we study the religion of the Southern Highlander, because the manifestation of his religion puts a strain on our comprehensiveness, if not on our toleration, a strain that we can bear only when his evident sincerity is met by our large sympathy. The religious connections in the mountains are almost entirely Protestant. Roman Catholicism has in recent years planted aggressive outposts and organized its work with the intention of making itself felt as a religious force among these people, but so far it has made practically no impression. With Scottish antecedents the ecclesiastical traditions must necessarily be Protestant ; but within the limits of the word Protestant — which to them means anti-Papal, or non-Roman, and may embrace even Mormonism— the affiliations of the people are widely varied, unim- portant and frequently changing. Originally Presby- terian, they lacked Presbyterian preachers, and what happened to the Church in the lowlands of Alabama and Mississippi happened to the Presbyterian commun- ion in the highlands of Tennessee and Virginia. It The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 55 lost thousands of its members through its failure to provide ministrations in the day of small things. But Baptist and Methodist preachers were there. Considered as preachers they were extremely ignorant. So were their hearers, even more ignorant. Con- gregations were organized, but loosely. The preacher was often unpaid, and the larger organization was too glad that the sheep were shepherded to look critically into the intellectual qualifications of the shepherds. Neither preachers nor people were checked in their vagaries, and finally the distinctive doctrines of the different communions lost their identity in a shifting kaleidoscopic presentation of doctrine, as first one preacher came and then another, to show their various more or less impossible combinations of spiritual imaginings. With the loss of characteristic teaching the ties of loyalty were loosed. "One church is as good as another" was their dictum — always excepting the Roman Catholic, which was purely pagan and idolatrous. The "power" of the latest preacher determined the special membership; and those who, having been converted, joined the Baptist denomination one year were found at the end of a revival a year later zealous members of the Methodist — albeit wor- shipping with the same kind of service and preacher in the same building used on another Sunday by a preacher of another communion preaching to the same congregation. These two, the Methodist and the Baptist, swept the field of religion; but were utterly unable to hold the converts to their distinctive teaching or in permanent membership. To and fro the people went, and whether in the one communion or the other they held to the same local tenets and practices. More 56 Round Robin and more frequently would small bodies get hold of a thought new to them and attractive, and on the basis of the novel suggestion would organize a new body in the old, or break away altogether. So came the Holy Rollers, the Sanctificationists, etc. As to our Church, they knew little of it. Some of the better informed knew of it as the entering wedge of the Roman Catholic Church; but the majority were as ignorant of its existence as the mountain farmer in Southwestern Virginia, of whom a prospecting clergyman asked, "My friend, are there any Episco- palians in these parts?" "Well, I don't know exactly," answered the farmer, "my son Jack killed some sort o' strange animal over on the hill last week and nailed the skin on the barn door. You might look at it." The formal theology of the mountain folk is as variegated as the flora of the mountains themselves. True to their Scotch descent their disputations are many and fierce. Immersion, close communion, original sin, and jree will are their favorite tilting grounds; and whatever the position taken it is fortified by Scripture taken word for word from the King James version. This version is regarded in practice as the original text of the Scripture, and, so, infallible — that is, infallible in the sense in which they receive it. To the Scriptures they go to settle every question of speculation; and the things they wrest from the Scriptures are indeed remarkable. One of them declared to the writer that St. Peter was a Negro; and on being asked for his proof triumphantly adduced Acts 13:1 wherein mention is made of "Simeon that was called Niger." Another quoted I Corinthians The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 57 15:51 and 52, "We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," as Christ's own declaration of the universal need of instantaneous and sensible conversion. They apply St. Paul's disciplinary rules as to dress and silence and subjection most rigorously to the women; and, like men every where and every when, they are fond of quoting a part of his dictum, "The husband is the head of the wife," without the illuminating addition of self-sacrifice, "even as Christ is of the Church." Their microscopic examination of some passages is amazing and their deductions are overwhelming: "You can't foretell nothing in this world certainly," said a hard-headed old man to a valley preacher who was arguing certain prophecies of his own. "Didn't Christ refuse to give them Pharisees a sign? Didn't he tell 'em 'Ye say when ye see the sky red at morning' and so on? I fergit the words, but he never even told 'em a red sunrise meant rain; he told 'em 'Ye say' thus and so. He knowed the weather does just as hit pleases." But while they claim and grant the widest liberty of speculation and dogma, and will concede whatever the dexterous use of proof- texts supports, there is a limit beyond which outraged humanity forbids speculation to go. In The Spirit of the Mountains, Miss Emma B. Miles tells this anecdote: "The shortest and hottest debate I ever witnessed was one that took place just outside the church door between a fledgling preacher and the oldest woman of the neighborhood. The young fellow had just delivered a sermon on the apostolic succession, declaring that no one could possibly be saved without baptism at the hands of a preacher of his own particular denomination: he had 58 Round Robin even named his mother — with deep respect and regret, it is true, but still he mentioned her — as one he believed to be among the eternally lost on account of her failure to comply with this scriptural injunction. Outside the door, after meeting, an old woman faced him, trembling with indignation. "Lishy," she shrilled at him, unheeding the crowd, "Lishy Robbins, I held you in my arms before you was three hours old, and I cert'n'y never 'lowed to see you stand up in a church and preach as you've been a-preachin' this day. Lishy Robbins, me and yor mother was girls together; I knowed her all her life, and when she died nobody grieved for her any more than I did. There never was a better woman or a better Christian in any church, and if she hain't in heaven to-day — " The old voice broke; she gathered herself together, and went close to the lad. "Lishy Robbins, you ought to be slapped over for preachin' any such fool- ishness about your mother, andT'm a-gwine to do it." And forthwith she did. Her toil-hardened old fist shot out so unexpectedly that the young preacher went down like a cornstalk. Angry? Of course he was angry, but she was a grandmother of the mountains. There was nothing for it but to pick himself up with as much dignity as remained to him." II. The Normal Theology of the Mountains The realization of the unseen world is universal in the mountains. Arguments for the existence of God, or for our own existence after death, are entirely unnecessary. These are points that may be taken for granted in any discussion, and in any company. The most foul-mouthed and profane bully will declare his The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 59 firm acceptance of them as facts. Acceptance of them is based, not on intuition, or on analogy, or on the dictum of the Church, but entirely on the witness borne to them in "the Good Book." But to deduce a large principle from a statement or from a group of acts never occurs to them in their literal acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God. Thus when they read that Jesus washed the disciples' feet and declared that he was among them as one that serveth, they find laid down in Christ's words, "I have left you an example that ye should wash one another's feet," not the law of service to men but the highest expression of the ritual law of religion; and the general effect of the passage is to enlarge the practice, not of mutual helpfulness, but of mutual foot-washing. But even so, is not such narrow respect for the authority of Christ and the Gospels better than a self-conceited rejection of his authority and theirs in every realm of life? It is a literalism like that with which the first disciples so often grieved Jesus; but even that was better than the self-sufficiency of the Pharisees or the blind arrogancy of the Greeks. With the reality of the unseen to rest in, all things are possible, and truth may be grafted on in place of superstitious reverence; and the religious sense that gave vitality and fruit to superstition will thenceforward flow through the engrafted truth and produce the true fruit of the Spirit. This sense of the unseen is so strong in them that the nearness of God — his immediate proximity, if we may intensify our expression — is the primary article of their working faith. They are not sufficiently 60 Round Robin pantheistic or metaphysical to say, "In Him we Uve and move and have our being," but he is regarded rather as the patriarchs regarded him — a corporeal and invisible being standing at the elbow, or in the room, regarding, guiding, permitting or preventing events. His higher ethical import as revealed by Christ is in the background. He is the Jehovah of Israel, the God of Hosts, mighty rather than merciful, and dominating rather than forgiving. Samuel hewing Agag to pieces before the Lord, and Elijah slaying the prophets of Baal, stir their imagination and rouse their repressed enthusiasm more than Paul pleading before Agrippa or Stephen calling to his Lord, "Lay not this sin to their charge." In any personal disputes that arise the mighty Lord is with the right, and since each disputant knows that he himself is in the right, he knows that the Lord will help him; and he thereupon proceeds, not to rest in the Lord, but to act in the Lord. A feud leader, so Mr. John Fox tells, who had about exter- terminated the opposing faction and who had made a good fortune for a mountaineer while doing it (for he kept his men busy getting out timber when they were not fighting) said in all seriousness, "I have triumphed agin my enemies time and time agin. The Lord's on my side, and I gits a better and better Christian ever' year." The novelist tells of another incident: A preacher riding down a ravine came upon an old mountaineer .hiding in the bushes with his rifle. "What are you doing there, my friend?" he asked. "Ride on, stranger," was the easy answer. "I'm a-waitin' for Jim Johnson, and with the help of the Lord I'm goin' to blow his damn head off." The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 61 As real as is the unseen, its manifestation in the mountain people is not primarily in conduct. To them the fruit of the spirit is not love, joy, peace, patience, and the like, but emotion, exaltation, frenzy; and if a man dies saying, "I'm not a-feared to die" his inner conviction carries to his hearers more satisfying conviction of his salvation than would a life-time of doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with his God. Morals are one thing and religion is another; and whoever tries to enforce connection between the two in another's life is deemed a very foolish or a very impertinent man. In not a few cases the preachers themselves have been dishonest or impure in their relations to others and have not lost either pulpit or prestige thereby. An old-timer admitted in court that he and a preacher had marked a false corner- tree which figured in an important land suit. All through the mountains surveys are made "from such and such a tree with such and such a mark on it so many degrees north and so many feet to a tree mar- ked so and so." Such trees are "corner- trees." On cross-examination the question was asked, "You admit that you and preacher X forged that corner-tree? Didn't you give preacher X a good character in your testimony? Do you consider it consistent with his profession as a minister of the Gospel to forge corner-trees?" "Aw," replied the witness, "religion ain't got nothin' to do with corner- trees." And yet, is that statement so widely different from many remarks made along the same line in highly cultured Christian communities? The difficulty in commending religion is the same among educated and ignorant. It is easy enough to get a theoretical 62 Round Robin acceptance of an invisible order of creation higher than this. The stress comes in attempting to get the law of that permanent order practised in this world. The trouble with the mountain people is that their pulpit instruction seldom deals with this vital topic. "Sabbath breaking" may be assailed, or "cussin' ", or dancing, or card-playing; but lying, cheating, slandering, back-biting, murder, adultery, lewd con- versation and impure habits, are not touched on from the pulpit or in private exhortation from year's end to year's end by the preachers of the old school. It is no wonder, such being the case, that these matters do not come within the purview of religion. The wonder is, rather, that with so many discouragements and hostile conditions, and so much neglect of the teaching of the oracles of God, there should remain so much of native honor and integrity and uprightness received only by tradition from them of old time. The sense of the reality of the unseen and of the immediate presence of God leads to some rather startling conclusions. The inspiration of the Bible is regarded as an historic event which occurred once and for all time and gave to the Bible the supreme seat of authority in doctrine and dispute. But the inspiration of those who preach the Word is ever renewed, and is constantly manifesting itself. It is not an intermediate inspiration, it is immediate. The preacher throws himself on God, and yields him- self to the utterance of the Holy Ghost as the pipe to the breath of the player. That preacher is condemned who takes his text from the printed page of the Bible rather than from the spiritual guidance of the Holy The Southern Highlands and Highlanders G3 Ghost. He is regarded as showing thereby the refusal of God to use him as a mouthpiece. As a rule this suits the mountain ministers entirely. They have an exaltation in feeling that once more God is speaking to his people by the mouth of his holy prophets. "There ain't no Holy Ghost in book larnin'," they say. One of them was persuaded to go to a theological seminary. After a few months he returned; and to an inquirer said, "Yes, the seminary is a good place to go and get rested up, but 'tain't worth while fer me ter go thar no more 's long as I've got good wind." And since emotion is to be stirred and frenzy roused, and the preaching is in vain that cannot produce these results, "good wind" is the first essential of the mountain preacher. The sing-song of a fierce and strident voice continued for an hour or two hypnotizes the congregation. A large portion of the sermon may be only a string of Bible stories told in the homeliest language, and, as likely as not, having no connection with any central thought; but by and by the long continued exhortation and peroration will take on a tone like the following: "Oh, brethren, repent ye, and repent ye of your sins,ah. Fer if you don't, ah, the Lord, ah, he will grab yer by the seat of yer pants, ah, and hold yer over hell-fire till ye holler like a coon." It is not to be thought that all the preachers are ignorant, uncouth, or of violent temper. Many have some education, some are little short of cultured, and intelligent consecration is found in a considerable number, especially in those of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches. About ten years after gradu- 64 Round Robin ation the writer met a classmate, a first honor man, and exchanged experiences with him. The young man gave this account of himself: He had taught school for some years and had saved several hundred dollars. While teaching he had read for the Methodist ministry. Having been accepted he had been sent to a circuit on Sand Mountain, the most desolate and lawless district in Northeast Alabama. His average salary from a half-dozen preaching stations totalled fifty dollars a year, with bed and lodging at each point and feed for his horse. After some years he had, at the tim.e of this meeting, expended all the money he had saved, and, not being able to live on his salary, and not having the eloquence and social grace that would lead the bishop to give him a better charge, had just been "located" at his own request by the Conference from which he was then returning, and was about to resume school teaching. "And then what, Johnnie?" I asked him. "As soon as I have saved up enough money to keep me going a few years more," he quietly answered, "I shall renew my connection with the Conference, and preach again till the money is gone." HI. Some Abnormal Developments of Religion Not so admirable are the characteristics of the preacher in those denominations that are indigenous to ignorance — the Hardshell Baptists, Holiness, Holy Rollers, Seventh Day Adventists, Three-Seed-in-the- Spirit, and the like — and the Mormons. These are the preachers that give ground for many picturesque but misleading sketches of mountain religion. They are distinctly in the minority; but just as a lawless The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 65 minority can give a reputation to a section so a minority who exhibit any marked peculiarities give the entire section a reputation for possessing those peculiarities. The Mormons are not making the progress in the mountains that they once made. Twenty years ago at a Mormon conference held in Chattanooga, reports showed that the number of Mormon elders working in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky exceeded the number of clergymen of the Church in the same states. It is not so now. Many causes have operated to reduce their number, not the least being the wider diffusion of education, secular and religious. Their pernicious influence has, how- ever, left behind it scattered converts who practice polygamy. On the other hand the ''Holiness Church," or as it prefers to be known, "The Church of God," has grown rapidly. It claims as many as two thousand congre- gations in the entire South, the great majority being in the mountains. To these people the Bible, in the King James Version, is wholly inspired and its books are equally infallible, Canticles yielding precedence not by one whit to the Gospels. Justification, Regen- eration, Sanctification, and the possibility of living a sinless life, the gift of the Holy Ghost testified by miraculous manifestations, and the Gift of Tongues, by which the disciples bear witness to experiences that transcend the limits of expression of any known language, but that compel expression and expression in a heavenly tongue, are the teachings that are stressed. This Gift of Tongues is a possibility to every believer. When conferred it is the evidence of that complete 66 Round Robin holiness by virtue of which they see God, and are beyond the power of sin and the possibiUty of sinning. This denomination holds to baptism by immersion, and to foot-washing. In ailments and accidents the consistent members ignore doctors and material reme- dies, trust in God without the mediation of the instru- mentalities of medicine, and call for the elders of this communion whose duty is to anoint the sick with oil and pray for them. It is claimed also that members who have received the testimony of the Spirit may with impunity take up poisonous serpents, and that, if bitten, they are immune from evil consequences. Is is held that demons literally incarnate themselves in human flesh and blood, and that it is the duty of the elders to exorcise them; devils, accordingly, are expelled from the possessed by the authority of God's Church through the power of the Holy Spirit. In their public worship it is no uncommon thing for a score or more of persons to be praying with a loud voice at the same time, while others are talking in the unknown tongue, and still others are singing and shouting at the top of their voices. The Seventh Day Adventists, though numerically inferior to the Holiness Church, are growing much more rapidly. This denomination has doubled its membership every ten years since it was organized in 1845, and in 1915 claims 150,000 members. Like the Holiness followers. Seventh Day Adventists get their teachings from the Bible literally interpreted; but they get some different results. Medical missionary work is one of their chief aims, and they have built large sanitariums in different sections of the country. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 67 Their name declares their distinctive doctrines. They hold that the Saturday or Seventh Day Sabbath is of divine and permanent obligation as the holy day of rest, and that the Second Coming of our Lord is near at hand, though none can foretell its exact time. They believe in "conditional immortality" of the soul: that is, eternal life is not the inherent characteristic of all human beings good or bad, "saved" or "lost," so that some will be eternally happy and some in ever- lasting pain, but is the gift of God through belief in Jesus Christ. The wicked shall be cast into hell, but the flame shall destroy them, and they shall cease to exist, not having attained to the life everlasting. Only the blessed shall live forever. They are strict vege- tarians, going back for their food law to God's command to our first parents, whom, rather than Noah, we should imitate. Believing in sound bodies as an aim and evidence of religious effort and attainment they refuse to use stimulants and condiments — whiskey and brandy, or pepper, mustard, and vinegar. They give not only a seventh of their time to God's specific service, but also a tenth of their income. Their churches have few financial difficulties, and their ministers have practically the same salaries every- where, paid from a central fund, and so being removed from either the temptation or the hope of "bettering their condition" by seeking a larger pastorate. These are only instances of the many departures from normal religious manifestation in the mountains. A composite photograph of mountain doctrine and usage, theological and ecclesiastical, is impossible. When "the Bible and the Bible only, the religion of Protestants" is interpreted to mean, as it is interpreted 68 Round Robin in the mountains, the Bible as interpreted by any self-constituted interpreter according to his own private fancy, ecstatic vision, or supposed revelation, the result is, inevitably, theological chaos. It is beyond our power to conceive of any vagary that has not been preached and, by at least a limited nimiber, received in the mountains. Nor is this to be wondered at in view of the wide vogue of Dowie and Mary Baker Eddy in sections where reason, and culture, and refinement would presimiably have rendered such aberrations impossible. A further catalogue of peculiarities in religious manifestation would be amusing, and interesting, and pathetic ; but not especially profitable. IV. The Earnestness of the Highlander's Religion Among the men of the mountain who have "pro- fessed religion," and who have "come through," and who are able to "give their experience," religion is the chief topic of conversation. Some dogmatize, some quibble, some talk about it but many more speak quietly and simply of its blessings in their own life and heart. There is a real and very profound seriousness of purpose in these people, as in all people, when they are in earnest in their religion. Here are two or three instances: In the "Dark Corner" of South Carolina, a section notorious for lawlessness of every description, a young man, now in the Baptist ministry and working in The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 69 that his native neighborhood, was much impressed by the death of two of his sisters in eight days. "About three years after their deaths," he writes, ''I was riding along the road and became awful convicted of sin. I could hear those prayers as plain that day as when they were uttered. I did not tell any one about my trouble. I just worried all to myself. I tried to pray but it was hard. One day I thought I would go off and pray aloud, and I went up into the stable loft and tried to speak aloud and see how it sounded for a bad boy to pray, but the devil said to me, 'You fool, you, somebody will hear you; you had better get down from here.' I took him at his word and got down. Then I went into the yard and sat on a stump and prayed silently but got no relief. I had had some feelings that I ought to be a Christian when I was eleven years old but some older boys made light of religion and caused me to abandon the idea. I came very near being lost. If I had had the proper encour- agement I would have become a Christian long before I did." Finally he was impressec with the sincerity of a preacher who came over once a month a distance of thirteen mountain miles and who received the munificent salary of seven dollars. "I gave him my hand and asked him to pray for me, but this meeting ran its course and I was not saved. During the next spring they organized a Sunday school and elected me secretary and teacher of a class of young ladies. This was a hard job for a sinner, but they said it was the best they could do. Well, I knew I was not fit and they knew it. I was sorry I was not fit yet I wanted religion but would not make up my mind to surrender. I was trying to get it all by myself." 70 Round Robin A year passed, and then a new meeting was held, at which, he writes, "I determined to get reUgion if there was any for me." He conferred with a cousin who had recently been converted and whose conversion so impressed him, that, in his own words, "I decided to put my whole trust in the Lord, and when I did that, I felt in my soul that I was saved. I cannot tell with language how I rejoiced. Human tongue was not made to handle such experiences. I joined the church and continued to rejoice every step I made." An old man who used to attend Archdeacon Neve's church in the Ragged Mountains of Virginia one day told the Archdeacon that he wished to "jine" the church, and the clergyman went up to his cabin to see him and talk over the matter. Neve gives this account of the interview: "He said there was one thing he thought might be inconsistent with his mem- bership in the Church, and he wanted to ask me about it. I asked him what it was, and he went over to his bed and pulled out from under it a box, out of which he took an old fiddle. He was willing to give it up if I said so. I asked him to play me a tune and he did so, and I recognized the familiar strains of "Jesus, Lover of my soul." He was much relieved when I told him that he could play his fiddle and be a Christian at the same time. It was about his only means of recreation, but he was willing to make the sacrifice in order to be a Christian." On one occasion, also, Mr. Neve tells us, a woman walked a whole day to get to preaching and was making the return trip on foot the next day when he overtook her and carried her home. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 71 It is no wonder, distances being great and preaching infrequent, and other interests few, that a twenty- minute sermon does not satisfy the mountain people. "I remember an interesting service," writes Mr. Neve, "which I held in the early days of the work at Simmons' Gap. The room which we used for our school at the time was crowded, men standing around the walls. I preached a long sermon and then closed with a prayer and the Benediction. The people, however, showed no signs of moving to go, so I got up and gave them another address. But even then their hunger for preaching seemed to remain unsatisfied, so I arose once more and delivered a third address; and then one old woman got up and moved toward the door, and the rest followed." The ordinary service of worship is simple and in- formal. Whenever it is thought a sufficient number of persons have assembled, the preacher and the spir- itual dignitaries who sit in the "Amen Corner" beside the pulpit raise a hymn, whose function is to out- siders what the orchestral prelude is to belated theatre- goers. Only after these worthies have sung the first verse do others join in. A few more hymns are lined out by the preacher and joined in by all. A chapter from the Bible is read, with comments and explanations freely interjected, and then the congregation is bidden to prayer. After several hymns more, and perhaps a prayer by one of the brethren, the preacher launches forth upon a sermon lasting never less than an hour, sometimes as much as two hours, warming up towards the end and exhorting to immediate surrender to God. Frequently a number of conversions are the result, and the converted give their hands to the preacher; 72 Round Robin after which the congregation in general "extend the right hand of fellowship" to the neophytes. The service concludes with a short and simple prayer. If the preacher is encouraged by the results at a given service to start a revival, preaching services, experience meetings, and the like proceed for several days continuously, the only difference from the stated public worship being in duration and intensity. The duration of a revival is determined by the amount of interest shown; and the amount of interest is measured by the amount of shouting, conversions, requests for prayers and the like. It is difficult to convey to those who have never sympathetically witnessed a revival a due impression of the reality of it to these people. Since few that read this book have ever seen anything of the kind the best idea may be given by likening it to the "good time" which they may recall on some occasion when they dropped all constraint, and every convention, and without reserve surrendered themselves to the enjoyment and satisfaction of the day. The revival, or "big meeting," or "protracted meeting," is the "good time" of the Highlander, and he gives himself to it wholly. Silence, and quiet, and repression have characterized his life for weeks and months, and now when deep calls to deep, the human responds to the divine, and the response is made with absolutely unconscious freedom of expression. There is no more restraint of self from expressing "joy in the Holy Ghost" in Unicoi County, Tennessee, than there is restraint of self from expressing pleasure in an orgy of the flesh just off Broadway, New York. The tendency of education, culture, and enlightenment is The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 73 to repress this self-expression, whether for bad or for good, and the repression will come quickly enough in the mountains. In the mean time, it is the voice of God's children calling to their Father. Much of their calling is very childish; but even childishness is better than undue sophistication. And we may be very sure that when these children become men they will no longer think, speak and understand as children, but putting away childish things will think, and speak, and understand as men. CHAPTER IV. IV. The Work of the Church in the Mountains In a handbook of mountain missions, entitled "The Highlanders of the South," published in 1910 "in the interests of the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church" is a chapter dealing with "The work of other denominations." A summary is given of what has been done by the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the United Brethren, the Christians, and the Roman Catholics. But our Church does not appear to have undertaken or accomplished anything. "The United Brethren Church," the author writes, "has but one school in the South, and that a very small one, the property being worth about .Ti.18,000, the enrollment about 125, and the grade hardly more than academic." The natural inference would be that the work of the Church, since it is not even mentioned, is even more insignificant. It is safe to say that this reflects the popular opinion. On the assumption that "the Episcopal Church is not suited to the common people," and on the further assumption that the mountain people are the most difficult type of common people, the achievements of the Church in the mountains are deemed negligible and its efforts futile. Like most assumptions these are overthrown by knowledge of the facts. The Church has made great advance in the mountains, and her work is prospering all along the line. To-day all mountain workers that have informed themselves of what she is doing, and divested themselves of sectarian prejudice admire the courage, the tenacity, the adapta- The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 75 bility of the Church, and the broad view she takes of the responsibiUties she has assumed in joining in the work of uphft and development; and in some cases they are giving the sincere comphment of imitating the Church's varied undertakings. I, The Wider Scope of the Work. These undertakings have registered the slowly changing conceptions of the Church as to the nature and scope of her duty in preaching the Gospel. In the early days this preaching was purely evan- gelical. Preaching was by the spoken word from the pulpit. It was intended to produce certain sub- jective frames of mind and heart that fitted a person so to die that he might live happily in the world to come. This was and remains essential to any preach- ing that permanently affects the individual, and it has not been superseded by what was seen later to be necessary attendants on thorough preaching of the Gospel. About the middle of the nineteenth century, as a result of the Tractarian Movement, preaching became largely sacramental. Not only were submission to Baptism and reception of Holy Communion set forth as ordinances of Christ, essential to consistency in any who called him Lord; they were channels of divine grace, through which life and strength were received by those who believed, enabling them to attain life everlasting. This preaching was definite, concrete, and logical, and it appealed to many of the Highlanders; but it stressed Church authority and cut straight across the highly prized individualism 76 Round Robin of the people, and so narrowed the terms of salvation in the world to come in addition to setting up barriers of Church exclusion of their own kinsmen in this world, that its appeal generally fell on deaf ears. The third stage of preaching the Gospel was the sociological. This began to make itself felt about twenty years ago. Not only one's self but one's neighbor was one's responsibility. Not only the neighbor's salvation in the world to come but his salvation in this world was the will of Christ. Salvation was not of isolated numbers hereafter but of correlated members in one body now. And present salvation had to do not merely with spiritual relation to God and moral relation to men, but with intelligent relation to life, and with physical health in the body, on whose soundness the perfect fulfillment of all other relations depends. So the Church started her work with preachers merely. Priests came in to give efficacy to preaching. Social workers were inevitable to manifest the fulness of Christ's presence as Redeemer. And at the present stage the Church expresses her care for the whole nature of God's children by maintaining churches, schools and hospitals for the soul, the mind and the body. This three- fold conception of her duty was not set forth by any central authority. There is not any such authority in the Church's mountain work. The Highlander is much the same in Kentucky that he is in East Tennessee or in western Carolina, but the determination of what work shall be done in any section is made locally; and almost universally this means, in practice, by the Bishops. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 77 The dioceses in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South CaroHna, Georgia, and Alabama received missionary aid from the General Board of Missions, but the General Board had no author- ity in determining the policy to be pursued in expend- ing the money, except that which comes from making, withholding, increasing, or diminishing appropriations of money for the work locally undertaken. About twenty five years ago the Diocese began to pay closer attention to organized work in the mountain districts. In 1892 the Diocese of Virginia was divided, and the Diocese of Southern Virginia so erected that at a later date the western end with its mountain work might be set off as a separate diocese; this has not yet been done, but the Diocese has attended to this work through a Coadjutor Bishop. In 1895 the Diocese of Kentucky was divided, and the eastern part erected into the Diocese of Lexington. In the same year the Diocese of North Carolina ceded the western section to the General Convention, which formed it into the Missionary District of Asheville, though a Bishop was not elected until 1898. In 1907, upon the division of the Diocese of Georgia, the Diocese of Atlanta was organized out of the northern half. The erection of a diocese in upper South Carolina and in East Tennessee, having the Highland work especially in view, has been pending for years, but has been postponed in each case purely for financial reasons. In all these changes of administration, however, there has been, despite the lack of a central authority, a remarkable similarity of development in ideals and 78 Round Robin methods. This is due to the fact that the Bishops and the workers realize the largeness of the problems, are not riding hobbies, and have no prejudices for or against any promising or feasible plan, but confer with open mind, glad to profit by the successes or failures of others. Thus it has come to pass that, as the mountain people themselves are one, the Church's work among them is one. For this reason what is said of the work in one section is so largely true of the work in most other sections that to describe in order the missionary activities, beginning in West Virginia and closing in Alabama, would, though interesting in the first few cases, soon become so monotonous, such a repetition of the same notes, that it would be as profitless as to describe to the tourist the trees of the southern mountains singly or the high-stooped houses of New York's cross-streets one by one. We must content ourselves with a study of types and charac- teristics, specific fields being adduced only to illustrate, to show tendencies or to give encouragement. At the outset of a study of the Church's missionary work a reminder must be repeated that in another form was given in an earlier chapter: To generalize is neither to universalize nor to exclude, and to say that a given custom or teaching characterizes a certain section is not to say that a majority favor or practice it ; but only to say that it assumes greater relative impor- tance there than it has elsewhere. For example: Evangelical preaching is peculiarly characteristic of our mission work in the Virginia dioceses and Lexington, sacramental in Tennessee, and sociological in Asheville, yet sacramental preaching is much stressed in Asheville, sociological is much in evidence in Tennessee, and in The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 79 Lexington and the Virginias settlement houses, schools, and hospitals are numerous. The differences in the mountain work are not so much in the kind of work done, as, if the figure is allowable, in the pro- portion in which the ingredients of the work are mixed. If we think of this unity in diversity our interest will be greater and our helpfulness more extensive, when, going behind "differences of Churchmanship," we come to "oneness in Christ" and find all the workers working with desire to fulfill what is Christ's purpose for the Highlander, as well as for those who know him not — "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." II. A Brief Survey of the Occupied Field A brief survey of the Church's work by dioceses will be a kind of "stock taking" and will also serve to indicate more clearly the unity of spirit of which we have been speaking: {For detailed list of works see Ap- pendix A, Page — ) WEST VIRGINIA. In the Diocese of West Vir- ginia, which lies entirely in the Appalachian system the general missionary work is carried on by twenty missionaries who minister in twenty-two churches and chapels and in many preaching places where conditions have not yet permitted the erection of a church building. These missions embrace 2,000 of the 6,000 communi- cants in the diocese. They are supported at an annual expense of SI 8, 000, of which those who are helped give one-half and the other 4,000 communicants the other half. In addition to this, an extensive medical and educational work is conducted. Two 80 Round Robin liospitals — The Sheltering Arms at Hansford and the Reynolds Memorial at Moundsville — cared for 2,275 indoor patients in the year 1914. These hospitals are of especial benefit to the miners who are the bulk of the rural population, and it is worthy of note, as showing the extent of this hospital work and the confidence it inspires, that the miners themselves contributed $21,000 to its support in 1913, and in 1914 the still larger sum of $24,000. In connection with the hospitals are training schools for nurses, from which responsible trained nurses are graduated every year. An industrial school at Blue Ridge Mountains, a day school at Ansted on the Allegheny Mountains, and the Settlement House Work of the Sarah Upham Sprague Memorial House, are among the leading activities of the mission field. Several hundred children are in the schools. The value of all the property used in this field is about $250,000 and to carry on the work costs annually about $40,000. The General Board of Missions is not asked to support any part of this work. VIRGINIA. In the Diocese of Virginia where the work has been wonderfully well organized there are thirty-eight missions — seven in the Ragged Mountains, thirteen in the Blue Ridge, eleven in the West Blue Ridge, and seven scattering. There are parochial schools in about half the missions, an industrial school at Dyke, mission homes and settlement houses of modest proportions in each of the four districts into which the field is divided, and a cottage hospital at Swift's Run Gap. Over forty missionaries, clergymen, deaconesses, teachers, nurses, and other workers are engaged in these multiform activities. More than The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 81 one thousand dollars a month is required to carry the fixed charges, besides the ever recurring expanses for repairs, rebuilding, and new building. A most recent and beneficial development has been the establishment of a cannery at the industrial school. At Mission Home and Blackwell Hollow are clothing bureaus, where for two hours every Wednesday the people come to buy clothing. The sources of supply are the boxes and barrels of clothing sent for this purpose by parish and missionary organizations all over the country. Articles are sold at a mere fraction of their cost, to avoid the pauperization that would come with con- tinued giving. A very small dispensary is conducted in connection with this work. The General Board of Missions is not asked to support any part of this work. SOUTHERN VIRGINIA. In the Diocese of South- ern Virginia, in which the General Board supports eleven women workers in the mountains, no large institutional work has been attempted except that in Allegheny County, where a four hundred acre farm has been bought and an industrial school established with forty boys in hand and two hundred on the waiting list. In Franklin County, where the attempt is being made to establish a chain of missions, the work is confined for the present to Church services and general edu- cation. Three schools are in operation, that at St. Peter's-in-the-Mountain, Callaway, having 132 pupils; at St. Elizabeth's, Hunter Hall, 38; and at St. John's- in-the-Mountains, Endicott, 32; or in all 202 pupils in one county. The purpose is to reach out with the same kind of work into the four adjacent counties, which, though large and populous, do not contain all told a dozen communicants of the Church. 82 Round Robin LEXINGTON. In the Diocese of Lexington the mountain district comprises more than one-half the total area of the diocese and is larger than either New Hampshire or Vermont. Great railroad and coal- mining developments in recent years have created great opportunities and responsibilities in this diocese. Added to the work among the native mountain people is the necessity for work among the incoming miners; and the social condition may be estimated from the fact that of fifty men at one time in a certain county jail thirty were indicted for murder. St. John's Home Training School at Corbin is the center of operations. Here the girls are gathered from the mountains and kept away from demoralizing home influences long enough to form habits that will enable them to lead rather than succumb when they return home. The theory and practice of domestic science is taught in all its branches — cleanliness and neatness in dress, sim- plicity and order in the bed-room, and a knowledge of cooking-values as well as of food-values — in addition to the 'Three R's". In Letcher County, close against West Virginia and Virginia, several mission churches have been built with the active assistance of a coal company, which recognizes the economic value of a Church that stresses right conduct as evidence of true religion. At Middlesboro is an industrial school with eight teachers and one hundred and fifty pupils. Of the forty- four mission stations in the diocese the great majority are in the mountains, and for the support of this work the General Board of Missions contributes $4,500, of which $3,000 is conditioned on the raising of an equal sum by the Bishop from outside sources. TENNESSEE. In the Diocese of Tennessee the entire mountain-mission work is done from two centres The Southern HIGHLA^4DS and Highlanders 83 in the Cumberland Plateau, which divides East Ten- nessee from Middle. No work has been undertaken in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Unakas, the Chilhowees, and the Clinch, which comprize the bulk of the Tennessee mountains. The two centres are Sewanee and Monterey. About three miles from Sewanee the sisters of St. Mary have established a home school for girls, of whom from thirty to forty are generally enrolled; and at the same dis- tance in another direction St. Andrew's School for boys is conducted by the Order of the Holy Cross, with an attendance of eighty. The buildings are most attractive and the industrial training given in each case thorough and effective. In the coves embraced by spurs of the plateau are a number of chapels and preaching places with more or less euphonious names — Jump Off, Thumping Dick, Roark's Cove, being some of them — which, while in the general charge of experienced clergymen, are, in fact, so many experimental labora- tories for the theological students in the University of the South. The work at Monterey on the summit of the plateau, and half way between Nashville and Knoxville, is so new as to be yet in the experimental stage; but so far its success has been great. An unused summer hotel accomodating sixty persons and carrying with it one hundred acres of land has been bought. Within a radius of fifty miles is a white population of 68,000, of whom twenty per cent, are illiterate or semi-illiterate. Pellagra, hookworm, tuberculosis, catarrh, and many other preventable, curable, or ameliorable diseases prevail. Within the twenty contiguous counties the Church has never 84 Round Robin before attempted work of any sort. In addition to worship, and public and private religious instruction, the three months' session of the public school is sup- plemented by an additional term, and daily instruction is given in domestic science of the most practical sort; an infirmary has been opened, and a visiting nurse gives medical advice and personal attention; a properly supervised camp for tuberculosis patients has been set up a mile away; and a preparatory school for theological students has been opened. Seven young men are now at work under a graduate of Harvard University, reducing expenses and gaining experience by doing all the manual labor necessary to the upkeep of the school, and going out to mission points to conduct services every Sunday. The General Board of Missions supplies the salary of the House Director, who is assisted by a trained nurse and a teacher of domestic science, but the student- workers do not receive salaries. Stated public worship is carried on in twenty-five places, and advantage is taken of every unoccupied store-house or dwelling for school, worship, clothing depot, or some other purpose that the conditions demand and resourcefulness perceives. In East Tennesse a vigorous campaign for money and men with which to develop the local field was recently begun. It is too soon to expect results, but if the plans are carried through the results will be far reaching. ASHEVILLE. In the Missionary District of Ashe- ville the educational and industrial work has developed beyond that of any other diocese in the mountains. This is what we should expect when we recall that the district was accepted as a charge of the general Church The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 85 for the specific purpose of doing work among the uncuhured mountain people. Cultured, refined, and enlightened communities — Asheville, Waynesville, Hendersonville, Tryon, Morganton, Lincolnton, and Rutherfordton, not to mention others — did not call for this special attention; but back in the Mountains, from three to thirty miles away, were large numbers to whom this culture, refinement, and enlightenment did not percolate. It was for these that the district was constituted and the work prosecuted, and to these people twenty-seven of the thirty clergy of the dis- trict give all or nearly all of their time. Of the thirteen organized parishes and sixty-eight mission stations only three are self-supporting. There are twenty- three schools for white children; in them 60 teachers instruct 1,160 children. Negro schools to the number of four, with eight teachers, care for 213 children. The industrial teaching is done chiefly in four schools: (1) The Valle Crucis Industrial School carries its academic work through seven grades, and besides cooking, laundrying and sewing teaches the girls canning, basketry, poultry raising, dairy work, and apple packing. An eight months' school term is provided, and all pupils, both day and boarding, work out a part of the expenses. (2) Christ School, Arden, receives both boys and girls. The boys learn wood-carving, joiners' work, carpentry, and scientific farming, and are especially adept in making chairs and tables whose sale helps both the maker and the school financially. Spinning and weaving have been added recently. (3) The Patterson School, Legerwood, is entirely for boys, and provides grammar school education and instruction in modern agriculture. The 86 Round Robin tract of land consists of 1,300 acres, of which about 300 acres of "bottom land" is cleared and under tillage. The property was given outright, the school has no endowment, and is dependent on voluntary contri- butions and the manual labor of its pupils for support. It is the only secondary school in the United States where a boy absolutely penniless can actually pay his own way completely. (4) The Appalachian Industrial School, Penland, is the newest venture in educational development of the work, having existed in its indus- trial features only one year, and prior to that having been conducted three years in temporary quarters as a day school. The school is for both boys and girls, and the curriculum is practically that of the other schools. The farm comprises 140 acres. It is intended to extend the privileges of the school to adults, to admit mothers to sewing and cooking classes and fathers to instruction in agriculture, dairying and forestry. The total enrollment of pupils in these four schools is at present 284, but the demand for space exceeds the equipment. When that is completely furnished the four schools will have an enrollment of one thousand. The work in all of them is being put on a permanent and substantial basis. Specially designated gifts have permitted the erection of well built stone schoolhouses and dormitories. Some of the schools have dammed the streams and installed motors for light and power. The property valuation of all the schools, primary, academic, and industrial, is $125,000 and the annual cost of maintaining them is $30,000. A work entirely different is "The House of Child- hood" at Shull's Mills, a little cottage in which ten children from five years of age to thirteen have their first The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 87 taste of what "homelife" really is when under Christian and refined influences. The simplicity and economy that are necessarily practiced, and the helpfulness that all are expected to give, may be inferred from the fact that the little five year old boy feeds the pigs and chickens. Under Church auspices but not under the ecclesiastical management a hospital is doing excellent work at Morganton. SOUTH CAROLINA, ATLANTA, ALABAMA In the remaining dioceses of the Appalachian Dis- trict not much work of a distinctive character has been done. In South Carolina the problem of the mill village, of dealing with MacGregor after he leaves his native heath, is so urgent that its importance has eclipsed that of the country still higher up. In North Georgia, the Diocese of Atlanta, a like condition prevails, complicated by the rapid growth of the manufacturing sections of the larger cities and by the actual decrease in population of towns and vill- ages, all of which calls for continual readjustment of forces and finances and leads the Bishop to begin new work only where it is forced on him. In Alabama the industrial development in the Bir- mingham district has led to the establishment of missions and preaching stations in about twenty places, but no industrial or educational features have been adopted. This survey discloses three facts: (1) That the Church's active work among the mountain people is in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and 88 Round Robin North Carolina: (2) That there is a real unity in the work, and yet that the workers are not afraid to make an experiment to meet a novel condition; and (3) That our work in the mountains has already reached considerable proportions, and that the workers are planning for large development. III. Typical Evidences of Fruitful Work Has the work been fruitless? Is it only a splendid illustration of Christian chivalry, creditable to the heart but reflecting no glory on the intelligence? Has the Church been like the surf beating on a rock-bound coast, expending its energy, constantly recruiting its force from inexhaustible stores, and after long continued attacks finding the barriers as immobile as in the beginning? In other words, has such measure of success attended our missionary efforts that we are justified in continuing and increasing them? "By their fruits ye shall know them." What evidence does the mountain work present that it may claim our further endorsement and greater assistance? Cer- tainly these are fair questions. One may advocate a cause and by his enthusiasm alone secure our co-operation, but after a time the enthusiasm must produce results or our interest will wane. When we say that the missionary work is not afraid to accept the challenge of these questions we do not mean to imply that the workers are infallible or that the work or the methods are perfect. The workers in the mission field have the grace of God for their work, but grace is not infallibility, and missionaries The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 89 are as subject to errors of judgment as are rectors of parishes or the traveUing representatives of wholesale stores. When a plan of campaign is laid out in a diocese or in a section of a diocese it is possible that it is a strategic blunder, but it is also possible that it is conceived in large wisdom. Indeed, the weight of probability favors the strategist more than the on- looker. Probably he knows more about the conditions than his critics know. But until the plan is worked out its wisdom cannot be demonstrated, and unwisdom can only be charged. Even if trial demonstrates the inability of the missionary to cope with conditions, that is all that it demonstrates. This should be emphasized. Occasional failures, blunders, mistakes, and errors, however costly they may be, do not affect the value of the work at large unless they are so general as plainly to be inseparable from the sys- tem of administration. The head of a firm that sends out travelling salesmen makes the distinction clear and sharp. He does not withdraw from business because of the inefifieciency of a given salesman. He does not take the salesman off the road because of an occasional failure to do the business in a business like way. He learns from the mistake, corrects the salesman and his error, redoubles his efforts, and increases his business. So the occasional shortcomings of missionaries and failures of their attempts should be regarded and treated by Churchmen in like manner, and not be followed by our criticism and by the withdrawal of our interest. It would not be honest to deny the presence of such conditions, but it would not be fair to say that they are widespread. They are not the rule; they are the exceptions. 90 Round Robin The development of the District of Asheville is the largest and most striking illustration that can be given, buttressed as it is by statistics that are accessible to anyone. The district was organized in 1895. Taking the annual report made the following summer (1896) we find that the communicants numbered 1,499; in 1914 they had increased to 3,223, an increase of more than one hundred per cent., even after large allowance is made for the growth of the self-supporting parishes. The congregations of the district then gave $13,310 to local support; in 1914 they gave $29,327; again an increase of one hundred per cent, after the same allowance is made for the self-supporting parishes. They then gave $451 for missionary work through the General Board; in 1914 they gave $2,188, with the same allowance; an increase of four hundred per cent. The value of all Church property was $127,435; in 1914 it was $509,225; an increase of four hundred per cent. These are items that can be measured. But besides the preaching that has been done, whose value cannot be figured, it is inconceivable that the education of so many thousands of mountain children should have been without large returns. The change in the general tone of a community is something that can be realized even when it cannot be tabulated. In the West Blue Ridge Mountain Missions in the Diocese of Virginia there are marked evidences of moral uplift, of community spirit, larger vision, and unselfish helpfulness in a general work that are ordinarily lacking. In every good work of the Church the people show appreciation by lending a hand, without salary, wages, or reward. At Rocky Bar, for example, where a stone church was recently The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 91 completed, everybody helped, even the school children doing their part by collecting rock for the walls. "The fifty persons awaiting Confirmation," writes Mr. Ellis, the missionary, "the forty children at one point alone who can say the Catechism perfectly, the ability to hold the children in school till the 15th of May, thus giving them eight months in school when here- tofore it was with difficulty that they stayed the five months required in the public school — these are some of the evidences of improvement and proof that the people are behind the work. In material things we have the property, worth about $8,000, all paid for at St. Stephen's Mission; and at every point the build- ings are being kept up by the people without outside aid." In Archdeacon Neve's field in Virginia, in Greene County, a little distance from the top of the Blue Ridge, the inhabitants had been so long forgotten by all Christian people that the following was an actual occurrence. One of the mission teachers some miles away met a man from the Lost Mountain and asked, "Does anyone ever come up to see you about religious matters?" and the answer was, "Well, we did have a Mormon come up to see us last summer." There was neither school nor church on the mountain, and the people were practically destitute not only of all religious privileges but even of any chance of educating their children, who were growing up absolutely uneducated heathen. Yet some years later in the same neigh- borhood at Simmons' Gap, where a school had been opened, a small girl was much distressed at the illness of the young lady who taught the school. "Oh, dear." she exclaimed, "'sposen she was to die. What should 92 Round Robin we do? There wouldn't be nobody to tell us things." The best evidence of influence, however, was given by a boy who had not been misbehaving in any way but was evidently disturbed by the disorder: "Miss Fitzhugh," he said to the teacher, "if it would help you any to manage the children, you can give me a beating if you like." Some of the children in these same mountains have become missionaries in their own homes. Here is an instance: An eight year old pupil was anxious to be confirmed, but was told that being so young she must wait a while. When she found that she herself could not be confirmed, she went to work and persuaded an older cousin to be confirmed. As soon as she was old enough she was herself accepted as a candidate and received the Laying-on-of-Hands. She has since been doing the work of Christ in the family. She brought her brothers and sisters to baptism, and when another baby came she brought it to church, carried it to the font, and stood sponser for it. She has since been trying to persuade her mother to join the Church. At present she and the cousin whom she brought to confirmation spend part of every Saturday in cleaning the church and getting it ready for Sunday service. At Simmons' Gap, Archdeacon Neve's earliest mission in the Blue Ridge, the work has established itself in the new generation and shown results that are per- manent. In the beginning the children were like little wild animals. Home influence for good did not exist. Moral restraint there was none. Not only the children were whipped, but they and the women also were beaten severely by the men, not for their lapses or for The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 93 discipline, but because of sheer temper or drunken irritation and brutality. Plays and pastimes with definite purpose were not known. All this is past. For some years a succession of teachers, boarding in the cabin of one of the mountain families, taught the children in a small frame schoolhouse. What these teacher-martyrs endured few can imagine, none can realize, unless they have been similarly placed. But a few years ago a school and a pretty little church of concrete blocks were built, and early in 1915 a mission house was built near by as a residence for the teacher and another worker. Every spring at the close of the school session a combined celebration of the four schools in the district is held near by at St. Hilda's School. The progress that has been made of late years by these children, evidenced on this occasion by their little plays, drills, and other exercises, is really wonderful. Not merely are the hospitals in the various dioceses saving the lives and ameliorating the sufferings of many mountain people; even more are helped by the advice and help of the missionary nurses, who visit in the homes and minister to those who are remote from the hospital. Their visits save many lives, notably the lives of little children whom their parents either entrust blindly to the keeping of the Lord, or neglect outright, not using the help even of witchcraft. Here is one instance of many told in the words of the nurse herself: "A mother had a very sick baby about two months old. A neighbor came and told us the baby was sick, and that the mother was "just naturally compelled and obliged" to go to the corn field to work. When we went to the home we found the baby had 94 Round Robin not been washed or dressed for two days, the baby's bottle had leaked over everything, and the child itself was threatened with pneumonia. Baby's little sister, with whom she had been left, when asked what she was giving the little sufferer, replied, 'Barley water.' We found that this consisted of flour and water boiled together, and a teaspoonful of Castoria added. The mother had already lost eight babies. If this little one had not received prompt attention it would also probably have been lost to her." What the mountain people assimilate from the small amount of Church History that is given in the mission- ary's familiar discourse is an uncertain quantity. Sometimes they miss the historic events but hit on the philosophy of them. An old man, dying from heart trouble, was discussing the Church. "Some people say," he gasped, "that the Episcopal Church is just a part of the Catholic Church, and I tell them that's true in a way. First, there was just one Church and that was the Catholic Church, and then some people roamed away from it, so they call them the 'Roaming Catholics.' But the Episcopal Church is the part of the Catholic Church that didn't roam." One day in July the Rev. Charles E. Crusoe walked twenty-two miles over the mountains to visit a new town in Western Kentucky that gave promise of rapid growth. It was one year old and had 1,500 inhabitants. He canvassed the town, found four communicants, three women and one man, organized the women into a parish aid society, and set them to work to arouse interest in the town for the' building of a church. In one year this litth band had been so energetic and The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 95 successful that they had secured $900 toward the church. The missionary bought a lot (once owned by "Red Fox," a character in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine") in the very centre of the town, now grown to 6,000 population. After a time more money was received, and now a nice church is the place of worship of thirty families and forty communicants, and the Church has a strong influence in the life of the community. Stone churches are ordinarily expensive churches, though in many cases local conditions have made them the most economical. In Lee County, Kentucky, at Beattyville, the county seat, the church is of stone, but all the attached mission churches are of frame or of logs. The county has an area of 500 square miles and a population of about 7,000. Beattyville has a little over one thousand population, is situated at the three forks of the Kentucky River, and is surrounded on every side by high hills. The stone church, which stands on an eminence overlooking the town, was erected a few years ago from funds collected by the former Bishop of Kentucky, Thomas Underwood Dudley. Adjoining the church is a large frame rectory, built by the missionary, Rev. Alexander Patterson, who not only designed the structure, but laid the foundations, pieced the frame, and built the chimneys, performing the functions both of car- penter and of mason. Within a radius of ten miles from Beattyville in the country districts are twelve missions established and served by Mr. Patterson, As he is unable to keep a horse he is obliged to travel by foot over the mountains and through the woods to hold services at his stations; and as his pedestrian tours are somewhat extensive he is called by the people "the walkingest man in the country." 96 Round Robin The practical results of Mr. Patterson's ministry may be estimated from the following extract from the Beattyville "Enterprise" of March 5, 1915. The article represents the sentiments of one of the moun- tain women, edited only in their expression, and shows the changed conditions as they appeal to the native wit of one who has seen the light: "Much is being said about the 'high cost of living,' which is only a misnomer for the 'cost of living high.' As long as there are more consumers than producers there will always be hard times, for it is impossible for the busy few to feed and clothe the army of idlers. We women are in a measure to blame for existing conditions. We are forcing our husbands to pay hard cash to the merchants for many things we could raise or make at home. Instead of being helpmates we are just spend- thrifts, and are throwing out of the window with a spoon faster than our husbands can bring it in at the front door with a shovel. Our mothers raised all their garden seed, made their vinegar, soap, and brooms, and knit the family's winter hosiery — all of which we could do if we were a little more industrious. They also made for their men folks their shirts and underwear, which were just as neat and more serviceable than what we force them to buy from the stores today. Besides, the price of one shirt will pay for enough material for two that will last much longer. By keeping a few sheep we could clothe our little children for winter without a cent of cost and without labor, for the woolen mills will readily make our wool into cloth on shares. Garments madte from flannel and linsy are more comfortable and look much better than the cheap materials bought from the store. The men too The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 97 come in for their share of the blame. By a careful cultivation of the soil the farmer could raise most everything needed for home consumption, yet he is not doing it. There is no need for a farmer to buy a single article of food, save sugar and coffee, and these are luxuries, not necessities. Most of our farms are surrounded by woodland, and then the farmers will argue that it is cheaper to buy coal than to burn wood. A few days' work in the fall would lay in a year's supply of coal without any cost. Tobacco cultivation would be profitable here in the mountains, yet very few men ever raise their own tobacco, but will buy it from the stores and then sit on the nail kegs while they spit it away. The Democrats are cursing the European war for the state of affairs, and the Repub- licans the Wilson administration: while it is the people, not the war, nor rulers, that are responsible for hard times. There is a good living here for every one that will work for it, and if our pocket books are empty it is our fault, not our misfortune." The Church that has developed among a native people the wise and understanding woman who express- es these sentiments and preaches them to her own people is a Church that has given good reason for being in the community. Along the line of Church teaching and the estab- lishing of permanent work we may take the Sewanee group of missions as an example and quote briefly statements made by those in charge for the current year. At St. Andrew's School where sixty boys are sheltered, clothed, fed and taught, "there are over eighty enrolled in the Sunday School, none of whom 98 Round Robin are our school boys. They are of all ages from fifty to babes in arms. We have baptized twenty- three this winter and have a list of twelve to baptize on Palm Sunday. We hope to have a large class for Confirmation when the Bishop comes." "A lot has been promised the mission at Alto, and it is hoped the deed may soon be executed, so that the settlement house and chapel may be started. There are at present about thirty children in the Sunday school." "A good class is being prepared for Confirmation at Jump Off." "Sherwood reports a class of about twelve for Confirmation." "The mission at Coalmont, built at a cost of $1,200, was recently entirely freed from debt." "One hundred and fifty dollars has been raised with which to begin the building fund for the neighborhood house and chapel at Foster Falls." These widely different and widely scattered evidences of the ability of the Church to influence the life of the Highlander are not carefully chosen: they are taken at random. What has been accomplished in one section has been done in almost every section. What has not been done remains undone as a rule, because not attempted, or because not undertaken with wise forethought, intelligent sympathy, and unwearying persistence. CHAPTER V. MISSIONARY METHODS AND EXPERIENCES. The words that closed the preceding chapter must open the chapter that deals with missionary methods and experiences: "Wise forethought, intelligent sym- pathy, and unwearying persistence;" for if the worker in the mountains lacks these elements he fights a losing fight. Without them the most burning zeal will burn itself out without kindling a fire, the greatest enthusiasm will grow stone-cold before the wondering objects of the enthusiasm discover what it is all about. A definite plan must be determined, with due regard to the needs and limitations of the people. The fundamental guide to right attitude must be the resultant admixture of two thoughts: (1) That God is no respecter of persons, and (2) That the Father pitieth His children and would have his ambassadors show his merciful spirit. The harvest will not come with the waving of a wand or the clapping of a hand, but must be brought through much travail. Its delay will give abundant time for patience and perse- verance, until the former rain and the latter shall come and God approve the work. The Highlander is like his native soil. It has rock foundation but it needs to be built up and enriched before it can show its capability; and the process is slow and the result cumulative in building up any soil, especially mountain soil. One zealous writer has said that even the worst class of mountain people are capable of being made over in one generation. If he means that after one generation of effort they 100 Round Robin can be brought to the point where they may be safely left to their own devices, he is greatly in error. The people will have to be made over and over, if the purpose of Christ's coming is to be fulfilled, and the harvest be gathered that the soil is capable of producing. About ten years ago a veteran pioneer of the work in Franklin County, North Carolina, addressed a missionary gathering and pleaded for workers in the field. "But," he said, in effect, "if any of you feel like heeding the call don't come unless you are going to stick. It is better for the final result that you shouldn't come at all than that when you come you will play at being a missionary for a year, or two years, or even three. Our people are suspicious, reserved, uncommunicative to strangers, and you can't get over being a stranger in a short time. You can't get next to them unless you settle down to live among them. If you intend to do missionary work in the mountains and hope to be successful in it come to be prepared to spend a lifetime in it." The speaker hardly exaggerated. He had already been in that one field twenty years, and he spoke as he saw. The men who volunteered to go into this work are coming to see this necessity more and more, and have given themselves for life as specialists in the spreading of the Gospel in the mountains. Their confidence in the outcome is firmer than ever, but their experience has taught them that the difficulties and delays will be many and long. They have no doubt of victory, but they have no illusions of easy victory. If there is one thing that the mountain worker gets out of his mind more quickly than another it is that "the people of the The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 101 mountains are crying for the Gospel as this Church hath received the same." It is true that the conditions cry aloud for the Gospel, but neither here nor elsewhere do the people themselves cry for it. After it has been preached, illustrated, enforced and experienced through a considerable period a small handful will embrace its spiritual truth, and a larger number its temporal benefits; but the majority will wait suspiciously for years to discover what is the real purpose of "them Tiscopals" in coming in and spending so much money and energy. Their approach is made not by obser- vation, but by experience in the family circle of the Church's unselfish help all along the line, in nursing the sick, burying the dead, helping a girl in serious trouble, pleading with the Governor for a law breaker, setting a broken bone, in fine, in taking roughness and hardship out of life and putting purpose and worth into it. The wisdom, the spirit, and the persistence with which these men and women work, and the experiences that come to them, are the burden of this chapter, and it has been thought wise to let some of them speak in their own words. Their own statements give a variety and vividness not otherwise attainable, and furnish ample material for a constructive imagination. I. A Kentucky Mission Field A missionary writes, but desires that his name be not published, (for in the mountains letters also, like chickens, "come home to roost," and the statements in a letter that finds its way back to the mountains are often visited on the head of the writer), "In this part 102 Round Robin of the Eastern Kentucky mountains, the Church has been estabUshed forty years. In that time this one field has had six hundred baptisms and one hundred and eighty confirmations. The Church was entirely new in these parts, and was established by Bishop Dudley, as was the school a few years afterwards. Three years ago the school was discontinued, owing to the improved educational facilities offered by the county. "Very great religious effort has been made in these mountains by the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Reformers, and the Church. Churches and schools have been built in various places, and every centre of religious effort has gathered about it some faithful adherents. A great deal better work would be done were there some understanding among the missioners. To-day the cry is for efficiency. We have thirty-four ministers of all communions that give their services in this county which has a population of a little over 7,000 — a minister for a little over two hundred people. Sunday services are held in at least twenty-five of the forty-three schoolhouses. There are five church buildings in the town of , and every Sunday we have at least three ministers officiating in a community whose entire population is 1,100. "These men belong to the different denominations. Some are ordained, some are not. Many of them get nothing for their labors — only their entertainment at whatever place they happen to hold service. There has been no immigration into this county; conse- quently nearly everybody is related. So when some young man with ministerial aspirations and a large The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 103 connection sets out to preach, his folks hang to him, and if he behaves himself he soon is sought after to hold services. Then there comes along some Holiness preacher, or a Come-outer who says there is no need of a church. They by their preaching produce excite- ment, get a few converts, make family splits. They pass on. So does the excitement which they created. After a while the situation becomes normal. It is a pity that all this energy is not efficiently directed ; for we missionaries come into each other's districts, and our congregations are not so much worshippers as listeners; they are treated to so many doctrinal ideas that instead of the peace and assurance that religion should give, there is just a touch of uncertainty. "A great deal has been said about the mountaineer and his ways. I have been among them thirteen years. They are just like other people, many of them splendid characters, capable and intelligent men and women. But in some efforts for progress these are not in the majority. "We have no hog law, no cow law, no dog law, in our town. Result: Fleas, flies, and jangling cow bells, and more sickness than we should have where there is stock law. Yet about two months ago we put in electric lights; for quite a while we have had high rents, high priced food, and at all times we have kept up with the latest style of clothes. "Out in the hills life is comparatively easy for the person who can be satisfied with such life and with its plain food, and who will not find fault with the cooks. Some of the women have not been to cooking school; but some of them have, and in some out-of-the-way 104 Round Robin hollow, in a little bit of a cabin, you will be served to as well-cooked a meal as you could wish for. "This is a rough country, with roads that barely deserve that name, with homes in some instances that have few attractions, where the children grow up and their parents don't care whether they go to school or not. Then there are some districts where they have intermarried so that it is next to impossible to lift the parents or the children to any satisfactory plane of civilization. It is from these two classes that our criminals come. Our courts sit three months in the year. Much money is spent. No one is benefited. Last term of court we tried five murder cases. "When I was appointed by my Bishop missionary to this county I set about to study the problem of crime. I lived with families who had evil reputations. Some of them had been in the courts for shedding human blood, some had passed some years in the penitentiary. People used to tell me I would get my throat cut. I am free to confess that I could not see any plan for the cure of a disorder that these people had been born with. The nature of the worst kind of animal was in them, and it was not altogether their fault. But they had the privilege of handing down to posterity a part of their inheritance, to fill the earth with more wicked- ness — a wickedness that this advanced age will have to deal with scientifically. "We have in this county twelve hundred people who can neither read nor write. I visit a great many of them. Last Lent I started a correspondence school among them. Now that was a job. Some could read in the primer. Some knew their letters, some The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 105 did not. But a desire to know something like what the person knew who was writing to them aroused ambition in some breasts. Books were given them, writing paper, pen and ink, a stamp to answer the letter of instruction. It was worth while, for among those who had not entirely lost the sense of values were some who showed much appreciation. Today some can read, a few can write, and they are proud of it. I had the girls of a Church school in Michigan who helped me in this. But there are those who never can learn. There is nothing for them but to take their place with the criminal in the human scrap-pile. This is a pity. "I also made a study of the everlasting poverty that seemed to cling to some families. Through the kind- ness of others I was made almoner, and was enabled to help a great many families. But help cannot be kept up everlastingly. I went to the Agricultural School of the State College for a short time, and took instruction in scientific farming, of which I already had some knowledge. I bought the best literature on the subject, and made some experiments last year with the best seeds I could find. Result: A good crop of corn and other things. This year we have gone in for more extensive experiments. "I also have a medicine chest of simple remedies, and have very frequent calls for a dose or two. "I have certain places to go to during the month to hold services — saw-mills, railroad depots, country schoolhouses, and the homes of those who live too far away from places of public gathering. In a month I meet a great many people, and preach to about six 106 Round Robin hundred in all. I have baptized and presented for Confirmation a fair proportion. I might have had more, but I set down a very strict rule of faith and order. It is not every one that I will take. This would be a good field for eugenics and some German "kultur:" for there are problems that that science and that culture would help solve. It is a hard work and a great work for the Church; for she can refine and uplift those who are capable of being lifted up and refined. "Last Wednesday I held a teachers' meeting at a big saw mill in County. Twelve were present, I explained the lesson. At night I held service for the workmen and had a good congregation, and last Saturday night had service at another big saw mill. "What I am going to prepare for is the holding of a Sunday school institute for a week or two, with as many of those thirty- four ministers as care to come. Some of them are real bright fellows, some of them can't read. We have a Day School institute here every year. I have most of the opening services and I give an exposition of whatever Scripture is read. I visit the country schools and give the children short talks. "Most of the other thirty-three ministers belong either to the Reformed or to the Christian communions. I am the only priest of the Church in ten or twelve counties, and I hold services in three of them. I have a funeral to-day six miles in the country and it is snowing hard. "We are to have moonlight schools in the fall." The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 107 II. What One Missionary Did in Virginia The clergyman who has just been quoted adopted the method of persuasion in Kentucky. Another clergy- man, this time in Virginia, also adopted a method of persuasion, but this time the persuasion was directed to rouse the public sentiment to change a certain law and to enforce the new law. Who he is and what he did is thus told by his superior officer Archdeacon Neve: "One of the most important events connected with our work in the mountains for a long time has been the great victory won by Rev. Roy Mason, of Mission Home, Virginia. "From the time of his first coming into the work Mr. Mason has realized that one of the greatest hin- drances to the improvement of the condition of the mountain people was the distillery. These places have been sources of trouble and demoralization all the time. The fights and cutting scrapes and other forms of disorder have been due almost always to the liquor sold at the distilleries. "Mr. Mason came to the conclusion that the distiller- ies must go if any substantial progress was to be made and he set to work to attain this end. He started out almost alone, as those who sympathized with him were afraid to express their sentiments, owing to the fear of the consequences to themselves if they stood out on his side. He found it almost impossible to secure witnesses against the liquor dealers, although many were willing to tell him privately of the illegal acts of these men. So he himself has had to bear the brunt of the fight alone, well knowing that at any time his life might have to be sacrificed for the cause. He, 108 Round Robin however, let it be known that it would be no advantage to them to kill him because some one else would certainly take his place and carry on the fight until the victory was won. "As time went on, however, his friends gained courage and gradually the sentiment in favor of the distilleries changed. Men who had been his oppo- nents came to see that he was right and that he was simply trying to remove something which had been a curse to them and to the community. This was the case even with men who had been the best patrons of the liquor dealers. And so it came about that Mr. Mason was able to put forward witnesses at the trials whose testimony proved conclusively that the distilleries were breaking the law. "The 'seven years' war' has come to an end, through the complete triumph of this valiant champion of law and order, and on May 1st, 1914, every licensed distil- lery in Albemarle and Greene Counties was closed and a great stride forward was taken in the work of eman- cipating the people from the demoralizing influences to which they had been exposed. "The fruits of this victory will be found far beyond Mr. Mason's own district and he has earned the gratitude of all the friends of the mountain people." III. Missionary and Distillers at Grips It may be said in passing, that illicit distilleries are still very much in evidence in the Southern mountains and that their number has increased since the pro- hibition laws went into effect. In Tennessee in one The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 109 section of the Cumbuland mountains one hundred and six iUicit stills were destroyed by revenue agents in the spring and summer of 1915. It is evident that even in Virginia there are, in the mountains, places that lack culture and refinement, cour- tesy and high breeding; but with the characteristic will that is underneath his characteristic manner the Virginia clergyman, stirred alike for the good name of his state and for the betterment of those to whom he has come, will not allow any small or great obstacle to hold him back from his work of amelioration. When good words fail he will throw rocks. When the Gospel does not make its appeal he makes his appeal to the law. Mr. Mason, whose work was last cited has a worthy companion in the Rev. J. R. Ellis. Mr. Ellis's story reminds us that the humorous in missionary experience is not confined to the Far West as we once thought when reading Bishop Talbot's "My People of the Plains," and that personal danger to a missionary may come elsewhere than in Thibet. He says : "Illicit distilling is not profitable now in the Blue Ridge — in East Rockingham at least — which accounts in large measure for its discontinuance. But wine and cider making and selling takes its place to some extent. In one case an old man, an old Confederate soldier, was warned to let up on his evil doings or the 'law would be put on him.' Not desisting he was brought to trial and fined. Shortly afterwards he met the Missionary and holding him responsible for his undoing, he seized rocks in both hands and advancing on him, swore he would kill him then and there — and fight to the last ditch — in true Confederate style. The Mission- 110 Round Robin ary, of somewhat the same stock and not willing ignominiously to quit the field, though as he was on horseback he might have done so without serious discredit to himself, was put to it to know what to do. He had nothing with which to defend himself and was wholly at the mercy of this irate man. Doing some quick thinking he turned his horse and rode directly toward him and looked squarely in his face without saying a word. Finishing his 'cussing' the old man threw down his rocks and went his way. Later he was apprehended and put in jail; the Missionary helped to get him out when he thought he was duly punished. Now he and the Missionary are the best of friends; he comes to Church regularly and vows he will shoot the first man that says wine or cider to him. This to show that the mountaineer is not the bad man he is said to be, but with proper treatment is tractable and manageable. "On another occasion in Page, where no neighbor- hood was thought properly equipped without a distillery, there being as many as sixty-six in that small county in recent years in operation at one time, the Missionary sought to stop the opening of a distillery in the heart of the Blue Ridge, because it was to be located near one of the churches in his charge. Here was some- thing never thought of before, to stop the mountaineer in a right guaranteed by the Constitution, as he was ready to maintain. But the Missionary essayed to do it. "Here and there among the people he went trying to get someone to back him up in opposition, but found never a one to help him. All wanted it and The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 111 had signed the paper to the Court for it and were going to have it — even those, his friends, who he thought were loyal to him and the Church. No, all had signed and they could not take back what they had written and signed. It is too long a story to recite here but it would amuse you as it has often amused him to know how he sat at home and planned what he would do when next he went to that hollow, and how all these plans failed on the next visit to see the people, and a new plan of operation would be formed. Suffice it here to say that the Court was friendly as far as Courts can be, and the distillery was stopped and today there is not a distillery nor bar room in Page County. "But this incident happened: Going down the little mountain road one day while the discussion was at its height, he met an old woman about seventy- five years old with whom he had sung on her porch one previous Sunday such hymns as delighted her in her girlhood — 'Old Time Religion,' 'Old Ship of Zion,' etc. Here, thought the missionary, is my friend; she will help and be a good witness before the court; she has raised a lot of boys and she knows above everybody what harm comes from a distillery. Howdying with her and biding his time — they move slowly, these mountain people — he said, "Old woman," in most persuasive tones ,"you don't want that distillery here in your midst, do you?" Ah, the. pathetic ring of her voice; he hears it now; "No, Preacher, that I don't, that I don't." Summoning courage now for this prospective witness before the Court he said confidently, "Why don't you want this distillery?" "Ah, Preacher," and the tone had lost none of its 112 Round Robin pathos, "I raises bees and they go down to the distillery and gets drunk off n the druppins and will not come home for work." The missionary faintly responded, "Oh," as he saw the last hope of a witness for the Court dissipate and vanish. "The Mountaineers are slow of speech usually; sometimes stolid in speech and movement, but their words and phrases are to the point. Our 'thread of your discourse' becomes with them 'the string of your talk;" our 'twilight' or 'dusk' is with them the 'aige of dark,' and 'stone's throw' is 'rock reach;' and when the mountaineer 'throws his coat' and 'draws a rock' it is well to be out of 'rock reach.' But though more or less stolid and stoical the Mountaineer must have amusements. These he finds in the old time customs and usages. The 'bell snickers' wait on a newly married couple and the bells and the horns and tin pans make a noise that would make bedlam itself turn green with envy in its effort to duplicate it. (This in East Virginia is the well known 'cally thump,' 'bell snickers' being of German origin evidently, and sure to crop out at Halloween.) "They keep religiously the 'Glorious Fourth' with the pop-crackers and the jug wherever obtainable, and the jug generally finds its way to the mountain hollows on such occasions; and Christmas is celebrated in pretty much the same way, though it is pleasant to say that this practice of keeping Christmas with the jug is becoming less and less popular. However, the following incident which must close this paper shows that the practice has not entirely disappeared : "There were two old widows near the Settlement House and the Missionary thought it would be nice The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 113 to play Santa Claus (though 'made in Germany') and take these old ladies a bag each of some vegetables and some good things to help on their Christmas cheer. His son being at home for the holidays he thought also it would be a diversion to him to get him to carry the bags of good things. So after nightfall with much secrecy they trudged through the snow and deposited the bags on the step and up against the door and by a preconcerted plan they knocked on the door and ran off. So far so good. But the son of the old woman was home for the Christmas without the knowledge of the men. He heard the knock and the running from the door and opened the door quietly to learn the reason of it. Being a little full of the 'O be joyful' he fell over the bags and, with curses loud and deep, swore vengeance as soon as he got his guns against the boys who as he thought were treating these old people that way. The curses and the threats added speed to the runners — the would-be Santa Clauses — and it was nip and tuck between father and son as to who would get over the fence first. The son having had much practice on the race course in getting off his demerits at school got an old time Marathon-move on him and scaled the fence at a bound, and making for the nearest town (to call the police, we suppose, or perhaps a fellow Monitor) was far and away before the father got to the fence and was with difficulty gotten back to his own home. Breathless he returned eventu- ally and it will be some time before he plays Santa Claus in the mountains again — widows or no widows." IV. Among the Coal Mines The mountain missionary work does not deal with the mountain people only. In many sections indus- 114 Round Robin trial development has brought in workmen from the outside world and these take their place as legitimate objects of the Church's care. Power plants, quarries, copper, zinc and coal mines, lumber mills and timber camps, are adding rapidly to our opportunity and responsibility. Here is what the Rev. J. Edmund Thompson tells of the new field that has opened up in Letcher County, Kentucky, among the coal miners: "The country is very rough and the valleys are narrow, except the valley of Boone Fork which is quite wide at McRoberts and Fleming. The mountains are between two thousand and three thousand feet high. There is a very heavy growth of timber of the hard- wood variety. While a great deal of the timber has been cut and used there is still much that has been untouched. "The coal company began operations in Letcher County in the spring of 1912. There was no railroad, and no wagon road; so the first thing that was done was to build the road to Pound, Virginia, through Pound Gap in Pine Mountain to where the town of Jenkins now stands. After months of work the road was com.pleted and mining machinery was brought in by way of Norton, Virginia, and thence over the company's road to Jenkins. This means of trans- portation was carried on until enough machinery had been brought in to set up a temporary power plant and to begin on the 204 mine. "About the time the road from Pound was completed the coal company, having failed in their negotiations with the Louisville & Nashville and Chesapeake The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 115 & Ohio railroads, began to build their own railroad from Shelby, a point on the Big Sandy Division on the Chesapeake & Ohio about thirty miles to the north- east. This road grew steadily, being built from Jenkins towards Shelby and from Shelby towards Jenkins at the same time. After some fifteen miles had been built an offer was made by the Baltimore & Ohio; the coal company accepted, and the Sandy Valley and Elkhorn Railroad became a part of the Baltimore & Ohio system, which completed the road. Thus Jenkins was linked to the outside world. "After the completion of the railroad it was only a question of hours rather than months when the town and mines would become realities. The coal company came into a wilderness and built an ideal mining town. The ordinary shack houses for the miner were not in the plans. The miner was to have a good, comfortable and substantial house in which to live. Each house has electric lights and all have deep driven wells, either next to the house or one for every two, or three houses. The houses are two stories and have from five to eight rooms. In the houses occupied by the officers there are hot water heaters, bath, running water, and electric light. The water supply for the upper Jenkins region, as the residential portion of town is called, is supplied by six springs all connected and flowing into a concrete reservoir situated up on the side of Pine Mountain to the south. The reservoir is about 20 X 40 X 60 feet. "The electrical power is derived from steam turbine generators whose supply of water comes from an artificial lake made by placing a concrete dam across the lower end of the Little Elkhorn Creek. This dam 116 Round Robin is about 40 feet high and possibly 25 or 30 feet thick at the base. The power generated at this central plant is distributed to all the mines in Jenkins which are eight in number; all at McRoberts, Fleming, Raymond and the operations on Beaver Creek. The current is carried by means of high tension transmission, with a voltage of 44,000 reduced by sub-stations at each mine. "The people of Jenkins and these other places are importations — the miner is mostly foreign and from Southern Europe, the others from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. The moun- taineer is a rara avis in these immediate parts. He left years ago because of the non-productiveness of the soil and took up his residence along the Kentucky River or else settled in Whitesburg, the County seat. The few that were left when the coal company came in moved away. Hence the mountain work here is nothing but parish work with rural surroundings. The mountaineer was offered work by the company, but he is a peculiar people and could not understand why he could not work for two or three days and then 'lay oflf' for the rest of the week. Nor could he see why, when he did come back, his job was filled by someone else. He wanted to be paid by the day and wanted his money at the end of each day. This was not the way with the coal company, and when he was told he would be paid for the time he had worked, but only twice a month, he decided he would leave and go where the rules were made by the employees rather than by the employer. "Since the miner is mostly Roman Catholic and the white people are nearly all from cities and towns where The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 117 our Church has been established for years their atti- tude is very friendly. The mountaineer when found is mostly very bitter against every communion except his own, which is generally one of the many varieties of the Baptist. He is even hostile toward other branches of his own denomination, and consequently the missionary Baptist has a hard time in these parts. "The coal company has built and maintains schools in all its mining towns and camps. The children are compelled to attend school, and if they do not go their father is fined for not making them go and the fine is collected from his pay. The schools are well attended as a result, and many a foreigner's child is receiving an education which otherwise might be left to go by the board. "I have gone all over Letcher County and visited at mountain homes which have been greatly improved, so I am told, since, 'Them city fellers come in with the company.' They listen to your preaching very atten- tively but think you are wrong and they are right; they try to argue 'much water against little water' for baptism, and then get angry when you show them that the Church does not specify either to be the proper mode. The Prayer Book seems to be a sore point with many, for they say they don't want their prayers read out of a book. These two points seem to give most of the trouble. They like the Mission Hymnal but prefer the Gospel Hymns contained in it. "There are many mountain cemeteries around here and the old custom is retained of building little houses over each grave. Some of these are quite elaborate, having a lot of scroll saw work and even fancily cut 118 Round Robin shingles on the roof. Some have even gone so far as to put sheet iron on the roof. This material was obtained from the worn out stoves of well-to-do neighbors, particularly from the ovens. When asked why they build houses over the graves the answer was cryptic — see what you can make of it — 'It is to give them rest and peace in their last sickness.' "To show how far these people have lived from the outside world! One of the coal company's foresters, a Mr. R. F. Paine and myself were at the head of the Kentucky River and seeing a cabin on the side of the mountain we stopped in and asked for a drink of water. The old man, who came to the door in response to our hail, requested us to 'light and hitch' which we did. He went into the house but soon returned with a jug and two gourds. Paine looked at me and raised his eyebrows, for the jug had all the marks of being an own brother to the moon-shine jug. Instead of that fiery liquid it contained butter milk. After we had each accepted a gourd full and tasted it Paine remarked to me, 'How much better this would be if it had some ice in it.' The old man heard him and fairly glaring at Paine remarked, 'Who in ever heard of ice in August?' Paine tried to convince the old man that there could be such a thing, but the old fellow was firm and we left him still unconvinced that ice could be had in August. "The mountaineer is as curious as a child and in this regard is a near relative to some of his more enlightened brethren in the outside world, the only difference being that the outsider has more tact in attaining the same end. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 119 "I was called to see a man who was dying. He was surrounded by his friends and neighbors who were trying to comfort him. He was a Churchman, the only one in that part of the country. He had expressed his desire to see an Episcopal minister and had refused the offices of a Roman priest and a Methodist minister; so one of his friends came for me. "After some conversation with him I asked him if he desired Holy Communion; he said that was what he had sent for me for, so I began the service. By the time I had finished the house and the yard were full of people, mostly men. I talked with him and in fact talked with the whole crowd, some of whom had never seen a Communion service. I answered questions from the spectators and the old man. He was very weak and died about two hours after I had finished the service. After making the arrangements for the burial I started back to Jenkins and returned the next day and had the funeral." V. A Life Story The workers in our mission fields are not all clergy- men and deaconesses. Some of them are laymen, and their functions are purely administrative or financial. Some of them give their time as field agents for the Bishop, describing the work, soliciting funds, or even acting as salesman for products of the industrial schools. One of these last, a typical mountain boy, of humblest parentage, who had pluck and endurance to overcome insurmoun- table obstacles, has, at the author's request, furnished this brief account of his life down to the 120 Round Robin time when he estabUshed what later become one of the four industrial schools of the District of Asheville : "I was the third and youngest son of a poor and uneducated woman, who herself was born and raised in the mountains, her father, an Irishman by descent, having been born in the foothills of Virginia. My home life and early associations were not such as would make for the highest thoughts and purest morals. "I early remember the large one room log house without an overhead ceiling, and the large rock chimney only a little above the ridge-pole — the result of which was that the logs caught fire many times and were extinguished by dashing water on them. I remember my mother going to the field to clear and clean up the land ready for plowing and planting, and doing an all day's work washing for the neighbors for only twenty- five cents. "There was no religious or other kind of teaching in the home except the rod and hard abuse — this coming to the children from others rather than from the mother. Sad it is for a boy who has half a dozen bosses who seem to delight in punishing with no word of sympathy. He begins to think that everybody is against him, and he begins to hate and plan revenge on those whom he takes as enemies. "I have no recollection of a school or a schoolhouse anywhere in the neighborhood in my early years, the result being that I knew nothing of books. Until the age of nine or ten I was teased and tormented by larger boys who nicknamed me and called me *a gal,' The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 121 because I wore a dress, not knowing from my own experience what a suit of boy's clothes was. "I well remember the first pair of pants I ever wore — an old pair given me by the mother of another boy my own size. They were made of cotton plaids or 'checks,' as it was called. The first time I ever went to school I wore the cotton check pants and was made fun of. "I went to school but little, and learned what little I did in Webster's 'Blue Back Speller,' this being the only book I ever had until I got a Second Reader, paying for it by the sale of a chicken and by the help of an added nickel given by my elder brother. "I knew not what it was to have a new pair of shoes, but wore old ones of all sizes that had been discarded by others. "I knew nothing about the beautiful and pleasant things of life. "An accident which nearly took my life happened when I was about seven or eight years old. I was out in the field with my uncle, and a large log rolled over me. The only thing that saved my life was a knot or a short limb on the log, which lifted so much of the weight that the log went over me without serious hurt. "I had many fights and difficulties with the children in the neighborhood. "At the age of twelve I went with an uncle by mar- riage to South Carolina to work in the cottonmills, one of my brothers having already gone. I made from fifteen to twenty-five cents a day, but my uncle got it all for my board. 122 Round Robin "In the mills I had fights with the other boys. I was dissatisfied and homesick, and finally returned home by myself, arriving home with only twenty-five cents in my pocket, and this was given me by a man in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I was so pleased to get home that I gave the twenty-five cents to my old grandmother with whom my mother was living. "There was a short public school in the settlement but I did not go. I had no books, and I had plenty of work to do at home. I cut and carried fire-wood, carried the corn to the mill to be ground, and did other kinds of work. The next year or two following I went to school a few days and weeks, and learned to read a little and write so it could be read. "At the age of sixteen I again went to the cotton mills, this time in Asheville. There I worked the first two weeks without pay. Then I was paid forty cents a day; then on up gradually to fifty-five cents a day. I stayed there ten months, paying eight or nine dollars a month board, and in that time saved forty dollars. This was a fortune to a boy who had never handled so much money in his life. While here I read 'The Story of Jesus' and the New Testament and learned the multiplication table while at work. "The following spring I went back to my own county and made a bargain with an uncle by marriage and worked all spring and summer for my board for six months that I might attend the school near by. At this school I had much trouble. I was embarrassed because I knew so little and some boys wanted to run over me, but I stayed the six months. Then I went to the cotton mills again and worked at seventy The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 123 cents a day, and went back home and went to school six months more, this time staying with my grand- mother, mother and brothers. After close of school I worked again for my board and five dollars; then returned to the same school for another six months. "Then I attended a Teachers' Institute and took an examination. I got a second grade certificate and taught a public school at eighteen dollars a month for about three months. Afterward I went to a small college in Tennessee, remaining while my money lasted. When it gave out I went back to the mountains and taught again. Then I went to the Tennessee Normal College and paid a part of my expenses by sweeping the college buildings. It took me all day on Monday to sweep the entire building; and to keep the rooms swept as need required I swept every day from the time school was closed till supper time, and some- times before breakfast. "Leaving the college I went to the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville, and reached there with about two dollars in my pocket. I gave my note for room rent and incidental expenses, borrowed some bed clothes, bought a small oil stove and a few vessels, and did my own cooking. Working holidays and odd hours during the day at ten or fifteen cents an hour at any kind of work I could get to do, I earned money with which to buy food and other necessaries. The hardness of the life wore me out, I became discouraged and came very near leaving the University and going to work; but at this critical time I received words of encouragement from the President of the University and others, and I determined to stick it out. 124 Round Robin "While here a high purpose came into my mind and Ufe, the purpose and desire to estabUsh a school up in my mountain section — an industrial school where the poor boys and girls might have an opportunity to get an all round practical education. I told my plans to the President who spoke with sympathy and interest. "I taught again the district school. After the close of the three month's school I began my efforts to interest people in the industrial school proposition, but few had any faith in this proposition." Thus far writes the young man. Space is lacking to give the whole story of how he struggled for some years and established an independent work, and them came in touch with the Church and Bishop Horner, who became so interested that he took over the plant as a part of the work of the District of Asheville and established what is now known as the Appalachian Industrial School at Penland. This much has been told to illustrate the purposefulness of the young man of the mountains when he is started aright, and to drive home the thought that the persons who are to develop the Church's activities are living in the moun- tains now, inefficient only because undeveloped. CHAPTER VI. WHAT THE CHURCH HAS YET TO DO. The problem of the Highlander is a permanent problem. Thousands have been induced to leave their mountains and go to the cotton mills, and some students have from this fact concluded that possibly the solution of the problem lies in the transplanting of the whole population to the mills. It seems hardly necessary to discuss this solution, yet it can not be ignored. Let this much then be said: Granted that these people could be deported, their unskilled hands are fitted only for the cotton mills; and the cotton mills could not use any noticeable fraction of them. Already the mountain folk that have formed the cotton mill towns have raised serious moral and economic problems hardly second in difficulty to those of the mountains themselves — not the least serious being the tendency to tuberculosis, and the prevalent attempt of the father and mother to live on the earnings of their brood of children. And if it were possible to direct the labor supply into other channels it would at once come into conflict with the present labor market of the South, which is unable to assimilate so much unskilled labor in a generation. And finally the Mountain people have strong local attachment. They are unwilling to leave their homes, and they can not be moved forcibly. Just as the problem of the Negro must be worked out in America because the Negro is here and can not be carried to Africa, so the problem of the Mountain people may not be carried down to the lowlands and solved there. 126 Round Robin The mountains will not come to the Church; there- fore the Church must go to the mountains. I. Why the Church's Mountain Work Must Be Developed Three possible courses lie before the Church in connection with this Mountain Work. She can con- tinue at it in a half-hearted way; she can withdraw from it entirely; or she must press it forward vigorously. It can be regarded as one of the Church's agencies of which we know little and care less; but since the Church took it in hand loyalty to the Church demands that some little assistance be given it. It can be regarded as a blunder into which the Church was led by blind enthusiasts; and since the Church is not particularly attractive to these people she should withdraw from the Quixotic attempt to make Episcopalians out of them. Or it can be regarded as a challenge to the Church's unselfish devotion; and since no wealth and prestige in worldly things can come to her or be taken from other churches by her efforts here she should exert herself to the utmost to demonstrate the uplifting power of the Gospel of Christ among neglected Ameri- cans as well as among benighted Filippinos. The second course may be dropped from considera- tion altogether. To continue the work half-heartedly is either to disapprove, or to be so uncertain as to be inefficient. If it is not worth doing well it is not worth doing at all. Either our efforts in the mountains should be redoubled or they should be abandoned. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 127 Our mission to the mountains is only a part of our mission to the world, and whatever argument is good against missionary work anywhere else is probably valid against missionary work in the mountains. On the general argument for missions it is not necessary to say anything here. But granted that the Church intends to be faithful to her commission from Christ, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel," it is pertinent to make two assertions: First. The people of the mountains are not, to say the least, inferior to the Negro to whom the Church carries this Gospel, or to the East Sider in New York, to whom she brings its ministration. In physique, in intelligence, and in will they are capable, when disciplined and developed, of taking no mean place in the world's hisory. Of that fact they have already given guarantee in the collective cases cited in the first chapter of this book, and in multitudes of individual cases. Second. The Church is not inferior to the numerous denominations that are ministering to the mountain people. In the truth of the Gospel as she presents it in its fullness, without stressing one point at the expense of another; in her adaptability in modifying methods to suit conditions, while yet fearlessly holding to truth and righteousness, sub- ordinating the non-essential things to the things that are necessary; and in that sympathetic helpfulness that does not declare a fault without proposing a virtue and that will, while denouncing a sin, show a kindly spirit to the offender, the Church has no reason to be ashamed of her record in the mountain as a faithful witness to Jesus Christ, or to be doubtful of a future harvest as the reward for her past fidelity. 128 Round Robin To say that the people of the mountains are capable of receiving high benefit from the Church and that the Church has the channels, the substance, and the ministers by which to meet their needs amply, is not to make a bare assertion; it is to say what the Church has proved time after time and is still proving. If she were not able to serve them, it would be well to ask, "Is her failure due to her lack of the spirit of Christ? Or is it due to the inability of some persons to receive the Gospel? If not to either of these causes to what can it be due?" When the ancestry of the Highlander is considered it is inherently probable that the preaching of the Gospel of the larger life of the sons of God will meet with larger response from him than from those who have no such ancestry. If, as is true, effete peoples can be regenerated by the Gospel, still more can unde- veloped strength make encouraging response. And if we are discouraged at the difficulties in awakening the Highlander, who has slept for two hundred years, ethnological reasons should make us despair in approach- ing an entire race, the Chinese ,that has slept more than two thousand years. Yet in making this plea for encouragement and for incitement to duty we would not be understood as intimating that the Highlander will remain asleep if the Church does not awaken him. We do say that he will not awaken as soon or with as clear a mind if we delay or play with the opportunity; but we -are not the only agencies at work. Attention has already been directed to the organized work, chiefly evangelistic and educational, that the various leading denominations The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 129 especially the Presbyterians, A-Iethodists, and Baptists are doing in the mountains. Not only denominational but secular agencies are vigorously at work to awaken the sleeper. Berea College, Kentucky, has 1,700 students and a budget of $120,000 a year, of which one-half is raised annually from current gifts. The Willard Industrial School near Landrum, South Caro- lina, in a section where two-thirds of the population are illiterate, has 125 students. Lincoln Memorial University, at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, has 750 students. Maryville College, Tennessee, has an enroll- ment of nearly 800, and an income from all sources of $48,000. Grandview Normal Institute, at the east- ern edge of the Cumberland Range, north of Chatta- nooga, has an enrollment of about 300. The Martha Berry School in Floyd County, Georgia, has property valued at a quarter of a million dollars and has several hundred students. The Southern Industrial Institute at Camp Hill, Alabama, has about 100 students. In Asheville the Presbyterians have four schools whose permanent plants have an aggregate value of $265,000 and whose total enrollment in 1913 was 550. These are only a few outstanding instances of many undertakings, for at strstegic points in every state similar schools are located. Some are denominational, some are not. Some are co-educational, some are not. Most of them embrace industrial features, some do not. A hard and fast rule of procedure is not attempted. The rule is first to determine what is the especial need of this section, and then to undertake so much as is practicable. Occasionally the judgment is bad and the work poor, but generally the vision, the effort, and the spirit leave little to be desired. In 130 Round Robin addition to the larger schools many small day-schools are conducted as feeders for the boarding schools and as possible beginnings of boarding schools. These large schools are trying to do for the people of the mountains what Hampton, Lawrenceville, St. Augus- tine (Raleigh), and Tuskegee are trying to do for the negro, or St. John's, Shanghai, for the Chinese, and their effect is noticeable when the lives of the students are followed up in their mountain homes to which many return. "If these agencies are so successful why not leave the work to them, and address ourselves to something else?" This very natural question has been often asked. It has been so often asked also in parish matters that nearly every worker has heard it: "Mrs. A. teaches her class so well that I would be ashamed to take a class," "The choir sings so well that I can add nothing to the music," "The income of the church is so large and Mr. X gives such a sum, that what little I could do would be of no help." The remark is protean in shape, but in spirit it is one. It is the voice of sloth disclaiming moral obligation to serve God with what gifts it received from God, be the gifts of others what they may. As there are parishioners that are drones, so there may be national Churches that are drones. Men do not stay out of goldfields, professions, or lines of business because so many are already at work in them. The very fact that so many are at work leads the vigorous man to think "there is something to work for;" and he adds one more to the number — if he has any courage and strength. The very fact that so many religious societies and other agencies are working among the Highlanders The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 131 should be an argument for active participation by the Church, in that it is declaration from beyond our borders that the effort is necessary and the result promising. "But is not the field already overcrowded with workers, and will not our participation on a larger scale make matters worse?" That question also has been asked, but not by any one who has carried his eyes and his mind into the Southern Appalachians. If only the present workers of all names and classes are to better the conditions of the Southern Highlander at least nine-tenths of the Highlanders will have died without having their condition bettered, and without suspecting that any one in existence was trying to better it. It is doubtless true that in a few cases (one, indeed, was quoted in Chapter V) agencies do overlap and there is a conges- tion of instrumentalities. That however is a purely local condition, and it is a rare condition. The general condition is such that the present agencies could be multiplied ten- fold without creating an adequate force. "There is glory enough for all," said one of Santiago. "There is work enough for all," we can say of the uplift agencies in the Southern Appalachians. If the Church stands still in this mountain work she will retrograde. There is a world of philosophy in Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter's explanation of his breathless condition:" I am out of breath from running so hard to stay where I am." The world's activities are a moving procession. One has only to stand still to fall behind. Lack of progress is relative retrogres- sion. All other agencies are developing their activities 132 Round Robin in the mountains, and if the Church fails to develop her own her contribution to the solution of the great problem will be of even less importance than it now is, and it is now of far less importance than a half- dozen other factors. But lack of progress is not only relative retrogres- sion, it is absolute retrogression. The merchant whose store front and stock fails to keep pace with the development of the community not only is of de- creasing importance relatively in the commercial life of the city; he finds that he is of decreasing significance to himself, he begins to think that he must have been big enough for only a small place and that he is not equal to large opportunities. For a time he can keep his self-love by calling to mind his past achiev- ments; but when he finds that the community is looking not for past achievements but for present achievements he will become discouraged, and being discouraged he will not expand his business but will dry up in himself. "Ilium fuit, et ingens gloria Dadanum" was one of the saddest plaints of ancient literature. Today the glory of the Church is not in what she did but in what she is doing. To paraphrase a famous saying, "Her past glory declares not her discharge from present duties but her debt." If we show our- selves so lacking in zeal that we are content to fall behind in dealing with the conditions of our less for- tunate fellow citizens in the mountains, the reaction on the vitality of the national Church will be disastrous. Over and over again it is observed that the missionary parish is the living parish, and that the non-missionary parish is dead. That is true also of the Church at large. The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 133 If the Church is not moved by the opportunities and necessities in the Southern mountains to develop her work there it is difficult to see what legitimate appeal could arouse her missionary spirit in any part of the world. The Christian rule from the first has been: We must do good to all men: but chiefly to them of our own household. 11. The Scope and Spirt of This Develop- ment The proper development of this work will not permit advance in only one department. It must be all along the line: in Christian teaching, in mental training, and in social betterment. Evangelism must have the primacy in this advance. The definite presentation of the Faith once delivered to, the saints is the chief need of the mountain people. That Faith is the bed-rock of Christian living, and without the declaration of the content of that Faith men cannot be brought to Christ. There is a tendency in some quarters to belittle this chief function of the Church in order to exalt the min- istry of benevolence and philanthropy, and it is declared that the good works will themselves speak for Christ. Hence appeals for hospitals, schools, industrial centres and the like receive a more sympathetic hearing than appeals for funds to build a new church or to open up a new group of preaching places. "Write me as one who loves his fellow men" is the thought that so exhibits itself. It is a noble thought, but Ben Adhem's spirit does not measure up to a higher spirit. When we build hospitals, and support nurses, and open school, 134 Round Robin and develop individual capacities, the mind of the majority of those helped does not ask, "What has led these people to do these things." They ordinarily accept the benefit without inquiring further. Certainly the least we Christian folk can do is to declare what is moving us; "The love of Christ con- strains us." And if we do that we shall have to declare the nature, the functions, and the relationship of Christ, and the breadth and unselfishness and reproductive power of his love. We are not following Apostolic precedent when we exclaim "Rise up and walk" unless we precede that command by the decla- ration of our authority and power, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth." This preaching is needed in the mountains. What the bulk of the Highlanders get in the way of preaching while satisfying the hearers is entirely unsatisfactory as a declaration of the counsel of God. It does not lead the people anywhere but in a circle. They are not helped by our minimizing or denying of this fact. They can be helped by the candid acknowledgment of it as a fact and by our attempt to change the kind of preaching they get by sending them preachers who have an intelligent conception of the Gospel of Christ and of its power to change men's lives. When we thus exalt evangelism to its proper first place we can proceed to say that that will be a dead evangelism which contents itself with words only. The works also must bear witness to Christ. This applies to education and social betterment alike, for the sons of God must serve God with body and mind as well as with spirit, and the clear head and the The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 135 strong and disciplined body are needed to accomplish the work of the Spirit. Certainly it is the State's duty to care for her unedu- cated, undeveloped, and unfortumate; for all are members of the civic body and the care of weak members is the obligation of the whole body. It is the State's duty to provide ample schools and efficient instructors for the uneducated, orphanages and hospitals for the deserted, and manual training and domestic science teaching for the youths and maidens. To some extent this is being done. But the progress is slow, and the public sentiment is not vigorous enough to accelerate the speed. Here is a place where united action can be taken by all religious communions. They should by concurrent action, or by action through a joint committee in each state, arouse public sentiment and urge the legisla- tures to appropriate action in the more rapid estab- lishment of educational and eleemosynary institutions, thus leaving the missions freer to do the work which they are especially set to do. There is no reason v\^hy one group of citizens should be regarded as especially chargeable with what is the common responsibility of the State, and the mere fact that this group, which is the group of Christ's disciples, assumes the respon- sibility gladly does not lessen the State's responsibility. Christian workers have been too timid in this matter. The time has come to make as strong a demand for the multiplication of instrumentalities of salvation as for those of extermination. The Hon. Samuel H. Thomp- son, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Tennessee, in an address to a large meeting of 136 Round Robin mountain workers held in the city of Knoxville in 1914 said: "It will be many years in my opinion before the denominations and foundations can afford to withdraw their aid from this section of the country. Of course, as soon as the State provides adequate educational facilities you will no longer be needed except in a purely denominational way. But that is so far in the future that I am sure you do not need to seriously consider that matter yet. So long as forty-six counties in Tennessee have five months or less of public school, and only six counties have eight months or more there is great reason for every sort of educational agency." Concerted action and widespread pressure can hasten the time when the whole civic body will meet its own responsibilities of preparation of the growing and refuge for the unfortunate; but until that time shall come, and so long as these works of mercy are not done largely and generously by the State, the Church can not stand back and allow human beings to suffer because the responsible party does not meet its respon- sibility. She must again repeat what she has done all through her history in Europe: Do the State's work so well and thoroughly that by and by the State will take it over and relieve the Church of further obligation in the matter. The question has doubtless arisen in the minds of many: "What good will all this effort, all this expendi- ture of men and money involved, bring to the Church?" In other words: "Even if success should crown all our efforts, what benefit is to accrue to the Church that she should exert herself to join in a work that cannot add to her resources, and that is not particularly desired by those among whom she is to work?" The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 137 Let it be distinctly understood that in going into the mountains the Church is not taking thought of her stature; she can well ignore the cubit if she attends to the work. She is going there not to swell her membership but to build up the neglected children of God. She does add to her membership, but even where she does not the work may succeed. Not all the fruit of the Spirit is ecclesiastical. If, as has occurred time and again, children of Baptist families are sent to our parochial schools in the mountains and there learn not only the "Three R's" but also the "Fourth R" (Righteousness), and perhaps a fifth (Religion), and then go back to their own denomination and join it, has the Church failed? Or has she succeed- ed? If the child is rendered more efficient and has discovered higher standard of right has not the work been, in so far, a success, though a new member was not added? What is our religion intended to do? How does the Church do it? These are the two questions and the only two by which we can justly measure our present and future success in the mountains. Our answer to the former of these questions will be the measure of our own vision. III. The Agencies to be Used In urging a forward movement in this work we are reminded of the saying of one of America's great sea captains, whose vessel was sinking, and who was asked if he was ready to surrender: "Ready to surrender?," he shouted back, "I have not yet begun to fight." 138 Round Robin As much as the Church has already accomplished in the mountains she has, in truth, not yet begun to fight. She is yet in the beginning of things, in the pioneer stage of her adventure for God, with vast reaches of country untouched, with great investments yet to be made in undeveloped human power, and with generations to come and go before the full significance and value of her undertakings shall fully declare themselves. She is called upon to walk by faith, but that faith differs not in essence from the faith with which large investors are pouring into these same mountains millions of dollars, whose returns will come to their children but not to themselves. Surely the Church will not permit the children of this world to be in this particular also wiser than the children of light. In opening up her aggressive campaign in the moun- tains the Church does not need to revolutionize her agencies. There is no reason why the present agencies should be displaced, and to that extent be discredited. The part of true wisdom will be to bring new strength and support to the present agencies, to give to those who have been making brick without straw the oppor- tunity to show what can be done when the material is in hand with which to work. The machinery for a forward movement is already ample. The national Church, through its Board of Missions; the sectional Church, through the Synods of the Third and Fourth Provinces; the dioceses immediately concerned, through their Bishops, con- ventions and boards of missions; and the local centres already established, through the archdeacons, and other missionaries in the field, these furnish ample machinery The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 139 to meet all the present problems and to deal with what- ever other problems may be raised because of develop- ment of the work. It is true that many details of the interrelationship of all these agencies, especially of the General Church, the Province, and the Diocese, remain to be settled; for example, the relative burdens to be carried by the General Board and by the Diocesan Boards; the extent to which the Bishop shall delegate to the General Board a more effective voice in the appointment of workers; the extent to which the Board and the Bishops shall request larger co-operation by the appro- priate bodies of the Provincial Synod, etc. These details will be adjusted gradually and, for a time, satisfactorily, but to the end of the chapter they will be subject to continual readjustment because of the changing conditions of the work and of the Church's mind concerning it. All this is wrapped up with the life of the Church. The mechanical details demand the least part of our attention and will be solved in the going of the work. What is needed is a more earnest spirit in dealing with our chosen agencies, more intelligent acquaintance with the Church's undertakings, and more liberal con- tributions of money. Then the workers will not need to take so much of their time in what is euphemistically called "presenting the claims of the mountain people." Then they may, in time of work, work in their fields and not out of them, and in time of recreation be relieved from that burden, "How can the work be supported?" which at present clings about them with the wearing clutch of the Old Man of the Sea. 140 Round Robin Without making invidious distinctions, and without suggesting that the specifying of certain fields as commen- dable means that they are more commendable than other fields, but naming them because they are examples of work well and thoroughly done but incapable of being supported by what sums the General Board of Missions now contributes, we cite as agencies that have passed the experimental stage and have demon- strated their right to live more largely and fully: Archdeacon Spurr's work in West Virginia and Arch- deacon Neve's in Virginia; Bishop Burton's school at Corbin, Kentucky; Bishop Horner's four industrial schools; Mrs. Wetmore's school at Arden, Mrs. Hugh- son's hospital at Morganton and Mr. Wilcox's mission work about Hendersonville, North Carolina; the mis- sion work of St. Mary's and St. Andrew's near Sewanee, and the Emerald-Hodgson Hospital in the same place but under different management. Of the admirable work done in many places it is impossible in this book to give adequate description, and a catalogue would be, as regards the Appalachians, simply a reprinting of the Church Annuals. All the named and unnamed places are the heart and core of whatever campaign the Church makes in the mountians, and the ample support of them is fundamental in all sound strategy. It need not be feared that any of them will receive too liberal support. Gifts have not begun to reach the point where they will endanger the self respect of the workers, or weaken their moral fibre. In this connection, however, we cannot ignore two questions that have aroused interest. Are endowments desirable for any part of the work? Is it the sounder policy to build expensive plants, or to build inexpensive plants? The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 141 It is not the province of the author to express an opinion about these matters, but he ventures to submit a few thoughts for consideration-: An inexpensive plant can be supported with less cost than a more expensive plant. Costly buildings require an extensive budget. Four modest plants can be erected for the cost of one that "strikes the visitor with its elegance and completeness." On the other hand the more expensive plant is generally the gift of generous persons who desire a memorial that shall be worthy. It declares that the work is to be permanent. Its beauty has an educational value for the mountain people, though at first they do not recognize it. In all probability the donors of a speci- fied sum would not assent to any suggestion to build four or five small schools or churches with the sum that was given for one, and often there is no choice except between a handsome building and no building at all. And finally it should be understood that what expensive buildings are in the Southern Appalachians were erected from specified gifts and not from the general missionary fund. Somewhat of a similar sort can be said of the matter of endowments. "Given a hundred thousand dollars, which is better?" it is asked: "To draw five thousand dollars a year interest from it to support a work, or to use ten or twenty thousand dollars a year for five or ten years confident that a larger policy will get results that will appeal to the people to give even more liberally when the present fund is exhausted?" Or in another form the question is put: "Shall wetrust the future or distrust it? Will the work be able to commend 142 Round Robin itself, or unable? If it appeals to us to give so freely now, will it appeal the less to another generation when it becomes more efficient?" We would suggest these thoughts as worthy of consideration: So long as the general Church gives so meagrely to support the work as to make the problem of the daily bread an acute problem, distracting the worker's mind from his proper activity, so long it is desirable that any form of permanent support shall be sought: and endowment is the most permanent form — far more permanent than a list of annual contributors which decreases by a certain percentage yearly. Whether rightly or wrongly the Church through her General Convention has adopted the principle of endowments, in that she will not permit the organization of a diocese until provision has been made for the salary of the Bishop; and if this principle is adopted for one member of the Church it cannot consistently be condemned when used for another. Moreover the money given for endowments is not taken from other work; it would not be available for current support if not used for endowment; therefore it is so much net increase in contributions to Church support. On the other hand it is to be considered that the energy expended in securing endowments would be able to raise a large amount for current expenditure if turned in that direction. For example, a gigantic attempt to raise $100,000 endowment may be successful and may net four or five thousand dollars a year interest indefinitely; but if an annual but not gigantic attempt were made to meet current expenses it would do more good by raising annually $10,000 than by raising ten times as much, for endowment. Moreover, endowment often The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 143 removes an institution from the interest of the people and the officers of the institution from living sympathy with the people. Yet after all is said and done, none of our institutions will ever have enough endowment to pay all its expenses. And some assured income, even if it be only a large fraction of the expenses, is a very comforting thing to tide over the time of financial drought. So much is said by way of suggestion, but those two topics should be thoroughly discussed as two of the actual problems that the Church must face and that her laymen must finally determine. IV. Some Specific Suggestions It is a mistake to give one man too many kinds of things to do. The expense account may be diminished thus, but the earning capacity is diminished even more. The Church has made this very mistake in the past. Not to rehearse the familiar instance of the rectors of large parishes who are expected to be administrator, pastor, priest, preacher, and publicist all rolled in one, the colossal mistake which she made in the past, and is continuing to some extent in the present, was in committing immense territory and widely diverse people to the oversight of a single Bishop. Bishop Jackson Kemper is a signal instance; and the weakness of the Church in the territory once served by him is the outcome of the Church's failure to take her missionary work seriously. It is true that the attempt of Bishop Kemper to do the impossible has given us reason and opportunity to laud his heroism: but our praise of his heroism has been bought at too dear a price. 144 Round Robin The mission work in the Southern mountains has suffered largely from the same cause. The Southern dioceses have been territorially so large and the means of travel so meagre that with the ability to do only a given amount of work the Southern Bishops, who had neither the purse of Fortunatus nor the magic carpet of Bagdad, have naturally and properly given their attention to that part of their dioceses where their efforts promised the best returns. The mountains promised the least returns, and to do any effective work in them would have necessitated neglect of a numerically larger and more promising people in other parts of the diocese. Now that the parts of the dioceses that have been nurtured have responded, the demands which they make on their Bishop are increased by so much. And the mountains remain the same less promising field. But, to repeat what was said in Chapter IV, the mind of Southern Churchmen is now beginning to realize that the work among the mountain people is of such magnitude and importance as to deserve and demand the undivided attention of those who are charged with its oversight, and that in the Church it is but a temporary expedient to give the oversight to any but a Bishop. Kentucky met the demand when the diocese of Lexington was erected. Virginia and Southern Virginia have made ample provision by electing Coadjutor Bishops, North Carolina made provision by setting off the District of Asheville. Georgia did the same by forming her northern half into the Diocese of Atlanta. But the old handicap to the most efficient work still remains in the dioceses of South Carolina, Tennessee The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 145 and Alabama, where very diverse and conflicting duties and interests yet prevent the Bishops and missionary bords from turning their full attention to the mountain work. The mountain work in these dioceses will continue to be subordinated to other work, and therefore, will continue to be done on a small scale, until in each of them the overseer is appoint- ed that the policy of this Church calls for — not an archdeacon but a Bishop. Whether this shall be accomplished in each diocese by the election of a Coadjutor Bishop, by the erection of a new diocese, or by the setting apart of the Highland section as a missionary district, is an important but minor question. South Carolina and Alabama will probably solve it by the erection of new dioceses in the not distant future. Tennessee will not be able to erect a new diocese, its communicant list in that section being confined prac- tically to the cities of Chattanooga and Knoxville; its solution will have to be either a Coadjutor for the whole state, or the cession of East Tennessee to the General Church as a Missionary District. Strategically East Tennessee is the first place into which the Church will pour its strength if an advance is determined upon: for it contains approximately as great a mountain population as the District of Asheville, and yet has done practically nothing for them except in the Sewanee and Monterey groups. Of course, if the Church is not to be a nursing mother for these sections there is neither rhyme nor reason in electing coadjutors, erecting dioceses, or ceding missionary districts. There should be a settled policy determined upon by the General Board of Missions, 146 Round Robin but that policy must be guided by the attitude of Churchmen generally toward such a campaign. The possession and the lack of ammunition are mighty factors in any warfare. The workers in the field must be fed and clothed; churches, schools, settlement houses, and hospitals must be built and equipped and maintained. The scale on which the work should be done should be neither lordly nor niggardly, but it must be generous. If the work is not worth doing thoroughly it should not be done at all. More churches than the Church of the Laodiceans have been spued out because they were neither hot nor cold but luke- warm. Since the writing of this book was undertaken the request has come that the author estimate the number of workers and the amount of money necessary to equip the whole field thoroughly and maintain it reasonably. It is impossible to name even approximately either the number or the amount. Each is greater than it is possible for the Church to contribute, and what the Church does contribute of each will fall far short of what can be used immediately and wisely. A com- parison may make this clearer. No one thinks that Alaska is overmanned or too liberally supported, yet to its scattered population, totalling only 64,000 souls, the Church has sent 14 clergymen. To meet the problems in the Southern Appalachians, every whit as urgent as those in Alaska, the Church would have to send not the 50 clergymen and the 115 lay workers now in the field but 1,000 clergymen and more than 2,500 lay workers; and to support the work in the same proportion would call for not the $25,000 received The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 147 annually from all outside sources, but $3,300,000! Not one-tenth of this amount is likely to be given soon; neither 100 additional clergymen nor 250 additional lay workers nor $300,000 could be used immediately. But there should be immediate and great advance in every line. Contributions should be multiplied to enlarge the life of those of our own household, to make them better fathers and mothers, more efficient citizens, and more enlightened Christians. Workers must be added in large numbers, both clerical and lay. Volunteers are needed to preach the Gospel and bring men to the Sacraments; to teach men and women, boys and girls, to read and to write, that they may gain and communicate larger thoughts; to visit and nurse the sick; to give examples in making the living place an attractive home; to chain vagrant fancies to constructive labor; and to take part in the multitude of activities that to-day take their appropriate place in the missionary work that seeks to lead the whole man, body, soul and spirit, into consecrated holiness. Especially are women workers needed, large-hearted, clear headed women; women sound in body, plain in speech, unaffected in manner, heroic in spirit; women whose heroism has no illusions as to heroics, who may expect never to be maltreated but often to suffer acutest discomforts in the daily living. Women of this sort who will give themselves to this work are women who, reproducing the spirit, shall reap the reward of Him who for our sakes became poor that he might make many rich. H 55- 78 "'^ ^^ '^^ if-^.^. <*. V -^.^ .« V T' *, 5, -» '^o >» ' j9 ?.° •n*. '" ;^^ ^MW-" ^.•^''■^ «^ \ -y. ^M 0^ ■" .•■'''^^ ./,::' >^^- / ^x. W 1,<\. w^ 0-^' ^ r. CJ-' v^. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing Agent; Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES. L.P. Ill Thomson Park Drive 'Ao^ <-^ ^" . ^ V , i. ^" ^•"cC^^f A- ",-> A ,V ^ A <.*^-'^. ►•^ "*^^'^~ S!' A K' -r. > :^ :^^^^'^^ ^<^^^' 'V. JAN T8- N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA