CALL OF 
THE WATERS 



KATHARINE R.. 
CROWELL 




THE CALL OF THE WATERS 



.HOME MISSION 
STUDY COURSE 

Each volume 12mo cloth50c.net; paper30c.net 

1. Under Our Flag 

A study of conditions in America from the 
standpoint of Woman's Home Misionary 
work, by AUCB M. GUERNSEY. 

"A text-book of sifted studies for home mission 
classes and meetings, with suggestions for various 
uses of the material it contains." Congregationaiist. 

2. The Burden of the City 

By ISABEZ,LE HORTON. 

"Settlement Work, the Modern Church and its 
Methods, the Deaconess in City Missions, Children's 
Work, and Co-operation. It constitutes a manual of 
practical philanthrophy worthy of study in all 
churches." The Outlook. 

3. Indian and Spanish Neighbors 

By JULIA H. JOHNSTON. 

"Pull of information with which every Christian 
patriot should be familiar in regard to the Indians; 
origin, tribes, characteristics t environment, lan- 
guage, religion, wrongs and rights, etc; also of the 
Spanish speaking people in New Mexico, Arizona, 
California, Porto Rico." Olive Trees. 

4. The Incoming Millions 

By HOWARD B. GROSE, D.D. 

To the spiritual need of these incomers and their 
influence upon us as individuals and as a nation Dr. 
Grose has given much study. 

5. Citizens of Tomorrow 

By ALICE M. GUERNSEY 

A study of child-life its conditions, environments, 
etc. from the standpoint of Woman's Home Mission- 
ary work. 







RUINS OF EARLY CHURCH (CHURCH OF ENGLAND) 
AT JAMESTOWN, VA. 



THE CALL OF 
THE WATERS 

A STUDY OF THE FRONTIER 



By ^M 

KATHARINE R. CROWELL 

>~~ J OT * 7 / V*" 

Author of " Great Voyages" " Africa 
for Juniors" " Pioneers" etc., etc. 




NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
Fleming H. Revell Company 

JLONDON AND EDINBURGH 



Copyright, 1908, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



Fourth Edition 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 




f r JJ/J/.CR (3 FT L f R R A P '.' 



From the Editorial Committee 

Text-books of the Home Mission Study Course 

" Under Our Flag" - - Alice M. Guernsey. 
" The Burden of the City " - Isabelle Horton. 
" Indian and Spanish Neighbours " Julia H. Johnston. 
" The Incoming Millions " Howard B. Grose, D.D. 
" Citizens of To-Morrow" - Alice M. Guernsey. 

This newest volume, which the Interdenomi- 
national Committee presents for study, deals not 
with the exceptional peoples of our land, but 
with those who go to make up the warp -and 
woof of the fabric of our national life. 

The subject is important and basic. It is a 
study of sources and origins, for our nation has 
evolved from frontiers^ and the Christian Church 
has been a potent factor in shaping national 
development, by its presence and influence in 
each of the successive frontiers. 

No more thrilling narrative could tie offered 
for study than the story of the opening up and 
final conquering of wilderness after wilderness, as 
the frontier was pressed steadily westward from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific. The great distances 
through roadless forests, over trackless plains, 
the constant danger from savage men and savage 
3 



\ S^Ti IMJ'T 
4 From the Editoral Committee 

beasts, the hunger, cold and loneliness, all these 
made the conquering of the frontier heroic work, 
indeed; and how the Church shared in it all 
" The Call of the Waters " will tell us. 

There still lingers much of the frontier in the 
great Northwest, which is even yet in process of 
transformation, as are the new states of the South- 
west. 

Nor can we forget that there are those who 
to-day, answering " the call of the waters," are 
bringing with them, from their far-away Euro- 
pean and Asiatic homes, a new and peculiar 
frontier, the winning of which will demand of 
the Church her utmost of zeal and wisdom and 
consecration. 

It is obvious that this volume cannot go into 
details of history. By the many references given 
to historical sources such information may be 
readily obtained. 

The book purposes chiefly to present in out- 
line pictures the successive frontiers and to set 
before us the share the Church has had in these 
stirring epochs of our national life. 



CONTENTS 

THE FRONTIER MOVING WEST- 
WARD 

I. THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL . . 9 

II. FOLLOWING THE WAR-PATH . . 47 

III. THE LAST STAND OF THE FRONTIER . 69 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 
"FRONTIER" 

IV. THE NEW MIGRATION ... 83 

V. THE NEW DOMAIN .... 99 

VI. BLAZING A NEW TRAIL . . . 117 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing Page 

RUINS OF EARLY CHURCH (CHURCH OF ENGLAND) 

AT JAMESTOWN, VA. ..... Title 

THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS, PLYMOUTH, MASS., 19 
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT . . . 39 

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. . . 62 

WESLEY CHAPEL, THE PREDECESSOR OF " OLD JOHN 

STREET CHURCH " 89 

THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH BUILDING, 
JAMAICA, L. I. 1 . . . . .119 



1 From " The Story of the Churches, *' by courtesy of the 
Baker & Taylor Publishing Company. 



The Frontier Moving Westward 



I 

THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL 



THE BIBLE LESSON 



THE RIVER COURSES 

Thus saith the Lord, who maketh a way in the sea, a path 
in the mighty waters. 

He cutteth out rivers among the rocks ; and His eye seeth 
every precious thing. 

For He looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the 
whole heaven. 

When He maketh a weight for the winds, and weigheth the 
waters by measure. 

When He made a decree for the rain, and a way for the 
lightning and the thunder. 

He bindeth up the waters in His thick clouds; He hath 
compassed the waters with bounds. 

The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee. 

Thy way was in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters. 

Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers ; the mountains saw 
Thee and trembled ; the overflowing of the waters passed by. 

Jehovah, thy God, bringeth thee into a good land, a land of 
rivers of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of 
mountains and hills. 

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my 
soul after Thee. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL 

IN the Long Ago in the days when the 
morning stars sang together, first faintly 
sounded the distant, silver call of the waters. 
Thirsty animals felt the stirring of the air and 
turned quickly with listening ear. The far of? 
music drew them on over hills and across vast 
plains, and after many days they reached the 
singing river. These pathways to the waters, 
trodden by trampling hoofs for countless ages, 
were the real beginnings of trails. 

But the men of the forest still heard voices 
in the thunder of the cataract, or rush of rapids 
or in the whisperings of the reeds by the river. 

In birch canoe they followed the luring call 
until in gurgling brook and tinkling spring the 
silvery music seemed to die away. Yet, always, 
far away was heard again the mocking, elusive 
call. 

The white man also heard this call of the 
waters. Because he followed it, we have our 
story of the frontier and the beginning of the 
trail. 

The voyagers of old time brought home 
ii 



12 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

with them to England most beguiling stones 
of the new world they had discovered. Gold, 
they said, was to be found in the sands of the 
rivers ; the Indians had " pecks of pearls " in their 
houses, wore " great plates of gold covering their 
whole bodies like armour," and the mountains 
were veined through and through with silver and 
gold. It was said, too, to be the delightful fact 
that the Indians would be only too happy to re- 
ceive in exchange for the gold and silver, glass 
beads and other trinkets, or even very poor knives 
and hatchets. 

One famous geographer and enthusiastic col- 
onizer, who early and late told his tales of won- 
der to all who would listen, and wrote them for 
those who could read, thus describes " the great 
countreys " of the " new worldes " and their in- 
habitants and productions : " They are fertile," 
he says, " to bring forth all manner of corne and 
grayne, infinite sortes of land cattell, as horse, 
elephantes, kine, sheepe, great varietie of flying 
fowles of theayre, as pheasants, partridge, quayle, 
popingeys, ostridges, etc., infinite kinds of fruits, 
as almonds, dates, quinces, pomegranats, oringes, 
etc., holesome, medicinable and delectable." 

The encouragers of colonization held out 
hopes that any explorer or settler in the new 
country might at some unexpected moment be- 
come famous and wealthy by the sudden discov- 
ery that a few miles to the westward of his cabin 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 13 

there opened out the great South Sea that road 
to spices and gold, which all the world was then 
seeking. It was a credulous age, and with such 
" authentic " reports, to say nothing of even 
wilder rumours in the air, interest in America 
grew apace. The adventurer saw fame awaiting 
him ; the poor man fancied he had but to hold 
out his hand to receive riches, and to the home- 
less and the persecuted came visions of a home 
where could be glorious freedom of thought and 
action. To them all as always since that day 
" America" spelled "Opportunity." Men and 
women who were brave enough and forceful 
enough seized the opportunity and crossed the 
sea to America, giving us our first " frontier," 
the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia. 

The stories of the earliest colonies in America, 
important and deeply interesting as they are, 
scarcely come within the range of our study ; yet 
we cannot in the least understand the westward 
march of the frontier without taking note of the 
Spanish possessions in America; of the French 
explorations and territorial claims ; and of the 
early English attempts at colonization which, 
notwithstanding tragic sufferings and disappoint- 
ments, and sometimes failure, were productive of 
important results. 

Though these fascinating but devious trails 
would, in the end, surely bring us to the " fron- 
tier," our way to it must be more direct. Yet 



14 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

we may allow ourselves a glance out over the 
" Sea of Darkness " which we now know as the 
Atlantic Ocean only a little less mysterious and 
frightful in these still early days than when 
Columbus and his three little ships ventured forth 
over its unknown wastes. 

As, in imagination, we look out over the waters 
towards the rising sun, we discern here and there 
interesting vessels drawn on their difficult way by 
the allurements of the new world. On the south- 
ern waters are Spanish galleons the " liners " of 
that day which will presently return home, laden 
perhaps with gold ; we seem to see, too, fleets of 
courageous little boats manned by Frenchmen 
bound for the Northern Sea, where the abound- 
ing fish will prove their sure gold mine. A 
curious looking craft approaches the shore 
much farther north than was intended by its cap- 
tain ; but by this inadvertent landing Cabot se- 
cures for England the Atlantic coast from New- 
foundland to, Florida. There are Raleigh's ill- 
fated ships ; and others which, having crossed the 
sea, are now hopefully pushing up the rivers 
whose seductive call lures them on and on, but 
never out into that fragrant and glittering and 
long promised sea of spices and gold. 

But what matters it when the land already dis- 
covered is rich and fertile and beautiful ! A land 
where even cooking vessels are made of silver 
and gold, and where in the great forests are little 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 15 

children whose necklaces of diamonds flash among 
the trees, while gorgeous birds glitter in the 
branches above them ! 

Was not this wealth enough ? Leading mer- 
chants of England thought so, and in 1606 two 
trading companies were organized. These ob- 
tained charters from King James I, and were 
known as the London and Plymouth companies. 

Emigrants to the new world were quickly 
found ; and again our fancy wanders out over the 
waters, where coming over the sea are the ships 
of the Jamestown colony the God Speed, the 
Discovery and the Susan Constant ; then the 
Half -Moon ; later the unhappy Treasurer, then 
the Mayflower. Other ships follow these and 
ti\z frontier and our study of it begin. 

We are studying the frontier, and not a history 
of the United States, except in so far as the de- 
velopment of the one has made the other ; there- 
fore we leave to the formal historian matters gen- 
erally treated of when the Jamestown settlers, 
the Dutch patroons, the Pilgrims and the Puri- 
tans are discussed, and consider chiefly their 
struggles to overcome frontier conditions, and es- 
pecially the efforts of the New England pioneers 
to imbed firmly in the foundations, the princi- 
ples of that righteous commonwealth which they 
had sailed over sea to build. 

Frontier conditions were nowhere more dif- 
ficult than in New England, and we shall dwell 



16 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

upon them somewhat at length, bearing in mind 
that many experiences of the Pilgrims and Puri- 
tans were common to all the colonies and that in 
them all were planted great treasures of manli- 
ness and womanliness, of faith and courage and 
devotion to the best ideals they knew. 

The first immigrants came to this country as a 
product of the civilization of Europe ; they found 
a wild wilderness, and " primitive man." For the 
moment, we are curious as to which will conquer. 
But we recall the story of the first settlements, and 
there is no question about it ; for a time, at least, 
Europe was vanquished and " primitive man " 
was the victor. 

We remember the fascination of that dignified 
son of the forest who one day issued from its 
glades and to the Pilgrim's astonishment, and to 
ours as well, uttered in good English the classic 
words, " Welcome, Englishmen ! " 

As we shall see, it would have been a sorry 
day for America if the red man had not at that 
moment come to the rescue of the paleface. 

We pass over the first terrible winter in the 
Plymouth colony. In the early spring there went 
forth into the wilderness a pathetic little group, 
all who were left of the Mayflower voyagers. 
Friendly Indians accompanied them and, in 
every point but one, primitive man had the 
advantage. He shows the European how to cut 
down the trees of the forest he himself having 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 17 

perhaps learned the lesson from the beaver how 
to build a house, how to clear away the forest to 
make space for planting seeds. 

But the month of March seems a little early, 
does it not, to plant seeds ? On this stern New 
England coast the snow still lingered and under- 
neath it was hard frozen ground. 

This is the way the Indian conquered these 
conditions and secured early spring vegetables. 
Trees were chopped down over a wide space and 
allowed to remain where they fell. By means of 
twirling one stick of wood upon another, the 
mass of tangled branches was set on fire. The 
great heat melted the snow, and thawed out the 
frozen ground ; the fire burned down, leaving a 
thick layer of ashes. In these warm ashes the 
Indian planted corn and pumpkin seed and 
beans. Before this he had taught the white man 
to fish, and knowing the sterility of the soil, he 
directed him while planting the corn just so 
many kernels to a hillock to drop in a fish as a 
fertilizer. 

At the base of the hillock beans were planted, 
to climb the corn stalks by and by and be- 
tween the rows were set the seeds of the pump- 
kin vine. 

As primitive man taught so does the one-time 
European to this day ! 

The European would have starved to death in 
this first frontier, and there might never have 



18 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

been a second, had it not been for the friendly In- 
dian. He taught him perhaps the Indian woman 
was in many instances the teacher how to find 
and kill animals, to dig clams, to catch eels, to 
fish ; and how to prepare and cook the food. 
He showed them the use of the " sugar trees " 
and how to secure wild honey. Later on, when 
the green corn was ready, it was the Indian 
woman who roasted it in hot ashes to show the 
paleface the proper way of cooking and serv- 
ing. In the autumn when the ears were golden 
the Indians ground the kernels in a mill of 
their own contriving and then initiated the 
settlers' wives into the mysteries of " sup- 
pawn," " pones " and " succotash." They also 
parched, or, as we more expressively say, popped 
the corn as a provision for long hunting trips, 
and, in a crowning effort, taught the art of bak- 
ing beans in an earthen jar. 

As to clothing it would seem that the stalwart 
materials in which the colonists were attired 
on their arrival in the wilderness would never 
wear out. But they did, and anything to re- 
place them was three thousand miles away. As 
always, the wilderness and the Indian met the 
demand, and ever after until " linsey woolsey " 
was a possibility the settlers wore garments of 
leather having learned from the Indians how to 
tan and sew it. 

The European stood by and watched while the 




THE CHURCH OP THE PILGRIMS, PLYMOUTH, MASS. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 19 

Indian fashioned a bark canoe ; later he made his 
own. He learned also to make a pirogue other- 
wise known as a dug-out. He wore moccasins 
and travelled on snow-shoes, as the Indian taught 
him. 

Here then are our colonists in their second 
winter by the sea, comfortable in strong log 
cabins of Indian make which are lighted in 
the long evenings by the flames of the roaring 
fire in the big chimney place, and by blazing 
pine-knots, which they must have some reason 
for calling " Indian candles." 

Fathers and mothers and children are dressed 
in the before-mentioned leather garments, and 
the babies, warmly wrapped in fur, are lying 
cozily in Indian cradles. 

The day's work in the clearing and the house 
has given hearty appetites for venison, baked 
beans and wild turkey, and for maple syrup and 
" jonny " cake of fine flavour because baked ac- 
cording to careful instructions on a plank of red 
oak over a fire of black walnut logs. Outside 
the snow falls, the winds roar, the wolves howl 
what care they ? 

So we leave them in their Indian house, by 
their Indian warmth and light, in their Indian 
clothing and with plentiful supply of Indian food. 
Is European civilization, or the wilderness and 
primitive man the conqueror ? 

The Indian revealed to the white man the 



20 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

sealed secrets of the forest. The white man owed 
to him, food, clothing, home, life itself. Just 
here two questions arise for answer : 

What service did the white man render the 
Indian in payment of this debt ? 

Why did the Indian, friendly at first, so soon 
become the deadly enemy of the English settler, 
while he continued to be the friend of the French 
invaders of Canada ? 

We should admit however that in the winning 
of his home, the colonist had two mighty ad- 
juncts to the Indian resources his axe and his 
firearms. And it is by these two weapons of the 
pioneer that we shall see the extension of the 
frontier yet hardly without the support of the 
" pemmican " of the Indian ; and both axe and 
rifle had large share in turning the friendly Indian 
into the settler's implacable foe. 

In this first frontier, conditions rapidly im- 
proved and each succeeding party of immigrants 
learned wisdom from the hardships and suffering 
of the earlier arrivals and came out from Eng- 
land better supplied with the necessities of life or 
the means of producing them. Cattle and sheep 
were brought over and, if not killed by wolves, 
throve well in the new land. 

As more forest was cleared away, hemp and 
flax were planted and the hum of the spinning- 
wheel and clatter of the loom were heard in the 
land. Windmills, sawmills, and grist-mills made 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL 21 

life easier than in the days when the axe did all 
the cutting of wood and the noisy Indian mortar 
must grind all the meal. 

Already, too, in the New England frontier 
were the first plantings of ideas that have since 
become the glory of America. In the first place 
there was to be in the colony of Plymouth a free 
government in which every man was to take 
part. Each man was to win from the wilderness 
his own home in which the principles of the 
Christian religion were to be practiced. 

The Sabbath was to be observed as a day of 
rest and worship. Each community was to have 
its church, its town hall in which matters of pub- 
lic interest were discussed, and its school, to 
which all children were compelled to go. 

The settlements at first clung to the seacoast, 
but very soon groups of daring men and women 
began to move westward, along the beginning of 
the trail ; northward, too, and southward. They 
had various reasons for going ; the more fertile 
land of the river valleys attracted them ; back in 
the forests they would still find the fur-bearing 
animals, which were their chief source of wealth ; 
but more influential than these causes was the 
fact that time had shown that while the Pilgrims 
and Puritans passionately desired freedom to 
worship God in the way . they thought to be 
right, they did not see the necessity or justice of 
allowing to others similar liberty of conscience. 



22 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

The persecution which had been their lot in 
England, they now dealt out with stern and un- 
sparing hand to those who refused to see the 
truth as they saw it and to obey the laws of the 
new commonwealth, with the result that many 
good men and women, exiled from the Massa- 
chusetts Colony, went forth once more into the 
wilderness. 

These persecutions brought great suffering but 
led to good results; for presently, in 1636, we 
find a new settlement far " out West." Starting 
from Boston the Connecticut River was a long 
way off for Thomas Hooker and his congrega- 
tion who travelled thither afoot, driving their 
cattle, and living mostly upon milk. The towns 
they built were soon, by a written agreement, 
united in one government, to which was given 
the name of Connecticut the first government 
in the world to be created by a written constitu- 
tion. About the same time Roger Williams be- 
gan a settlement on Narragarisett Bay. He 
called this settlement Providence, and here was 
established genuine religious freedom ; no one 
was to be banished from his home on account of 
religious belief, and no one could be punished 
by the government for the way in which he 
worshipped God. The establishment of these 
colonies adds two great items to our bill of 
obligations to the New England frontier the 
first democracy with a written constitution, and 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 23 

the first government permitting individual relig- 
ious liberty. 

As towns and villages grew, churches also 
became numerous and within ten years of the 
landing of the Puritans thirty churches were 
established. It was difficult to secure ministers 
to serve so many, and it was at all times a matter 
of many months' waiting, for all must come over 
sea. It was necessary to educate for the min- 
istry young men of the colonies, and accord- 
ingly, in these early days, six years after the 
arrival of John Winthrop, a college was founded 
and later named for John Harvard, who appears 
on this first frontier as the first in the long line 
of munificent endowers of American colleges. 

While New England was thus laying founda- 
tions, stones were also set by other colonies. 

One of the ships coming over sea was the Half- 
Moon. We know the captain well through the 
magic of Irving's tales. Have we not often 
heard him rolling tenpins among those beautiful 
hills which the Half-Moon, sailing up an en- 
chanting river, helped him to discover ? 

Hendrik Hudson hoped that this same river 
might soon lead him out to the Pacific Ocean 
which was popularly supposed to lie about two 
hundred miles west of the Atlantic. He did not 
find this much searched for Northwest Passage, 
but, sailing back again down the shining river, 
he brought with him, in the furs which stocked 



24 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

the Half-Moon, richer wealth than the gold and 
spices of the Indies. 

These furs and Hudson's tales of inexhaustible 
supplies to be had for the shooting, or by trade 
with the Indians, speedily brought over a colony 
from Holland who made their first settlement at 
the mouth of Hudson's river, but in the pursuit 
of richer and yet richer furs soon dotted its 
banks as far north as Albany with trading posts 
and forts. The object of this Dutch colony was 
trade in furs ; yet the first frontier gained from 
it the first free churches and the first free public 
schools of America ; not to speak of many pleas- 
ant things which also we inherit from the first 
frontier and its Dutch occupation ; as, for in- 
stance, the observance of New Year's Day, 
Christmas and Easter. 

In the founding of New Jersey and Pennsyl- 
vania were set many goodly stones. As we think 
of them they seem to parallel the " fruits of the 
Spirit " : " Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." 

The gentle-minded and sorely-persecuted 
" Friends " or Quakers ; prisoners released from 
the cruel and horrible bondage of English pris- 
ons ; families made homeless and wageless by in- 
dustrial changes in England ; Germans crowded 
out of their fatherland all of these and many 
others who suffered, found refuge and peace and 
plenty in William Penn's free state. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 25 

This frontier was a pleasant place. Fair deal- 
ing with the Indians ensured happy and peaceful 
homes, the colonists were earnest Christians 
" diligent in business," as well as " fervent in 
spirit " and kindly in act. There were soon a 
flourishing commerce, the finest farms of the first 
frontier, publishing houses, and the printing of 
the Bible. 

Think for a moment of our present hospitals 
and of the noble work they do, and of our col- 
leges for women, and the work they do ! For 
their beginnings we go back to the first frontier 
and to William Penn and his Quakers, for it is to 
their practical Christianity that we owe the idea 
of a College of Medicine, and of equal opportu- 
nities of education for men and for women. 

Geographically, we come now to Maryland 
lovely Maryland ! No wonder that all who can, 
say " Maryland, my Maryland ! " In the whirli- 
gig of time there came a period when persecution 
was meted out to Roman Catholics. To them 
America offered an asylum and an opportunity 
and, strange to say, the Roman Catholic founders 
of the colony extended this opportunity to Prot- 
estants as well, and the first legislative action 
proclaiming religious toleration we set down to 
the credit of Maryland. A man might in this 
colony be free from molestation, whether a mem- 
ber of Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Presby- 
terian, Baptist, or other Church. It was two 



26 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

years later, as we have seen, that Roger Williams 
advanced even farther in allowing individuals to 
hold any form of Christian belief, whether mem- 
bers of churches or not. 

Virginia had become fairly prosperous by the 
time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth ; but its 
tragic experiences had prevented the carrying 
out of many noble plans which were in the hearts 
of the founders of the colony. So we miss in its 
first frontier some things that but for starvation 
and the Indians might have been there. 

In Virginia were few towns but many large 
plantations. It was not desired that the children 
of the workers on these plantations should be ed- 
ucated. Schools were few and only for sons of 
the planters, who were, moreover, generally sent 
to England to be educated. Their education, 
the care of large estates and oversight of large 
bodies of labourers, trained the men of the south- 
ern frontier for leadership, and the time was com- 
ing when all the colonies would be in great need 
of leaders. In Virginia, as in New England, at- 
tendance upon the services of the church was ob- 
ligatory, and during the frontier period many 
churches were built,' the first being the church 
of Jamestown. 

To the Virginia frontier we owe also the first 
representative convention of lawmakers. 

Carolina was cut off from Virginia, and later 
was divided into two royal provinces, North and 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 27 

South Carolina. These had a mild climate and a 
rich soil ; the colonists were English, Scotch- 
Irish, French Huguenots and Dutch, and the 
region speedily became prosperous, and "or- 
thodox " as well. 

North Carolina had small plantations of corn 
and tobacco cultivated by slaves ; the Southern 
province had immense plantations of indigo and 
rice, also worked by slaves. Many of the wealthy 
planters lived in Charleston, carried on a brisk 
commerce with England, and sent their sons 
" home " to be educated. 

Georgia's " frontier " did not begin until Vir- 
ginia and New England had been progressing for 
a hundred years and more. Its reason for being 
was to give a chance in life to thousands of debt- 
ors shut up in English jails, in most wretched 
surroundings and utterly without hope. Thus 
Georgia's frontier lays one more philanthropic 
stone in our foundations. 

It is also interesting to observe that in this 
colony the sale of intoxicating liquor was prohib- 
ited by law. 

Georgia brings us to our geographical limit, 
for on its southern side is Florida, then a part of 
the Spanish possessions in America. It assigns 
to us also almost the time limit of the first frontier, 
for a few years after its founding the first great 
westward movement began. 

And let us bear in mind that now in the sec- 



28 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

ond half of the eighteenth century New England 
has many villages and towns, much manufactur- 
ing, for the many swift streams furnish abundant 
water power for mills and factories, much com- 
mercial activity also, and many churches ; Har- 
vard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth Colleges are 
flourishing, and a strong people, mostly Puritans, 
who are striding to live according to the Ten 
Commandments. New York has a mixed pop- 
ulation of Dutch and English, with a few 
French Huguenots. There were at this time 
many good schools, and in the city of New York 
was King's College, now Columbia University. 

Pennsylvania was flourishing and Philadelphia 
a city of great interest. The Quakers, Moravians 
and Germans had some excellent private schools, 
and the University of Pennsylvania was a pioneer 
in offering courses of study in law, medicine and 
science. New Jersey rejoiced in many beautiful 
farms, an English largely Quaker population, 
and the new-born College of New Jersey. 

Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas were 
largely Episcopal as New England was largely 
Puritan ; agriculture was the chief pursuit, rivers 
were the chief means of communication. Large 
plantations were the rule and the people were 
of three classes, planters, negroes, and " poor 
whites." 

From Maryland to Georgia there was but one 
institution of higher learning the College of 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL 29 

William and Mary ; and this was mainly for 
planters' sons. 

The Church of England was established in 
the southern colonies about as Congregationalism 
was established in New England and the middle 
colonies. 

Roads were few and usually bad. Pennsyl- 
vania alone had cause for pride in this line; 
bridges were also few. Rivers were forded or 
crossed on rafts ; there were a few funny little 
ferries as it would seem to us now ; but they 
were indeed a blessing then. 

Boston was six days from New York, and 
Philadelphia two or three days, by stage coach. 
Very few people in those days " possessed the 
world by travelling." 

On the water, travel was by slow sailing 
vessel or by canoe. 

Mails were irregular to state the case mildly. 
There was no daily newspaper, but there were a 
few weeklies, poorly printed, we should think. 

The population of the colonies was about a 
million and a half, and the Star of Empire ac- 
cording to Bishop Berkeley or the centre of 
population, according to the census map stood 
over the head of Chesapeake Bay. 



At this point we should notice three great happenings, not 
because they pertain to the first frontier, for the Atlantic coast 
has passed out of the frontier stage, but because of their effect 



30 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

on the character of many who should soon go forth to influence 
the second frontier. 

The earliest of these events was the establishment, largely 
through the efforts of Dr. Bray, a Maryland clergyman of the 
Church of England, of the " Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts," for the spreading of the Gospel in the 
" colonies, factories, and plantations of England," and it is 
with a strange little thrill that we realize that we were chiefly 
the " Foreign Parts," for whose welfare especially the Society 
was organized. " We " in the colonies of Virginia, Maryland 
and the Carolinas ; and also for the " first Americans," Indian 
tribes whose homes were in our southern territory. There was 
ample justification for these efforts for the later immigration had 
not always been for conscience' sake, and there was great need 
for a planting of righteousness in the land. 

The second happening was the Great Revival, which pro- 
foundly influenced all classes in New England, and especially 
the leaders of religious thought, and indirectly produced im- 
portant results elsewhere. Jonathan Edwards was preeminent 
in this Revival. 

Lastly there was the Great Awakening whose beginning was 
in the year 1740 when George Whitefield first came to America. 
As its name implies, this movement awakened as from a deep 
sleep the churches throughout the land, and much after-good 
can be traced to it. Princeton and Dartmouth Colleges were 
indirect results of the Great Awakening. 



THE FIRST "CHURCH" AT JAMESTOWN 

After a long and stormy passage, the three ships, the God 
Speed, the Discovery and the Susan Constant, entered Chesa- 
peake Bay in the last week in April, and made their way into 
Hampton Roads. The name Point Comfort testifies to their re- 
lief and joy. Sailing up the wide river which they named for 
King James, their patron, they disembarked on the I3th of May 
at a little peninsula. They called the place Jamestown, thus 
connecting the king's name with English Christianity in 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TBAIL 31 

America, as it was soon to be connected with the English 
Bible. 

They landed on Wednesday. On Thursday, they set about 
the erection of a fort, a three-cornered structure with a cannon 
at each angle. They prepared for Sunday by hanging up an 
old sail, fastening it to three or four trees, to shelter them from 
sun and rain ; seats they made of logs; a bar of wood between 
two trees served for a pulpit. 

There in the wilderness, with the river before, and the un- 
broken forest behind, every day began and ended with the 
Prayer-book prayers. Hodges. 

"THE CHURCH IN THE FORT" 
The first religious service on Manhattan Island was held in 
the trading post established here by the Dutch in 1614, five 
years after the first landing made by Hendrik Hudson. The 
first New York pastor was the Rev. Jonas Michaelius. The first 
permanent church was regularly organized by this pastor in the 
summer of 1628. This church, known to-day as the Collegiate 
Church of New York, is the oldest with a continuous history in 
America. The first place of stated worship was in the ample 
loft of a horse-mill, so called to distinguish it from two others 
which were windmills, and is now known as 32 and 34 South 
William Street. The first church bell in New York, captured 
by the Dutch in 1625 from the Spaniards in Porto Rico, pealed 
out its call to worship from the belfry of this horse-mill church. 
The first ruling elder of this first church was Peter Minuit, who 
was also the first Director-General of this Commonwealth and 
the first of the great Dutch Patroons, " a wholly incorruptible 
man." The first real estate transaction on Manhattan was the 
purchase of the whole island by Peter Minuit, and the myn- 
heers of this church, for the modest sum of sixty florins ($24.00). 
The first school, founded in 1633 by the Dutch Church, with 
Adam Roelantsen as the first schoolmaster, is now the Collegiate 
School at yyth Street and West End Avenue, and is the oldest 
educational institution in America. The first church organ 
used in New York was one presented to the Consistory of the 



32 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

Dutch Church by Governor Burnet in 1720. The first sanctu- 
ary erected on Manhattan Island exclusively for worship was a 
wooden edifice built in 1633 on the site now 39 Pearl Street. 
This in turn was followed by a stone structure, built within the 
ramparts in 1642, known as "The Church in the Fort." The 
tenth building in this historic series of sanctuaries is the Marble 
Collegiate Church, at Fifth Avenue and 2gth Street. It is built 
of Hastings Marble in Romanesque style. Its massive clock and 
bell tower terminates in a spire 215 feet high, surmounted by 
a gilded weathercock six and one half feet high, after the man- 
ner of early Dutch churches. 

THE PILGRIM CATHEDRAL 

" We cannot too often read the story which tells how the 
Mayflower Pilgrims landed upon those desolate shores. Every 
reading of it sets the pulses throbbing with nobler resolves and 
higher impulses. As they landed the waves broke over them, 
and as the water struck them it froze, and they stood in ice, 
clothed as in coats of mail. But they landed, and when they 
landed they remembered whence they came and why, and they 
knelt in prayer and in a new dedication to God and to the 
cause which brought them there. 

" Amid the storm they sang, and the stars heard and the sea, 
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang to the anthem 
of the free.' 

" They built their church and beside the church their schools, 
and there they grew and produced men worth producing." 



" On the brow of the hill overlooking the bay where the 
Mayflower was moored, they have reared a colossal statue. 
On the four corners of the pedestal repose four figures repre- 
senting law, morality, freedom, and education. There ought 
they to rest by right. But above these stands erect the gigantic 
figure of Faith. Thirty-six feet she rises from the foot, which 
rests on a slate of Plymouth Rock, to her brow bound with 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 33 

evergreen laurels. With one hand she grasps an open Bible : 
with the other she points the nation up to God." Christian 
America. 

ONE ITEM OF OUR DEBT 

A great field of tall Indian corn waving its stately and 
luxuriant green blades, its graceful spindles, and glossy silk 
under the hot August sun, should be not only a beautiful sight 
to every American, but a suggestive one ; one to set us think- 
ing of all that Indian corn means to us in our history. It was 
a native of American soil at the settlement of this country, and 
under full and thoroughly intelligent cultivation by the Indians, 
who were also native sons of the New World. Its abundance, 
adaptability, and nourishing qualities not only saved the 
colonists' lives, but altered many of their methods of living, 
especially their manner of cooking and their tastes in food. 

A field of corn on the coast of Massachusetts or Narragansett 
or by the rivers of Virginia, growing long before any white 
man had ever been seen on these shores, was precisely like the 
same field planted three hundred years later by our American 
farmers. There was the same planting in hills, the same num- 
ber of stalks in the hill, with pumpkin vines running among the 
hills, and beans climbing the stalks. The hills of the Indians 
were a trifle nearer together than those of our own day are 
usually set, for the native soil was more fertile. 

The Indian method of preparing maize or corn was to steep 
or parboil it in hot water for twelve hours, then to pound the 
grain in a mortar or a hollowed stone in the field, till it was a 
coarse meal. It was then sifted in a rather closely woven 
basket, and the large grains which did not pass through the 
sieve were again pounded and sifted. Home Life in Colonial 
Days. 

THE BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN 

All the southern lands lay at the feet of the conquerors. 
The British leaders, overbearing and arrogant, held almost un- 
checked sway throughout the Carolinas and Georgia ; and look- 



34 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

ing northward they made ready for the conquest of Virginia. 
Their right flank was covered by the waters of the ocean, their 
left by the high mountain barrier-chains, beyond which stretched 
the interminable forest ; and they had as little thought of danger 
from one side as from the other. 

Suddenly and without warning, the wilderness sent forth a 
swarm of stalwart and hardy riflemen, of whose very existence 
the British had hitherto been ignorant. Riders spurring in 
hot haste brought word to the king's commanders that the back 
water men had come over the mountains. The Indian fighters 
of the frontier, leaving unguarded their homes on the western 
waters, had crossed by wooded and precipitous defiles and were 
pouring down to the help of their brethren of the plains. . . . 
The mountain-men had done a most notable deed. They had 
shown in perfection the best qualities of horse-riflemen. Their 
hardihood and perseverance had enabled them to bear up well 
under fatigue, exposure, and scanty food. Their long, swift ride, 
and the suddenness of the attack, took their foes completely by 
surprise. Then, leaving their horses, they had shown in the 
actual battle such courage, marksmanship and skill in woodland 
fighting, that they had not only defeated but captured an equal 
number of well-armed, well-led, resolute men, in a strong posi- 
tion. The victory was of far-reaching importance, and ranks 
among the decisive battles of the Revolution. It was the first 
great success of the Americans in the South, the turning-point 
in the southern campaign, and it brought cheer to the patriots 
throughout the Union. The loyalists of the Carolinas were 
utterly cast down, and never recovered from the blow ; and its 
immediate effect was to cause Cornwallis to retreat from North 
Carolina, abandoning his first invasion of that state. " The 
Winning of the West," see Part III, Chap. V. 



One hundred and fifty years were needed to 
push the frontier from the Atlantic coast west- 
ward to the mountains, but while the settlers 



THE BEGINNING OP THE TEAIL 35 

were taming this country, hunters and trappers 
were pushing on up the river courses and over 
trails far to the north and south and west. Many 
of these daring men gave up their lives to the 
wilderness but some returned with their peifries 
to the markets of the coast, having marvellous 
stories to tell of rich lands and plentiful game on 
the other side of the mountains. 

Once across the first ranges, passage down the 
long river valleys of the Appalachians was com- 
paratively easy, and by the middle of the seven- 
teenth century hardy men and women from the 
colonies of New York and New Jersey, Mary- 
land and even Virginia, were. forming settlements 
near the trading posts of the trappers on the 
banks of the Kanawha, the Yadkin and the 
French Broad. 

To a little settlement on the Yadkin, came 
journeying about this time a family from Penn- 
sylvania. Father and sons were masters of wood- 
craft, and famous hunters, who made long and 
ever longer trips into the wilderness. One of the 
sons we know as that most intrepid and skillful 
explorer and guide, Daniel Boone. So far did 
he and other frontiersmen of this region wander 
and so prolonged were their absences from home 
that they were known as the Long Hunters. 
When they did at length return they told tales 
of a wonderful land of beauty and fertility " so 
good as to be like Paradise " lying far westward 



36 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

beyond the mountains and the long stretching 
forests, which had been previously supposed to 
reach even to the coast of the Pacific Ocean; 
the way thither was indeed difficult and beset 
with perils from man and beast, by day and by 
night, but the goal was worth all the hardships 
and risks of reaching it. These stories of the 
blue grass land spread like wild-fire among the 
frontiersmen of Virginia and North Carolina. 

While the Long Hunters had been making 
their slow progress across the mountains and 
through dark forests, an easier way to the beau- 
tiful western country was discovered in the 
" River of the White Caps," known to the French, 
as La Belle Riviere. The Indians called it O-hi-o. 
Now begins to open before us our second fron- 
tier, for by pack-train over the " Wilderness 
Road" and down-stream by raft and flat-boat 
and clumsy square-end scow and dug-out, be- 
gan a great immigration to the fair country of 
" The Kaintuckee," the Cumberland and the 
Tennessee. 

Boone himself, with a band of helpers, cut out 
the celebrated Wilderness Road, after all only a 
bridle-path, through dim and silent forests, which 
stretched out endlessly in a gray twilight, for 
seldom could a ray of sunlight flicker through 
the thick roof of leaves. 

Through this silent forest passed the silent 
pack-trains, scarcely breaking the stillness, for 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 37 

never could these early travellers know how close 
to them might be their Indian foes. A long 
journey and a gloomy one, lonely and gray and 
still, and better so, for any sound of humankind 
must mean death or worse than death. As night 
came on there were sounds, stealthy sounds, of 
panther perhaps. There were hooting of owls, 
and howling of wolves. There was sometimes 
the blood-freezing yell of an Indian attack. 
Oh, happy were the mothers and children when 
at last they reached the open glades and spark- 
ling waters, the gorgeous flowers and the sunny 
meadows and the singing birds of the beautiful 
land of the blue grass. 

The river way was easier. Much easier, one 
would think, simply to float with the current 
down-stream. Yet there were unsuspected rapids 
and unseen rocks and unknown channels ; and 
Indian arrows whizzing forth from forests skirt- 
ing the river; not only arrows, for firearms were 
the pride of many Indians now. Any monfent 
might and often did see a fleet of Indian canoes 
stealing out from the banks. 

In looking back we can see that the key to 
the second frontier is this Indian warfare; for 
Tennessee and Kentucky with their abounding 
game, were the long time and favourite hunting 
grounds of powerful tribes in the South and in 
the North. This rich country between was " No 
Man's Land," and the sons of the forest were 



38 THE CALL OP THE WATEKS 

resolved it should remain so. The carrying out 
of their resolve makes a tragic story of the 
settlement of Kentucky. 

This story in its outline is quickly told ; first, 
the erection of a stockaded fort which in times 
of danger was a refuge for all the settlers of the 
community ; then the building of log cabins, 
clearing the land and planting corn. In occa- 
sional brief lulls, more planting was done, and 
horses and cattle flourished undisturbed on the 
rich range, or natural pasture. The " clearings " 
became farms and in their houses the mothers 
drew long breaths of relief. 

It was then all the more h^rtrending and ter- 
rible, when in the dead of night or in broad 
daylight while the men of the settlement were at 
work in the fields, the Indians made their sudden 
and ferocious attacks. 

The children were killed before the mothers' 
eyes, while often they themselves were carried 
away captive, their houses burned, the cattle 
driven off or killed, the orchards and growing 
crops destroyed. All this and tortures too hor- 
rible to tell or think of, occurred with sickening 
frequency in the " dark and bloody ground " of 
Kentucky. 

Think of the magnificent courage and endur- 
ance of those who remained in the country 
facing these dangers and horrors, and of the 
newcomers who after the Revolution streamed 







THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 

The oldest place of worship of the Reformed Church in 
America in the fort on Manhattan Island, near "Bowliny 
Green," New York City. Its first minister, James MicJiael- 
mus, ivas installed in 1628. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 39 

into the country, down the rivers and over the 
Wilderness Road. 

As a nation we owe a great debt to the second 
frontier in the victory of the backwoodsmen at 
King's Mountain. (See page 33.) 

There was much missionary work on the sec- 
ond frontier chiefly by means of the saddle bag. 
We recall the fact that only the northern col* 
onies had colleges for the training of ministers of 
the gospel, and therefore we may be sure that in 
the case of these sturdy pioneers of religion and 
education, long journeys, abounding in perils and 
hardships, were necessary in order to reach Ten- 
nessee or " The Kaintuckee." 

Fancy the long tramp for the missionary 
usually walked, while his horse carried the bur- 
den of books. The starting point was Princeton 
college perhaps, or Yale, or even Harvard ; then 
through New England, New York and New Jer- 
sey ; across Maryland, through Virginia, down the 
Valley of the Shenandoah ; southward still, on and 
on to Fort Chissel, where began the Wilderness 
Road (then called " Boone's Trace ") leading 
through the Cumberland Gap and the gloomy 
Cumberland mountains ; then westward through 
the misty gray forest until at last man and horse 
reached the settlements of Kentucky. 

Other missionaries followed blazed trails over 
the mountains to the Holston Settlements. Such 
a pioneer was Samuel Doak, a Presbyterian min- 



40 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

ister, who helped to build " Salem," the first 
church in Tennessee, in the little town of Jones- 
boro. Near this church Doak built a log high 
school, which later became Washington College, 
the first institution for higher education west of 
the Alleghanies. 

The first ministers to many of these settlements 
were Presbyterians, and it is safe to say that 
wherever a church was built, a schoolhouse 
quickly followed. Baptist missionaries were not 
far behind the Presbyterians, and after the Revo- 
lution many Methodist preachers came to the 
second frontier. 

The minister shared all the hardships of the 
settlers ; he cleared the forests, hunted elk and 
buffalo, always carried arms, and at church services, 
while his congregation leaned their rifles in their 
pews, his stood in the pulpit within reach of his 
hand, and often in an Indian attack did valiant 
work in routing the enemy. 

We owe more than can be computed to these 
strong and steadfast promoters of righteousness 
and education in the second frontier, which was 
really the beginning of our America, for the At- 
lantic frontier had ever looked longingly eastward 
over the sea ; but the men and women who crossed 
the mountains, or drifted down-stream to the sec- 
ond frontier, set their faces westward, once for all. 
For the most of them there was no going back, and 
henceforth they would look towards the sunset. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 41 

Following them, the star of the census map, 
moves also westward ! 

We may see in this first westward movement 
something of the bearing of the frontier in the 
development of our country. It is plain that only 
the strongest and most courageous men and 
women could hope to survive its hard conditions ; 
and also that these very conditions increased their 
strength and fortitude, and brought out and de- 
veloped other fine qualities. Sudden and terrible 
emergencies necessitated quick thought and in- 
stant action ; and while individuality was strength- 
ened, at the same time qualities of leadership were 
brought out. 

Self-reliance became a distinguishing charac- 
teristic of the frontiersman. It could not be oth- 
erwise when all props had been left on the east- 
ern side of the mountains, hundreds of miles 
away; naturally their resourcefulness increased 
with the demand upon it. On the second frontier, 
too, there were a sturdy independence and a 
neighbourly interdependence. 

This was the environment of the children of 
the frontier. They grew to manhood and to 
womanhood, sturdy, fearless, reckless of danger, 
regardless in a measure of human life, vigorous 
of body, steady of nerve, keen in mind, ambitious 
to rise, quick to seize opportunity, resolute of 
purpose, indomitable in will, careless of hard- 
ships, and with limitless power of endurance and 



42 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

pride in achievement. The material was omni- 
present, the ideal but vaguely felt. In short in 
them was born the Spirit of the West, which is 
our inheritance from the second frontier. 

THE DEVELOPMENT 

At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the fron- 
tier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the 
frontier became more and more American. As successive ter- 
minal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each fron- 
tier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled 
area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. 
Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement 
away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of inde- 
pendence on American lines. And to study this advance, the 
men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, 
economic, and social results of it, is to study the really Ameri- 
can part of our history. Turner. 

TURNING WESTWARD 

In time this early outbound man learned that there were 
rivers which ran not to the southeast and into the sea, but out- 
ward, across the mountains towards the setting sun. The wind- 
ing trails of the Alleghanies led one finally to rivers which ran 
towards Kentucky, Tennessee, even farther out into that un- 
known, tempting land which still was called the West. Thus 
it came that the American genius broke entirely away from 
salt-water traditions, asked no longer " What cheer ? " from the 
ships that came from across the seas, clung no longer to the 
customs, the costumes, the precedents or standards of the past. 
There came the day of buckskin and woolsey, of rifle and axe, 
of men curious for adventures, of homes built of logs and slabs, 
with puncheons for floors, with little fields about them, and tiny 
paths that led out into the immeasurable preserves of the prime- 
val forests. A few things held intrinsic value at that time* 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 43 

powder, lead, salt, maize, cowbells, women who dared. It was 
a simple but not an ill ancestry, this that turned away from the 
seacoast forever and began the making of another world. It 
was the strong-limbed, the bold-hearted who travelled, the weak 
who stayed at home. Hough. 



QUESTIONS 

1. Who, exclusive of the Indians, were the "owners" of 

America in the early days of the first frontier ? 

2. Upon what did each of these nations base its claims to 

ownership ? 

3. What motives brought men to the new world ? 

4. What is the distinction between Pilgrim and Puritan and 

what was the object of each in coming to America ? 

5. What factor besides the spirit of persecution, led the 

Puritans to withhold religious liberty from those who 
differed from them in their opinions ? 

6. What national blessings do we owe to New England ? 

to Virginia ? to the Dutch ? 

7. What sources of wealth were open to New England, the 

middle and the southern colonies, respectively ? 

8. What were the principal industries ? 

9. What educational progress was made in the first frontier ? 
10. Name some church buildings of the first frontier. 



QUESTIONS 

1. How do you account for the great change in the attitude 

of the Indians towards the colonists ? 

2. What was the " frontier line " at this time ? 

3. Can you trace a waterway from Pennsylvania to the 

Yadkin River ? From the Atlantic Ocean to the Ohio 
River ? 



44 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

4. What methods of travel were at this time possible to the 

pioneer? 

5. Describe the stages of development from " the European " 

to " the American " ? 

6. Where was held the first " American " Convention of law- 

makers ? 

7. How did this differ from the Virginia representative Con- 

vention ? 

8. What was the environment of children on the second 

frontier ? 

9. Name some of these children when they had attained to 

manhood and womanhood ? 
10. What advance did education make in the second frontier ? 

TOPICS FOR RESEARCH WORK 

"Spices "; Their Part in the New World Story. 

" River Trails and Portages." 

" Spanish Discoveries in America." 

" French Exploration and Claims." 

" The Lost Colony of Roanoke." 

FACTS AND DATES 
(See Channing : Short History of the United States') 

Ponce de Leon discovers Florida . 1513 

Balboa discovers Pacific I 5 I 3 

The French on the Atlantic Coast '524 

De Soto and Coronado 1539-1542 

St. Augustine (First Permanent Settlement) 1565 

Drake in the Pacific 1577 

Acadia (The French in the North) 1604 

Virginia (First Permanent English Colony) 1607 

Beginning of Dutch Colonies 1609 

The Pilgrims (First Permanent Colony in the North) . . 1620 

Great Emigration of Puritans 1630 

Roger Williams (Separation of Church and State) . . . 1636 



THE BEGINNING OF THE TEAIL 45 

New England Confederation 1643 

Toleration Act 1649 

Carolina 1663-1665 

English Conquest of New Netherland . 1664 

Georgia *73 2 

Expulsion of the French 1 7&3 

First Continental Congress 1774 

Declaration of Independence 



POINTERS 

(These should be brought out in the missionary meeting by 
lively description. Lend variety by telling ; the reading of 
paragraphs ; or sentence by sentence ; in each case members 
should follow one another in quick succession. In the study 
class the " Pointers " may be used as assignments, or as topics 
for special research work.) 

The Attractions of the New World. 

Early Attempts at Colonization. 

Historic Ships. 

Our Debt to the Indian. 

Improvement in Conditions. 

Early Churches and the " S. P. G." (Use also extracts in 
small type. See page 30.) 

Some Effects of Persecution. 

The Oldest College in America. 

The Dutch Occupation. 

Our Debt to the Southern Frontier. ( Include the Battle of 
King's Mountain.) 

The Atlantic Coast, and the First Move Westward. 



POINTERS 

Our Debt to the Trappers and Fur Traders. 
The Long Hunters and Their Tales of Wonder. 
Over the Wilderness Road. 
Down-Stream." 



46 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

The Indian as a Foe. 
" Saddle-Bags " and the Minister. 

The Influence of the Frontier. (Make use of extracts in 
small type and illustrate by concrete cases.) 

SOME GREAT MEN OF THE FRONTIER 

/. Explorers ' 

Balboa, Coronado, De Soto, Carder, Champlain, Mar- 

quette, Joliet, La Salle, Boone. 
2. Home-Makers : 

Bradford, Winthrop, Boone, Robertson, Sevier, Clarke. 
j. Ministers : 

Hunt, Roger Williams, Doak, Hooker, Wesley, White- 
field, Edwards. 

What significance have the following dates? 
1492, 1497, 1585, 1607, 1609, 1620, 1630, 1649, 1776, 1777, 
1780, 1783. 

FACTS AND DATES 

First Continental Congress '774 

Lexington and Concord 1775 

Boone and Settlement of Kentucky 1775 

Declaration of Independence 1776 

King's Mountain , 1780 

Treaty of Peace 1783 

BOOKS OF REFERENCE 

Prince : " A Bird's Eye View of America." 
Jenks : " When America Was New." 
Earle : " Home Life in Colonial Days." 
Anderson : " History of the Colonial Church." 
Fiske : The Beginnings of New England." 



The Frontier Moving Westward 



II 

FOLLOWING THE WAR-PATH 



THE BIBLE LESSON 



INTO THE UNKNOWN 

send out Thy light and Thy truth ; let them lead me. 

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of 
them ; for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee ; 
He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee ! 

Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the 
way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when 
ye turn to the left. 

The Lord, your God, went in the way before you to search 
you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night, to show you 
by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day. He led 
them on safely. 

In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy 
paths. 

1 will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou 
shalt go. I will guide thee with Mine eye. 

Behold, I am with thee and will keep thee in all places 
whither thou goest. 

My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. 
Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age. 



II 

FOLLOWING THE WAR-PATH 

NEVER did the waters call more allur- 
ingly, and never so insistently as in 
our third frontier. 

Had we time we should listen and follow, as did 
De Soto, the Spaniard, and Cartier, La Salle, the 
beloved Father Marquette, and the brave Joliet. 
Let us instead take a rapid glance at the map, 
down the Alleghany River, the Monongahela and 
the Ohio ; along the borders of the Great Lakes, 
and westward where many streams fall into the 
Mississippi, making mental note as we pass, of all 
French names. Down these streams paddled the 
old voyageur and these towns and cities were 
once the forts and trading posts which gave to us 
the third frontier, otherwise known as the Old 
Northwest. 

It is necessary just here to call to mind certain 
happenings the French and English War ; Brad- 
dock's disastrous defeat, and the proffered and 
refused advice of a certain young surveyor from 
Virginia; which counsel, if taken, might have 
turned that defeat into victory. 

We must notice, too, changes in the political 
ownership of the western country resulting from 
49 



50 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

the French and Indian War, and from the war of 
the Revolution ; for all these events are as links 
in a chain which brought under British dominion 
the Old Northwest. 

Let us also return for a moment to the second 
frontier, which is still suffering untellable tortures 
from the Indians of the North. To enter into 
these prevailing conditions, one's imagination 
needs only an old map of the country reaching 
from the Ohio River to the Great Lakes, and 
from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi River and 
the Lake of the Woods a vast expanse of forest 
and prairie, absolutely unbroken save for the 
far and lonely forts and trading posts. On the 
map are the names of powerful Indian tribes and 
there are trails running down from their homes in 
the North to the Ohio River and to the one-time 
hunting grounds south of it. 

These trails had at this time become war-paths ; 
and constantly passing over them were bands of 
Indians, supplied with arms by British officers at 
Detroit, and urged on by them to fearful ravages 
upon the settlements south of the Ohio. 

The disheartened settlers of Kentucky and 
Tennessee were beginning to understand the share 
of the British in the ceaseless coming of those 
stealthy and murderous bands of savages, over 
the long forest trails, and across the Ohio River. 

There was but one way to put an end to their 
coming, namely : to capture the northwest country 



FOLLOWING THE WAR-PATH 51 

from the British and to conquer or win over the 
hostile tribes of Indians. 

It was at this time of discouragement and 
almost of despair that George Rogers Clark, a 
young frontiersman from Virginia, thought out a 
plan by which to conquer the country of the 
northwest. With the sanction of Patrick Henry, 
the Governor of Virginia, and gathering a small 
following of frontiersmen of Tennessee and Ken- 
tucky, he himself took the war-path. 

We may not stop to describe his heroic passage 
through the flood-covered country of the Illinois 
and the Wabash, and the surprise and capture 
of British forts, among them Old Vincennes. 
For the young frontiersman was successful and 
the British did finally surrender the country to 
the young Government at Washington, and " Mad 
Anthony" eventually brought the Indians to 
terms. Congress, after various adjustments of 
conflicting rights and claims, passed the great 
Ordinance of 1787 " the Magna Charta of the 
Old Northwest" and behold ! the third frontier ; 
and a half chapter, or for that matter, a whole 
one is small space in which to tell of the migration 
thitherward and what followed ; for the " western 
fever" in aggravated form immediately set in, 
with wonderful consequences for our country. 
The reasons for this rush to the West were many. 

The frontier has been defined as the " hither 
edge of free land," and in all save one of the 



62 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

great westward movements free land was the 
magnet which irresistibly attracted immigration. 
This third frontier offered free land boundless, 
rich and fertile. 

Previous to this time the pioneer to the wild 
country must, humanly speaking, trust his life 
and the life of his family to his own rifle and his 
good right arm, but now and from this time on 
the Government promised its aid in subduing the 
Indians. 

It will be remembered that the men who won 
for us our liberty and made us a nation, did not 
receive great pecuniary reward for doing it. But 
Congress paid up arrears by the bestowal of tracts of 
land in the Old Northwest upon soldiers who had 
fought in the Continental Army, great numbers 
of whom now took up their claims. 

Finally there was the famous " Ordinance of 
1787." One of its articles which brought in 
thousands of settlers of the right sort, is brief and 
easily remembered. 

"Religion, morality, and knowledge being neces- 
sary to good government and the happiness of 
mankind, schools and the means of education shall 
forever be encouraged'' 

A land ordinance providing for the survey and 
sale of the millions of acres in this new domain 
directed that in every congressional township of 
thirty-six sections of land one section should be 
reserved for the maintenance of common schools, 



FOLLOWING THE WAR-PATH 53 

and from that time until now one thirty-sixth of 
the public lands has always been set apart for 
schools ; each state has also one entire township 
for the building and support of a university. 

The result of this ordinance has been a fund of 
nearly twenty million dollars for free education in 
the Old Northwest. 

Do we not now hear the " call of the waters " ? 
Through all its varied music of falling cataract 
or grandly sweeping river, or of soft and sleepy 
tinkling of little brooks, still there runs the one 
theme Opportunity. 

If we could but see and hear the excitement 
of those days and the eager, earnest talking and 
planning ! Especially in New England, where 
many a tired farmer, weary of the never-ending 
struggle of his fields, said to his son, " Go West, 
young man, where your plowshare may turn up 
something besides rocks and stones, and where 
ceaseless mortgages shall not hold you back 
from an education " ; and mothers everywhere 
gave up all dear and familiar things for the sake 
of " the children's " brighter chance in life. 

In fancy we may see them, these thousands of 
home-seekers,pouring forth, in Conestoga wagons, 
and other queerer and more uncomfortable ve- 
hicles ; on horseback, or even on foot hastening 
to catch the first note of the silvery " call " ; in 
other words to embark on the nearest westward- 
flowing river in any kind of a vessel, raft or flat- 



54 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

boat, square-end scow, or " Noah's Ark," or dug- 
out in or on anything which might reasonably 
be trusted to carry them to the haven where 
they would be. 

New Yorkers whose own fair, western hills 
and valleys were yet untilled felt a greater 
enchantment in the distant view, and found a 
way to it by the waters of the Mohawk. Land- 
less thousands in the South saw homes and com- 
fort in the Old Northwest, and thither they 
journeyed up the Potomac and across to the 
Ohio ; or by way of the Tennessee, the Cumber- 
land, the Kentucky, the Kanawha and Youghio- 
gheny verily our " inland waterways " were the 
making of the third frontier. 

It is almost impossible to comprehend in these 
times of easy and rapid locomotion, the diffi- 
culties and hardships and perils and long drawn 
out discomforts of travel, as they existed in the 
days of the third frontier. 

Yet, as we have seen, many thousands under- 
took the long journey. Could we scan the 
streams of men, women and children pressing on 
in spite of every obstacle to this new land of 
glorious opportunity, we should perhaps see 
among them some who were not going to the 
new country for that country's good, but rather 
to the advantage of the land left behind ; some 
Micawbers and a few " rolling stones " : but 
mostly they were brave and hardy souls, willing to 



FOLLOWING THE WAE-PATH 55 

endure anything for the sake of the good to come ; 
and also, very many of them, for the sake of the 
good they might do, for it was in the time of 
this great rush of people to the West, and be- 
cause of it, that the churches of the East began 
to send through the recently organized mission- 
ary societies, men and money to build churches 
and to establish schools and colleges in the 
"Old" Northwest. We shall see that Chris- 
tianity and Christian education were grandly 
placed in the foundations of the third frontier. 

The leader of the first colony to what is now 
the State of Ohio was a minister of the Congre- 
gational Church. His destination was the mouth 
of the Muskingum River. It was first necessary 
for the party to meet in Connecticut, and the 
converging thither over the poor roads of New 
England was in itself no easy task ; but after that 
they must cross the Hudson River to Kingston; 
from Kingston they travelled by the military 
road, and by the Youghiogheny River to the 
Monongahela and the Ohio, to the tract of land 
which had been purchased by the Ohio Com- 
pany ten days after the passing of the great 
Ordinance. This tract lay on the north bank of 
the Ohio, mainly between the Muskingum and 
the Scioto. 

The big clumsy barge in which the pioneers 
floated down the Ohio was named the Mayflower 
in memory of a certain old vessel dear to the 



56 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

heart of the New Englander ; at their journey's 
end they disembarked, cut down trees, built log 
cabins, and a fort which they named " Campus 
Martius " cleared land and planted corn. This 
was in April, 1788. 

A definition of the frontier is " the line where 
savagery and civilization meet." We may then 
see the third frontier epitomized in the bill of 
fare enjoyed at the celebration of the Fourth of 
July in this new little settlement which should 
later become the city of Marietta. Savagery 
provided " venison barbecued," buffalo steaks, 
bear meat and wild fowl. Civilization was able 
to furnish " a little " pork (the amount of this 
commodity has since increased in the State of 
Ohio). 

In the late summer the eastern half of Ohio 
was organized into a county called Washington 
County. Judges and other officers were ap- 
pointed and a county court was opened in one 
of the blockhouses of the fort. 

This day was a great day in the annals of 
the Old Northwest for it marked the begin- 
ning of a new order of things, the American 
order. 1 

This is the third frontier as it began on its 
eastern edge it extended rapidly westward far 
beyond the limits of this study, for the third 
stage of advance developed the five noble states 

1 The Conquest of the Old Northwest," p. 191. 



FOLLOWING THE WAE-PATH 57 

of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wis- 
consin. 1 Contrast for a moment the wild wilder- 
ness which came to us through the clear brain, 
the indomitable courage, and almost incredible 
endurance of George Rogers Clark, and the 
magnificent resources and cultivation of our 
present Old Northwest. 

We cannot linger to watch this development, 
splendid as it is, but we have a tribute to pay to 
those who planted its germs in the third frontier, 
and chiefly to those whom we call " home mis- 
sionaries." It is simply impossible to estimate 
the results of the work of these heroic men, and 
quite out of the question to sum up the labours 
of their even more heroic wives. Such 
journeys ! Aye ! and also such lonely and 
courageous stayings at home ! If we are really 
desirous to pay a tribute, let us pay it to the 
home missionary wives, past, present and future, 
only let us hope that the future will see to it 
that their deprivations and hardships shall soon 
be no more ! It may even be that the future 
will see self-support in all our churches, in which 
case the home missionary himself and herself 
having become pastors and pastoresses shall also 
be no more. May it be so, for then shall there 
be released for other Christian work great stores 

1 The " Ordinance of 1787 " suggested as names for these 
states : " Sylvania," " Cheronesus," " Assenisipia," " Metropa- 
tamia," Pelesipia." 



58 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

of energy and consecration and money, and 
noble lives. 

But these even now hypothetical conditions 
certainly did not exist in the third frontier. 
Christian faith and therefore courage and energy 
and endurance and fortitude were built into 
many and many a log church and into many a 
character in the old frontier days. Where are 
the log churches now? Transformed into 
Gothic beauty, or " Institutional " solidity they 
are in every city of the Old Northwest. 

The circuit rider also was ever active and de- 
voted in the third frontier. He is a familiar 
figure, especially in the " Hoosier " state. 
Thousands of miles he and his horse travelled as 
they came and went on their circuits, and many 
settlements looked out for his coming, and many 
a lonely family on far-away clearings blessed the 
day when he appeared. 

In nothing was Christian patriotism more 
nobly shown on the third frontier than in the 
founding of schools and colleges, funds for which 
were in many cases sent from the East, through 
the newly- formed missionary societies. Many 
agencies shared in laying these foundations one 
of them the Illinois band, in which were as- 
sociated twelve young men from Yale College 
is noteworthy not only on account of its own 
fine work but because it was the pioneer of other 
similar groups which later accomplished great 



FOLLOWING THE WAE-PATH 59 

things in other territories and states. Their 
names explain themselves, and yet give no hint 
of the courage and self-sacrifice and the far-seeing 
statesmanship developed in the groups of young 
college men who devoted all the strength of 
their lives to the implanting of a Christian edu- 
cation in the third frontier. 

These schools and colleges were not pre- 
tentious ; the buildings were plain exceedingly 
so ; the furnishing was far from luxurious and 
the equipment was meagre in the extreme. But 
the spirit in these colleges was earnest and the 
teaching fine; and stirring indeed because of 
their subsequent influence in the nation would 
now be the roll-call of their students. It would 
also be an inspiring thing simply to name these 
institutions and their early faculties ; we should 
find among the founders and instructors names 
of high honour in all our churches ; for many 
denominations contributed to the Christian 
foundations of the third frontier. 

The Spanish explorers of America had a large 
part in determining the western extension of our 
country. Yet was the river call still dominant in 
the fourth frontier for De Soto had heard it 
the first of white men in the grand sweep of 
the Mississippi. Its music was for him the fatal 
syren song ; nevertheless the majestic river flow- 
ing onward to the sea henceforth " belonged " to 



60 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

Spain by right of his discovery, and long after 
there ensued a complicated chapter in the history 
of Spain, France and the United States whose out- 
come was the purchase in 1803 by our Govern- 
ment of the magnificent trans-Mississippi country 
known as the Louisiana Territory. A contempor- 
ary apprehension of the transaction is interesting : 

" Louisiana must and will be settled if we hold it, and with 
the very population that would otherwise occupy part of our 
present territory. Thus our citizens will be removed to the 
immense distance of two or three thousand miles from the 
capital of the Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the 
rays of the general government ; their affections will become 
alienated ; they will gradually begin to view us as strangers ; 
they will form other commercial connections, and our interests 
will become distinct. 

" These, with other causes that human wisdom may not now 
foresee, will in time effect a separation, and I fear our bounds 
will be fixed nearer to our houses than the waters of the 
Mississippi. We have already territory enough, and when I 
contemplate the evils that may arise to these states from this 
intended incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would 
rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any other nation 
of the earth, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the 
United States should ever settle within its limits, than to see 
the territory sold for a hundred millions of dollars and we re- 
tain the sovereignty. And I do say that, under existing cir- 
cumstances, even supposing that this extent of territory was a 
valuable acquisition, fifteen million dollars was a most 
enormous sum to give." 

Who can now compute the millions billions 
of dollars which have reimbursed the nation 
for that " enormous " expenditure ? 



FOLLOWING THE WAE-PATH 61 

The Louisiana purchasers were, however, not 
so much concerned in the acquisition of territory 
as in the right of way down the Mississippi 
river ; for down-stream trade had become an 
absolute necessity if Kentucky and Tennessee 
were to prosper. 

The purchase was indeed largely brought 
about by the men of the South so that, as in the 
attainment of the Old Northwest, we owe much 
to the second frontier for this next stage of ad- 
vance. And presently after sawmills had 
been built on the rivers there was evolved an 
up-stream boat, a queer and clumsy craft 
known as a keel boat ; and the up-stream men 
were almost a class by themselves in inventive- 
ness, hardihood, endurance and persistence. 

Advancement along the Missouri, the Platte, 
the Arkansas along all the streams whose 
sources are in the blue far-off mountains of 
the West, required the up-stream boat. Up 
these streams pressed now the pioneers of the 
Long Trail the hunter, the trapper and the 
trader. 

And after them, closely following the river 
courses, plodded the patient, long enduring 
prairie schooners of the plains. 

We have but to shut our eyes and think a mo- 
ment of the far-stretching monotony of the Great 
Plains to feel the sympathetic strain of those 
long, slow-dragging miles not so bad for the 



62 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

men perhaps, but wearisome beyond words for the 
mothers and the children. 

And not always monotonous for many times 
the level line of gray horizon was broken by 
long bands of the horse Indians of the plains. 
The most tiresome monotony had been better 
far than this. But the long drawn out journey 
ends at last ; and in the frontier for the first time 
since the Mayflower touched on Plymouth Rock, 
we miss the " anvil chorus " of the ringing axes 
in the forest for here there is no forest. 

Sod cutting is less inspiring work than tree- 
felling; but since sods are the only available 
building material the settlers must needs live in 
sod houses until more comfortable dwellings shall 
become a possibility. It is a rich and fertile 
country, but in winter are blizzards and bitter 
cold and in summer there are hot blasting winds 
and thirsty fields and men and beasts, for at this 
time only the witch-hazel wand could hear the 
call of the life-giving underground waters. 

Notwithstanding all the drawbacks, there were, 
before many years had passed, flourishing farms 
in the country lying west of the Mississippi, and 
thousands of immigrants, heeding pleasant re- 
ports and ignoring rumours that were unpleasant, 
crossed over the river to the promised land. 
The census map for 1820 gives us the frontier 
line of this stage of our study. It is quite 
regular and clearly defined except for certain 




FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
Founded by Roger Williams, A. D. 1638. This Jiouse dedicated 
May, 1775. The third house occupied by the church. 



FOLLOWING THE WAE-PATH 63 

odd little westward reaching tongues and 
splashes of colour. Were we looking at the 
real country the buff and brown tongues of the 
census map would be painted in living green, for 
the ever attracting rivers had drawn the settlers 
farther and farther on into the unknown country. 
These little buff spots are now populous centres 
possessing large and influential churches, and 
our present interest in them lies in the fact that 
their foundations were laid by devoted home 
missionaries in the old days when they were the 
vanguard of the fourth frontier. 

Many men celebrated now as statesmen or 
writers or judges perhaps, grew up on the 
frontier. It is often said of them that their 
only means of education were a spelling-book 
and a Bible. 

Considering all things, is it not a matter for 
wonderment that the log cabin or the sod house 
should contain a copy of the Bible? For all 
books were expensive and not over plentiful and 
for several reasons the Bible was especially costly 
and rare. 

Let us try to answer the question we have 
raised, and first of all by calling up to our minds 
a picture of a sunny hayfield near Williams 
college in Massachusetts ; in the afternoon the 
warm summer day becomes sultry, and suddenly 
black clouds fill the blue sky, lightning flashes 
and thunder crashes and torrents of rain pour 



64 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

down. To escape the violence of the storm a 
group of young college students seek the shelter 
of a haystack. 

All the world is better now for that thunder- 
storm and the haystack prayer-meeting which 
resulted from it ; but not many persons perhaps 
associate with it the supplying of Bibles to the 
frontier and that not only in a general way, 
but through the labours of Samuel J. Mills, one 
of the " Haystack Men." 



GIVING THE BIBLE TO THE FRONTIER 

In January, 1813, Gen. Andrew Jackson sailed from Nash- 
ville, Tenn., with 1,500 volunteers for Natchez, Miss., in order 
to prepare the defense of the lower Mississippi Valley against 
possible attack from the British. Before leaving he had met 
Mr. Samuel J. Mills, a theological student, who had been or- 
ganizing a Bible society for the state of Tennessee. Finding 
that Mr. Mills, with his companion, Mr. Schemmerhorn, was 
going to New Orleans for similar work there, General Jackson 
invited him to travel with him on his steamer. So it came to 
pass that Mr. Mills, the Home Missionary, made the journey to 
Natchez as the guest of the bluff and restless general. 

When he returned to the North Mr. Mills published an ac- 
count of his observations. His report was designed to arouse 
Christians to action, and it did. 

The spirit of missions was abroad in those days, and all 
men knew that Bible distribution was essential in missionary 
enterprises. Discussion as to what ought to be done to save 
the settlers in the new states and territories at length took form 
in the organization of the American Bible Society in New York, 
May 8, 1816. It was a momentous event in the history of 
the United States. None of the great home missionary societies 



FOLLOWING THE WAK-PATH 65 

had as yet been effectively organized. The delegates of the 
local Bible societies, representing different denominations act- 
ing together, sent the new society forth as in itself an expres- 
sion of the highest principles of Christianity; for it was a mis- 
sionary society in the most literal sense. 

In 1829 the Washington County Bible Society (New York) 
formally proposed united effort to supply every destitute family 
in the United States with the Bible. The thought was a noble 
one, and it was promptly taken up by the National Society and 
urged upon all the auxiliaries. In the three years, 1828-29 to 
1830-31 the issues of the American Bible Society were 
680,000 copies of the Scriptures, of which at least 500,000 
copies were distributed in the United States; very largely 
through the gratuitous services of the devoted Christians who 
canvassed the counties and supplied all destitute families who 
could read. A similar general supply was undertaken in 1856, 
when more than a million copies were distributed. A third 
general supply took place in 1866 and the following years when 
1,200,000 families were visited and 101,000 families, together 
with about 60,000 individuals who had no Bible, were supplied. 
In this distribution 954 societies auxiliary to or cooperating 
with the American Bible Society took part. A fourth general 
supply was undertaken in 1882. 



THE WAR-PATH " 

The frontier army post, serving to protect the settlers from 
the Indians, has also acted as a wedge to open the Indian coun- 
try, and has been a nucleus for settlement. In this connection 
mention should also be made of the Government military and ex- 
ploring expeditions in determining the lines of settlement. But 
all the more important expeditions were greatly indebted to the 
earliest pathmakers, the Indian guides, the traders and trappers, 
and the French voyageurs, who were inevitable parts of gov- 
ernmental expeditions from the days of Lewis and Clark. 
Each expedition was an epitome of the previous factors in 
western advance. Turner. 



66 THE CALL OP THE WATEKS 

" THE WEST " IN 1835 

" It is plain that the religious and political destiny of our 
nation is to be decided in the West. Its population is assem- 
bled from all the states of the Union and from all the nations 
of Europe, and is rushing in like the waters of the flood, de- 
manding for its moral preservation the immediate and universal 
action of those institutions which discipline the mind and arm 
the conscience and the heart. And so various are the opinions 
and habits, and so recent and imperfect is the acquaintance, 
and so sparse are the settlements of the West, that no homo- 
geneous public sentiment can be formed to legislate immedi- 
ately into being the requisite institutions. And yet they are all 
needed immediately in their utmost perfection and power. A 
nation is being born in a day.' But what will become of the 
West if her prosperity rushes up to such a majesty of power, 
while those great institutions linger which are necessary to form 
the mind and the conscience and the heart of that vast world. 
It must not be permitted. Let no man at the East quiet him- 
self and dream of liberty, whatever may become of the West. 
Her destiny is our Destiny." Lyman Beecher. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What great waterways did the pioneers use in their ad- 

vancement westward ? 

2. How was the old Northwest conquered ? 

3. What was the " Ordinance of 1787"? What were its 

principal features? 

4. What were some of the reasons for the great and rapid 

advance of the old Northwest ? 

5. To what do these states owe their great educational fa- 

cilities ? 

6. Mention ten great institutions of learning in these states ? 

7. What led to the advancement of the frontier to the west 

side of the Mississippi ? 

8. Why was there urgent need for a market "down- 

stream " ? 



FOLLOWING THE WAK-PATH 67 

9. What was its effect on the nation ? 

10. What rivers have had the largest share in the develop- 
ment of America ? 



POINTERS 

A Map Talk. 

War-Paths. (Use fine type also.) 

1. Indian Ravages. 

2. Carrying the War into the Northwest. 
Old Vincennes and the Illinois. 

The " Magna Charta " of the Old Northwest. 

The New Call of the Waters. 

The Ohio as a Course of Empire. 

The Great Migration. 

The Missionary Societies. 

The First Colony to Ohio. 

Christian Education in the Third Frontier. 

The Circuit Rider. 

The " Market " at New Orleans some of Its Effects. 

The " Up-Stream Men." 

The Long Trail. 

The Bible in the Frontier. (Use fine type also.) 

MEN OF THE FRONTIER 

Lewis and Clark, Whitney, " Mad " Anthony Wayne, Fulton, 
Howe, De Witt Clinton, Cartwright, Whitman. 

SIGNIFICANT DATES 
1789, 1803, 1805, 1807, 1809, 1825, 1827. 

FACTS AND DATES 

The Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance 1787 

Invention of Cotton Gin 1794 

Louisiana Purchase 1803 

War with England 1812-1815 



68 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

Missouri Compromise 1820 

The Monroe Doctrine 1823 

The Erie Canal 1825 

The Locomotive 1830 

BOOKS OF REFERENCE 

Baldwin : The Conquest of the Old Northwest." 
Clark: " The Leavening of the Nation." 
Turner : " The Rise of the Northwest." 
Hulbert : " The Ohio River ; a Course of Empire." 
Prince : " A Bird's Eye View." 

TOPICS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 

Old Vincennes. 
The Illinois Band. 
The Circuit Rider. 
The " Up-Stream " Men. 
The Long Trail. 



The Frontier Moving Westward 



III 
THE LAST STAND OF THE FRONTIER 



THE BIBLE LESSON 



FOR THE INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE 

And I will make all My mountains a way, and My high- 
ways shall be exalted. 

Cast up, cast up the highway ; gather out the stones. 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert 
a highway for our God. 

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill 
shall be made low. And the crooked shall be made straight 
and the rough places a plain. 

And a highway shall be there and a way and it shall be 
called the way of holiness. 

And many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be in- 
creased. 



Ill 

THE LAST STAND OF THE FRONTIER 

AS a graphic exponent of the frontier, 
nothing exceeds the census map. 1 Es- 
pecially is there a fascinating richness 
and variety in the fine colour scheme in the map 
of 1880, which shows us the last stand of the 
frontier. No longer so the map maker tells us 
can there be a " frontier line," for the reason 
that there are so many isolated spots and out- 
reaching tongues of settlement. 

It is our study, in this chapter, to discover the 
reasons for these departures from the regular line 
of advancement. 

Queer stories used sometimes to travel east- 
ward from the far regions of the sunset that 
mysterious, ever-receding, ever-alluring " West " 
such stories for instance, as that of the great 
salt mountain, a hundred miles long, from whose 
base issued ever-flowing streams of salt water. 

There were many equally remarkable tales, 
and where all listeners were ignorant who should 
decide on their truth ? 

In this state of things the Government at Wash- 

1 See " Statistical Atlas of the United States, 1900." To be 
found in most public libraries. 

7* 



72 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

ington had the happy thought of sending ex- 
plorers through these lands of mystery to find out 
what part of the stories might be true, and great 
discoveries were thereby made ; among them the 
fact that in many instances the actual truth far 
exceeded the most fabulous stories. So came 
about far in the utmost West, slight shadings of 
buff on the white ground of the census map. 
These shadings signify that every square mile 
covered by them rejoices in a population of from 
one to six white men, traders or settlers, lured on 
by the calling waters of that " rolling Oregon," 
which heretofore had heard no sound save his 
own dashings ! But now there happened once 
more the panorama of the frontier: first the 
trampling of thousands of hoofs heralding a great 
procession of thirsty animals who sniff from afar 
life-giving waters, and make all speed towards 
them ; next passes the Indian along this " game 
trail " ; following him are explorer and hunter, 
the trapper and trader; the missionary; and 
finally the settler. The salt mountain tale did 
not, however, attract many settlers ; rather did 
it, with other causes, tend to discourage agricul- 
tural advance. 

We may briefly state the mental altitude of the 
time, by a quotation from a Government publi- 
cation. 

"Major Long's expedition up the Platte brought back the 
important fact ' that the whole division of North America 



LAST STAND OF THE FKONTIEB 73 

drained by the Missouri and the Platte and their tributaries, be- 
tween the Meridian of the mouth of the Platte and the Rockies 
is almost entirely unfit for cultivation, and therefore uninhabita- 
ble for an agricultural people.' " 

(This whole division, etc., now contains Neb- 
raska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and 
Colorado !) 

It would seem then that the Indian and the 
buffalo might long remain monarchs of the plains, 
but agriculture is not the only magnet for at- 
tracting population, and, as we shall see, the Indian 
and the buffalo soon lost their supremacy on the 
Long Trails. 

On the census map of 1880 and of previous 
decades as well, there is in the country of which 
the Great Salt Lake is the centre, a long splash 
of buff with interior markings of brown. This 
splash denotes the final resting-place in what was 
then Mexican territory of the long-migratory 
Latter Day Saints. 

Other splashes in the southwest would carry 
us back to the fascinating days of Coronado and 
his seven cities of gold. This being outside our 
limits, we may follow only an inglorious fur trap- 
per who, making his stealthy way through the 
forests in pursuit of the ever more wary animals, 
happens one day upon a rich old Spanish city, 
whose name shorn of its Spanish magniloquence 
we know as Santa Fe." Trade with this city is 
the origin of that wonderful traffic by pack-train 



74 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

and ox team over the old Santa Fe trail, which 
ultimately produced much of the colouring on 
the map of 1880. 

The deep colouring spreading over California 
came about through the trifling incident that on 
a certain morning a man going out to his work 
a white man in California ? Aye, truly ! but 
how he came there would take long to tell. Suf- 
fice it to say that on that fateful morning this man 
found among grains of sand particles of yellow 
gold. 

Immediately, one scarcely can tell how, tidings 
of this finding flew out and spread like wild-fire 
through this land and to other lands ; and as it 
always does, the gold dust brought on a fever of 
excitement, and more quickly than one would be- 
lieve possible, there was a wild and furious scram- 
ble of eager gold seekers to the New Eldorado. 
They came by every possible and impossible way 
across the plains, over the Isthmus of Panama, 
around Cape Horn no difficulties were too great ; 
no reports of hardships to be borne, of hunger or 
thirst or heat or cold deterred them. Even the 
dread of Indian atrocities could not hold them 
back. Gold, gold the fever for it fed by larger 
and yet larger stones of findings in the mountains 
ran like wild-fire in their veins. 

Thousands and thousands of men poured into 
the mountains ; scarcely was there a nook or 
cranny without its anxious prospector, and many 



LAST STAND OF THE FEONTIER 75 

a surprised fur trapper shared his loneliness and 
his venison with an unexpected and quite proba- 
bly half-starved visitor. 

This fact that many of the miners were in 
danger of starvation is the clue to the next hap- 
penings on the westward trails ; for gold with all 
its magical power cannot buy bread where there 
is none to be had, and the miners were not able 
to supply themselves with game as did the trap- 
pers of the mountains. 

But they were willing to pay fabulous sums to 
those who could supply their need. Hence the 
growth of the great pack-trains of the western 
trails ; of the " pony express " and the " Over- 
land" stage route. 

The pack-train consisting of perhaps a hundred 
mules or burros the experienced leader picking 
the way for those in the rear was an interesting 
sight, and its arrival in the mining camps pro- 
duced intense excitement. 

The perils of the way for pack and wagon trains 
were so great that the successful fcompletion of 
the journey has been described as simply an 
escape from death. 

It is interesting to turn back the leaves of time 
to the year 1827 and open the book at a page 
where sit in conclave in the city of Baltimore 
twenty-five of its leading citizens. They are lis- 
tening to an impassioned speaker by name 
Philip Evans Thomas, whom we know as the 



76 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

father of American railroads who, as his hearers 
said, seemed touched with the spirit of prophecy 
as he spoke of an enterprise which was to cast 
aside mountains, to unite streams and to discover 
what there might be in that always mysterious 
land " the West " in his mind the country lying 
near the Mississippi River any progress beyond 
that point being at that time almost unthinkable. 
It is permissible here for us to speak of that great 
achievement the first railroad of our country, a 
line from Baltimore to Washington, built almost 
immediately after Mr. Thomas' speech. This 
short line was the beginning of that great high- 
way, which should ultimately join the far Pacific 
with the Atlantic. 

Never was frontier so much in need as in the days 
of the gold fever and of the " Prairie schooner," 
which about this time began its slow-creeping 
progress over the plains ; for increasing knowl- 
edge of the country had shown it to be not " unin- 
habitable " for farming communities, and many 
families were now on their way to the free lands 
of the far, far West. 

These families did indeed miss the Christian 
surroundings of their old homes, but their need 
was as nothing compared with the extremities of 
destitution of all moral restraint in the mining 
camps. 

This was especially the case in California, so 
much so that even the miners themselves sent to 



LAST STAND OP THE FKONTIEE 77 

the East an urgent request that ministers of the 
gospel might be sent to them, to act as chap- 
lains. 

These men looked towards the East, never 
dreaming that from far away over the glittering 
water of the Pacific should come their helper. 
But so it was ; and here indeed is opportunity 
to call up facts of history. 

The temptation is great, but Hawaii is not and 
never was our frontier, so we merely say that in 
the time of dire need California received the 
gospel by way of the Sandwich Islands, and it 
was an Hawaiian missionary who welcomed to 
California the first ministers from the East. 
Before the end of 1849 five churches had been 
organized in San Francisco. These were Episco- 
pal, Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist and 
Methodist. 

Such were the first efforts of Christian patriot- 
ism at the end of the trail. But who shall tell 
the story of Christian foundations laid in the great 
expanse of country containing and lying west of 
the last " frontier line " ? 

It is a story of heroism beyond compare ; but 
of a quiet sort, wherein the actors never dream 
of what heroic stuff they are made. 

But the churches tell the story ; could walls 
speak every one would utter thrilling tales of 
devotion and self-sacrifice. 

Schools and colleges are eloquent of missionary 



78 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

effort ; and some of the first hospitals of the West 
owe their existence and their usefulness to mis- 
sionary societies of the East. 

Transformed Indian tribes are also tributes to 
missionary devotion, and thousands of dark-eyed 
little Mexicans have grown up to be good citizens 
of the United States because of the instruction of 
mission teachers. 

Years ago little mission schools nestled among 
the mountains or stood in the scorching heat of 
the plains; to-day these having attained the 
stature of a man are in some instances colleges ; 
in others, churches in the midst of Christian com- 
munities, made up of the one-time children of 
the schools. 

All these foundations were laid when the mis- 
sionary must travel on foot, or on horseback, or 
must drive many miles over an almost roadless 
country ; he must ford or swim rivers, and never 
heed cold of blizzard, or heat of desert. 

Travel is easier now, and the beginning of the 
change we may trace to a spring day of the year 
1869, when more than the dream of the " father 
of railroads " was realized in the driving home of 
that golden spike which showed the joining of the 
Atlantic to the Pacific by the completion of the 
Union Pacific Railroad. 

As we watch the driving of this nail our old 
frontier fades away like a dissolving view; but 
behind it, blurring the picture a little, are the 



LAST STAND OP THE FKONTIEB 79 

first faint outlines of that coming time which we 
shall know as our Twentieth Century " Frontier." 

EVOLUTION 

The buffalo trail became the Indian trail, and this became 
the trader's " trace " ; the trails widened into roads, and the 
roads into turnpikes, and these in turn were transformed into 
railroads. The same origin can be shown for the railroads of 
the South, the far West, and the Dominion of Canada. The 
trading posts reached by these trails were on the sites of Indian 
villages which had been placed in positions suggested by na- 
ture ; and these trading posts, situated so as to command the 
water systems of the country, have grown into such cities as 
Albany, Pittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, 
and Kansas City. Thus civilization in America has followed 
the arteries made by geology, pouring an ever richer tide 
through them, until at last the slender paths of aboriginal inter- 
course have been broadened and interwoven into the complex 
mazes of modern commercial lines ; the wilderness has been 
interpenetrated by lines of civilization growing ever more nu- 
merous. It is like the steady growth of a complex nervous 
system for the originally simple, inert continent. If one would 
understand why we are to-day one nation, rather than a collec- 
tion of isolated states, he must study this economic and social 
consolidation of the country. In this progress from savage 
conditions lie topics for the evolutionist. Turner. 

DRIVING THE GOLDEN SPIKE 

The time came when some minds and brains of the go-ahead 
kind thought out a plan to " cast aside mountains and to unite 
streams " from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. 

The railroad builder has a task before him. He must climb 
mountains for seven thousand feet or more ; he must cross a 
great expanse thirteen hundred miles wide, which until a very 
few years ago was marked on the map " unexplored desert." 
It was not very well known even at this time, and in one long. 



80 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

long stretch of nearly seven hundred miles, there was only one 
white man to be found. 

But of course all along the route from Omaha westward 
there were the fiercest Indians. They saw a curious thing one 
day ; motionless on their horses they watched to see what the 
strange objects might be. 

Flags they know and chains they know but what are those 
queer three-legged creatures which some fearless young men 
are placing here and there over the prairie ? 

They do not know either that following behind these young 
engineers are an army of workers who will lay a path for the 
iron feet of a " horse " swifter than the mustang, stronger than 
the buffalo ! 

******* 

As the Union Pacific men pressed westward, the Central 
Pacific men pushed eastward. They crossed the Sierras and 
laid the rails in the Utah desert. The subsidies promised by 
Congress were far larger for mountainous than for level country, 
and as the two armies of workmen drew near together each 
tried hard to gain the prize the Central men on their slope, 
and the Union men on the western side of the Rockies. 

" Where metals meet metals " Congress had said should be 
the joining point, and in April, 1869, they met, at Promontory 
Point, near Ogden, Utah. A few days afterwards, on the 
loth of May, the rival armies of workers were drawn up on 
either side of the tracks. There was also a group of officers 
and invited guests who had come over the road to be present at 
its joining. The spike of gold to show the completion of trans- 
portation between East and West was driven home by a min- 
ister of the gospel, who then offered prayer. A moment later 
the news was flashed by the telegraph east and west, and in 
Chicago, Buffalo and New York public thanksgivings were pro- 
claimed. Condensed from "Pioneers" 

(The best aid in the study of Chapter III is found in the 
Government Census Maps. If these are not attainable, the 
small reproductions as given in McMaster's " Primary History 



LAST STAND OF THE PEONTIEE 81 

of the United States " (American Book Company), will be 
helpful.) 

POINTERS 

(Suggested Program divisions, or Study Class Assignments.) 

1. Western Myths and Heroes. 

2. " First Across the Continent." 

3. The Mormon Migration. 

4. The " Discovery " of Santa Fe. 

5. Gold Finding and Its Consequences. 

6. Pack Trains, the " Pony Express," and the " Overland 

Stage." 

7. Christianity Eastward Bound. 

8. Home Missions beyond the Frontier Line. 

9. The Opening of the New Northwest. 

10. Railroad Building on Plain, Desert and Mountain. 

11. Conquering the Indian. 

12. Christianizing the Indian. 



QUESTIONS 

1. How did " Oregon " come into the possession of the 

United States ? 

2. What historical happenings brought the Mormons within 

the domain of the United States ? 

3. What were the three principal " Long Trails " ? Describe 

features of transportation methods peculiar to each. 

4. Is the development of the railroads a fulfilment of 

prophecy ? 

5. Name and locate ten famous forts of the West. 

6. Name and locate ten Indian battles whose results we feel 

to-day. 

7. State briefly links in the chain which brought Christianity 

over the Pacific to California. Should this chain be 
named " foreign " or " home " missions ? 



82 THE CALL OP THE WATEBS 

9. Name institutions of higher education whose origin was 

the mission school ? 

IO. What inventions of this period greatly hastened the de- 
velopment of the West ? 

GREAT NAMES OF THE FRONTIER 

Carson, Crockett, Morse, Henry, McCormick, Field, Bald- 
win, Whipple, Kemper, Sheldon Jackson. 

SIGNIFICANT DATES 
1846, 1848, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1869, 877. 

BOOKS OF REFERENCE 
(See also " Leader's Supplement"} 

Inman : " The Old Santa Fe Trail." 

Brooks : " First Across the Continent." 

Casson : " The Romance of the Reaper." 

Cassdn: "The Romance of Steel and Iron in America." 

Semple : " Geographical History of the United States." 

Mowry: "Marcus Whitman." 

Stewart : " Sheldon Jackson, Pathfinder and Prospector." 

FACTS AND DATES 

The Electric Telegraph 1844 

The Horse Reaper 1845 

Annexation of Texas ^45 

The Oregon Treaty 1846 

The Mexican War 1846-1848 

Discovery of Gold 1849 

The War for the Union 1861-1865 

Purchase of Alaska . 1867 



The Twentieth Century "Frontier 



IV 
THE NEW MIGRATION 



THE BIBLE LESSON 



"THE WHOLE FAMILY 



And He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the 
face of the earth. 

One God and Father of all who is above all and through all, 
and in you all. 

Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 

He is not ashamed to call them brethren. Behold, My 
mother and My brethren. Whosoever shall do the will of My 
Father who is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and 
mother. . 



T 



IV 
THE NEW MIGRATION 

HUS the wild land was tamed and pos- 
sessed, and now the old frontier is 
gone! 

Can there be a twentieth century " frontier " ? 

Let us gather up some results of our study of 
the old frontier. We have found it to be the 
" hither edge of free land " attracting eager home 
seekers and making for health and happiness; 
the border-land between savagery and civiliza- 
tion ; a stage of advance ; the vanguard of prog- 
ress. A place of uncertainty, whence many trails 
led out whither? A place, therefore, of reso- 
lution and decision, where only the strong and 
courageous pressed over the chosen trail into the 
unknown country. The frontier was a place of 
vision whence seers looked off afar. It was a 
crisis for good or for evil. It was a breaking 
with old ties ; back of the pioneer was depend- 
ence, before him self-reliance; behind, habit; 
before, absence of restraint; and always was it 
the place of new conditions and of new ways of 
meeting them ; above all, the frontier was Oppor- 
tunity. It made for character and developed the 
spirit of America. 

85 



86 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

Just so is there a twentieth century " frontier " ; 
whence many alluring and unknown trails lead 
out ; a place of new and hard conditions and of 
glorious opportunity; where, as in the days of 
the old frontier, there will be call for pioneers, 
willing to break with old ties, courageous to 
meet the new conditions and to seize the oppor- 
tunity. 

Our further study concerns these new borders 
of enterprise. 

For the sake of contrast, we turn back for a 
moment to the old conditions. We see that 
then the home was the centre of activity. It 
was, of course, " in the country," and stood alone, 
or was grouped with others in village or town. 
Each family supplied its own needs and, so far 
as possible, its wants, and every member in help- 
ing towards this end became a skillful worker 
along many lines of household industry and out- 
door activity. 

Our thoughts being chiefly concerned with 
women's occupations, this extract from a diary of 
colonial days as given by Mrs. Earle is interest- 
ing. Notice the variety and wide range in a 
day's work : 

" There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical So- 
ciety, a diary written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, 
in the year 1775. Her name was Abigail Foote. She set 
down her daily work, and the entries run like this : 

" Fix'd gown for Prude, Mend Mother's Riding-hood, 



THE NEW MIGBATTOST 87 

Spun short thread, Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls, Carded 
tow, Spun linen, Worked on Cheese-basket, Hatchel'd flax 
with Hannah, we did 51 Ibs. apiece, Pleated and ironed, 
Read a Sermon of Dodridge's, Spooled a piece, Milked the 
cows, Spun linen, did 50 knots, Made a broom of Guinea 
wheat (maize) straw, Spun thread to whiten, Set a Red dye, 
Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's, I carded two pounds 
of whole wool and felt Nationly, Spun harness twine, 
Scoured the pewter.' 

" She tells also of washing, cooking, knitting, weeding the 
garden, picking geese, etc., and of many visits to her friends. 
She dipped candles in the spring, and made soap in the autumn. 
This latter was a trying and burdensome domestic duty, but the 
soft soap was important for home use." 

It then was a girl's pride and ambition to be- 
come the best housekeeper of the neighbourhood, 
the most rapid spinner, or most skillful weaver, 
to have the whitest linen, to turn out the largest 
number of the most shapely candles, to make the 
finest soap in short, to excel in every branch of 
domestic work ; and the amount accomplished in 
a day by the women of the old time might seem 
incredible did we not remember that the work 
was healthful and varied and the workers absorb- 
ingly interested in bringing their labours to a 
triumphant conclusion. 

The home was also the social centre. The 
days, so full of occupation, yet abounded in hos- 
pitality. Companionship in work led to close 
friendships, and days of special pressure, when 
all the neighbourhood cooperated in a " barn- 
raising," or " quilting," or " apple bee," were fol- 



88 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

lowed by evenings of fun and jollity. The 
church and the " town meeting " added other in- 
terests, and in connection with the latter was the 
ordering of educational matters. 

The school curriculum was limited, but suited 
to practical needs. Supplemented by the liberal 
" manual training " of the home, it furnished a 
good life-equipment. 

Such, in brief, were the conditions of the early 
days. The evolution of machinery had much to 
do in changing them, taking interest out of 
country life and attracting a new migration 
away from the hard-won country homes to the 
fast-growing manufacturing towns. 

This backward flow has continued until towns 
and cities have become overcrowded, while in 
many localities farms are almost or quite de- 
serted, villages are lifeless and churches empty. 

Contrast Abigail's diary with a day's work in 
mill or factory. Throughout the monotonous 
hours of the long day just one little part of some 
article is made, time after time, time after time, 
in dulling, paralyzing repetition. Nothing is be- 
gun, nothing completed, nothing accomplished, 
nothing learned ; there is no possible interest in 
the work, unless it be in gaining " speed," which 
may lead to increase of pay or greater certainty 
of employment, and surely means the wearing 
out of nerves. The day ends, the whistle blows, 
and work stops. The next morning whistles 




WESLEY CHAPEL, THE PREDECESSOR OF "OLD JOHN 
STREET CHURCH," NEW YORK CITY 

Built in 1768. (Methodist Episcopal) 



THE NEW MIGEATION 89 

will blow and work the same work will begin, 
and so on, endlessly. 

In the hours between, the worker, according 
to her temperament, resorts to some strong ex- 
citement to overcome the apathy of her mind, 
or relapses into a state of semi-stupefaction. 
Too often there is no social or church interest 
within her reach or, perhaps, desire. 

Is there not here a challenge to infuse interest 
and life and spirit into this dull and hopeless ex- 
is^ence ; to provide in the city a substitute for 
home interests ; and to instill into country life the 
stimulating interest it once had ? 

Once again we contrast the early days with 
ours this time by a glance oceanwards. Then 
the Atlantic was a lonely waste of waters, with 
here and there a tiny " ship " carrying little 
groups of brave-hearted immigrants, who " hav- 
ing all the world before them where to choose," 
yet " chose " to follow where the waters called. 
Now the harbour is crowded with shipping, and 
great " liners " continually pour into the land 
thousands of immigrants. Many of these new- 
comers will go westward, travelling over the same 
trails as did the earlier arrivals, not to an Indian 
village or trading post, but to the great city 
which has sprung up in its place. 

Many thousands also find their way to coal 
mines or to copper mines ; to lumber camps ; or 
they press on to win a home from the wilderness 



90 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

in that restricted region which is still the " hither 
edge of free land." 

The copper mines of the Lake Superior region 
present a fine illustration of the varied character 
of this new migration, for here are thirty nations 
at work. 

There are miners from Cornwall, and Finland 
and Lapland; there are Irish, Scotch, Welsh, 
Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, Danes, Norwegians, 
Swedes, Russians, Hollanders, Greeks, Swiss, 
Austrians, Belgians, Negroes, Slavs, Bohemians 
there are even a few Chinese, Arabians and 
Persians. 

The owners of these mines have worked out 
a solution of the immigrant problem, chiefly by 
treating the miners and their families as human 
beings. 

There are perhaps twelve hundred dwelling- 
houses belonging to the company ; comfortable 
homes with kitchen gardens attached ; there 
are eight schoolhouses, in which the polyglot 
children are learning to become good Americans, 
speaking English as their common tongue, and 
saluting the Stars and Stripes. There is a free 
library containing thousands of volumes in many 
languages, used and enjoyed by the men and 
women of all the races living in this region. 
There are a club-house ; a finely equipped hos- 
pital ; and thirty churches, occupied by thirteen 
different denominations. 



THE NEW MIGEATION 91 

Here is a cheering example of what may be 
done with the problem of immigration, " by 
sticking to the old-fashioned doctrines of fair 
play.'" 

Mines and lumber camps in the East as well as 
the West, and new settlements in regions recently 
opened to home-seekers, call for urgent Christian 
effort, for in all these is the frontier a crisis, whose 
outcome will be for good or for evil as may now 
be determined. 

THE PRESSING DEMAND 

A Church big enough to overspread a big land ; broad enough 
in its sympathies to appeal to and be appealed to by all the 
classes of our society ; eager enough to carry the message of a 
saving gospel that all our polyglot people shall hear and under- 
stand ; homely enough to make itself at home among the low- 
liest ; confident enough of the dignity of its mission to press its 
claims upon the loftiest ; sure enough of its truth to commend 
the wisdom of God's salvation to the wise ; simple enough in its 
interpretation of the truth that the simplest-minded may not fail 
of comprehending ; hopeful enough of its triumph to be the 
worthy minister of a God who would have all men saved ; saga- 
cious enough to adjust itself to its delicate task ; human enough 
to be all things to all men and touch the common human chord ; 
divine enough to hallow human life at every turn of its ministry. 



One of these days a simple-minded prophet will arise and 
calmly inform the American people that their problem of 
assimilating the alien is a matter of telling the alien How d'ye " 
when he is encountered on the street ; of replying sympathet- 

1 For full account of these mines read in " Greater America," 
"The Story of a Copper Mine." 



92 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

ically to his questions and encouraging him to ask more ; of 
practicing a kindly American humanity; of allowing a practical, 
courteous Americanism to glint in the eye, to drop from the 
finger-tip and from the tongue-tip, to smile out its welcome and 
never to scowl out its annoyance and certainly not its disdain. 

The business may prove a matter not so much of charity funds 
as of common fairness, not so much patronizing philanthropy 
as plain friendliness, less assimilating institutions and more 
intimate associations. 

When the foreigner meets Christ on the street and hears from 
Him His kindly message and gains the benison of His loving 
ministry, he will not fail to recognize His Christliness. The 
alien will join the Kingdom of God wherever he finds one fit to 
join. He is looking for Christliness ; that is what he came over 
to find. He may not have put it just so when he recited his 
intentions, but that is what he blindly means, and a little ex- 
perience of Christian humanity will enable him to comprehend 
his own intentions fully. He is alert to learn. Only show him 
Christ and he will be drawn to the Kingdom as the metal seeks 
the magnet. J. E. McAfee. 



A CHURCH ON WHEELS 

In 1891 the chapel car idea was evolved and the first one put 
into our hands to go forth aided by steam to carry the gospel 
into the great West. The first was an experiment ; but it soon 
grew into a rich experience. The railroads welcomed it and 
gave it free transportation ; one car followed another, and now 
there are six, with men and women on them as missionaries 
operating in California, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Okla- 
homa, and Texas. More than ten thousand people have been 
converted on these cars; two hundred Sunday-schools have 
been established ; a large number of meeting-houses have been 
built and paid for. 

We soon came to " Glad Tidings " and the friend could not 
refrain from exclaiming : " Isn't it a beauty ! " And such a 



THE NEW MIGEATION 93 

name who could ever feel sad with such a message to carry 
into the homes and hearts of the people in the great West. My 
friend expressed delight more than once during the morning as 
he examined very carefully the entire equipment of the car. 
Everything was substantial and nicely made, and yet there was 
no foolish extravagance. As a prominent general manager 
said : " Just right for its purpose." On the outside he found 
boxes to hold three thousand five hundred pounds of hard coal, 
forty storm windows, four screen doors, and one storm door, an 
oil stove and oven, also a ladder. Looking to the top of the 
roof he saw an eaves trough with hose connection, so that the 
tanks could be filled with rain-water. And when he passed 
inside he stood amazed. Experience of many years had brought 
into use needed appliances for work and comfort, and he found 
himself in a meeting-house and parsonage perfectly equipped for 
aggressive Christian service. 

PLANTING SEEDS 

In the early days of the frontier, there was a singular char- 
acter known as " Johnny Appleseed." Every year he would 
gather all the apple seeds he could get, and go far into the wil- 
derness, and plant his seeds at each " likely " spot ; and when, 
many years after, settlers penetrated these unsettled places, to 
build their homes, they found all over the West apple trees and 
even orchards, bearing in abundance the rosy-cheeked fruit. So 
there is many a church flourishing in some Western city, because 
the colporteur has been there long before, and left his literature 
to speak after his living voice has gone. 

FROM "TO-DAY'S PHASES OF HOME MISSION 
CONCERN " 

The American church has an Americanizing function. 
Effective spiritual ministry is impossible among unassimilated 
ingredients of citizenship. Anarchism is a crime against the 
Kingdom of God. Evangelization involves the cultivation of 
loyalty to the institutions of society. Conscientious citizenship 



94 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

is a first-fruit of a Christly redemption. To be an American 
rightly conceiving the office, is to love God and serve one's 
neighbour. Alien elements in our American life are, therefore, 
the importunate concern of the Church of Christ. By the char- 
ter of its existence, the Church is committed to the sympathetic 
and Christly assimilation of aliens. 



Individual churches in our largest cities are forging ahead 
and gaining in efficiency. It is the common assertion of the 
statisticians that the city church as a whole is falling behind, far 
behind. From some cities there are reports of fewer Protestant 
church-members than ten and twenty years ago, though the 
population has increased by enormous proportions. The up- 
town movement of churches is universal. It cannot be checked 
by declamation, of course; and most thoughtful students under- 
stand how normal it is. But none can overlook the fact that 
increasing proportions of the populations of our greater cities 
are out of reach of the Church. 



Reasons for the decline of the country and village church are 
plain enough to the observing. The rural population is chang- 
ing, is vitally changed both in numbers and in character in many 
sections. But the discovery of these patent causes does not 
solve the problem of rural churchlessness. In certain older 
sections of the country this condition presents a more distress- 
ing need than does the unchurched city population. The old 
country church is bound to go with the people who made it and 
maintained it. But in the meantime vast numbers of people are 
unreached by the spiritual forces which the Church exists to 
wield. 

The Church is more nearly one in spirit than ever. Even 
Protestants and Romanists, members of the church and adherents 
of the synagogue, are seeing eye to eye in some interests, are 
lifting up a common voice on some vital questions. But de- 
nominational administration has too little discovered the grow- 
ing sentiment of unity. We go on duplicating plants and 



THE NEW MIGEATION 95 

agencies for doing a common work. On one city four-corners 
there are four rival religious institutions erected at rivalling ex- 
penditures of money. From one town of three hundred in an 
eastern state a discouraged minister writes of four Protestant 
churches struggling to exist, and crippling each other in the 
struggle. 

POINTERS 

1. The Old Frontier. 

2. The Twentieth Century " Frontier." 

3. One Phase of the New Migration. 

4. A Day under the Old Conditions. 

5. A Day under Factory Conditions. 

6. Immigration from over Sea. 

7. An Instance. 

8. The Opportunity in Mine and Camp. 

9. The City Church. 

10. The Country Church. 

11. A " Church on Wheels." 

12. Rivalry in Religious Work. 



QUESTIONS 

1. What are likenesses and differences between the old and 

the new "frontiers "? 

2. In what ways has machinery made life easier in industrial 

conditions ? 

3. Are present day conditions more or less healthy than those 

of the early days ? 

4. The South is coming to a great industrial power. Will it 

thus gain or lose " efficiency and happiness " ? 

5. Contrast New England in 1800, and 1900. 

6. The " Migration from over Sea " remains largely in east- 

ern cities; what agencies are aiding its distribution 
over the country ? 



96 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

7. Name specific ways in which industrial problems are 

complicated by the new migration. 

8. What factors does it add to the problem ? 

9. What additional spur does it apply to Christian effort ? 
10. Will the " spirit of America " be helped or hindered in 

development by this new infusion ? 

The first frontier had these blessings : 

A Home where righteousness was taught ; and where there 
was variety of active work, and room to perform it. There 
was hospitality with room to receive and enjoy neighbourly 
visits. 

A School which needed only to teach from books, because 
all manual arts were learned at home. 

All outdoors in which was abundance of active, interesting 
exercise of muscle and of mind. 

A Church which suited the temper of the times. 

Does the twentieth century " frontier " show loss or gain in 
these respects ? 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE 

Strong : " The Challenge of the City." 
Steiner : " The Trail of the Immigrant." 
Patten : " The New Basis of Civilization." 
Rauschenbusch : " Christianity and the Social Crisis." 
Anderson : " The Country Town." 

TOPICS FOR RESEARCH WORK 

Immigration : 

(a) The Country's Gain. The Country's Loss. 

() The Immigrant's Gain. The Immigrant's Loss. 

Monuments : and What They Signify. 



THE NEW MIGEATION 97 

THE LOCAL FRONTIER CLASS 

Consult: Town Records, Files of Newspapers, Libraries, 
"The Oldest Inhabitant." 

(a) First Churches. 

() First Schools. 

(c) First Industries. 

(</) First Roads. 



The Twentieth Century "Frontier 



V 

THE NEW DOMAIN 



THE BIBLE LESSON 



THE SCENT OF THE WATERS 



Behold I will do a new thing. I will even make a way in 
the wilderness and rivers in the desert. 

In the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the 
desert. 

And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty 
land springs of water. In the habitations of dragons shall be 
grass with reeds and rushes. 

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; 
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. 

It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and 
singing. 

He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry 
ground into water springs, and there He maketh the hungry to 
dwell that they may prepare a city for habitation, and sow the 
fields and plant vineyards which may yield the fruits of 
increase. 

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none and 
their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the 
God of Israel will not forsake them. 

They shall not hunger nor thirst ; neither shall the heat nor 
sun smite them ; for He that hath mercy on them shall lead 
them, even by streams of water shall He guide them. 

The Lord shall guide thee continually ; and thou shalt be 
like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters 
fail not. 



V 

THE NEW DOMAIN 

HERE follows an " American Fable " : l 
" Once upon a time there was a 
young nation which left its home and 
moved to a new continent. As soon as the peo- 
ple who formed the first settlements began to ex- 
amine the value and conditions of this new conti- 
nent, they found it marvellously rich in every 
possible resource. The forests were so vast that 
they were not a blessing in the early days, but a 
hindrance. The soil was so rich and there was 
so much of it, that they were able at first only to 
scratch the edge of their great property. It was 
quite plain to these people in the early times that 
however much they might waste, there was going 
to be plenty left. They found wonderfully rich 
deposits of ore, great oil fields and vast stretches 
of the richest bituminous and anthracite coal 
lands ; noble rivers, making fertile broad ex- 
panses of meadow, rich alluvial prairies, great 
plains covered with countless herds of buffalo and 
antelope, mountains in the West filled with min- 

1 By Gifford Pinchot. In the National Geographic Maga- 
zine, May, 1908. 

101 



102 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

erals, and on both coasts opportunities richer than 
any nation had ever found elsewhere before. 
They entered into this vast possession and began 
to use it. They did not need to think much 
about how they used their coal, or oil, or timber, 
or water it would last and they began to en- 
croach on the supply with freedom and in confi- 
dence that there would always be plenty. The 
only word with which they described what they 
had when they talked about it was the word in- 
exhaustible." 

The " fable " like other fables has a moral, 
which will presently appear. 

The resources of this magnificent domain of 
three and a half million square miles, are proving 
to be not " inexhaustible," and among thought- 
ful people there is awakening a new patriotism, 
whose object is the preservation of our splendid 
heritage for the future, and for the happiness and 
benefit of those who shall come after us, who 
as much as we are heirs to the inheritance. 

How shall we do this ? How can we make 
ourselves and those who shall follow us happiest, 
most vigorous, and most influential? 

Mr. Pinchot goes on to say that according as 
we accept or ignore our responsibility as trustees 
of the nation's welfare, our children and our chil- 
dren's children for uncounted generations will 
call us blessed or will lay their suffering at our 
doors. We shall decide whether their lives, on 



THE NEW DOMAIN 103 

the average, are to be lived in a flourishing coun- 
try full of all that helps make men comfortable, 
happy, strong and effective, or whether their 
lives are to be lived in a country like the misera- 
ble, outworn regions of the earth which other na- 
tions before us have possessed without foresight 
and turned into hopeless deserts ; and he reminds 
us that we are no more exempt from natural laws 
than are the people of any other part of the 

world. 



The new patriotism calls for the replacing of 
forests where once the settler's axe rang out in 
never-ceasing efforts to clear the land of trees; 
for less wasteful use of coal and oil and iron ; for 
the conservation of copper and of the strength 
of the waters, lest America should one day be 
without light or heat or power. 

" The public lands available for homes did at 
one time seem ' inexhaustible ' when the property 
of the nation embraced 1,800,000,000 acres. But 
this domain has now been reduced to 500,000,000 
acres. 1 Much of the remaining land is desert or 
swamp, or is unproductive because of the severe 
cold of winter. 

The rapid narrowing of the public domain and 
the tremendous increase in values make it each 
year more difficult for a man of small means to 
get a foothold on the land ; and these facts are 

1 Figures as given by C. J. Blanchard in National Geographic 
Magazine, April, 1908, p. 251. 



104 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

the more serious because, in the American, the 
home-making instinct is a strong trait, as our 
study has shown. Have we not watched its de- 
velopment all the way from New England's 
" storm bound coast," to the fertile valleys of the 
Columbia river ? The nation has reached a time 
when the question of providing homes for the 
people is looming large. The answer is of tre- 
mendous national importance, for "there is no 
national stability in a citizenship born and reared 
in tenements." 

The attempts to answer this question are re- 
sulting in what seems almost the creation of a 
new domain. 

It is fascinating to stand by and watch this new 
creation ; and also to listen, for in the new domain, 
as in the old, we hear again the luring call of the 
waters. 

The pioneers of the old days followed the call 
with dauntless courage and unswerving resolu- 
tion ; not less resolute and courageous are those 
twentieth century pioneers the men of the 
reclamation service. We recall the cutting of 
the Wilderness Road long ago. It was good 
work, and bravely done ; but in the winning of 
the new domain roads must often be cut into solid 
walls of rock before the great dams for storing the 
waters can be even begun. In this difficult and 
dangerous work, men are lowered into canyons 
whose walls are hundreds of feet high, and with 



THE NEW DOMAIN 105 

ropes about their bodies as they work, they put 
in the drill holes for blasting. From such a be- 
ginning arose the highest masonry dam in the 
world. We may best realize its stupendous 
height by comparing it with some familiar build- 
ing, as, for instance, the Flatiron Building in New 
York. Placed side by side, the Shoshone dam in 
Wyoming would rise one story higher. 1 

Already life-giving waters flow through many 
thousands of acres of one-time blinding desert, 
but now a region of richly productive farms, and 
prosperous homes. 

In the Great Plains, once thought to be unin- 
habitable, there are in process of construction 
eleven irrigation projects from which water is now 
available to fertilize 500,000 acres. Hundreds of 
new homes dot the prairies in readiness to put 
the water to use. 

The engineering features of all these great 
undertakings deserve extended description, but 
space admits the mention of only two the Sun 
River Project in Montana, opened to settlers in 
May, 1908, and the Milk River Project. In the 
former, the engineers propose to increase the 
supply by diverting water from the streams now 
flowing into the Pacific Ocean through a gap in 
the Continental divide, to a watershed which 
drains into the Atlantic. The Milk River 
scheme also needs more water ; and in this case 

1 C. J. Blanchard. 



106 THE CALL OP THE WATEBS 

Hudson's Bay will bear the loss ; for to augment 
the Milk River, some of the north-running 
streams will be turned southward. 

The home-making projects of the Government 
include, also, the drawing off of too much water 
and some day where now are great and dismal 
swamps shall be sunny fields " bearing the bloom 
of the tasselled corn." 

The witch-hazel wand is sensitive to water 
running forty or fifty feet below the surface, and 
has located many a well of refreshment ; this 
seems remarkable ; but what shall we say of that 
scientific skill which can unerringly show the 
way to waters flowing three thousand feet 
below? Such wells have been sunk in the 
Dakotas. Flowing beneath the burning sands of 
Arizona are " inexhaustible " supplies of water, 
fresh and sweet. It remained for our generation 
to discover and to make use of them. 

" Beyond the Rocky Mountains lies the true 
desert ; a land of mysterious silence, a land of 
potential greatness." It is often called the 
inland empire. Here has been wrested from a 
region long regarded as absolutely worthless, a 
home-supporting area of splendid fertility. 
Seventy thousand miles of canals carry life-giv- 
ing waters to 10,000,000 acres which each year 
produce crops valued at more than $250,000,000. 

" When the magic kiss of canal-borne water " 
shall touch the whole of this vast " desert 



THE NEW DOMAIN 107 

empire " into life, there need be, for some years 
at least, no fear of congestion of population or 
of a want of homes. 

We recall the days when a rush of settlers in- 
vaded the rich prairie lands of the " New " North- 
west. Orchards, and small fruits and alfalfa 
were planted.. These flourished and all went 
well and hopes were high until the extreme 
cold of some winter night dashed all prospects 
for the coming year, and also for succeeding years, 
and the homes of the northwest seemed doomed. 

A boy growing up on one of these farms saw 
many hopes thus blighted and years ago set 
himself to the task of learning from nature how 
to save the homes of this beautiful and fertile 
but disheartening northwest. 

For years he studied; he travelled far in 
northern regions in his search for knowledge, 
and alfalfa ! 

Experiments were patiently made, all tests 
have been applied and soon will be ready for 
distribution seeds of alfalfa, of fruits and of 
vegetables, warranted to produce plants and 
trees which shall successfully resist not cold only 
but also drought and blasting winds and plant 
diseases. 

This great discovery will bring prosperity to 
the northwest, homes of health and plenty, 
liberal education, and let us hope self-support- 
ing churches. 



108 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

In the old days because of ignorance or 
indifference farmers so worked their crops as to 
wear out the land. Present day knowledge and 
interest are making out of these used up lands a 
new domain to benefit the generations to come ; 
and in that day perhaps there will be no 
" deserted " farms. 

This new domain will shortly yield a certain 
and enormous harvest. How shall transporta- 
tion facilities then equal the tremendous de- 
mand ? For answer let our thoughts turn back 
to those musical water trails upon which the 
Indian or the French voyageur guided his birch 
canoe. There was now and then a break in the 
waterway ; the canoe was carried a mile per- 
haps, or ten, or twenty until again was heard 
the tinkling call of the flashing water. May it 
not be that these old " portages " will become 
connecting canals, and that thus our inland 
waterways will meet the demand ? 

The new domain does not always stretch out 
to far horizons, but sometimes mounts upward in 
many storied tenements, a single building often 
containing a larger population than is found in 
many country towns. Such a population is 
indeed the " frontier " in the sense of being a 
place where new and difficult conditions must be 
met in new ways. City missions expand to 
meet the need ; settlements and neighbourhood 
houses, deaconesses and nurses are doing a great 



THE NEW DOMAIN 109 

work, and churches are continually adding to 
their work " institutional " features. The subject 
is more fully discussed in the next chapter for 
the reason that in order to reach a desired point, 
it is sometimes necessary to " blaze a new trail." 
The question for us to consider : Is the 
Church supplying spiritual force to this new 
domain with a heroism equal to that given by it 
to the old frontier ; with energy commensurate 
to that of the Government in providing homes ; 
with a devotion comparable to that of men of 
science who are giving their lives to making the 
material life of the new domain rich and full ? 

** 

A NEW PATRIOTISM " 

The people of the United States are on the verge of one of 
the great, quiet decisions which determine national destinies. 
Crises happen in peace as well as in war, and a peaceful crisis 
may be as vital and controlling as any that comes with national 
uprising and the clash of arms. Such a crisis, uneventful and 
almost unperceived, is upon us now, and unwittingly we are 
engaged in making the decision that is thus forced upon us. 
And, so far as it has gone, our decision is wrong. Fortunately, 
it is not yet final. 

The question we are deciding with so little consciousness of 
what it involves in this : What shall we do with our natural 
resources? Upon the final answer that we shall make to it 
hangs the success or failure of this nation in accomplishing its 
manifest destiny. 

Few Americans will deny that it is the manifest destiny of 
the United States to demonstrate that a democratic republic is 
the best form of government yet devised, and that the ideals 



110 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

and institutions of the great Republic taken together must and 
do work out in a prosperous, contented, peaceful, and righteous 
people ; and to exercise, through precept and example, an in- 
fluence for good among the nations of the world. That destiny 
seems to us brighter and more certain of realization to-day than 
ever before. It is true that in population, in wealth, in knowl- 
edge, in national efficiency generally, we have reached a place 
far beyond the farthest hopes of the founders of the Republic. 
Are the causes which have led to our marvellous development 
likely to be repeated indefinitely in the future, or is there a 
reasonable possibility, or even a probability, that conditions may 
arise which will check our growth ? 



It is this national attitude of exclusive attention to the pres- 
ent, this absence of foresight from among the springs of national 
action, which is directly responsible for the present condition 
of our natural^resources. It was precisely the same attitude 
which brought Palestine, once rich and populous, to its present 
desert condition, and which destroyed the fertility and habit- 
ability of vast areas in Northern Africa and elsewhere in so 
many of the older regions of the world. 

No patriotic citizen expects this nation to run its course and 
perish in a hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred years ; 
but, on the contrary, we expect it to grow in influence and 
power and, what is of vastly greater importance, in the hap- 
piness and prosperity of our people. But we have as little rea- 
son to expect that all this will happen of itself as there would 
have been for the men who established this nation to expect 
that a United States would grow of itself without their efforts 
and sacrifices. It was their duty to found this nation, and they 
did it. It is our duty to provide for its continuance in well-be- 
ing and honour. 

That duty it seems as though we might neglect. Not in 
wilfulness, not in any lack of patriotic devotion, when once our 



THE NEW DOMAIN 111 

patriotism is aroused, but in mere thoughtlessness and inability 
or unwillingness to drop the interests of the moment long 
enough to realize that what we do now will decide the future 
of the nation. 

The profoundest duty that lies upon any father is to leave his 
son with a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life and an 
untarnished name. So the noblest task that confronts us all to- 
day is to leave this country unspotted in honour, and unex- 
hausted in resources, to our descendants, who will be, not less 
than we, the children of the founders of the Republic. I con- 
ceive this task to partake of the highest spirit of patriotism.- 
Gifford Pinchot. 

THAT NORTHWEST PASSAGE 

The mention of Hudson's Bay, or indeed of any eastern 
waters, calls to mind the patient search of the old voyagers for 
the longed for Northwest Passage. Not a stream flowed into 
the Atlantic Ocean that their little ships did not enter hope- 
fully. It is curious that just at this time, when all these rivers 
and many others which the old sailors knew not of, have been 
traced to their first little silver trickle, honours and medals should 
be bestowed upon the first man to sail his own ship through the 
much desired " Passage." 

THE FOUNDATION OF THE NATION 

There is congestion to-day in many of our cities, and the 
menace of a great population underfed and poorly housed looms 
more darkly each year. So great is the land hunger that al- 
ready a quarter of a million families, comprising some of the 
best blood of the nation, have expatriated themselves and taken 
up new homes under a foreign flag. What is the use of preach- 
ing love of home and country when we offer nothing but 
crowded tenements to the toiler who seeks to earn a roof over 
his family ? 

Our nation's greatness has its foundations in the home of the 
man whose feet are firmly planted upon his own land. There 



112 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

is no national stability in a citizenship born and reared in 
tenements. Patriotism, loyalty, and civic pride are not bred 
and fostered in the crowded centres of population. The destiny 
of the nation is foreshadowed in the provisions made for the 
prosperity and contentment of its citizens. An assurance that 
the great mass of our people shall reside in homes of their own 
is an insurance that our future will be one of stability and 
progress. 

We pause to observe a large flock of ostriches wandering 
over an alfalfa meadow and rub our eyes to be sure we are 
really in our own country. More familiar to us appear the 
sleek, fat cattle standing knee-deep in the cool alfalfa. This 
alfalfa is a wonderful crop down here, a veritable farmer's bank 
account, frequently yielding twelve tons to an acre per year, 
worth from five to twelve dollars per ton. 

We linger just a moment to gather a few oranges from the 
grove beside the road, and as we eat we wonder why such fruit 
never comes to our tables. 

There is such a riot of colour about this cottage that we want 
to stop long enough to ask the housewife how she can get roses 
to bloom in this wonderful way, but we have a long journey 
and we only learn that most farmers' wives in this valley, hav- 
ing both time and inclination, delight in beautifying their 
homes. Home-Making by the Government, 

"THE LAND THAT GOD FORGOT" 1 

All too quickly we have driven over this flowery, fruitful 
vale. With a suddenness that is startling we come upon a 
scene of death and desolation, where everything bears mute 
evidence of a terrible struggle for life. It is the land some one 
called " The Land that God Forgot." Everything that grows 
is covered with a thorn ; everything that crawls is deadly. It 
is a topsyturvy wonderland. We may not drink of the waters 
of the desert stream, for they are salty. In this strange region 

1 National Geographic Magazine, April, 1908. 



THE NEW DOMAIN 113 

they dig for wood and climb for water, for the water is found 
in cup-shaped pools in the hills and the wood is the big root of 
the mesquite. 

For twenty miles our road, a government road, stretches 
across the desert and we begin to feel some of its compelling 
and pervasive mystery. There is a beauty and charm about it, 
too, which cannot be described. The distant buttes are glow- 
ing richly red in the early morning light and the landscape, 
some one has said, "suggests a thought of God's original 
palette whereon He mixed the colours with which He brought 
forth the glories of a southwest sunset," the opal-tinted morn 
and the fairest shades of rose and green and yellow. 

The desert vegetation is interesting. We come upon the 
Sahaurra, the giant cactus, the sentinel of the desert, clothed 
from base to top with thorns, yet bearing delicate and waxen 
yellow blossoms. Singly and in pairs they grow, some attain- 
ing a height of forty-five feet. Sometimes we find them in 
groves. The cliff-dwellers used the heart of this plant for 
floors in their houses. 

Rising straight up from the desert is a distant range of moun- 
tains. They seem to float above the edge of the level plain, 
intangible and unreal, yet transcendently beautiful in colouring 
and contour. 

As we enter the mountain country glory after glory of view 
is presented. Changeful, charming landscape panoramas are 
unfolded before us. The colours, illusive and divinely artistic, 
shift and change and blend as we gaze in wonder and amaze- 
ment. 



We are now entering upon what many travellers have de. 
scribed as the most wonderful highway ever made by man a 
great thoroughfare built for forty miles through the heart of a 
rugged range of mountains and for the most part literally 
carved from the living rock. It would be impossible for human 
artist to duplicate, far less to exaggerate, the colours which the 
Divine Hand has put upon these stones. 

I need not tell you that road-building in a country like this 



114 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

was difficult ; that fact stares you in the face at every point. 
When the surveying party reached the top of Fish Creek Hill 
the engineer called a halt. He wanted time to think ; and the 
problem before him demanded thought. He looked over the 
cliff into a blind canyon, into which there was not even a foot 
trail. A thousand feet sheer below him he could discover 
faintly a tiny stream of water and a few green trees. How 
was he going to get there with a wagon road over which tons 
and tons of machinery must be hauled ? A hurried reconnais- 
sance disclosed the fact that to go around the canyon meant add- 
ing fifteen miles to the road. It was not to be thought of. So 
he decided to blast a road down the face of the steep cliff, and 
it was done. 

It would be simply terrifying to go over the road to-day but 
for the fact that the Government has built it broad and com- 
fortable, with easy grades and many safe turnouts ; for standing 
here at the end of the road a pebble slipped from the fingers 
shoots almost straight down a thousand feet without stopping. 

POINTERS 

1. The Old and New Point of View. 

2. The New Patriotism. 

3. Home-Making across the Continent A Backward 

Glance. 

4. The Shrinkage of the Old Domain. 

5. The " Creation " of a New Domain. 

6. The New Call of the Waters. 

7. Saving the Homes of the Northwest. 1 

8. The Inland Waterways. 

9. Mounting Skywards. 

10. The Destiny of America. 

11. " The Land that God Forgot." 

12. "A Thousand Feet without Stopping." 

QUESTIONS 
I. What is the " moral " of Mr. Pinchot's fable ? 

^ee "The Romance of a Scientist." World's Work % 
April, 1908. 



THE NEW DOMAIN 115 

2. Upon what does the future prosperity of America rest ? 

3. Why is home-providing a question of national im- 

portance ? 

4. What has brought men to the adoption of a policy of con- 

servation ? 

5. How is sufficient water obtained for the vast irrigating 

schemes of the Government ? 

6. How were the underground rivers made known ? 

7. By whose discovery has prosperity been brought back to 

the Northwest ? l 

8. Are the old " Portages " likely to become connecting links 

in the new "Inland Waterways"? (Make a draw- 
ing of old trails and " carries." ) 

9. What is the " frontier " of the tenement ? 

IO, Does the Church measure up to its opportunity ? 

TOPICS FOR RESEARCH 

New Projects for Irrigation. 

The Story of Alfalfa. 

Intensive Farming. 

Extensive Farming. 

Hudson Bay as a Summer Resort. 

FOR REFERENCE 

Files of " The World's Work." 

The World To-Day. 

The National Geographic Magazine. 

Government Reports. 

Current Magazines, and 

The Daily Press. 

Paine : " The Greater America." 

See "The Romance of a Scientist". World's Work, 
April, 1908. 



The Twentieth Century "Frontier 



VI 
BLAZING A NEW TRAIL 



THE BIBLE LESSON 



NEW THINGS DO I DECLARE 
(fsa. 42 : 9) 

Behold I create new heavens and a new earth and the 
former shall not be remembered nor come into mind. 

I will put a new spirit within you. No man rendeth a piece 
from a new garment and putteth it upon an old garment ; else 
he will rend the new and also the piece of the new will not 
agree with the old. 

And no man putteth new wine into old wine-skins ; else the 
new wine will burst the skins and itself will be spilled and the 
skins will perish. 

But new wine must be put into fresh wine-skins. 

And they were all amazed insomuch that they questioned 
among themselves saying what is this ? a new teaching ? 

Old things are passed away ; behold they are become new. 

A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one 
another, as I have loved you. 

Behold, I make all things new. 

We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a 
new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 




THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH BUILDING, 
JAMAICA, L. I. 



VI 

BLAZING A NEW TRAIL 

FOR hundreds of years these words have 
often been read, " There shall be a new 
heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness." 

All at once apparently this promise is 
looked at by many persons from a new point of 
view. 

They do not now think of the new earth 
merely as a far off possibility in a dim, 
vague and distant future ; rather is it our present 
world made righteous and " new," and this 
twentieth century bears the inspiration and glow 
of the realization that by living the principles 
and spirit of Christ we may lift the burdens and 
repressions that have led to so much of evil and 
set free forces that will make for good, and so 
hasten the coming of that new earth, wherein 
shall dwell righteousness. , 

In some parts of our land there are terrible 

conditions of wretchedness and misery, which 

kindly disposed people have long tried to cure, 

or, at least, to alleviate. The new point of view 

119 



120 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

is that much of the sickness and suffering and 
wrong-doing is not necessary and may be pre- 
vented, as the suffering of the man who fell 
among thieves when going up to Jerusalem need 
not have been had the Jericho road been 
properly policed. 1 

As an illustration of the new point of view, 
we look back at the records of summers in the 
past when life was simply a long terror because 
yellow fever was abroad in the land. The 
records show shocking scenes of horror and 
instances of glorious heroism. Many doctors 
and nurses gave up their lives in efforts to 
check the " scourge " which was " visited " upon 
us. Was it a " visitation " hopeless to strive 
against ? 

So it was once considered but greater knowl- 
edge has changed the point of view. A few 
courageous pioneers went forth and blazed a 
new trail. Others followed. The cause was 
discovered, prevention was begun, and the dread 
of yellow fever as an epidemic has already 
passed away. 

The terror and suffering, the selfishness and 
the self-sacrifice were all unnecessary had men 
but known how, and cared, to prevent them. 

Think for a moment of the misery and 
wretchedness in this land owing to tuberculosis 
the " white plague " ; and fancy, if you can, 
1 " The New Basis of Civilization," p. 86. 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 121 

America's gain in happiness and in efficiency 
when freed not only from the ravages of the 
disease but also from the fear of it. Great 
efforts are being put forth to accomplish this end, 
and also to prevent the spread of other conta- 
gious disease. 

Within a short time many cities have suddenly 
come to a realization of the fact that the appar- 
ent listlessness and lack of mental ability and 
moral strength shown by thousands of school 
children are really a matter of imperfect nutri- 
tion. 

How shall this problem of the underfed be 
solved ? Many plans have been proposed. One 
described below 1 has been successfully carried 
out in a school where many children in the 
primary classes were chronically underfed, weak, 
undeveloped and unable to learn properly. 

First of all was established a well equipped 
kitchen, with every appliance for the preparation 
and cooking of food. The cooks employed 
were highly skilled. Most careful study was 
given to securing variety as well as nutrition, 
and by a lavish expenditure of love and labour 
a series of seventeen bills of fare was pre- 
pared so that the same dish is never served more 
than once in three weeks. Something like this 
happens every day in the bright and airy dining- 
rooms where are seated about two hundred 

i The World To-day," p. 544, May, 1908. 



122 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

children, eager, glad and hungry. One would 
suppose a long narrow table to be a ne- 
cessity, but instead of it are many small tables so 
that groups of friends may sit together. Each is 
covered with a snowy linen cloth, the children 
have table napkins and there are bright flowers 
on every table. The pretty china has been 
chosen with much care for the reason that the 
teachers believe in the influence of beauty as 
well as cleanliness. The hot and wholesome 
food is brought to the tables ; but before the 
meal begins the children sing grace, a simple 
song in which all can join, no matter what the 
nationality or religious faith may be. Two 
hundred child voices fill the room with rich 
melody for a few seconds, after which there is 
the different music of the chatter of happy 
children, mingled with clattering dishes, knives 
and forks. After the meal, there is first the 
playground, then the schoolroom ; and all the 
afternoon instead of hungry, listless or sullen 
and irritable children, the teachers have the en- 
joyment of scholars who are at once able and 
willing to be taught. Education to these wise 
teachers means the development of a sound 
mind in a sound body. They depend upon a 
sound physical development as the basis of 
mental and spiritual growth. The bright flowers 
continue their gentle ministry in the school- 
room, or are sent to sick children, or go to their 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 123 

sick mothers in the tenement homes from which 
the children come." l 

There are overworked as well as underfed 
little children in this land of ours. Nothing, un- 
less it be intemperance of father or mother, 
makes life so pathetic as this. It is sorrowful 
and pathetic enough while the tiny fingers and 
weary little bodies ceaselessly work ; and one 
may scarcely think of the dwarfed and thwarted 
after-life, if indeed there is after-life. 

Here is a picture of this labour of little chil- 
dren in a flower factory. 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 2 
They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one- 
Little children who have never learned to play : 
Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day, 
Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twilight slips in, gray. 
High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong 

beat, 
They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one. 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 

They have never seen a rose-bush nor a dew.drop in the sun. 

They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta, 

Of a Black Hand and a Face behind a grating ; 

They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocat- 
ing, 

Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing of a cricket, 

But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their 
dreams, 

From "The World To-day," May, 1908. "How the 
world of to-day is preparing for the world of to-morrow." 
2 Copyright by the S. S. McClure Company. 



124 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric 
screams. 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 

They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one, 

Let them have a long, long play-time, Lord of Toil, when 

toil is done ! 
Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun. 

Some wise person long ago discovered that all 
work and no play made " Jack " a dull boy. We 
have advanced upon this and learned that Jack 
without play is likely to become a bad boy as 
well as a dull one. 

The boy in the city where can he play? 
Cities are likely to continue for a long time to 
come ; children must grow up in them, and it is 
surely the duty of a good citizen to see that the 
city is a good place for their growth. The cause 
of the playground has certainly advanced far 
when the annual report of the Park Commission- 
ers of a certain city contains a paragraph like 
this: 

No better use of city funds can be made than for the pur- 
chase of new playgrounds, and no citizen of can make 

a better gift to his fellow citizens or one of more surviving value 
to many generations than a playground. 

Even brief extracts from the many playground 
bulletins would exceed space limits ; but we must 
include a few words from the Chairman of a cer- 
tain Parks and Drives Committee : 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 125 

Parks are no longer made for spectacular purposes. The 
most splendid monument cannot compete with a load of sand as 
a practical benefit to the children and the mothers of the chil- 
dren. It would give me a thousand times more pleasure to 
show some tired mother the way to a sand pile in a children's 
playground than to take the most distinguished visitor to the 
top of Hill. 



The movement for children's playgrounds is 
scarcely ten years old, yet almost every large city 
of the North and East has already some free play- 
grounds. New York has one hundred vacation 
playgrounds, and twenty -six evening recreation 
centres. Chicago has within these ten years ap- 
propriated $10,000,000 for small parks and play- 
grounds. The Chicago recreation centres pro- 
vide indoor and outdoor gymnasiums for men 
and women, sand-gardens and wading-pools for 
the smaller children, ball fields for the bigger 
boys and men, and outdoor swimming pools. 
There is a National Playground Society, and in 
a dozen or more cities are Playground Associa- 
tions. School gardens and school farms are 
doing wonders in character building, but in large 
cities it is difficult to find garden soil so much 
so that the small gardeners must sometimes 
" take turns " in the use of tiny plots. 

All these healthful activities and the sunshine 
and fresh air, have marvellous and permanent 
effect in liberating " righteousness " and diminish- 
ing crime ; happy and intensely interested chil- 



126 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

dren or older people are not usually those who 
fill reformatories. Notwithstanding all this, the 
streets claim many, many children, especially 
when schools are closed for the summer; not- 
withstanding, too, the many and delightful vaca- 
tion schools. 

As another illustration of the new view point, 
we mention that fine work of college men and 
women, the Vacation Daily Bible Schools, which 
has already developed four distinct stages. 
First : A warm day in the summer vacation ; 
the sun is hot, the city streets are dusty. Chil- 
dren are idling or quarrelling in these streets, their 
efforts at amusement having been checked by the 
" cop." A pleasant-looking, energetic young 
lady, who walks in a way that indicates that she 
finds life worth living, makes her way to some of 
the listless or fighting children. She talks awhile 
in an animated way, and presently starts off in 
the direction of a cool-looking, ivy-covered 
church. The children follow her, and they all 
troop into the church, by one door, just at the 
moment when a brisk young man is ushering in 
a group of boys through another door. 

There is singing, the beginning of what will 
be, before vacation is over, beautiful and delight- 
ful music. There are Bible stories, to which the 
children listen with great delight. Some one 
who knows how tells the story of Joseph, or 
David, perhaps, or Daniel. These tales are new 



BLAZING A KEW TEAIL 127 

to the children ; they do not know, as they listen 
breathlessly, whether Joseph will ever get out of 
that well, whether the mighty giant will crush the 
life out of David, or how soon the lions may 
devour Daniel. So it is all very exciting. 

After an hour of stories and more singing, 
there is an hour of pleasant work with the hands, 
weaving, carving, sewing more singing, then 
the children go out again into the hot and dusty 
streets, but they have had a fine time and will 
surely come again to-morrow. Besides that 
pleasure, the brisk young man has invited the 
boys to play ball with him in the afternoon. 

Second : Many such groups in other churches 
of the same city. 

Third : Similar groups in other cities. 

Fourth : A national organization of such 
groups, which may become a pioneer to other 
nations. 

One of the noblest illustrations of the new plan 
of prevention of crime and misery rather than 
punishment for it, is seen in the Juvenile Court. 
By this method of dealing with youthful break- 
ers of the law, thousands of boys and girls are 
saved to live lives of right-doing, of self-respect 
and the respect of others. The most celebrated 
of these courts is in Denver, but in many cities 
the plan here inaugurated by Judge Lindsay has 
been adopted. 

All these instances are simply illustrations of 



128 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

the new spirit at work which would help boys 
and girls and men and women to come up to the 
highest stature of manhood and womanhood that 
it is possible for them to attain. 

This spirit works in other ways in city and in 
country ; among Americans and those who are 
becoming Americans ; and thus Christian people 
are trying to meet the new conditions of this rap- 
idly changing age. 

Some one has said that if we could but stand 
off and view the events of which we are a part 
we would clearly see that we are in the midst of 
as revolutionary changes as were any movements 
of the Renaissance or of the Reformation, and a 
great writer has told us that if at this juncture we 
can rally sufficient religious faith and moral 
strength to snap the bonds of evil and turn the 
present unparallelled economic and intellectual 
resources of humanity to the harmonious develop- 
ment of a new social life, the generations yet un- 
born will mark this as that great day of the Lord 
for which the ages waited, and count us blessed 
for sharing in the apostolate that proclaimed it. 1 

Thus may we see the spirit of America devel- 
oped by the old frontier fulfill itself in a true 
Christianity, and our inheritance won for us by 
the courage and labours of the pioneers, and en- 
riched by our faith and hope and love be the yet 
nobler inheritance of the generations to come. 
1 " Christianity and the Social Crisis," p. 422. 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 129 



HOW ONE MAN SAVED A TOWN 

( To be used as a reading} 

BY GEORGE HOLLEY GILBERT 

Reprinted by kind permission of The Outlook 

THE town of X , well settled by im- 
migrants for Connecticut and south- 
western Massachusetts in 1761, was 
run down. Broad stretches of hillside and even 
some of the lowland, which once produced from 
fifteen to twenty-five bushels of wheat to the acre, 
were covered so thickly with prairie weed (Poten- 
tilla fruticosd) and steeple-top that even Angora 
goats could not find subsistence among it. Pastures 
which until the middle of last century had af- 
forded the best of grazing, pastures clean and 
well fenced, were now given over to brush and 
thistles, to brakes and briers, and the few cattle 
that ranged through the thickets were ill-favoured 
and lean-fleshed like the harbingers of famine in 
Pharaoh's dream. 

THEN AND Now: A CONTRAST 
Some of the valley meadows where our fathers 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Mr. Gilbert's story carries us back in 
thought to the old frontier of New England and at the same 
time presents in a true picture, the twentieth century " fron- 
tier." It furnishes practical answer to many of the questions 
raised in the foregoing study of present-day conditions and is a 
fine illustration in the concrete of the " new " patriotism. 



130 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

saw clover and timothy waist-high in June, and 
luxuriant fields of corn in August, were "sick- 
lied o'er " with a little faded wire-grass, rarely 
thick enough to furnish a screen for the nest of 
the bobolink and song-sparrow. Only the wide- 
spreading forests looked sound and vigorous, as 
one could easily believe they had appeared to 

the first settlers. But the people of X made 

little use of the forests. 

Where the meadows and pastures were run 
out, the houses and barns were dilapidated, sug- 
gesting by their hingeless doors, their rotting 
sills and broken window-panes an abandonment 
of the struggle with time and the elements. Old 
houses were seldom repaired, new ones were 
never built unless for summer use by city people. 
The life of the town in general, prior to the 
career which we are about to sketch, was slowly 

receding. As X was a purely agricultural 

community, the exhaustion of the soil lowered 
the tone and vitality of the inhabitants socially 
and religiously, as a low fever saps the resources 
of the human system. 

THE TREND IN THE WRONG DIRECTION 
The district school was indeed still in session, 
but with diminishing numbers and a marked de- 
cline in the efficiency of the teachers, due, no 
doubt, in part to the diminution of the school 
funds of the town. The church also was still 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 131 

open every Sunday, but the little, dispirited con- 
gregation heard no voice calling them to possess 
the land. Half of the meeting-house sheds were 
filled with old wagons, lumber and sawdust. The 
roll of the church contained names which even 
the most charitable person could not believe to 
be written in the book of life, and offenses against 
divine law which the Jews of old punished with 
stoning were allowed to flourish in the light of 
day, a constant menace to the morals of the ris- 
ing generation. There had been a grange in the 
town for a few years, but it had gone to pieces, 
as everything else seemed to be doing as fast as 

possible. Things were not as bad in X 

by a good deal as they might have been, but the 
trend had long been in the wrong direction. 
The present was depressing, and no one saw 
better days ahead. The settlement plan for the 
regeneration of decadent towns, which was to be 
set forth attractively and forcibly in The Outlook 
in the year 1900, had not yet risen on the 
thought of men. 

THE STARTING-POINT OF A FORWARD MOVEMENT 
Then something took place in the town of 

X , in the year 1888 an event of the same 

mysterious sort as those that have been the start- 
ing-points of many forward movements in human 
history. A young man, born and brought up in 
the town and loving it well, who had been edu- 



132 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

cated at the district school, at an academy in a 
neighbouring town, and an agricultural college, 
formed a notable decision. He had come home 
to the old farm with his diploma and carrying in 
his pocket an offer of a position with good pay 
in the Bureau of Agriculture in Washington. 
There was also the attraction of life at the na- 
tional capital and of association with experts in 
all departments of agricultural science. But this 
was not all. His own brother was in Iowa on a 
large farm, and had written him glowing letters 
of the opportunities which awaited him beyond 
the Mississippi. 

The young man in question, whose identity 
we may not disclose but whom we will call, sym- 
bolically, Mr. Life, was not deaf to these calls. 
He would have done the natural thing had he 
gone to Washington, or, if he wished a more in- 
dependent life, had gone to Iowa. His father 
advised him to go into the Government office ; 
no one held out any inducement to lead him to 
remain at home. 

NOT MONEY BUT MANHOOD AND SERVICE: 
A VISION 

But he had been asking the question in him- 
self, What should be my aim in life? And 
whenever he thought seriously on the question, 
it seemed clear that the aim should not be money, 
but manhood and service. The question of aim 



BLAZING A NEW TRAIL 133 

led on to the question, Where can I make most 
of myself and do most for my kind ? Then there 
rose before his inner eye the vision of another 

town of X , a town in which the trend was 

upward, where farming paid, where homes were 
attractive, where social life was clean and gener- 
ous, where school and church stood for more 
than they did at present or ever had in the past. 
What nobler ambition could he have than to 
realize this vision ? Would not this be as worthy 
a contribution to his native land as he could hope 
to make anywhere? The vision haunted him, 
and, believing that he could turn the tide of 

affairs in X , he decided to do it. 

This was twenty years ago, and twenty years 
are not a long time in the life of a town. But 
the tide was turned, and the vision of the young 
man has been in part realized. And this is how 
it has been done. 

TURNING THE TIDE 

In ten years he rejuvenated the old farm. He 
knew that this was fundamental, that his vision 
of a higher town life rested on clear success in 
farming. Here he was confronted by three 
serious problems, which tested his Yankee wit 
as well as his experience and knowledge gained 
at the agricultural college. There was, first of 
all, the problem of help. The physical tasks 
awaiting him were too great for one man, how- 



134 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

ever strong and full of hope. Otherwise his 
father would have accomplished those tasks, but 
as a matter of fact he was always " under the 
harrow." 

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF " HELP " 

Following the example of a lumberman whom 
he knew, Mr. Life went to New York, hired a 
young Swede, and brought him with his wife 

back to X . The old tenement which his 

father had used for storage had been thoroughly 
repaired, freshly painted and papered, and pro- 
vided with new furniture. This involved some 
expense, but he felt that it was good business 
policy as well as a Christian sort of thing to give 
the man who was to work with him an attractive 
and comfortable home. He had even had the 
forethought, while in New York, after he had 
found his man, to subscribe for a Swedish weekly 
for him ; and perhaps it is not too much to say 
that the spirit which prompted this little act for the 

stranger who was to farm with him up in X 

was itself, in good part, the solution of the labour 
problem in his case. It was this spirit which led 
him at the end of a year to take the Swede into 
partnership with him, giving him besides his 
monthly wage a percentage of all produce that 
was marketed. After three years a second 
Swedish family, near relatives of the first, was 
secured, and the farm now afforded ample oppor- 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 135 

tunity for all. To anticipate a little, it may be 
noticed here that the second man turned out to 
be an exceptionally successful gardener, and a 
piece of land which had yielded about thirty dol- 
lars a year in grass, a swampy place infested by 
moles, was brought by him in three summers to 
yield chiefly in celery just thirty-fold as much 
revenue. Little more need be said of Mr. Life's 
relation to the problem of help. The immigrant 
and cooperation in a liberal spirit this was the 
solution in his case. 

THE SECOND PROBLEM 

The second problem which the young man 
faced was the restoration of the soil. Here his 
agricultural course and his constant contact, 
through books and papers, with the Government 
experiment stations and with progressive farm- 
ers for there are progressive farmers even in 
rural New England were of great value. Fully 
forty acres of his two hundred he proceeded at 
once to reforest, sowing sugar maple seed over a 
large area that was most easily accessible, and a 
variety of coniferous and deciduous trees on the 
remaining acres, making a special experiment 
with the eucalyptus for railway ties. These forty 
acres are now rapidly becoming a valuable asset, 
and promise in another twenty years to be worth 
several times as much as the entire farm when he 
took it. 



136 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

CONCENTRATION 

In regard to the better grade of land, that 
which was tolerably level and free from rocks, 
the chief point in Mr. Life's method, as he tells 
me, was concentration. Not concentration on 
one crop, for he has greatly increased the variety 
of products from his farm, but concentration on 
a small piece of land. Beginning with a few 
acres, he has now, in twenty years, brought from 
thirty to thirty-five acres of land up to a high 
state of fertility. He soon discovered that the 
soil was not so completely exhausted as had been 
thought. It was in part only " tired " of doing 
the same thing year after year, with no assistance 
except that of rain and sun. Intensive farming, 
such as is practised in Saxony, for example, Mr. 
Life thinks best adapted, not only to his place 

in X , but to hundreds of farms throughout 

New England. 

THE PROBLEM OF A MARKET 
The third and more delicate of the greater 
problems which had to be met by Mr. Life was 

how to market his produce. No one in X . 

understood how to do this. Maple syrup of ex- 
cellent quality was sold in bulk for sixty or 
seventy cents a gallon, and then, having been 
heavily adulterated, was retailed in the cities for 
twice as much. Mr. Life did what all farmers in 
similar circumstances must learn to do, indi- 



BLAZING A NEW TRAIL 137 

vidually or cooperatively ; he studied the markets, 
visited two or three of the nearest large cities, 
showed his produce in practical and attractive 
form, and sold direct to large houses. He 
learned in this way what was demanded, in what 
form various articles were most salable, and where 
to sell. The amount saved in this manner, to- 
gether with the saving on some of the larger 
purchases necessary for the home and farm, 
which he secured by buying in the city, was of 
itself sufficient to make a success of what would 
otherwise have been the old discouraging story. 
There was also a real satisfaction, not to be over- 
looked, in the consciousness of being able de- 
cently and profitably to complete the farmer's 
task. 

AFTER TEN YEARS 

These three problems, though by no means 
the only ones which confronted Mr. Life, are 
enough to introduce into this brief chronicle. 
With their solution and ten years of enthusiastic 
work, the old farm was transformed and the 
material basis was secured for the realization of 
the higher part of his vision. He had made 

farming pay in X , pay not only in dollars 

and in the large increase in the value of property, 
but also in pleasure and in the sense of power 
that was gained by triumphing over adverse con- 
ditions. His example gave light and hope to 



138 THE CALL OP THE WATEES 

others in the neighbourhood, and a half-dozen 
farms were soon beginning to rise with his own. 
In more than one case intelligent cooperation 
proved that where there had previously been 
hardly enough to feed and clothe one family 
there was now enough to feed and clothe two, 
and something left over. 

INTENSIVE FARMING 

The idea of intensive farming also won its way, 
and, as the years have passed, it has created lit- 
tle oases in the midst of the general poverty of 
the fields. In regard to the marketing of pro- 
duce, the neighbours of Mr. Life were glad to 
make use of his knowledge and ability, for not 
every farmer was qualified to follow his example ; 
and the result was a cooperative sellers' league, 
through which Mr. Life, who has always been its 
president and has gladly given his services, has 
been able to raise the standard of excellence in a 
number of important products. 

THE ORIGINAL AIM 

But in the ten years given to saving the old 
farm Mr. Life did not lose sight of his original 
aim manhood and service. Instead of fading 
into the light of common day, his vision of a 
higher type of town took on new definiteness, 
and seemed more realizable and worth while 
than at first. As he succeeded in farming, and 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 139 

saw the new spring time, which was calling out a 
wealth on his own place undreamed of before, 
touching one and another of the neighbouring 
farms, he began to wonder whether he could not 
carry on into the higher life of the town the 
principles by which he was solving the problems 
of the material life. He pondered the matter 
deeply. 

THE SCHOOL AND THE CHURCH 
The little unpainted schoolhouse, half buried 
in a tangle of choke-cherry bushes, which he 
saw twenty times a day, often reminded him of 
it, and he could not fail to think upon it Sunday, 
when, with a few others, he went to the well-nigh 
deserted and altogether discouraged village 
church. Could he do for the school and the 
church anything like what he had done for his 
farm ? 

So he asked himself what he had really done 
for the farm, and found that he could state it very 
simply. 

MAKING IT PAY 

He had put himself into it ; he had made it 
pay ; by making it pay he had awakened the de- 
sire in other farmers to put his ideas into prac- 
tice, and they had begun to do it. He had not 
urged his neighbours to change their methods. 
He had not taken pains to distribute among 



140 THE CALL OP THE WATEES 

them books and papers on agriculture or maga- 
zine articles on the decadent New England town. 

He had just shown them that farming in X 

might be made to pay well. Thus far this had 
been his only gospel not preached but simply 
incarnated in his new- old farm. Not all heeded 
it, but some did, and the tide was turned. 
Could he apply this simple principle to the higher 

life of X ? 

This is what Mr. Life undertook in earnest 
about ten years ago. The district school, as it 
was near and drew its pupils from his immediate 
neighbourhood, seemed the best field in which to 
begin. He knew he was not a trained educator, 
but he was on the ground and the trained edu- 
cator was not, and, moreover, he knew the peo- 
ple. So, in the leisure which he was now able to 
get from farm work, he studied this new soil and 
began to put his life into it, as he had put it into 
his land ten years before. 

STUDY OF THE NEW SOIL 
The voters of the district had confidence in 
him, for he had not only saved his farm, but he 
had done it in a generous, neighbourly spirit. 
When, therefore, he said that the school ought 
to yield double or treble the returns which they 
were getting from it, and that he thought he saw 
how this could be done, they replied that if he 
would go ahead they would follow. The result 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 141 

for we cannot follow the course of affairs in 
detail was briefly this : At the end of five years 
they had had but two teachers, and hoped to 
keep the present one indefinitely ; they had their 
studies graded as in the Massachusetts grammar 
schools ; they had a library of between sixty and 
seventy volumes, in which the history of New 
England, the poets and essayists of New Eng- 
land, had a prominent place ; and best of all, to 
judge from the interest which the children took 
in its varied occupations and aims, was the school 
farm of two acres fenced and given by Mr. Life 
for the use of the scholars. 

THE SCHOOL FARM 

All work on it was directed by a committee 
of three, consisting of the teacher and of one boy 
and one girl elected annually by the school. 
Mr. Life, besides furnishing the children seed and 
friendly advice, offered to take all the produce of 
the school farm at its market value. He made a 
suggestion, which has become a tradition at the 
school, that the children should have one-half of 
all that they could produce, and that they should 
give the other half to the beautifying of the 
schoolhouse. 

Two facts remain to be noticed in this connec- 
tion. As the school entered on its sixth year, 
the children of two neighbouring districts, seeing 
what was going on, asked if they might not come 



142 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

to this school. The outcome was that the nearer 
of the two districts was merged in Mr. Life's, 
and the school funds were correspondingly in- 
creased. The, children were eager to go the 
longer distance for the sake of being in " Mr. Life's 
school." 

PROGRESSIVE FARMERS' WIVES 
The other fact is this : In the ten years since 
the rebirth of the school, whose roll has never 
contained more than thirty names, seven have 
gone away for further education, while in the 
twenty-five years prior to that event only one 
pupil of the school had continued his studies. 
And besides this a considerable number of the 
scholars have imbibed so much of Mr. Life's 
spirit in the school farm that, if they become 

farmers or farmers' wives in X , it is almost 

certain that they will be of the progressive sort. 
It is no wonder, then, that Mr. Life sees in the 
metamorphosis of the district school of his neigh- 
bourhood a partial fulfillment of his vision, nor 
that he takes pleasure in turning a generous part 
of the increase of his farm into this hopeful chan- 
nel. 

But in following Mr. Life's relation to the 
children of his neighbourhood we have passed the 
beginning of his third effort for his native town. 
He had made his farm a gospel to the country- 
side ; he had made his district school a magnet 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 143 

which actually drew boys and girls from adjoin- 
ing districts ; but for a long time he saw no way 
of applying his fundamental principle to the 
church. 

" CONCENTRATION " ONCE MORE 
He felt that the church, or rather the religious 
nature of the membership, was in a condition 
similar to that of his poorest land, which he was 
now reforesting. But how reforest this spirit- 
ually waste soil ? How should he help to make 
the church in its way as attractive as his meadows 
or the school farm ? He was ready to give of 
his life, if he could see how to do it so as to se- 
cure adequate returns. It finally occurred to 
him, to use his own figure, that he might regard 
the minister as he did the piece of land which 
he chose at the first for intensive farming. So 
he quietly began to concentrate his energies at 
this point. He brought the minister again and 
again to his farm, showed him just how he made 
the farm pay, explained how the soil had been 
raised to a high state of fertility, how he utilized 
all waste, and how he disposed of his produce. 

BREAKING THE BAN OF HOPELESSNESS 
At length, when he had baptized the minis- 
ter in his own enthusiasm for farming, when he 
had broken the ban of hopelessness that had al- 
ways seemed to rest on him, and had created in 



144 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

him an interest in something progressive, he told 
him frankly of his aim in life that his farm was 
intended as an evangelist, and invited him to be- 
come a silent partner and to receive, for three 
years at least, one-quarter of the farm's net earn- 
ings for use in his church work. This experience 
was to the minister like the appearance of the 
angel to Paul on the ship which was driving 
helplessly and hopelessly before the northeast 
typhoon. He saw the analogy between an ex- 
hausted farm and an exhausted church, and argued 
that he ought to be able to secure as clear a 
transformation of his church as Mr. Life had 
made of the old meadows. 

The idea of intensive spiritual farming took 
hold of him. He began to try it on himself. 
Instead of getting next to nothing from two 
hundred acres planted, so to speak, for soci- 
ology, evolution, political economy, theology an- 
cient, theology modern, new and newest he 
decided to concentrate on the simple religion of 
Jesus. 

INTENSIVE SPIRITUAL FARMING 

And as he did so there was at once a new note 
in his preaching, a new spirit in his life, and, 

what had been unknown in the church of X 

for a generation, there were unmistakable signs 
of power. Here was something so new and 
strange that he hardly knew what to think of 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 145 

it returns, dividends, income from his religion. 
Here was something, after all, that paid. 

Of course his work in the parish, with scarcely 
any premeditation on his part, became intensive 
like that which he had been doing in his own 
study. It is too soon to say much of results, 
even if I were at liberty to do so. Exhausted 
land can be renewed in three or four years ; an 
exhausted church requires longer. But it is 
clear that a new day has dawned in the church of 

X . There are no more organizations for 

religious work. Indeed, it is quite likely that the 
arrival of life may render some of the existing 
organizations unnecessary. 

" 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want." 

Intensive farming brought increase of life to 

the meadows in X , and is doing the same in 

the church. 

THE VISION COMING TO FULFILLMENT 
Twenty years are just passed, and the vision 
is coming to fulfillment. At three crucial points 
the tide has been turned. This has been done 
from within, and every one who visits Mr. Life's 
farm or the district school, as I have done, will 
say that his work pays. Yes, and every one 
who has an ear for the Gospel, every one who 
recognizes the signs of spiritual power, will say 



146 THE CALL OP THE WATEKS 

that nothing that Mr. Life has done is really 
paying better than his private partnership with 
the village minister. 

In a few months our New England schools of 
agriculture will confer diplomas on about seventy- 
five young men. Of these a few may enter the em- 
ploy of the Government, more will probably feel 
called to become teachers in the rapidly develop- 
ing agricultural institutions of the country ; but if 
half of the number, yea, if one-quarter or even one- 
tenth of the number, would dedicate themselves, 
in the spirit of Mr. Life, to the rejuvenation of 
rural New England, they would make this year 
forever memorable. If rural New England is to 
be saved for the descendants of the Pilgrims and 
the Puritans, if it is to furnish in coming years a 
high type of agricultural prosperity and an in- 
creasing number of homes in which leaders shall 
be trained who will be worthy of the New Eng- 
land succession, then something like the career 
of Mr. Life must enter into the history of many 
towns. 



THE OLD AND NEW CHARITY 

Civilization spares us more and more the sight of anguish, 
and our imaginations must be correspondingly sharpened to see 
in the check-book an agent as spiritual and poetic as the grime 
and bloodstain of ministering hands. 

" In the capitalists the corrective emotion is a generosity that 
is developing in two forms. The first may be called use-altru- 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 147 

ism, for it is such paternal kindness as opens private picture- 
galleries to the public and permits a limited and conditional use 
of the parks and gardens of estates. In that measure it adds to 
the fund of socialized wealth. The other sort is an economic 
altruism, a public generosity which is willing to bestow gifts 
without conditions and to be taxed for public and far-reaching 
ends. Both kinds grow rapidly; and each capitalizes wealth 
for social purposes with the quality of future utility. It is this 
quality which must be lacking in service-altruism. The differ- 
ence is that which separates the old from the new charity. 
The one crossed the road to help the Samaritan after he had 
suffered under bad conditions of highway management; the 
other patrols the road and arrests the wayside thieves before 
the traveller falls among them. Service-altruism binds the 
wounds, breathes forgiveness, and solaces the victims of recur- 
ring disasters without attacking their causes. Income-altruism 
hews to their base, for it has the money power to police and to 
light the road to Jericho." 

Character is aroused by vivid ideas and long-sought ends. It 
is never built out of new material or improved by hardship and 
restraint 

It often happens that the simplest means attain the greatest 
ends. Taken alone, pleasure appears sinful, and work is a 
drudgery, but when the two are united in just proportions the 
effects seem magical. 

Now look at the brighter side. It is, without doubt, more 
difficult than was once believed to lift a man with normal facul- 
ties to a higher plane of existence ; but it is far easier than we 
have thought to raise a man below the general level of humanity 
up to it. There are no differences between him and his normal 
neighbours which cannot be rapidly obliterated. He does not 
lack their blood, but their health, their good fortune, their 
culture, and their environment. The doctrine that teaches that 
evolution is the slowest of moving forces also teaches that the 
distinctions between men on the two sides of the line of poverty 



148 THE CALL OF THE WATEBS 

are frailer than we have been led to believe. The faculties 
and social qualities of human nature were implanted in it 
before the beginnings of history ; but health, vigour, and good 
fortune are determined by to-day's environment. The New 
Basis of Civilization. 

A THOUSAND MILES OF BOYS 

Next July a message is to be carried afoot from the Mayor of 
New York to the Mayor of Chicago. The carriers will be 
seven hundred boys between fifteen and seventeen years old. 
For a week or so, during the night as well as the day, some lad 
will be speeding across the country at the rate of a mile run. 
The first will start from the City Hall in New York and run 
northward. At the end of a mile a second will be awaiting him 
and on his arrival will seize the message and carry it to the 
next mile-post. There is probably but one organization that 
could select these carriers solely from its own membership 
along the route, and, by representatives already on the line of 
the race, arrange for all details and guard the race as it occurs. 
That organization is the Young Men's Christian Association. 
The boys selected for this event will be under special training. 
No boy will have any other competitor than time, or receive 
any prize other than the honour of wearing his Association's 
colours. A generation ago no religious organization could have 
attempted anything of this sort. What the Young Men's 
Christian Association has accomplished in uniting with the 
Hebrew the Greek ideal in religion, interpreting Christianity 
as a force for the welfare of the whole man, body as well as 
mind and spirit, is dramatically embodied in this picturesque 
undertaking. The Outlook. 

THE PRAYER 

Lover of souls, indeed, 

But Lover of bodies too, 
Seeing in human flesh 

The God shine through ; 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 149 

Hallowed be Thy name, 

And, for the sake of Thee, 
Hallowed be all men, 

For Thine they be. 

Doer of deeds divine, 

Thou, the Father's Son, 
In all Thy children may 

Thy will be done, 
Till each works miracles 

On poor and sick and blind, 
Learning from Thee the art 

.Of being kind. 

For Thine is the glory of love, 

And Thine the tender power, 
Touching the barren heart 

To leaf and flower, 
Till not the lilies alone, 

Beneath Thy gentle feet, 
But human lives for Thee 

Grow white and sweet. 

And Thine shall the Kingdom be, 

Thou Lord of Love and Pain, 
Conqueror over death 

By being slain. 
And we, with the lives like Thine 

Shall cry in the great day when 
Thou comest to claim Thine own, 

"All Hail! Amen." 

Dawson. 

THE SOCIAL CRISIS 

Since the Reformation began to free the mind and to direct 
the force of religion towards morality there has been a per- 
ceptible increase of speed. Humanity is gaining in elasticity 



150 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

and capacity for change and every gain in general intelligence, 
in organizing capacity, in physical and moral soundness, and 
especially in responsiveness to ideal motives, again increases 
the ability to advance without disastrous reactions. The 
swiftness of evolution in our own country proves the immense 
latent perfectibility in human nature. 



Last May a miracle happened. At the beginning of the 
week the fruit trees bore brown and greenish buds. At the end 
of the week they were robed in bridal garments of blossom. 
But for weeks and months the sap had been rising and distend- 
ing the cells and maturing the tissues which were half ready in 
the fall before. The swift unfolding was the culmination of a 
long process. Perhaps these nineteen centuries of Christian 
influence have been a long preliminary stage of growth, and 
now the flower and fruit are almost here. 

Western civilization is passing through a social revolution 
unparalleled in history for scope and power. Its coming was 
inevitable. The religious, political, and intellectual revolutions 
of the past five centuries, which together created the modern 
world, necessarily had to culminate in an economic and social 
revolution such as is now upon us. 

By universal consent, this social crisis is the overshadowing 
problem of our generation. The industrial and commercial life 
of the advanced nations are in the throes of it. In politics all 
issues and methods are undergoing upheaval and re-alignment 
as the social movement advances. In the world of thought all 
the young and serious minds are absorbed in the solution of the 
social problems. Even literature and art point like compass- 
needles to this magnetic pole of all our thought. 



Individually we are not more gifted than our grandfathers, 
but collectively we have wrought out more epoch-making dis- 



BLAZING A NEW TRAIL 151 

coveries and inventions in one century than the whole race in 
the untold centuries that have gone before. If the twentieth 
century could do for us in the control of social forces what the 
nineteenth did for us in the control of natural forces, our grand- 
children would live in a society that would be justified in re- 
garding our present social life as semi-barbarous. Christianity 
and the Social Crisis. 



HEALTH AND SANITY 

That there is a tide in the affairs of men, with flood and ebb, 
we will admit readily enough, even without the added assur- 
ance of the poet. All about us, if our eyes are open to see, we 
discover the subsiding of certain great tides of popular feeling. 
Equally clear is the rising of others, slowly, perhaps, like the 
water-line on a shallow beach, or as swiftly as a tidal wave. 
Public interest goes by pulses. 

Magazines devoted to physical training, to athletic sports ; 
articles everywhere on good health and right living, indicate 
the enormous, unprecedented interest which the American 
public feels just now in setting life right on the physical side. 

Has the tide reached the flood yet ? It is hard to say. But 
one thing is certain ; there will be a turn eventually a slow 
but inevitable subsidence. It is neither good science nor good 
sense to disregard this fact. BtoCfoft 



As significant, perhaps, if not more so, is the universal in- 
terest, of only a few years' growth, in the subject of personal 
and public hygiene. " The city of Philadelphia spends more 
annually in the interest of public health than did the whole 
English-speaking world a century ago." The sanitary condi- 
tions of the tenements is now a matter of official inspection. 
Free public baths are provided in many cities. Restrictions 
have been placed upon the employment of child-labour and the 
labour of women. The sanitary condition of the factories is 
the subject of official inquiry and of legal responsibility. 

Before this present great wave of interest in the health of 



152 THE CALL OF THE WATEKS 

children subsides, we must get our boards of education to in- 
corporate into their structures this provision for the creation of 
departments of school hygiene. 



Without basis of good health for our children our other 
efforts are of little value. Our education, science, literature, 
architecture, and even our religion are of no avail unless the 
human race itself remains healthy and sane. The schools are 
now a predominant influence in the lives of our children and 
must be guided towards health. Dr. Luther Gulick. 



HOW TO REACH THE IDEALS 

In whatever direction progress may seem to lie, an ideal has 
been erected as the prize to be striven for which shines forth in 
our thoughts ; but the means of reaching it are not also made 
vivid. And therefore we honour the herculean toilers who 
strive to cut direct roads towards the goal of the ideal. We 
encourage self-denial when we should encourage self-expres* 
sion. We try to suppress vices when we should release 
virtues. We laud country life when we should strive for the 
improvement of cities. We judge the poor by their family his- 
tory when we should judge them by their latent powers. We 
impose penalties when we should offer rewards. We ask for 
the gratitude of the poor when we ought to point out their 
rights to them. We dwell too long upon the weakness of the 
man who drinks and too little upon why the saloon remains at 
the corner. The New Basis of Civilization. 



CHRISTIAN MEN FOR THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC 

The possibility of the American Republic lies in her people. 
There never was a greater mistake than to assume that our institu- 
tions are safe because we have free schools and a free public opin- 
ion which finds expression through a free ballot. China has had 
schools, but her people are not blessed. For three centuries 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 153 

Spain had town governments as independent and self-support- 
ing and as representative as those of New England, but her 
people were not prosperous. De Tocqueville says that fifty 
years before the great revolution public opinion was as omnip- 
otent in France as it is in America, but it did not save France. 
What China and Spain and France needed was men and that 
is what America needs and must have ; men, men who are pre- 
pared to look their own destiny and their own responsibilities 
in the face and prepare for the destiny by meeting the responsi- 
bilities. 

This is our need Christian manhood. The stream retreats 
to its source. The heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the 
moon. The great tides of political and social achievement do 
not rise above the manhood of a nation's citizens. 

" God give us men ! A time like this demands 
Clean minds, pure hearts, true faith, and ready hand. 
Men who possess opinions and a will ; 
Men whom desire for office does not kill ; 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
Men who have honour ; men who will not lie ; 
Tall men ; sun-crowned ; who live above the fog 
In public duty and in private thinking." 

Such men are cultured only by Christianity. Let Christian- 
ity have full play in America, in her schools and in her legis- 
latures, in her business and in her politics, in her homes and in 
her churches and there will be developed a fine Americanism 
and there is nothing finer than a fine Americanism. " Chris- 
tian America." 

" And I remember still 
The words, and from whence they came, 
Not he that repeateth the name 
But he that doeth the will. 
And him evermore I behold 
Walking in Galilee, 



154 THE CALL OF THE WATERS 

Through the cornfield's waving gold 
By the shores of the Beautiful Sea. 

" And that voice still soundeth on 
From the centuries that are gone 
To the centuries that shall be! 
From all vain pomps and shows, 
From the pride that overflows, 

" Poor sad humanity 
Through all the dust and heat 
Turns back with bleeding feet 
By the weary round it came, 
Unto the simple thought, 
By the great Master taught, 
And that remaineth still, 
Not he that repeateth the name 
But he that doeth the will." 

Longfellow. 

POINTERS 

1. Submission versus Prevention. 

2. The National Health Association. 

3. Diseases once thought hopeless now almost or quite 

stamped out. 

4. Change in view point, in morals also. Lotteries and 

duels for instance, were once accepted without question. 

5. The Problem of the Underfed. 

6. How solved ? in Europe and in America. 

7. Tenement House Reform. 

8. Playground Association. 

9. Vacation Daily Bible Schools. 
IO. The Juvenile Court. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Name at least ten " twentieth century pioneers " who have 

blazed a new trail for altruistic advance. 

2. Does the Church practice the old or the new method of 

dealing with suffering and wrong-doing ? 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 155 

3. Give Bible foundations for the new ways of meeting the 

new conditions of the twentieth century " frontier." 

4. What are the present gains of the Child Labour League ? 

5. What are after-results of child labour ? 

6. What plans are in process of formation in regard to health 

officers in public schools ? 

7. Sum up present achievements of the Playground Associa- 

tion. 

8. What is the " Juvenile Court," as administered by Judge 

Lindsay ? 

9. How may the Spirit of America as developed by the old 

frontier be fulfilled in a true Christianity ? 

FOR REFERENCE 

Books : 

" The New Basis of Civilization." 
" Christianity and the Social Crisis." 
" The Social Teachings of Jesus." 
The Church and the Changing Order." 
Magazines : 

The Playground. 
The World's Work. 
7'he Commons. 
Current Magazines and 
Daily Press. 
Special Articles : 

"Rural Development." The Commons, June 6, 

1908. 
" Art Brought into the Lives of Wage-Earners." 

Charities, Feb. 4, 1905. 

" The Kid Wot Works at Night." Everybody's, 
January, 1908. 

WHY ARE THEY STARVING? 

Teachers say that school children are starving on the East 
Side and fainting in class rooms every morning. The situation 
is so grave that relief committees are organizing to open free 



156 THE CALL OF THE WATEES 

kitchens. One school principal testifies that he knows of twenty 
pupils in his institution alone who have been coming to their 
studies without breakfast. Numerous other reputable citizens 
familiar with the Russian Jewish quarters where the destitution 
is reported, bear witness to a similar state of affairs within their 
respective circles of acquaintance. There is, therefore, no good 
reason for dismissing the whole matter as an invention of soft- 
hearted charity workers, or as a sensational press. Inasmuch 
as publicity will probably relieve the plight of these hungry 
children, it is pertinent to ask how circumstances have con- 
spired to cause such distress and how a recurrence of present 
conditions may be made more difficult. 

School children are starving partly because their parents are 
desperately ignorant, but partly also as a result of the educated 
public's sluggish response to the suggestions and demands of 
highly trained, experienced charity workers. It is significant 
that the suffering is found chiefly among Russian Jewish chil- 
dren. Heavily handicapped by Oriental superstitions, ignorance 
of the English language and American customs and by an al- 
most inevitable clannishness, the Russian Jewish parent is sure 
to feel the pinch of poverty in dull times long before the wide- 
awake, mobile, optimistic Italian, or the cleanly, independent, 
quick-witted North European does. But even this disadvantage 
might be overcome in large measure if the American people 
would give serious thought to the vital problem of distributing 
labour. Owing to neglect in this matter, East Siders cannot 
find bread for their children, while the Kansas farmers' employ- 
ment bureaus are hunting for twenty-eight thousand farm- 
hands. Thanks to it, in part, drunken ditch-diggers in Nevada 
have all the work they care to undertake at four dollars a day, 
while skilled mechanics in large Eastern towns spend all their 
savings in an idle winter. The three requisites of an effective 
distributing system are, for all practical ends, wholly lacking in 
this country. There is no national or interstate employment 
bureau financed and managed on a scale commensurate with 
its duties and opportunities. There is no system of cheap rail- 
way transportation for working men going to and from employ- 



BLAZING A NEW TEAIL 157 

ment. The " man with the hoe " must travel from town to 
town either at the same rates which merchants pay or else free 
" on the bumpers " with the " hoboes." Finally, there are no la- 
bour colonies for the reception on honourable terms of honest 
working men in times of acute depression. Is it strange that 
children go hungry on the East Side ? Rather is it remarkable 
that there is not far more misery. New York Tribune, June 
4, 1908.