CHAPTER VII

.

THE SOCIAL WELFARE.

Quaker Hill is an example of the working of a religious and economic system toward its inevitable results in social welfare. The results consciously sought were mainly personal. They were not seeking culture or security or equity, and not attempting to create a community, those early Quakers; but they sought with all their heart and mind after prosperity, individual and communal; after vitality, morality and that self-expression which is in the form of self-sacrifice or altruism in "the service of others." The conscious mind of the Quaker fathers of this community was other-worldly, except in the matters of business--of which more later. That "spiritual" state of mind was intensely individual. All the interests it regarded were of the self, conceived as an inner, immaterial duplicate of the body, destined for heaven after death, and now enjoying interchanges of experience, especially of emotion and intelligence, with the Deity, during life.

It was a mind consciously framed to serve personal development, with no thought of public or common interests. Yet subconsciously the Quaker was acutely aware of common interests. A Quaker frequently uses the expression "I feel myself in unity with them." Their doctrine of the indwelling of the divine in every man made them quick to feel common emotion. Their group-sympathy was lively and strong. They felt the community, though they never thought upon it. Subconsciously, though not consciously, they were public-spirited. They acted upon a fine social spirit, thought they taught no social gospel.

"The supreme result of efficient organization,"[37] says Professor F. H. Giddings, "and the supreme test of efficiency is the development of the personality of the social man. If the man himself becomes less social, less rational, less manly; if he falls from the highest type, which seeks self-realization through a critical intelligence and emotional control, to one of those lower types which manifest only the primitive virtues of power; if he becomes unsocial, the social organization, whatever its apparent merits, is failing to achieve its supreme object. If, on the contrary, the man is becoming ever better as a human being, more rational, more sympathetic, with an ever broadening consciousness of kind, then, whatever its apparent defects, the social organization is sound and efficient." Let us consider whether Quaker Hill has met this test. It has been well organized. It has had definite purposes. What has been the type of welfare enjoyed as a result? What kind of man has emerged from almost two centuries of cultivation of a religious and economic ideal?

In economic operations the Quakers dwelt in this world. They sought a living and they sought wealth--not for the services wealth can render in culture and education, but to accumulate it, possess it, invest and manage it, and to live "in plainness."

Yet they subconsciously did also seek after a prosperity that should be general. Not closely, not in any declarations or definite teachings of their code, but still in a real way, as a by-product of their code of life, they acted so that none in their community should be in want. This they did with profound wisdom--for they taught no communal doctrine--and the details of their action toward weaker members of the neighborhood were uncommonly shrewd and sensible. I will show later the effects of this in the fact that the population under our study shows the absence of defective classes in a significant degree. There are no idiots, no defective, no criminal, no pauper classes among the Quaker Hill population.

The mind of the community had, indeed, an active interest in liberty and the contribution noted above (see Ch. IV. Part I) in the agitation for the abolition of slavery in this state was an act of public spirit along the lines of a great national experience. The fact that the meeting of Friends in 1767 was held on Quaker Hill, which initiated effective

## action against slave-holding, is much cherished on the Hill, and is

commemorated in a stone and bronze memorial at the Meeting House.

Equality of suffrage and universal suffrage are jealously believed in, owing to the Quaker teaching as to woman's parity with man. Yet in the school-meeting, in which women have the same right to vote that men have, there are seldom any women present. Indeed, except for a packed meeting once in a decade, to decide some agitated question, few women attend school-meetings.

The size of the holdings of land on the Hill, and the curve of increase and decrease for seventy years, are exhibited in Table II.

TABLE II.

_Land-Holdings on Quaker Hill: Acreages on which Owners are taxed._

Years 1835 1845 1865 1875 1890 1900 1906 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No. Owners 31 26 39 51 48 53 42 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Highest Acreage 610 540 445 420 540 540 540 Higher Quartile 378 260 225 225 183.5 222.5 265 Average 222 206 150.5 147.8 137.8 154 184.2 Median 187 150 131 120 104 120 155.5 Lower Quartile 80 100 59 52 43.5 57 90 Lowest Acreage 1 42 3 6 5 1 6

The above table gives in a graphic manner the tendency of wealth to increase, on the Hill, so far as wealth is represented in land. It is to be noted that these figures, taken from the Tax-Lists of the town of Pawling, are not precisely accurate, especially in the lower ranges. There is an evident inaccuracy in the reporting of the smaller places. Yet from them the following may be inferred: First, that from the beginning of the reports, which was about the end of the period of the Quaker Community, there was a shrinkage in the size of the land-holdings on the Hill; and from the beginning of the period of the Mixed Community a rise in the general averages. The lowest of the curve is about 1890, in the Median, the average and in each of the quartiles. Second, the incoming of the Irish immigrants, who began to be land-holders about 1850, multiplied the number of small holdings of land.

Just what cause has operated in the years 1890-1906 to increase the size of the holdings of land it is hard to say, unless it be the expectation that land would have a value, which is aroused by the presence on the Hill every summer of visitors to a number equal to the numbers of the resident population. It is evident at the present time, when the "milk business" has been reduced to half in the past five years, that the farmers are holding their lands with a hope of selling.

It is worthy of remark that the tax-list of the town furnish no other data of reliable value, or even of suggestion, being obviously inaccurate and uneven in their reports of the values of land, and of the holdings of personal property.

The fact that is not recorded in the above statistics is this: that certain owners, associated in close family ties, own all the land of greatest value. Seven family groups possess, in the names of eleven of the above owners, all the land near the Hotel, all the land for which any one has ever thought of charging more than fifty dollars an acre. These eleven owners of all the land of greatest value possess probably nine-tenths of the personal property.

Holdings of property on Quaker Hill are very unequal. The smallest owner of real estate has an acre, and the largest about six hundred acres. Contrasts here are sharp and permanent. The same families have possessed certain properties for many decades, often for two centuries; and generally Quaker Hill families do not sell till they all die or move away.

Wealth is increasing on Quaker Hill in the slow course of years, and probably along the lines of present growth, will increase. It is distributed with marked inequality. The tendency, especially in central territory, is toward increasing inequality. There is "a small group at a high degree."

Yet the community is generally prosperous and well-to-do. There are none poor. Indeed, the wealthy women who began to come to Mizzen-Top Hotel in 1880, looking about for some poor to assist, were obliged to go off the Hill to the south, and lay hold of a lonely female with a curious nervous malady but self-respecting withal, and deliberately pauperize her. To this process, after some initial struggles, she has submitted through these intervening years. She has now for years been pensioned by the church in Akin Hall through the year, visited in summer by people in carriages, has maintained an extensive begging correspondence through the mails all winter, and has been generally despised by her neighbors. But she has represented to interested clergymen and charity workers on their summer vacations the fascinating and mysterious problem of poverty.[38]

Very few indeed have been the defectives. I know of none in ten years. The prevailing vitality of the community is high. There were living two years ago five persons past ninety; and one of them died in his hundredth year. Octogenarians drive the roads every day, and manage their estates with ripe discretion and unabated interest in affairs. The religious revival referred to (see