Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-09
u. S.FARM Agency
DECLARED BURDEN
Speaker Calls Agriculture De-
partment ''InfIiction'
Upon People.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.
STAFF Cnrresnnndent OF The Star

ON1NEfL011 Vt N11LG4N1A, august
9-The United States Department of
Agriculture was denounced as "just an
other of the infections upon country
people which exploit them OF their
sons and daughters and lay upon them
a burden too heavy to be borne" by
Dr. Warren H. Wilson of the Presby-
terrain board of home missions, speak
ing before the Institute OF Public At
fairs here last night.
The attack was made in the course of
DR.. Wilson's address on the decline of
the rural churches during the past 20
years. This was due in large part, he
held, to the economic plight of the
farmers.
THE Secretary of the department"
he said, always speaks the voice of
business. The chief policy for these
Two decades has been to demand that
the farmer produce for the manufac-
turer to consume more and more prod
ucts that will come in cheap to the
cities. 1t Is not an eXaggeration to
say that the present surplus of farm
products is the undesired result of this
persistent policy. If we had in Wash
ington farmers department we would
not have this present cutlery.
Criticizes Teaching.
Speaking for the churches. what
help have the national and State de-
partments rendered to country people
In understanding evolution? Their
thousands of extension agents have
taught farmers how to Gull hens, how
to make bonnet. how to breed cat
tie, how to select seeds, but they have
been silent as to the doctrine, which
they all believe, that underlies breeding
and selection. After so years of their
teaching, in every county of the Union,
the religious people living in country
places were led by fanatics and per-
secutorS into a controversy essentially
scientific about the doctrine of evolu-
ton. Why had not the teaching of
the evoluttonists who travel out from
the national and State departments
forestalled this? Because they teach
farmers not to think, but to make
money.
They interpret agriculture in terms
OF trade and commerce. The farmer
was denied the intellectual awakening
that the universities have had, and the
departments have not gained his con-
f1dence because they have tried to make
him what he knows he cannot be-a
commercial success. The farmer would
fam understand his own occupation
and he is given by the Government de-
of life of his competitors. He would
worship God after his own manner and
he Is given no large thoughts, such as
stir the imagination of his teachings,
but eXhortation to profit. which he we'll
knows is not likely to come to him.
THE present condition of distrac-
ton and depletion of the country
churches is no more than a measure
of effects produced in this country by
TO IF 70 NV ha
tional government and their neglect or
oppression by State governments"
Appeals to Churches.
Mr. Wilson appealed to the national
organizations of the larger churches to
enable educated men adequately sup
ported to fill country pulpits. He de-
plored the condition in which the older
denominations were dropping out and
in which new denominations were
forming overnight
New exhorterS ordain themselves
he said, because no one else will, to
denounce the Baptists and the Meth
odiStS. and farmers wives fall stricken
in abandoned meeting houses and roll
on the floor in conviction of the truth
of the gospel, in anguish over the theo-
logical sins of others. That is hopeful,
though it Is shocking. 1t is evidence
Generally" he continued, country
people have recognized Christianity on
a basis of utility. They get religion
and it comforts them. American rural
religion has little arrangement for God,
and is organized on the principle of its
usefulness and acceptance by man. 1t
is a series of cults of which it can be
said with some truth that they con-
Stitute worship"
religious education for rural commune
ties which will teach the discard of
moral control for tolerance. 1t will have
no long years in school to win the
scholar away from his home and his
community, but the courses of not more
than six months in which the scholar
will think upon his inherited social
order.
Scholars Aid Needed.
eft cannot advance without the help
of the scholar and scientific worker.
The daily life of the people who live
on the land is filled with wonders, or
else it is stupef1ed with superstitions
or dulled with indifferences. Only an
intelligent rural pastorate can keen the
idols, the ghosts, the totems and the
little demons out. Something bigger
than nature study and more intellectual
true that the modern farmer must be
scientific, it follows that the country
church must interpret physical and BIZ
illogical science that he may have a
faith suitable to his occupation"
The thousands of city police stations
and village lock-upS are the most pro-
life crime breeders, DR.. Hastings H.
Hart of the Russell Sage Foundation
told the round table on law enforcement
yesterday.
Most of them" he said, "are badly
lighted poorly ventilated and vermin-
infested. They are used not only for
the confinement of persons arrested for
offenses against the law, but also as
lodging places for tramps and Migrants.
In many of them it is customary to con-
fine from to IL in single room.
Often the bedding is ragged, dirty and
vermin- infested. They are the greatest
crime breeders, because they receive the
Criminal in the earliest stages of his
career and they handle more inmates
than all of the other prisons combined"
The county Jail is little better, DIR.
Hart said. 1.-THE atmosphere is vile," he
said, land the surroundings are degrad-
ing. The great majority who are sent
to jail infallibly come out worse than
when they 60 in. The United States
Jail system was modelled 200 years ago
after the British system, whereby the
jail became a perquisite of the sheriff
and was used to promote his personal
interests. This vicious system was aban-
doned in England many years ago, but
still prevails throughout the United
States"
Addicts' Influence.
Overcrowding in Atlanta and Leaven-
worth, said DR.. Hart, is 1877 per cent