In the years 1890-1905 there were only two families on the Hill which followed primitive custom in "putting in cider" into the cellar in quantity for the winter. In five more a very small quantity was kept. In the other cases it was regarded as immoral to use the beverage. The writer was only once offered a drink of alcoholic beverage in six years' residence on the Hill.
In respect to the standard of living which is regarded as necessary to the maintenance of respect and social position, the Hill exhibits two strata of the population. The city people, and the farmers and laborers. The former class, besides the Hotel and its cottages, comprise seven households, who have formed their ways of living upon the city standard. The others, resident all the year round upon the Hill, live after a standard common to American country-people generally of the better class.
The economic ideas and habits are in no way peculiar to the Hill. There survive in a few old persons some primitive industrial habits. One old lady, now about ninety, amuses herself with spinning, knitting and weaving; keeping alive all the primitive processes from the shearing of sheep in her son's field to the completed garment. Axe-helves are still made by hand in the neighborhood.
The practical arts of the community are agriculture, especially the cultivation of grass for hay, cooking and general housekeeping, and the entertainment of paid guests, as "boarders" in farmhouse and hotel. There is in addition on one farm, at Site No. 3, a slaughter-house, at which beef and mutton and pork are prepared for market, the animals being bought, pastured, fattened and killed on the place, and the meat delivered to customers, especially in the summer months, by means of a wagon, which makes its journey twice a week, over the length of the Hill and in the country eastward.
There is also a fish-wagon owned and maintained by the resident at Site No. 15, which buys fish during the year and maintains by means of a wagon a similar trade. These two are the only food supply businesses maintained on the Hill.
Economic opportunity has always appealed strongly to the Quaker Hill man and woman. In 1740 John Toffey settled at the crossing of ways which is called "Toffey's Corners," and began to make hats. Other industries followed.
In recent years, in almost every Quaker house boarders have been taken, and a better profit has been made than from the sale of milk. For twenty-five years the Mizzen-Top Hotel, accommodating two hundred and fifty guests, has represented notably this response to opportunity. The beautiful scenery, which the Quaker himself does not appreciate, because he has educated himself out of the appreciation of color and form, has offered him an opportunity of profit which he has been prompt and diligent to seize. All through the summer every one of the six largest Quaker homesteads is filled with guests. The fact cited above that in the summer there comes to the Hill a greater transient population than dwells there through the year, a population of guests, illustrates this lively economic alertness.
The emigration from the Hill since 1840 of so many persons, notably the younger and more ambitious, is in itself a token of this response. The railroad brought the opportunity; theambitious accepted it; many whole families have disappeared. Their strong members emigrated; the weaker stock died out. The Merritt, Vanderburgh, Irish, Wing, Sherman, Akin, and other families offer examples. In the place of those who departed have come others, to fill the total population. There were in 1905 on the Hill twenty-five old families with seventy-five persons, and twenty-five Irish Catholic families with one hundred persons.
The response to economic opportunity has often been too keen, and the attempt too grasping. In 1891 wealthy New Yorkers offered for certain farms so located as to command beautiful views, prices almost double what they are worth for farming. The reply was a demand in every case of one thousand dollars more than was offered; and the result was—no sale.
Land is valued, though few sales are made, at $1,000 per acre, near the Hotel. The acre numbered 42, one mile from Mizzen-Top, on Map II, was sold in 1893 to a laboring man for $250. At 53, land was sold in 1903 for $700 per acre. At 52, three acres were sold by sisters to a brother in 1895, the asking-price being $1,000 per acre, and the price paid $800 per acre. For farming, this land is worth $50 and $75 per acre. Four miles further inland as good recently sold for $10 per acre. Quaker Hill has not neglected its economic opportunities.
Nearness to the soil has, under the influences of Quaker ethics and economic ambition, cultivated in this population a patient and steadfast industry, which expresses itself in the milk dairy, a form of farming by its nature requiring early hours and late, with all the day between filled by various duties. I have shown above that this industry is losing its hold on the farmers of the Hill, but for two generations it has been the distinctive type of labor on the Hill. To rise at four or even earlier in the morning and to prepare the milk, to deliverit at the station, four to eight miles away, to attend to the wants of cows from twenty to one hundred in number; to prepare the various food-products, either by raising from the soil, or by carting from the railroad,—these activities filled, ten years ago, the lives of one hundred and four of the adult males of the community; and these activities at present fill the time of sixty of the adult males of the community.[34]
While "the milk business" is a declining industry, other things are not less engrossing. The land must be tilled, and is tilled. Hay is the greatest crop, and the mere round of the seasons brings for a community used to agriculture a discipline and a course of labor, which make life regular and industrious.
Farming, as stated above, is carried on with a view to the production of milk for the city market. It is a laborious and exacting occupation. The dairy cow, generally of the Holstein stock, or with a strain of Holstein in her blood, is the most common variety; though the grass of the Hill is so good that very rich milk is produced by "red cow, just plain farmer's cow," as the local description runs; and the demands of the middlemen have brought in some Jersey cattle, which are desired, because of the greater proportion of cream they produce. The largest profit from the "making of milk" is secured by those farmers who keep as many cows as can be fed from the land owned by them. But the more ambitious farmers rent land, and in a few cases on a small farm keep so many cattle that they have to buy even hay and corn. It is necessary for the farmer, in order to meet the demands of the city market, to feed his cattle on grains not raised on the Hill. One hundred years ago the lands of the Hill were planted in wheat, rye, corn and other grains, but to-day the farmers buy all grains, except corn, of which an increasing quantity isbeing raised, and oats, of which they do not raise enough for the use of their horses. There are no silos used on the Hill, the city milkmen having a standing objection to the milk of cows fed on ensilage.
The labor problem created by the milk business is an acute one. One man can milk not more than twenty cows, and he is a stout farm-hand who can daily milk more than twelve or fifteen. As a farmer must keep between twenty and forty cows to do justice to his acreage, on the average Hill farm, there must be at least two men, and often there must be five or six men employed on the farm. To secure this number of capable men, to keep them, and to pay them are hard problems. Their wages have risen in the past twelve years, from fourteen dollars a month and board to twenty-three dollars and board; or for a married man, who has house rent, wood, and time to cut it, garden and time to tend it, and a quart of milk a day, the wages have risen from twenty-eight to thirty-five dollars a month.
These men are recruited from a class born in the country, and of a drifting, nomadic spirit; and from the city, the latter a sinister, dangerous element, whom the farmers fear and suspect. On a large farm, with five men in employ, the farmer may expect to replace one man each month; and to replace his whole force at least once a year. So changeable are the minds of this class of laborers.
Those who are married are somewhat more stable; but of the others it is asserted by the farmers that out of their wages they save nothing.
There has been a rise in the price secured by the farmers for their milk in the past ten years, but it has been only for limited periods. The variation was from 1.9 cents and 2 cents, the price in 1895-98, to 3 cents, the price paid in the winter of 1907. In the summer the price is always lower. The farmers have no control over the price paid them for milk, nor havethey control over the prices to be paid for labor, though of course in this matter, there is room for a certain skill in bargaining and for the lowering of the total wages paid on the farm through the skillful employment of the cheaper kinds of hands.
There is also a difference in the price paid for milk by "the Milk Factory," a plant established at the railway in the past ten years, in each dairy-town. This establishment takes milk from the poorer dairies under conditions less exacting than are laid down by some buyers, and in consequence pays a price correspondingly lower than the market rates for milk and the higher prices secured by the better farmers.
One energetic farmer, who has in the past five years had large farms to manage, on hire, or on shares, has prepared milk for hospital use in the city, meeting the exactions of inspection, and the prescribed care of stables, animals, workmen and receptacles in a way intolerable to the average farmer. He receives in return a price twenty per cent above the market rate.
The effect of the above conditions is seen in the fact that in the twelve years under study nine owners of large farms have "given up the milk business," have sold their cows, or keeping them have made butter and fatted calves for market. The profits to be made in dairy-farming are so small, unless the farmer conduct his dairy in an exceptional manner, or on a very large scale, that the average man on the Hill cannot continue it. Indeed, the average farmer on the Hill is unable through lack of vitality or incapacity for application, to conduct any business, successfully, against competition. The state of mind of such men, in the worst cases, is illustrated by the remark of one of them who approached a successful dairyman, saying: "I am going to cease to make milk for the city market, and I thought I would come to you and find out something about the way to make butter—not the best butter, such as you make, but a sort of second-class butter."
Quaker Hill has always been a community with greatpowers of assimilation. The losses suffered by emigration have been repaired by the genius of the community for socializing. Whoever comes becomes a loyal learner of the Quaker Hill ways. I think this is a matter of imitation. Personality has here made a solemn effort to perfect itself for a century and a half; and the characters of Richard Osborn, James J. Vanderburgh, Anne Hayes, David Irish and his daughter, Phoebe Irish Wanzer, ripened into possession of at least amazing power of example. I must be sparing of illustration here, where too rich a store is at hand. I will offer only this striking fact, observed by all who know the Hill: the Irish emigrant and his American-born children, of whom there are now as many as remain of the original Quakers, have come to be as good Quakers in character—though still loyal Catholics in dogma—as if they said "thee and thou," and wore drab. They are peaceable, gentle folk, sober and inoffensive; and the transforming influence of Quaker character is seen in certain of them in a marked degree.
The same statement may be made of the pervasive example of the Quaker character upon other areas of population; servants who come from the city, summer guests, artistic people who love the Hill for its beauty and suggestiveness, ministers and other public teachers who come hither.
The area to the southeast, called "Coburn," settled to a degree by those who have worked on the Hill in times past as employees, is touched with the same manner. Its meetinghouse, erected over sixty years ago, even retains the Quaker way of seating the men and women apart.
The Quaker Hill Conference, now in its ninth year, is another illustration of the charm and reach of the gentle influence of the Quaker Hill ideal upon personal character.
Suggestion also explains much. In such a social whole, manners and customs are fixed. The newcomer is often fresh, ingenuous, and sometimes intrusive. Little by little he becomes socialized. Ways of action are fixed for him, and a range of performance comes to be his. In harmony with this range, suggestion is very fertile; but one learns after a time that there is a limit to its force beyond which individuals will not go. Suggestion, to be effective upon the many, must come from the sources which embody the community's religious and economic ideal.
Ideas, once broached, are usually, if they contemplate action, opposed, at least by inertness; but after a time they reappear as if native to the minds which would have none of them by reasonable approaches. This process is accelerated if the suggestion begins to travel from mind to mind. Some individuals are less slow than others; and the leaders of Quaker Hill thinking have always been able to work by the plan of academic proposal—to avoid rejection—followed by incitement of popular action in particular quarters. Quaker Hill cannot bear to be divided; and that which comes to be successful in one quarter soon comes to be universal. Things can be done by social suggestion which could never be accomplished by appeal or rational discussion.
The word that has formed the social mind of Quaker Hill has been, not "the Spirit," not "the inner light," but "orthodoxy" or "plainness." For this community, it must be remembered, had no great thinkers. It discouraged study, stiffened reason in formulas and dissolved thinking in vision. To its formulas the Hill has been exceedingly devoted. He whoupheld them was accepted, and he who rejected them, as well as he who ignored them, was to the early Quaker Hill as if he did not exist.
This shibboleth has indeed always been religious. Even to-day the way of direct access to the common heart is a religious one. Catholic as well as Protestant, Quaker no more and no less than "the world's people," welcome religious approaches, respect confessions, and believe experiences. Nothing can assemble them all which does not originate in religion and clothe itself in religious sanction. History is religious history. Business prosperity is approved when the prosperity has followed religious profession.
I do not mean to say that there are not other symbols than those of religion. Prosperity has spoken its shibboleths as well as orthodoxy. "Business is business" on Quaker Hill. Not "to save money" is an unforgiven sin—and a rare one!
Much has been done in forming the common mind of Quaker Hill by antipathies and sympathies, chiefly again of a religious order modified by the economic. The community is markedly divided into rich and poor, and into orthodox and not-orthodox. These have no inclination one to another. Each group has its symbols and pass-words, and while neighborly, and answering to certain appeals to which the community has always responded, each resident of the Hill lives and dwells in his own group and has no expectation of moving out of it. So long as a man stays in his group he is, by a balancing of antipathy and sympathy, respected and valued. If he venture to be other than what he was born to be, he suffers all the social penalties of a highly organized community.
Authority, working along the lines of belief and dogma, has almost irresistible force for the Quaker Hill social mind. A visitor to the Hill said "These are an obedient people." Any barrenness of the Hill is to be attributed rather to the lack of leaders who could speak to the beliefs and in harmony withthe dogmas, than to lack of willingness to obey authority. From the past the families on the Hill inherit their willingness respectively to command and to obey. This is true socially of certain families and religiously of others. That to-day some are not led is due solely to the decadence of initiative in the households which, by reason of wealth or dogmatic rectitude, inherit and claim the first place.
It was said above that Quaker Hill has shown great power of assimilating foreign material, and of causing newcomers to be possessed of the communal spirit. The agency which from the first accomplished this was religious idealization, embodied in the meeting, the dress, language and manners of Friends. Generally the Meeting was recruited from births, and members were such by birthright. In former times the community and the Meeting were one. This assimilating of foreign material by social imitation to the Quaker type, and into organic subjection to the Quaker Hill community, was wrought by six agencies. They were language, manners, costume, amusements, worship, and morals. In each of these the Quakers were peculiar. In the use of the "plain language" the Quakers had a machinery of amazing and subtle fascination for holding the attention, purifying the speech, and disciplining the whole deportment of the young and the newcomer. No one has ever been addressed with the use of his first name by grave, sweet ladies and elderly saints, without its beginning an influence and exerting a charm he could not resist; the more so that the Quaker in so doing is guarding his own soul, rather than seeking to save his hearer.
The grave manners of the Quakers, both in meeting and without, are framed upon their belief that all days are holy, and all places sacred. Their long and triumphant fight against amusements is a tribute to the gravity of life. The contest to which I have elsewhere referred for pure morals, in matters of sex, of property and of speech, was a victorious battle.
In all these matters Quaker Hill was a population socialized by religion. Central to it all was the worship of the Meeting on First Day, and on other occasions; and the great solemnity of the annual Quarterly Meeting. Fascinated by that "silence that can be felt," men came from far. They would come as readily to-day. They went away under the domination of that idea of pure and spiritual faith, which kept a whole houseful of men silent for an hour in communion.
As I have looked into this matter it has seemed to me that the induction to be drawn from the history of Quaker Hill is this: Religion was a true organizing power for this social population. Whatever the meeting determinedly strove to do it accomplished. If it had tried to do more it would have succeeded.
This was a gain, moreover, without corresponding losses; a total net gain in all the moralities. The whole area on which this meeting exerted its influence was by it elevated to a higher moral and social tone, and organized into a communal whole, characterized by a loftier and cleaner standard than that of surrounding populations.
Why, then, did it die out? First, because of the bareness of its worship, the lack of music, color and form; through which it lost in the nineteenth century some of its best families. Then through dogmatic differences, of no interest to human beings, it lost its primacy in the community and so its authority.
In the chapter on "Ideals of the Quakers," I have dwelt upon their dramatization of life. They "made believe" that "plainness" was sanctity. They fixed their minds upon the commonplace as the ideal. It is probable that the early population were men and women of no such talents as to disturb this conviction; and the variations from plainness in the direction of gayety were sternly denounced as immoral. Also the struggle with the wilderness occupied and exhausted thepowers of the exceptional as well as of the average man. But when with wealth came leisure, there were born sons of the Quakers who rebelled against the discipline of life that repressed variation, who demanded self-expression in dress, in language, in tastes, and in pleasures. Gradually but surely, as the outside world was brought nearer, these persons were influenced in their restiveness by books and examples, by imitation and other stimuli from new sources, until they cast off in their minds the Quaker ideal of plainness. To be ordinary no longer seemed to them a way of goodness. They were oppressed and stifled by the ban of the meeting upon variation. And though the ideal of plainness has subtly ruled them even in their rebellion and freedom, it has done so by its negative power, in that the community has never furnished exceptional education. The positive dominion of the meeting broken, the negative "plainness" of the community rules all the children of the Hill to this day. So few are the sources of individual variation furnished, in the form of books, music, education, art, that no son or daughter of Quaker Hill has attained a place of note even in New York State. The ideal of "plainness" has been an effectual restraint.
The common mind has been formed to a great degree bystrong personalities; for the common mind has held an ideal of perfection in a person. The force which at the beginning assembled its elements was personal. The type represented by George Fox, as interpreted by Barclay, embodied this influence. In all the history of the place response to strong personality has been immediate and general. The past is a history of names. William Russell led the community in erecting a Meeting House, and then a second one—which still stands. Ferriss, the early settler, located the meeting house on his land, as later Osborn located the Orthodox Meeting House, at the Division, on his land. Judge Daniel Akin, in the early Nineteenth Century, was a leader of the economic activities of this Quaker community, then differentiating themselves from the religious. So, too, his nephew, Albert Akin, in the last half of that century was a leader, gathering up the money of the wealthy farmers to invest in railroads, founding the Pawling Bank, the Mizzen-Top Hotel, and launching Akin Hall, with its literary and religious basis.
David Irish, the preacher of the Hicksite Meeting in the middle of the nineteenth century was leader and exponent of the most representative phases of Quakerism, for at that time it was still possible for the business and the religion of Quakerism to be united in the minds of the majority; Unitarian Quakerism was the result, and of this David Irish was the ideal embodiment.
The respect paid by the community to leadership is shown in the place assigned to Admiral John L. Worden, commander of the "Monitor," who married a Quaker Hill woman, OliveToffey, spent the summers of his life on the Hill, and is buried in the Pawling Cemetery. There was universal pride in his charming personality, interest in his sayings, and no pious condemnation of his warlike deeds. His nautical names of the high points on the Hill have been generally accepted; so that the Hill rides high above all surrounding lands, her heights labelled like the masts of a gallant ship: "Mizzen-Top," "Main-Top," "Tip-Top."
There is indeed by contrast a corresponding unwillingness to be impressed by great personality. The residence of Washington with his troops in the neighborhood left no impression on the records of the Meeting, though he turned out the worshippers and filled the place with sick soldiers; no impression upon the devout tradition, except the story of his being seen once in the woods alone on his knees in prayer; and no impression upon the social tradition, except the cherished claim of one family that he used their residence as his headquarters. Washington was the embodiment of all that this community opposed, and he was ignored.
Another instance of grudging allegiance was the following given to a New York broker, who set out to build a modern schoolhouse, and was permitted only by a packed school-meeting, and by paying two-thirds of the expense himself, to build in 1892 the comely structure at 43, with which Quaker Hill is content.
The same resident was discouraged from further acts of public service, in 1894, by the declining of his offer made to the town of Pawling, to build one mile of macadam for every mile built by the town. He had constructed in 1893, at 113, a sample piece of such road, covering at his own expense an ancient sink-hole in the highway, through which during two months in every year for a century and a half Quaker Hill had wallowed; and he desired with this object-lesson to convince the town,—to win the support of at least his neighbors,—to the proposal to transform the highways into good roads. But there was never a response, and even his neighbors on the Hill, who cheerfully enjoy his smooth stretch of stone road over the ancient wallow of their fathers, manifested no active appreciation of his generosity. The generous resident had purchased a stone-crusher and other necessaries for the work; but they have been used only on private grounds.
The most conspicuous instance of following leadership in recent times has been the measured devotion given by the community to the activities which have centered in Akin Hall and in the institution known as Hill Hope, on Site 35. The leaders in this activity have been themselves under the influence of New York city ideas. Two of the three most conspicuous persons are of this neighborhood, but have resided in New York for years, returning to the Hill for the summers. The third is a New Yorker by birth, and trained in Presbyterian religious experience and especially in charitable activity.
Akin Hall has in the years 1892-1905 expressed the leadership in religious confession and worship, after the forms of the Reformed Christian order, and has embodied this leadership in the conventional activities of a vigorous country parish.
For ten years Hill Hope, supported personally by the third member of this group of leaders, was, until it was closed in 1904, a country home for working girls. By a liberal policy it became also a center of much interest and of a pervasive influence to the neighborhood. Meetings of a social and devotional character were held there, to which the residents were pleased to come, and in which the young women from the city met and mingled with the Protestant residents of the Hill, especially with those of the Quaker stock. The influence of Hill Hope was very marked, and its power in representing to people of a narrow experience the ideals of a richer and broader life was obvious to any one who saw the place it held in the interests of the whole resident community.
These influences, thus compounded of the humanitarian, the liberal-orthodox and the devotional, but in all things confessedly religious, exerted themselves for the ten years named, unbroken. The death of one member of this group of leaders, the head of one of the three households peculiarly identified with its work, appreciably weakened the group. But in the thirteen years of its influence, it united the whole community in the formation of a church, to some of whose services came all the Protestant population; in whose membership were representatives of all groups of the Protestant residents; and which was able at least once a year to call the Catholics also together at Christmas festivities.
To this group of leaders a guarded, though at times cordial following was given by Orthodox Friends, the Hicksite group, the farmer class, laborers, Catholics and Protestants, and summer people. It was generally inert and negative in spirit, seldom actively loyal. At its best it was willing that leaders should lead and pay the price, and be more admired than upheld. At its worst it was alert to private and blind to public interests, peevish of change, incapable of foresight.
I do not think that Quaker Hill people have much expectation of benefit from social life. They are habitually skeptical of its advantages, though eager to avail themselves of those advantages when proven. Almost every person on the Hill, however, is a member of some secret society, to which he is drawn by anticipations of economic advantage, or of moral culture.
Nor can I say that there is prompt or general reaction to wrongdoing, either of one or of many. I might illustrate with two cases. In one a rich man perverted a public trust, openly, to his own advantage; and a conspiracy of silence hedged his wrong about. In the other, a youth entered in one winter every house on the Hill in succession, and there was no one to detect or to punish him.
The Hill does not exhibit the highest type of social response in the recognition of impersonal evil, in the quest of knowledge, or in free discussion. Almost two centuries of dogma-worship, with its contemplation of selected facts, has made it now impossible to secure from one thoroughly socialized in the spirit of the place the exact truth upon any matter. It seems to be reserve which conceals it, but it is rather the effect of continued perversion of the sense of right and wrong, and indifference to knowledge for its own sake.
The ideal of the common mind of Quaker Hill is the practice of inner and immaterial religion. It looks for the effects of certain dogmas, effects expressed in emotions, convictions, experiences. The ideal contains no thought of the community or of its welfare. It is purely individual, internal and emotional.
It was expressed in the comment of one excellent representative citizen upon another, "He does not seem to me to be the man he once was. He does not say in meetings the things he used to say. He used to be very helpful in his remarks." This was said at a time when the citizen commented on was laboring heroically for a public improvement by which the citizen speaking would chiefly be benefited.
The Quaker Hill man and woman desire to make money. They instinctively love money, though not for any other purpose than saving. They cherish no illusions of an unworldly sort about it. This is true of Quaker and Catholic, laborer and summer resident. It is true of the small class of cultivated intellectual-aesthetes, who might be expected to be less mercenary. They all value money; but not for display, not for luxury, scarcely for travel; not for books or the education of children. Quaker Hill men and women would accumulate money, invest and manage it wisely and live in respectable "plainness." This characteristic is written largely over the whole social area. It is an instinct.
The emotional nature of this population has been by long-continued application of an accepted discipline, economic and religious, restrained and schooled. More beautiful personalities than some of the Quaker and Irish women of the Hill, schooled in a discipline which produces the most charming manners, the gentlest kindness, one may never see. There is no cloud in the sky of these women's justice, truthfulness, goodness. One may remember, even with them, a day of anger, of indignation; but it was a storm restrained; the lightnings were held in sure hands, and the attack was eminently just.
But this very discipline has resulted, in other persons, in an explosive emotionality. One person suffers this explosion in a periodic lawsuit—a rare action for the Hill; another in an almost insane family quarrel, another in an occasional fury of futile violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the emotional ruin of some, and in the subconscious volcanic state in others.
Strange to say, the immigrants, Irish and American, have in this conformed to the better type; so that gentle manners, placidity of character and restraint of emotion may be said to prevail among them.
As for judgment, on economic questions and matters of benevolence the judgment of Quaker Hill people is sound. They use money sanely and with wisdom. They act wisely in matters of poverty and need, or appeal on behalf of the dependent. On other matters, outside the range of the social discipline in which the community has been to school, not so much can be said.
The judgment of the community is not determined by evidence in any other matters than economic. The Quaker Hill mind works subjectively on the lines of instincts and habits inherited and inbred. Auto-suggestion has been a great force in this community. Men and women have had an impression, "a leading," believed to come from the Divine Spirit, and have acted upon it and have led others with them. So that the prevailing determination of the social judgment has been by personal suggestion, and the appeal of inner convictions, fortified by alleged divine influence. It must be said that this is a disappearing habit. Even those born Quakers, now that the Hicksite Meeting has been discontinued since 1885, and the Orthodox since 1903, and the Quarterly Meetings of both societies have ceased to come to the Hill, do not so often see visions or act upon "leadings." The influence of non-Quakers in the place has been of late to quarantine such "leadings" and prevent social contagion.
Frugality is universal. Almost every resident laboring man has a bank account. Indeed, these laborers have done more in saving than have the farmers. But the tastes of all are simple. Clothing is never showy or expensive, and housekeeping is carried on with the most sparing use of purchased articles.
Cleanly most of the people of the Hill are, in person and in their care of house and grounds, of carriages, horses and other properties. The houses and barns are always freshly painted, and an appearance of neatness pervades the community.
For reasons which I will mention in a later paragraph the men and women trained under Quakerism are not orderly, either in the use of their time or in the management of their labor, or in anything, save in the discipline of their religion and in the economic system to which they give themselves.
The community has grown in compassion since the dayswhen Surgeon Fallon's soldiers were starved and neglected in the Meeting House. To-day I am sure no class of men in real need could appeal to the community, or to any constituent group of it, in vain. The growth has been along lines which, beginning in a group-compassion that has from earliest days recompensed any poor member of the Meeting in his sudden losses of property, have widened first to Quakers of other places, then to other Christians, then to other men, and last of all to Quakers of the other Quaker sect; and from Protestant to Catholic and Catholic to Protestant.
Property seems to be sacred. Doors of houses and barns do not require locks, but one winter there was a series of house-breakings, in which almost every summer residence on the Hill was entered. Contents were inspected, but nothing was stolen. But the honesty here is a passive honesty. It is not the aggressively just fulfilment of obligation which one finds in New England.
The Hill is a community with a high level of chastity. This may be said of all classes, though not uniformly of all. Yet it was not always so. The first century of the life of the Quakers here is recorded in the minutes of Oblong Meeting as one long struggle of Quaker discipline against unchastity. There is an amazing frankness about these records, and a persistence in the exercise of discipline, a frequency of accusation, proof, conviction, expulsion from the Meeting, which is astonishing to the twentieth century reader. The best families furnished the culprits almost as often as they supplied the accusers and prosecuting committees. So many are the cases and so frequent the expulsions, often for matters which might better have been ignored, but generally for substantial offences, that one wonders who was left in the Meeting. But men often confessed and were received again, and the Meeting held its ground. In general it may be said that often in the eighteenth century there were more cases of unchastity dealt with in ayear by the Meeting, in a population no larger than the present, than have come to public knowledge in the past ten years in this community. The change shows also in a reserve of speech upon these matters.
The characteristic pleasures of the community, as a whole, are few. There is a group of women of leisure, of course, devoted to bridge-whist, who come in the summer and do not go far from the Hotel. Young men go hunting, and a few grown men are fond of fishing. The typical person provides himself with no pleasures outside of his family and home. Men and women are too busy to play, and the Quakers educated themselves out of a playful mind.
There are a few pleasures which are native and general. One of these is public assembly, with an entertaining speaker as a central pleasure. Quaker Hill audiences are alert and keen hearers, and indulgent critics of a public speaker. There are only two other forms of public entertainment more pleasing to them. The first is a dramatic presentation. Many of the Quakers are excellent actors, and the Irish are quite their equals, while the other newcomers are equally appreciative. The Christmas play in Akin Hall is a great annual event, assembling all the people on the Hill of all classes and groups, for it embodies very many of the appeals to characteristic pleasure. Only one other attraction is more generally responded to; I refer to a dinner. Something good to eat, in common with one's neighbors, in a place hallowed by historic associations, under religious auspices—here you have the call that brings Quaker Hill all together. On such a day there will be none left behind.
Of all these sorts is the attraction the Quaker Hill Conference has for the people of the neighborhood. It is a universal appeal to the capacity for pleasure in the community. It presents famous and eloquent speakers through the days of the week. Matters of religion, farming, morals, literature, are discussed, by men of taste and culture; and the closing day is Quaker Hill Day. On this day, after an assembly in the old Oblong Meeting House, erected in 1764, at which the neighborhood has listened to papers descriptive of the past of the Hill, all adjourn for a generous dinner under the trees of Akin Hall, or latterly under a tent beside the Meeting House, partaken of by four hundred people, of all groups and classes, and followed by brisk, happy speeches by visitors present. This, after almost two centuries of keen interest in the question of amusements, is the last and most perfect expression of the capacity for amusement in the community.
OBLONG MEETING HOUSEOBLONG MEETING HOUSE
MEMORIAL STONEMEMORIAL STONE
Of active pleasure-taking, Quaker Hill, purely considered,is incapable.
It should be said that the Roman Catholic Church in Pawling provides its people with a yearly feast, parallel with the Conference, which was for years held in a grove on the borders of Quaker Hill.
Traits of character which are general or even common among Quaker Hill people are worthy of mention under the heads of regular industry, frugality, cleanliness, temperance, chastity, honesty as to property, and compassion.
Politically the Hill was until the year 1896 inclined to be Democratic. For years a number of the Protestants on the Hill have been Prohibitionists.
Primitive notions of morals survive in spite of what has been said earlier, in isolated instances, or tend to recur in certain families. Until twelve years ago members of certain families maintained the right to catch fish with a net in Hammersley Lake. Over the line in Connecticut this practice, and that of taking fish with a spear, survive in spite of law. But this primitive method was forcibly ended by the attempt to arrest the chief offender. He made his escape from the officers, but has never returned, and the practice has not till this date, 1905, been resumed on Quaker Hill.
Primitive moralities of sex appear in certain families, in which in each generation there appears one illegitimate child, at least; as it were a reminder of their disorderly past. The chari-vari survives among the better class of working people, a strange, noisy outbreak for a Quaker community, with which a newly married pair are usually serenaded.
I find also no animistic ideas, or practices; no folk-lore and no magic. The Quaker Hill imagination has been disciplined.
The preferred attainment in this community is neither power, splendor, pleasure, nor ceremonial purity; nor yet justice, liberty or enlightenment; but rather, first of all, prosperity, a well-being in which one's good fortune sheds its favors on others; secondly, righteousness, to be enjoyed in religious complacency; and thirdly, equality. This last is one of the few elements of a social ideal actually realized. Even among the women of the place there is a simple and unaffected democracy in the religious and communal societies, which is quite unusual in such a place.
Of sacred places there are avowedly none. But the historic sense of the community is reverent, almost religious, in its regard for the past; so that the Oblong Meeting House, cradle of the community, and for over a century its home and house of government, is chief in the affections of all. In the summer of 1904 this place was marked for all time by the placing there of a boulder of white feldspar, bearing a bronze tablet inscribed with the important facts of the history of that spot.
Quaker Hill does not desire to expand. The type of community preferred is the simple, small, and exclusive. In this all agree, whether they confess it or not. No expansion will ever come by native forces or conscious purpose.
Quaker Hill reveres leaders, not heroes; and not saints, for men have been cherished for their leadership in dogmaticactivities, rather than for their abstract goodness or human value. The type of the social mind that has been most esteemed is the dogmatic-emotional. Even Albert J. Akin, whose dogma was the union of all Christians, had no patience with any divergence in religious experience from this, his dogma.
The forms of complex activity that are chiefly cherished are, first, the economic arts; second, religion; third, morals; and fourth, things pertaining to costume. The institutions chiefly prized are the family and marriage, the economic system and the cultural system, especially the church.
Social welfare is conceived of under forms of peace, the increase and diffusion of wealth, industry, and by a minority, culture. High morality is most valued as an element in the social personality. Next after it is a highly developed sociality. Social policies would be favored on the Hill as they represented authority and individualism. Conversion is the accepted means of modifying type.
Practical politics may be said to be foreign to Quaker Hill, for reasons drawn from its isolation and religious offishness. An exception was in the early part of the nineteenth century, when Daniel Akin, apparently in consequence of mercantile position, was elected County Judge. After him, his brother Albro was appointed to the office.
The consciousness of kind on Quaker Hill is stronger in the group than in the community. Yet the general sense of "unity" is very strong and it often comes into play.
The chief social bonds which unite the whole community are, first of all, imitation, in which process it seems to me the Quakers are a peculiarly subtle people. Second, a good-will which pervades the Hill like a genial atmosphere. Third, kindness, which on certain occasions draws the whole community together in unusual acts of helpfulness to some member in need.
The prevailing type of mind among Quaker Hill folk isthe Ideo-Emotional; for these folk are a gentle, social sort of persons, ready of affection, imaginative and analogical in mental process, weak and complacent in emotionality, with motor reaction rather inconstant, and of slow response. Of these I find thirty-seven families.
The next category is that of the Dogmatic-Emotional, in which I observe twenty-two families. These are composed of persons in whom austere and domineering character proceeds from a dogmatic fixity of mind, and expresses itself in the same inconstant application shown by the former class.
A few of the more notable of the personalities produced by Quaker birth and breeding belong, I think, in the Ideo-Motor class. I find only seven families of that type, but the forceful character, of aggressive bent, moderate intellect and strong but well-controlled emotion, is distinctly present; and this class has furnished some of the most successful of the sons of Quaker Hill.
I have known only six persons resident on the Hill in the twelve years under study who could be described as Critically-Intellectual. Of these, four have been bred in the larger school of the city, and only two have lived their lives upon the Hill. Of these six, five are women.
There is, of course, only one language spoken in Quaker Hill. Indeed only one or two persons have any other than English as their native tongue.[35]And very few have acquired any other as a matter of culture. The vocabulary used is limited. An intelligent observer says: "The vocabulary of the native community is the meagerest I have ever known, except that ofthe immigrant." There are, however, very few illiterates; none, indeed, in the literal meaning of the term.
Manners on the whole are uniform for the resident population. Of course the summer people have the conventional manners, or lack of manners, of the city. So far as religion has shaped the manners of the old Quaker group, they are often gentle and refined; but as often blunt and imperious. The Irish have the best manners, I observe, and the more transient summer people and farm-hands the worst. In both the last two classes there is too often a pride in rudeness and vulgarity which the native of mature years never exhibits. The Quaker and the Catholic are equally ceremonious in inclination. The latter always desires to please. The Quaker, when he desires to please, is capable of very fine courtesy; but he does not always desire, and he has less insight into the essence of a social situation.
The community has had a history, of course, in the matter of costume. The Meeting House law made costume a matter of ethics for a century. But to-day there is great diversity. Probably this is a sign of the transition from the Quaker to the broader human order. But all one can say upon costume is that there is now no dress prescribed for any occasion. At one extreme there are a few, in 1905 only three, in 1907 only one, who wear the Quaker garb. At the other extreme are outsiders who dress as the city tailor and milliner clothe them. And between these there is liberty.
The dispositions again are varied. One finds the aggressiveness of five stirring men and three capable women sufficient to give character to the place. Many functions of the community are still vigorously upheld, yet the number of aggressive spirits is diminishing. The instigative type is present in three, and its processes give pleasure to all who behold. The domineering type is present in eight members, especially in those families which claim by right of inheritance eithersocial or religious leadership. And, as to others, as I quoted an observer above, "They are an obedient people." I do not know any creative minds, much less any class with original initiative. If there had been any such, Quaker Hill would have produced artists, great and small, and writers, not a few. There is a consciousness of material for creation, and in certain families the culture which creation presupposes; but something in Quakerism has quieted the muse and banked the fires.
As to types of character, there are forceful persons, a very few, nine at the utmost being of this type. Austere persons, who have in the past given to the Hill much of its character, have almost disappeared, not more than four being within that category, among the population under study in this part of the book.
The number of the rationally conscientious is as small as is that of the convivial. The Meeting, which was for over a century the organ of conscience for the community, denied to the convivial their license, and released the conscientious from any obligation to be rational. The Meeting has now but recently passed away, and its standards of character speak as loudly as ever. I find three women who may be called rationally conscientious, one a Quakeress, one a New Yorker, and one of Quaker birth and worldly breeding. I find also three who are truly convivial in type, one a son of Quakers, and two who are Irish Catholics; while to these might be added two whose designation ought to be Industrious-Convivial, hard-working men who are fond of social pleasure as an end of life.
A few in certain households, three in number, are intellectually aesthetic in a passive way, fond of art and books, but creating nothing. Two artists of note have in the past twelve years come to the Hill, bought places and made it at least a summer home.
It must not be inferred from the foregoing that there isnot a wide range of mental difference among Quaker Hill men and women. In the matter of quickness and slowness of action this variation appears even among the members of any one group. In the same family are two brothers, both farmers, both tenants. One is able to farm a thousand acres more successfully than the other can cultivate two hundred. The one is instant in judgment, swift in action, able to compress into an hour heavy physical labor and also the control of many other men. The other is leisurely, indolent in movement, though a diligent man, and is as much burdened by increase of responsibilities as the former is stimulated. These two men are not exceptional, but typical. The extreme of slowness is indeed represented in one man whose tortoise pace in all matters dependent on the mind and will is oddly contrasted with his vigor and energy of manner. His movements are a provocation of delighted comments by his neighbors; I think partly because they are felt to be representative of what is latent in other men, and partly because he is surrounded by others more alert. Such men are the outcropping of a vein of degenerate will. It is not immoral degeneracy, but its weakness is incapacity for action of any kind, inability to see and do the specific task. This degenerate will does not extend to traditional morals, and does not always affect whole families. But its pervasive effects are seen in almost all the representatives of three large families of the old Quaker stock. Contrasted to these are some of the old stock, who though slow of thought and barren of mental initiative, are swift of action, sure in synthesis of a situation, and instant in performance of precisely the requisite deed.
One finds on the Hill many examples of native administrative ability of a high order—for a farm is as complicated a property as a railway is. There are fully as many others who would be burdened with the cares of a ticket-chopper.
Not a few on the Hill are like the farmer who, sent on anerrand to bring some guests from a train to a certain house, spent half an hour after meeting the guests in conversation with them in the railway station before mentioning his errand; and would have made it an hour had they not inquired of him for a conveyance. Yet a neighbor of his, in the same social group, closely related, has unusual capacity for affairs.
The instincts of the people of the Hill are not, I think, so varied. They involuntarily respect religion, when expressed with sincerity, and incarnated in strength of character. It must have the authority, however, of strength, at least passive strength, to appeal to local instinct.
The members of the community have organized themselvesinto associations for the carrying on of special forms of activity to a degree which is worthy of record. As one might expect, the societies of most vigor are those maintained by the women, since the men have never been able spontaneously to organize, or to maintain, any society on the Hill.
Central to all this organization, through the period of the Mixed Community, has been Akin Hall Association, created by one man, and endowed by him. Under its shelter a church and library live, and a yearly Conference is maintained for five days in the month of September. In this chapter we will consider first the incorporated, then the unincorporated societies.
The chief incorporated institution on Quaker Hill is Akin Hall Association, founded in 1880 by Albert J. Akin. It was his intention to create an institution of the broadest purpose, through which could be carried on activities of a religious, literary, educational, benevolent and generally helpful order. "Albert Akin endowed," said a visitor, "not a college or a hospital, but a community!" The charter of the Association, which was from time to time, on advice, amended, up to the time of Mr. Akin's death in 1903, provided for the most catholic endowment of Quaker Hill, in every possible need of its population.
The particular directions in which this endowment has been used are two. A library and a church are in active use by the neighborhood, the former since 1883, and the latter since 1895, of which I will speak in detail hereafter.
Akin Hall Association is a corporation consisting of fivetrustees, a self-perpetuating body, and eleven other "members." The number of trustees was originally sixteen, but Mr. Akin early yielded to legal advice in concentrating authority in five persons; while continuing the remaining eleven as a quasi-public to whom the five report their doings, and with whom they regularly confer. The annual meeting of the Association is upon the birthday of the founder, August 14th. At that time the trustees assemble at two p. m. for the transaction of business, election of members and of officers; and at 3 p. m. the members' meeting is called to order, the officers of the trustees being officers of the whole body. Members are permitted and expected to inquire as to activities of the Association, its funds and its work in general, and to vote on all matters coming before the body for its action. Only no action involving the expenditure of money, or the election of trustees, shall be valid without the concurrence in majority opinion of a majority of the trustees.
The chief interest of the trustees has always been the care of the property of the Association, which includes invested funds, and the following buildings, with about thirty acres of land: a hotel, having rooms for two hundred guests, a stone library, a chapel, and seven cottages. The hotel is usually rented to a "proprietor," and the duties of the library and church are laid upon a minister, the earliest of whom, Mr. Chas. Ryder, was called the "Agent."
The Akin Free Library, consisting of about three thousand books, selected with uncommon wisdom by committees of ladies through about twenty-five years, was originally established by the ladies of the Hill, in the early eighties, through a popular fund. It has ever since been funded by the Akin Hall Association, who have also given it quarters, and care, in the Chapel known as Akin Hall. It will soon be moved into the stone Library, erected in 1898, but only finished in 1906, and it is reasonable to suppose that it will there have a wider scope and an increasing use.
The Library has been managed primarily for the use of "the Summer people," and the books have the excellence of their selection, as well as the proportion of certain kinds of books, determined by the preferences of the Summer residents. No adequate records are kept of the books used; so that it is impossible to give statistics of the specific utility of the library. But it occupies a real place in the community, and is drawn upon by families from every section of the population.
The fact that it was originally assembled by popular subscription, and only later sustained by the Akin endowment is a token of the exceptional latent interest in literature, and the passive culture, to which tribute has been paid in this study of the Quaker Hill population. It is fair to say, however, that such interest has been confined to a small group of the population, now fast disappearing.
There is a small corporation, formed for the purpose of holding and caring for the "Old Meeting House." It is known as Oblong Meeting House, Incorporated. To this corporation, consisting of three trustees, a self-perpetuating body, the Yearly Meeting of Friends[36]handed over in 1902 the building and grounds known as the "Old Meeting House," at Site 28. This ancient building, erected in 1764, is probably the oldest edifice on the Hill, and is the embodiment of the religious and historical traditions of the community. These trustees attend to the repair of the Meeting House, which is maintained in exactly the condition in which it was used for over a century. No meeting of worship is held now in this building, the "monthly meeting" having been "laid down" in 1885. The building is, however, the center of frequent pilgrimages during the summer, by the visitors to the Hill and boarders, who delight in its quaint interior. It is used for occasional "sales" for the "benefit" of some public interest. Once a year at theclose of Quaker Hill Conference, it is the place of "Quaker Hill Day" exercises, at which addresses and papers are presented, in celebration and commemoration of the past history of the community.
The Hill has record of few revivals. Quaker ways preclude surprises, and revivals usually arise from new things. There was, however, during five years, 1892-1897, a religious awakening, prolonged month after month, for five years with undiminished force. The cause of it seems to have been the study of the Bible in the historic method; a new mode of awakening traditional religious interest. During that time the whole community was keenly alive, old and young; and in certain cases a change of life became permanent. In many young persons a definite religious impulse was the result.
This quickened religious interest involved all the Quaker influence, both Orthodox and Hicksite, and it was reinforced by several strong personalities from outside the Hill, persons trained in church work in New York and elsewhere. It crystallized in the organization of "Christ's Church, Quaker Hill," in the Spring of 1895, which received at the beginning adherents of all the religious groups represented on the Hill. Within three years it had grown to a membership of sixty-five, among whom were members or adherents of the following religious bodies, Protestant Episcopal Church, Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, Quakers, Hicksite and Orthodox, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist Episcopal, Congregational, Disciples and Lutheran.
This church is served by the minister employed in Akin Hall, and it has therefore a peculiar place. Its membership is drawn from the population resident on the Hill. Its doctrinal truths are simple, namely the Apostles' Creed. Its ordinances are elastic, baptism being waived in the case of those who, being trained as Quakers, do not believe in water baptism; and by the conditions affixed to Mr. Akin's endowment, that no denominational use should ever be made of Akin Hall, it is without sectarian connections.
The religious services in Akin Hall have in Summer been attended since 1880 by numbers of "summer people," from Mizzen-Top Hotel and the boarding-houses. A Sunday School was maintained from 1890 to 1905, a Christian Endeavor Society from 1894 to 1903. Both have been discontinued, owing to lack of members.
The church has also a diminished membership, especially since 1903, owing in part to mere removal of population; and even more to the death and removal from the Hill of persons of forceful, aggressive type, and the impoverishment of the population in respect of initiative and coherence.
The other agency carried on under the patronage of Akin Hall Association is the Quaker Hill Conference. Founded in 1899 by Mr. Akin, entertained by Miss Monahan, this assembly has made September of each year a focal point in local interest. For five days of public meetings, Bible study, addresses upon religion, social and economic topics, culminating in a great dinner, of which four hundred partake, it is the modern successor of the now extinct Quaker Quarterly meetings. It expended in 1907 about $1,400, of which about half was contributed by Akin Hall Association, and the remainder by individuals.
The groups in which the women of the Hill are associated are of great interest. The Roman Catholic women have only their kinship associations, and no voluntary associations, being generally in the employ of Protestants, and having their church center away from the Hill in Pawling village.
The King's Daughters is the largest association, and most representative of the Hill, both in its numbers, frequency of meetings and variety of interests; though it is not the oldest. It has a membership of forty, and is actively devotional, charitable and benevolent. It serves also a useful purpose in providing social meetings, bazaars, sales and other occasions throughout the year which bring neighbors together; and uses their assembling for the assisting of the poor, ignorant or needy.
This society, as well as the one to be mentioned next, exemplifies the real democracy in which the women of the Hill meet and plan for common local interests; a fine spirit and practical efficiency characterizing their meetings, and each woman, however, humble, having a part with the best in the general result.
The Wayside Path Association is smaller in number of members, as well as older than the King's Daughters; indeed, it has perhaps no fixed membership, but is an assembling of the women of the place about a small group as a working center for a yearly duty. Its purpose is to maintain a dirt sidewalk, over three miles in length, which follows the road northward and southward, from the Glen to the Post Office, with branches. Once a year the Association meets, gathers funds by a "sale" or by subscription, hires a laborer to repair the Wayside Path; then for a year lies dormant. In 1898 there was a general effort made to transform this association into a general Village Improvement Society, with diversified interests, into which men would come, but it failed, and no such society exists.
The West Mountain Mission is an association of ladies of the Hill, who through sales and bazaars, supplemented by gifts, contribute to the support of a chapel of the Protestant Episcopal Church, two miles west of Pawling. This association draws its membership from the hotel guests and from residents in the cottages; and but little from the essential Quaker Hill households.
The same may be said of whist clubs maintained in the summer at the hotel and cottages.