WATERING HER GARDEN
This homesteader of ten years’ standing has succeeded in cultivating an attractive garden patch even in the thirsty soil of New Mexico.
Self-Help the Rule
The development of the Range has been haphazard. Any Land Company has been able to work up a “boom” at will. Not even misrepresentations and uncounted, unlimited hardships have stirred the Government to form and follow any better colonization policy for its unoccupied lands than its “Homestead laws.” The western farmer has never been cherished by his Government as has beenthe Canadian farmer. Until the comparatively recent development of county agent services and the Farm Bureau, he has had to work for everything he got with very little help from any one.
An intense economic struggle is behind the homesteaders. They begin from the bottom up. Some are just now beginning, but for the majority the difficulty of getting a start is over. But the last few years have been hard for every farmer and rancher on the Range, old settler and new alike. No part of the country can afford to have the men on the land as hard pressed as these men have been. Too large a proportion of the farms have been mortgaged for the economic well-being of a nation.
A COMMUNITY RENDEZVOUS
Often the general store is the only gathering place for neighbors miles apart.
Made up largely of people from the Middle West, this country has taken on some of the characteristics of that region—in the development of small and large centers, and in the improved roads and schools. But on account of the nature of the soil, it will be many years before the Range becomes a second Middle West, if ever. The land will not support as many people per square mile. Much of the area will remain, for years to come, a land of large distances and comparatively few people. The future of the Range is not to be summed up by saying, “Go to, this country will soon become a second Middle West. Just give it time.”
“If you want to see neighbor Adams, you’ll find him in town on Saturday afternoon, most like round Perkins’ store.” Such will be the advice given in regard to meeting almost any farmer livingin almost any part of these counties. As roads have improved, and autos have come to be generally used by the farmers as a means of transportation, the trade centers along the railroads, especially the county seats, have increased greatly in size and importance. This growth of the centers is characteristic of the whole United States. Until after 1820 less than 5 per cent. of the American people lived in cities of 8,000 population and over. In 1790 there were but five cities in the United States having a population of 8,000. Now a majority live in the cities; but the West does not yet have the urban development of the East.
Importance of the County Seat
As the county seats are coming gradually to have more of a direct relationship to the country around them, they should assume more responsibility toward their counties. Through their organizations and Civic Leagues of business men, these centers are just waking up to the fact that the towns are dependent upon them. As one farmer in Union County said, “There is no permanent prosperity except that based on the farmer. If our town is big and top-heavy and the farmers are taxed heavily to keep the town up, it is killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. The 1,000 farmers tributary to Clayton must pay the bills of everything brought in because, ultimately, the products of the farm have to pay for everything. When conditions are bad, the farmer has to pay the bill and keep going besides.” If the development of the future is to be sound each side will do its best to understand the other.
A Centralized School System
School systems are becoming better. People realize the advantages of education. More and more young people are being sent to college. But as distances are gradually being overcome, schools should be administered wholly from the county seat. The County Unit plan does away with the local school district boards. This system equalizes burdens and advantages, minimizes dissension, and conduces to economy and efficiency. The average school board has no standards by which to judge an applicant for teaching. One disadvantage of the district system is that so often daughters are put in as teachers. The county unit plan means centralized control. The county superintendent, who is selected solely because of education, training and successful experience,takes over most of the duties which the various districts now have. This means a comprehensive and efficient plan of education for the whole county.
Social Needs
Other great needs are a better organized social life and more recreational activities. Outside the larger center, there is a great lack of social life. Social organizations are fairly abundant, but they are almost all city or town affairs. Living on the land is a more solitary affair for women than for men. The men drive to town, but the women stay home week in and week out with few diversions. A postmistress in Montana told about two women living on large cattle ranches about six miles apart, a small distance in that country. She said to one of them: “There is Mrs. Denis at the door just going out. Did you see her?” The other lady answered: “Yes, but I hardly know Mrs. Denis.” They had lived there for more than ten years, near neighbors for the Range country, and yet barely acquainted!
“MARY, CALL THE CATTLE HOME!”
But this “Mary” is a homesteader’s wife and the Range is a long way from the Sands o’ Dee, and “Mary” herself is usually a long way from anywhere.
The Part of the Church
Finally, there is the duty of the Church. “The churches performed an inestimable social function in frontier expansion,” says John Dewey. “They were the rallying points not only of respectability but of decency and order in the midst of a rough and turbulent population. They were the representatives of social neighborliness and all the higher interests of the communities.” The Church has played an important rôle in the past, but its position in this same country to-day is disappointing. For some reason it has not become essential to the landscape.
WAITING AT THE CHURCH
A Christian Church in Union County which draws its congregation from a wide area.
The immense distances and scattered population have, of course, been a great problem. All the country west of the Mississippi makes up 70.9 per cent. of the total area of the United States, while the western area has only 30 per cent. of the total population. In 1850, it had only 8.6 per cent. of the population. The average density per square mile in the United States is 35.5 persons. Illinois has 115.7 people per square mile, but Montana has an average density of only 3.8, Wyoming of 2, New Mexico of 2.9 and South Dakota of 8.3 persons.
Much of the Range has never had the chance to go to church, and one result of the lack of church facilities in the past is that it is difficult now to create a church spirit. Homesteading is no fun. It means being away from doctors and comforts, getting ahead little by little, facing set-backs, discouragements and loneliness. Of course, a homesteader is absorbed by his place. Unless he is simply proving up on his claim for the purpose of selling it,he must be absorbed if he is to succeed. He broke with most of his home ties before he came and, after arriving, has not had time to go adventuring for any but those simple things which he must have. “Church” is one of the things he left behind. Church services have rarely followed him, and generally he has been too busy to seek them. Even if he were minded to hunt them out, it takes more than average courage to be “different” when one’s neighbors are largely of a common mind. So the absence of church has become a habit.
HITTING THE TRAIL
Will this settler find a church welcome in his new home?
But probably the greatest hindrance to church work has been the shifting population. Churches have trained lay leaders only to have them leave “en masse.” Out of the fourteen churches which have been abandoned in these four counties, nine have gone under because their members melted away.
The carrying over of the care-free frontier spirit often makes for a general slackness. This spirit has in it the freedom of the West, the perfect democracy of the cowboy, and is essentially individualistic. If directed into right channels, it should be an asset instead of a drawback.
What the Frontier Church Is
Five sentences sum up the Church on the Range. It is a church of the center. It is, in the main, a church of the middle-aged. It has been a church with haphazard leadership. It is a church of past achievements and of unlimited future possibilities, provided it has an inspired and sustained leadership. It is a church which needs a social vision.
It is natural that, where the centers along the railroad have been the only “sure” things in a country of constantly shifting settlements, the largest number of churches have been established in such centers. But these churches have not reached the great unevangelized areas around them. The “isolated, unattached Christian,” who lives perhaps only a few miles from town, has been neglected by the church in the center.
It is natural, too, that this should be largely a church of the middle-aged. What is there to attract the young people? Many of the church organizations have no buildings. With few exceptions, buildings are equipped for little else but preaching and listening. Nearly half of the churches have less than four services a month. The Sunday schools are not well organized. With the start the Sunday schools now have, possibilities are unlimited if they can be conducted on a more business-like basis. Yet these young people and children are the great hope of the church. No more wide-awake, vigorous young people are to be found. “If only the Church could work out something that would last through the week,” said one of them, “it would seem more real.” But in many communities the women’s organization is not only the sole organization in the church, outside the Sunday school, but the only one in the community.
The work has been haphazard. Home Mission aid has been spent out of all proportion to fitness. The same amount now received would go further, eventually, if spent in fewer places. With means and leaders adequate for a small area only, the general idea of some denominations has been to hold, but to do little with a large area. There has been some unnecessary over-lapping of work. With their large fields, the ministers cannot be expected to do more than they are doing at present which is, in most churches, occasional preaching. A missionary pastor said, concerning one of his charges in a neglected community in Union, “The second time I went to preach no one came. Do you think I’d go back?” Under the present system of many points and long distances, this pastor could hardlyafford to use the time to go back. Yet, to succeed, church ministry must be steadier and more long-suffering.
There are some New Americans in each county, but they are in larger numbers in Sheridan and Beaverhead. A large number of the Spanish-Americans in Union are not provided for by the Catholic church, and the only Protestant work for them in the county, a Spanish American Mission in Clayton, has been given up. In Sheridan County there is great need of a comprehensive program that shall include all six mines. There should be at least two community houses built with organized social activities and evening classes; the staff to include a domestic science teacher. With the exception of one class for half a dozen Italian mothers in one of Sheridan’s mining villages, no Americanization work is being done in any county. The churches should enlarge their vision so as to include the New Americans.
THE FAMILY MANSION
With the family and the Union County doctor in front of it. The family is Spanish-American.
What the Frontier Church Can Be
It is possible for the Church to serve this kind of country with its scattered people. It is difficult but it can be done. Certain denominations have succeeded with what they call a “demonstration parish.” The plan is exactly the same as that of the experimental farms conducted by the Government. A comprehensive seven-day-a-weekplan, which has in mind the whole man, mind, body and soul, in place of the old circuit-rider system, is the program of the Congregational Demonstration Parish in Plateau Valley, Colorado. Six thousand feet up on the western slope of the Rockies, this valley is shut in on three sides by rugged, white-capped mountains. It is thirty miles long, from one to six miles wide, and contains about 150 square miles of territory. This is a small world in itself, self-contained by the nature of its environment. Of the 3,500 people, 750 live in the four small villages of Collbran, Plateau City, Melina and Mesa. The one great industry of the valley is stock-raising. Farmers have devoted themselves chiefly to raising beef cattle, but an interest in dairying is increasing. Pure-bred stock is now the goal of their efforts.
This beautiful mountain valley was chosen as a “model parish” to show what could be done by the Church throughout a large, thinly settled area. Although there were five church buildings in the valley, the church-going habit seemed to have been lost or never acquired, possibly because religious privileges had been meager and not altogether suited to the peculiar needs of the people and the country. It is doubtful if 250 people living in the valley were church members or attendants, while not more than 200 children went to Sunday school regularly. Few persons, however, were actually hostile toward religion or the Church. Here was the opportunity and the challenge.
The work centers in Collbran village, where there is a Congregational church organization and building. There are two men on the staff. The pastor has charge of the church school, the Christian Endeavor, and the work with men and young people in Collbran village. He also does visiting throughout the valley. The Director of Extension Work has the responsibility for establishing and maintaining out-stations, financing the local budget, and supervising the activities and the building of the Community House.
This Community House is to be the center and great achievement of the modern socio-religious program. The completed building will have rooms and equipment for an ideal church school, kindergarten, game room, library, rest-room and men’s club. The gymnasium will have a floor space seventy-five by forty feet and a gallery; it will also serve as an auditorium, while a stage, dressing-rooms and a moving-picture booth form part of the equipment. The basement will have billiard room, bowling alleys, lockers, baths, dining room and kitchen. The entire cost of the building will be approximately $25,000, to be financed in part by the CongregationalChurch Building Society and in part by local pledges. This is Home Mission aid well spent.
The first and second units were completed and opened for use on Christmas Day, 1921. The first unit is the auditorium. The second unit contains the library, assembly room, men’s room, women’s room, large billiard room and two offices which are to be used as headquarters for the boys’ and girls’ organizations. The third unit will be completed in the summer of 1922. The pastor and extension man have office hours in the morning. In the afternoon, the women’s rest room, with its easy chair, lounge and cribs for babies, and the men’s club are open. The billiard and reading rooms are open from one to five-thirty and the library is open from three-thirty to five. This library already has 1,200 books, and there are shelves for 3,800 more. The library service is probably the most appreciated part of the work for it fills a long and sorely felt need. In the evening, the men’s and women’s rooms are open, and the reading room and billiard room are open from seven to nine. The privileges of the Community House are for each man, woman and child in the valley irrespective of church or creed.
So far as possible, everything enjoyed at the center is to be taken to the furthest circumference of the valley. The equipment for the extension work consists of a truck, auto, moving-picture machine and a generator. The community truck is used to furnish group transportation and to promote inter-neighborhood “mixing” in competitive and other ways. The Extension Director is organizer, social engineer and community builder. He has a regular circuit of preaching appointments and Sunday schools. His program includes a one-hour visit to four schools every week. Ten minutes are used for physical exercises, thirty minutes for public school music with the coöperation of the teacher and twenty minutes for religious education. He takes out library books and Sunday school papers to the teacher, and once a month shows educational moving-pictures.
The people are already responding to this constructive program. Within four months, the Collbran Church School has increased nearly 150 per cent. in average daily attendance. The Christian Endeavor Society includes practically all the young people of the intermediate age. The Scouts and Camp Fire organizations are very active and recently held a dual meet with the Mesa organizations. Wrestling, basket-ball, hog-tying and three-legged races were some of the events. Within the year, thirty-seven members were added to the Collbran church, among whom were the leadinglawyer, banker, doctor, contractor, editor, merchant and rancher.
The other two denominations in the valley, the Methodist Episcopal and Baptists, are coöperating in the effort. The small Methodist Episcopal church at Plateau City has come into the movement by arrangement with the Methodist Episcopal Conference, and has become part of the larger parish. This church and community will unite with the Congregational church on a common budget for the support of general work. There is now Methodist Episcopal work in the extreme end of the valley, Baptist in the central part, and Congregational in the extreme west. Each church sticks to its own territory; each urges members of its own denomination to work with churches in other sections. But the larger parish equipment serves all in the extension program.
The work is only begun. The larger purpose is to break down distinctions between neighborhoods, as well as between village and country, and to weld all people living over a wide area into one large community with community spirit and a common loyalty. This cannot be done by the Church alone; doctors, visiting nurse, school teachers, county agent and farm bureau will gradually be called into a coöperative team play. This, then, is the Church not merely aspiring to leadership, but utilizing its opportunity with a real program. Asking no favors because of its divine origin, it is determined to make itself a necessity in the community by virtue of what it does. It is the Church “actually practising a religion of fellowship, giving value for value and serving all the people and all of their interests, all of the time.”
The Larger Parish Plan
This Larger Parish plan is the old circuit rider system brought up to date, and given an all-around significance through the use of modern means of transportation and an equipment suited to a religio-social program. The minister is no less a preacher and man of God because he is a community builder. His measure of “success” is his ability to work out with his people a genuine program of rural and social service.
With its community church and program, the Larger Parish plan seeks to make the church both a religious and a social center. Under its own roof, if necessary, or better, with an adjoining community house, it has equipment which provides for ideal worship, a modern church school and well-supervised social and recreational activities. It amounts to a church that offers advantages like thoseof the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. By means of this program, the rural church puts itself at the center rather than at the far circumference of rural life, and becomes one of the most active agencies in the community.
A REAL COMMUNITY HOUSE
Members of this Presbyterian Church at Sheridan building their own community house under the leadership of the pastor. The women of the church provided the eats.
This plan remedies a characteristic disability of the average rural minister and his church—the neglect in farmstead visitation. Especially on the plains, isolation and loneliness persist despite modern improvements. There are country homes near to villages or towns into which no minister or church visitor goes from one year’s end to another. Within reach of almost any church on the Range, and over great stretches of country, children may be found who are growing up without any religious training. In the face of this need and its challenge, the Larger Parish plan need not wait for people to come into the Church. By means of a well-equipped extension program the Church, and everything it stands for, is taken to all who need its ministrations.
A CHURCH THAT SERVES THE COMMUNITY
The M. E. Church and parsonage at Clearmont, Wyoming.
Preaching is essential. But when a minister and congregation can “brother” scattered peoples, they are most helpful in bringing the Kingdom of God to rural America. There may be some justice in the excuse that “the farmer and his family might easily come in to services in their automobile,” but it is true that a “house-going minister makes a church-going people.” The Larger Parish plan furnishes the minister the equipment and help to do just this thing. It views the church as a service institution.
The Montana Plan
It is even possible for a whole state to make a united plan for church work. Montana has had its area, community by community, county by county, or valley by valley, “allocated” to the religious care and undisputed responsibility of one or more denominations. For this new and progressive policy the people of the State were themselves responsible, and its development will be watched with intense interest. Unfortunately one of the fields in the only Montana county in this survey is not receiving the attention it should from its “allocated denomination.” This is the work in the southern part of the county, now served by a non-resident pastor. A glance at the map will show how effectively the larger parish plan could be applied.
Two tasks face the churches in these counties: First, to increase and enlarge the work of the churches already established, and, secondly, to reach and serve the great unevangelized areas. The former is a problem for the individual church and community. The latter is a problem demanding the coöperation of all religious forces on the field, for “there is religious need enough to tax the best energies and resources of all.” The churches in this new western country must keep pace with their rapidly changing environment, and with elastic yet inclusive programs really become community churches.
The county seat towns should assume more responsibility for their surrounding areas; in other words, they should plan and develop larger parishes. Especially in Beaverhead and Hughes, this area is unchurched and to a great extent neglected. While the social and economic life of these “centers” naturally overshadows a great portion of the county areas, yet the churches minister very inadequately to their needs. The church parishes on the map represent few members. The centers are growing, their influence is ever widening, so that the Church, in building up her work at the center with the idea not only of serving the people at hand but of reaching just as thoroughly the people in the surrounding areas, will naturally fulfill her destiny.
To reach areas outside the influence of the church work at the centers, colporteurs should be employed. A Sunday school missionary could give permanence to all Sunday school work and help to organize new schools in Union and possibly in Sheridan County. Some additional churches should be established; others might very well be closed. But it is chiefly up-to-date, educated,resident pastors that are needed, with a belief that the rural task is worth their lives.
Coöperation the Solution
The psychological and religious differences in these four counties have already been shown. All should not be treated alike. Every county is different. Every county demands individual study and treatment. Such conditions call for the survey method and for intensive coöperation. This is the key to the whole situation. Business, though still competitive and on an individual basis, combines for the community good, as in the case of Rotary and Civic Clubs. The churches might well emulate this example in organization. There are competent Ministerial Unions in Pierre and Sheridan City. What is needed now is a Council of Religion in each county with a program enlisting every minister and every church, and including every square mile of occupied land in the county. All problems are related. The causes of church ineffectiveness lie in non-coöperation. Ministers have stayed too short a time to relate themselves to their parish and their people; denominations in establishing new churches have not been curious enough about the lay of the land; the various component parts have been unrelated—the preacher to the church, the fringe areas to the church in the center and, finally, the Church to the people.
The Frontier of the Future
Yesterday the Range population was busy settling down. To-day it is haphazardly here, and still coming. And what of to-morrow? Franklin K. Lane wrote at the end of his term of service in the Department of the Interior: “We are quickly passing out of the rough-and-ready period of our national life, in which we have dealt wholesale with men and things, into a period of more intensive development in which we must seek to find the special qualities of the individual unit whether that unit be an acre of desert, a barrel of oil, a mountain canyon, the flow of a river, or the capacity of the humblest of men.” Here is fertile ground for well directed and progressive development.
The East is crystallized into its habits and customs. The West is more plastic because it is in the social making, and is willing, at need, to change its ways. The social baggage of the eastern states is only partly unpacked in this region. The young West isdeveloping a flexible social and institutional life in keeping with its phenomena of time and place.
Great possibilities are ahead. A real welding process has begun during the last few years as the population tends to become more static, or as it learns to coöperate in such agencies as Red Cross work during the war and the work of the Farm Bureau. A new social spirit is developing. The Church has counted for a great deal on the Range and has done some good, fundamental work. But in order to keep abreast of the new development and to help bring to the Range a “satisfying community life which is profitable, sociable, healthful and full of culture and charm and, above all, full of God,” the Church must make its ministry broader, steadier and more available.
Methodology and Definitions
The method used in the Town and Country Surveys of the Interchurch World Movement and of the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys differs from the method of earlier surveys in this field chiefly in the following particulars:
1. “Rural” was defined as including all population living outside incorporated places of over 5,000. Previous surveys usually excluded all places of 2,500 population or over, which follows the United States Census definition of “rural.”
2. The local unit for the assembling of material was the community, regarded, usually, as the trade area of a town or village center. Previous surveys usually took the minor civil division as the local unit. The disadvantage of the community unit is that census and other statistical data are seldom available on that basis, thus increasing both the labor involved and the possibility of error. The great advantage is that it presents its results assembled on the basis of units which have real social significance, which the minor civil division seldom has. This advantage is considered as more than compensating for the disadvantage.
3. The actual service area of each church as indicated by the residences of its members and adherents was mapped and studied. This was an entirely new departure in rural surveys.
Four chief processes were involved in the actual field work of these surveys:
1. The determination of the community units and of any subsidiary neighborhood units included within them. The community boundaries were ascertained by noting the location of the last family on each road leading out from a given center who regularly traded at that center. These points, indicated on a map, were connected with each other by straight lines. The area about the given center thus enclosed was regarded as the community.
2. The study of the economic, social and institutional life of each community as thus defined.
3. The location of each church in the county, the determinationof its parish area, and the detailed study of its equipment, finance, membership, organization, program and leadership.
4. The preparation of a map showing, in addition to the usual physical features, the boundaries of each community, the location, parish area and circuit connections of each church, and the residence of each minister.
The following are the more important definitions used in the making of these surveys and the preparation of the reports:
Geographical
City—A center of over 5,000 population. Not included within the scope of these surveys except as specifically noted.
Town—A center with a population of from 2,501 to 5,000.
Village—A center with a population of from 251 to 2,500.
Hamlet—Any clustered group of people not living on farms whose numbers do not exceed 250.
Open Country—The farming area, excluding hamlets and other centers.
Country—Used in a three-fold division of population included in scope of survey into Town, Village and Country. Includes Hamlets and Open Country.
Town and Country—The whole area covered by these surveys, i.e., all population living outside cities.
Rural—Used interchangeably with Town and Country.
Community—That unit of territory and of population characterized by common social and economic interests and experiences; an “aggregation of people the majority of whose interests have a common center.” Usually ascertained by determining the normal trade area of each given center. The primary social grouping of sufficient size and diversity of interests to be practically self-sufficing in ordinary affairs of business, civil and social life.
Neutral Territory—Any area not definitely included within the area of one community. Usually an area between two or more centers, and somewhat influenced by each, but whose interests are so scattered that it cannot definitely be assigned to the sphere of influence of any one center.
Neighborhood—A recognizable social grouping having certain interests in common, but dependent for certain elemental needs upon some adjacent center within the community area of which it is located.
Rural Industrial—Pertaining to any industry other than farming within the Town and Country area.
Population
Foreigner—Refers to foreign-born and native-born of foreign parentage.
New Americans—Usually includes foreign-born and native-born of foreign or mixed parentage, but sometimes refers only to more recent immigration. In each case the exact meaning is clear from the context.
The Church
Parish—The area within which the members and regular attendants of a given church live.
Circuit—Two or more churches combined under the direction of one minister.
Resident Pastor—A church whose minister lives within its parish area is said to have a resident pastor.
Full-time Resident Pastor—A church with a resident pastor who serves no other church, and follows no other occupation than the ministry, is said to have a full-time resident pastor.
Part-time Pastor—A church whose minister either serves another church also, or devotes part of his time to some regular occupation other than the ministry, or both, is said to have a part-time minister.
Non-Resident Member—One carried on the rolls of a given church but living too far away to permit regular attendance; generally, any member living outside the community in which the church is located unless he is a regular attendant.
Inactive Member—One who resides within the parish area of the church, but who neither attends its services nor contributes to its support.
Net Active Membership—The resultant membership of a given church after the number of non-resident and inactive members is deducted from the total on the church roll.
Per Capita Contributions or Expenditures—The total amount contributed or expended, divided by the number of the net active membership.
Budget System—A church which, at the beginning of the fiscal year, makes an itemized forecast of the entire amount of money required for its maintenance during the year as a basis for a canvass of its membership for funds, is said to operate on a budget system with respect to its local finances. If amounts to be raised for denominational or other benevolences are included in the forecast andcanvass, it is said to operate on a budget system for all monies raised.
Adequate Financial System—Three chief elements are recognized in an adequate financial system: a budget system, an annual every-member canvass, and the use of envelopes for the weekly payment of subscriptions.
Receipts—Receipts have been divided under three heads:
a. Subscriptions, that is monies received in payment of annual pledges.b. Collections, that is money received from free will offerings at public services.c. All other sources of revenue, chiefly proceeds of entertainments and interest on endowments.
a. Subscriptions, that is monies received in payment of annual pledges.
b. Collections, that is money received from free will offerings at public services.
c. All other sources of revenue, chiefly proceeds of entertainments and interest on endowments.
Salary of Minister—Inasmuch as some ministers receive, in addition to their cash salary, the free use of a house while others do not, a comparison of the cash salaries paid is misleading. In all salary comparisons, therefore, the cash value of a free parsonage is arbitrarily stated as $250 a year, and that amount is added to the cash salary of each minister with free parsonage privileges. Thus an average salary stated as $1,450 is equivalent to $1,200 cash and the free use of a house.
Tables
I
LAND AND FARM AREA IN THE RANGE COUNTIES ACCORDING TO THE FEDERAL CENSUSES FOR 1910 AND 1920
The average acreage per farm in Beaverhead and Sheridan has increased very slightly in the past ten years, while the improved acreage per farm has decreased. In Hughes and Union, however, there is a decided increase in both the acreage per farm and the improved acreage per farm.
II
FARMS AND FARM PROPERTY IN THE RANGE COUNTIES ACCORDING TO THE FEDERAL CENSUSES FOR 1910 AND 1920
As is usual in districts that have been homesteaded, the proportion of ownership is high. But because of absentee ownership, land companies operating over large areas and high taxes, the rate of tenancy is increasing.
III
ACREAGE AND VALUE OF CULTIVATED CROPS IN THE RANGE COUNTIES ACCORDING TO FEDERAL CENSUSES FOR 1910 AND 1920
The most important crops are hay and forage in Beaverhead and Sheridan; in Union cereal crops; in Hughes, both in nearly equal proportions. Dairying is a comparatively new development.
IV
URBAN AND RURAL POPULATION OF THE RANGE COUNTIES ACCORDING TO THE FEDERAL CENSUSES FOR 1910 AND 1920
V
RACIAL COMPOSITION OF POPULATION OF THE RANGE COUNTIES ACCORDING TO FEDERAL CENSUS OF 1920