that farm tenancy raises the ratios of white illiteracy and lowers the ratios of white church membership with fatal certainty in the South. Does it also blow out the light in the souls of our white tenants? If so, farm tenancy ought to probe to the quick of the intelligence and Christian conscience of church authorities and church members, for the sixty-three thousand white tenant households of North Carolina contain nearly one-fifth of the entire white population of the state.

5. What Farm Tenants Read. The thirty-eight tenant households subscribe for newspapers and magazines, receive free public bulletins, and own books as follows:

12 families subscribe for a country weekly each.

12 families subscribe for a farm paper each.

9 families subscribe for popular magazines, 14 in number.

6 families subscribe for church papers, seven in number.

5 families subscribe for a daily paper each.

38 families have each a Bible and an almanac.

0 families subscribe for children's papers or magazines.

4 families receive the State Public Health Bulletin.

0 families receive any other bulletins-from any state department, or any state college.

13 families have all told 153 children's books including school books. 14 families have 38 religious books, mainly songbooks.

3 families have 43 novels.

34 families have 473 volumes of various other sorts, mail order catalogues, reports, old medical books, law books, etc., most of these in three families.

0 families have any books on agriculture or country life.

0 families borrow books from school or other public libraries.

2 families have no books but the Bible.

The bulk of the papers, magazines, books and bulletins are in the homes of thirteen tenants on family lands who have inherited the traditions of family culture in farm-owner homes. Seven self-help tenants and five croppers subscribe to newspapers and have a few books in their homes -one of these, a goodly number of books. Twenty-six or more than half of the fifty-one tenant homes are bare of books, papers, and magazines. The wonder is not that so few but that so many books, papers, and maga zines reach these farm tenant homes. The 153 books for the children are the bright particular spot in these homes. One hundred and fifty-three children's books would not long keep alive the sixty youngsters of reading ages in thirty-eight homes, but we dare to say that they play a large part in making country life endurable.

The country weekly leads the list of newspapers, here as everywhere else in the state, and advertisers may like to note this fact-that is, if they want to reach the people who have a minimum of pin money to spend.

Church papers come fourth in the order of frequency, and the editors of church papers may like to note that fact. Farm tenants crave country

weeklies, farm papers, and popular magazines more than they crave the religious journals of North Carolina.

Aside from the Bible, the books in these homes are miscellaneous volumes, children's books, novels, and religious books, named in a descending order of numbers. No book on agriculture was found in any tenant home, and in one cropper home no Bible.

The state departments and the state institutions may like to note that aside from four homes receiving the State Health Bulletins, they are reaching none of these tenant homes with official literature. If they have an idea that their extension activities are covering North Carolina like the dew, they are mistaken. There is an immense work for them all to do in field services to the people of the state. The homes of the white renters are beyond their efforts at present in this area; and even more the homes of the white croppers. The chances are these facts are statewide, and that the 317,000 people in white farm tenant homes are receiving no benefit or almost none from their extension efforts.

6. Churches and Church Influences. Next to the home which is everywhere the strongest social group in country civilization, the country church stands out as the most important social institution-in this territory, in the state, and in the South in general.

Eight churches of three denominations serve the 1700 white inhabitants of Baldwin and Williams townships. Seven have preaching once-a-month and usually in rotation. All but two of the preachers serving these eight churches are non-residents, living in other communities or counties. Only one preacher in the active ministry and only one retired minister are living in this territory.

As in Orange, the country church buildings evidence pride and care. All but one were painted once-upon-a-time. The window lights are in, the blinds are on, the interiors are swept and dusted, the buildings are locked between preaching events, the grounds and graveyards are in order, and are kept so by the memorial day clean-up that features the country church year in mid-state Carolina, or such is the general appearance of all but one of the country churches. The dwellings of a country region in midstate North Carolina may look dilapidated, but not the country church buildings as a rule.

Preaching in the different churches makes every Sunday of the month a social occasion for all the people, and everybody or almost everybody goes to church. It is the event of the week. The great event of the year is the revival or protracted meeting when crops are laid-by in the fall and the whole countryside turns out. Unhappily these church-recruiting occasions often conflict in dates. The church that offers the greatest excitement draws the largest crowds. The indifferent and the openly irreligious come out to the church at protracted meeting times. Even the bootleggers fringe the out-skirts of the crowds and not infrequently ply their trade within the curtilage of the churches.

The rest of the year the households go to the church of their own faith on one Sunday; the other Sundays of the month they mingle with the

congregations of other creeds, with a steadily decreasing sense of church differences. We'd all belong to one and the same church if it wasn't for the preachers, said one farmer with a twinkle in his eye. The families of farm owners, renters and croppers meet and mingle on a common level on Sundays; they freely exchange invitations to the basket dinners of the family groups on the church grounds on big occasions; and on the whole in this area the country churches are unifying rather than separating social influences.

Are these churches reaching and serving the tenants? This was the main inquiry of the church section of our survey schedule. The answer is, Yes, in the main-church attendance considered.

It is the rule in this corner of Chatham for every family to hitch-up or crank-up and go to church on Sundays-to the church of its own faith on one Sunday of the month and to other churches within reach on other Sundays. Preaching is the event of the week. It is the one chance for social intercourse, for talk about crops and candidates by the men and about babies and household ailments by the women. It is the rule of every renter family of both types-the kinsman and the self-help tenants almost without exception. The farm-owning families attend church no better than the renters, and there are no discoverable class differences here or elsewhere in this tenancy area.

But just as we expected, the thirteen white cropper families lag behind in church attendance. Four of these families or nearly a third of them all are habitually absent from church. No way to go, church too far away, no clothes, they say. In three families the fathers had the smell of corn whiskey on their breath when our surveyor talked with them, and the entire household were manifestly below the level of the neighborhood.

So much for church attendance. The Sunday school is another story. Of the fifty-one tenant families, thirteen go to church but not to Sunday school, four families more attend neither Sunday school nor church, and these four families are croppers. Thirty-four percent of the renter households and seventy-nine percent of the cropper households are not in Sunday school.

The Sunday school which ought to be the strongest phase of religious organization is the weakest. Here as elsewhere it fails to reach the humbler homes-the homes of the croppers in particular.

Tenant Church Membership. Turning from church attendance to church membership the tabulation is as follows:

It will be noted that church membership in white tenant families in this territory is in direct ratio to property ownership, stable residence, and community identity. Here is the reason why three-fifths of the cropper

households are outside the church, and four-fifths of them outside the Sunday schools. The highest ratios of church membership are in renter households, and the lowest in cropper households. The renter households are 22 and 24 points above the state average of church membership, and the cropper households are 22 points below it. And it must not be forgotten that one of every ten people in these white cropper households, ten years old and over, is illiterate, and that nearly nine times out of ten his education ends with the fourth school grade. Here as elsewhere in the South a high illiteracy ratio in white tenancy areas means a low church membership ratio, for two reasons: first, it is embarrassing not to be able to read the hymns, and to sing with the rest of the congregation; and second, illiterate white croppers have little or no money to put into the contribution boxes, and "where we kaint pay we don't go," as one renter expressed it. White farm tenancy in the South breeds poverty, poverty breeds illiteracy, and together these three social conditions are deadly menaces to the country church. Besides, they remove beyond the reach of the church the very people who most need its ministrations, or so as a rule.