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31.
Factors Which Tend to Disrupt the Community.

The following section of the report is bases almost entirely
on the observations of the writter. He spent eight weeks in the
community during the summer of 1923, and since that time has visited
the community several times.

In the past few years there has been a gradual influx of new
families into the community. This has been caused, primarily, by
the dying out of the older families.

At the present time there are four farms that are farmed by
unmarried owners, who are descendants of the original settlers. There
is great probility that these farms will be sold to new comers
when their present owners become too old to farm.

The Quakers that do have children seldom sell their farm. As
a rule they are passed down to one of the sons, the other children
often leave the community, they seldom buy a farm. As a result there
is a gradual dying out of the old families. The future of the
community rests on the new comers. If they are assimilated and are
the right type of people, the community will continue to prosper.
The community is in a critical stage. There are a sufficient
number of the old Quaker families in the community now to keep
up with the clubs and other organizations. The clubs are are active and
seem to be healthy, but will they continue to be so with the
passing of this generation? We will answer this question after we examined the other disrupting influences.

The new comers have brought their own religion and they have
built their own churchers. This tends to make a division in the
community, those that are Quakers and those that are not. This is
brought out very clearly by a custom of the Quakers of only using