"THE ECONOMIC FACTOR is not the history-making factor by itself."
This is illustrated by contrasting the different attitudes toward
poverty in America with those in India and China. During the
period of the great depression in the nineteen thirties the prin-
cipal problem which faced this country was the poverty and hun-
ger which stalked the land due to the widespread unemployment
of more than ten millions of people. Every responsible person in
the nation was concerned about it; it was the chief problem in
state and national government, and both the large political parties
gave it central place in their party platforms. In India and China,
however, six hundred millions have lived in abject poverty for a
thousand centuries without producing any appreciable effect.
There, poverty is accepted as a matter of course, and no one is
concerned about a remedy. Poverty, therefore, as an economic
factor does not become operative until the people become con-
cerned about it and are convinced that something can and ought
to be done to remedy it. It is the attitude of men which makes the
difference. If we define religion as the ultimate passion which
determines men's attitudes--and religion may well be so defined--
then religion is a fundamental history-making force ¹

On every American frontier life was crude, and ignorance and
lawlessness were everywhere in evidence. The great majority of
the people were indifferent to the prevailing conditions and ac-
cepted them as a matter of course. But there was, fortunately, in
every considerable community a little company of people, the ma-
jority of them constituting the membership and the ministry of
the frontier churches, who believed that conditions could be
changed; that life on every frontier could be raised to a higher
level, and thus through them the seeds of culture were planted in
the west. In refining manners and taste; in creating new and

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