Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/816

802 A’s families moved from the first floor to the fifth—and there have been sociological “anti-basement” clubs in New York city—would it not be better to have visitor A continue the friendly visiting, when acquaintance was just forming into friendship, than to have visitor B make a beginning? One-tenth of New York’s Protestant church members, in 1890, that is, 17,000 people, could not visit, at ten families apiece, that is, 170,000 families, all of New York’s families of that year, which were 312,866 in number. In these and other regards the Chickering Hall plan was subpractical for New York, and its practical elements must be inductively adapted wherever its ideality permits it to be adopted. Its superiority over the first plan is unquestioned, however, in that it approaches a geographical parish system, and combines the Protestant congregations in visitation.

The third plan is yet to make its history, and if it succeeds it will be another instance of the evolutionary order of social progress. If it fails, or is submitted to modifications before it is fitted to survive, none who have been concerned in formulating it will deny that God is in his world or in his church. All that they will say is that he is in his church as he is in his world.

The plan is, first of all, to induce the churches and charities of a region to make a house-to-house study of educational, evangelical, economic, and other conditions. The minuteness and extent of this inquiry will vary in different cities. The territory covered will vary. In New York it has embraced, so far, two regions, one as large as Utica, the other as large as Schenectady. In Schenectady a subregion as large as Fonda might suffice.

The result of such a study, which should be conducted by someone who has a measure of sociological training, will, it is felt, show, everywhere in America, a sadder state of social affairs than the Christian community knew to prevail. Out of this knowledge, if the situation is severely discouraging, the desire for coöperation in care will arise. When the Persians