AUNT Polly came up, puffing away at an old long-stemmed pipe, and accosted the group of strangers. "Who are you? And where air you going?" "Don't care if you are preachers," she went on, filling her pipe again and scratching a match on her shoe sole. "When I want to smoke, I smoke; when I want to chaw, I chaw; when I want to dip, I dip."

"The whiskey we make ourselves is mighty good," she explained later. "It's much better than this store kind. We call this imported stuff 'bust head whisky.' "

"Church? Yes, I 'low I'll jine church when I get a little bit better fixed. And when I do I'm going to live right."

Aunt Polly was seventy-eight years old and full of yarns about feuds, big revival meetings and adventuresome revenue officers. Wouldn't story writers take delight in her? As a matter of fact, it is from just such exceptional characters, "old timers" like Aunt Polly, that our stories about the "poor whites" are gleaned. Stories that are often true, but always exceptional.

Travel now through the Appalachians and you won't find many Aunt Pollys. You won't see any feuds except perhaps a movie feud "made in California." There isn't as much disorder in a whole year in the Southern Mountains as there was in Boston in one night. If you are looking for wild "life," you'd better go back to New York or Frisco.

But if you are looking for the most interesting, most hospitable, and in some instances, the most needy folk, "allow me to introduce" the mountaineers of the south.

Where shall we find them? In the Southern Appalachians, scattered over 20 counties of southeastern Kentucky, several counties of Virginia and West Virginia, 24 counties in western North Carolina, a dozen counties in eastern Tennessee, and a few counties in northern Georgia and Alabama.

Incidentally you can find mountaineers also in New York, Boston, Chicago, Oklahoma, and Flanders Fields.

During the last ten years so many mountaineers have gone out of the mountains, and so many railroads have gone into the mountains, changing the mountaineers — that a census is difficult. The number of southern highlanders today is given variously, from two to five millions.

IT is the grossest insult to call these people the "mountain whites." Of course they are white. Some mountain people have never seen a negro. The mountaineers have a better claim to the title of "real Americans" than anybody except the American Indians. The slur that goes with the name "mountain whites" is pardonable only because it is a sign of the ignorance of the speaker.

The mountaineers are Americans of the kind that left the Old World and braved the unknown dangers of the New for religious

and political convictions. They are of the same stock as the Pilgrim Fathers and the First Families of Virginia.

Numbered among the early mountaineers are Daniel Boone, Davie Crockett, George Rogers Clarke, George Sevier. These men were not "degenerates" certainly. They were as fine ancestors as anyone could hope to claim. But their descendants got "side-tracked" ©if the road of progress.

From the coasts of the Carolinas and the historic valleys of Virginia they climbed up into the mountains to get cheaper land and larger farms. The plantation, system of farming along the coast, with large holdings and cheap "indentured" — and later cheap negro — labor, crowded them out and up.

As the tide of population flowed westward, these people stopped "where the axle-tree of the wagon broke down," to quote John Fox, Jr. Their descendants became as isolated up there in the Appalachians, as though they were surrounded by a Chinese wall.

"EAST of them along the coast, manufacturing sprang up. . South of them, the cotton industry developed. West of them in the Mississippi Basin, the wheat lands were cultivated, and the prairie dwellers rode forward on a wave of prosperity and progress."

"But in the "mountains nothing changed. The people found themselves beyond the reach of mails, schools, churches. They were stranded above the tides. Every great movement that swept over the country swept around the mountains. The educational wave, which gained impetus from the work of Horace Mann, accomplished great advances in the matter of public education — everywhere but in the mountains. The religious revivals of 1811 left the mountains unchanged. For generations, the mountaineers experienced, not evolution but involution."

The greatest handicap of the mountaineers has been their isolation. The railway systems follow the long valleys and creek beds, leaving many counties "off the railroad." Low taxes — and taxes must needs be low where poverty is so grinding — low taxes won't pay for expensive road building up peaks and down dales. Poor transportation means home-made products, houses, clothes, tools, machinery, religion, whiskey. One boy excused their "possum stills" by saying:

"We can't haul our corn out over the mountains, so we make it into whisky and fight it out."

FOR generations the mountaineers lived in the most primitive fashion. They were the Rob Roys of the American highlands. They enjoyed the most perfect freedom, lived and died untrammeled by civilization. There was game a-plenty, venison, wild turkey and squirrel. The creeks teemed with fish.

The old religion of the mountains did not inspire progress either. Now there are Presbyterian and Methodist and Episcopal and other mission churches. But for years the old mountaineers belief in Predestination made them as fatalistic as Mohammedans. Their attitude toward destiny was much like that described in the verse,

Such a cramped outlook was responsible, probably, for the reckless disregard for law which prevailed in the mountains. If a man was "predestined" to kill his neighbor, he would murder him. If one was "predestined" to have a still, he would have a still, revenue officers to the contrary notwithstanding.

This moonshining habit is not excusable, perhaps, but we can understand it more sympathetically when we realize that in the narrow lives of the mountaineers, there was no news, no travel, no visitors, from outside, no recreation, no vent for any upreaching thought or emotion — except moonshine whiskey and fights.

THE new nation-wide prohibition won't affect the mountain stills. They have always been against the law. What's one more law? In some districts of the mountains, notably near the big schools, the moonshine practice is becoming less common. Which proves that to rout out the stills, we need, not prohibition but education.

How do the mountaineers get a living? In many instances "get a living" is correct. For some of them do not earn money even today.

They plant corn and potatoes. Year after year till the soil is exhausted. Their sheep graze on fields tipped almost vertical. They raise some razor-backed hogs, and cure their own pork over hickory logs in a smoke house. There are some mountain farmers using the same sort of wooden plow the first pioneers did. There are families still who grind their own corn meal, and saw their own logs.

On the other hand, there are water mills springing up everywhere. The railroads bring work. Work in the lumber camps, in the coal mines and coke ovens, and on the railways themselves. The railroads bring a market for timber, railroad ties, dressed lumber, axe-handles, wooden furniture. Farmers are building silos and breeding better cattle.

THERE are two kinds of mountaineers. In the broad valleys, on rich farms or in the thrifty cities, are a class of people as prosperous, intelligent and progressive as any similar group the country over. But the other half, way up in the mountains, far from centers of wealth and culture, live the simplest of lives full of hardships and privations. Isolation has made the mountaineers individualists, reticent, careless of appearances, but with a keen sense of the great realities.

BUT the mountaineers are American. In nine counties in Tennessee, on the edge of the Great Smokies, there are only 211 foreigners out of a population of 168,649. Of the 22,296 people in Sevier County, only seven are foreign-born.

In these same nine counties, not one person in ten is colored.

MOUNTAIN children are the finest raw material in the country. But in one mountain county there are 7988 children of school age, of whom 3272 have never attended school. That is not typical of all mountain counties, but neither is it an exceptional case.

WHEN they've finished the chicken-house, they'll probably begin carpentering a dormitory. Mission schools are always overflowing. There're more pupils than there are mattresses to put on the floor.

A package of publicity matter to be used in recruiting students was sent to one of our mission schools for Southern Highlanders. The president re-turned the circulars saying that he spent about a fourth of his time informing parents that no more students could be accommodated. He didn't dare advertise.

Judging Stock

"THE gentle cow" entirely surrounded by mission school students learning to judge her points. Both cow and boys are of the new order reigning in the highlands. Young men of this type become the prosperous farmers and the leaders of their districts. And cows of this type soon make their dairy record known county over.

THIS should be called ' Then and Now." But the then and now" are simultaneous, at the Asheville Farm School. The old wooden plow and the gasoline tractor, working side by side, provide graphic proof of the value of modern methods in agriculture.

Answering Questions

THE missionary-farmer-teacher giving a "close-up" lesson.

PRACTICAL work in pruning trees at Brevard Institute, North Carolina. This school has 200 pupils, most of them from the mountains, some from the cotton villages of the" level country."

Through the most varied and ingenious missionary work to be found the world over. I'll cite some instances.

A visiting nurse sent by a mission board has organized a "Health Campaign" for a whole county/ She is giving "Health Talks," conducting a "Better Babies Campaign," promoting "Baby Shows" at community fairs, and planning the hot lunch at rural schools for undernourished children.

A young Ohio school teacher was sent to the Cumberland Mountains, to a small community seven miles from a railroad, seven miles from a grocery store, from a doctor, a post office, from everything but loneliness and need, in the homes of that "settlement" now you will see canned vegetables and fruit that she has taught them how to save, to vary the winter diet.

A rural route, which she secured, brings the daily mail. A good road runs through the community. She is also responsible for a weekly religious service and a six months school. There is no way of knowing how much an educated and consecrated young woman can accomplish in one of these communities.

THE primary interests of the "Community Workers" sent  there by our churches is to give the people a chance to help themselves. One missionary imported some pure seed corn for the farmers. Another made the neighborhood yeast to induce the people to use "light bread." One missionary walked over eleven mountain counties carrying a stereopticon lantern giving illustrated lectures on the harmful effects of the house fly and persuading the people to screen their homes. A minister in Kentucky helped his community to pave the roads to pave the roads to his church. A pike road to church is an invitation that anyone can understand.

One missionary in response to the requests of the voters, is the auditor of the public money of this county. He has installed a new financial system and during the past two years has saved his county seven thousand dollars in maintenance expenses. He has signed checks for the spending of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of county money for road improvement. He also has a chance to improve the schools and secure well-prepared teachers. It was a missionary of the church who raised the salary for the first County Agricultural Agent in the mountains of Tennessee. Now the thirteen adjoining counties have County Agents paid out of state funds. It was another missionary who started the Canning Clubs in the mountains of North Carolina and promoted them for four years until the state took over the projects. It was under the auspices of the church six years ago that Community Fairs, now quite popular, were started.

What about the additions to the church? Mission Boards are trying to help each community to secure a well-equipped resident pastor. When this has been done people unite with the church. In one section of the mountains where the churches have recently been well equipped by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, one of the foremost agencies in this field, the membership is increasing ten per cent a year.

"Are the people capable of development: How do they show up?" someone always asks. Meaning, of course, "we're from Missouri."

WELL, look at Sergeant Yorke. No article about mountaineers is complete without him. And Sergeant Yorke is not exceptional, but is typical of the character and strength the mountains produce. The war merely stimulated the outburst of genius and ability which brought him and many others into the limelight.

This generation will witness great changes in the Appalachians. The men of soldier-age were snatched out of the narrow environment of their homes, and thrown in contact with men from every where. The physical training and medical attention cured many of them of hook worm, a scourge of the South. Some men got their first schooling in cantonments. They saw the wonders that motors and tractors and road-building machines can accomplish.

"I hope I get discharged before the first of November," an overseas veteran complained, "Cause, if I don't, I can't get home till next spring. I'll have to walk fifty miles from the railroad, and you can't get over the roads in the winter."

How long will he live in the mountains before urging good roads? And schools? And all the other institutions of civilization and democracy he saw "out in the world."

The mountain people only need a chance. When given it, they succeed. One day a preacher proposed to a houseful of young people that if any of them would save money enough for their railroad fare to get them to college and provide for their clothes for the year, he would get the money for their tuition. A bright young woman soon accepted the offer. She began making her clothes and getting ready to enter Berea Academy ten months hence. Her enthusiasm became contagious. At the end of those ten months of preparation seven young people from that one community entered Berea, five went to a college in Tennessee and one to a normal school in North Carolina. Thirteen young people, from one community in one year "working their way through college" shows that these people appreciate a chance to improve. The big work of the church in the mountains is to give the young people a chance.

OUTSIDE a mountain cabin a mother sat under a shade tree, weeping, and her tears fell on the face of her baby boy. She did not know that those tears were carrying to her child the same affliction she was now enduring — trachoma.

Whole communities in the Kentucky Mountains have trachoma, that most painful and dangerous disease of the eyes. The victims sit all day in the dark windowless cabins, most of them without occupation or diversion. At twilight they come out and stumble up and down the rough hillsides, visiting with their neighbors, gossiping, talking politics. Then home again to a sleepless night.

Dr. Stucky, of Lexington, when he made a tour of investigation, at the instigation of a mission school teacher, found many localities where from 60 to 80 percent of the people were infected with trachoma.

With several other volunteer doctors and nurses, Dr. Stucky set up a clinic at the Hindman Settlement. They had a three-roomed "log hospital" and a little colony of tent work-rooms. When it was "norated around" that the "eye doctors" were there, patients came by the hundreds. Men, women and children poured into Hindman, riding mules, riding nags, bumping along in "jolt wagons," or walking. Nearly all of them wore black bandages, or bonnets and hats pulled low over their sensitive, suffering eyes.

One old man said he had never been without acute pain for twenty years. The trachoma-roughened lids had scraped over his eye balls till the sight was hopelessly gone. Many children could not remember whether they had ever been able to see distinctly.

For three years the volunteer doctors and nurses came back twice a year to continue the treatment and make the cures permanent. A new hospital, with twenty-two beds was built, so that the Settlement nurse could keep patients under continual treatment.