The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 42

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42 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

would have a splendid opportunity to erect a me-
morial for them by presenting our orphans at Shih-
nan with a real home and school. How we long to
see the day when we shall be permitted to dedicate
our new institution!
St. Louis, Mo., January 22, 1932.
FREDERICK BRanp.

Present-Day Frontiers.

The frontier still exists in the sense that there
are people in our country living in the pioneering
stage. But the frontier can no longer be measured
in terms of geography, as was the case a few decades
ago. Frontier areas may be found not far from our
great industrial centers in the East just as surely as
they are found in our Far Western States. The
frontier must be measured in terms of human need,
in terms of isolated and spiritually neglected com-
munities and neighborhoods. Such may be found
not far from our own churches, urban and rural.
This is a significant fact that is not realized by our
pastors and their members as it should be. Can-
vasses, systematic surveys, made by our members
would reveal conditions in this respect that would
astound many among us and probably would awaken
them to action.

A missionary in one of our Western States may
find himself fifty miles from a- railroad, with no
house, no church, and possibly no roads. His neigh-
bors will be homesteaders who live in sod houses.
The people may have to drive fifty, sixty, and more
miles to take their crops to a railroad station. In
the long winter months they must live in loneliness
and face sickness and death without a doctor. - One

A Frontier Parsonage.

A Frontier Logging-Camp in California.

such missionary, in the course of his first year,
established stations twenty-five and thirty miles
apart, either in schoolhouses or ranch-houses. At
his first service he had eighteen persons in atten-
dance and twelve of these had come from twenty to
fifty miles. That was a frontier!

But here is another case. There is a town in the
hard-coal region of Pennsylvania. The town has
five thousand inhabitants. When the missionary
came there, the town had no church, no resident
physician, and no sewers. All the sewage ran into
open gutters. The teacher of one of the lower
grades had a hundred children; other grades were
also overcrowded. Here was a frontier of human
need !

Another case. There is a section in the cut-over
territory bordering on the Great Lakes covering
seven townships and having a population of about
1,820: In this district there is not a single church.
North of this section there is another one consisting
of fifteen villages and hamlets and a number of log-
ging-camps. The population is about 5,900. In
this whole territory there are three churches, and
these are for Indians on the two Indian
reservations located in the territory. This,
too, is a frontier!

One more case. Dilapidated, unpainted,
unfinished, and wretchedly furnished homes
greet the home missionary as he comes to
a village in the Great Smoky Mountains of
Tennessee. Illiteracy is general in the com-
munity. The school term is very short. The
people live isolated lives and have few
friendly contacts. The roads are impassable.
Health conditions are most primitive; igno-
rance of the very first rules of hygiene, no
doctors, broken-down, overworked mothers,
whisky, snuff, and itch. No play-life for the
children and youth, no social life for the