They held to the belief of their founder George Fox (1624-91), that no one could know Christ without "quaking and trembling." So, although they called themselves Friends the irreverent called them Quakers. Today there are 160,000 members of the Society of Friends. Their organized groups, called "meetings," are spotted irrelevantly over the map of the world. Largest is the London Yearly Meeting, with 20,000 members. Next in size is the Five Year Meeting of Indiana, located near Richmond, Ind. with 16,000 members who differ from most Quakers in having formal services with paid pastors. The combined Race Street and Arch Street Meetings of Philadelphia (15,000) are now practically reunited, after having been respectively Hicksite and Orthodox Quakers as a result of a schism a century ago.* Next largest are the Africa Eastern Group (7,000), the Madagascar Yearly Meeting (6,000), the Guatemala Yearly Meeting (3,600). Once, 17 years ago a world conference of Friends was held in London. Last week 1,000-odd members of the world's Quaker meetings met for the second World Conference of Friends.
Influential in world affairs out of all proportion to their numbers, Quakers, compared to most sects strong in faith, are peculiarly passive. Fanatical flamboyance of word or deed is abhorrent to them. Their informal meetings, where they sit in sombre clothes heeding the mild words of those of their number who may be moved to prayer, are the antithesis of the average Protestant revival meeting. Their preoccupations are peace, temperance, social service, the Godly way of life. Their Friends Service Committee, active in rehabilitating jobless U. S. coal miners and ministering to the needy of both sides in the Spanish War, is Anna Eleanor Roosevelt's favorite charity to which in the past two years she has subscribed $30,000 of her radio earnings.
Last week's meeting in Philadelphia offered an extraordinary view of this extraordinary church. The only Quaker President of the U. S., Herbert Hoover, never an active churchman, was absent but many another famed Quaker was present. Quartered at two Quaker colleges Haverford and Swarthmore, both in Philadelphia's environs, the Friends met daily in Swarthmore's roomy Field House and its towering limestone chapel. Foreign delegates soon learned that the chapel was given by Philadelphia's rich Quaker Clothier family, while the other-half of the ownership of the city's famed department store, the Quaker Strawbridges, are benefactors of Haverford.
Many a British Friend is also a merchant for a century ago Quakers were forbidden by law to attend British universities were thus barred from most professions. Friends founded Barclays and