Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in
mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I
will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing
that there shall not be room enough to receive it.—Malachi 3:10. This ancient text on tithing still looks sensible to Quaker Perry
Hayden, an energetic mill executive of Tecumseh, Mich. Five years ago
Hayden launched a dramatic experiment to prove that tithing works. He
planted 360 kernels of wheat in i a plot 4 by 8 ft. Each year he has
given a tithe of the crop to the church, resown the rest.
This week he and several hundred fellow tithers will go into a 230-acre
field to harvest approximately 5,060 bushels. The first year's tithe amounted to only five cubic inches of grain,
which was contributed to the Tecumseh Friends Church I and eaten by the
pastor as breakfast cereal. The remainder of that tiny crop was
sown on a 24-by-60-ft. plot of land given by Henry Ford, to whose
thrifty imagination the lot-from-a-little scheme had strong appeal.*
As the project burgeoned, Ford continued to donate the geometrically
progressing areas of land, and at last September's sowing personally
broadcast a peck of the symbolic wheat. This year, Hayden will divide the 4,500 bushels of wheat which are to be
replanted between 4-H groups and farmers who have pledged themselves to
sow it. They will give 10% of next year's harvest to the church of
their choice and 5% to the ''Dynamic Kernels Foundation” . This year's tithe will go to local hospitals. Obviously such a program must stop somewhere. At the present rate of
increase, the twelfth year of sowing would require more than the
earth's surface. But for the Tecumseh Quakers, mindful of Leviticus
25:3, 4, next year's sowing will be the sixth and last. *Martha Berry, a Georgia schoolmarm, once asked Ford for a
$1,000,000 donation to her country school, was listened to politely but
received only a Ford dime. Undaunted, she used the dime to start a
peanut crop, solemnly sent Ford detailed annual accountings of each
year's harvest, eventually bought a piano with the profits of the 100
worth of seeds. Ford was impressed, eventually visited the Berry
School, square-danced to the piano, finally came across with more than
the $1,000,000 Miss Berry originally asked for.
