Before there were technical missions, there were missionaries, and the latter had that face-to-face contact which the social psychologists believe to be so important for the transmission of ideas between men of differing cultures. Again, missionaries of the modern world have had more long-continuing contacts with a greater sweep of peoples in underdeveloped countries than any other group, unless one bundles itinerant and small resident traders into another aggregate. Furthermore, missionaries of all creeds in the last half-century or more have in some measure striven--like their more modern technical counterparts more specifically--to advance the agricultural, industrial, and other economic capacities of the subject areas. Accordingly, the relationships between religious missions and economic progress in the underdeveloped countries of the world appear a rather obviously proper topic for scholarly inquiry.