188 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



THE SOCIAL EANK OF FARMERS. 



BY HON. M. D. CAMPBELL. 



[Read at the Quincy Institute, Feb. 18, 1886.] 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



AVliy your oommittee asked me to address a Farmers' Institute has been, 

 something of a mystery to me and may prove more of one to you ere I am done 

 ■with my paper. 1 suppose it was because my growing years were passed within 

 rail fences, and my young voice was early attuned to the Whee-co-boss or ko-da 

 of rural life. But though I know how long it takes butter to come in an old 

 dash churn, and which is the bunting end of a hungry calf, I nevertheless know 

 but very litt'e of the great science, farming ; and so allow me to assure you in 

 advance, that I am not a teacher of farmers. In the short time I have been 

 able to give the subject, I have found not the least of my difficulties to get a 

 definition of the term "social rank" as understood in this our boasted repub ic. 

 We know what it meant in the South a few years ago. We read what it means 

 in the old world where lords, knights, serfs and vassals are ranked as such. 

 We know what it means in Eng and and Ireland with the tillers of the soil, 

 where they are little more than slaves to their masters. We know what it 

 means in France, where the largest farm tilled by its owner is not more than 

 eleven acres. But when we undertake to formulate a definition that will clearly 

 define American social rank, either as applied to agriculture or other vocations, 

 we find ourselves in more than a pock of trouble. Our farmers of to-day are 

 not living upon the soil of many generations of their fathers, for but a few 

 scores of years at most have elapsed, since our ancestors broke loose from the 

 attachments of their native countries, to find a home in America. They crossed 

 the seas to stake out a home from which no lord of mammon could drive them 

 away. Thus the old definitions of social rank, as applied to agriculture, must 

 gather new meanings from the ages and countries in which they are useil. In 

 the older States of our commonwealth the towns and small cities have become 

 so thickly scattered over the country, that we can hardly get out of sight of 

 the village church spire, or away from the sound of the village school boll. 

 The farmers and towns people have married and inter-married, until the sepa- 

 rating lines would be hard to trace. The villages of to-day are largely n)ade 

 up of the farmers of yesterday. Some have drifted from their farms to the 

 village or city store, or to homes in the village to educate their children, or in 

 declining years or failing health to find more leisure than the cares of the 

 farm will permit. And I do not believe there are very many boys or girls who 

 have thus come to maturity on the farm, and whose early lives and growth 

 have been assimilated from its surroundings, but that will, so long as life and 

 reason last, point widi pride to the home of their youth. In the cities and vil- 

 lages are to be found the extremes of wealth and ])overty. Only a few, how- 

 ever, are rich, while the great mass are the poorest of the nation. But on the 

 fanns of the country we find the great middle class. That class who ilre 

 neither within the tropical luxuriant growth, where massive fortunes shine 

 down ur)on them, nor yet cling to the barren rocks in the frigid zone of pov- 

 erty. 



I trust uo one will think I am hoodwinked or blinded to the fact 



