420 Transactions op the 



business of industrial labor, agriculture, wherein it fails to meet the 

 higher demands of human nature, and why, in California especially, we 

 are looking to the lower class of foreigners for the permanent tillers of 

 American soil and laborers in the more important industries. 



In Great Britain men seek to gain fortunes that they may become the 

 owners of country homes; it adds to their dignity to be landed proprie- 

 tors. The tastes of rural life are there cultivated and diffused. This has 

 given to its farmers great social and political consideration. They have 

 a weight in shaping the policy of Government which they do not have 

 elsewhere, and this int spite of an aristocratic social structure which 

 would seem far more unfavorable than that of our own country. 

 Throughout Europe it may be asserted that the foundation of social dis- 

 tinction is always in the ownership of land, not held as with us for spec- 

 ulative purposes, but for actual and perpetual use. Something of this 

 sentiment came over in the Mayflower and got planted on the James 

 River, but in our long migrations across the continent it seems to have 

 'lost greatly in strength. Certainly it does not now distinguish the 

 higher classes of society, and if Ave look for a genuine, hearty love for 

 the land, we shall find it among the humbler classes of European emi- 

 grants who have becn»taught the value of it by their wants. • 



The Valley of the Eock River, in Wisconsin and Illinois, is one of 

 almost unequaled fertility, and within my own remembrance has been 

 twice colonized — first, by settlers from New York and New England, the 

 advance of the wave which spent itself so largely in Michigan; and 

 secondly, by Germans and Scandinavians. The first came in and took 

 up extensive tracts of land, which they cropped year after year with 

 wheat, burning their straw, and returning nothing to the soil. They 

 cut down the spare timber of the openings, and the climate not being 

 favorable for fruit growing, left nothing in its place. By the time their 

 * lands were well fenced, comfortable houses and barns erected, they dis- 

 covered that the crops were not as heavy as formerly; there were more 

 frequent droughts, more " chinch bugs*;" many of the pioneers sold out 

 and. moved to Missouri, Kansas, or the Pacific Coast. Meanwhile the 

 hardy Norwegian and German emigrants, who, coming later, had taken 

 up the less desirable sections of wild land — saving, in European fashion, 

 every scrap of manure, planting trees and vines, and settling more in 

 communities, have been able in many cases to buy up these improved 

 homesteads, until in some locations the entire nationality of a district 

 has been changed — certainly not fm* the worse, if the accelerated increase 

 of the population and value of the land is considered. Wisconsin, Iowa, 

 and Minnesota, and more lately, Missouri, have gained immensely in 

 gaining this home-making element. 



RESPECT FOR THE SOIL. 



If it be true that there is a degeneracy of sentiment in respect to the 

 intrinsic dignity and nobleness of industrial pursuits in American }*outh, 

 and that the elders seem to look to these rather as a means to some very 

 different end than the handing down of a well-earned success to worthy 

 successors in the same line, then let us seriously ask the question: How 

 shall we improve in this respect, and create in this country, as there is 

 in Europe, a higher sentiment of attachment to the soil than springs 

 from a sordid self-interest, till paternal acres represent here, as in older 

 lands, social standing, intelligence, leisure, and culture? I believe the 

 only way to do this is to educate our }-outh — boys and girls — into a 



