The ]\Iax with the Hoe. 211 



Critics have insisted that we have no peasant class in our 

 joung. rich, independent America; that the principles of our gov- 

 •ernment and the spirit of our institutions forbid that we ever shall 

 have. While disposed to accept the optimistic view of this ques- 

 tion. I must, nevertheless, call attention to the fact that America 

 has imported plenty of stock from which such a class may breed. 

 A tour through the West will show that our prairies are already 

 thoroughly planted with the seed of a European peasantry. Free- 

 dom and liberal education must" be depended upon to leaven this 

 lump. It would indeed be difficult to believe that our American 

 farmer or farm laborer could ever degenerate into the poor crea- 

 ture of the picture and the poem. For myself, I regard life on a 

 well-conditioned farm a wholesome discipline for mind and body. 

 I do not believe it is generally felt to be a hardship even from the 

 view-point of the " hired man." In New York State he certainly 

 receives a fair share of the profits of the farm, and has none of the 

 responsibility of management. The farmer has his troubles and 

 grievances, but if called upon to name the class most deserving 

 of pity, I would not look for it in the fields of agriculture, but 

 turn to our brother of the mines — that underground world where 

 human lives are worn away in brute ignorance of all that makes 

 the glory and sweetness of life! Human beings living like the 

 denizens of an ant-hill, without the ant's share in the benefits of 

 his labor! 



The French peasantry which the Barbizon painter portrayed so 

 well, is not a recent growth, but the product of powerful causes 

 and conditions, whch have been operating in France for more than 

 two centuries. Demolius, the French sociological writer, tells us 

 that the chief cause of the demoralization of agriculture in France 

 is due to the desertion of this profession by large land-owners, and 

 the abandonment of country for town life. There is no country 

 in the w^orld where agriculture is so forsaken and discredited as it 

 is in France. This result may be looked for in any country where 

 the people become estranged from rural life and regard living on 

 -a farm as the gloomiest exile. No one can doubt that the profes- 

 sion of agriculture is important and necessary to a successful 

 social system. It should and must, therefore, demand skill and 

 intelligence in its followers if we would save it from the demoral- 

 ization and decay which is apparent in France. 



