1918.] IT. ACE or TFIK FARMKR IN' TIIK nr)DY POLITIC. 79 



fur hi^luT strata from wliicli arc to come the leaders, thinkers, 

 artists and rulers. ( )n the other basis, the farm class itself 

 is a lateral and co-operatint^- fact<jr in alYairs, capable of j^ru- 

 ducini;- leaders, thinkers, artists and rulers, a class co-ordi- 

 nate rather than subordinate, directly related to civic needs: 

 this is the American idea. 1 do not know how extensively 

 this idea pre\ails, or is practiced in other ])arts of the world. 



^'(•u will a^ree that we cann(jt have a democracy on the 

 former basis, which is the theory of the sub( ordinate or 

 peasant class. Vou will now better understand my earlier 

 statement that democracy rests on the lanrl. In a ijook I 

 once said that if agriculture cannot be democratic, then there 

 is no democracy. 



Un the one basis rests autocracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, ar- 

 Togancy, tyranny, stratified social systems, whatever the 

 name of the government. On the other basis rests the possi- 

 "bility of free institutions. 



The farmer should have equal privileges with any other 

 man to develop himself and to partake in all affairs not to be 

 merely a mudsill on which a superstructure may rest. 



Democracy rests on the land, on such a division of it and 

 such an ease of acquiring it and such freedom of establishing 

 •new^ ownerships and combinations, as will allow the farmer 

 to buy and to sell it in his own name, and assure him the 

 economic and civic freedom to make the most of himself as a 

 man. This is equivalent to saying that the man is more im- 

 portant than the produce. 



])y this I do not mean that every man shall be a farmer, or 

 that in the future state of society every man shall raise his 

 own sustenance. This socialistic notion belongs to the idylls 

 of poetry. Rut a man shall not be bound and chained to a 

 hereditary piece of land. 



AMiile democracy rests on the land, it does not rest on 

 landlordism : quite the contrary. There is no aristocracy so 

 hateful and so difficult to dislodge as the aristocracy of 

 land. Landlordism is not agriculture; the agrarian questions 

 in the different countries arc not agricultural questions. 

 However free a people may be politically, if a large part of 

 the land is held by a relatively few families and beyond their 

 reach, that people cannot be a democracy. 



