1902.] THE FARMER AS A CITIZEN. 10/ 



citizenship of our farmers that you will pardon me if I touch 

 upon. With the process of time various changes have come 

 about. A State finds it is desirable to change its fundamental 

 law, or the constitution under which it is operating. I am told 

 that the able and accomplished Governor of your State today, 

 in addressing this convention, referred to the fact that you 

 are about to revise your State Constitution. Now, I do not 

 know much about it, but I have long understood that your 

 system of representation to which I alluded a few moments 

 ago, that your system of representation has been quite differ- 

 ent from ours in the State of New York, and that your agri- 

 cultural communities have a much larger representation in 

 your General Assembly than your city communities do, and 

 that it is proposed to change all this. I freely admit that the 

 fundamental idea of representation is one of entire equality, 

 but let us see what this thing is? Let us examine it. And I 

 hope that it may be that the idea I am about to advance is one 

 that has been considered here in the State, and one with which 

 you are entirely familiar, but that is something which, of 

 course, I do not know anything about, whether you are or not; 

 but I want to tell you how I look at it. What does it take to 

 make a State? A State is made up of two things. It is made 

 up of territory, a given amount of territory, which is land, and 

 the people who live upon that land; in other words, a State is' 

 a dual political body which is made up of two separate and 

 distinct parts — territory and population — and each of these 

 parts is entitled to consideration in the matter of representa- 

 tion. Now you must protect your territory. You must con- 

 serve the interests of your territory as well as the interests 

 of the people of your State. Now, a farmer sent to either 

 house is a double representative. He is a part of the popula- 

 tion of the State, and he is also the representative of its terri- 

 tory as nobody else is. What territory does a man represent 

 who hires a flat on the fifth floor of some house in the city? 

 Can you tell what connection he has with the territory of the 

 State of Connecticut? Now, they propose to say, as I under- 

 stand it, that he represents just as much as the farmer who 

 has one or five hundred acres of land; he does not do it. He 

 has not the interests at stake, and he is not entitled to the voice 

 in representation that the farmer is entitled to. He only 

 represents one part of the State — population — while the 



