1884.] THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE FARM. 199 



with them the Old World sentiments that the man who tills the soil 

 is socially and intellectually below the man in trade. We have 

 many foreigners in our newspaper offices, and we see more flings 

 at the farmers here than we do in the western States. Of this 

 very meeting I have seen notices of the "bucolic" gathering in 

 one of our city papers, and the " bucolic mind " is a not infrequent 

 subject of patronizing comment in papers whose editors and 

 writers came from other lands. Even in the great New York 

 dailies we see indications the same way, and within the last two 

 years I have noticed in the paper " founded by Horace Greeley," 

 editorials that would never have appeared in his life time. It is 

 but fair to say, however, that they do not go into the weekly 

 edition, which goes so widely among farmers. Even the New 

 England Journal of Education has, within a few months, had its 

 say about the " narrow country farmers " who are powerful in the 

 Legislature, but who " represent the least progressive element in 

 society." 



All of this has an essential' interest in this connection. W ith 

 the increase of wealth in cities there is an increase of snobs, and a 

 tendency to class the farmers of this country with the peasant 

 class of the Old World. Each of these things has an influence in 

 the problem of education, and makes it the more important that 

 the old-time value of the farm as a place for the training of 

 youths be maintained. The various forces at work, the effects of 

 recent immigration, the snobbishness of the newly-made-rich, the 

 relatively decreasing numbers of farmers, are all modifying those 

 influences which heretofore have wrought such glorious results for 

 our nation. 



City populations are relatively increasing, but in the cities origi- 

 nate and flourish the more dangerous social theories which now 

 begin to alarm so many people. Socialism in all its worst forms 

 has its great development in cities, where great numbers of 

 men work together for wages. It is curious to see how in all 

 these so-called labor movements and labor theories by so-called 

 "working men," the tiller of the soil is left out as a worker. In 

 this matter the farmer is in a curious position. To the snob he is 

 a plodding, narrow, ignorant drudge; to the socialist and city 

 trades-union-men he is an aristocrat and land-holder, one of the 

 oppressors of the race because he owns land, and land ought to be 

 free, like air and water. 



