DOES FARMING PAY? 29 



classes and industries. I come now to my last argument 

 proving that farming pays the nation. And that is, its influ- 

 ence iu fixing the national t^-pe of character, the Americanized 

 sentiment of our population. 



As might be expected from the sum of the products, nearly 

 one-half of our population are engaged, either directly or in- 

 directly, in some branch of agriculture, and much more than 

 half of our producing-laborers are at work upon the soil. By 

 the returns it appears that on the first of June, 1870, there 

 were in the United States 9,486,307 persons actively engaged 

 in gainful pursuits. Of these, 2,407,421 were engaged in 

 manufacturing, mechanical and mining pursuits; 5,928,868 

 were engaged in agriculture, and the remaining 850,018 were 

 engaged in transportation, the different professions and minor 

 industries. Thus it appears that so far as our population and 

 industries are concerned, we are really a nation of farmers. 

 This is the paramount and controlling interest, and, in all its 

 needs, simple justice, as well as public welfiire, demand that it 

 shall receive the constant care of the state. The vital and 

 enduring power of a nation depends very largely on the homo- 

 geneous character of its people and their attachment to their 

 fatherland. But we are, as it were, a nation of immigrants 

 gathered from all the countries of the world, — of different and 

 often opposing religions, reared under different forms of gov- 

 ernment, and retaining to a great extent national prejudices. 

 These are elements of weakness, and history would teach us 

 that when the time of trial came, the ties which bind these 

 individuals together as a nation would be but ropes of sand, 

 and we should fall to pieces. The fact however has proved 

 far otherwise ; once, again and again, we have passed through 

 the most terrible ordeal, and found that notwithstandins the 

 incongruous character of our people, Tvc possess as much in- 

 herent strength as the most favored nations. How is the 

 anomaly in the world's history to be accounted for ? Mainly 

 by this simple fact : That when the German, the Frenchman, 

 the Irishman, the Italian or the Enoflishman immic^rate to us 

 they are transformed from tenants or serfs into land-owners. 

 Of a sudden they find to their astonishment that they have 

 become an inherent part of the nation, that they possess the 

 soil which is their home, and which cannot be alienated or 



