The 

 Human 

 Harvest 



[52] 



typical of a large portion of the French 

 peasantry. Every one who has travelled in 

 France knows well his kind. If it should be 

 that his kind is increasing, it is because his 

 betters are not. It is not that his back is 

 bent by centuries of toil. He was not born 

 oppressed. Heredity carries over not op- 

 pression, but those qualities of mind and 

 heart which invite or which defy oppression. 

 The tyrant harms those only that he can 

 reach. The new generation is free-born, and 

 slips from his hands, unless its traits be of 

 the kind which demand new tyrants. From 

 "thebeaten members ofthe beaten races "we 

 cannot count on breeding free-born men. 



Millet's " Man of the Hoe " is not the 

 product of oppression, whatever may be the 

 case of the hoe-man imagined by Markham. 

 He is primitive, aboriginal. His lineage has 

 always been that of the clown and swine- 

 herd. The heavy jaw and slanting forehead 

 can be found in the oldest mounds and 

 tombs of France. The skulls of Engis and 

 Neanderthal were typical men of the hoe, 

 and through the days of the Gauls and Ro- 

 mans the race was not extinct. The " lords 



