Chapter V 



THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF EQUITY 



THE EXCESSIVE individualism of the American farmer has long been a 

 subject of extensive historical comment. Frederick Jackson Turner 

 lost no opportunity to emphasize this characteristic in his studies of the 

 American frontier. American individualism, Turner believed, was itself 

 largely a frontier product, since in every frontier region each pioneer 

 farmer had to work out his own salvation with a minimum of assistance 

 from his fellow men. The decline of subsistence farming and the rise of 

 production for sale made extensive alterations in the farmer's way of life, 

 for under the new conditions he was as much a businessman as a producer. 

 Contacts with the outside world for such necessities as credit, transporta- 

 tion, marketing, and merchandising were unavoidable. And yet each 

 farmer preferred to stand aloof from every other farmer as much as he 

 dared. In a sense, as has often been noted, each farm, even in thickly 

 settled areas, was in itself a little frontier, and each farm boundary a kind 

 of frontier line. Farmers were obliged most of the time to work alone or 

 in family units, not shoulder to shoulder with other workers after the 

 fashion of factory operatives. Their contacts with other farmers, at least 

 from the point of view of the city dweller, were few and far between. 

 They looked with the suspicion of rivals at what went on across their 

 fences in their neighbors' fields. Every farmer thought of himself, in a 

 sense, as a competitor with every other farmer; and such, indeed, he 

 tended to be. 

 Thus the task of organizing the farmers in their own defense was 



