30 THE BOOK OF WHEAT 



always given a great impetus to organization and co-operation. 

 In modern agriculture, especially if the farmer owns his land, 

 the only point at which the influence of competition can enter 

 is in the sale of farm products. 



Other things being equal, a progressive farmer may be able 

 to offer his wheat for sale at a price below the cost of produc- 

 tion for the unprogressive grower. While this is competition, 

 its point of incidence is mainly below the line of subsistence 

 for the farmer, and as most farmers are above this line, much 

 of the force of competition is lost. When a government guar- 

 antees to an individual the ownership of a certain area of land, 

 he has a monopoly of that area as long as he raises enough 

 produce from it to pay the taxes, or their equivalent, for the 

 governmental guarantee, and to keep himself supplied with the 

 necessaries of life. If he is unprogressive and isolated in his 

 farming, he is quite free to continue so his whole life, and his 

 son and his grandson are just as free to follow in his footsteps. 



In the early days the farmer looked to better informed 

 powers than those of human origin for the solution of difficult 

 problems. Wily and insinuating shamans and medicine men 

 astutely took a benevolent interest in him by unfolding, in- 

 terpreting, and at times even creating, the knowledge and in- 

 struction which numerous deities dispensed through these, 

 their agents, for the benefit of agricultural mankind. When to 

 plow, sow, harvest, and when to sell his crop, were thus made 

 manifest to him by the deities whose special business it was 

 to know these things. The gifts of rain and sunshine were in 

 their hands. They alone were the instrumentalities of fructi- 

 fication and bounteous harvests. With the advance of civili- 

 zation, however, the deities became less communicative, the 

 shaman's magic power waned and became less occult, while his 

 usual recompense grew more burdensome to those who paid it, 

 and his functions became differentiated and were gradually as- 

 sumed by the botanist, the chemist, the agriculturist, the 

 physicist, the miller, the speculator, the instructor, and above 

 all, the experimenter. As the paternal concern of the gods 

 and medicine men for the farmer became relaxed, little interest 

 was taken in him for centuries, and he has never since been the 

 object of such profound solicitude from any source. In the 

 middle ages and during the conquests of the Goths, Vandals 



