THE NEW EARTH 



some of them one-sided, but all of them on 

 fire with independence. I think it is quite 

 impossible for one who has been reared in the 

 city life, particularly the life of large eastern 

 cities, where the people, through possibly sev- 

 eral centuries, have settled down into conser- 

 vative ways distinctly their own, to appreciate 

 the situation in the farming regions of the 

 West, when the West was first emerging from 

 the period of the pioneers. All conditions 

 were unsettled. Everything was in a formative 

 shape. Very large numbers of farmers were 

 distressingly poor, as must ever be the case 

 when new regions are being brought under 

 cultivation. They were heavily in debt. They 

 found it exceeding hard to meet their ob- 

 ligations. They were individuals, not corpo- 

 rations. 



About the time that the New Earth period 

 began, there came across the sea more and 

 more frequent tales of the success which had 

 been achieved through a union of forces by 

 the weavers of Rochdale, a band of men who 

 were in sorer straits than ever the American 

 farmers had been. These weavers, a generation 

 before the New Earth began, living in the 



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