FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS 37 



SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITIONS 



A somewhat similar condition of affairs prevailed with reference 

 to the social and intellectual position of the farmers. Just as 

 they had lost political power, so their relative social position 

 had been lowered until the tilling of the soil, formerly considered 

 one of the highest of occupations, had come to be looked upon 

 as a pursuit suitable only to those who were not equipped for 

 anything else. This was due not so much to a positive decline 

 in status on the part of the farmers as to the rapid increase in 

 the social and educational advantages of those who were engaged 

 in occupations which permitted their lives to be spent in the 

 cities. The farmers, living in their scattered homesteads and 

 often forced by the pinch of adversity to devote their whole 

 time to their calling in order to provide for the mere material 

 wants of themselves and their families, were not in a position 

 to keep pace with the dwellers in urban centers who had all the 

 advantages which go with density of population; 1 for it must be 

 remembered that this was before the day of interurban trolleys, 

 farm telephones, and rural free delivery of mail the three 

 great factors which help to ameliorate the position of the farmers 

 today. That they keenly realized their disadvantages is seen 

 in the fact that so many of them made every effort to have 

 their children equipped for some other occupation which might 

 give them an opportunity to rise in the world. 



Agriculture, like other industries, demands the application 

 of knowledge and skill as well as mere physical labor for its 

 highest development, but the only teacher which the farmer had 

 was experience, and there was no means by which he might 

 equip himself with the accumulated experience of his fellows. 2 

 The agricultural colleges of the country were then in their 

 infancy, and insistent complaint was heard that the gifts made 

 by Congress for agricultural education had been misapplied 



1 Nation, xix. 36 (July 16, 1874); Peters, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 

 iv- 25-30 (October, 1889); National Grange, Proceedings, xix. 17 (1885); Messer, 

 The Grange (pamphlet); D. Kinley, "The Movement of Population from Country 

 to City," in Bailey, Cyclopedia of Agriculture, iv. 117. 



2 Messer, The Grange, 9. 



