PLACE OF THE FARMER IN THE SOCIAL SCALE 87 



farmer as a separate class of society. Laws are passed 

 presumably for his benefit, which are often for his in- 

 jury. It is a notorious fact that in a farming and 

 dairying community it is almost impossible to get rigid 

 laws covering the inspection and commerce in dairy 

 products. In some of the farming States where the 

 dairy industry is dominant, the legal standard for milk 

 is fixed at three per cent, of fat, whereas it is well 

 known that the average fat content of American milk is 

 not less than four per cent. Sanitary laws, looking 

 to the cleaning up of the dairies and the pig pens and 

 the stables in the country, and to a proper sanitation 

 of the water supply, looking to the control of typhoid 

 fever and other contagious and infectious diseases, are 

 not only difficult to enact in a country community, but 

 still more difficult to enforce. 



The farmer is credited, moreover, with being a con- 

 servative, when in point of fact mere inertia is mis- 

 taken for conservatism. It is difficult to get a farming 

 community to vote for good roads, and I am not sur- 

 prised at this, because in the construction of good roads 

 such palpable frauds have been so frequently committed 

 upon the tax payer. 



The farmer is also charged with packing the best 

 apples on top of the barrel, and putting the biggest 

 berries in the top layer of the box. These charges per- 

 haps do not lie with any greater pertinence against the 

 farmer than they do against those in other lines of 

 business practising similar kinds of deception. 



THE THREAT OF SOCIAL CLASSIFICATION. 



I look upon the attempt to classify American citi- 

 zens, by reason of occupational pursuits, into different 

 strata of social efficiency and honor, as extremely per- 



