88 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



ilous, unwise, and threatening to the fundamental 

 principles of democracy. A man should not be classed 

 socially by reason of his employment. If there are to 

 be distinctions of a social character, they should rest 

 upon individual merit and accomplishment, and not 

 upon the accident of profession. The officers of the 

 army, whose business in time of war is to direct the 

 most efficient machine for killing human beings, rank 

 proverbially high socially. The farmers who follow 

 the plow and make the crops which lie at the very foun- 

 dation of national prosperity and growth, occupy a very 

 inferior position in the social order. Even the makers 

 of political platforms are not slow to single out occu- 

 pational classes in their bidding for votes. When it 

 comes to voting the farmer and the laboring man are 

 the real aristocrats, and the dangerous habit is growing 

 up of modifying legislation to suit the particular de- 

 mands of a class, such as the laborer or the farmer, with- 

 out reference to its intrinsic merit or ethical founda- 

 tion. This is not peculiar to the United States. Other 

 countries are troubled with agrarian agitation and the 

 passage of agrarian laws particularly for the protec- 

 tion and benefit of the farmer. 



To my mind the farmer is an American citizen. He 

 is entitled to the same rights and privileges as every 

 other citizen. He is not entitled to any more. He 

 should not ask any more. The politician who wants to 

 give him more is not a statesman, but a demagogue. 

 The law which gives him more is not sound in its legis- 

 lative heart. It has the dry rot. It threatens to infect 

 the whole legal code. It is class legislation, which in 

 its very nature is vicious and in its enforcement calami- 

 tous. The political ambition of the farmer should be to 

 enjoy the rights of citizenship. 



