14 FOREWORD. 



do to better his condition ? A course of possible procedure is 

 pointed out in the following pages a life in which he may 

 breathe the air of freedom and health, in which he may enjoy 

 room and sunshine ; a life in which he may regulate his own 

 hours of labor, and, walking abroad among his fellows, enjoy 

 the consciousness of absolute equality. 



Farm life was never so attractive as it is to-day, and this 

 notwithstanding the fact that present methods of production 

 and distribution outside the farm leaves much to be desired. 

 Almost unthinkable sums of wealth which the farmer annually 

 creates is annually appropriated by a few powerful corpora- 

 tions, but this is not more true than that all other classes of 

 workers are equally and some of them even more terribly 

 exploited. But an evolution so active that it approaches the 

 phenomena of a peaceful revolution is going on in society, long- 

 standing abuses are being curtailed or abolished, and the 

 present social system is destined in the near future to undergo 

 profound modification before it is finally displaced by some- 

 thing better or transmuted into another form. While, there- 

 fore, farm life offers more inducements than at any previous 

 period of the world's history, and vastly more in America than 

 in any other country on the globe, from the present moment of 

 reform to the final fruition of the social growth of which the 

 reform is an indication, is the farmer to reap more and more 

 nearly the full reward of his toil. 



There are probably not less than two millions of people in 

 this country at the present moment who, by leaving the places 

 they now occupy as clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen, factory 

 hands and unskilled workers, could, by earnestly and intelli- 

 gently adopting the avocation of agriculture, better both their 

 own condition and that of those who are dependent upon them. 



