"The Most Valuable of All Arts" 85 



the prosaic work of planting the new clearing, the 

 orator must have spoken over the heads of most of 

 his audience. But Lincoln was right. We shall never 

 make the most of our resources — the most of man's 

 innate love for the soil— until the farmer and gardener 

 imbibe the spirit of the artist. 



Lincoln spoke of deriving "a comfortable subsist- 

 ence from the land." And this was his second big 

 thought. He was speaking, doubtless, to men who had 

 gone into the wilderness thinking more of getting rich 

 than of getting a living. They had taken up free 

 land — all they could possibly obtain under the law — 

 with the expectation that it would become of high value 

 with the passing of the years and the growth of popu- 

 lation — an expectation that was by no means disap- 

 pointed. But Lincoln did not laud this purpose. He 

 was blind to the possibilities of speculation; deaf to 

 the call of sudden riches. Himself the child of poverty, 

 hardship and struggle, his prayer for his countrymen 

 was that they might achieve "a comfortable subsist- 

 ence," which to his mind meant security of life, even 

 unto old age. 



Greatest of all was his final thought: "The smallest 

 area of soil." The very crux of our rural civilization, 

 the very hope of our rural democracy, lies in that 

 phrase. It represents the antithesis of land monopoly 

 and exalts the hope of a well-provided life as the 

 dearest goal of our citizenship. When men shall come 

 to regard the use of the soil as an art, based on scientific 

 knowledge and pursued by scientific methods; when 

 they accept the thought of a "comfortable subsist- 

 ence" rather than unearned speculative profits as the 



