GENERAL PRINCIPLES 15 



happenings were of little moment to those who got their living 

 out of the soil. Viewed from this standpoint, the farmer led an 

 independent life. But, on the other hand, happenings in the 

 physical world were of the utmost concern to him, and he 

 was, in fact, more dependent upon these than any other class. 

 Floods, droughts, storms, untimely frosts, backward seasons, 

 and a multitude of such conditions continually threatened to 

 render his labor of no avail or to destroy the fruits of it. Con- 

 tinual watching of weather signs made the farmer, with the pos- 

 sible exception of the sailor, the most expert of all judges of 

 weather, and made that subject, together with crops, the two 

 perennial themes of rural conversation. Rural people need not 

 feel sensitive upon this point. These are topics of vastly more 

 weight and interest than those which commonly form the basis 

 of conversation among urban people. Aside from the work of 

 guarding against loss by bad weather, the farmer had to wage 

 continuous warfare against weeds, vermin, predatory beasts and 

 birds, various forms of blight upon his crops, and disease among 

 his animals. Thus it will be seen that the farmer's was a one- 

 sided independence ; he was independent of those things which 

 the business man of the city most dreaded, such as changes 

 of fashion, loss of good will or credit, new competitors, finan- 

 cial panics, and a multitude of other changes which might force 

 him into bankruptcy, all of them changes in the world of 

 men, many of them mere psychological changes. The business 

 man of the city, thinking only of his own peculiar cares and 

 trials, has often envied the farmer his independence. But, on 

 the other hand, the business man concerned himself very little 

 about ordinary changes of weather and such things as worried 

 the farmer. Nothing short of a tornado or a flood severe 

 enough to destroy property ever interfered with the regularity 

 of his work. The farmer, thinking only of his own peculiar 

 cares and trials, often envied the city man his independence. 



