No. 4.] COW AND THE MAN. 101 



read recently of a party of visitors who were going through 

 an asyhim for lunatics. One of the party said to an attend- 

 ant : " How do you know when a patient is cured ? " " That's 

 easy/' said the attendant. " We set them baling out a trough 

 of water which is being filled all the time from a two-inch 

 l>ipe. When a man knows enough to shut oif the water before 

 he begins baling out, he is sufficiently cured to leave the insti- 

 lution." 



Farmers are in a similar position. Until they are suffi- 

 ciently enlightened to know enough to turn off the streams 

 which are drowning them, in s])it(* of frantic efforts to swim 

 out, they may be scarcely considered in a fit condition to con- 

 trol the affairs of an agricultural nation, which is their right 

 according to numbers. We may not in America reach that 

 happy condition described by an English poet who said : — 



Ere England's griefs began 



When, every rood of ground maintained a man, 



but w^e should probably approach the state described if farmers 

 had a " fair show." Why should they not receive more atten- 

 tion at the hands of the gardeners of the North American 

 continent ? 'Tis true that " Of all the flowers, the flower of 

 humanity (the farmer) stands most in need of the sun." 

 Farmers have been too long " in the shade." 



The farmer o-\ms land, has the labor and some capital, hence 

 possesses the three requisites for the production of wealth 

 according to the rules of political economy. The other natural 

 agents, such as timber, coal, minerals of all kinds, gas, oil, etc., 

 belong, or should belong to the people as a whole. As farmers 

 represent the largest number of any one class of the people in 

 America they ought to be the largest sharers of the wealth 

 produced in our country. Too much emphasis has been and is 

 Ix'ing placed upon manufacture as a means of acquiring 

 wealth. A French writer says of the manufacturers of the 

 United States: "At the present moment it looks as though 

 nothing could stop their progress. They are rushing through 

 space like a cannon-ball." But in case manufactures fail, he 

 says : " They have but to hark back to aericulture, — a less 



