CHAPTER XX 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FARM 



^T^HE keynote of the farm life of to-day is 

 -*- independence, and the harmony is major. 

 The keynote of the former generation was 

 dependence, and the music was minor to the 

 end. For now the farmer, and by this may be 

 inckided for present consideration all those 

 who earn their living from the earth, is coming 

 into his own. He has passed through many 

 preparatory stages and the road has been thick 

 with thorns. He has been trained in the harsh 

 school of experience and has been graduated 

 with full honors. He is master now, servant 

 no longer. 



I do not know that a better concrete illus- 

 tration of this can be found than that afforded 

 by a body of five hundred Iowa farmers whom 

 I visited one day when the earth was falling 

 into the mellow mood of autumn. They lived 

 in a rich agricultural region, once the center 

 of a great wheat -raising industry but now 



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