THE IMPORrrANCE OF THE FARM 



he must learn. He has come to know now 

 that knowledge is power, and only by becom- 

 ing broadly educated, — and with him his wife 

 and his sons and his daughters, — can he hope 

 to hold his own. 



Time was, and not so very long since, either, 

 when the most feared, because the most power- 

 ful, friend or foe the farmer had was Wall 

 street. Today the great body of the West, 

 essentially a farming body, has become abso- 

 lutely independent of this powerful factor. 

 Now and again a farmer, grown rich in his 

 new estate, contracts the fever of speculation 

 and is cured, or killed, by the medicines which 

 Wall street so adroitly administers, but the 

 mass of the western producers, recognizing 

 legitimate uses of capital as never before, freed 

 from the rant and cant of demagogues whose 

 only capital is hatred of capital, have come to 

 see that their occupation is a business in itself 

 as much as any other; indeed, far more than 

 this, that they maintain a great manufacturing 

 plant, the most colossal in existence, turning 

 out the raw material for the preservation of 

 life itself. They have come to realize that they 

 are the independent factors, the millions who 



S78 



