28 An American Fruit-Farm 



bandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on the casual- 

 ties and caprices of customers. Dependence begets 

 subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and 

 prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the 

 natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes 

 perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, 

 generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of 

 the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its 

 husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy 

 parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure 

 its degree of corruption. . . . The mobs of great cities add 

 just so much to the support of pure government as sores 

 do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners 

 and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. ' 



In our day, as in other days, in all countries, 

 at all times, men love to get back to the land. This 

 points to their natural avocation; circumstances 

 have made them senators, judges, lawyers, manu- 

 facturers, railroad-men, writers, doctors, sea- 

 captains, bankers, and so on through the weary 

 list. Many a good fruit-grower has been spoiled 

 in the lawyer, the doctor, the merchant. Happy 

 is the man who is doing what he is best qualified 

 to do, particularly if he is by instinct a fruit- 

 grower and grows fruit. In otir day the world is 

 reaching this conclusion. Young men are looking 

 to fruit-raising as a vocation, as they look to other 

 vocations. Like banking, railroading, mining, 

 practicing law or medicine, or engineering, fruit 



' Notes on the State of Virginia. Written by Thomas Jefferson. 

 Philadelphia, Printed and Sold by Prichard and Hall, in Market Street, 

 Between Front and Second Streets, M.DCC.LXXXVIII. Query XIX. 

 p. 175. 



