FARMERS TO THE FRONT 83 



ties and institutes, where they discuss subjects of 

 interest to all. He, too, feels the touch of the elbow 

 on each side of him, and knows that millions of oth- 

 ers are fighting the same battle that he has to fight, 

 and that they can fight it best by combining forces. 

 Rural America is to-day one vast neighborhood with 

 interests in common from ocean to ocean, and the 

 American Society of Equity is specially constructed 

 to promote good fellowship and cooperative indus- 

 trial development. 



So we hear from all sides talk of organization. 

 This means that organization is felt to be both a ne- 

 cessity and a possibility. When men — at least when 

 Americans — are brought together the first thing 

 they think of is organization. No people that ever 

 lived had such a capacity as the Americans have 

 for concerted action. In the present case, men have 

 not proposed to organize the farmers simply because 

 they thought it would be well to do so, but because 

 they saw that conditions invited organization. This 

 is the way in which great and successful movements 

 always come. Prophets and seers may dream of 

 wonderful things, but if they are in advance of their 

 time, they try to accomplish them and fail, or, de- 

 spairing of success, they attempt nothing. The cen- 

 turies roll by, and at last, in the fulness of time, the 

 man and the hour coincide and then the world cakes 

 a tremendous step in advance. Only the other day 

 a man wrote a book on submarine navigation. He 

 showed that inventors had been busy with the prob- 



