180 THE THIRD POWER 



such men among the American farmers ; having once 

 decided to give the American Society of Equity a 

 trial they would see to it that it had a fair trial. 



The only people incapable of working together in 

 organizations are savages, idiots and the insane. 

 Among these a perverse individualism prevails. Are 

 we to class the farmers in either of these categories? 

 Organization is the great weapon of civilized and 

 enlightened men, and so it is peculiarly the weapon 

 of the American farmer. In his "Notes on Vir- 

 ginia," Thomas Jefferson wrote: 



"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen peo- 

 ple of God, if He ever had a chosen people, whose 

 breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for sub- 

 stantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which 

 He keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise 

 might escape from the earth. Corruption of morals 

 in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which 

 no age or nation has furnished an example." 



And writing to John Jay, in 1785, Jefferson said : 



"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable 

 citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most in- 

 dependent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to 

 their country and wedded to its liberty by the most 

 lasting bonds." 



What they were in Jefferson's day they are now. 

 Yet it is of such men that we are asked to believe 

 that they, like the insane and savage, are incapable 

 of organization. The farmers are as intelligent as 

 the mechanics, who combine without difficulty and 



