THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 455 



feelings that are so readily nurtured by commingling 

 of society. They are becoming more and more un- 

 social, and have been tending in this direction since the 

 first settling in this country. A half century ago and 

 more, when general poverty and insecurity rendered 

 mutual protection a necessity, there was a more genial 

 feeling among the inhabitants. They went long dis- 

 tances on foot for an evening's enjoyment of social 

 intercourse ; but since those good old days a competence 

 has come to the majority of farmers, and they stick to 

 the homestead with a tenacity that fosters every social 

 evil. They go through with about the same routine of 

 duties from sunrise to sundown, from one year's end to 

 another, through the whole active part of life, never 

 unloosing the mind from the drudgery of farm life. 

 The human being alone was created with the faculty 

 of social intercourse, and he who fails to improve it 

 scarcely rises above the level of the brute creation. 



" One of the principal objects of this Society is to en- 

 large this God-given faculty. It calls the laborious 

 worker of the soil from his duties and places him side 

 by side with those engaged in the same occupation. A 

 thousand questions are discussed that interest and bene- 

 fit its members. 



" Place a person in solitary confinement before -any 

 indications of intelligence are manifest, and actual 

 experiment proves that the appearance, the shape of 

 head, the features, suffer from such treatment, and the 

 actual knowledge is excluded. Since these things are 

 so, farmers who enslave themselves, who are semi-im- 

 prisoned, cannot expect to wear a very prepossessing 

 personal appearance. 



" You all know the value of a social home ; you 



