96 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



under shifting conditions, with the intent always to promote the 

 prosperity of the farmer, not as a favored class but as a typical 

 and component part of society, producing the food of the people 

 and in potential control of the land policies of the commonwealth. 



My general thesis is this : That considerations of fairness and 

 of public safety both demand a higher regard for the affairs and 

 interests of the open country and for the welfare of the farmer 

 and his family; that in a real democracy the farmer must stand 

 higher than hitherto in public esteem, not because of demands he 

 may make upon society but by reason of his worth and his service ; 

 and that he should count for more in the management of public 

 affairs not administratively, in which he has little skill, but in 

 matters requiring counsel, in which he is comparatively wise and 

 relatively unprejudiced. 



Agriculture, whether considered as a profession or .as a mode 

 of life, has never figured adequately in world affairs, being re- 

 garded by publicists mainly as the source of cheap food for 

 cheap labor and of raw materials good for commerce and for 

 manufacture, both convenient for holding the balance of trade 

 upon the right side of the ledger. The farmer himself has been 

 generally considered as an unskilled laborer, a humble producer 

 rather than a typical citizen. 



Outside the technical journals, the public press is almost as 

 silent about farmers and agriculture except for an occasional 

 poor joke, the annual crop statistics, or the market report as if 

 our farming were done upon Mars. The columns are full of the 

 struggles between labor and capital, of society notes and of busi- 

 ness schemes, but in general a murder trial with a mystery, or 

 the love letters in a triangular divorce suit are good for more 

 space than the greatest livestock exposition in the world. Our 

 magazines and the public mind are full of modern scientific 

 achievements and of art, but how much does the world know or 

 care about the farmer and his phenomenal success in animal and 

 plant improvement or the pictures he paints every year upon 

 the landscape? Clearly our public press is animated almost 

 exclusively by urban interests even in cities that owe their very 

 commercial existence and financial support to the agricultural 

 activity of the immediate environs. To be sure, the statistician 

 and the speculator know something about farming but not about 



