CHAPTEE VII 



MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS OF RURAL LIFE 

 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FARMER 1 



JAMES BRYCE 



I BEGIN with the farmers because they are, if not numerically 

 the largest class, at least the class whose importance is most 

 widely felt. As a rule they are the owners of their land; and 

 as a rule the farms are small, running from forty or fifty up to 

 three hundred acres. In a few places, especially in the West, 

 great land owners let farms to tenants, and in some parts of the 

 South one finds large estates cultivated by small tenants, often 

 Negroes. But far more frequently the owner tills the land and 

 the tiller owns it. The proportion of hired laborers to farmers 

 is therefore very much smaller than in England, partly because 

 farms are usually of a size permitting the farmer and his family 

 to do much of the work themselves, partly because machinery is 

 much more extensively used, especially in the level regions of the 

 West. The laborers, or as they are called "the hired men," do 

 not, taking the country as a whole, form a social stratum distinct 

 from the farmers, and there is so little distinction in education 

 or rank between them that one may practically treat employer 

 and employed as belonging to the same class. 



The farmer is a keener and more enterprising man than in 

 Europe, with more of that commercial character which one ob- 

 serves in Americans, far less anchored to a particular spot, and 

 of course subject to no such influences of territorial magnates as 

 prevail in England, Germany, or Italy. He is so far a business 

 man as sometimes to speculate in grain or bacon. Yet he is not 

 free from the usual defects of agriculturists; he is obstinate, 

 tenacious of his habits, not readily accessible to argument. His 



i Adapted from "The American Commonwealth," volume II, pp. 293-4. 

 Revised edition. Macmillan, N. Y. 



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