MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 163 



way of life is plain and simple and he prides himself on its 

 simplicity, holding the class he belongs to is the mainstay of the 

 country, and regarding city folks and lawyers with a mixture of 

 suspicion and jealousy, because he deems them inferior to himself 

 in virtue as they are superior in adroitness, and likely to out- 

 wit him. Sparing rather than stingy in his outlays, and living 

 mainly on the produce of his own fields, he has so little ready 

 money that small sums appear large to him; and he fails to see 

 why everybody can not thrive- and be happy on $1,500 a year; 

 he thinks that figure a sufficient salary for a county or district 

 official, and regulates his notion of payment for all other officials, 

 judges included, by the same standard. To belong to a party 

 and support it by his vote seems to him part of a citizen's duty, 

 but his interests in national politics are secondary to those he 

 feels in agriculturist's questions, particularly in the great war 

 against monopolies and capitalists, which the power and in some 

 cases the tyranny of the railroad companies has provoked in the 

 West. Naturally a grumbler, as are his brethren everywhere, 

 and often unable to, follow the causes which depress the price of 

 his produce, he is the more easily persuaded that his grievances 

 are due to the combinations of designing speculators. The agri- 

 cultural newspaper to which he subscribes is of course written 

 up to his prejudices, and its adulation of the farming class con- 

 firms his belief that he who makes the wealth of the country is 

 tricked out of his proper share in its prosperity. 



Thus he now and then makes desperate attempts to right him- 

 self by legislation, lending too ready an ear to politicians who 

 promise him redress by measures possibly unjust and usually un- 

 wise. In his impatience with the regular parties, he is apt to 

 vote for those who call themselves a People's party or Farmer's 

 party, and who dangle before him the hope of getting ''cheap 

 money," of reducing the expenses of legal proceedings, and of 

 compelling the railroads to carry his produce at unremunerative 

 rates. However, after all is said and done, he is an honest, 

 kindly sort of man, hospitable, religious, patriotic, the man whose 

 hard work has made the West what it is. It is chiefly in the 

 West that one must look for the well-marked type I have tried 

 to draw, yet not always in the newer West ; for, in regions like 

 northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Dakota, the farming popula- 



