176 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



to such a degree as to diminish the intellectual influences born of 

 his occupation. 



The method of procedure that gives largest promise of sub- 

 stantial fact is to attempt to uncover some of the fundamental 

 influences that operate upon the psychic life of the farmers of 

 America and to notice, in so far as opportunity permits, what 

 social elements modify the complete working of these influences. 



One influence that shows itself in the thinking of farmers of 

 fundamental character is, of course, the occupation of farming 

 itself. In primitive life we not only see the importance of 

 agricultural work for social life but we discover also some of the 

 mental elements involved that make this form of industry socially 

 significant. From the first it called for an investment of self- 

 control, a patience, that nature might be coaxed to yield from 

 her resources a reasonable harvest. "We therefore find in primi- 

 tive agriculture a hazardous undertaking which, nevertheless, 

 lacked any large amount of dramatic appeal. 



It is by no means otherwise to-day. The farmer has to be 

 efficient in a peculiar kind of self-control. He needs to invest 

 labor and foresight in an enterprise that affords to the usual 

 person little opportunity for quick returns, a sense of personal 

 achievement, or the satisfaction of the desire for competitive face- 

 to-face association with other men which is offered in the city. 

 Men who cultivate on a very large scale and men who enjoy un- 

 usual social insight as to the significance of their occupation are 

 exceptions to the general run of farmers. In these days of ac- 

 cessible transportation we have a rapid and highly successful 

 selection which largely eliminates from the farming class the 

 type that does not naturally possess the power to be satisfied with 

 the slowly acquired property, impersonal success, and non-dra- 

 matic activities of farming. This process which eliminates the 

 more restless and commercially ambitious from the country has, 

 of course, been at work for generations. This has tended, there- 

 fore, to a uniformity of mental characteristics, but it has by no 

 means succeeded in producing a homogeneous rural mind. The 

 movement has been somewhat modified by the return of people to 

 the country from the city and by the influence on the country 

 mind of the more restless and adventurous rural people 

 who, for one reason or another, have not migrated. In the far 



