MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 179 



pressed in a way one can hardly forget by Tolstoy in his * * Resur- 

 rection ' ' when his hero, from moral sympathy with land reform, 

 undertakes to give to his tenants land under conditions much 

 to their advantage and, much to his surprise, finds them hostile 

 to the plan. They had been too often tricked in the past and 

 felt too little acquainted with business methods to have any con- 

 fidence in the new plan which claimed to have benevolent motives. 

 It is only fair to admit that the farmer differs from others of his 

 social rank only in degree and that his experiences in the past 

 appear to him to justify his skeptical attitude. He has at times 

 suffered exploitation ; what he does not realize is that this has 

 been made possible by his lack of knowledge of the ways of 

 modern business and by his failure to organize. The farmer is 

 beginning to appreciate the significance of marketing. Un- 

 fortunately, he too often carries his suspiciousness, which has 

 resulted from business experiences, into many lines of action and 

 thinking, and thus robs himself of enthusiasm and social con- 

 fidence. 



A third important element in the making of the farmer's mind 

 may be broadly designated as suggestion. The farmer is like 

 other men in that his mental outlook is largely colored by the 

 suggestions that enter his life. 



It is this fact, perhaps, that explains why the farmer's mind 

 does not express more clearly vocational character, for no other 

 source of persistent suggestions has upon most men the in- 

 fluence of the newspaper, and each day, almost everywhere, the 

 daily paper comes to the farmer with its appealing suggestions. 

 Of course the paper represents the urban point of view rather 

 than the rural, but in the deepest sense it may be said to look at 

 life from the human outlook, the way the average man sees 

 things. The newspaper, therefore, feeds the farmer's mind with 

 suggestions and ideas that counteract the influences that specially 

 emphasize the rural environment. It keeps him in contact with 

 thinking and events that are world-wide, and unconsciously 

 permeates his motives, at times giving him urban cravings that 

 keep him from utilizing to the full his social resources in the 

 country. Any attempt to understand rural life that minimizes 

 the common human fellowship which the newspaper offers the 

 farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate misinterpretation. 



