540 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



is necessary in view of the way by which other interests have 

 secured special legislative privileges, (c) That a satisfactory 

 money can be made by government fiat. 



This is not the place to discuss these questions. They are 

 set down as delusions because as practical propositions they have 

 not been made to work to advantage to the farmers. It must 

 not be supposed that all farmers' organizations have urged these 

 views, nor indeed that the majority of American farmers have 

 believed in them. But they have all been proposed as measures 

 of relief for real difficulties; they have never worked results 

 permanently helpful to farmers, and they have wrecked every 

 farmers' organization thus far that has pinned its faith to 

 them. 



(4) Lack of leadership. Organization among any large group 

 of people means leadership. The farm has been prolific of 

 reformers, fruitful in developing organizers, but scanty in its 

 supply of administrators. It has had the leadership that could 

 agitate a reform, project a remedial scheme, but not much of 

 that leadership that could hold together diverse elements, ad- 

 minister large enterprises, steer to great ends petty ambitions. 

 The difficulties of such leadership are many and real. But it 

 is to be doubted if the business of small farming is a good 

 training ground for administrative leadership. At any rate 

 few great leaders have appeared who have survived a brief 

 record of influence. 



(5) Lack of unity. A difficulty still more fundamental re- 

 mains to be mentioned. The farmers of America have never 

 been and are not to-day a unit in social ideals, economic needs 

 or political creeds. The crises that have brought great farmers ' 

 organizations into being have shown the greatest diversity of 

 views as to remedies for existing ills, and in most cases there 

 has not been in any farmers ' platform sufficient unanimity about 

 even a few fundamental needs to tide the organization over to 

 the time when a campaign of education could have accomplished 

 the task of unifying diverse views. 



