608 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 







The English Government has solved the problem in Scotland and England 

 by compelling the tenant to put back into the land the manurial equivalent 

 of the grains/ he sells off it; by preventing him from selling straw and 

 roots, which must be fed to live-stock on the farm; by compelling the land- 

 lord to pay the tenant for the manurial value of the food-stuffs he has 

 purchased and fed to the live-stock, or else let him stay until he has used 

 up this fertility; and also by forbidding the landlord to raise the rent be- 

 cause of improvements the tenant has made. 



During his later years he seldom spoke without mentioning this 

 matter; but did Uncle Henry advocate the passage of such laws 

 in this country ? No ; but he did urge American farmers ten- 

 ants and landlords to think about these things, talk them over, 

 and study the problem. No law, he always urged, is worth any- 

 thing until it has public opinion behind it. 



He hoped for the amendment of the landlord's lien laws so 

 as not to be so severe on the tenants; he hoped for the passage 

 of laws giving the tenant a claim, if his lease was not renewed, 

 for the fertility that he had placed in the soil. 



Mostly he hoped for these as beginnings. They would tend 

 to stop this everlasting moving about, and make rural society 

 more stable, so as to make better schools, better churches, better 

 neighborhoods. 



Uncle Henry is gone, but he leaves behind him something for 

 us all to consider his thoughts, his doctrines, his methods, and, 

 most of all, the fine and noble lesson of his life. 



There were no years of * ' retirement ' ' for him. He was splen- 

 didly active to the very end. 



He was a successful man. I am glad to write that. He died 

 rather well off, I think; but that is of small consequence he 

 was successful anyhow, for he lived a life of activity, doing 

 work which most writers would have called drudgery, but which 

 to him was interesting because he saw all there was in it. 



Like Joe Wing, whose life his very much resembled, he made 

 a success of devoting himself to writing and speaking for the 

 farming interests, for farm living. 



I wish the lives of Uncle Henry Wallace and Joseph E. Wing 

 could be read and studied by every farm boy in the United 

 States. 



They were both soldiers of the common good, ennoblers of 

 the common life and both of them proved that big men may 



