2 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



of the peasant, in most times and in most places, the 

 farmer has been an underling. Even the land that he 

 tilled has not been his own. In great spaces of the 

 earth the farmer was for ages an actual slave. In 

 some regions even to-day he belongs to the land and, 

 if the land is sold, he goes with it to the new owner. 

 If any country is dark with illiteracy, ignorance, and 

 superstition, it will be found that the blackest areas 

 are the rural districts. The soil tiller has at the worst 

 been serf and clout, and at the best, with a few shining 

 exceptions, rustic or peasant. Rarely indeed has he sat 

 at the council-board of those who determined the des- 

 tinies of peoples or even had a voice in the policies that 

 governed his own work and life. 



THE SHINING EXCEPTIONS 



In republican Rome the farmer seems to have been 

 held in respect and to have had a satisfactory place in 

 the business of the time. Of the standing of Roman 

 farmers in general, Cato says that when a Roman 

 wished to commend an honest man he termed him a 

 good husbandman, a good farmer. This was rated 

 the superlative of praise. It was, he continues, from 

 the tillers of the soil that sprang the best citizens, the 

 stanchest soldiers, and theirs were the most enduring re- 

 wards. A survey of Roman literature reveals many a 

 prominent name made famous chiefly through writings 

 on agricultural subjects. Cato, farmer, soldier, law- 

 yer, is known to us almost wholly through his De Re 

 Rustica, which reveals his wide farm experience. 

 Varro, " the most learned of the Romans," left to the 

 world the best practical work on farm management 

 which has come down to us from the ancients Rerum 

 Rusticarum, a careful statement of actual experience 



