2i 4 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



Nevertheless, there has been creeping into our farm 

 life a certain dim, intangible limitation to the farmer's 

 freedom, one that the farmer, while often conscious of 

 it, does not always appreciate as a failure of democracy. 

 During the past few decades, certain bonds have been 

 tightening around him. The free land is exhausted ; it 

 is increasingly more difficult for the man without capital 

 to procure land for farming. Many of the limitations 

 of the farmer described in an earlier chapter are hedg- 

 ing him about and limiting his freedom. 



EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 



This is closely akin to freedom. Freedom implies 

 liberty to act, think, speak freely. Equality of oppor- 

 tunity means that each man has an equal chance with 

 every other man to grow, to make the most of himself. 

 Men are not equal in capacity and no democracy can 

 make them so. But what democracy asks is that each 

 man may have as good a chance as every other man to 

 develop whatever capacity he may have. With the 

 growth of cities, the farmer has probably been slowly 

 but rather surely losing ground with respect to some of 

 his opportunities as compared with those that he would 

 find if he became a city dweller. He has an increasing 

 lack of opportunity to share in some of the things that 

 are best developed where many people are concerned, 

 and where ample money resources are available. On 

 the more superficial side of life, in amusements, con- 

 veniences, comforts, the city has rather outstripped the 

 country. Lectures, concerts, operas, theaters, electric 

 lights, rapid transit these come to the city dweller 

 first and sometimes exclusively. To many farming 

 areas these things are fully available, but in vast regions 



