CIYIL AND SOCIAL POSITION. 181 



raised to the acre ; and he too desired to know the relation be- 

 tween the landlord and the tenant. To him I presented the 

 same view, with the assurance that the success of American 

 agriculture depended on the absolute ownership of the land, 

 by him who expected to obtain a subsistence from his acres. 

 No where in the world is the value of this system of small 

 ownership understood as it is here. 



That is the civil and social position to which I allude when I 

 say that every man is responsible for the mode in which he con- 

 ducts his agriculture. So with the whole business of farming. 

 The laboring man upon a farm is a prosperous man. You all 

 know it. A man who can get $25 or |!30 a month, for eight 

 months in the year, and his living, is getting as good a share of 

 the whole profits of the farm, and of the income of the farm, as 

 the owner himself. As a general thing, those persons who 

 labor upon the land are the prosperous laborers. 



Now mark the distinction between the class of people labor- 

 ing here, among an intelligent community of farmers, and those 

 who labor in Europe in the same position. I have just read 

 with the greatest interest a report of Mr. Howard, who was sent 

 to France by the Farmer's Club of London, a portion of whom 

 belong to the Royal Agricultural Society, for the purpose of 

 examining the crops, and ascertaining the modes of labor there. 

 He reports upon the raising of beet-root sugar and other crops, 

 and that the laborer there was getting from four and a half to 

 ten pence, — that is, from nine to twenty cents, — a day for his 

 labor. 



After setting forth the impossibility of labor subsisting on 

 such wages, and contrasting the amount of service performed 

 in France and in his own country, per day, on all public and 

 private works, he declares that the system of small farms exist- 

 ing in France is inapplicable to the state of society there. He 

 urges the management of large estates by subordinate labor, 

 and the control of land by capitalists, as the only system that 

 can be profitable in a country like that. 



This is the difference between society, labor and capital here 

 and in Europe ; and it is because of the social position and con- 

 dition here both of the farmers themselves and their labor, that 

 the responsibility rests so heavily upon us to see to it that our 



