54 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



a farmer talking on this subject the other day. He was a man 

 who had been a broker in one of our western cities, and had had 

 large experience with the commercial as well as the agricultural 

 classes ; and his opinion was that the average of honesty in the 

 commercial class is higher than among the farmers — that there 

 is an amount of small swindling and trickery among the latter 

 that would not be tolerated among the former. But that state- 

 ment I could not bring myself to accept without some qualifica- 

 tion. I know that it gets to be accepted doctrine among these 

 financiers that a big swindle is perfectly legitimate — that it is 

 only the little ones that are vicious ; that the man who steals 

 a railroad ticket is a villain, but the man who steals the railroad 

 itself is a highly respectable man. This is a kind of logic that 

 that is too high for me. I could never make it appear that the 

 guilt of theft is in inverse ratio to the amount stolen, or that 

 the big-bellied admiral who steals the ship and sails it, is not at 

 least as big a rascal as the scullion who steals the admiral's 

 spoons. But still there is guilt and meanness in cheating on a 

 small scale ; and I know enough about farmers to be ready to 

 admit that the criticism is not wholly without foundation. I do 

 not think that farmers are more dishonest than other people — 

 quite the contrary I should say ; but I have the best of reasons 

 for knowing that there are dishonest ones. I have bought some 

 barrels of apples that were just as large in the middle as on the 

 to}D — but I have bought other barrels in which the apples grew 

 small by degrees and beautifully less as you went down. I have 

 paid for some cords of wood that were eight feet long, four feet 

 wide and four feet high ; and I have paid for other cords, trust- 

 ing to the measurement of the man who brought them, which 

 have shrunk wonderfidly when piled up in my wood-shed. To 

 such small dishonesties as these the exigencies of the farmer's 

 life quite naturally lead, and they, above all things, are to be 

 shunned and abhorred. Nothing is more fatal to true manliness 

 than trickery or fraud of any sort. No man who values the es- 

 sentials of life more fully than its accidents, or who has any just 

 idea of what true value is, will descend for a moment to any 

 such transaction. You can afford to work hard and live frugally 

 and get on slowly, but you can never afibrd to stain your hands 

 or pollute your soul with the least deed of dishonesty. 



