made up his mind. How the contrast strikes one in passing immediately from 

 country to city. There questions are answered ahnost before they are asked. 

 The change is ready for the customer before he has had time to even guess at its 

 amount. Vanderbilt would negotiate the purchase of a thousand miles of raih'oad, 

 or of ten millions of government bonds in the time it takes the typical farmer to 

 sell a bushel of potatoes or to exchange morning salutations with his neighbor. 

 In estimating the coiTCctness of this opinion, you must not take such communi- 

 ties as most of those represented here where so many quickening influences come 

 in to modify the distinctive features of agricultural life ; you must take communi- 

 ties purely agricultural. You must take farmers as a class. And nothing, I think, 

 can be more evident than that they are characterized by a moderation of mental 

 movement, marking them off at a glance from men of most other occupations. 

 And there can be no doubt that they are, in consequence, placed at a disadvantage 

 in the competitions of life. It is an interesting fact in the political history of the 

 country, that so many of our prominent politicians and statesmen have risen from 

 the shoe-maker's bench. And what was the reason ? Evidently the constant 

 friction of mind with mind to which the shoe-maker's calHng as formerly conduc- 

 ted gave opportunity. He could talk and argue as he worked ; and having always 

 an audience or opponents in his customers or fellow-workmen, latent talent was 

 developed, and his mind was trained to an activity that prepared him eventually 

 for the haUs of legislation and the seat of magistracy, as in the case of Roger 

 Sherman and Henry Wilson: And so with many other occupations admitting of 

 close and constant mental contact. I have not at hand the statistics to verify the 

 opinion, but my impression is a strong one that the ratio of farmers who have ris- 

 en to eminence directly from the plough, that is with no other training than that 

 gained in the solitai-y hfe of the farm, is comparatively small. Is not this fact, if 

 it 1)6 a fact, a suggestive one ? Does it not indicate a lack of quickening influence 

 in agricultural life that demands a rernedj^ if remedy be possible ? 



TENDENCY TO EXCESSIVE CONSERVATISM. 



Closely connected with this slowness of mind, and equally apparent, is a ten- 

 dency to excessive conservatism in the farmer's character. Here again, I remind 

 you that I speak of the class, and do not forget the fact of marked exceptions 

 both in communities and individuals. In all countries and in all ages, the agri- 

 cultural class has been marked for its reverence for the Old, and its suspicion of 

 the New. It is almost inevitable that its prevailing spirit should be conservative. 

 The natural influence of its envu'onment is all in that direction. And not seldom 

 has it been greatly to its advantage and to the advantage of the world that it has 

 been so. Farmers have been themselves saved by their conservatism from de- 

 structive innovations, and have constituted an impregnable bulwark against their 

 spread in the community. But quite as often is it disastrous in its influence, 

 leading to the retention of old ideas whose usefulness is at an end, and to a hos- 

 tihty to new discoveries essential to prospei-ity and progress. The superior in- 

 telligence of New England farmers has saved them from the worst ettects of this 

 undue I'everence for the past, but I think few will deny that even here it has stood 

 in the way of agricultural progress. But for this would not labor-saving machin- 

 ery have had an eai'lier adoption '{ Would not agriculture have received speed- 

 ier and heartier recognition as a sciercce ? And would not the farmer's life in all 

 its aspects be more completely abreast the civilization of the times ? Occasionally 

 we have an instance even in Massachusetts of the old consei'vative spirit in all its 



