8 



and industries are concerned, we are really a nation of farmers. 

 This is the paramount and controlling interest, and in all its needs, 

 simple justice as well as public welfare, demand that it shall receive 

 the constant care of the State. The vital and enduring power of a 

 nation depends very largely on the homogeneous character of its 

 people and their attachment to their father land. But we are, as it 

 were, a nation of emigrants gathered from all the countries of the 

 world. Of different and often opposing rehgious, reared under 

 different forms of government, and retaining to a great extent 

 national prejudices. These are elements of weakness and history 

 would teach us that when the time of trial came the ties which bind 

 these individuals together as a nation would be but ropes of sand, 

 and we should fall to pieces. The fact however has proved far 

 otherwise ; once, again and again, we have passed through the most 

 terrible ordeal, and found that notwithstanding the incongruous 

 character of our people, we possess as much inherent strength as 

 the most favored nations. How is the anomaly in the world's his- 

 tory to be accounted for ? mainly by this simple fact : that when the 

 German, the Frenchman, the Irishman, the ItaHan or the English- 

 man emigrate to us they are transformed from tenants or serfs into 

 land owners. Of a sudden they find to their astonishment that they 

 have become an inherent part of the nation, that they possess the soil 

 which is their home and which cannot be alienated or taken away 

 but by theu" own act ; that, as never before, they are men with 

 hopes, rights and interests to labor and to strike for, that instead of 

 being simple spectators of government affairs, they are themselves a 

 part of the government. And they rally round the national banner, 

 as the emblem of the power that has conferred and protects them 

 in their new rights and privileges, with a love and enthusiasm as 

 ardent but more vital and enduring than their love and attachment 

 to the land of their biith. 



Whether they were conscious of it or not, the men who originated 

 and passed the Homestead Act, acted the part of philosophic states- 

 men. Land to the landless, free homes to those who settle upon 

 and till the soil, whether in the original form of nominal purchase, 

 or the present form of absolute freedom,; is the grand stroke of 

 American poHcy which obliterates the diverse national prejudices of 

 our immigrants, and binds them together as a homogenous and in- 

 dissoluble nation. But the influence of farming on our people does 

 not end here. We have some national characteristics that are not 



