15 



seven of them from hand-to-hand labor on new land. The 

 Father of his Country wrote freely on Agriculture, and 

 he owned one of the first threshing machines that was 

 ever used. Thomas Jefferson had many honors, but 

 among them all there is none that is brighter than this, 

 that he wrote a treatise on the mould board of a plow, and 

 for it received a gold medal from the agricultural society 

 of the Seine. 



We have no menial class. At the basis of our society 

 lies this thought, JVo labor that is useful is degrading. 

 False aristocracy rests on the wealth of inheritance, the 

 technicality of tenure, a mere accident of birth, and is al- 

 ways hated and hateful. There is but one nobility. It is 

 found in the man whose character and life command the 

 regard of all who love virtue, the man who gives an 

 equivalent for what he has in wealth or place or power. 



We have no peasantry. It is the progeny of feudalism. 

 Our fathers founded the republic. They honored labor. 

 John Winthrop wore the leathern coat, and fed sometimes 

 on corn, and handled the hoe and plow. John Winthrop, 

 distinguished alike for piety and learning, for his knowl- 

 edge of men and his knowledge of husbandry, for his loy- 

 alty to his God and his love of humanity, equally dignified 

 when he sat in state in starched ruff and badge of chief 

 magistracy, or when he tilled the garden or the field he 

 loved so well, — John Winthrop, who landed on the shores 

 of Essex, a Puritan governor and a Puritan farmer, grand 

 progenitor of a race who should be equal in right and 

 privilege and rank, who should exalt all honorable labor 



