1 8 AMERICAN FARMS. 



Strife, both of an international character and between 

 classes and communities, has, as a rule, been most in- 

 tense for the lion's share in production and through ex- 

 change, the farmer — naturally supplying his own wants 

 in a large degree, or in the centre of an industrial sys- 

 tem of self-contained independence — desires the privi- 

 leges of peace. Agriculturists, the world over, have a 

 common cause in securing the inestimable benefits of in- 

 dustrial, commercial, and international peace. Then De 

 Laveleye is not far wrong in claiming that " real civiliza- 

 tion dates from the time when man first entrusted a grain 

 of corn to the soil." 



With the agriculturist, too, we may look for social 

 security ; for who can be more desirous of preserving 

 the institutions of the country from revolutionary shocks, 

 than those who have property in land with all its valued 

 associations ? 



In a word, the agriculturists should be valued as the 

 temperate, the physical, the mental, the religious, the 

 moral, the social, as well as the best economic support to 

 our civilization. See Book VII. 



If we study the statistics of the United States we find 

 that they furnish most conclusive evidence of the vast 

 importance of the farm industries of America. Dimin- 

 ished as they may seem to be in relative importance, the 

 capital invested in agriculture exceeds the capital em- 

 ployed in any other line of production. Agriculture 

 builds the railways of America, or they are built in 

 anticipation of the farmers paying for them ; it supports 

 directly the largest industrial class ; it settles the princi- 

 pal part of the foreign account for two hundred and thirty 

 millions of crude articles of manufacture purchased in 

 Other countries — to say nothing of the manufactured. 



