CHAPTER III. 



THE AMERICAN FARMER'S WANING ECONOMIC 



POWER. 



Most students of social science will admit that in all 

 stages in the growth of nations and of society, the indi- 

 viduals or the classes .which have had the largest shafe 

 in the general wealth have possessed immense advan- 

 tages over those less abundantly supplied. Such pos- 

 sessions have truly given them the " power of position " to 

 command men as well as things. The early farmers of 

 America could well boast of being the wealth producers, 

 as well as the wealth controllers of the Western world ; 

 a power of position which could reasonably defy oppres- 

 sion from the hands of others. 



I am aware that the aggregate apparent wealth of the 

 agricultural and pastoral classes has increased in the 

 last fifty years, and that the average farmer may be in a 

 sense better conditioned than he was half a century ago ; 

 but so is the ordinary citizen, in a sense, better off than 

 the foremost citizen of primitive times. Even the average 

 pauper of to-day is, in a sense, better circumstanced, than 

 the most successful of the earliest pioneers in material 

 progress. As much could be said, perhaps, for the 

 slave of the Roman Empire in her palmy days, as com- 

 pared with the free savage of an earlier period. At any 

 stage of development, however, the successful ones, or 



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