THE FARMER LOSING HIS POLITICAL POWER. 1 77 



Few, we think, will deny that even on great questions 

 the farmer usually supports the old party, but he does it 

 from far higher motives than those which govern the aver- 

 age voter. But the consequences are that the politician 

 thinks it unnecessary to give himself any concern as to far- 

 mers' rights or his support. And, whatever has been 

 said to the contrary, the average farmer of America is, I 

 believe, above bribes. He, the farmer, with his industry, 

 his self-reliance, is really the nation-builder ; but in poli- 

 tics his vote counts but one, and the politician has faith 

 enough in his integrity to know for whom it will be cast. 

 With all that must be done to suit the exigencies of the 

 times, the demands for benefactions, protections, pre- 

 ventions, and encouragements, and which the State can 

 only satisfy by large demands upon the farmer and his 

 like, who have produced and saved, — the farmer is what 

 Professor Sumner calls him, "The Forgotten Man." 



Even in many constituencies where agriculture largely 

 predominates either a coal, a coal-oil, a cotton-seed, a 

 railroad, a sugar-refining, or a cotton-manufacturing mo- 

 nopoly marches its forces to the polls, " an organized 

 army." The agricultural vote is, so far as self-interest is 

 concerned, practically a fruitless effort. When our poll- 

 ing days arrive, our agriculturists gather around the 

 booths and promptly record their votes. So long as 

 only farmers vote, the ward-workers have little trouble 

 to decide the state of the poll, carefully guarded as the 

 secrets of the poll may be. They know that their neigh- 

 bors are influenced in their choice of representatives, in 

 the main, by their feelings in reference to the antecedents 

 of the party whose name the candidate bears. But the 

 effect on the ballot-box by the squad of electors who 



are to be marched down from the factories near by, will 



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