PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 111 



"West with a mind and hospitality as wide and as fertile as the 

 teeming soil beneath their feet. Or is the American farmer 

 best typified by the early pioneer, that strange combination of 

 hunter, fisher, lumberman, farmer, trapper and scout, now well- 

 nigh extinct, but to whom we owe Lincoln, the best and most 

 typical American citizen? Or shall we find him in the South, 

 amid the cotton, rice and sugar plantations? And if here, is he 

 white or black a member of ante-bellum aristocracy or "poor 

 white trash"? If purity of American blood is to be the test, the 

 latter will demand first consideration, for in few places is the 

 foreign strain less present than among the moonshining, feud- 

 fighting mountaineers of Kentucky and the Carolinas. Is he cow- 

 boy, rancher or sheep farmer on the Western plains? Or is the 

 typical American farmer the resident of the great arid irrigated 

 belt, a dependent upon a great water company, raising almost 

 fabulous crops and receiving a beggarly return? Or is he the 

 Slav, or Italian, or Dutch truck farmer of the city suburb, work- 

 ing beneath glass and aided by steam and electricity? Or shall 

 we find him upon the dairy and stock farms of Illinois, Iowa and 

 Wisconsin? Or is he a fruit farmer, and if so is he in tropic or 

 temperate climes? Is it all of these, or none, or part of each, or 

 a composite picture of the whole that makes up the American 

 farmer ? 



THE POINT OF VIEW IN COMPARISONS OF CITY AND 

 COUNTRY CONDITIONS 1 



KENYON L. BUTTERPIELD 



IN view of this apparent change in the attitude of people 

 toward the farm problem, it may not be idle to suggest some 

 possible errors that should be avoided when we are thinking of 

 rural society. The student will doubtless approach his prob- 

 lem fortified against some misconceptions he probably has 

 thoughtfully established his view point. But the average per- 

 son in the city is likely to call up the image of his ancestral home 



i Adapted from "Chapters in Rural Progress," pp. 4-5. ( Copyright by 

 University Chicago Press, 1907.) 



