128 THE farmer's relationships. 



a race would, perhaps, differ no more from us than we differ 

 from the primeval man. So far as we can now conceive, it 

 would be a race of degenerates. 



But if we fight nature, we must fight together. So long as 

 we are divided, slie is too strong for us. And yet by her own 

 law she may be contributing to her own destruction, since, if 

 we reach unity, it must be by the extinction of those who will 

 not cooperate. The single man can not compete with organ- 

 ized man— is not now doing it successfully. The best organ- 

 ized are the most prosperous. Those who will not cooperate 

 will die. The farmer, being now less organized than some 

 others, suffers in ways that we have seen. Gradually he will 

 cooperate more, because his environment will compel him. 

 In part, it may be the present farmers who will do this, and, 

 in part, the successors of those who will die because they 

 will not cooperate. At present, his incompetence to act for the 

 common ends with his fellows is a great cause of the farmer's 

 discontent. 



It will be seen that I do not think that the real causes of 

 the farmer's discontent lie upon the surface, or can be removed 

 by local treatment. If the farmer could pay all his debts with 

 what he calls cheap money, be relieved from all taxation, and 

 be given free transportation for himself and his produce, with 

 a bounty on all his exports, so far as he is discontented he 

 would be discontented still. Possibly he would be more dis- 

 contented, since the seemingly more genial environment would 

 attract to the industry still more of the weaker sort. As I have 

 said, we do not know what qualities may yet develop in our 

 race, but, as we are now, the rugged conditions of competition 

 tend to eliminate discontent by the brutal process of the 

 destruction of the discontented. 



We are all children of one family, governed by one law. 

 I can conceive of no adequate treatment of the condition of 

 the farmer except in connection with the condition of others. 

 In the operation of the law which controls all of us, I have 

 seemed to myself to find the real causes of the farmer's dis- 

 content, and to get some glimpse of the remedies which must 

 cure it. The first step is to decide what is a reasonable 



