CHAPTER VIII. 



THE FARMER AND SOCIALISM. 



WE may agree in desiring that our great industrial 

 activities be directed by persons of brains and force, 

 and concede that to the possessors of those qualities 

 something more is due from society than to those who are 

 without them, and yet we may protest against the tyranny of 

 intellect and vigor which now oppresses us, and insist that we 

 who pay tribute to those virtues have more voice in fixing its 

 amount. We may concede that the mighty forces which impel 

 mankind to its destiny will move on in the line of their 

 resultant, regardless of our views or wishes, and yet recognize 

 that all that we say or do is both an effect and a part of those 

 forces, and that discussion of social reform is therefore not 

 vain or unprofitable. Insomuch as opinion is changed, desire 

 is changed, and a change of desire in a single human being- 

 tends to a change in the direction of social impulse. With no 

 pretense to deep reading on social topics, I seem to myself 

 sufficiently familiar with the literature of the subject to feel 

 justified in saying that the subject of social reform has hardly 

 yet been touched — at least by English-speaking peoples — in 

 any thoughtful way, from the standpoint of the interest which 

 will liave to be first considered in any new alignment of the 

 social battalions. Discussion seems to have centered itself 

 almost wholly about urban life and the comfort of operatives. 

 But before there can be urban life there must be food to sustain 

 it, and before factories can be operated there must be raw 

 material. For many ages mankind demonstrated its power to 

 live without cities and without factories, and it could do so 

 still, but the results of labor of rural society are essential to 

 our existence. The conveniences and ornament of a structure 

 may be more in evidence than the foundations, but it is the 

 strength and disposition of the latter which control stability. 



(422) 



