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fight  for  his  boarding  house/’  reflects  this  great  truth,  that  no 
man  is  so  ready  to  defend  his  country,  not  only  with  arms,  but 
with  his  vote,  and  his  contribution  to  public  opinion  as  the  man 
with  a permanent  stake  in  it,  as  the  man  who  owns  the  land  from 
which  he  makes  his  living. 
Our  country  began  as  a nation  of  farmers.  During  the  periods 
that  gave  it  its  character,  when  our  independence  was  won  and 
when  our  Union  was  preserved,  we  were  preeminently  a nation 
of  farmers.  We  can  not,  and  we  ought  not,  to  continue  exclu- 
sively, or  even  chiefly,  an  agricultural  country,  because  one  man 
can  raise  food  enough  for  many.  But  the  farmer  who  owns  his 
land  is  still  the  backbone  of  this  nation ; and  one  of  the  things  we 
want  most  is  more  of  him. 
The  man  on  the  farm  is  valuable  to  the  nation,  like  any  other 
citizen,  just  in  proportion  to  his  intelligence,  character,  ability,  and 
patriotism,  but  unlike  the  other  citizens  also  in  proportion  to  his 
attachment  to  the  soil.  That  is  the  principal  spring  of  his  steadi- 
ness, his  sanity,  his  simplicity  and  directness,  and  many  of  his 
other  desirable  qualities.  He  is  the  first  of  home-makers. 
The  nation  that  will  lead  the  world  will  be  a nation  of  homes. 
The  object  of  the  great  conservation  movement  is  just  this,  to 
make  our  country  a permanent  and  prosperous  home  for  our- 
selves and  for  our  children,  and  for  our  children’s  children,  and 
it  is  a task  that  is  worth  the  best  thought  and  effort  of  any  and 
all  of  us. 
To  achieve  this  or  any  other  great  result,  straight  thinking  and 
strong  action  are  necessary,  and  the  straight  thinking  comes  first. 
To  make  this  country  what  we  need  to  have  it,  we  must  think 
clearly  and  directly  about  our  problems,  and  above  all  we  must 
understand  what  the  real  problems  are.  The  great  things  are  few 
and  simple,  but  they  are  too  often  hidden  by  false  issues,  and  con- 
ventional, unreal  thinking.  The  easiest  way  to  hide  a real  issue 
always  has  been,  and  always  will  be,  to  replace  it  with  a false  one. 
The  first  thing  we  need  in  this  country,  as  President  Roosevelt 
so  well  set  forth  in  that  great  message  which  told  what  he  had 
been  trying  to  do  for  the  American  people,  is  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity for  every  citizen.  No  man  should  have  less,  and  no  man 
ought  to  ask  for  any  more.  Equality  of  opportunity  is  the  real 
object  of  our  laws  and  institutions.  Our  institutions  and  our  laws 
are  not  valuable  in  themselves.  They  are  valuable  only  because 
they  secure  equality  of  opportunity  for  happiness  and  welfare 
for  our  citizens.  An  institution  or  a law  is  a means,  not  an 
end,  a means  to  be  used  for  the  public  good,  to  be  modified  for 
the  public  good,  and  -to  be  interpreted  for  the  public  good.  One 
of  the  great  reasons  why  President  Roosevelt’s  administration 
was  of  such  enormous  value  to  the  plain  American  was  that  he 
understood  what  St.  Paul  meant  when  he  said : “The  letter 
killeth,  but  the  spirit  giveth  life.”  To  follow  blindly  the  letter 
of  the  law,  or  the  form  of  an  institution,  without  intelligent  re- 
