The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-04-09

DIR colleges and universities. From
fifty to seventy-fve years ago, at least
two-thirds, if not nine-tenths, of their
students we're farmers sons-big,
brawny, and brainy fellows, who wore
homemade clothes and practised the
most rigid economies. One such
specimen, within the writer's recollec-
! ton. walked sixty miles to his institu-
ton, not only carrying his necessary
belongings upon his back, but driving
before him one of his fathers COWS,
whose milk was to assist in sustaining
the body while the mind was drinking
at the classic fount. From the schools,
these rustics entered the learned pro-
LESSONS divinity medicine, law
and pushed their way to the first po-
sitions in the land. But now the
country boy, appearing in garments
home-spun and homemade, and setting
up to be his own housekeeper, would
be a rara avis at any one of our first
class seats of learning. He would
have a hard time of it among his com
panions of fine feathers and fine ways.
Our colleges get their students from
the cities and towns. The son Of
gentlemen-so called-crowd the
learned professions, while the farmers
boys who weary of their fathers occu-
patton and decide upon a change enter
the mechanical trades, become railroad
employees, hucksters, and the smaller
shopmen. Socially, they 60 down in
stead of up.
But a more significant change is to
be seer in our Legislative halls. Here
the farmer once predominated. He
not only made, but he executed, the
laws. The first President of the United
| States was a farmer. So was the first
Vice-President. Of the first ten Presi-
dents, eight were directly interested
in agriculture; but it has now been a
long time since we have had a farmer
in the Presidential chair, and he is not
to be there for four years ore Not
only has the farmer largely retired
from Congress,-especially from the
upper branch, where his place has
been taken by the millionaire nan
facturer, the railroad magnate, and
the lumber king,-but he is rapidly
disappearing from the State Legisla-
ture, where he once reigned supreme.
The Connecticut Legislature used to
be almost solidly agricultural; but the
roster of it's present Senate shows
seven manufacturers and three manu-
facturers' lawyers to two farmers. In
and about our big cities, although
thousands are engaged in agricultural
pursuits, the farmer as a legislator is
now outnumbered by the liquor-seller.
Indeed, the bucolic statesman who
used to quit his pillow ace a year to
become a law-maker at the State cap
ital, where he was chiefly distinguish
able by questionable garments and
intense watchfulness over the public
pennies, is almost extinct. The cost
of an election to Office, now that pro-
motion is getting to be more and more
a matter of money, rules out the small
husbandman who was once SO impor-
tant a factor in politics. He can't
stand the expense.
But nothing, after all, so strikingly
and painfully signalies the farmers
decadence as his manifest loss of esprit.
This appears not-only in the failure of
agricultural colleges, the diminishing
support of agricultural newspapers,
and the decline of the old-time and
once popular county fair, which now
lives merely as a ~horse-racing exhibit
ton, but in the increasing discomfort
that is visible in all ranks and classes
Of the rural population. No feeling
is there more obvious than the desire
to quit the farm. Whenever the
landed proprietor feels able to do SO,
he moves to town, and our cities and
villages grow at the country's expense.
Our agr~iculturalists act as if they were
ashamed of their calling,
Under such circumstances it is not
surprising that the farmer should be
slow to grasp and master the public
questions that most affect his material
interests. The hired and salaried
laborers of the country have of late
shown much greater enterprise. Their
organizations have been numerous
and powerful, and the wage-earning
masses have studied economic issues
to an extent that has enabled them to
display at times an intelligence and
independence that have surprised and
frightened their employers, who,
naturally enough, would like to be
their masters. Not so with the farmer.
His class organizations have amounted
to little; and he has shown in his po-
litical operations a Bourbonism that is
almost comical. Years ago he was
jocularly accused of voting for Andrew
Jackson after that dignitary was dead;
but il is a fact that l~atterly he has
manifested a rooted propensity to con
tinue voting on the issues of a war