Long Valley advocate. (Lardo, Idaho) 1904-1907, 1907-05-09
FARMER FULLY THE EQUAL OF
THE CITY MAN.
March of Progress Has Done Great
Things in Broadening Out the
DwelIer in the Country
is Now Leader.

a person with hay in his hair, a double
handful of beard on his chin, clothing
with many patches and boots of COW
hide. This blithering pumpkin is de-
picted as buying green goods of city
men, whose wickedness is supposed to
count as wisdom. But the truth is
that the country man of to-day has cut
his eye teeth upon, experience and
keeps them sharpened on books and
newspapers, for which he has more
use and reverence than those who have
hourly editions thrust upon. them.
The rustic can no longer remain the
clOdhOpper of comedy, even if he
would. Those material changes that
we fondly count as progress are as in
escapable among the hills as they are
in the tenement. The village now has
its telephone, it's electric light-some-
times as many as two-its free library,
its high school, its Improvement asso-
citation, its health officer and it's occa,
s1onal lecturer on COWS and agricul-
ture; whereas the sole center of au.
thOr1ty, intellectual endeavOr and So
c1al activity was formerly the church
Nor is the farmer distinguishable by
his recent acquisition of hand-me-down
clothes, for they are shaped after re-
cent patterns and are made of as good
materials as are other folks Indeed,
IL ne lives near one of those New Eng
land mills, where they weave wooden
cloth that is three-fourths shoddv the
chances are that he knows better than
the city man what to avoid and gets
better clothes for less money. He
drives shiny carriage, has a melO
deon-if not piano-in the house,
takes daily paper as we'll as a coun-
try weekly and has been to Boston or
New York or Chicago
differences between the farmer and
the city man are even less in respect
OF ways of life and modes of thought
than in these matters of clothing and
custom The farmer has broadened
out OF late. He has a concern in the
business of the nation. although he
does not view problems and complexi-
ties at close range, having in his farm
enough for his needs and fewer ex
penseS than the person who is deem
In society and whose station or calling
demands large and constant OutgO
IL is the farmer who for years has
peen receiving the least for his prod
ucC and paying most for his bought
en- necessities, and it is the farmer
VINO has been systematically over
looked by the politicians he has helned
TO office. The material gains which
nave been forced from capital bv trade
unions have reused his interest. per
maps MS envy, and as he broadens and
becomes increasingly worldly minded
MS demands and his needs must he
needed.
And this is as it should be. Men
must be grounded firmly in nature or
they decay, individually and socially.
All that will lead men back to the
SOIL, to places of strength and health
10 calm, to readiness in seIf-resource
makes for the endurance of the state
and OF the institutes of civilization.
crime ana discomfort do not pertain to
the tlllage of our fields; envy is not a
tra1t of villages; small places have
small vices, it is true, of which tipplins
ana gossip are the worst, but thew are
nurseries of men who take the Mace
OF those weakened by the life of towns
And 1T is for these men of red blood
nd free speech that place must be
made The outward marks that nro-
Claimed them country men being lost
we snail the more freely concede those
merits that qualify them for station
Inc pumpkin has passed because his
age and his country have called to him
to be "a