The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.) 1881-1918, 1907-05-09
"RUBE" IS NO MORE
FARMER FULLY. THE EQUAL OF
THE CITY MAN.
March Of Progress Has Done Great
Things in Broadening Out the
DweIler in the Country
Is Now a Leader.

Our comic papers will continue for
a time to represent the eeaHtfymen as
a person with hay in his hair, 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 wicRedness is supposed to
count as wisdom. But the truth Is
that the country man of today 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 II 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, its electric light-some-
times as many as two-its free library.
its high school, its improvement asso-
citation. its health officer and its occa.
sional lecturer on cows and agricul-
ture: whereas the sole center of au.
thority, intellectual endeavor and So
cial 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,
II he lives near one of those New Eng.
land mills, where they weave wooden
cloth that is three-fourths shoddy the
chances are that he knows better than
the city man what to avoid and gets
better clothes for less money. He
drives a shiny carriage, has a melo-
deon-if not piano-in the house,
takes daily paper as well 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 concern In the
business of the nation. although he
does not view problems and complex
ties at close range, having in his farm
enough for his needs and fewer ex-
penses than the person who Is deep
in society and whose station or calling
demands large and constant outgo.
1t Is the farmer who for years has
been receiving the least for his prod
uct and paying most for his bought
en-" necessities, and II Is the farther
who has been Systematically over
looked by the politicians he has helped
to office. The material gains which
have been forced from capital by trade
unions have reused his interest, per-
haps his envy, and as he broadens and
becomes increasingly worldly minded
his demands and his needs must be
needed
The sons Of this ruddy-faced and
hearty citizen fill the pulpit and the
bench, and they are known on change
duu tldy Htdu COlil lIdIISS. w utn uC 10
chosen to congress, as men of strength
and merit always risk being chosen,
the once pumpkin will have a voice
in the conduct Of affairs.
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,
to calm, to readiness in self-resource
makes for the endurance of the state
| and of the institutes of civilization
Crime and discomfort do not pertain to
the tillage of our fields; envy is not a
trait of villages: small places have
small vices, it is true, of which tipping
| and gossip are the worst, but they are
| nurseries of men who take the place
of those weakened by the life of towns.
And it is for these men Of red blood
nd free speech that place must be
made. The outward marks that pro-
claimed them country men being lost,
we shall the more freely concede those
merits that qualify them for station.
The pumpkin has passed because his
age and his country have called to him
! to be not a man among cattle, but a
man among men.-Brooklyn Eagle.