The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1908-05-14
The Farmers Prosperity

of business this year he could clean
up thirty thousand million dollars.
And he would have to sell his farm
on credit; for there Is not enough
money In the whole world to pay him
half his price.
Talk OF the money-mad trusts!
They might have reason TO be mad
II they owned the farms, instead of
their watered stock. When We re-
member that the American farmer
earns enough In seventeen days to
buy out Standard Oil, and enough in
fifty days to wipe Carnegie and the
Steel Trust of the Industrial map,
the story of the trusts seems like
1.-The short and simple annals of the
poor"
One American harvest would buy
the Kingdom of Belgium, King and
all; two would buy Italy; three would
buy Austria-Hungary, and five, at a
spot-cash price, would take Russia
from the Gear.
Talk of d. swollen fortunes! With
the setting of every sun the money
box of the American farmer bulges
with the, weight of twenty-four new
millions. Only the most athletic i'm
aginations can conceive of such a tor
rent of wealth.
Place your finger on the pulse Of
your wrist, and count the heartbeats,
one,-two,-three -four. With ev-
cry four of those quick throbs, day
and night, thousand dollars clatters
into the gold-bin of the American
farmer.
How incomprehensible it would
seem to Pericles, who saw Greece In
her Golden Age, If he could know
that the yearly revenue of his coun-
try is now no more than one days
pay for the men who till the soil of
this infant Republic!
Or, how it would amaze a resur-
rected Christopher Columbus If he
were told that the revenue of Spain
and Portugal are not nearly as much
as the earnings of the American
farmers hen!
Merely the crumbs that drop from
the farmers table otherwise known
as agricultural exports) have brought
him in enough in foreign money since
1892 to enable him, II he wished, to
settle the railway problem once for
all, by buying every foot of railroad
in the United States.
Such is our New Farmer man
for whom there Is no name in any
language. He Is as far above the
farmer Of the story-books as a 1908
touring car Is above a tinrikisha. In
stead Of being an ignorant hoeman
in barnyard world, he gets the
news by daily mail and telephone;
and incidentally publishes 700 trade
journals of his own. Instead of be-
ing a moneyless peasant, he pays the
interest on the mortgage with the
earnings OF week Even this Is less
Of an expense than 1t seems for he
borrows the money from himself, out
of his own bank. and spends the bulk
of the tax money around his OWE
properties.
Farming for business, not for a
living,-this Is the motif of the new
farmer. He Is a commercialist,-a
man of the twentieth century. He
works as hard as the old farmer did
but in a higher way. He uses the
four M's,-mind, money, machinery
and muscle; but as little of the latter
as possible.
Neither Is he a Robinson Crusoe OF
the soil, as the old farmer was. His
hermit days are over; he is a man
among men. The railway, the troll.
ley, the automobile, and the top bug.
gy have transformed him into a SUI.
burbanite. In fact, his business has
become so complex and many-side6
that he touches civilization at more
points and lives a larger life than
if he were one Of the atoms of 8
crowded city.
All American farmers, of course
are not Of the new variety. The
country like the city, has its slums
But after having made allowance fol
exceptions, 1t is still true that the
United States Is the native land OF
the new farmer. He Is the most typi.
cal human product that this country
has produced, and the most import
ant, for, in spite Of his egotistica
cities, the United States Is still 9
farm based nation.-From 1.-THE New
American Farmer" by Herbert N
Casson, in the American Review OF
Reviews for May.