, 1908-06-05
The Farmers Prosperity.

III the American farmer went out Oh
business this year he could clean up
$50, 600, 600, 900, writes Herbert N. Cas-
son. in the American Review of Re-
views for May. And he would have
to sell his farm on credit; for there Is
not enough money in the whole world
to pay him half this price.
Talk of the money-mad trusts! They
might have reason to be mad if they
owned the farms, instead of their wa
tered stock. When We remember that
the American farmer earns enough in
II days to buy out Standard Oil, and
enough in so days to wipe Carnegie
and the Steel trust OFF the industrial
map, the story Of the trusts seems like
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, ant five, at a spot
cash price, would take Russia from
the czar.
Talk of swollen fortunes! With the
setting of every sun the money box of
the American farmer bulges with the
weight of $24, O0O, 900. Only the most
athletic imagination can conceive of
such a torrent of wealth.
Place your finger IN the pulse of
your wrist, and count the heartbeats-
one-two-three-four. With every
four of those quick throbs, day and
night, a thousand dollars clatters into
the gold-bin of the American farmer.
How imcomprehensible it would
seem to Pericles, who saw Greece in
her GoliensAge, If he could know that
the yearly revenue Of his country is
now no more than one days pay for
the men who till the soil Of this infant
republic! M
Or, how it would amaze a resurrect
ed Christopher Columbus il he were
told that the revenues 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 of foreign money since
1892 to enable him, If 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-a man for
whom there is no name in any lau-
guage. He is as far above the farmer of
the story books as a 1908 touring a
is above a jinrikisha. Instead of being
an ignorant hoeman in a barnyard
world, he gets the news by daily mail
and telephone; and incidentally pub
fishes TOO trade journals of his own.
Instead of being a moneyless peasant,
he pays the interest of the mortgage
with the earnings of a week. Even
this is less of an expense than it seems
for he borrows the money from him
self, out of his own banks, and spends
the bulk of the tax-money around his
own properties.
Farming for a business, not for a
living-this is the motif of the new
farmer. He is a commercialist-a mar
of the twentieth century. He works
as hard as the old farmer did, but In
a higher way. He uses the four Ms
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 mar
anon gmen. The railway, the trolley,
the automobile, and the top buggy
transformed him into a suburbanite.
In fact, his business has become 80
complex and many-sided that he
touches civilization at more points and
lives a larger life than if he were n
of the atoms OF a 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 for exceptions.
1t Is still true that the United States
is the native land Of the new farmer.
He is the most typical human product
that this country has produced, and
the most important, for. in spite Of its
egotistical cities. the United States is
still a farm-based nation.