The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1922-12-01
The Farmer in The
Commonwealth
By RALPH H. GABRIEL
prot. of History, Yale University

1.-THE farmer group of America was not
built up by the evolutionary method OF
the selection of the fit and the elimination
of the unfit. The process was quite the
reverse Democracy's policy OF lavish
distribution of the rich bounty OF nature
gave the inefficient an equal chance with
the efficient, the farmer with the man who
knew nothing of agriculture. 1t is doubt
full if the penalty for individual failure,
either on the fields or in the city, has ever
been SO light as in America OF the nine
teenth century when the down-and-out
could still go west Of such materials
the American farmer group was originally
composed. Is it surprising that this
group, until recently practically isolated
from contemporaneous civilization, should,
at times, bring forth strange things! The
security enjoyed by the nineteenth CEN
fury is paid for, in part, by the socialistic'
Non-Partisan League of the twentieth.
But the picture is not all dark; the
very disadvantages of the farmer group
proved advantageous. The equality OF
the frontier that enticed the derelict de-
veloped a sturdy independence and an
outstanding individualism that has separ-
ated the farmer of America from the
peasant of Europe by an impossible
gulf. The very isolation of the primitive
frontier that brought intellectual stag
nation developed that aggressive resource
fulness upon which success is built. Out
of the composite of peoples that crossed
the Appalachians came the American.
Though many of the ADLER men left the
farm for the cities, in more cases than We
know the love of the soil remained with
them From these, for the most part,
we're recruited that army of experiment
ers who, in the last half of the nineteentS
century, brought into being the science
of agriculture.
A New Epoch.
1.-THE last decade of the nineteenth
century saw the conclusion of the old
epoch in American farming and the be-
ginning of the new agrarianism. The
frontier disappeared bringing to an end
the timeworn process of increasing agri-
cultural products by taking up new lands.
Escape from the rigors of competition
was cut off Moreover, the rolling prairie
country had been covered with network
of railroads and the haunts of the bison
shook under the wheels of hurrying loco
motives. As free land disappeared and
the country filled up with people, land
values rose and farms became costly.
Ex-Secretary Meredith e n y
announced that, in the forty years from
1860 to 1000, during most Of which time
the frontier was an active force, farm
values increased only twenty per cent.
In 1920, they were FIVE times as great as
in 1900, and the end is not yet. Not only
have farms become costly but the tools
which have replaced the scythe and cradle
have greatly increased in expense. The
result of these changes is that farming has
passed out of the simple, almost primitive
development of the mid-nineteenth CEN
fury and become a capitalistic enterprise.
Purged of Rifraf.
"The change is one of the fundamental
factors in the new agrarianism. 1t is a
change which has brought memorable
competition into the farmer group and a
wedding out of the unfit and the inefficient.
The purge of the riffraff that flooded the
farming areas of America during the
years in which they served as the safety
valve Of the nation has begun. The grow
ing kcenness of this competition has
played no inconsderable part in breaking
down the lethargy of 'old habits already
and insensibly acquired without any ex-
pense OF thought" and in bringing OPEN
mindedncss to the new agricultural science.
For more than a quarter of a century
the land grant colleges and the State and
National experiment stations developed
this science against the day when there
should be no more unoccupied land.
They foresaw that, when it came, food
production must be increased by the use
of better methods To abolish the inertia
of the traditional farmer and to put the
new science actually at work behind the
plough was the task which lay ahead.
The beginning of the solution of this
problem is at the very centre of the
agrarian movement of the first quarter
of the twentieth century.
A Potent Factor.
almost overnight, the Farm Bureau
has become a factor of major national
Importance. 1t must not be believed
that this is the only farmers organization.
There are active survivals of earlier or
CARNATIONS of which the Grange is prob
ably the most powerful and most useful.
Furthermore there are organizations Of
specialists within the agricultural field
such as the Dairymen's League and the
National Wool Growers Association.
The centre Of this complex of organiza-
tons, however, is to be found in the Farm
Bureau.