Evening star., 1932-10-10

OF good hobbies, who read more than
amateur gardeners? We do not believe
it. The pleasant news pertaining to
flowers and their cultivation binds all
the children of mankind together in
the great basic bond of human broth
erhood-nutrition.
No man who gardens, even IN the
smallest way, but has the proper re-
spect for the tanned men OF the SOIL,
the farmers, sometimes called agrlcul-
turists, who grow the great crops OF
stable foodstuffs upon which we all
live or upon which the animals live.
The farm problem is vital one, not
only among the various bodies of gov
ernors and economists, but among anna.
teur gardeners everywhere who may not
raise anything more important than
violets and Euphorbias. but neverthe-
less feel that these entitle them to an
opinion as well as any.
Such small plants, by the care when
they take and by the growth whlch
they make, cause the gardener to see
eve to eye with those who feel the
shame of a state of affairs in which
men who grow the things We all eat are
not paid even the cost of production.
Something Is terribly wrong some
where, whatever may be the merit OF
the respective farm programs" Maybe
such programs are only ways OF look
ing at things. after all. The real solu-
ton lies, first. on the farms themselves,
and, second, in human nature.
When the selfish elements OF our
common human nature can be sub
jugated to the better, either by the
growth Of sweetness and light" as the
poets hope, or by legislation, which the
sophisticates deplore, the farm ques-
ton will right itself in a common
triumph Of common sense.
One who has worked with plants, II
no more than in small way, knows
the vital something which infuSes the
work, the respect which fills the mind
and heart of the worker for the things
Of Nature, even the smallest plants un-
der his care Whether he raises fine
peonies as large as ones head or less
featured plants, as as Snow -on-the-
Mountain, he knows something of the
feeling which comes to the rugged
'agriculturist" who stands looking over
his crops in some auspicious season
and finds them good.
They are far apart in one way, but
very close together in another. This
community of feeling is aioed by a
which grow in the earth are related
and have a common mother and a
common nature.
Those who work with them on a
small or a large scale come in time to
recognize this feeling and this COM
munity of interest and to have a greater
respect for a good job. Well grown
cereals, fine vegetables. all the products
known as produce, have an essential
dignity.
The soil from which they grow does
not smear them. What dirties them is
the human contempt which so often
beSpatterS them and which would with
hold from the laborer his rightful hire.
Civilization has grown so complex
that there are too many steps between
production and consumption. The es-
sential dignity Of growing things is
pushed back to point where it van
lshes into the thin air Of talk about
farm commodities" and Index prices
and all the rest of the rignarole of
mystical economics.
Man in his own supreme show. civil
ization, has come to the point on his
rough road where his desire to push
everything from the humanities to alb
stractlons, and so into mathematics,
las eol ulIn INTO universal hot water
at last. A human being is always a
human being. and no one can make a
or a '2' or "3" out of him in a
report and not take away from him. or
at least attempt to take away from him,
some OF the essential dignity of a hu-
man being made in Gods image.
Men are men, not eases" in reports
They resent being distractions, but
want to be personalities. large or small,
as the case may be, but forever per-
sonalities. The relationship between
the giant redwood tree and the lowly
spurge of the home garden is not diff
cult to see 1t is all question of how
one looks at the two. War Kreuger got
more respect than he deserved before
he died and the average American
farmer does not get enough until he is
dead