ed misunderstandings. No
mere education as to alleged right and wrong can plaster over the old
economy with new ethical standards. Until the loneliness and the emotion
are taken out of farming country people cannot co-operate.

A good part of the United States is still in the land farmer period. The
characteristic of the land farmer is his cultivation of group life. The
historical process by which this group life is broken up is
exploitation. Farmers whose lands have not been exploited and whose
group life has not suffered the undermining influence of exploitation
will not normally co-operate. I am convinced that in most farming
territories the loyalty of the countryman to his group is the second
reason for his refusal to co-operate. Again, this refusal of his is not
subject to persuasion. He is obeying an economic condition which shapes
his life and controls his action. Striking instances are furnished in
many regions of the amazing disloyalty of farmers to one another, and to
their own pledged word. These are to be explained by the type to which
the farmer in these sections conforms. We must not expect the land
farmer to obey the ethical standards of the husbandman.

A good instance of this conformity to type was furnished in the case of
meetings held in Louisiana and Western Mississippi among the farmers who
raise cotton. The occasion of the meetings was the approach of the boll
weevil to their districts. The attendance upon the meetings was large,
indeed universal. The situation was clearly understood and the speakers
secured from the farmers present a promise quite unanimous to refrain
from cultivating cotton for a year. The purpose of this was to meet the
boll weevil with a territory in which he would find no food. Thus his
march eastward across the cotton field would be arrested.

The farmers having made their promise and agreed heartily in the
proposal, adjourned. Weeks and months passed and the time approached for
planting cotton. Farmer after farmer, who had attended these meetings
and given his promise, privately decided that he would plant a cotton
crop and secretly expected that he would secure a larger price that year
because so many of his neighbors were to raise other crops. When the
full season for planting cotton had come it was discovered that so many
farmers had planted cotton that the plan of co-operation was a failure,
and the whole district went back to cotton, with full prospect of
assisting th