enth century superseded the pioneer period, in
which individual action and independent personal initiative were the
prevailing mode.

The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of
ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has
perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet
endowed with social standards. He knows that it is right to give full
measure when he sells a commodity, but he does not yet see the evil of
breaches of contract. Farmers of high standing in their communities for
their personal character, who are truthful and "honest" in such
contractual relations as come down from their fathers, have been known
to use the school system of the town for their own private profit, or
that of members of their families, and to ignore financial obligations
which belong to the new period, in which money values have taken the
place of barter values.

A good illustration is that of a deacon in a country church, whom I once
knew. His word was proverbially truthful. As widely as he was known his
reputation for piety and simple truthfulness, for honesty and purity of
life were universal. I do not think that he was consciously insincere,
but as a trustee in administering a fund devoted to public uses he
seemed to have a clear eye for only those enterprises through which he
or members of his family could indirectly secure incomes. Entrusted with
a public service which involved the improvement of the school system, so
far as he acted individually and without prompting by those who had been
accustomed all their lives to modern methods, his action was that of
loyalty to his own family and relationship. In so doing he regularly
would betray the community and the public interest. Yet he seemed to do
this ingenuously and without any conception of the moral standards of
people used to the values of money.

I have known the same man, whose standing among farmers was that of a
blameless religious man, to borrow money, and in the period of the loan
so to conduct himself as to forfeit the respect of people used to
handling money. To them he seemed to be a conscious and deliberate
grafter. The explanation in my mind is that he suffered from the
transition out of the pioneer and farmer economy into the economy of the
exploiter.

The history of the sale of lands in the country, in the recent
exploitation of farm-lands, contains many stories of the breach of
contract of fa