uced to the
elemental necessities of food and shelter, I want it not. But I do not
believe that this is the case. The wealth of the world comes from the
land, which produces all the direct and immediate essentials for the
preservation of life and the protection of the race. When people cease
to look to the land for support, they lose their independence and fall
under the tyranny of circumstances beyond their control. They are no
longer producers, but consumers; and their prosperity is contingent upon
the prosperity and good will of other people who are more or less alien.
Only when a considerable percentage of a nation is living close to the
land can the highest type of independence and prosperity be enjoyed.
This law applies to the mass and also to the individual. The farmer, who
produces all the necessities and many of the luxuries, and whose
products are in constant demand and never out of vogue, should be
independent in mode of life and prosperous in his fortunes. If this is
not the condition of the average farmer (and I am sorry to say it is
not), the fault is to be found, not in the land, but in the man who
tills it.

Ninety-five per cent of those who engage in commercial and professional
occupations fail of large success; more than fifty per cent fail
utterly, and are doomed to miserable, dependent lives in the service of
the more fortunate. That farmers do not fail nearly so often is due to
the bounty of the land, the beneficence of Nature, and the
ever-recurring seed-time and harvest, which even the most thoughtless
cannot interrupt.

The waking dream of my life had been to own and to work land; to own it
free of debt, and to work it with the same intelligence that has made me
successful in my profession. Brains always seemed to me as necessary to
success in farming as in law, or in medicine, or in business. I always
felt that mind should control events in agriculture as in commercial
life; that listlessness, carelessness, lack of thrift and energy, and
waste, were the factors most potent in keeping the farmer poor and
unreasonably harassed by the obligations of life. The men who cultivate
the soil create incalculable wealth; by rights they should be the
nation's healthiest, happiest, most comfortable, and most independent
citizens. Their lives should be long, free from care and distress, and
no more strenuous than is wholesome. That this condition is not general
is due to the fact that the average farmer put