d
in the success of the new farmer that is still more fundamental than any
yet mentioned. The old farmer had a social standing that made him
essentially a middle-class man. He was a landholder, he was independent,
he was successful. He was the typical American citizen. The old farmer
was father to the best blood of America. His sons and his sons' sons
have answered to the roll call of our country's warriors, statesmen,
writers, captains of industry.

Can the new farmer maintain the same relative social status? And if he
can, is he to be an aristocrat, a landlord, a captain of industry, and
to bear rule over the mossback? And is the tribe of mossbacks destined
to increase and become a caste of permanent tenants or peasants? Is the
future American farmer to be the typical new farmer of the present, or
are we traveling toward a social condition in which the tillers of the
soil will be underlings? Is there coming a time when the "man with the
hoe" will be the true picture of the American farmer, with a low
standard of living, without ideals, without a chance for progress?

We must eliminate the mossback. It is to be done largely by education
and by co-operation. There must be a campaign for rural progress. There
must be a union of the country school teacher, of the agricultural
college professor, of the rural pastor, of the country editor, with the
farmers themselves, for the production of an increased crop of new
farmers. Anything that makes farm life more worth living, anything that
banishes rural isolation, anything that dignifies the business of
farming and makes it more prosperous, anything that broadens the
farmer's horizon, anything that gives him a greater grasp of the rural
movement, anything that makes him a better citizen, a better business
man, or a better _man_, means the passing of the mossback.

CHAPTER V

CULTURE FROM THE CORN LOT[2]

The question of questions that the college student asks himself is, What
am I going to be? The surface query is, What am I going to _do_? But in
his heart of hearts he ponders the deeper questions: What may I become
in real intellectual and moral worth? How large a man, measured by the
divine standards, will it be possible for me to grow into?

These are the great questions because growth is the great end of life.
That is what we are here for, to grow. To develop all our talents, all
our possibilities, to increase our native powers of body, mind, and
soul--this i