The safety of our Great Republic entirely depends upon the existence of
a conservative class of independent individuals, unable to become
crazed, through laziness, over some miserable idea unconnected with the
business of living. When any great wrong is to be righted by absolute
force it is necessary that the body exercising that force should be
amenable to a sense of practical justice. If it shall be necessary to
take the railroads away from their owners, or to close the boards of
trade, or to go the other way and farm out the post-office and machinery
of the government to get rid of the crime of office-hunting,--why then,
the action of independent men is necessary--the doings of wage-workers
are not satisfactory, and are almost always fatal to the order of things
which was to be renovated. If this Republic have any vitality not
enjoyed formerly by the democracies now buried in the yellow pages of
history, it is the tremendous scope of her quarter-section farms. Not
many years ago one of the largest business houses in Chicago put up a
placard, just before election, stating that the proprietor considered
his interests justly the interests of his clerks, and it was decidedly
to his interests to have the Honorable Barnacle Bigbug re-elected. All
employes were requested to note well. You see the crime of this
dry-goods "prince" (how we all run to idiotic titles!) lay in
subordinating the good of the State to the good of his particular
millions. He totally forgot that the good of each clerk was as much to
be looked after by the Government as the good of his own ambitious flesh
and blood. He drowned every principle of democracy in the monarchical
desire to "get it all and then give some away." The desire to give away
is where the theory gives away. Now this can never happen on the farm.
The plutocrats must always tremble before the man with hay-seed in his
hair. They cannot reach him. They cannot tempt or debauch him. Teach
this to your sons. Teach it with horses, buggies, churches, picnics,
schools, books, rest, and travel. Take the boys to the rank-smelling
cities; show them the factories, the store-gangs, and the street gangs.
Then they will go home with joy in their hearts, and when Old Brindle
moos and Old Sorrel whinnies in recognition at their gate you may be
sure that the greedy city will never swallow up your sturdy sons, the
pride of your declining years. I have been somewhat earnest in this
because my life on a farm was harder than circumstances make imperative
nowadays. Clearing is heavy work. The culture of an Indiana opening
among stumps that make a field look like a drag turned wrong-side-up
leaves little chance for gymnasium or bath-room. But all that is gone
by. I have been earnest, again, because