ed, is it not a happy fact that the American farmer is
not merely a farmer? Although it complicates a rural problem such as
ours, it is fortunate that the individual farmer shares the larger
social mind to such a degree as to diminish the intellectual influences
born of his occupation.

The method of procedure that gives largest promise of substantial fact
is to attempt to uncover some of the fundamental influences that operate
upon the psychic life of the farmers of America and to notice, in so far
as opportunity permits, what social elements modify the complete working
of these influences.

One influence that shows itself in the thinking of farmers as of
fundamental character is, of course, the occupation of farming itself.
In primitive life we not only see the importance of agricultural work
for social life but we discover also some of the mental elements
involved that make this form of industry socially significant. From the
first it called for an investment of self-control, a patience, that
Nature might be coaxed to yield from her resources a reasonable harvest.
We find therefore in primitive agriculture a hazardous undertaking
which, nevertheless, lacked any large amount of dramatic appeal.

It is by no means otherwise today. The farmer has to be efficient in a
peculiar kind of self-control. He needs to invest labor and foresight in
an enterprise that affords to the usual person little of the opportunity
for quick returns, the sense of personal achievement, or the
satisfaction of the desire for competitive face-to-face association with
other men which is offered in the city. Men who cultivate on a very
large scale and men who enjoy unusual social insight as to the
significance of their occupation are exceptions to the general run of
farmers. In these days of accessible transportation we have a rapid and
highly successful selection which largely eliminates from the farming
class the type that does not naturally possess the power to be satisfied
with the slowly acquired property, impersonal success, and non-dramatic
activities of farming. This process which eliminates the more restless
and commercially ambitious from the country has, of course, been at
work for generations. It has tended, therefore, to a uniformity of
mental characteristics, but it has by no means succeeded in procuring a
homogeneous rural mind. The movement has been somewhat modified by the
return of people to the country from the city and by the